Iraqi Icicle

by Bernie Dowling

  ‘Awlright, you have totally confused me now, Boss. You want to see me on Thursday morning about something or other, and you want me to hold on to the paper I could turn into cash today. But it’s still my choice. So, it’s also my choice to give our Thursday appointment a miss.’

  ‘That’s a different kettle of fish, entirely. You have to attend the inquiry I am calling.’

  ‘An inquiry into what?’

  ‘That you already know, so I believe I am safe legally to withhold further details. But I would like you to reassure me you will do what I ask, and refrain from depositing those cheques until Thursday afternoon.’

  ‘Sure, Boss, I’ll do that, because, if you know about the cheques, you also know I collected thousands in cash. I can hold off until Thursday afternoon. Will I need a lawyer for this inquiry?’

  ‘That’s up to you, Steele. My advice would be to keep the lawyers out of it until we are clearer on a few details. As I said, that’s up to you.’

  ‘Yair well, I might bring a lawyer, because I know a good one. His name is Jim Mecklam.’

  I heard Boss snort a laugh down the phone. ‘They tell me you’re something of a comedian,’ he said. ‘Leave the jokes at home on Thursday and, for now, let’s have the record clear. You will cash those cheques in your possession on Thursday afternoon at the earliest.’

  ‘I’ve agreed to that twice already,’ I said, offended by his distrust.

  I was the first person through the door of my bank when it opened later that morning, and I paid for six-hour clearances on all the cheques. I didn’t like the way Boss described my cheques as cheques in my possession. I would turn up for the Thursday morning showdown, but I was determined that Bill Smith and I had the flexibility of stacks of cash in case we were unhappy with what we heard.

  At Bill’s place, he told me Boss was not seeing him until Friday morning, which set us both thinking. You had to figure Smith for a badder guy than I was in a race fix, when all they had me for was being the moneyman. Unless Boss knew more than we gave him credit for.

  Bill’s daughter Flick had contacted him and told him that their stupid kidnapping prank was their last together. He said she was quite cheerful, but she gave him a good dressing-down. She was returning home to Sailor that day.

  With Flick safe, our main worry was the chief steward and what information he had. As far as Bill and I could figure, only three people knew the full details of the scam. Mick Clarence was dead, leaving Smith and me.

  Bill had read about Mick’s death in the morning paper, but I could see he did not want to talk about it. He asked me if I knew anything, and I said that the last time I had seen Mick was on Friday night. Smith muttered ‘sad’ and ‘good young bloke’, and the topic returned to our meetings with the chief steward.

  Of course, Bill thought he had hidden the full story about his daughter’s role in the hustle from everybody. I guess that put me at the top of the tree for seeing the whole scene, not that it gave me extra protection. It did make me wonder if Bill had been too clever by half in other matters, and allowed someone else to work out parts of the hustle. Bill and I decided that Boss wanted to get as much from me and from other unknown parties as he could, to be able to throw some scares into the trainer on Friday.

  I rang the bookie I worked for, saying I was crook and would be unable to field until Saturday at the earliest. He sounded pissed off, though plenty of casual clerks were available. I realised word of my big collects would have been all over the bookies’ ring. He would have felt a dill, being no wiser than anyone who I was fronting for when I pulled off the big plunge on Who Loves Yer Baby. My bookie never went so far as to fire me, so he could tell the other bookies whatever he liked as far as I was concerned.

  ___o0o___

  JOE BOSS DISMISSED the copper to outside the tiny office. He looked at me after the copper shut the door on us.

  ‘I’m sorry about the death of 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 sudden rain?’ Boss asked.

  I said it was, and we discussed the details that Mick had shared with me. Boss looked at me across his desk.

  ‘You’re only a baby, Hill. What the fuck are you mixing with these lunatics for?’

  It was funny, the impression Mick Clarence made, even on people who only knew of him second or third-hand. Boss was calling him a lunatic for leading me astray, though Clarence was almost four years younger than me and the only favour he had ever asked of me was to put his twenty grand on Who Loves Yer Baby. One of the other lunatics he was referring to had to be Bill Smith, and I played along.

