Iraqi Icicle

by Bernie Dowling

  ‘Let me guess,’ I said, like the selfish sarcastic bastard I was. ‘It’s either 146,234 or you are going to be the first.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she nodded.

  They must pass out these tickets to dream at high school. Twenty million nobodies make Australia go round, and eighteen million of them are told to be somebody. Oh well, Kathy Billings probably had a better chance at that lonely big time than most.

  ‘I hope you get there,’ I said.

  It was the least I could do. One day, she might wish me well in my quest to back the entire card at Eagle Farm racetrack.

  ‘But, you see, you set me up for a tremendously opportune meeting with this Mr Jones, who turns out to be Marcus Georgio, who turns out to be dead.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, resurfacing on Planet Real. ‘Mr Jones? Well, he just rang up, said he wanted someone who knew about horse racing, maybe someone who had been a bookmaker’s clerk. Also someone who could work computers. But no, he never mentioned your name.’

  ‘I see, so he wanted a bookie’s clerk who knew computers. And how many people like me do you have on your books?’

  ‘Only you; it was our best chance to get rid of you.’

  Only me. My lucky day.

  I finished my wine. She finished her vodka, looked at the last slither of ice and scrunched up her face. Deliverance was not in the bottom of the glass, after all. She would have to look elsewhere.

  ‘You owe me a drink,’ she said.

  I took the empty plastic cups to the bar. None for me, just a vodka and orange for Kathy. I took the drink to our corner. Leaning close to her, I lifted her hair above her ear. ‘And you know what? The world owes me a living.’

  As I kissed her, I was surprised at the way her lips melted against mine. I heard the silence as forty public servants took in the floor show of the future head of the department and the beno. When we were done, she ran a finger across her lips.

  ‘Give me a ring at the office next week.’

  I shook my head. ‘It depresses me, Kathy, to see the modern woman slumming it with the likes of me.’

  ___o0o___

  THE EH UTE and I headed down to the Gold Coast. With Mooney’s two grand and the nine hundred I had won at poker, I should have been on top of the world. But all I had was three-grand of running-away money.

  I drove through Southport and Surfers and Miami and Burleigh and Palm Beach and Currumbin and Coolangatta, and all the beach villages in between, to finish up at Gooroo’s unit in Tweed Heads.

  June answered the door. June liked me. We didn’t see enough of each other for her not to. She pretended gambling was not my life. For five years, June had been pretending that Gooroo did not work for Cheerful Charlie, the SP bookie. For thirty years before that she had been pretending that Gooroo was not keeping book, whether on someone else’s behalf or, more rarely, for himself.

  One of the things I liked about June was that she accepted the Gooroo as an honest man in a dishonest job. June was just worried that there could be something intrinsically wrong about our gambling business. That I didn’t understand. Perhaps that’s why we were such good friends – we didn’t understand each other.

  Gooroo told me I looked like shit. June asked if I had eaten, which reminded me that it had been almost twenty-four hours since I had tasted food. I told her I couldn’t eat a bite. She sat beside Gooroo as I tucked into reef fish, chips and fresh salad.

  I felt the need to speak as I ate. ‘You were wrong about the public-servant woman, Con,’ I said between mouthfuls.

  June was concerned. ‘You and Natalie haven’t split up, have you, Steele?’

  ‘No, it was just that Gooroo, er Con, thought I might be able to score a job down here for a bit.’

  Mrs Vitalis was relieved. ‘How long you down for?’

  ‘Quite a while, I think. Nat’s on holidays, staying with her parents, the ones who don’t like me.’ I had put that badly – as though Natalie had another set of parents who did like me.

  The Gooroo could see my getting into trouble explaining why Nat was up the coast and I was down the coast for what I anticipated could be a while. He stepped in to help. ‘Listen, Steele, I think I can get you a job with Cheerful Charlie, just answering phones.’

  Buddha, I was tempted. Honest work was what I needed.

  June wasn’t having any of it. ‘Come on, Con, you know enough people. Can’t you get Steele a real job?’

  ‘Course I can, Sweetie, but we’re all tired right now. Can you set up the spare bed for Steele?’

