The Brush-Off Read Free Page B

nothing is certain. When things change, they change quickly. From the direction of Treasury Place, at the foot of the towering office-blocks, wraiths of heat haze ascended to the remorseless heavens like smoke from a sacrificial altar.
    It must have been the weather. All this Greek shit was going to my head. I picked up the phone. ‘Break it to me gently,’ I said.
    For the past sixteen months, since the ’87 stock-market crash, the Economic Development Ministry had been haemorrhaging money. What had started as a trickle had become an unstoppable torrent. The government was losing money faster than it could raise or borrow it. A gesture was required. A head must roll. Bill Hahn, the Deputy Premier, had drawn the short straw. The fag end of January met the timing requirements perfectly. Half the population was too shagged out from the heat to be interested in politics. The other half was busy folding its tents and returning from holidays. When the Premier called an unscheduled Cabinet meeting earlier that afternoon, the agenda was only too obvious.
    â€˜It’s over,’ said Trish. ‘Angelo’s just come back.’
    Behind her voice I could hear the mechanical whirr of a document shredder. Which could mean only one thing. There had been a major reshuffle. Angelo Agnelli was no longer Minister for Ethnic Affairs. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense.’ I tried to make it casual. ‘What happened? Did he get the sack or did he get a new portfolio?’
    Trish was Agnelli’s private secretary. I thought I could detect a suggestion of distance in her tone, a hint that old alliances could no longer be taken for granted. The flux was running, changes were afoot up there in the ministerial suite. ‘You’re going to love this,’ she said. She could afford to be flippant. She’d be okay. Whatever happens, they always take their secretaries with them. ‘He’s been given Water.’
    â€˜Christ!’ I said. ‘Minister for Water Supply. The very thought of it made my mouth go dry. I looked about the Nea Hellas production room for something to slake my sudden thirst. The only cup in sight contained the congealing dregs of ancient Greek coffee. My future was suddenly as black as that bitter beverage. I touched it to my lips. At least it was wet.
    I’d been at Ethnic Affairs for four years. Employing me as his principal adviser had been one of Agnelli’s smarter moves. In a state whose two major ethnic power blocks are the Greeks and the Italians, giving the job to a man with an Irish name was a masterstroke of impartiality. And since I’d once been party organiser in Melbourne Upper, Agnelli’s electorate, home to the highest concentration of migrants in the country, it wasn’t as though I didn’t have some pretty solid credentials in the field of dago-wrangling. But Water Supply? All I knew about Water Supply was it happened when you turned on a tap.
    â€˜And the Arts,’ said Trish.
    Water Supply and the Arts. My heart plummeted. Not only had Agnelli failed to win substantial promotion, he’d managed to put me in very ticklish situation. Local Government I could do. Community Services, no problem. But Water Supply and the Arts? I knew as much about rocket science.
    â€˜The Arts?’ I repeated dismally. ‘That means I’m fucked.’
    Now that I had embraced my fate, Trish could afford to allow a little more of the old warmth back into her voice. ‘Yeah,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I reckon.’
    The odds that Agnelli would retain me as his adviser on hydraulic affairs were low. But the very idea that a man named Agnelli might employ someone called Whelan to advise him on cultural matters was inconceivable. The fact that Ange had been born in the Queen Victoria Hospital, not five kilometres from where I stood, was immaterial. What possible assistance could an Australian bog-wog provide to a man through whose