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.
I joined the crowd of about fifty mingling in the Avalon’s foyer, and spotted Natalie by herself in a corner. I caught her eye, waved and pointed to a makeshift bar where I bought a glass of red and another of white at the attractive price of a dollar apiece. I handed Natalie the white and asked if I needed to buy a ticket. Nat rolled her eyes just a wee bit, before producing two entry slips from the glossy pages of a program.
‘Pirandello – it sounds a bit like a ballet move,’ I said to relieve the tension.
‘Don’t start, Steele,’ My estranged Cucumber reprimanded.
‘I’m not starting. We’re quite the arty couple, you and I: electric violin music, movies with subtitles, theatre and ballet.’
‘When have you ever been to the ballet with me?’
‘We went to that play by the Chinese herbal cold remedy fella.’
‘Tchaikovsky,’ Natalie scoffed. ‘Only because you read the title in the paper and it sounded like that Sydney mate of yours.’
‘He was hardly a mate; I only met the big blond Viking a couple of times. I just wanted to see the ballet the Nutcracker Swede got his name from.’
Natalie’s shoulders shook in revulsion at the implications of the nickname, but I merrily continued.
‘You know street slang is my thing. I wanted to see if the moniker was more than just a play on words.’
‘Yair, right, Steele, among those lowlife mates of yours lurks a twentieth-century Shakespeare, just itching to erupt on the world stage.’
‘A lot of good it did me anyway, Nat. Talk about subtitles; that ballet needed babies crawling around the dancers’ ankles and holding cue cards to tell us punters what was going on.’
I saw Natalie wanted to laugh at that image, as she put her tongue onto her top lip to suppress any mirth. She demanded I just stop it, but I was having fun and was determined to raise at least a smile.
‘You know, Nat, I happily tagged along to all your arty occasions, though you hardly ever went to the races or the trots or the dogs with me in the days I was allowed in.’
‘I wonder why, when you’d race off to the betting ring or chase red hot tips all day, and leave me with one of your sleazy mates either trying to look down my dress or borrow $5.’
‘Most of them weren’t mates, Nat. They were gambling acquaintances, and you can’t choose them – they just luck upon you in the course of your work.’
That last observation could best have been left unsaid, because it was our differences over the definition of gainful employment that prompted our rift. As luck would have it, I was saved by the bell announcing the imminent raising of the curtain on the play.
We settled into our seats in blocks of aluminium chairs welded together into rows that were movable by hand. They could have been more comfortable and, as it turned out, bigger seats, as a lot were empty. Most of the audience appeared to be students, who didn’t seem to mind the discomfit. From my limited experience of higher learning, uni students did not expect much, and those who did were quickly brought down to earth. The highs and lows were accepted equally when you learned Plato during the day and cleaned plates at night.
The play was a minute old when the smell of a familiar perfume prompted me to look to my right. Crystal Speares had settled into the seat beside mine.
She wore a strapless black cocktail dress, which declared she had forgotten her bra again. While I tried to work out the odds of seeing her at the play, Crystal stared ahead at the stage and gave no hint of knowing I was beside her.
Unlike any poor student writing a review of the play, I had a top excuse for not understanding what the first act of Six Characters in Search of an Author was about. I remember getting the impression that bits of it were funny as I followed the lead of others and laughed. I suppose it is a good idea to have funny stuff in a work that people have little hope of understanding.
Despite my outbursts of mirth and my need to stare straight ahead at the stage, most of the action and dialogue blurred into a sense of dread. When I did glance to my left, Natalie was clearly captivated by the plot. When I could not help myself looking to the right, Crystal was watching blankly ahead, only allowing herself a trifling smirk as she sensed I was sneaking glances at her. Act one seemed endless.
Crystal Speares followed us into the foyer and I felt the sweat on my face when she touched Nat on the shoulder. The blonde beauty shook her head when Natalie turned her face.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought you were someone else,’ Crystal said sweetly.
Natalie said it was all right – she did it all the time herself. She excused herself to me to go to the toilet.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Crystal?’ I asked, softly and vehemently.
‘A night out at the theatre, Steele. You’re not the only one who knows how to find people. But you did not seem to enjoy the first part of the play much. You should identify with it. There are about six of us characters still living in our little drama and, as our author has abandoned us, nobody knows who is writing the rest of the script.’
‘I hope it’s not you, Crystal, because you lack a little in subtlety.’
‘It’s like this, Steele. The script I’m writing has me living to a rich, ripe and mildly decadent old age. The way you’re acting, you will get me bumped off early in the second act. Your pretty girlfriend will be back soon and I’m seriously thinking of telling her we’re sleeping together.’
‘That is flattering, Crystal, but I’m not sure Natalie will believe it. I would have thought you might prefer death before the dishonour of having me as a trophy.’
‘Well, that just shows you how desperate I am getting. Shush, here she comes. Ask yourself, Steele, how did I find you here? You are blundering around like a baby feral pig when it’s open season on them. You don’t seem to want to help the state police bury this to everybody’s satisfaction, including dead Fed Bradshaw’s vicious business partners.’
She tinkled a laugh as Natalie came nearer.
‘Oh yes, it is quite a clever little drama, isn’t it? Seems to be about trying to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Can’t wait to see how it ends. See you round.’
Crystal walked away. I noticed some teenage students, male and female, eye off her sleek figure as she approached the bar.
Natalie wanted to know what our conversation was about. I told her some bloke had stood Crystal up, and I guess she had nobody to discuss the first act with at interval.