  June went to the linen cupboard, and then to the spare bedroom. Her husband watched her go out of hearing.

  ‘What?’ demanded the Gooroo, softly but forcefully.

  He whistled when I took out my wallet to show him the three grand.

  ‘A couple of coppers gave me most of this and told me to piss off out of Brisbane. But this whole state is so hot, I’m thinking of going to Tassie for the cooler climate. Maybe Natalie could extend her holidays and join me.’

  The Gooroo considered that. ‘Tasmania, that’s not a bad idea. I can probably come up with another grand or so, if you have to be away for a while. But why would the coppers want to stake you?’

  ‘I was hoping you might be able to figure those odds, Gooroo.’

  ‘Steele, I have been hustling one way or another for nearly fifty years. In that time, the cops have never done me one single favour I did not pay for. You’re quite right to be looking this gift horse in the mouth, because it probably bites.’

  June returned and settled into an armchair.

  ‘Should we get out a video?’ she asked.

  Her husband nodded. ‘Let’s get out The Grifters again. Have you seen that one, Steele?’

  I saw it at the cinema earlier that year. It’s a fun movie, but you have to be in the right mood to watch Angelica Huston as the aging but still leggy hustler who accidentally slits her son’s throat. I begged off.

  ‘Don’t think me an unsociable bastard, but I go all funny if I’m not out and about on Friday night. What’s on around the traps tonight, do you know?’

  ‘Well the basketball’s on at Southport. That usually drags in a big crowd,’ the Gooroo said.

  Yo, not my go. I don’t mind testosterone-enriched white Aussies pretending they’re Afro-Americans. But the truth is I hate the taste of American popcorn and I cannot convince myself that a hotdog is more than a red sausage in a bread roll.

  June offered a musical alternative. ‘There’s usually live music in the lounge bar of the Kirra Beach Hotel. That’s just down the road.’

  The suggestion jogged Vitalis’s memory. ‘That reminds me. I’m supposed to ring Cheerful Charlie at the Kirra Beach to give him the latest betting markets from Darwin.’

  He disappeared into his study. I gave June’s idea the thumbs-up. ‘That sounds awlright. I’ll have a couple at the pub and then head down to Coolangatta airport to get flight info.’

  ‘Why don’t you and Natalie stay with us for a couple of weeks, Steele?’ June said.

  ‘We might just take you up on that.’

  The Gooroo returned and walked me out.

  ‘I didn’t mean what I told June,’ he said. ‘I’d never land you with a stiff’s job. Come down to the shop tomorrow. Cheerful will put you on for the day.’

  The shop he was talking about was literally that. The bookie operation was conducted from the back of a butcher’s shop. You got your lamb at the front and you were fleeced out the back.

  I said I would think it over, but I was still keen to check out flights to Tassie.

  17

  THE SOLOIST IN THE PUB was what I call a street-fighting singer. When she couldn’t hit the notes, she screamed noise at them. Still, she wore the obligatory black cocktail dress, cut low at the front, to attract those who preferred to look rather than listen.

  I climbed a bar stool beside a short thick-set man, deep in thought. It was such a hot night that I fancied a beer rather than my usual gla
ss of wine. I wanted to be alone with my worries, so I was annoyed when the stranger turned to speak to me. Oh well, at least he drowned out the singer, losing a wrestling match with a difficult number.

  It was the standard strangers-in-a-pub conversation. Yair, I was new here. From Brisbane. Yair, he was a local. Yair, I was a bookmaker’s clerk. Yair, he was a professional fisherman. But he wanted to get out. Enough of the pleasantries, we talked about him from then on.

  ‘My brother was two grades below me at school. I was the smart one in the family. He’d kill me if he heard me telling you this, but they even kept him down one year. We both ended up as fishermen. But he got out; he set up that floating casino on the Tweed River.’

  Now I was interested, as I usually am when the topic turns to gambling. ‘The African Queen. Your brother’s Angelo Sebastion?’

  ‘You know him,’ the man said, almost in disgust. ‘Anyway, I’m Luigi Sebastion. People call me Lui.’

  I introduced myself and admitted I only knew of Angelo Sebastion.

