The phone rang and the Gooroo gave me a tip for the next race. I put $200 on the horse through Gooroo’s phone account, and won another $800. The horse was called National Designer.
Prepared to back another hunch, I went down to check out the butcher’s shop, the front for Cheerful Charlie’s illegal bookmaking. I parked the EH half a kilometre down the road and walked the rest of the way. The shop was shut, or at least the front door was. Around the back, I pressed my foot on a buzzer set in concrete among the bushes. I introduced myself through the microphone covered by the creepers, crawling up the side wall.
There were nine phones inside, the legacy of when the operation was more successful. A young bloke, a young woman and the Gooroo worked from desks, each supporting four wide ledgers, with one race to a page, drawn up in what would have looked like the work of crazed mathematicians to non-gamblers, and to most gamblers for that matter. One of the four desks, arranged in back-to-back pairs, was free and I got comfortable on a chair behind it. A lonesome phone with pre-programmed numbers hung from the wall.
The Gooroo was the general for the afternoon. He buzzed about, keeping an eye on each ledger and ringing through bets to other bookies when the book had more money on a horse than the operation wanted to cover. He gave us permission to go for a walk or to the toilet when the phones were running coldish. At one stage, when he was not too hyper, I told him about the two grand I had won on his account.
At another opportune time, I asked him when Cheerful Charlie Evatt would show. Gooroo said Cheerful never came to the shop before dark. That was a bit rich, I thought. Sure, Cheerful gave the Gooroo a job after the coppers smashed up the unit and made bookmaking life hot for Con. But the Gooroo was the best in the game. He didn’t deserve to wear the lot if another raid came. Charlie should wear some.
All the Gooroo would say, when I persistently quizzed him on the point, was that the money was paid in all the right places, and that there was no risk. I had no doubt he knew the odds better than I did. I also had no doubt that there was always a risk, even when the money was paid up.
We ended up getting stung, not by the police, but by a group of professional punters. It was the last race in Sydney. The horse had not started for six months, when it had run a respectable eighth in the Derby of 2400 metres. By most reckoning, the 1200-metre race was way short of an appropriate distance for this nag. Except for the reckoning of a handful of cashed-up, infoed-up pro gamblers.
We had difficulty laying off. Other bookies were copping an earful of optimistic bets, just as we were. In desperation, the Gooroo rang through to back the horse with the three grand in his TAB account. Two grand of the money was my winnings, but I knew the Gooroo would cover it.
The punters took out $50,000 when the horse flew home to win by a head. We had managed to bet back to take $10,000 off the loss. Punters who lost on the race kicked in with another ten grand. We also picked up fifteen grand from the telephone bet. You might say we were lucky to drop only $15,000 on the race, but a bookie is not supposed to lose $15,000 when a five-to-one shot comes in. Such is horse racing.
The book broke about even on the day. The Gooroo ducked down to the TAB. The youngsters took the stragglers’ bets on the last provincial races.
I brewed the coffee and watched the action wind down. I poured a cup for the young woman, who had time for chit chat.
‘What’s it like living in Brisbane, Steele?’
‘I like it: not too big, not too small.’ It was the truth, but as I had never met the girl before, her knowledge of me was a worry.
She saw my uneasiness. ‘Gooroo talks about you all the time, all the mischief you get up to,’ she explained.
On cue, a key turned in the door and the Gooroo came in. Con and Cheerful had the only keys, with everyone else using the buzzer-in-the-bush system. Gooroo held a cotton bag in his hand, from which he withdrew $200.
He gave the youngsters $100 each, and told them he and I could manage till seven o’clock closing. Although the book covered that night’s dogs and trotting meetings, bets had to be rung through before seven. Reaching into his bag of bugs bunny, the Gooroo counted out twenty-five hundreds. I tried to stop him at twenty, but he made the good point that the book would have been another ten grand in the hole if it hadn’t had access to the $2000 I had won. He handed me the money and three rubber bands.
My wallet was so full I stuffed two bundles of a thousand in one trouser pocket and put the other $500 behind my wallet in the other pocket. The Gooroo threw the money bag into the top drawer of his desk. He walked over to the coffee percolator and poured himself a cup. ‘We were lucky to get out of that one as well as we did, Steele.’
