The Gooroo played along as he edged towards the protection of a desk. ‘Odds on, Steele. If we were to ring the Governor-General right now, I’m sure he would strike up an Order of Australia for Bradshaw overnight.’
That’s the trouble with private school boys. They hate being ridiculed. Bradshaw backed towards a wall, snarling, and slowly reached for his gun. I went for a telephone. Not much, I know, but at least they have long cords. I dived towards a desk to my left as I threw the phone in Bradshaw’s direction. Gooroo dived behind another desk. As I hit the deck, I wished I had not misjudged the distance to land behind Cheerful’s bloodied corpse. I liked at the blood on my bandaged right hand and doubted if that would aid the healing process. I tried to make the best of a bleak situation by using the roly-poly frame as a shield.
23
‘YOU AWLRIGHT, GOOROO?’ I screamed, as I watched Bradshaw calmly flick the safety catch of his gun.
Gooroo found the strength to knock his desk over, so its top was between Bradshaw and him. Cheerful’s corpse was the only protection I had. The desk I had dived towards was behind me.
My mentor’s voice shook. ‘Yair, I’m sweet. But Bradshaw’s running a short-price favourite against the two of us.’
I screeched. ‘Why don’t you use your gun, Gooroo?’
He screamed back. ‘What bloody gun?’
Our exchange made Bradshaw smile, and he removed his finger from the trigger of his weapon. He wanted to play.
I yelled back at Gooroo. ‘No gun? You’re supposed to be a big-time bookie. Next you’ll be telling me you haven’t got a buzzer on your desk to call your heavies.’
Bradshaw giggled.
I was growing hysterical, but it was time for a Gooroo speech. ‘Listen to me, Steele. We’re both gunna fucking die. We’re both gunna die. You understand? We’re both gunna fucking die, but no bedwetting private-schoolboy fucking stiff like Bradshaw is gunna kill us. You got me?’
Gooroo’s bluster was meant to give me confidence. Its effect was the opposite. ‘That speech probably means you have no heavies. Buddha, Gooroo, what sort of a crim are you?’
Bradshaw could not resist this. ‘See what I mean about natural selection, gentlemen? Some members of a species have no idea of self-preservation, let alone self-advancement.’
At least Gooroo had bars across the windows, for protection. The glass smashed into the room and a hand holding a long-bladed fishing knife poked between two bars and steadied itself. The hand lingered until Bradshaw turned towards the noise. I had to admire his professionalism. He got three shots away before the knife sank into his heart. Only an expert with a knife could have made that kill. The scream outside told me that at least one bullet hit its target. Bradshaw sank into a heap on the floor.
I got up and looked with distaste at my bloody hands. I wiped them on the pockets of my jeans, which were also covered in Cheerful’s blood. I could not get the blood off my bandage. Gooroo stood up and whistled in relief. ‘You know, Steele, maybe Kathy Billings and Natalie are right. You should get a real job. Anything has to be better than sitting at home bored all day.’
He moved towards the jug to fill the percolator as a fist pounded on the steel door. I knew the voice behind it only too well. ‘Let us in, Steele,’ Frank Mooney insisted.
I looked at the Gooroo, who asked, ‘Is he planning to kill us too?’
I was at the stage where I was taking little for granted. ‘Who knows? But I don’t think so.’ I pointed at Bradshaw. ‘The fish he’s after has already been caught. By a fisherman, I suspect.’
The Gooroo undid the lock. For some reason, Mooney was dressed in his sergeant’s uniform instead of his usual tacky leather jacket and suit pants.
But the first man to step into the room was an American Army Colonel. He walked slowly and carefully around Evatt, inspecting the bookie’s dead body while making sure he did not get a drop of blood on his highly polished shoes. Satisfied, he took a close look at Bradshaw.
Mooney was talking to me, but the words were not clear. I heard the Gooroo answering Mooney back, but couldn’t pick up what either was saying. I was trying to remember the name of the Colonel who had interrupted Bradshaw and me at the VIP lounge of Coolangatta airport.