  ‘I haven’t done anything, Boss. Is this about that mad Russian?’

  Boss shook his head, not in answer to my question but in general disbelief at my audacity.

  ‘I don’t know how you blokes reckoned you could possibly get away with it. When I looked at the time, a new race record, almost a course record, and with what I had seen of the race with my own eyes, I couldn’t believe it.’

  I looked blankly at the chief steward, knowing he had more to say.

  ‘I took all the reports from the other stewards. Together, we watched the patrol film over and over. Of course, we declared correct weight, as no interference to other runners occurred. But we knew we would be taking the race from you. So we ordered a routine swab of the second placegetter, which we intended to promote to first, once we found out what Smith gave your horse. We asked for a quick process of the analysis, and we had the results yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘That was quick,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, they’ve been checked half a dozen times. So, what would you like to say at this point?’

  I could see through the blinds of the solitary window that it was a fine day outside, but apart from chitchat about the weather, I had nothing to add.

  ‘Okay,’ Boss said. He sat upright in his chair and stared hard into my face. ‘If anything remotely like what I am about to tell you comes back to me, you will never enter any racetrack anywhere in the world ever again. You understand me?’

  Boss had my full attention as I nodded agreement.

  ‘The second placegetter, All The Favours, came back positive for a go-fast they discovered in Italy three months ago.’

  ‘Mecklam’s horse was doped,’ I said.

  I was trying to control my smile as Boss gave me a filthy look.

  With my best serious expression, I said, ‘You wouldn’t expect that sort of thing from a member of the legal profession.’

  It was Mr Boss’s turn to suppress a smile. I began to ponder why we were discussing Mecklam’s results rather than ours.

  The chief steward opened and closed his mouth twice before he spoke, as if unsure whether he should offer the next piece of information.

  ‘Who Loves Yer Baby came back clean,’ he said finally and with little enthusiasm.

  I stared hard at the other man, and his dejected expression confirmed the good news. Who Loves Yer Baby clean. Clean as the whistle that legend has top jockeys using to tell their peers they need an uninterrupted run through the field.

  Mick Clarence had been spot on with every prediction. Psilocybin was an effective undetectable go-fast. I wished I could meet Mick back in his tiny Spring Hill flat to congratulate him. I rose from my chair as if our session was over.

  ‘I guess I can cash those cheques now,’ I said, and turned towards the door. ‘You know, you only had to ask on Monday, and I could have told you that Bill Smith had trained the horse to perfection because he wanted to win the race with a passion.’

  Mr Boss ignored my regrets at the misunderstandings between us. He rose quickly and took a few large strides to place his hand on the doorknob before I could reach it.

  ‘Sit down, Hill, I am not finished with you yet. What if I tell you all the money you defrauded and your job as a bookie’s clerk are both still yours, if you tell me what you used to dope the horse?’

  ‘
Fresh air and good feed, that’s all Smith used.’

  ‘You know I can pull your licence before you get to your car.’

  ‘That would be corruption.’

  ‘That would be justice. You’re lucky half of Brisbane hates Mecklam’s guts. I’m sick of trainers asking me to make him pay his bills. Maybe this will force him out of the game.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  The chief steward agreed. ‘I do, too, but we won’t have you around much longer, Hill, unless you pull your socks up and stay away from the wrong crowd.’

  ‘You know, Boss, I’d love to do that. The trouble is, these days, you never know who the wrong crowd are.

  Book Five

  At church

  43

  I SEARCHED THE DEATH NOTICES and found that Mick’s funeral was on Friday at Nudgee cemetery, not far from the orphanage where I grew up. I told Bill Smith about it but he said he had to go to the race inquiry. I am sure he could have had the inquiry postponed but he chose not to. For some reason I did not press him on, Bill thought Mick’s death had a connection with our race fix. The racing mob are a superstitious bunch and Bill Smith wanted to erase Mick Clarence from his memory.

