I EASED THE EH UTE onto the highway and drove towards Tweed Heads. There was nothing else I could think to do. I considered going home, but Nat wasn’t there and I wanted to stay out of the way of Mooney and Schmidt while I figured out what these murders were all about. I desperately wanted to ring Nat, but what could I tell her? Certainly not the truth.
Back at the unit, I sipped a beer and June Vitalis ignored my silence. She excused herself while I made a call. The local Catholic priest knows the Sebastion family, but he has not seen Lui at mass for a while. Yair, he can go down to the pub and do the business. Last rites, yair, that’s the one I was talking about. Only didn’t you need to race down there quick or else the soul goes scampering off somewhere or other, doesn’t it? The priest would take care of it. Good. My name? Oh, that doesn’t matter. Could he just hurry?
I was halfway through the beer before June returned. She must have been dying to know what was going on. But thirty-five years with the tight-lipped Gooroo, miserly doling out information, made her used to not asking a single question when she considered the timing was wrong.
The Gooroo had told me about one time when the police put their steel mallets through the television and the plaster panels of the walls of the unit when June was home alone. The cops said they were looking for evidence of illegal gambling. When the Gooroo arrived, he saw silent June with a beetroot face. The cops were gone, having left a dozen infringement notices and the unit looking like a bomb had hit it.
June gave Con some looks with icicles hanging from them. But she asked not a single question. The Gooroo told me he wanted to crawl under the carpet when the local electrical retailer brought in the new TV and the builder came in to repair the walls. He said it was the day that he realised just how much he loved June. Because she never asked him what sort of a business he was in when the police smashed the TV and the walls under the pretext of looking for betting slips.
I rang the Gooroo’s work number, listening as the phone diverter shifted the call from the widowed pensioner’s home to the butcher’s shop. I asked Gooroo for his TAB account number, and told him I was going to place $30 in bets, for which I would give June the money.
I had to persuade June to accept the $30 for my trifecta bets over the phone on Gooroo’s account. I was able to convince her that the $2000 in my wallet would see me through a month or two, even if I went to Tassie for part of that time.
The clock dream worked out spot on. Number three, trainer Barret’s baby, won easily, just as Billy Scharfe had told me it would. It ended up a short-priced favourite. But four and five, at good prices, ran second and third, in that order. The dividend for the trifecta was $62.20 for a $1 investment. I won more than $1,200 for my $20 bet. June asked if I had lost, because my expression did not change when the race broadcast finished.
The phone rang and the Gooroo gave me a tip for the next race. I put $200 on the horse through Gooroo’s phone account, and won another $800. The horse was called National Designer.
Prepared to back another hunch, I went down to check out the butcher’s shop, the front for Cheerful Charlie’s illegal bookmaking. I parked the EH half a kilometre down the road and walked the rest of the way. The shop was shut, or at least the front door was. Around the back, I pressed my foot on a buzzer set in concrete among the bushes. I introduced myself through the microphone covered by the creepers, crawling up the side wall.
There were nine phones inside, the legacy of when the operation was more successful. A young bloke, a young woman and the Gooroo worked from desks, each supporting four wide ledgers, with one race to a page, drawn up in what would have looked like the work of crazed mathematicians to non-gamblers, and to most gamblers for that matter. One of the four desks, arranged in back-to-back pairs, was free and I got comfortable on a chair behind it. A lonesome phone with pre-programmed numbers hung from the wall.
The Gooroo was the general for the afternoon. He buzzed about, keeping an eye on each ledger and ringing through bets to other bookies when the book had more money on a horse than the operation wanted to cover. He gave us permission to go for a walk or to the toilet when the phones were running coldish. At one stage, when he was not too hyper, I told him about the two grand I had won on his account.
At another opportune time, I asked him when Cheerful Charlie Evatt would show. Gooroo said Cheerful never came to the shop before dark. That was a bit rich, I thought. Sure, Cheerful gave the Gooroo a job after the coppers smashed up the unit and made bookmaking life hot for Con. But the Gooroo was the best in the game. He didn’t deserve to wear the lot if another raid came. Charlie should wear some.
All the Gooroo would say, when I persistently quizzed him on the point, was that the money was paid in all the right places, and that there was no risk. I had no doubt he knew the odds better than I did. I also had no doubt that there was always a risk, even when the money was paid up.
