THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO GEORGE BURRARRAWANGA AND THE WARUMPI BAND
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Dedication
A Message From The Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About The Author
Other Books By
Copyright
About the Publisher
A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR
Of all the diversions in life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
Joseph Addison, 1672–1719, English essayist, poet, playwright and statesman.
There you go. If you haven’t got the brains to come up with something yourself, you can always do a little literary shoplifting and plagiarise somebody else. Not that I’m claiming to be a useful and entertaining author. But I manage to sell a few books and I reckon that’s a pretty good quote.
Anyway, once again I have to apologise to all the people who have written to me and are waiting on a reply. As usual, I’ve got letters up my Goolwah, but I’m doing my best to answer them. So with a bit of luck, you should get a reply. Although some letters do get lost. The same goes to members of my captive audience wanting books for the gaol libraries. I’m doing my best there, too.
Now, to this book. The reason I dedicated it to George Burrarrawanga and the Warumpi Band is because I like their music and like to put it in my books. ‘Blackfella/Whitefella’, ‘My Island Home’ and ‘Jailanguru Pakarnu’ are classic Australian songs. Also, a big Aborigine friend of mine was in Broome and he bumped into the Warumpi Band. They liked their music getting a mention in my books and sent me one signed by every member of the band. I was absolutely rapt. I’ve signed a heap of books, but I reckon that would be the only time an author has got back one of his books signed by his readers. So I dedicated the book to George and the boys in appreciation of a kind thought and some great music. Sadly George Burrarrawanga is not with us any more and the band has broken up. Let’s hope they get back together again and give us some more good music.
Okay, the book itself. I have to admit, you couldn’t find a more stupid name for a book than The Case of the Talking Pie Crust. It’s ridiculous. But once you’ve read the book you’ll see that it makes sense. However, to get into the guts of things, you have to find out about Emile Mercier. Emile was an incisive humourist with a zany sense of humour and his old cartoons and comics were insane. No one knows a great deal about him. But try and find his works in your local library or on the net. I’m sure you’ll agree.
The cave full of Egyptian carvings is the real deal. It’s out in the middle of nowhere and is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. I put some photos and more information up on my website. The photos aren’t the best, but they’ll give you an idea of what’s going on.
I might add, I’m in this book, too. I’ve always wanted a guernsey in a Robert G. Barrett book, so I gave myself a cameo role as one of the characters. I’m stoked. If you still can’t find me, there’s some photos of this particular scene on my website as well. There’s also photos from The Tesla Legacy tour and a recent speakers gig I did for the libraries in Cairns. One photo of me roaring drunk on margaritas with my face looking like an eggplant is worth the price of a mouse click on its own. I also want to say hello to the men and women in our armed services, wherever they might be. I know I’ve got a big following in the military, my books remind them of home, and I’ve been swapping parcels of books for T-shirts. Some of the T-shirts they sent me back from Afghanistan are unreal. Our serving men and women do a great job and Australia a great service and we should all be proud of them.
Well, that’s about it for the time being. I’m not sure what my next book will be all about, though I’m thinking of sending Les over to Western Australia. I’d like to set a story between Perth, Broome and Derby. Any sand gropers out there got any stories or ideas, drop me a line. There might even be a drink in it for you. In the meantime, thanks for all your support and letters. I truly appreciate it. And I’ll no doubt get to meet and greet some of you when I’m doing book signings for Les Norton and the Case of the Talking Pie Crust.
All the best,
Robert G. Barrett
Sprawled comfortably on his backyard banana chair in a plain white T-shirt over an old pair of blue shorts, Norton smiled and shook his head in admiration as the CD in the ghetto blaster alongside him cut out. How can a couple of blokes as old as those two keep pumping out filthy, foot-stomping rock ’n roll as mean as that? he asked himself. Christ! Buddy Guy has to be pushing eighty. Jerry Lee Lewis is in his seventies. And they’re still making hacks out of musicians half their age.