  I was tossing up whether I should go, and spun Natalie a yarn about a bloke I knew from the track who been killed in a tragic accident and I did not think he had much of a family. Nat asked if she had ever met him, and when I said no she still insisted I should go to the funeral.

  I didn’t make the funeral mass because I had a bet going in the third at Hawkesbury, which I listened to on the car radio on the way to the cemetery. I backed Bright Side each way or to run in the first three, and it ran fourth.

  I parked the ute outside the grounds and waited for the funeral procession of eleven cars, including the hearse. I followed the group to the graveside and looked around, to discover I was about the only mourner under thirty-five years-old. You would have thought Mick’s smack dealer could have turned up to pay his last respects. And where was that parade of punters who frequented his Spring Hill flat, eager for a tip on a twenty-to-one shot?

  People waiting for the ceremony talked quietly among themselves. A short, middle-aged woman came up to me and asked if I knew Mick well. The other mourners had taken turns to cry on her shoulder, so I figured it was Mrs Clarence.

  ‘Did you know my son Mick well?’ she repeated.

  ‘Reasonably well,’ I answered with due solemnity.

  ‘You know they’re saying he killed himself, and they never found the man who helped him do it, the man who rang the police,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think he killed himself,’ I said. ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘I do not think my Mick would do anything like that; it just wasn’t him,’ Mrs Clarence said.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘It was a mistake.’

  She was reassured, or, at least, I hoped she was.

  ‘You don’t take drugs?’ she asked.

  ‘No I don’t, Mrs Clarence,’ I lied. ‘Are you awlright? Did your doctor give you something?’

  She said her GP had fixed her up with some Valium. She had never heard of it before, but he told her that other patients took it all the time; it settled their nerves and was safe as houses.

  ‘You know, he was never the same after his Dad died.’

  ‘It must have been hard on you, too, Mrs Clarence,’ I consoled.

  ‘You know, the driver of the other car was drunk, but they could never prove it.’

  ‘The other driver?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Mick begged his Dad to let him go with him to the greyhounds that day. He’d done it lots of times, though they both knew I didn’t like it. But his Dad would not let Mick go that day.’

  This was Dad who Mick told me shot his brains out across the kitchen wall. And Mick that we all thought had never been to a racetrack in his life.

  ‘You know, the other driver was drunk and they couldn’t prove it,’ Mrs Clarence repeated.

  ‘This was when your husband died?’ I said softly.

  ‘Yes, killed in a head-on, with two of our greyhounds in the back of the station wagon. Mick was twelve at the time and he never really got over it. Did you know him well?’

  I nodded in answer and realised I didn’t know him at all.

  The priest said Mick was free now, safe in the shadow of God. Mick was in pain but had not resorted to the coward’s way out, said the priest, betraying his Catholic fear of suicide.

  ‘Bloody right,’ I echoed out loud, though I did not mean to. ‘It was a mistake.’

  Some of the middle-aged mourners turned to admonish me with their glares, but I was happy to have paid the tribute I involuntarily blurted out.

  ___o0o___

  A GREY-HAIRED MAN approached me after the ceremony.

  ‘That was quite a hustle you and Clarence pulled,’ he said.

  I looked up at the kindly, knowing face.

  ‘What are you, a fucking Guru?’ I said.

  ‘No, I’m no Guru. Mick Clarence took about $120 grand from us in eighteen months. We knew he was under the legal betting age, but who were we going to tell?’

  ‘You a bookie?’ I asked.

  ‘SP. My boss Cheerful took to eating anti-acid pills like they were potato chips every time Mick rang us for a bet. You know, you can’t blame yourself or the fix for Mick’s death.’

  ‘There goes the Guru again,’ I replied.

  The man, who looked to be in his late fifties, put his hand around my shoulder and guided me to the exit. ‘Mick’s time had come,’ he said. ‘Let me buy you a drink. My name’s Con Vitalis. And can you stop that Guru shit? By the way, there’s a copper named Mooney standing over on that hill. I’d say he is checking you out, because you’re the only young person here. He probably thinks you work for me now.’