‘Yair, dumb luck, Gooroo. But my luck had to change.’
The Gooroo turned around before he went to pick up a ringing phone.
‘Leave it,’ I said, as Con reached down for the handset.
He looked at me as if I was asking him to commit a major crime. He moved his hand closer to the phone, but stopped when I spoke again. ‘I said, leave it. Let’s sit down and work this out. First, I go to the dole office to get trapped into an appointment for murder. Someone knew I was on the rock ‘n’ roll and was a good target. Then I go to meet with Mooney this morning, but someone knew I might look up Billy Scharfe at the Feed Bin beforehand. That someone was able to give a killer in a white Ford the drum. Enough good drum to be able to almost kill me.’
Gooroo moved to sit down, but I wasn’t having any of that.
‘Don’t go near that desk,’ I warned.
The Gooroo obeyed and began to dance about in small circles. His face silently said he did not like the direction of my thoughts.
‘Even before all of this, I go to a card game where Mooney and Schmidt turn up. Someone knew I would be at that card game. Georgio’s murder the next morning speaks for itself. Someone knew.’
He moved about nervously, as if pretending what he was hearing was different from the words I was stringing together.
‘It’s been a long afternoon,’ Gooroo said. ‘Steele, you’re stressing out here.’
I was stressing out, but I was not done. ‘And someone knew I had a meeting with a nice Italian fisherman, whose only problem was that his brother had made it big and he hadn’t.
‘That problem was solved when the nice fisherman got killed for a reason he could not understand. A reason that I cannot understand. Because he got killed before we could work it out together. All because someone knew.’
The Gooroo stopped his circling. He began to back away from me, even before I lunged.
‘No Steele, no, you’re wrong.’
I could see the tears in his eyes as my hands reached his throat.
‘You set me up, you bastard,’ I hissed, ignoring the click of the door lock.
The Gooroo began to splutter. ‘No, Steele, no. No, Steele. No, Cheerful.’
I turned my head and released my grip on the Gooroo’s throat. It was my turn to back off as I looked into the cheerless face of Cheerful Charlie Evatt. I looked at that face for a couple of seconds before I began to concentrate on the gun in his hand.
22
THE GOOROO GAVE ME a dirty look as he straightened his shirt. He turned towards Cheerful, who kicked the door shut behind him with his heel.
‘Jesus, Cheerful,’ Gooroo said. ‘We’ve been mates for twenty years. You could have talked to me about this.’
Cheerful nodded four or five times, then shook his head. ‘You’ve been in this game most of your life, Gooroo. It’s all you know. You’re the smartest man I ever met. How many times I tell you that? But how much did we make today?’
Gooroo conceded the loss. ‘We got burned on the last race in Sydney. Apart from that . . .’
‘Apart from that!’ Cheerful screamed his interruption, his face reddening. ‘Apart from that, we’re fucking dinosaurs. The dinosaurs got frozen out thousands of years ago. And we are getting burned out in the last race or the first race or some race in between,
every fucking week.’
I had to listen to a lecture on the plight of the small businessman, after being the bunny of a two-day murder and mayhem spree. I turned my anger on the bookie. ‘So it was you, Cheerful. What’d I ever do to you, hey? Hey, what’d I ever do to you?’ I was yelling now, too.
But Cheerful was still ranting at the Gooroo. ‘There’s TABs in every pub and club on every street corner. There’s Sky Channel coverage of every race in those pubs and clubs. There are so fucking many races for the dumb shits to bet on, they’re lining up like zombies and throwing their money across the TAB counters.
‘But not the pros. No, not the pros. They work out a race to win on. Fuck about with the TAB odds, so the horse gets out in the betting. And then back the bastard with us. Cause we are fucking dinosaurs, and it’s the pros’ destiny to make us extinct.’
Gooroo looked at Cheerful and went red himself. ‘You think I don’t know all that? But I got it under control. Jesus, Charlie, you’ve got a BMW. I’ve got a unit. I’ve got last year’s model car. Are we starving on the streets, Charlie?’
