Father Reilly, the priest who had blessed Mecklam’s horse, was eating a plate of fish and salad at the cafeteria on my way back to the grandstand. I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my betting slips, which I unfolded and saw it was my $200 each-way bet. I walked over to the priest and put the ticket on his plate next to a pile of mayonnaise.
‘I read your story in the paper, Father. Here is a bet on Who Loves Yer Baby. It’s an insurance policy in case Mr Mecklam’s horse loses. I know how bad he’ll feel about the African orphans, so you can console him if this one wins instead. By the way, my name’s Steele Hill, if Mr Mecklam asks.’
The priest was surprised, but managed to mumble a blessing with his mouth full of chips. He put the ticket in his wallet and carried on eating his lunch, while I made my way to the top of the grandstand.
The bookies were having a good day, with only one favourite winning in five races. Two of the winners were twenty-to-one shots, so they were in a good mood for race six, the Brisbane Handicap.
After I had watched all of the action from my lonely seat way up in the grandstand, I went down to the crowded betting ring. Mecklam’s horse was four-to-one with most bookies. The favourite, Purple Haze, was at five-to-two, with Who Loves Yer Baby mostly under the odds at eight-to-one, with ten-to-one the best price available.
Mecklam’s crew came for All The Favours with some commission agents I recognised. George, Phil and an attractive leggy blonde I heard someone call Crystal also worked the ring to back the horse. All The Favours came into a general price of two-to-one, with nine-to-four the best bet, despite some healthy bets on other runners.
I had $500 each way on Who Loves Yer Baby when one bookie blew it out to sixteen-to-one.
I put $2250 on each way, at prices ranging between fourteen-to-one and ten-to-one.
With my bets on the bookies and the tote, I stood to collect between seventy-five and eighty-five grand if Bill Smith’s horse won. I did the rough maths in my head, giving myself a healthy collect on the trifecta and subtracting the ticket, potentially worth more than four grand, I had given to the priest to rub it in to Mecklam if his horse lost. All my tickets were in my left shirt pocket, where I always kept my betting slips.
I decided to watch the race from the grassy incline near the winning post, and that was where I met Bill Smith for the first time that day.
‘How you going?’ he asked.
‘Good.’
‘That’s good.’
Smith was sweating profusely from his top lip and his temples, and his voice was shaky. I was wondering why I was oddly calm. I had left the unit of a dead teenager that morning and, in the afternoon, had put seven grand on a doped horse in a race that Mecklam’s neddy was supposed to win.
‘The horse is behaving well,’ said Bill. ‘I left him with his strapper to saddle up Sailor. Everything’s good.’
‘That’s good,’ I said.
I had to get away from this conversation, so I told Bill I had another bet to put on. I walked around to the up escalator, which would take me to a part of the grandstand far away from Smith. I hopped on the escalator and looking up, saw Mecklam, still with the businessman, four steps ahead above me. I figured the owner of All The Favours had urged the other bloke to back the horse, trying to build a bank of favours. Relying on the result of a horse race was a high-risk strategy for making friends.
The pair stepped off the escalator and took up a position to watch the race. I deliberately walked to stand a metre in front of them, and imagined Mecklam’s glare trying to burn a hole in the back of my head.
The horses came onto the track. All The Favours and Who Loves Yer Baby were both fractious, turning their heads to the side and fighting the reins, as their jockeys persuaded them to canter down the straight before heading to the starting stalls. Early favourite Purple Haze sweetly did all its jockey asked, including easing into the barrier stalls without a fuss.
The barrier attendants finally got the two skittish horses into their stalls and the starter let them go.
Who Loves Yer Baby, which had not led in a race since its two-year-old days, zoomed from the starting stalls and led the field by three lengths by the time they had gone 100 metres. I silently begged the horse not to go further in front, as this would ensure that the stewards came knocking on my door with a folderful of questions.
All The Favours was running second, also a more forward position than it usually took. Purple Haze was fourth, one horse off the fence, which would have made its backers happy if the front runner wasn’t going quite so quickly. That might test the early favourite’s ability to get the distance.
