Thought Crimes by Tim Richards Read Free Book Online Page A

office and delivered a bogus speech over the public address system, complete with trademark tics and slurs.
    â€˜Do you want to go on the stage, is that it?’ his father shrieked, his complexion already hinting at the cancer that would take him the next year. ‘Your friends will be lawyers and you’ll have no arse in your pants.’
    An Australian dad would have asked him to repeat the routine, and praised the accuracy of his impression. In the final analysis, it wasn’t about what his own father thought, but about the kind of dad a decent Australian could choose to be.

    While setting himself to blast out of the greenside bunker on Crampton’s fifteenth, Craig asks his caddy if it’s true that the cancer rate among resort staff is ten times the national average.
    â€˜That’s bullshit,’ Norichi tells him. ‘Wouldn’t be enough money to pay a bloke if that was true.’
    Fifteen metres away on the green, Craig’s playing partner, Ben, has overheard this exchange and looks Hizu in the eye.
    â€˜Sure, that’s the company line. Let me ask you something, man to man. It’ll go no further than us four here. There’s a story doing the rounds in Melbourne. Two big blokes came up here, one of them a top investment banker. After drinking a skinful, they decided to have a swimming race on the ornamental lake. Two thirds of the way across, the banker’s mate had a massive coronary. The banker notices, pulls him to shore, does CPR, and saves his life. Two days later, both men are dead. The doctor signed off on meningitis, though he knew it was radiation poisoning. I’ve heard that story from three sources. Is it true?’
    Hizu doesn’t know what to say. He hasn’t been asked in the way that a wealthy man asks a servant, but in the way an Australian asks his mate. He could tell Ben that his story’s untrue with an easy conscience. He’d been there. It was Hizu who’d given CPR to the banker’s big mate. Last time he’d seen the two men, they were alive. What happened after that was rumour. If he said that, Nori, listening nearby, could have no reason to complain to their supervisor. But this situation was entirely new. It was a question of honour.
    â€˜It’s bullshit,’ Hizu tells Ben.
    â€˜Didn’t happen?’
    â€˜Nah, they both drowned.’
    â€˜Then why would the doctor lie?’
    â€˜The bar staff had seen them getting legless and did nothing to stop them.’
    Ben and Craig were impressed. ‘Fuck, that’s great arse-covering. This place couldn’t be more Australian if it tried.’
    Later, having shared two beers with their new mates, Norichi was furious. ‘If I told admin what you said, you’d be out of this place in an hour.’
    â€˜What choice did I have? They wanted a story with a credible ending.’
    â€˜That man could be a private eye or ASIS … You’d threaten everything to give someone a yarn to tell his mates.’
    â€˜Better that than the truth.’
    â€˜Truth’s got nothing to do with it. If truth mattered, this place would still be wasteland.’
    â€˜Nori, if you’ve got a problem, put it on paper and shove it up your clacker … You think you wouldn’t go down with me? Do you really think your willingness to lie would count for anything?’

    While studying for his final exam and the Permanency interview, Hizu begins to question some of Missy’s balder assertions.
    Even if a guest asks about your family, or where you went to school, don’t imagine that they’re doing anything more than satisfying their desire to seem friendly. As likely as not, the facts won’t interest them. They’ll be just as happy with bullshit that sounds like bullshit.
    Whenever he told tall stories about his childhood – the kamikaze grandfather, and the aunt who was kidnapped by the North Koreans – the guests had a