  We walked through the gates and Vitalis told me to follow him in my ute before he approached his white Holden Commodore. The SP bookie began to hop into his driver’s seat, but he stopped in mid-crouch to stand up and turn towards me.

  ‘Is it true Mick abused the stewards for twenty minutes because they moved the starting barriers five metres at Canterbury?’ Vitalis asked.

  I assured him it was indeed true, but it was only ten minutes. He shook his head in wonder, then eased himself behind the steering wheel. I told him to wait up, and fetched a large envelope from the ute’s glove box. I handed it to Vitalis.

  ‘Can you give this to Mrs Clarence?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Much?’

  ‘Ten grand.’

  ‘You trust me?’ Vitalis asked.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s only money.’

  I followed his car to a pub in Fortitude Valley.

  44

  Spring, October, 1992

  THE CREAKY WHEELS OF JUSTICE move pretty slowly. It took the coppers eight months to reconstruct the plot of what had happened to the Federal copper in Cheerful Charlie’s SP betting shop in late 1991. I hadn’t thought about Mick Clarence for a couple of years until the coppers repeatedly appeared on my doorstep dispensing new and improved versions of what had happened on that Saturday evening in the back of the butcher’s shop. I told Senior Constable Schmidt I would continue with our historical rewrites only if he found out the details about the death of Mick’s Dad.

  From 1986, waves of sadness overwhelmed me from time to time, as I thought of Clarence’s death. It was a tragic passing of a unique person, with an unusual mathematical gift that might have dragged him up a nobler path than picking winning racehorses. I felt I could put the jigsaw puzzle away in the cupboard if I just had all the pieces of his Dad’s death.

  Mooney threatened to kick my teeth in and have me charged with murder, but I stood on my digs until Schmidt said he would look into it.

  ___o0o___

  HALF A WORLD away, another man received a resolution of sorts. On October 24, 1992, in a baptism provided by American Rehabilitation Ministries
, General Manuel Noriega was immersed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit at the Federal Court House, Miami, Florida, in the chambers of United States District Judge Honourable William M Hoeveler. Born again Manny applied for a pardon soon after, but the earthly U.S. authorities were in no mood for forgiveness.

  ___o0o___

  AN UNHAPPY Mrs Applebee answered after I fingered the correct buttons, in my third attempt at using another of Cheerful’s mobiles that I inherited. Gooroo made me promise not to pawn this one, and guaranteed he would pay the bills. I felt honour-bound to fulfil the oath I gave my mentor. Mrs Applebee let me speak to Natalie after I promised I would not ring again. I was missing My Cucumber, but I was unsure she reciprocated.

  I started by apologising to Natalie for her not finding me at home. It’s okay, she said, she had not rung. I said I had wanted to tell her about the danger I was in, but she might have worried. Worse, she might not have cared.

  ‘I need to see you soon, Nat.’

  ‘I still haven’t made up my mind, Steele. I’m coming down to see Bub’s play at the Avalon Theatre, and Jane’s probably expecting you to come along anyway. It’s best we meet in public, but it’s not a date.’

  Nat told me the theatre for Bub’s graduation play was in Sir Fred Schonell Drive, St Lucia. Queensland Uni owned the premises, and used them for drama lessons and occasional student productions.

  I supposed that naming a theatre after fifties pop heart-throb Frankie Avalon was an example of that new trend, post-modernism, which a bunch of newspaper arts columnists loved to embed in their Saturday morning pieces. Yair, since that murder at La Boite, I had taken to reading the arts pages sometimes, though I rarely understood much of it below the headline or picture caption.

  The play was called Six Characters in Search of an Author, and some dead Italian fella named Pirandello did the show business. Mr P. was another one of those famous playwrights no one ever heard of. I guess university professors get the big money for discovering a play’s genius, missed by most of the other forty-nine punters who take in an obscure piece on opening night. I imagined – to myself, of course – these high-minded judges of literary genius patting themselves on the back for their discovery of the depths of the author’s genius: Listen Jack, don’t you know, he’s a star. Just like me, for finding it out. I put my foot into it with Natalie by jokingly asking if this playwright won a Nobel Prize, because it turned out he did.