The Big Whatever (15 page)

“He died a junkie, didn't he?”

MEL SHALL OVERCOME!

Melbourne that autumn was aflame with anti-war carryings-on.

The Vietnam War, conscription, a shit-for-brains government. And other very uncool goings-on, of a fascist police-state military-industrial-complex-type nature. So plenty of fomenting, anywhere you looked. There were factions and groups and cells. Old lefties. Young lefties. Old centrists. Young centrists. Sweet old ladies from Duckberg. Quakers and liberal church types, school kids, squareheads. Uni students, old-school trade unionists. Fired up with anti-war zeal. And the rest of the country fired up about
them
being fired up. Which was one reason the Man hadn't noticed the hard drug scene growing right there under his snout: he had his eye on the militants.

The big event on the calendar that year was the so-called Vietnam Moratorium. Dig: I was onside with all that, even played a couple of benefits and whatnot. Bobby Boyd was vocally anti-war, and the rest of the Oracles went along, except for the drummer, who was a crypto law-and-order freak, into war history, collected Nazi weaponry.

Not that your old Mel was
that
much of a political head – please don't send me off to a collective cabbage farm or whatever. And as for socialism – well yeah, that's cool, but maybe it's like my old pal Lenny Bruce said, socialism's just one big phone company, right? One for you to ponder, my earnest young guerrillas. But anyway, I was more or less hip to the workings of your repressive capitalist state, renarda renarda (some family history there, generally of a reddish hue, enough said).

I hadn't paid too much attention to the big Moratorium rally coming up, though. My position was: good for you, boys and girls, I'm with you all the way, but I must proffer my apologies. Toodle-oo! Don't forget to smash the state!

Others saw it differently. Like Stan, for instance. Oh yeah, he saw it with fresh eyes - with
I Ching
, “crisis equals opportunity”–type eyes. He turned up unannounced from North Queensland a month before the march. He scrubbed up well: tanned, fit, healthy, no hard drugs. Dressing now in the style of your Melbourne sharpie. Jimmy and Denise showed up a few days later.

We had a big jolly reunion party at East Melbourne. Cathy, Denise, even Clive the Fop was there, plus a whole bunch of others – hard types, mostly.

Late afternoon in the backyard, Stan sidled up to me holding out a joint. I took it from him, passed it back. Minor chit chat ensued. Then with elaborate casualness he said, “I hear you've been doing good business with the Captain. I'm guessing you'd have a bit of a bank by now. A little something that's . . . not really doing anything for you?”

Fact was, I
did
have a few parcels of money stuck away, here and there, the beginnings of a sweet nest egg. My re-entry ticket to Sydney.

“Hmm, maybe,” I said.

Stan looked around – no one nearby. Moved closer. Lowered his voice. “I'm ready to work,” he said. Dig that word, seekers: “Work.” Underworld argot for any and all forms of breaking, entering, ripping, running, looting, shooting and derring-do criminality.

He went on, so softly I had to lean in further to hear him.

“Wanted to let you know. There's something coming up. It's big.”

“Yeah? How big?”

“The biggest.”

He looked at me. At that point I could have said: Spiffing. Wonderful. Hope it goes well. Bye bye. That would have been the shrewd, level-headed response. I flashed on that, for maybe a millisecond. Thing is, I was dead curious. Hungry too, I'll admit it. So I asked him, just as he knew I would, “What?”

He leaned right in close and whispered, “The ANZ Bank in the city.”

“Yep, that is big.”

He waited a moment, then said, “And the Colonial Permanent Building Society at St Kilda.”

I said nothing.

“And last but not least, the payroll at Sunshine Pipefitters. It'll be a big one.”

Mel was flabbergasted.

“Get it?”

“Like a crime spree?” I said.

“Right, but we hit them all on the same day at the same time.”

Mel, the Dumbfounded Kid.

“There's one more thing. A little earlier in the day. A diversion. We'll blow up the King's Bridge.”

“I . . . It's . . . But . . . How . . . Wha—?”

“We've been working up to this for a while. It
was
meant to happen later in the year, maybe spring. But now there's this other business. It's just too good a chance to pass up.”

The guy's barmy, right? I knew that. But I asked, in my dazed, stupefied state, “What other business?”

“The Moratorium.” He let that sink in.

“You . . . do it on the day of the march? While the march is going on. When the police are busy.”

“Got it. Every cop in the fucking state will be at the march.” He smiled. Proud as you please. Preparing to paint his masterpiece.

Ooh, yes, my young scoundrels. This was serious A-grade, first-division, top-rank, move-over-Ned-Kelly-type criminal enterprise.

“Thing is, Mel, for something this big, we need a good bank just to get the thing organised. I'm looking for a financial backer.”

“Me?”

He smiled.

“How much?”

“There's a lot to set up. It'll take at least four cars and a truck. Some advance pay-offs and hush money. And we need to tool up.”

“Yeah. So how much?”

“We still need ten thousand to do it right.” He let that hang there. “You'll get two hundred percent back on any money you put in.”

“All these people here today, they're part of it?”

He didn't say anything to that.

“All right, just hypothetically,” I said, “I put the money up, it all goes to plan. I get my payoff. Wonderful. But what if it goes bad?”

“You'd still get your two hundred percent back.” Looking me right in the eye. “You'd have my guarantee.”

“Let me think about it.”