He knew me, right enough. When he’d finished his second tour of death, he turned to look in my direction. I will swear the bastard smiled. Colonel Clark, that’s what Bradshaw had called him. Clark changed his mind about smiling, and looked severely at the scene. But I had seen it: Clark’s appreciation of death in the back of a Tweed Heads butcher shop.
Watch the butcher shine his knives
And this town is full of battered wives.
Mooney started to poke at my shirt to get my attention.
‘Stop that,’ I said. ‘I’ve had it with being pushed around.’
Mooney stopped as Senior Constable Bill Schmidt, wearing a suit, hurried into the room. ‘I think the one outside is dead, too,’ he said. ‘I’ve called an ambulance.’
‘Who is he?’ Mooney asked the constable.
I answered for him, pointing towards Bradshaw’s body. ‘He’s a fisherman, or was. I think you’ll find he is Angelo Sebastion, late owner of the African Queen, licensed gambling boat. Bradshaw killed his brother.’
‘You slimy Fed bastard!’ Mooney, just to remind us that he was indeed a lunatic, yelled at Bradshaw’s dead body,
Bradshaw had picked Georgio and Evatt badly, but he was spot on about the crazed Mooney. And Mooney had Bradshaw pegged. The State and Federal coppers knew more about each other than they did about themselves.
Schmidt put on his thinking cap, demonstrating why he was worthy of future high office. ‘This could work out sweet, Frank. Sebastion might have been legal, but he was still into gambling, right? Evatt and the Sebastion brothers, and Georgio too, they were running an Australia-wide SP bookie racket. Bradshaw was investigating, and here we have the gunfight of the century as the result.’
Mooney was buying. ‘Yair, it fits. I just don’t like Bradshaw getting off with a clean slate.’ He kicked the body three times to express his distaste. ‘But I guess his Fed mates will find out what went down. Teach those bastards not to shit in our nest.’
I was curious. ‘Would that be a nest of grass, Mooney?’
‘Piss off, Hill. You’re lucky to get out of this alive; Bradshaw’s been gunning for you from the start. We could still get you for whatever we want, even murder. So shut your trap.’
Colonel Clark cleared his throat. ‘Well, gentlemen, I will be on my way, now that everything is settled.’
Mooney waved the American army officer on. But I put my hand on the Colonel’s shoulder. The officer drew in a deep breath to hold his temper at seeing a bloodied hand stain his uniform. I wanted to know the score, and I addressed Mooney. ‘Where did you meet Colonel Clark?’
The sergeant gave me a compliment. ‘You know him too, Hill. If you weren’t such a fucking clown, you would make a good cop. I saw Clark waiting in a hire car down the road.’
The Colonel began to move. I clutched a handful of his shirt in my fist. His eyes went wild and I realised this man probably knew ninety ways to kill someone with his bare hands. Still, I held firm to the fabric of his expensive shirt.
Mooney looked into Colonel Clark’s fiery eyes, to see the hatred and aggression there. He held his hand up in a stop gesture. ‘Take it easy, Colonel. We’re all the good guys together, remember.’
Mooney spoke softly to me. ‘Let him go, Hill.’
I protested. ‘But this bastard is in the thick of this. You can’t let him go.’
Gooroo moved up close to Clark. ‘A Colonel, hey? That’s pretty high up in anyone’s army. Were you involved in the recent Gulf War fracas against Iraq, by any chance?’
The Colonel stiffened his body, dropped his fists and closed them beside his outer thighs. ‘I am proud to say I served my country in that action.’
The Gooroo poured coffee into four mugs, not extending hospital
ity to the Colonel. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘You’d better do what Mooney says, Steele, and let Colonel Clark go.’
‘What am I missing here?’ I yelled.
Sergeant Mooney agreed with the Gooroo. ‘Let him go, Hill. You see that crap on his shoulder below your hand? You see the crap on my upper arm? His crap shits all over my crap. But I fought on the streets, not to mention in police stations, for thirty years for my crap. And I’m keeping it.’
I let go of the uniform. Clark walked slowly to the door. He turned around when Gooroo addressed him.
‘What was it, Colonel? About 10,000 body bags you shipped over in the first week?’