We ended up getting stung, not by the police, but by a group of professional punters. It was the last race in Sydney. The horse had not started for six months, when it had run a respectable eighth in the Derby of 2400 metres. By most reckoning, the 1200-metre race was way short of an appropriate distance for this nag. Except for the reckoning of a handful of cashed-up, infoed-up pro gamblers.
We had difficulty laying off. Other bookies were copping an earful of optimistic bets, just as we were. In desperation, the Gooroo rang through to back the horse with the three grand in his TAB account. Two grand of the money was my winnings, but I knew the Gooroo would cover it.
The punters took out $50,000 when the horse flew home to win by a head. We had managed to bet back to take $10,000 off the loss. Punters who lost on the race kicked in with another ten grand. We also picked up fifteen grand from the telephone bet. You might say we were lucky to drop only $15,000 on the race, but a bookie is not supposed to lose $15,000 when a five-to-one shot comes in. Such is horse racing.
The book broke about even on the day. The Gooroo ducked down to the TAB. The youngsters took the stragglers’ bets on the last provincial races.
I brewed the coffee and watched the action wind down. I poured a cup for the young woman, who had time for chit chat.
‘What’s it like living in Brisbane, Steele?’
‘I like it: not too big, not too small.’ It was the truth, but as I had never met the girl before, her knowledge of me was a worry.
She saw my uneasiness. ‘Gooroo talks about you all the time, all the mischief you get up to,’ she explained.
On cue, a key turned in the door and the Gooroo came in. Con and Cheerful had the only keys, with everyone else using the buzzer-in-the-bush system. Gooroo held a cotton bag in his hand, from which he withdrew $200.
He gave the youngsters $100 each, and told them he and I could manage till seven o’clock closing. Although the book covered that night’s dogs and trotting meetings, bets had to be rung through before seven. Reaching into his bag of bugs bunny, the Gooroo counted out twenty-five hundreds. I tried to stop him at twenty, but he made the good point that the book would have been another ten grand in the hole if it hadn’t had access to the $2000 I had won. He handed me the money and three rubber bands.
My wallet was so full I stuffed two bundles of a thousand in one trouser pocket and put the other $500 behind my wallet in the other pocket. The Gooroo threw the money bag into the top drawer of his desk. He walked over to the coffee percolator and poured himself a cup. ‘We were lucky to get out of that one as well as we did, Steele.’
‘Yair, dumb luck, Gooroo. But my luck had to change.’
The Gooroo turned around before he went to pick up a ringing phone.
‘Leave it,’ I said, as Con reached down for the handset.
He looked at me as if I was asking him to commit a major crime. He moved his hand closer to the phone, but stopped when I spoke again. ‘I said, leave it. Let’s sit down and work this out. First, I go to the dole office to get trapped into an appointment for murder. Someone knew I was on the rock ‘n’ roll and was a good target. Then I go to meet with Mooney this morning, but someone knew I might look up Billy Scharfe at the Feed Bin beforehand. That someone was able to give a killer in a white Ford the drum. Enough good drum to be able to almost kill me.’
Gooroo moved to sit down, but I wasn’t having any of that.
‘Don’t go near that desk,’ I warned.
The Gooroo obeyed and began to dance about in small circles. His face silently said he did not like the direction of my thoughts.
‘Even before all of this, I go to a card game where Mooney and Schmidt turn up. Someone knew I would be at that card game. Georgio’s murder the next morning speaks for itself. Someone knew.’
He moved about nervously, as if pretending what he was hearing was different from the words I was stringing together.
‘It’s been a long afternoon,’ Gooroo said. ‘Steele, you’re stressing out here.’
I was stressing out, but I was not done. ‘And someone knew I had a meeting with a nice Italian fisherman, whose only problem was that his brother had made it big and he hadn’t.
‘That problem was solved when the nice fisherman got killed for a reason he could not understand. A reason that I cannot understand. Because he got killed before we could work it out together. All because someone knew.’
The Gooroo stopped his circling. He began to back away from me, even before I lunged.
‘No Steele, no, you’re wrong.’
I could see the tears in his eyes as my hands reached his throat.
‘You set me up, you bastard,’ I hissed, ignoring the click of the door lock.
The Gooroo began to splutter. ‘No, Steele, no. No, Steele. No, Cheerful.’
I turned my head and released my grip on the Gooroo’s throat. It was my turn to back off as I looked into the cheerless face of Cheerful Charlie Evatt. I looked at that face for a couple of seconds before I began to concentrate on the gun in his hand.