Norton had been listening to a CD called Last Man Standing, featuring Jerry Lee Lewis doing duos with everyone from Jimmy Page to Neil Young to Mick Jagger. The particular track that had Norton shaking his head was called ‘Halicol Boogie’, in which the crusty old Southern rocker pumped out a scorching rock ’n roll duo with veteran bluesman Buddy Guy.
‘Why’d they call it Halicol?’ asked Buddy Guy, when the track ended.
‘Halicol it something,’ replied Jerry Lee.
Norton liked the CD that much, he put down his cup of lemongrass tea with ginger, reached lazily across and played it again.
It was mid-morning on a delightful, autumn Saturday in beautiful downtown Bondi and a light sou’wester was pushing a scattering of puffy clouds towards the ocean, while the languidly rising sun warmed the day. Normally at this time, Les would be getting out of bed after a hard day’s night at the pickle factory instead of lying out in the backyard alone, catching some rays and getting into a bit of boogie. But the big Queenslander had been cruelly laid low by a virus he’d picked up at the Kelly Club and had to take a week off work. The bug hit him Saturday night when he suddenly started sneezing and his nose began running. By Sunday he felt absolutely rooted. Monday he was still sneezing and coughing up what looked like pineapple yoghurt, so he rang Price to painfully inform the dapper, grey-haired casino owner he was at death’s door and about to see a doctor. Stick the Kelly Club in his arse and get someone else in for the rest of the week. That was no problem. Billy Dunne’s cousin Royce was in need of a dollar and only too willing to help out. So Les set off to see a good doctor he knew up in Old South Head Road, who prescribed him some industrial-strength antibiotics along with some good advice. Les got his prescription filled, then drove home, gobbled down the antibiotics with several vitamin C tablets and honey and lemon, then crawled miserably into bed to have a good sulk and sweat out the evil spirits.
Whatever pills the good doctor prescribed certainly worked. By Wednesday, Les had stopped coughing and sneezing. By Thursday he was on his feet. Friday he had a slow jog along the soft sand on Bondi Beach and on Saturday morning after a good night’s sleep, Les was smiling and fit for work. However, Les decided to keep this to himself and have a few more days off. So he rang Billy’s wife earlier to say he was still pretty crook and tell Billy to keep his cousin at the club till the end of the following week. Lyndy said she’d pass the message on and would he like her to bring him round some chicken soup? That was quite all right thanks, Les lied to her, as he glanced at the empty plate in front of him, which a short time ago had been piled with scrambled eggs. He still hadn’t quite got his appetite back. After hanging up, Les sorted things out in the backyard, relaxed in his banana chair and mulled things over while he sipped his herb tea. And as the sun rose and the music played the general co
nsensus was—apart from an untimely spell flat on his back—life was all right.
His brief sojourn at the health farm had done him the world of good and Les was pleased with himself for not outing the murderer. He put the ignominy of being date-raped behind him and rang Estelle the girl from Leichhardt. But she was going one way and Les was working nights and going another. However, they both swore to meet up for dinner and a movie one evening.
Les also tried to maintain a healthier lifestyle now when it came to food. Although his appetite hadn’t diminished one iota, he was eating more salads and vegetables than before and laying off the junk food. If he wanted to snack, Les would eat nourishing sandwiches. His favourite was grated carrot and cheese, topped with lettuce and slices of Spanish onion, on wholemeal bread spread with Promite. He still liked chocolates and maybe a pizza marinara if the occasion arose and was also extremely partial to date smoothies. Clover put him onto them and her secret was to soak the seedless dates in hot water till they softened, before dropping them into a blender and adding full-cream milk. The only problem was, one date smoothie had enough calories in it to send a rocket to Jupiter. Add a banana and a scoop of ice cream and you could send the rocket into another solar system. But Les figured you had to allow yourself certain indulgences. Another was coffee.
