by Peter Doyle
Slaney was waiting. Blank-faced.
I went on. “But I can put them in touch with a possible buyer.”
Slaney grinned. “Who might that be?”
“I’d rather not say for now. But they’ll get a fair price, maybe better than the state government would have given them. And they’ll be able to sell the places as they are. The purchaser will deal with the squatters.”
Slaney smiled.
“But they need to know that I’ve saved them there,” I said. “Phil needs to call it square between us.”
Slaney nodded. “Noted,” he said.
“Abe and Joe Dimitrios, they need to drop off too. We’re all square.”
Slaney stared at me, said after a moment, “You still don’t get it, do you?”
“How so?”
“They’ve long since called it square. Their worry is that you might be nursing ambitions of your own.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Gangster-type ambitions.”
I looked at him, waiting.
“Look at it from their point of view. You got rid of Barry, their number one standover man. If you wanted to you could round up a gang of sorts.”
“Who would that be?”
“You’d have me. Grossman too, if you want him. Your bikey mates. Your druggie connections. Donny could provide a few more men, if needed. If you were to ask the Blighter, he’d quite possibly sign on with your merry band of outlaws. He’s probably got a couple of pirates on his string too.”
I said nothing.
“That would be what they call a gang. You’d be what they call a gangster. At the very least, you could join the Combine, as an equal partner.”
“I’d sooner neck myself.”
“I’m just saying, with your old-world sense of honour and so on, you’ve probably taken your obligations to the Combine more seriously than you needed to. Strictly speaking.”
“Whatever. It’s all square between us now. Let them think what they like.”
The Blighter and Grossman came out to the car. The Blighter said we should keep in touch, but even if we didn’t, fate seemed to have its own ideas about such things, so au revoir for now. He got in the car.
Slaney put on a pair of sunglasses, gave me a look and a nod, started the car and they were off.
Denise and I camped out a mile from the farmhouse that night. I built a fire, even though it wasn’t cold. We’d cooked chops and potatoes, and were drinking flagon riesling out of mugs. Denise leaned back with a cig in her hand. “So, the Blighter and you,” she said. “Is that subject to a Bill Glasheen D-notice?”
“The Filthy Blighter. Real name, Beaufoy Edward Hawley-White. Drunk, scoundrel, double-crossing slime. Killer. Old-time spook. Didn’t Cathy ever talk about him?”
“Not exactly. She always hinted something big had happened in Vietnam, but I never knew whether that part of the book was real or fantasy.”
“More real than not, I think. I knew him years ago. He was a kind of spy then, but running his own rorts too.”
She shook her head. “And now, the smack.”
“I’ve got a feeling he won’t be around too long. He’s got a habit now, by the look of it, maintaining on cough syrup. How long can he last once the shipments start? But forget him. a question for you. How did you find Plain View? Vic’s mum?”
“Yeah. She didn’t know much, but it was enough for me to find the place. When I got there, I saw the Falcon driving out of the farm. I followed. At a safe distance, as per the Billy Glasheen method.” She snuggled into my side. “I missed our camping out. I missed you.”
“Yeah, likewise. Any progress on the book or film or whatever it is?”
Denise looked into the fire and said, “I’ve had a rethink about all that. You know what I reckon?” Looking at me. “It’s too late. The Moratorium, hippies, Trots, Maoists. Vietnam. 1970. Old hat. These days, each year is so different from the one before. Three years ago is like another planet. I may as well be writing old-time beatnik bullshit like Max. Who would care?”
“It’s all dead then?”
“Love, smack, the Melbourne underground. There could be something in that. I won’t be the one doing it though. But I reckon I could do something with my, whatever it is, reputation.”
“How about a science-fiction surfing road movie?” I said. “With kangaroos.”
She looked at me, smiling, waiting for a punchline.
“I’m serious. Got your typewriter with you?”
Back at the farm the next day. Vic was still there, trying to get Mark and Max to forgive him for having thrown in his lot with the Melbourne police. Max didn’t seem to care too much. Yeah, it could’ve gone badly, he said, but that move ended up being what resolved everything. Mark said, fuck him. It’s a matter of principle. Every time Vic tried to talk to him he barked like a pooch. Around mid-afternoon Vic gave up and walked away, head bent, intending to hitch back to town.
Later on, Denise, Max, Charlie and me were sitting on fold-up chairs in the shade of a big pepper tree, drinking more of Charlie’s coffee. Mark was nearby, fiddling with a motorbike.
Max took a sip of coffee, smiled at me. “So, old compadre, how do we stand?”
I looked at him a long time. But I had nothing to say. I just shook my head, too tired to answer.