Who Loves Yer Baby appeared to be running a very fast time, and the horses in fifth and sixth spots were being niggled at by their jockeys to keep up. The stayers at the back of the field were twenty lengths from the leader, which showed its first signs of distress near the home turn.
I could have sworn I saw Gregory Sailor pull on the left rein. He would never normally do this on a right-handed track like Eagle Farm, as it would cause a horse to veer out.
Who Loves Yer Baby, more than three lengths clear, resented the unexpected tug and shook its head from side to side, losing the fluency in its galloping action at the same time. The margin to All The Favours was reduced to little more than a length, and the jockey of the second horse waited to see whether the leader was going to run out on the home turn.
Who Loves Yer Baby did run out, about seven horses wide, and All The Favours and Purple Haze, both near the inside fence, ran to a joint lead.
You crooked bastard, Sailor, I thought. You can’t even be trusted in a race fix.
Knowing his unsettled mount had run its race, Sailor relaxed the reins. With its new freedom, Who Loves Yer Baby took off. It still refused to run a straight line but, at high speed, it wobbled past All The Favours and the tiring Purple Haze on its inside. With fifty metres to go, the only way Gregory Sailor could lose the race was to jump off his mount, and he did not have the courage for that. Who Loves Yer Baby won by two lengths from All The Favours, with the fifty-to-one stayer White Knuckles third. The time on the semaphore board declared a new race record.
I turned to go down the escalator. Mecklam was standing, hands clenched into fists, white with rage. His business mate had turned red with anger, and tore up his tickets even before weight was declared.
‘I’ll see you later, Jim,’ the businessman said testily, storming off to the escalator.
‘It’s not correct weight,’ Mecklam called down, but he knew no protest could eventuate, as the first and second horses never got near one another in running. The best he could hope for was for the winner to return a positive swab, days later, giving him first prizemoney. But he would not get back the money he had lost on the punt. Nor would he get back the time off his life he lost with that look of sheer hatred he gave me, as I tapped my shirt pocket, produced my winning tickets, looked at each one and smiled breezily at Mecklam. I walked very close to him so he could talk to me in a whispering snarl.
‘You’re dead, Hill, and so’s Smith.’
Smiling warmly, I wished him a most happy day, and asked if he wanted the contact number of a reliable Sydney hitman. I had good referrals on a Nordic bloke they called the Nutcracker Swede.
At the bottom of the escalator, I heard the course announcer advise punters to hold all tickets, which meant that the stewards had discovered a discrepancy. I grabbed the rail of the escalator and felt my hand drag me downwards. The announcer said the inquiry was into the second last race in Melbourne.
41
BY THE TIME I had lined up at the tote window, they had announced the ‘all clear to pay’ on the Brisbane Handicap. The totalisator declared a dividend of $4376.85 for the trifecta, which made my total collect from the tote just shy of twenty grand. They paid $18,000 of this with a cheque.
As I expected, the bookies asked me to come back after the last race, and they too wanted to pay me most of my winnings by cheque. After
some hostile negotiations, I was ready to leave the course with about twenty grand in cash and another fifty in cheques. I asked two bookies if they could tee up a security guard to escort me to the car. They both told me to fuck off.
The leggy blonde, in her mid-twenties, who I had heard someone call Crystal, came up beside me. ‘Looks like you’ve had a good day. Need someone to help you celebrate?’
‘Shouldn’t you be out commiserating with Jim Mecklam?’
‘Who?’
‘How quickly they forget.’
‘Life’s too short to hang about with losers,’ she said.
‘Life’s too short for winners, too.’ I was thinking of Mick Clarence. ‘I’ll give your kind invitation a swerve, Crystal, because My Cucumber awaits at home, and a pregnant friend is holed up in a hotel room.’
Only one part of my info got through. ‘You know my name?’
‘Only your first, but I would imagine your second is “Trouble”.’
‘Only for the slow coaches who can’t keep up with me. See you around, Winner.’
