A BATTERED DARK GREEN HOLDEN V8 was parked along Nudgee Road, 200 metres from the Feed Bin café, and I pulled in behind it.
The previous day I had put in my annual application to be reinstated to all racecourses across Australia. I had woken in the middle of the night with an inspiration. As keen as anything to start a new year fresh, I always put in my application to re-join the racing fraternity in January. In 1992, I realised I was playing a mug’s game. If I put the application in during November, by the time the final verdict came down, it would be near Christmas, the season of goodwill and Christmas parties, the time for all good prodigal sons and true to come to the aid of horse racing’s just cause. With my new strategy, I had to be a shoo-in, and I whistled on my way to the Feed Bin.
Billy Scharfe was hunched over a cup of coffee in the corner. His eyes darted from side to side, but never beyond his table, as if he feared to look up. For a jockey in his early twenties, his face was thin and lined like a hoop twenty years older, who had seen the inside of too many saunas. I was thinking of sitting beside him, but decided the table was already crowded with his personal demons. Instead I walked past on my way to order coffee, toast and a newspaper, and whispered in his direction.
‘Nice driving last month along Sir Fred Schonell Drive. You’d get beaten on Phar Lap if you rode like that, Billy.’
To his credit, Scharfe pretended he didn’t hear me and focussed his vision into his half-empty coffee cup. I had no follow-up line, so I let him be. Billy’s riding career was all but over. The word was about that he was “bad news”, though no one could agree why it was so.
Billy was never very bright, but he tried to please, putting all the contradictory advice he received into practice as best he could. He was never supposed to run me down outside the Avalon Theatre, but he was supposed to make me think his intentions were bad. Like most projects he touched, he stuffed the whole thing up good and proper. The Billy Scharfes of this world will always end up doing the bidding of the unscrupulous. The Billy Scharfes need a truckload of luck to survive with their dignity. That much luck is not out there.
The daily paper had some good news on page seven. Brisbane lawyer Jim Mecklam, who had gone back into private practice after years in the corporate sector, was caught diddling his clients’ trust accounts to the tune of a quarter of a mill. Former prominent racehorse owner Mecklam was suspended from practising law, but strenuously denied any impropriety. He engaged a leading Queen’s Counsel to process his defence, as well as his bankruptcy and divorce proceedings.
My money was on Mecklam to come out of it with a wad of cash, but I wouldn’t want to be waiting in line with his wife Prue, the trainers he owed or even his Queen’s Counsel, looking for a share of it.
I flicked aimlessly through the sports pages, declined a second cuppa and left.
As I took in the pleasant but heavy morning air outside the café, I couldn’t fail to notice Crystal Speares in white jeans and a tight white T-shirt, as she smoked a fag beside her red Mercedes Sports. She pretended she was waiting for someone and ignored me when I walked alongside. As you did, I wondered if she and Billy Scharfe were fucking. It would be a stranger-than-fiction reality. They do happen.
I played it cool and nudged Crystal gently with my elbow as I passed.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said as she stubbed out the cigarette under the edge of one of her expensive running shoes.
I kept walking and the blonde beauty told me to wait.
‘Hold up, Steele,’ she said. ‘I admit I’ve been waiting for you.’
She slid into the driver’s seat of the red Mercedes and invited me to sit beside her.
‘You gotta hear this, Steele. I’ve hooked up with this preacher,’ Crystal said, as she hopped out of the car and caught up with me. ‘There’s squillions in it.’
I stopped and faced the blonde. She had my attention now.
‘They fleece fucking hundreds of these rich dumb marks at their weekly prayer meets. I didn’t believe it myself until this preacher Ralph dragged me along to one of his gigs.’
‘His name’s Ralph?’
‘That’s his real name, not his stage name. I met him at an Ascot dinner party and we got chatting. Dead set, this bloke owns three Rolls-Royces. They’re all over ten years old, but they’re still fucking Rollers. After the dinner that night, we ended up banging in the back seat of the Roller he’d brought to the do. Dead set, just as he was about to come, he screamed, ‘Praise the Lord.’
I had lost interest and kept walking, but Crystal ran after me to tug the sleeve of my T-shirt. ‘Shit, Steele, these bastards are deadset babies. We can take them for everything. I know you like me, Steele. We can do this together. Whaddya say?’
Looking into the pale, infantine and slowly lining face of the most beautiful woman I had seen in my life, I gave way at the knees.
Here was something I didn't want to tangle with, something that could bring my whole world crashing down.
I ran.