Max grinned, or tried to. “A bit of a drink in it there for old Bill. Not what we’d hoped for, but still, a tidy sum. Get you out of trouble, at least.”
I turned to face him. “Are you kidding? This’ll barely cover what I need to sling Eloise and the kids.”
Max looked at me with the same plastered-on vacant grin.
“If you wanted to make it right, why didn’t you just ring me?” I said. “Or send me a letter? Or send Mark to fetch me?”
No answer.
“We could’ve had all the money and all the dope. Instead of no dope and a ninth of the money each.”
Max said, “My idea was, we draw everyone out, see which way they were going to jump. Spot all the players, then deal with each one of them. Now we’ve got our money, there’s no one left chasing us. And so, with your help—” he grinned inanely, “I can prepare my return to society.”
“You’ll have to do some jail,” I said. “You incriminated yourself with that stupid fucking book.”
“It’s called unreliable narrator, pal. A tissue of fabrication and artistic license. Carries no weight in court. Anyway, Slaney’s doing a little sniffing around for me, see what charges I would actually face. Could even be none. Meanwhile, we keep steadily building the legend.”
“Really?”
“I was thinking of a television documentary about me and my life. Max Perkal, father of Australian jazz-rock. Man of many parts. Beat generation legend. Came through the hell of drug addiction wiser and stronger. There are so many angles to this. Get someone like Rolf Harris to narrate it.”
“Not him.”
“Bill Peach then. A family friend, you know.”
I said nothing.
“I could go round to schools, warn kids about the dangers of drugs.”
I stood up. “This is a waste of time. I’m shooting through.” I looked at Denise. She stood up.
Max, still in his chair, looked quickly at Mark, then at Charlie. “Maybe now is the time?”
Mark shrugged. Charlie nodded.
Max stood up. “Before you go. Better come for a little look-see.”
We drove across the property, all of us squashed into Denise’s car. Through a gate, past a row of she-oaks, across a cattle grid, into what looked like another property. A large yard. A tractor parked under an open shed. All neat and tidy. Along the path another shed, much bigger and newer.
We got out. Mark pulled out a set of keys, opened the three heavy padlocks, pushed back the big sliding door.
The smell hit me instantly. Max gestured, be my guest, and stood aside. I walked in. A bank of flouros flickered on. In front of us, rows and rows of steel shelving. Pack
ages like mini-wool bales, tightly wrapped in taped-up black plastic, neatly stacked along the entire length.
On the other side, racks with plants hanging upside down.
Mark was looking pleased now. Proud.
He walked over to the curing rack, picked up a branch, brought it over to us. Dense, gluey heads, with no seeds.
“Sensimilla?” I said.
“Certainly is.”
“The booklet from the Third World?”
“I’ve improved on the method in the book. Quite a bit, actually.”
“He’s a clever lad,” said Max. “We get three harvests a year up here. Could get four next time.” He waited a few seconds. “And you’ve got a panel van.”
I walked along the row of shelves, patting the packages.
Max called out, “Equal share for you, Bill. Need I say, it’ll be big bickies. All we need to do is arrange my rehabilitation.”
I walked back. “Forget the documentary. No one gives a shit about the old days. But you can have a part in our movie. A small part.”
“Eh?”
“You’re the crazy old coot who runs a cantina in the hills, up in the rainforest. Strictly a cameo, though.”
A confused slow shake of the head from Max.
“It’s the near future. A few years after the big crash, the big earthquake, big meteor strike. Whatever. Everything’s been wiped out. Law and order has broken down. Every so often another bit of California drops into the sea, sends these sets of waves two, three, four hundred feet high across the Pacific to Australia. There’s a band of outlaw surfers who wait on the high ground for each new apocalypse set to arrive. That might be the name of the film, actually – Apocalypse Set.” I turned to Denise. “What do you think?”
“The title is still up in the air,” she said.
“That’s right. Just a thought. Anyway these surfies catch the big ones when they come through. Try to. Most of them die, actually.
“But that’s not the main story. There are all these different communities who live on the hilltops, where the super waves don’t quite reach. Anarchists, hippies, heads, blackfellas, musicians, fortune-tellers, separatist lesbians, artists’ co-ops, angelheaded hipsters. They perform ritual magic. There’ll be some lezzo sex there, but tasteful. Then there are these—”
“I know some musicians who’d be perfect!” Max piped in.
“Johnny Mugg and the Muggs?” I said.
Max was nodding, but surprised. “You see, we see the same things. That was part of my re-entry plan – take Johnny and the boys to Sydney, promote them as the next thing. You’ve seen them, obviously.”