The Colonel said nothing, but stood to hear more.
‘You had contingency plans for at least 10,000 of your bodies to be brought back, dead. Which would mean contingency plans for four, five or more times that wounded. And you lost fewer than a hundred.’
Mooney and Schmidt looked at each other to see if either knew what this history lesson was all about. I put my face between theirs.
‘Don’t you get it?’ I said. ‘Morphine.’
‘Morphine,’ the Gooroo repeated. ‘Unrefined heroin.
‘After every major war, since at least the American Civil War, morphine or heroin addiction have increased in particular parts of the world. In this century, Paris in the twenties, New York in the late forties. We were late starters in Australia. Sydney had to wait till the seventies for the aftermath of Vietnam. Now in the nineties, we’re getting presents from the Gulf to supplement the gear coming from south-east Asia and Afghanistan.’
The Colonel maintained a professionally bored expression, untouched by any of what the Gooroo was saying. The military man straightened himself to his full height. ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’
He moved through the steel door, and out into the twilight.
Putting my hands into my jeans pockets, I felt all the money jammed in there. I retrieved the wad and let it drop to the floor.
I took out my wallet, and emptied all the money in it at Mooney’s feet. The sergeant looked down at the money before raising his head to snarl at me. Schmidt put a comforting hand on Mooney’s shoulder and led his superior officer to the door.
The bloody five hundreds behind the wallet, I threw towards the opened door. I followed the money trail.
Stopping at the threshold to the sultry night, I stooped down to pick up eight bloody notes. I dropped the money inside my shirt and felt the warm bills fall past my heart to rest in front of my stomach. I bade the Gooroo goodnight.
Book Four
At the beginning
24
Brisbane, late spring in early November, 1986
I HAD SCAMMED Bub Applebee’s school principal into stopping her being bullied by tricking him into believing I knew about the most embarrassing moment in his life. My most embarrassing moment was when I had to stare straight into the face of the chief steward of racing, with a bloody great copper standing off his right shoulder. The steward was asking the questions.
‘You wouldn’t know anything about this Brisbane Handicap fiasco, would you Hill?’
Would I ever? Kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, extortion, supplying illicit drugs . . . I was looking down the barrel of a minimum of fifteen large at the tender age of twenty-one. I would be lucky to be outside the nick for New Year’s Eve 1999.
‘No, Boss, I don’t know anything about it,’ I said meekly, staring into the face of the chief steward, Mr Joe Boss.
Mr Boss waved the copper out of the tiny office, saying he would call him when he was needed. As the copper shut the door, Boss stood up and leaned forward, spreading his fingers like two fans onto the table. He made a great effort to give me a look of utmost sincerity.
‘I’m sorry about what happened to your mate, Clarence. Is it true he rang up the Canterbury stewards and abused them for ten minutes for moving the barrier stalls five metres after a sudden downpour?’ Boss asked.
It didn’t seem important any more, but I wanted to give Mick Clarence due credit.
‘It’s true, Boss.
‘How old was Clarence when this happened?’ Boss asked.
‘I guess he was about seventeen at the time.’
‘What, was he crazy or something?
‘Mick wasn’t crazy,’ I said evenly. The chief steward let me go on. ‘Well, maybe he was just a bit crazy, but he was a mathematical genius. After he gave the stewards a prolonged blast, he redid his sums with the barrier moved five metres, and it came out that his horse would get done by a nose rather than winning by a head.’
Boss looked at me in disbelief across his desk. ‘You’re only a baby, Hill. What the fuck are you mixing with these lunatics for? What do you think’s going to happen to you?’
‘I haven’t done anything, Boss. Is this about that mad Russian?’
___o0o___
EVEN IF YOU have a history of punting, you won’t know the Russian I’m taking about, because this horse trainer changed his name to sound as Pommy as you could get. I’ll call him Bill Smith. Most of the racing crowd probably noticed that Smith talked funny, but your average gambler is neither an Einstein nor a Socrates, and the other trainers, owners and jockeys were never too curious about unusual speech patterns. Smith could not get rid of the last traces of his Russian accent, no matter how hard he practised in front of his children.
