Almanac Fiction: Swifty Taylor and the Errant Husband (Episode 2)

 

Episode 2: Cairns, Chinos, and Clues – Swifty’s stakeout begins… 

 

I was grateful to have finally disembarked from the plane. The seat was cramped, the service had been poor, and I eventually had to tell the clown next to me that I wasn’t interested in small talk. To make matters worse it seemed like the pilot had sought out – and found – every pocket of turbulence in the sky between Melbourne and Cairns. On the tarmac, the humidity hit me in the face like a Barry Michael haymaker. And if that wasn’t enough, the heat already seemed to be eating into my skin.

 

 

I would need to acclimatize, and quickly, if I was to be any use at all. My client Emma McDonald had not batted one pretty eyelid when I said my rate was two thousand bucks per week, plus expenses. I cursed silently, suspecting that I had low-balled myself. For her to be going to all this trouble, there must have been stacks and stacks of cash at stake. What the hell was a merchant banker anyway? It sounded like something from a Shakespeare play.

She had provided me with a dossier, and I read it on the plane. Boy, was it comprehensive, and boy, were the details minute. She’d also supplied a photo of her husband Max. Yes, a picture might well be worth a thousand words, but I only needed three to sum up this jerk: he presented as smarmy, suave, and insincere. “Was he always such a deadbeat?” I had asked her. She had answered slowly: “Looking back, I guess so. But I thought I could change him…” Her reply had made me cast my mind back to my ex-wife, and how she’d fought like a demon to rid me of my bad habits. It had not taken her too long to realize that there ain’t no Coupe de Ville hiding at the bottom of a Crackerjack box.

My rental car was small and cheap. My hotel room was small but adequate. Anyway, all I ever sought in that department was a functioning shower and a reasonably comfortable bed. And being so far out of my comfort zone, I wasn’t intending on hanging around too long anyway. A hungry man is an angry man, so while still in the process of gaining my bearings, my first port of call was Café Diva, a small coffee shop on the main street of Port Douglas. It was lined with mirrors, and while chowing down on a toastie, at one point I caught a glimpse of my own reflection.

My pallid face stood in stark contrast to the tanned visages of the tourists pounding the pavement metres away. The mirror image seemed to be mocking me: “Take a good hard look at yourself, Swifty. Are you happy with where your life has ended up…chasing philanderers for a fee?” I momentarily wrestled with my conscience, but only momentarily. “Well, it pays the bills,” I said to myself, maybe just a little too loudly. The waitress was passing by my table and offered me a sympathetic look. “Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness,” she said. “What’s the second sign?” I asked her. She laughed. “If you come in again tomorrow for a coffee I might just give you an answer!” Was she flirting with me? I had been out of that game for so long that I wasn’t completely certain, but the attention was reassuring, nonetheless, because she was a cutie.

 

 

My final stop before bedtime was the Court House Hotel. I took a seat under the awning on the footpath, and ordered a Jameson. My eyes were drawn to the building across the street: ‘Club Tropical Resort’. It was where my quarry was staying, supposedly. And sure enough, who should pull up out front and exit a taxi, but Max McDonald. He was smaller than I had imagined, and he was looking a little more dishevelled than the suave snake in the photograph. If for nothing other than it made me feel like I was performing my duties, I grabbed my phone and snapped a photo of him regardless. So far, so innocent.

 

 

The first Jameson had in no way quenched my thirst, so I’d started on a second. Which was when I spied Max sauntering across the road, white chinos, white shoes, looking for all the world like a shifty Queensland property developer. Damn, but didn’t he fit right in here!

 

 

My phone buzzed. I hoped like hell that it would be my girlfriend Laura, but in my heart I knew it wouldn’t be her. Was she even still my girlfriend? She had recently decided that she needed ‘some time to herself’, and it’s true that Laura was still grieving her dead brother. I guess that grief is the price one pays for loving someone too much. And maybe I, too, was grieving Laura’s absence?

 

You can read more from Smokie HERE

 

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