“They were shithouse. Anyway, glam rock is the big thing now. This Bowie feller.”
“Ah, but that’s about to change. It’s your basic dialectics, comrade. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thing gives birth to its other. The Muggs only play three chords, yeah, yeah, I know. But they’ve got spirit, you’ll have to admit. And a new look. They’ll be fast, angry, and rough as guts. Gonna call it ‘Mug Rock.’ First there was Rock. Then Glam. Now Mug Rock.”
“Whatever. Maybe we can use them. There’s also a blackfella kid on the north coast, name of Wes, who plays incredible guitar. Good-looking kid.”
Denise said, “Lobby would be right for this, too.”
“And how about this,” said Max. “One bunch of the good people, the anarchists or whoever, are growing this sensational pot up in the hills. Every so often they have to do a run to take the harvest to the lowlands.”
“There are no lowlands,” said Mark. “It’s all under water.”
“Bellevue Hill, Coogee, the Blue Mountains. Doesn’t matter,” Max went on. “There are a bunch of survivor communities spread around, but they’re starved for dope. So there’s this brief moment when the waters recede, before the next big inundation. All the roads are dry for, like, three days. And there’s this super-driver, he gets around in an incredibly hotted-up EK panel van, who does the dope run, brings the righteous shit to all the villages.”
“And it’s weird,” Mark said, “because there are octopuses and seaweed and shit everywhere. There’s coral growing in the main street of Bathurst.”
“So a cross between Thunder Road and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,” I said.
“Yeah. Kangaroos and starfish.” Max again. “The bad guys are the drug squad and the CIA. They’re evil murderous bastards in big grey government Kingswoods. Deep down they wish they could just turn on and be cool, but they’re too fucked-up in the head.”
“The drug squad are trying to stamp out pot,” said Mark, “so they can force everyone onto methadone, which they get from—”
I cut in. “We’d need a bikey gang in there too. The Devil’s Turds, something like that. All the different wayfarers and seekers pull into the cantina from time to time, because it’s kind of neutral territory. ‘Crazy Max’ tells stories about the old days, shooting up with Lenny Bruce and so on. He says stuff like ‘copasetic’ and ‘daddio.’ Kind of hipster nostalgia. But he’s an oracle. Talks in loony but poetic riddles. You can play some low-down piano in the corner. A cross between William Burroughs and Hoagy Carmichael. Crazy Max, the Lost Troubadour.”
“Hell’s Sphincters,” said Mark.
Everyone looked at him.
“The bikey gang,” he said. “And the cars, they’re all made out of rusty corrugated iron, tractor parts, old farm equipment, stump-jump ploughs, tree trunks, rocks and shit. Like Ned Kelly on acid. But they go like the fuck.”
Denise spoke up. “Satan’s Arseholes. Easier to say. Anyway boys, there’s a lot to be sorted out yet, and we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. One thing, though, what if the hell-driver was a chick?”
We looked at her, suddenly silent. Then everyone burst out laughing.
Denise went on, “Like Cathy. With a young blackfella sidekick. The guitar kid, maybe. But like I said, we can fix all the details later.”
“You’re right. Later,” I said. “So, the business at hand. This shit here—” I gestured at the dope inventory, “are we equal partners?”
Mark said, “Sounds all right. Max, me, you and Charlie. This is Charlie’s land. Charlie has the water rights we need for the irrigation.”
Charlie, who’d been silent till now, smiled.
“All right,” I said. “We don’t have long. A year or two, three at the most, before they legalise cannabis. And I need some right off – what are they, a couple of pounds each?”
“Five pounds,” said Mark. “Exactly.”
“I’ll need three or four bags,” I turned to Denise, “to sweeten the Annandale squatters. The musicians, at any rate, probably the activists too.” To Mark, Max and Charlie I said, “So that comes off the top, before the split. Agreed?”
Mark nodding, said, “Okay. Four ways after that.” He glanced quickly at Denise.
“That’s all right,” she said. “This is your thing. But I wouldn’t mind a wee little something to share with my friends. A package. Or two.”
We all nodded.
“But we’ll need to come to a clear understanding about the film,” she said. “Rights and whatnot. Who’s the producer, who’s the director. Who gets a writing credit. What each person’s investment stake is. All that stuff.”
I said. “My friends Mullet and Kate, Terry and Anna – they need to be in on this thing too. If they want to be. Mullet can shoot the film. The others will help sell the dope – the Sydney branch office.”
More nods all round.
“So how do we fix all that?” Mark said.
Denise smiled. “Like I said, I have a lawyer.”
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