He waited ten days, suspecting this was long enough to cover him should he need an exception to the no contact rule. When, as expected, he’d hadn’t received a scrap of evidence that Betga was still handling the case or even alive, he headed out to the East St Kilda terrace house of Carla Monterosso one evening on a wing and a prayer, in a 27-year-old Saab, the sight of which induced in most people surges of Weltschmerz, and in Eleanor Maserov something approaching contempt.
Unlike her lawyer, Carla wasn’t difficult to find. She still lived in the property listed as her address in her affidavits.
Maserov rang the doorbell and waited in what would have been the dark had it not been for the valiant strivings of an intermittently on streetlight nestled inside a cushion of branches and exhausted powerlines. He could hear what sounded like a television game show that was, on closer listening, the news, as well as a small child crying and a woman’s voice alternating between addressing the child in coos and addressing an adult in more exasperated tones.
‘No, I’ll get it . . . Why not? I can get the front door as well as you. Okay, you get your hand on your holster and cover me.’ That was the last thing Maserov heard before the door was opened just enough to reveal a tall woman somewhere in her late twenties to early thirties with large dark almond-shaped eyes framed by thick jet black hair and wearing silver-grey compression leggings. The woman was holding a little girl who looked likely to grow into the woman holding her and whose age Maserov guessed at somewhere between one and two.
‘Yep?’ Ms Monterosso said through the gap in the door.
‘Hi, my name’s Stephen Maserov. I’m a lawyer and I’m looking for Carla Monterosso?’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Stephen Maserov,’ he said, holding one of his business cards up to the screen door between them, ‘and I was wondering if you could help me. I’m trying to contact Mr Betga, A.A. Betga, whom I understand to be your lawyer.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘Who is it?’ called a man’s voice from inside.
‘I don’t know . . . a lawyer,’ Carla called back to the man.
‘No, I didn’t think he was here,’ continued Maserov, ‘but I wondered if you could help me find him. You’re Ms Carla Monterosso?’
‘Where’d you say you’re from?’ she asked him.
‘What does he want?’ the man’s voice called to her from inside and down the hall.
‘I don’t know. Will you let me talk to him?’ Carla called back, holding the little girl tightly within her arms and bouncing rhythmically for her benefit via shallow squats.
‘Where’d you say you’re from?’ she asked him again.
‘My name’s Stephen Maserov. I’m a lawyer with Freely Savage Carter Blanche and I’m trying to find —’
‘I got nothing to say to you,’ she said, closing the door.
Maserov stood there frozen for a moment, looking at the closed front door, and heard Carla say, presumably to the man’s muffled questions, ‘How should I know? Said he’s looking for Betga.’
Maserov realised that, although technically she hadn’t actually admitted it, this was almost certainly Carla Monterosso, and she had opened the door only to close it on hearing he was with Freely Savage, so she knew who A.A. Betga was. So Maserov tried twice more at different times of the day to visit her, having left phone messages that went unanswered. On both occasions his visits were unsuccessful.
How hard could it be to track down this woman’s lawyer, he wondered to himself. How could he even dream of solving Malcolm Torrent’s sexual harassment problems if he couldn’t do that? And why wouldn’t Carla Monterosso agree to speak to him, not even long enough to tell him where Betga was or even just how to contact him? As he sat in his car he could see himself using up the precious time Malcolm Torrent had gifted him and drawing a salary for it, but without making the slightest progress towards solving Torrent’s problem or securing alternative employment. He was squandering the gift. The car smelled of him and even he knew it. It wasn’t an intrinsically unpleasant fragrance but it used to smell a little of Eleanor. Had he squandered his life with her? A tiny cinder of self-regard waved at him and then surrendered to the gale of anxiety he kept beneath all his business shirts.
He was parked outside Carla Monterosso’s house two days later, waiting for her to come home, when he realised that few people would consider what he was doing anything other than stalking. Here was a lawyer, a man, acting for a client she was suing for sexual harassment and he himself could be regarded to be stalking her, at least by the ethics committee of the Law Institute. When he saw her car pull up he took a breath and opened the door of his car.
‘What do you want?’ she said, taking her little girl out of the car. ‘I’ll call the cops. My partner’s a cop,’ she said as though just remembering.
‘I’m sorry, I’m just trying to find Betga.’
‘Fuck off, whoever you are,’ she said, propelling Maserov back into his car. If only she’d seen the reassuring sight of the children’s car seats in the back seat. How non-threatening is a man with two kiddie car seats behind him wherever he goes? But he didn’t have kiddie car seats, they were in Eleanor’s car. What about a young mother and two kiddie car seats? Carla Monterosso might respond less defensively if she was approached by a woman.