Think about it I did, my larcenous young friends. It was a good investment, any way you stacked it. If it worked, I'd get my money. It went bad, sooner or later I'd still get my money. How so, I hear you politely enquire. I'll tell you: Stan and Jimmy were old-school, my-word-is-my-bond-type brigands. A handshake deal with them was rock solid. That's how their lot operated. Only a loser or a lagging dog would renege on a debt. It was all about reputation. So that money would be mine, sooner or later. Even if it turned to shit and they all went to jail, eventually they would make good.

But elsewhere another stew was cooking. Next day, I was mugged. In the middle of a drug deal. How do you like that? Happened like this. Late afternoon. I was waiting for Alex and Cathy in a little park in Carlton called Murchison Square. Not quite dark. A chilly breeze blowing. I had the drugs in my car, a block away.

A couple of young blokes came walking up to me quickly. Leather jackets, hunched over. One of them in grubby white jeans. I could see they were nervous and I didn't like it. I started away. “Mel! Wait.” They knew my name.

I paused. Shouldn't have.

“I've got a message from Alex,” one of them was saying, closing the distance between us. That was it. Too late now. The other had circled around, and I saw the kid in the white jeans was holding a knife. I stopped. The other said “Jesus, put it away!” to his mate, then to me, “Sorry Mel, we just wanted to get, you know, a taste from you.”

“Fuck off!”

“Come on, Mel. Just give us what you've got and we'll piss off.”

Another figure approached through the gloom. A big, rangy character striding towards us. Unseen by the punks. Psycho Barry. He walked straight into the one who was doing the talking with enough force to knock him flying. The one with the knife froze. Barry was grinning. He walked up to the kid, took his forearm, held it in two places, and carefully, effortlessly, broke it over his own knee. I heard it. The kid screamed and collapsed. Barry turned to the other, who was on his feet, already limping away. He turned back to the kid on the ground, now holding his arm and sobbing, and kicked him in the stomach. He picked up the knife and leaned over the kid. He was breathing fast, staring hard at the writhing kid.

A voice out of the gloom shouted “Barry!”

Alex was approaching briskly. “Barry! We've got to get out of here.”

“You set this up, you dog!” I said, as Alex got closer.

“I swear, Mel, I fucking swear I didn't. They must have overheard me on the phone. They were probably planning to jump
me
, but I got caught up on Punt Road.” He looked around. “Barry, we've got to get out of here.”

Barry straightened up, then looked around. With obvious reluctance, he dropped the knife, kicked the kid once more, looked at Alex, then at me. He tapped Alex's shoulder, none too gently. “Come over to my car.” To me, “You too. Quick.” I could hear the kid groaning as we left the park.

We walked in silence around the corner, a couple of hundred yards along Faraday Street. Barry stopped at a new-looking yellow Charger and said, “Get in.”

Alex was shivering – from fear or dope sickness, I couldn't tell. Barry walked around the car and got in the back next to Alex, gestured for me to get in the front. As soon as Alex settled himself, Barry hit him hard on the side of the face.

Alex's head bounced around a bit, then he put his hand to his smarting cheek and said, “Barrrry! Fuckin' hell, man!”

Barry pulled Alex's hand away and hit him again. “Shut up.”

He chucked his car keys to me. “Drive away,” he said.

Ten minutes later he told me to stop on a dark stretch behind a factory in North Melbourne.

I thought it best to start the conversation. “There's been business between Alex and me,” I said to Barry. “I've been steadily paying him back that outstanding debt. I have the paperwork to prove it.”

Barry shook Alex, who was shivering worse than ever. “Is that right?”

Alex nodded, but without much enthusiasm.

To me Barry said, “How much have you given him?”

“Three thousand,” I said.

To Alex, “True?”

“Round about, yeah, something like that.”

“And how much have you still got?”

Alex opened his mouth to speak, but Barry cut him off, “Don't shit me.”

Alex paused, then said quietly, “A few hundred.”

“You,” he said poking my shoulder, “you're in the shit.” He nodded towards Alex. “This one is the big bloke's nephew. But you, you're just some cunt.”

“Some cunt who has made partial restitution in good faith.”

Barry shook his head. “You
knew
he'd give the money straight back to you to buy gear. Any fool could see that. The boss will see that.” He let that hang there a few seconds. “He told me to tell you that whatever money you've already given Alex doesn't count.”

“Hardly fair.”

“You and your slut
robbed
the big man's nephew. Haven't you wondered how come you're not dead yet?”

I said nothing.

“Well, I'm waiting.” Barry was smiling.

“He wants money?” I said.

Still smiling, no answer.

“He wants smack?”

A slight tilt of the head.

“He wants money and smack?”

“You're not just an ugly face, are you?”

PANIC IN ALBERT PARK

Barry dropped me back in Carlton, took Alex with him. I rang Cathy from a public phone, told her the news.

“Don't freak, Mel. I'll come over to your place. We can use this.”

She arrived twenty minutes later. I banged up some speed mixed with the teensiest, weensiest little smidgin of smack, just this once, to help cool me out. Cathy had her regular blast.

We talked through the angles late into the night. The gist of what I'd gleaned from the psycho messenger was, the Greeks wanted to try their hand at heroin selling. Probably reasoned if grass and hashish were such good products, how much better would skag be? Except they didn't know how to get started. I could help with that.

From my point of view it was a complete catastrophe. Or else it was the best thing to happen in a year. One of them.
Get a fucking huge pile of smack and a pile of money, give it to the big man. If all went well, and the Greeks decided they wanted more, I would put them in touch with the Captain. Together they would then proceed to deliver narcotics to the people of Australia. And I would quietly slip out of it all, maybe with a little see-you-later bonus.

Of course the wily Greeks hadn't specified exactly how much money and drugs they judged to be an appropriate square-up. Leaving that to me.