Crystal slinked across the racecourse. She called out to a fifty-something man by name and told him to wait up. I looked around at the faces of the other stragglers leaving the course, but I couldn’t see Bill Smith or anyone else I knew.
Shoving notes from my pockets into the glove box, I started the EH’s engine, turned on the radio and headed to the city. I stopped in a quiet corner of King George Square car park and counted out $10,000. I put this into a plastic bag and shoved the bag down my shirt.
The woman at the front desk of the Sheraton paged Flick Sailor’s room. The pregnant woman must have been near the door, for she flung it open as soon as I knocked and before I could announce myself.
‘I’m bored, Steele. Can I go home now?’
‘Not just yet, Felicity.’
I looked up and down, round and round the corridor before I closed the door and locked it.
‘Did you listen to the radio?’
‘Yes, I did, but you have to dial ‘0’ before the number from this stupid room phone, and I was always too late. I knew almost every song, too.’
She had been playing contests on FM radio rather than listening to the exploits of her father and husband on the racing channel.
I took the plastic bag from my shirt.
‘Those Fun Guys from 1SquillionFM Radio told me to give you all this, as they reckon you were deadest robbed.’
Flick looked inside the bag, and asked me where I had got all the money. I told her that her Dad’s horse had won.
‘Don’t tell me that, Steele. I wanted to watch the race on the six o’clock news. That looks like a lot of money; what are you going to do with it all?’
‘It’s all yours. It’s a long story, but some bloke you don’t know gave me some money to put on Who Loves Yer Baby, and he said to give you $10,000 if it won. It’s all yours, and your husband knows nothing about it. But just stay here a couple of days more. Then I’ll tell Bill where you are, and you and he can work out what you’re doing.’
She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’ve never had so much money of my own in my life, not even after Greg won the Stradbroke.’
Flick took the bag to the double bed, and emptied all the money onto the quilt. ‘But why do I need to stay here? I’ll go home to Greg now that he’s promised to mend his ways. Our baby needs a mum and a dad. Not like our family was.’
‘That’s fine, but Greg will be in a foul mood for a couple of days. He could be a more popular bloke right now with a certain owner after he won on your Dad’s horse.’
Flick started into a speech about sharing her husband’s happiness and his disappointments, and about how Sailor would be starting to really worry. I cut her short.
‘It could be dangerous, awlright? It’ll blow over in a few days, but right now, it could be dangerous. Stay in the hotel, have a bit of a splurge, and wait until your Dad or I, or even Greg, say it’s awlright to leave.’
‘Does Greg know where I am?’
‘Not at the moment, but when he does, it’ll mean it’s awlright to go home.’
She promised to do as I asked, telling me I was the best and I knew what was what. I agreed with her, to keep up her confidence. The truth be known, all I knew was that you could get an honest but not brilliant racehorse to run a race record under the effects of psilocybin. For the rest of it, I had no idea what demons you let loose when you did it.
Why I felt an obligation to Flick’s father, I will never know. But I rang Nat to tell her I was going to be a little late home, and went searching for Bill Smith to reassure him I had his winnings. As luck would have it, he was at the third place I went to, the bowls club just down the road from the racecourse.
He was sitting next to Who Loves Yer Baby’s owner, a schoolteacher on the verge of a retirement, which would be enriched with her ability to tell the saga of winning the 1986 Brisbane Handicap. The trainer and the owner had their backs to me. They were speaking loudly above the din of the punters swapping post mortems on the day’s races.
‘I don’t know what happened to the price, Bill,’ owner Claire Levy was saying. ‘I know you said it had a chance and you did get Sailor to ride, but it still should have been twenty-to-one and the best I got was twelves.’
‘Who knows how it happens, Claire?’ said the ever-honest Bill Smith. ‘Someone might have read about it in the paper. Someone having a big win decides to put a few hundred on as an omen bet and it snowballs from there. I’m sorry you missed your price.’
‘I’m not, because I saw the price and put on three times as much as I planned. To tell you the truth, Bill, I thought you were pulling a swiftie.’