‘We would be if I wasn’t smart,’ Cheerful persisted. ‘It’s called diversification, standard business practice. That’s all. But I knew you would never understand.’
Gooroo leaned towards the other bookie. ‘What wouldn’t I understand, Cheerful?’
I had heard enough to understand. ‘Drugs,’ I told Gooroo. ‘Grass, heroin, speed, coke, and maybe new drugs we haven’t even heard of. And other diversification, too. Murder, blackmail, rigging horse races.’
Gooroo calculated. ‘You’re murdering people for weed, for powder. Is that it, Cheerful? We had a business where we sold some poor stiffs a dream for a few bucks. And you wanted to diversify into killing people for powder. For fucking powder.’
The way Cheerful moved his lips before he spoke, I knew the obligatory justification was coming. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Gooroo. We are getting some of the purest heroin ever seen in Australia. We are giving those junkies the best deal they ever had. I’ve been told.’
I had to buy in on the discussion. ‘You’ve been told,’ I repeated. ‘You’ve been told, have you, Charlie? What do you know about smack? Have you ever even seen it?’
‘I don’t have to. I’m an investor, but I’ve been told.’
‘Awlright, well, let me tell you.’
I began to move towards Evatt, but only made a few paces before the chubby man halted me by pointing the gun at my chest.
I stayed where I was, but continued to educate the man who had been told. ‘You get smackies who have been shooting up low-grade hammer, full of chalk and Buddha knows what else sort of shit. And you think you are doing them a favour by giving them top-grade stuff? Leave me alone. It was probably your A-grade heroin which was banged up the arms of those two eighteen-year-olds who overdosed under that church hall in Brisbane last Wednesday.’
‘For powder, Cheerful,’ was all the Gooroo could say. ‘You’re killing people for powder.’
I followed the Gooroo’s line. ‘You going to kill us for powder, too, Cheerful?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Evatt, wiping the sweat from his face. ‘All I was supposed to do was put up the money. I gave you up to the coppers, Hill, because you mean bugger all to me. And I am sick of Gooroo talking about you all the time. But now, I don’t know what I’m gunna do.’
For one of the leading SP bookmakers on the northern New South Wales coast, Cheerful Charlie Evatt didn’t know much. He didn’t know about kids dying of smack, about an innocent fisherman being murdered. Buddha, he didn’t even know to listen for the sound of a key turning in a steel door.
He did know that only he and Gooroo had keys to that door. But he had that wrong, too.
It was his good luck that he knew nothing about the one bullet, clean through his back and the centre of his ignorant heart that killed him.
The Gooroo and I looked at each other as Cheerful’s body slumped to the concrete floor. A second unnecessary bullet, just for luck, blew bits of his skull in our direction as he went down.
We turned towards another man, another gun in the doorway.
‘Here’s good fortune,’ I said. ‘The Federal cavalry has arrived in the nick of time.’
Jerome Bradshaw of the Federal Police moved forward to stand above the body on the floor. As they say on race days, it was all over bar the shouting. I went slowly towards the door, but Gooroo didn’t move.
Bradshaw put the gun back inside a shoulder holster but he was in no hurry to speak or follow me out.
Gooroo nodded towards our guest. ‘I am only guessing. I’ve been receiving all the info second hand,’ he said. ‘But this would have to be Bradshaw.’
I nodded to silently confirm his estimation. Con was playing it cool.
‘You and Bradshaw should be able to wind it up between yourselves,’ he said. ‘You don’t need me.’
Neither of us was getting off that lightly. I looked helplessly at Gooroo as I gave up the pretence that I was free to walk out the door. ‘You know, don’t you?’ I said.
The Gooroo was not keen to declare. ‘I’d only be guessing.’
The Fed walked around the room, checking out this and that.
I knew the Gooroo hated to guess. I guessed for him. ‘All I’ve been hearing about from Federal Police Officer Bradshaw is this huge paddock of North Queensland grass which is supposed to be behind this.
‘But all I keep running into is a mountain of smack. Georgio, a smackie. Billy Scharfe and Crystal Speares both users. An inoffensive bloke named Lui Sebastion starts talking smack to me in a pub and he ends up dead. Maybe you can help me out here, Bradshaw. You told me two state coppers were producing grass. I never doubted you for a moment.’
