by Peter Doyle
Then word came back from Stan’s underworld pals that detectives had been asking around about the new gang on the scene. The cops knew the thefts were the work of experts, and – worst of all – they, the cops, weren’t getting a piece of the action. If you wanted to operate professionally – and long-term – Russell Street had to get its due. So things went quiet on the hoisting front.
In early December Denise threw a big party at her parents’ holiday house on the Mornington Peninsula. The oldies were interstate. The slather was open.
The party started Friday night, and over a hundred people turned up, mostly the Barrel crowd. We set up our instruments in a big shed out the back. The house was well hidden from the road and from neighbours, so we cranked the music up loud. It was more like our own little Woodstock festival than a party. People camped around the property, lit fires, smoked grass, dropped acid. Vic’s friends were roasting a lamb on a spit. They had their own keg.
Clive the foppish journo was there, crapping on again about ‘the underground.’ The Captain was wearing a velvet jacket, drinking cognac, smoking joints, taking lines of this and that.
Oracle – man, I just couldn’t get hip to that name – played all that first night. We played pretty well, too – I really felt the music, we all did. We tried new things, outlandish changes, and they would always work. Bobby sang a song we’d written together called ‘Superman on Dope’ – I’ll tell you all about that a little later – and the party crowd loved it. We took a break around eleven.
Then Cathy wandered into the shed and back into my life. Her hair was cut short. She looked good in tight jeans and a suede jacket with little coloured beads sewn into it. Cowgirl-hippie-American Indian shaman style, I guess you’d call it. She stopped at the door and slowly looked around the room. She waved to me, or maybe to the room, I couldn’t tell. Then she came over and kissed me, smiling like nothing had happened, no story, no explanation required. She took a step back and said, “Mel!”
“Hi,” I said, like I was the Duke of Detachment, the Count of Unearthly Cool.
I mean, after all, what was I to say? The Sydney rip, the mad escape down the Hume, her disappearance – that was history. So we chatted. She’d been travelling, she said, had been to Adelaide, Perth, driven up the West Australian coast to Darwin, hooked up with a yachting beachcomber crowd, kicked around Torres Strait, Bali, Java. Now she was back.
Looking at her up close, there were signs of a change even then, a change I didn’t get right away. She was kind of dreamy, distracted, like none of the stuff we were talking about mattered. Like it was this, but could have been that, and if it had been that, so what?
We did a couple of lines, smoked a joint. Denise appeared from somewhere, and it was obvious she and Cathy had already palled up. Later I saw Stan outside, standing near the bonfire, drinking a bottle of beer. I asked him if he’d seen Cathy.
“Oh yeah,” he said, in a way that told me something had gone down, but there was no way of knowing from his tone whether it was a good something or a bad something. I waited for him to say more, but he just bobbed his head to the music playing inside.
We played another set, another good one. People were dancing, and Bobby kept it funky – no endless stoned improvisations. It was one of those good times for a rocking musician – you look out, everyone’s dancing, having fun, you’re giving them the music, they’re giving you their joy.
It went on for a long time. The lights were low. Plenty of people tripping, everyone was stoned on something. Across the room I saw Cathy and Denise dancing together, laughing, waving their arms in the air. Cathy leaned over, slowly, and kissed Denise on the lips. A long kiss. Denise pulled back, looked at Cathy, then leaned into the clinch.
We played till late. At three or four in the morning, the speed was burning out of me and I went looking for somewhere to sleep. I wandered into the main house, pushed on a random door. A weak beam of light was falling across a bed. There were people in it. I saw a smooth shoulder, glistening hair fanning out. A sleepy movement, Denise’s face. Another movement, her breast caught in the shaft of light. Slender fingers stroked the nipple. Then Cathy’s face in the light, smiling. Cathy looked at me then and held the look.
A moment at the crossroads for your faithful correspondent. Cathy, garden of athletic delights. Cathy, goddess of fire. Cathy, pure trouble. Denise, warm and good-hearted, fleshy and substantial. Cathy, and Denise.
Denise’s voice, husky. “That you, Mel?”