Caffeine withdrawls, caffeine poisoning, caffeine addiction. It didn’t matter. Les still enjoyed good strong coffee. He’d tried decafs, Bambu and other ersatz blends. But apart from tea and one particular herb type, Les wouldn’t have given the rest to a Jap on Anzac Day. Coffee was coffee. Slaves had died for coffee, dictatorships had fallen because of coffee, duels had been fought over coffee. SBS did three-part documentaries about coffee. Coffee was more than a beverage. Coffee drinking was a major social event. And if there was anywhere better to socialise with people over coffee than Bondi, Les wasn’t aware of it. There was a coffee shop with chairs and tables spread across the footpath on every corner. In Hall Street, or Halal Street, as Norton’s Jewish mate, Benny the Beak, liked to call it, coffee shops were cheek by jowl. Plus the Bondi coffee shops were more than that. They were scenes. Scenes brimming with would-be scriptwriters, actors, authors, poets, film directors or whatever, all propped in front of their laptops looking pensive and intense while they gossiped about the arts and stabbed each other in the back. And the various scenes were like armed camps. The mob at Enzo’s didn’t like the team at Gemini’s, who despised the punters at Sardana’s, who loathed the rabble at Vivace’s. It was more delicious than the coffee. And strolling amongst it all, acting the epitome of elegant sophistication and sagacious perspicacity while he got his caffeine hits and grooved on the pettifoggery and intrigues, was Norton.
On the subject of strolling, or getting around town in general, Les had recently been doing a bit of soul-searching. Did he really need his Holden Berlina? It still went okay. But someone had side-swiped it while he was at work, he’d backed into a shopping trolley bay at Bondi Junction, and a brief hailstorm hadn’t helped the duco. And for some reason, the smell from the previous owner’s corpse was wafting back through the interior on hot humid days like a curried egg fart. Parking and traffic in the Eastern Suburbs was a horror show; all you did was drive from one set of lights to another and wait. Petrol wasn’t cheap and Les didn’t have a family. What use was a spacious four-seater, six-cylinder car? Avid environmentalist Spike Milligan had espoused driving the smallest car possible and for a crazy old Goon, he made a lot of sense.
Les had been thinking along the lines of a secondhand Mini Cabriolet. But the car that caught his eye was a thief-proof hybrid number a German company was bringing out, that ran on the smell of an oil rag and looked like something out of Tomorrow Land. Plus it had a heap of room inside, loads of extras and you could park it almost anywhere. The only blue was, they were around seventy-five thousand dollars on the road. Les could have dug that up out of the backyard, and he was sorely tempted. But it was a lot of money to fork out for a glorified tin box on wheels only to find out later you didn’t like the thing. But if a lazy earn close to that amount fell in out of nowhere, Les would have dug up the shortfall and had a talk to a dealer.
Norton did make one momentous purchase. He finally stepped into the twenty-first century and bought himself a mobile phone. Reluctant to the last. The final straw arrived one shitty night when the Berlina died coming home from the Kelly Club and Les had to trudge around Edgecliff in the rain, searching for a phone box to ring the NRMA. All the phone boxes were vandalised, so Les threw the towel in and hailed a passing taxi to take him home. When he returned to his car the following day, he’d been pinched for parking and his hubcaps were gone. The minute the NRMA mechanic revived the Berlina, Les went straight to the nearest Telstra outlet and bought an LG something or other that played music, tuned into Foxtel, took photos and had a range of other functions Les wasn’t interested in. All Norton knew was, he could ring the NRMA or whoever and people could ring him.
However, Les wasn’t sure if his new mobile was a blessing or a curse. Everybody at work had his number and he’d got drunk at a couple of soirees and given it to people who had handed it on to other people. Now he had uncertain women and blokes he hardly knew ringing him out of the blue wanting to talk absolute Edgar. Since the novelty faded, Les would have preferred to keep the thing switched off. But Price advised him to leave it on in case there was an emergency. Though Les had a feeling Price mostly liked to ring him up from the races, when he had one or two Dimple Haighs under his belt and he’d just given some poor unfortunate bookmaker a kicking.