Bill Smith was a battling horse trainer, best known as the father-in-law of one of Brisbane’s top jockeys. I was on nodding terms with him at early-morning track work, and struck up a conversation when I saw him down at the wharfies’ club – properly known as the Waterside Workers’ Club, though only its management and a few cabbies would recognise it by that moniker.
It turned out that Smith had worked on the wharves in the early fifties, having jumped a Russian cargo ship and successfully applied for political asylum. A short thin fellow, he had great strength beyond his size, and he knew his way around loading and unloading cargo. His smattering of English, gained from travelling around the world, along with his winning smile, landed him the wharfie job.
One night, we were sharing a bottle of vodka in his two-bedroom weatherboard house in the Brisbane trackside suburb of Hendra. He raised his two children here, after his wife scarpered. Bill did not hold a grudge against her. She had wisely predicted that he would not be a great provider, after throwing in his wharfie job to follow his love of training horses.
‘Must be the Cossack in you,’ I joked. He had recently confided in me his background story. He kept his Russian heritage private from most people. As soon he had the hang of the new lingo, he had changed his name to a very English moniker, which I have changed again to Bill Smith.
‘I don’t want you thinking I am ashamed of being Russian, Steele. Anyone who says I ran away from communism is a liar.’
‘I’m not the KGB, Bill. I’m not judging you on why you chucked in the old country.’
‘I didn’t run from communism. I ran to communism. The Australian wharves where I worked were full of Bolsheviks. Most of them had turned that way after their experiences in the Australian or British defence forces during World War II.’
Bill told me he had jumped ship in Perth more on an impulse than anything else. He even had a notion that he might catch up with the ship in Melbourne. But he met the proverbial man in the proverbial pub, and this bloke was a public servant who said Bill might as well try his luck for asylum. I asked the Russian if he had had any State secrets to trade. He replied that he had devised a few before he applied, but the Foreign Affairs diplomats demanded nothing along those lines. ‘They almost wet themselves, Steele, having a real-life defector standing in their office. You got to remember, this is Cold War time and anti-communism is like the flu spreading through Australia.’
Bill was glad he didn’t have to divulge the secrets he had made up, written down and rehearsed. His false espionage concerned matters of which he knew little. He did know that the diplomats would catch him out with the
simplest of questions. Instead, they just asked him about his childhood and where he grew up. They could not hear enough about post-war food shortages in Russia. Bill found that strange. ‘After the war, you must have had shortages here. Later, my wharfie mates told me about the rationing, and women being made to work on farms and in factories during the war to try to keep up production. Australia, Britain, Russia, I don’t know we were much different. But to the diplomats, Australia had to be better. That’s when I decided anyone who wanted it enough could be rich in this country.’
He glanced around his tiny kitchen, with its old stove and small fridge, and the wooden table covered with discoloured and peeling linoleum. Bill smirked and I involuntarily repeated the gesture, as if I was catching a yawn. Then a laugh swelled into a roar as it erupted from his throat. We were both exploding in laughter, with him hitting the table and me slapping a knee to calm ourselves down.
When we finally got ourselves under control, I said: ‘You’re not a bad bloke, Comrade Zhivago.’
He returned the compliment. ‘You are a top bloke, Magic Pudding.’
‘Hang on – “Magic Pudding”?’
‘Yes, Magic Pudding. What is wrong with that? It is an Aussie children’s book I used to read to Felicity and Robert when they were toddlers.’
‘Magic Pudding. Magic Pudding; I guess it’s awlright as a nickname, Bill. In fact, it’s growing on me all the time. Let’s just keep it between ourselves, but.’
We managed to do that, to my everlasting gratitude. I don’t think I could have handled that moniker from anyone else.
Bill’s daughter Felicity, or “Flick” as most knew her, who grew up on the Magic Pudding yarn, was a pretty blonde. She married one of Brisbane’s most successful hoops, a man who we will call Gregory Sailor. He was always near the top of the win tally for any given year, and won a couple of recent Brisbane jockeys’ premierships. You cop that trophy for winning the most races in a season, running for twelve months from August 1.
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