Bradshaw continued to search the room and seemed to ignore every word I said. I continued anyway. ‘I never doubted you for a moment about the involvement of state coppers, because grass is a domestic industry. Whereas smack is an import business.’
The Gooroo helped me out. ‘Balance of trade,’ he said, ‘a Federal responsibility.’
I had to give it to Bradshaw; he left his gun right in that pocket holster. He was confident he could kill Gooroo and me before we made it to the door. He stopped his survey to pay me a compliment.
‘I underestimated you, Hill. Maybe it comes from dealing with such dunces as Evatt and Georgio. I considered you would be easy to manipulate. But between you and that Irish lunatic Mooney, you have stuffed it up good and proper.’
‘Why did you kill Cheerful?’ I asked. ‘It’s an extreme way to break up a business partnership.’
‘I can’t believe how stupid that man was,’ Bradshaw confessed. ‘We asked him for a Brisbane distributor and he comes up with a playboy junkie like Georgio. Well, Georgio had to go. At least Evatt had the brains to come up with you, Hill, as the ideal killer.’
The phone rang. The Gooroo moved to answer it, but Bradshaw shook his head and Gooroo stopped in his tracks. The Fed continued his inspection.
‘Then that madman Mooney got in the road. What is with these state police? I give them an easy kill, you for Georgio, and still they are not satisfied.’
I agreed with Bradshaw’s assessment of Mooney. ‘Yair, he’s as mad as a cut snake, awlright. But was that true about him and Schmidt and the dope plantation?’
‘Only true enough to get you discredited, Hill, if you spread the story. There is a plantation, but it is not in North Queensland. Neither Mooney nor Schmidt has been to North Queensland in their lives. I was just sweetening the pot for them to take you down. Nosey Steele Hill tells the coppers he knows about the plantation in North Queensland. They realise you have nothing solid, but they do have a plantation and they decide jail is the place for you, before you do get some more information.’
I needed to fit one more piece. ‘And the nobody fisherman Luigi Sebastion? Why Sebastion?’
‘That was indiscreet. I must admit you were beginning to annoy me, Hill. Th
at’s why I decided to run you down near Doomben racetrack. To be honest, I was even thinking about cutting our losses here and moving interstate. There are plenty of bays in Australia. Sebastion was my last card to see which way I’d go. With Sebastion dead, Mooney could have you for two kills and leave me alone.’
Relocation was a good idea for the Fed.
‘So you’re moving out, Bradshaw. Now you’ve killed Evatt, and there’s no trace to you, you’re pulling up stumps.’
‘Maybe. I killed Evatt, mainly because he told you that stupid story about Crystal Speares having AIDS, trying to throw you off the track. That’s when I realised just how dumb he really was. You always tell a story grounded in half-truths. Not a transparent lie like Evatt’s. To top it all off, I find out Speares has some tie-in with Mooney.’
I inquired about how the sexy blonde racecourse hustler finished up. ‘So what did you do with Crystal Speares?’
Bradshaw was surprised at my concern. ‘She was just a distraction. She is probably distracting someone else right now. I have more important business than Crystal Speares.’
So she was right all along. Crystal Speares was a survivor, the only one guaranteed to live. I needed to find out what Bradshaw planned for the Gooroo and me. ‘You’ve scored a respectable body count already, Bradshaw: Georgio, Sebastion, and Evatt here, not to mention at least two junkies. All in less than a week.’
Bradshaw’s face hardened and he gave a scowl, an expression I had never seen him wear before. ‘Junkies are vermin. Every one of them that dies proves the law of natural selection. Their deaths strengthen our society.’
Buddha, another speech of justification. What happened to the good old days when people stole, sold drugs and murdered for money?
I figured the Fed had already passed the death sentence on me, so little additional harm could come from adding sarcasm to my list of transgressions. ‘Sure, I should have known. How could I possibly have suspected that greed was your motivation? We only have to look at you to see you are a noble man. I’m willing to bet right here and now, if you give yourself up, you won’t be charged with any crime. You were only trying to decontaminate the gene pool. They’ll probably give you a medal, Bradshaw. What say you, Gooroo?’
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