THE rumor mill is still working overtime. If it is to be believed, Mad Micky Marlow, Dennis Carr and Robbie Riley have all teamed up and, armed to the teeth, have made trips to the mainland, all expenses paid by me, in search of ‘Never tell a lie’ Sid.
Having no success in locating Sid, the tale goes, they returned to Tassie and proceeded to hunt down Trent Anthony. Stories of near hits and close calls are running rampant, with one wild yarn involving Dave the Jew and a car chase. The story goes that when ‘Dave’ finally forced a car over to the side of the road it contained the wrong person, not Sid at all.
I don’t believe this story. Because, let me assure you, Dave rarely gets the wrong person.
Another wild yarn concerns a ‘$20,000 contract’ on both Sid and Anthony, with the Launceston CIB arresting Micky Marlow and Dennis Carr parked outside a police safe house.
Robbie Riley who is, pound for pound, a top-rated street fighter in Tassie and a wild boy generally, was supposed to be involved in a fight with three members of the Outlaw motorcycle gang trying to protect Sid.
Stories of car chases, shots fired, fist fights and attempted hits allegedly involving my mates from Tassie and the mainland keep cropping up. And, just to keep it balanced, there have been other tall stories about members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang offering money to try to get me killed in jail. No crim in Tassie is so short of money that he wants to commit ‘suicide by Chopper’, believe me.
There have even been plots to kill my dad, according to the rumor mongers. Mad Micky Marlow is an old and dear friend but he is now a dad and he and his lovely wife Kelly have gone bush with their baby daughter. He stays in touch with me and calls in to see my old Dad. Dennis Carr is a young mate and a friend of Micky’s, and he also sees my old Dad now and again, but Dennis hardly ever sees Micky these days.
Robbie Riley, the streetfighting man, is a friend of mine and Dennis Carr and Micky Marlow. I was very good friends with Robbie Riley’s late brother big Johnny Riley. He was a top Melbourne crook and a very hard man, and very respected in the Melbourne criminal scene. Johnny and I were very good friends in Pentridge, but he got himself stabbed to death outside a pub in Fitzroy in 1981.
Years later I had a fall out with the Turk who did that. But that, as they say in the classics, is another story.
Robbie Riley was in the remand yard with me last year but he is out and about now and living on Flinders Island, and though he is still friends with Dennis Carr and Micky Marlow, he does not mix with them socially.
So how do these insane stories and rumors get started?
I’m so flat broke I’ve told my lawyers to file an appeal to the High Court of Australia against my sentence. What my lawyers do not know is that I don’t have the money at this point to pay them.
All the book royalties from my previous classics have already been spent on high-flying legal eagles. If I had my life over again I would be a lawyer. You make more money with a law book than a blow torch, let me tell you.
The Supreme Court appeal against my sentence broke me, so how I could fund the efforts of three men to run around in search of Sid and Trent Anthony is beyond me, even if I wanted to.
What the rumor mongers don’t understand is I don’t want anything at all to happen to Sid and Trent. If anything happened to either of them it is very doubtful that I would ever be released from prison. How would I look trying to plead to the authorities to release me and meanwhile both my Crown witnesses are on the missing list? In fact, if either of them caught a cold I would send the chicken soup, made from an old recipe from Dave the Jew’s mother.
Micky Marlow suspects that half these mad rumors are started by the police and the other half are started by drunks in pubs. Perhaps some of them are started by drunken police in pubs.
THE most wonderful thing about Tasmania, in my opinion, is that everybody seems to be either related or friends with each other, or friends with a relative or related to a friend.
The whole state seems to be interconnected. My old driver, Trent Anthony, who, along with Sid, went Crown evidence against me and helped to get me this twelfth of never Governor’s Pleasure sentence, is in hiding in Tasmania and has been ever since my trial. (Incidentally, it’s a great title for a lagging in jail with no release date, isn’t it? Governor’s Pleasure indeed. I hope it pleases him because it sure as hell pisses me off something shocking.) But back to Trent and his movements. I get reports of him being sighted in Perth then in Launceston. I hope the brain surgeon has joined a frequent flyer’s club: he might end up getting a free ticket to a give-ups convention somewhere. It would be great; they could have a big dinner where all the name tags would say ‘John Smith’. They could have the dinner in Asia and serve dog, but that would be a bit like cannibalism for someone like Trent.
I got a letter from an old and dear friend of mine called Kay saying that young Trent, along with his good lady wife and new baby, moved into a house in the same street as Kay in Mayfield, Launceston. Which proves that it is impossible to hide in the Apple Isle for long.
Next thing I find, Trent’s own brother-in-law ends up in C Yard working in the laundry with me. His name is Jamie Young. Jamie’s baby sister, Karen, is married to Trent. I knew Karen quite well. She is a lovely kid and far too good for a thing like Trent Anthony, in my humble opinion.
I think Karen would look very fetching in black. I observe this purely as a fashion statement and this should not be misconstrued.
Jamie is also friends with my old mate Mike Alexander, the former publican of the Clarendon Arms Hotel in Evandale. The Clarendon was the pub where I was supposed to be drinking with Sid shortly before he had his plumbing rearranged with a bullet.
Mike is no longer at the Clarendon Arms but now runs the Bridport Hotel on the north-east coast of Tassie with his mate Dave Kruska. Jamie Young is a fisherman at Bridport and drinks at the Bridport pub. That is, when he’s not in jail. It seems Mike Alexander is still a keen punter. In fact, I’ve heard it said he still thinks a Pimm’s Number One Cup is a hurdle at Flemington.
I am not the least bit interested in revenge against Trent Anthony and I told Jamie to pass the message along. If I wanted to reach out from jail and touch Trent on the shoulder – or anywhere else – it would be so easy, but why bother? It seems he lives his life in mindless fear and paranoia, convinced that my secret agents are going to come up through his floorboards any minute.
Paranoia will destroy them all in the end.