‘And what great insight did you come up with, Steele? That any bloke who stood her up had to be mad?’
Crystal left the bar and I edged Natalie towards it. ‘Now, Nat, I’m no longer the yobbo you fell head over heels in love with. When we first met – what, almost seven years ago? – if someone had stood you up, I would have made such a remark. Tonight, with that blonde, I only thought it. You have to agree it’s progress on my personal journey. Apart from that, the two of you have a lot in common.’
‘Like what?’
‘When I said Pirandello sounded like a ballet move, she didn’t find it funny either.’
At play’s end, Natalie couldn’t wait to congratulate Bub. I said I needed a piss. She handed me a ticket to get backstage, and headed off that way as I made towards the toilet.
Through the open doors, I noticed Crystal Speares smoking a cigarette on the footpath outside the theatre. She was also talking down a mobile phone and raising a finger to hail me. Not only could she do lots at once, Crystal knew where I would be before I got there.
The battered dark green Holden V8 squealed rubber as it veered from the middle of Sir Fred Schonell Drive and sped towards Crystal. The car bounced off the kerb as its hooded driver over-corrected and narrowly missed two cars coming the other way from the university.
Crystal lunged towards me and I instinctively opened my arms. She brushed her blonde hair against my cheek and whispered in my ear. ‘I told you, Steele, you’ll have us both killed.’
Protectively, I put my hands on her shoulders and asked if she recognised the driver. She did not have a good look, but it was definitely a man wearing a balaclava. She couldn’t see anything else.
I could. ‘You know Crystal, if that was a professional killer, he needs to get a day job. He couldn’t even make the car jump the kerb. And I don’t want to be size-ist about this, but a bloke built like a jockey hardly cuts the terrifying mustard at the wheel of a V8.’
She looked into my smiling face as I continued. ‘You’ve been known to have a bet in your life, so what’re the odds on me going down to the Feed Bin café next week to find Billy Scharfe or one of his mates parking that car?’
She gently pushed my chest to free herself from my gallantry. ‘Fuck you, Steele. I’m trying to be nice about making you get lost. The people who want you dead aren’t amateurish worrywarts like Billy.’
She saw the cab she had rung pull up beside the kerb and walked over, turning towards me before she got in. ‘I take care of myself because I know there won’t be anyone crying over my coffin. My admirers like me alive. I’m sure your girlfriend is less fickle than that. She’ll throw flowers into your grave.’
I turned to go back inside and saw three rose bushes struggling in a bed in front of the theatre. ‘Wait up, Crystal,’ I called out.
I recognised one of the bushes as an Iraqi Icicle, nowhere near as well-nourished as my neighbour Amelia Barnes kept hers. Even her Iraqi Icicles had battled in the past week, though I watered them twice.
___o0o___
SEVEN DAYS EARLIER, an ambulance had arrived at our block of flats and a squat man about a generation younger than Mrs Barnes let the ambos, pushing a trolley, into her flat.
They returned through the front door, pushing the trolley, with a sheet covering a body about the size of Mrs Barnes. I thought about asking what was going on. I decided against it.
___o0o___
I HAD MY FLOWER-SNIPPING SCISSORS in the glove box of the EH, but Crystal Speares would be too impatient to wait for me. I tried to snap an Iraqi Icicle branch with a cluster of small white flowers on top. The branch was not firm enough and I twisted it off, pricking myself in the process. I looked to see Crystal tapping her foot while she held the cab’s front door open.
‘Here,’ I said presenting the rose. ‘I’ll bet you don’t know what this is called.’
‘It’s called a rose,’ she said sarcastically.
I let the jibe pass. ‘We first met at the races six years ago, Crystal, and I said your middle name had to be Trouble.’
She raised her eyes and shook her head slightly, to indicate so many men, so many race days.
I gave her the Iraqi Icicle. ‘The name of this rose is White Trouble,’ I said.
She sniffed the cluster of blooms. ‘How sweet, I will keep it under my pillow.’
She hopped in the cab and turned up the window to maximise the value of the air conditioning against the hot night. The cab did a U-turn to head back through the city to Ascot. I thought I saw Crystal’s window turn down, and wondered if she was sick from too much wine.
A few seconds later a car came from the university. In its headlights I saw the cluster of Iraqi Icicle flowers lying in the gutter.
Back inside the theatre, a young student breathed alcohol into my face. ‘Way to go, man. I seen you with both those hot chicks. What deodorant you wearing?’
I took a step backwards away from the alcohol fumes before I replied. ‘It’s called Morbidity.’
I could see him trying to log the brand name in his soggy brain.
Backstage, Bub asked me if I liked the play. I told her I couldn’t get my head around it, but that she was terrific.
‘And no dead bodies among the cast this time, Steele,’ Jane said, recalling our evening with Godot.
I replied that it was a pleasant change. Maybe these Queensland Uni students were not as emotional as their Kelvin Grove counterparts? Bub declared that her new Alma Mater was as close to the edge as her previous campus. They just channelled their raw passions more effectively, she said.
‘Bub, you are full of shit,’ I answered. ‘And I love you for it.’
Bub replied that she loved me too, though she was the only one of the three Applebee women who would make such a claim at that moment. She would have a word with sister Nat on my behalf.
As a notion, it had no merits I could see. ‘Before you do that, Bub, just plunge a dagger into my heart, right now, and be done with it.’
Bub said proudly I had the instincts of a true ham, and should enrol in drama classes. She was serious; she would help me fill in the forms for the next semester. With Bub in my corner, my prospects for a happy life were sinking fast.