“Sweet ladies!” I shut the door behind me. But that’s enough for you, my filthy-minded little friends. Just take this tip from your old uncle: should such a circumstance befall you – I’m talking to the boys and the girls now – don’t dilly-dally or shilly-shally. Pick that low-hanging fruit, you hear!
Next morning I awoke alone. I stumbled over to the window. Tents were dotted around the paddock. A couple of campfires were still going, smoke hung in the cool air. The bikey crowd were still carousing in the distance. The wooden rail around the old veranda had been pulled down, and two big ceramic pots either side of the front path had been smashed. Someone was cooking bacon.
I chopped up a line on the bedside table, horned it, got back into bed. Then a couple of Valiums to cool out a little. A flagon stood next to the bed – I took a big draft. Another minute. Better now. I went downstairs.
No sign of the girls. I went outside. The day was warming up, and the music had started again. People were swimming naked in the dam. A couple of nearby partyers, a boy and a girl, were sharing a joint. A bloke lay on the path, drinking from a bottle of beer, singing to himself. A girl was on the grass in front, sunbaking with her top off.
I looked towards the line of thick eucalyptus that surrounded the main paddock. Something going on over there. I watched more closely. Darting movements, flashes of blue – hard to get a fix on, though.
Then a glimpse of a uniform. Police. More than one. A lot more than one. Flitting, bobbing, hiding. I’d look one way, and see a flash of movement, then nothing. Looked the other way, same thing. They were fast, those fuckers. There were trees along three sides of the paddock, cops on every side. Watching us. Somewhere the squawk of a walkie-talkie.
This was it. The thing every dope fiend in all of history has known is coming, is always coming. The big showdown, the reckoning. The shit which doth hit the fan. Must bust in early May. Oh holy creeping Jesus, I thought. A fucking army of drug-squad jacks. I looked left and right. Those about me were oblivious.
I froze, unsure whether to scream blue murder, urge all zonked-out heedless heads to ditch their stash and take to the hills post haste, or just get up and make a run for it myself. I cogitated for a minute. Maybe it was more than a minute.
I stood up slowly, ambled over to the elf-like couple on the veranda, being cool, careful not to tip my hand to the watching Man. “Hey,” I whispered.
The girl turned to me, smiling. “Want some?” she said, and held out the joint.
I shook my head. “Don’t turn around quickly. But check it out. Over there. In the trees.”
She looked confused.
“We’re being watched. Cops,” I said.
Her smile cooled. She turned casually and glanced across the paddock, then back to me.
“Where?”
I looked myself. Nothing. They’d hidden themselves. Or maybe gone. Cunts.
The boy on the veranda whispered something and the girl giggled.
I went inside, mooched around for a while. Still no sign of the girls. Nor Stan, nor Jimmy the Thug. I thought, fuck it. I’d had enough. The sylvan setting was giving me the shits now. I went to the shed and packed my equipment, feeling sourer by the minute. It was hot outside. The trees were still. No movement at all. No jacks.
By the time I drove out, the bikeys had set fire to the paddock and the line of flame was moving slowly towards the house. No one seemed to give a shit.
I was nearly back to the highway when Stan’s Fairlane came skittering around
the bend and skidded to a stop in front of me, gravel flying. Cathy, Denise, Jimmy, Stan, and Clive the journo.
They tumbled out of the Fairlane. Amped. Laughing. Jimmy had a big paper bag. A couple of twenties fell out of it, he scooped them up, stuck them back in the bag. Cathy clutched a gun. Denise was wide-eyed. Clive scared shitless. Stan calm as ever, moving slow and easy.
“Can you take the girls with you, Mel?” He glanced sideways. “Clive too.”
“What’s happened?”
He looked down the track towards the house. “What’s with that smoke back there?”
“The bikeys started a scrub fire. Maybe the house is going up by now.”
He thought for a second. “Cops could be along soon.”
“They’ve already been,” I said.
He looked at me strangely. I should’ve kept my trap shut. “They were hiding in the scrub this morning, watching the house.”