Mobile phones aside, Les had the house to himself this particular Saturday morning, because Warren had stayed the night at his new girlfriend’s place. His old girlfriend Clover’s glassware company had offered her a twelve-month overseas posting in Genova, Italy. With the posting went a raise, an expense account and a fully furnished apartment, making it virtually a free trip to see Europe and come back with money in the bank. And although it broke Clover’s heart to leave Warren and Warren’s to be without Clover, she would have been mad not to take it. Les drove them to the airport, where they joined Clover’s friends and family and he was standing right next to Warren and Clover when they tearfully kissed each other goodbye, before Clover jetted off business class to Rome, flying Air Italia. However, despite all the tears and sorrow, it wasn’t long before Warren met Beatrice. A Hunters Hill girl who ran a small screen-printing business at Waterloo, where she lived above the premises.
Beatrice was in her late twenties and comfortably built, with wide, red lips set in a square face, and wore glasses under a mane of long, black hair cut in a fringe. Beatrice had a nice nature, but Les churlishly nicknamed her Ugly Betty and was a little indifferent towards her for no other reason than he liked Clover, and felt Warren could have waited a little longer before he let her lease expire. But it was none of Norton’s business and he imagined if Clover met some good-looking Italian count with a red Ferrari and plenty of lira to toss around, she wouldn’t stay lonely too long herself. Les did find one thing interesting about Beatrice. She was a conversant numismatologist and made money on the side buying and selling coins through the internet. Name an Australian coin and Beatrice could tell you where it was minted and how many there were in circulation. Beatrice also allowed her sideline to influence her dress sense and often wore a pair of earrings made from two 1910 threepences, plus she had a twenty-four carat gold necklace with a gold sovereign for a pendant. Beatrice liked Les and his tough guy persona and gave him a pinky ring with a 1938 sixpence in it. Les appreciated Ugly Betty’s gift. But sadly, the sixpenny coin finished up embedded in the forehead of a big Islander who tried to king hit Billy outside the Kelly Club when Billy wasn’t looking. Les apologised to Beatrice and said it came off when he was changing a flat tyre and rolled down a drain. Beatrice said that was okay, she’d find him another one.
Les was listening to Jerry Lee Lewis doing a great duo with Neil Young and watching a little butcher bird t
hat was watching a little skink lizard near the fence, and was about to advise the skink to take it on the toe when the phone rang inside. Norton closed his eyes and thought, Now this is when I should have my mobile next to me. So I don’t have to get up off my big fat arse. He tossed the remains of his tea towards the unsuspecting skink to scare it away, then walked into the loungeroom and picked up the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘What are you doing, Shitbags?’
‘What am I doing, Warren?’ replied Les. ‘Well, I was sitting out in the backyard taking it easy, until you rang and fucked everything up.’
‘Shit! I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet,’ grunted Norton. ‘So where are you? Over at your concubine’s place, I imagine.’
‘Please don’t call her that,’ said Warren. ‘She’s my lady.’
‘Lady? Ohh don’t give me the Edgar Britts,’ snorted Les. ‘She’s either your girlfriend or your sheila. Don’t give me this fuckin lady shit, you imposter.’
‘Jesus you’re a fuckin nark.’
‘I know. It comes from putting up with you. So you’re over at Ugly Betty’s.’
‘And don’t call her that either,’ corrected Warren. ‘It’s Beatrice.’
‘Holy shit! Beatrice, Beetroot. Beatrix bloody Potter. Fair dinkum, Warren. What the fuck do you want? This is one of the nicest Saturday mornings I’ve had to myself in ages and you have to stuff things up. Fuck you. Piss off.’
‘Okay,’ said Warren. ‘If that’s the way you want to be, you miserable big prick. In your arse. I was going to offer you an earn.’
‘An earn?’ Norton’s ears pricked up. ‘Keep talking, Woz.’
‘Yeah. I knew that’d make you change your tune, you tight-arsed cunt. All right. How would you like a chance to make fifty thousand bucks?’
‘Fifty grand!’ exclaimed Norton. ‘Warren. My friend and confidante. What do I have to do? A nice TV commercial. Do you want me to promote Versace or Armani’s latest range? Does Russell Crowe want me to run on for Souths? I still follow the Roosters. But I can soon switch to the red and green. No problems. Go the mighty Rabbitohs.’
Les Norton and the Case of the Talking Pie Crust Page 1