  ‘All us other fishermen said they’d never allow him to set up a gambling boat,’ Luigi moaned into his beer. ‘We said that Jupiter’s Casino would have too much pull; that they would stop him, by saying that drunken gamblers would fall off the boat and drown. But Jupiter’s is in Queensland, and the Tweed River is in New South Wales. Governments love money. And now he’s making a squillion of it for the government, and four squillion for himself.’

  Luigi shut up and looked at me in earnest, for half a minute. ‘You seem like a bright young bloke. Professional fishing is fucked. Between us pros and all those bloody amateur anglers, we have just about fished out every bay below Cairns. But I’ve still got dough. I can get my hands on nearly a million. You come up with an idea for turning that into two or three mill and I’ll look after you.’

  I believed the man. I can read a bullshitter nine times out of ten, and he was not bullshitting. If one little murder hadn’t been occupying all my thoughts, I would have planted a big kiss on Lady Luck’s rich red lips. Sure, I would have helped Luigi spend his, I mean our, million. More basic survival concerns held back my excitement.

  ‘I would have to think about it,’ was my noncommittal answer.

  It was enough to send him off again. He leaned closer to me, and looked around. ‘You know some of the other fishermen are bringing in drugs, but I won’t come at that.’

  This sounded like juicy gossip. ‘How?’

  ‘What happens is a ship passes the coast, but out at sea. They don’t even need to come within sight of a harbour. They drop the drugs overboard, tied to a buoy. The fishermen know what the buoy looks like and where it is. They collect the drugs in their nets and bring it all in. No customs, nothing.’

  ‘What sort of drugs are we talking about?’ I asked.

  ‘Some cocaine; mainly heroin. But I won’t come at that.’

  Heroin, a white powder that might look like cigarette ash, if you don’t look closely. I could see Marcus Georgio’s office in my mind. The upturned glass of water, next to the burning cigarette and the white powder I took for ash. The thin corpse on the carpet. In the cupboard, the bleach, which you can use to clean fits. Even the ties in the cupboard, and the tall, thin, model-like figure of girlfriend Crystal Speares, also a cigarette smoker, as were many smackies, seemed to fit suddenly.

  ‘Look, I gotta go,’ I said to Luigi. ‘But I might have a notion for you. Could I meet you tomorrow, say at eleven in the morning? We could discuss this business idea some more.’

  Sounded all right to him. About eleven in the bar, or in the car park.

  I didn’t give a shit about formulating a business plan with Luigi Sebastion. But I wanted to find out more about the Gold Coast international heroin trade.

  Georgio liked to get his picture taken at places on the Gold Coast where the glitterati congregate. He liked to be seen with women with slender bodies. If I told the Gooroo these and other details, I was sure he would set the market at even money that Marcus Georgio had been a drug dealer and a drug user.

  As I walked out, the singer was strangling the Bette Midler song The Rose, which I read somewhere was a tribute of sorts to American rock singer Janis Joplin. She had died of a heroin overdose some twenty years earlier at the age of twenty-seven, the age I was approaching Smack could kill you without a doubt, and it could also get you killed.

  ___o0o___

  COOLANGATTA AIRPORT WAS BUZZING, even at 10 p.m. Lots of Japanese tourists, but what took my eye were two nuns standing in line behind a slim 190cm army officer with savagely short grey hair. You would call the sixtyish military man distinguished if you were impressed by all that brass, glittering from his shoulders. He looked oddly compatible with the nuns, all serving a Higher Power that demanded strange costumes of Its disciples.

  As I went up to check the flights to Tassie, via Sydney, I began to cool on the idea. It felt as if someone else was planning my holidays. I was not keen on other people arranging my life. Whoever killed Marcus Georgio was really starting to piss me off. And I felt even more pissed off when my name was called through the public address.

  The Gooroo should know better than to page me, unless it was a matter of life or death. I listened to my name being called three more times to make sure I had not misheard. I went to reception as requested, if only to silence the transmission of a murder suspect’s moniker through these echoing airport halls.

  A redhead with a plastic smile, beginning to melt in the heat of overwork, grabbed the message from a pigeonhole. Could I go to the VIP lounge? Why not? I would have gone in the past, only no one was considerate enough to invite me.