A searching look from young Stanley. All right, young’uns, I know what you’re thinking – amphetamine psychosis, right? Well fuck that, is all I have to say. I saw what I saw.
In any case, Stanley chose not to pursue that particular line of enquiry right then. “Get going right now,” he said. “Jimmy and me’ll get another car after we hide the Fairlane up in the scrub.”
Denise was looking back towards the house at the column of smoke. She shook her head, then got in my car. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. So much for the parental pad.
Stan said, “See you back in Melbourne.”
SOLID GONE
We drove back to the city, me and the two girls sitting across the front bench seat of my car, Clive in the back. The girls excited and babbling, me shitting blue lights, eyeballing the rearview mirror, driving like your grandmother. I didn’t know what had gone down, but wigged that it was something serious, that the ante had been well upped. Pay attention to me, my tender young desolation angels, and dig the truth. The tide had turned, the pressure was on, and the shit was deep.
Eventually I got the story. They’d driven out that morning to get cigarettes, the girls, Stan, Jimmy, the useless Clive. The lasses had tried to wake me before they left, they said, but no luck. Anyway, they had no particular criminal intentions, though they were in a reckless mood, still drunk and stoned.
They’d got the cigs, but the bloke behind the counter had sneered at them – so Cathy reckoned. More likely he had leered at them, I thought. Cathy was wearing that old army shirt, only one button done up, her shapely right tit more out than in. Denise was similarly bed-dishevelled. The hodad at the petrol station must’ve thought he was in a hippie-chick dirty picture. Anyway, some kind of uncalled-for remark was made. Cathy goes back to the car, gets the gun, marches back in and makes him open the safe. Just like that.
Now, it so happens your hardboiled narrator knows a bit about waving guns about, extracting money from safes and whatnot – don’t ask, just take my word for it. The musician’s life is a motley business, feast or famine, so it pays to have a sideline, and brother, I’ve tried them all. Anyway, the one thing you never ever do, obviously, is pull a job using a car registered in your name, or the name of anyone who knows you. But that’s what Cathy was doing, just because some jerk had given her the shits.
To their credit, Stan and Jimmy swung into action without a moment’s hez. They gave the dag a touching up and emptied the safe. Bingo. Clearly the owner had not made it to the bank the previous week.
Did he get their number plate? The girls didn’t know. He’d gone numb with fear, they said, and I could see they were digging that idea, the squarehead having the daylights scared out of him.
There would be serious heat from all this, but the funny thing was, as the heedless lassies told me of their bushranger-like deeds of derring-fucking-do, I sort of caught their bug. The fool at the garage – fuck him if he couldn’t take a joke.
All the way back to Melbourne, the fearless damsel duo told and retold the story and I picked up more of their couldn’t-give-a-flying-fuck mood. I was thinking, fucking-A. Stick it to ’em. I felt better and better, like it was a win for my side, for our side, whatever that was. I mean, I’d long ago made a decision to follow the crooked path. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been where I was, right? I’d be working with the old man in the family newsagency, or clocking on every day at Arsefuck and Sons Pty Ltd, measuring my life out in teaspoons and all that sorry shit.
By late afternoon we’d reached the outskirts of Melbourne and hadn’t so much as seen a cop. Yeah, a sign, I thought. I’ll tell you something, my dear demimondaines, note it down for later: my earlier, er, anxieties, shall we say, notwithstanding, it is a fact universally acknowledged among the rebellious element that in most places, most of the time, you can do whatever the hell you want. Light up that dooby, hop through that window, pinch that car – odds are you’ll be all right. Ol’ plod will be back at the station doing the crossword. Anarchy now, baby!
We pulled over in the burbs somewhere, did a line of go-go, smoked a joint and glided home. There was a whack-up later that night at my pad, and a nice earn for Mel for being wheelman (you see, my innocent baby sparrows, I was already hip to the underworld patois). Funny thing, we never ever heard or read a single word about the hold-up. All I could figure was the servo geezer had kept his trap shut.
The speed ran out on Wednesday. Just like that. I called Stan that morning. “Need another ounce,” I said.