‘Would I do that?’ said Bill, feigning innocence.
I interrupted, tapping Bill on the shoulder and nodding to Ms Levy. Bill smiled at me, slapped me on the back and introduced me to his companion. She was the best owner any Brisbane trainer ever had, apparently. He offered to shout me a wine, but Ms Levy swore she was buying while any of us were drinking. She pressed a $10 note in my hand and requested a gin squash for herself and a vodka and ice for Smith. Bill said he had to go to the loo, and followed me to the bar.
‘How’d you go, Steele?’ he asked.
I replied in a flat voice. ‘I owe you about forty-two-and-a-half grand, but most of it’s in cheques.’
‘I’m sweet about my share, Steele. I was hoping you had a good go at it, but I can always give you some of mine.’
‘I’m awlright, Bill. If you want to look after anyone, give Flick a bit of a sling. You were out of line with what you put her through. By the way, I hear she’s fine and she’ll ring you soon. As for that husband of hers – was it my imagination, or did he try to throw the race on the home turn?’
‘You saw it, too, Steele? That cheating bastard will never put his leg over one of mine again.’
I had to smile, because Sailor would be the most relieved man in Australia had he heard the trainer’s threat. I reached into a pocket to grab a wad of money, which I passed to Bill.
‘We’ll settle up for the rest towards the end of the week,’ I said.
‘Sure, but we should both go around to see Mick Clarence tomorrow. I half expected to see him with you today, but he told me about his medical condition. I bet he’s as happy as a pig in mud right now.’
I was not up to telling Bill that Mick was as dead as a pig in a pork pie, and I refused to answer his questions about who had told me Felicity was all right. All I said was I would pick the trainer up on Tuesday morning and we would go around to Mick’s Spring Hill unit. Tuesday seemed a long way away, and I expected any number of humourless authorities would be grilling us both before then. I toasted the victory of Who Loves Yer Baby with two glasses of red, left the winning connections to party into the night and drove home to Hendra.
When I put $5000 in Natalie’s hand, she asked me what I had done, and I told her I backed a winner. I could have looked more excite
d, she said, but I declined to offer any more details. It had been a long day.
The truth is that I didn’t feel any satisfaction from winning a big bundle. A gambler can never win enough, but they can lose the lot, as Mick Clarence did. Gambling is a beautiful tragedy, which is why it attracts the glamorous and the self-destructive. I think that’s why I threw all that money in the river. I was not making an audacious gesture, or shaking my fist at the gods; I was just admitting to myself that money is a lousy way to keep score.
42
ONCE I HAVE A NOTION firmly planted in my brain, it stays fixed. A quick calculation told me I would have more than twenty grand left after I gave Bill Smith his forty-two and change. Because Mick Clarence had said he would give me ten grand if our horse won, I decided that was what I was entitled to. I had ten grand to spend quickly. A romantic might have given more to Natalie, but I never entertained that notion. A smart man would have bought her a ten-grand diamond ring, something to wheedle from her to pawn when I was down on my luck. I was not doing that, either
___o0o___
THE CHIEF STEWARD RANG me at seven on Monday morning.
‘You woke me,’ I said, sipping coffee in my lounge room and peering down at the racing page of the morning paper. ‘How’d you get my number?’
‘You’re a licensed bookmaker’s clerk; we have your details.’
‘Sure, that’s right,’ I said, and waited for him to get to the point.
Joe Boss, which is still the name we are using for the chief steward, reminded me of the $60,000 in bookies’ and totalisator cheques I had in my possession.
I didn’t ask how he knew about the money, but let him move on instead.
‘I’d like you to promise not to deposit those cheques until after you come to my office on Thursday morning,’ Joe Boss said.
I asked why, but he simply repeated his request. I asked whether he had instructed people to stop any of the cheques.
‘I would need authorisation from a court to do that, Steele. I am just asking you not to deposit the cheques until Thursday afternoon. I can only add that it might prove beneficial to you, if certain circumstances prevail.’
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