  I followed the pointing finger and sensed that someone was following me. When I reached the lounge, a hand from behind me opened the door. The hand belonged to a tall classy bloke, about thirty-five, designer shirt, designer tie, designer trousers, designer shoes.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Hill,’ said a designer voice, cultivated, deep and medium posh.

  Designer man closed the door behind us and motioned towards my choice of chairs around an oval table. I moved towards the table, but did not sit down. He took this as a request for an introduction, and stuck out his hand. Jerome Bradshaw of the Australian Federal Police. He wanted to chat with me, but first, he wanted to put me at ease. ‘Let me assure you from the outset, Mr Hill, you are not in any trouble.’

  That was a relief. I was in trouble with the state coppers for murder. At least no one had assassinated a foreign diplomat on my behalf, to put me in the poo with the Feds. Bradshaw sat down. I sat down.

  The Fed leisurely explained himself. ‘You have incurred the displeasure of a Sergeant Mooney and a Senior Constable Schmidt.’

  ‘Have I?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, you have. They left a present for you, in the form of the corpse of one Marcus Georgio.’

  I could see that Bradshaw was trying to shape up as my mate. As far as I was concerned, the only differences between this Federal cop and State coppers were better dress sense and rounder vowels. I pointed to the phone in the corner. ‘Do you mind if I ring a solicitor? I don’t know this area real well, but I should be able to find one or two playing the tables at Jupiter’s Casino. It’s not eleven, so they shouldn’t have blown all the money from their clients’ trust accounts yet.’

  ‘You have a cynical attitude towards authority, Mr Hill. In the case of Mooney and Schmidt, it’s quite justified. But, in my instance, you will come to realise that our interests coincide. Haven’t you seen yet that Mooney killed Georgio?’

  I scoffed. ‘I don’t know, you southerners, always bagging us Queenslanders. Now, why would Detective Sergeant Mooney kill Georgio?’

  Jerome Bradshaw slowly poured himself a glass of water from the transparent jug set in the middle of the table. ‘It was the termination of a business contract. Mooney and Schmidt are the absentee landlords of a large marijuana plantation in North Queensland. Georgio was in charge of Brisbane distribution. But you know a little of Georg
io’s lifestyle. He needed a lot of money, so he broke the unwritten financial clauses of the contract. Mooney decided to terminate that contract.’

  I believed all this, as much as I believed anything a copper told me. But the story was still as loose as a failed entrepreneur’s memory. ‘And what’s the Federal cops’ interest in all this?’ I asked.

  ‘That cannabis is travelling all over Australia, across state borders, and some of the profits are travelling overseas in undeclared cash and gold. Our political employers were unhappy when they heard.’

  He took a sip of water. ‘It does not concern us that the Queensland police force cannot clean up its own backyard, but we don’t like their rubbish blowing into ours.’

  For the sake of politeness to my interstate visitor, I agreed to accept what Bradshaw was saying. ‘Awlright, I can understand that, but why are you talking to me about this? I don’t do casual police work.’

  The Fed shook his head. ‘You really do not have a choice, Mr Hill. You see, we know Mooney has been trying to fool you. I spoke to your old widowed neighbour, the one who likes to potter about in her garden. Actually, I told her that a natural predator is the most effective pesticide for aphids. She was most grateful. In return, she told me that two police officers, whom she described as the spitting images of Mooney and Schmidt, took you away. I discreetly waited near your flat, though I honestly believed that would be the last anyone ever saw of you.’

  More sympathy for my anticipated murder by Mooney and Schmidt might have varied the even tone of Bradshaw’s voice.

  ‘Did you follow me down here from Brisbane?’ I asked.

  ‘I am afraid so. I do apologise for that invasion of your privacy. But, as I have indicated, we have mutual interests.’

  Buddha, why hadn’t I sensed someone following my car, like in the American cop shows. Spun the EH snappily around the back streets of Southport and lost the turkey. Instead I reversed through a possible hole in Bradshaw’s story to make sure he was leading me down a straight road.

  ‘So I was set up for Georgio’s murder, but then Mooney told me to disappear?’