“Can’t do, Mel. It’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“We sniffed it all.”
The light shifted. The air chilled. The floor dropped away. Everything changed. The abyss.
“I . . . Can you get more?”
“That’s it. The end of it. All there ever was.”
I had nothing to say. But I spoke anyway.
“I’m going to miss it.”
Stan laughed. “Me too. But there you go.”
I felt listless, off-tap. Kicked around the house, uninterested in everything. Except more drugs. I smoked some gear, but it just made me edgy. A generally fucked-up day.
Denise came by that night. She was sweet. She brought some cocaine from a medical friend, put out a couple of lines. It did the trick. I jollied up. We smoked some gear, had a laugh and a bit of a cuddle. Then she went out, bought some fish and chips. We drank flagon wine.
I was moved, pilgrims. Later that night, settled back, feeling mellow, I said to her, “You’re an A-grade, first-rate, top-of-the-range chick, my sweet Denise” – I was only half joking – “and I could do far worse than throw my lot in with you. But baby,” I said, “this thing with the petty crime?”
“What do you mean, ‘this thing’?”
“You signing on with the crims. It’s just playing around, right?”
I’d meant it as a joke, but it came across as an accusation.
Denise had been sprawled on the couch, but she sat up straight then. “I’m not playing,” she said.
“Petrol station busts? Oh, come on, sweetheart.”
“That’s worse than drug dealing?”
She stood up, full of girlish fire. Gave me the spiel. I’ll spare you the details, but the gist was, Stan and Jimmy were ‘existentialist heroes.’ They were practising an ‘aesthetic of crime.’ Something about ‘the grace of the deed’ and ‘the poetry of the act.’ There was mention of Burroughs, Genet, Kerouac, Camus, Bowles and Sartre. Even old Ned Kelly got a look-in.
I kept my mouth shut long as I could, nodding pleasantly (dig, I was still hoping to get laid) but when she said, all full of schoolgirl wonderment, that their lives were a kind of art, that their art was in their life, I blew my top.
“That’s such bullshit,” I said. “Middle-class bullshit.” I was standing now too.
Denise looked at me pityingly.
“You might not get it, Mel, being from Sydney or whatever, but it is art. Of a kind. Or so like art that it doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “Clive is writing a magazine piece about
us.”
“Madness!”
“Yeah? How about this?” She dived into her embroidered shoulder bag, pulled out an eight-by-ten print. Cathy in her army shirt, grinning, holding a pistol in the air, like a guerrilla. Outside an Esso service station.
“You took this?”
She nodded.
“This is the place you robbed?”
She nodded again, chin thrust out a little.
“Oh, my sweet child,” I said. “Listen to me. Burn this print. Now. Then go home and burn the negative. Tonight.”
I collapsed onto the chair, shaking my head.
Denise smiled with an air of superiority I didn’t care for. “It might not make sense to someone of your generation, Mel.”
Oh, the viper!
“Or maybe it’s because you’re not in control of this. God knows, I’ve heard you crap on about Burroughs and Kerouac and Charlie Parker often enough.” She struck a defiant pose, daring me to contradict her.
But I had nothing more to say.
“Anyway,” she said, “things have gone way past the petrol station bust.”
“How so?”
She went all mysterious, but could only hold back for about three seconds.
“We robbed a bank yesterday.”
I stared.
“It was on the telly. It’s in the papers today.”
She tossed her head. Flicked her hair. A good gesture, I thought, even while I was thinking, Oh holy mother of fuck.
“Bank robbery is not for dilettantes,” I said quietly – calmly, I hoped. Dig, I probably sounded like her old dad.
“What makes you think that’s what we are?”
That was pretty much it as far as any possible romantic developments were concerned. Denise chopped out a pile of coke on the kitchen table – very generously, I’d have to say, under the circumstances –and left.
Bikey Vic came to my pad the next day, Thursday morning. I told him straight up, the go-fast had gone.
But Vic grinned and shook his head at me, then did a little tap dance. “Well, well, well, Mr Speed Daddy Mel, I might just have some good news for you.”