Shane Maloney - The Big Ask (Murray Whelan)

PRAISE FORTHE BIG ASK

Its a rollicking good read of sex, political intrigue and
murder. Sunday Mail

The great joy of Maloney is that he seems effortlessly to
marry tightly constructed crime stories to great satirical
visiontheres no doubting the brilliance of the writing
Ian Rankin, Age

Another triumph for Maloney, who is one of our best
and most consistently original crime writers. Highly
recommended. Canberra Times

The Big Ask is full of laugh-out-loud humour as well
as jaw-dropping accuracy in describing Australian
political life. marie claire

There is only one Australian crime writer on my list this
yearShane Maloney. His satires on Australian political life
are always hilarious. Examiner

Melbourne has found a fresh spokesmanShane Maloney
Visitors could use The Big Ask as a Melbourne street directory.
West Australian

PRAISE FOR SHANE MALONEY AND MURRAY WHELAN

Maloney is top shelf. Australian

I look forward to the next Murray Whelan book with the
same anticipation of pleasure that I feel for the new Carl
Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard. Sydney Morning Herald

Whelans wry social commentaries, ironic observations and
many failed attempts at getting the girl make him one of
Australian crime-fictions most attractive characters, and
Maloney one of the genres most gifted writers. Who Weekly

To the list that contains Charles Willefords Florida Keys, Jim
Thompsons West Texas, Pete Dexters Philadelphia, James
Crumleys Montana and Carl Hiaasens Miami, you can add
Shane Maloneys Melbourne. Maloney has created a fictional
city that contains the best of the real and the not quite real.
Herald Sun

Maloney is a literary writer whotakes characters that are
stereotypes (the public servant, the minister, the arty type) and
depicts them with subtlety and originality and compassionate
humour. He also writes a ripping yarn. Eureka Street

Maloney is a born writerFor the first time, in the vicinity
of Australian crime-writing, we hear the true national
voice of comic futility, a literary voice which is rich,
ridiculous and tawdry, which can set itself up with a
soaring rhetoric and slide on the banana skin of its
own piss-eleganceMaloney is terrific. Age

A writer who seems to have been sitting on a thousand
observations now unleashed. Sunday Age

The pure pleasure of Maloneys book lies in being plunged
so thoroughly into the complicated byways of Australian
politicsa fast-paced, fresh, unerringly funny bookMurray
is a great creation, one that takes the wisecracking wise guy
into a whole new realm. Houston Chronicle

Maloney has a quirky eye for descriptive details that lend
frequent humor to a fascinating and adventurous plot.
Highly recommended. Library Journal

THE BIG ASK

Shane Maloneys novels
include Stiff, The Brush-Off,
Nice Try and Something Fishy.

SHANE
MALONEY
the big ask

A MURRAY WHELAN THRILLER

The paper used in this book is manufactured only
from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William St
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
Copyright Shane Maloney 2000

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published 2000, reprinted 2000, 2001
This edition published 2003, reprinted 2004, 2007, 2008

Printed and bound by Griffin Press
Designed by Chong Weng-ho
Typeset in Baskerville MT by Midland Typesetters

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Maloney, Shane.
The big ask.

ISBN 978 1 877008 52 8.

1. Whelan, Murray (Fictitious character) Fiction. 2.
Political consultants Fiction. 3. Melbourne (Vic.) Fiction.
4. Australia Fiction. I. Title.
A823.3

This project was assisted by the City of Melbourne

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Clarisse Ghirardelli
Writers Centre

This book is dedicated to Christine, Wally and May.

I have no choicethey know where I live.

The author of this book, its setting and its
characters are entirely fictitious. There is
no such place as Melbourne. The Australian
Labor Party exists only in the imagination
of its members.

The smart money was home in bed.

It was 4.30 a.m., a Monday morning at the arse-end of winter, and I should have been there too, clocking up a few hours sleep before the eight oclock flight to Sydney. My son Red was somewhere in Sin City, missing and possibly in danger.

Instead, I was sitting in a greasy spoon cafe at the Melbourne Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market, nursing a bruised forehead, drinking over-brewed coffee and talking to a truck driver named Donny Maitland about his campaign to unseat the leadership of the United Haulage Workers.

Dawn was still two hours away and a frigid wind was sweeping off Port Phillip Bay, one of those bone-chilling breezes that descend on Melbourne in late winter and make us wonder why we bother to live here. Vendors were standing in front of their stalls, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands together. Beyond them, past rampaging forklifts and crates of vegetables, the tower blocks of the central city were etched against the sky above the railway switching yards, dark on dark.

Donny had just arrived, five hours from Nar Nar Goon with a load of spuds. He breezed through the door in a gust of arctic air, a craggy, cleft-chinned, stout-featured bloke in a woollen pea-jacket. One of those men, you knew if he was ever hit, wouldnt fall down. Not that I could imagine anyone trying it on. Donny wasnt that type. His body was a fact, not an assertion. Something he lugged around to do the work.

He spotted me straight up, plonked his frame onto the stool beside me and laid a hefty hand on my shoulder. A flush of good cheer rose across his cheekbones like old sunburn, almost managing to conceal the fatigue in his amiable brown eyes. He must have been shagged, a night behind the wheel, but he wore it well. Donny was a stayer, all right. More than once over the years, hed drunk me under the table while the women came and went, talking of Michelangelo. Or Solzhenitsyn. Or Sinatra.

Sorry to keep you waiting, Murray, he declared. I stopped to help some bloke whod lost his load on the South Gippsland Highway. Hope the bastard votes for me.

Itll take more than random acts of kindness to win control of the Haulers, I said.

Donny jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Dont worry, comrade. The rest of the crew are on the case, spreading the word among the cabbages. And the kings, too, if they find any. For the time has come, as the walrus said.

I glanced through the glass wall of the eatery and caught sight of one of Donnys running mates, a scarecrow of a bloke called Roscoe, as he disappeared into the hurly-burly of the market, distributing handbills. Donny extracted a sheaf of flyers from his pea-jacket and thrust one into my hand. Vote UHW Reform Ticket, it was headed. Fight for a Union that Fights for Its Members.