Читать книгу Amaze Your Friends - Peter Doyle - Страница 6

Chapter 1

SEPTEMBER 1958

A cold Saturday night at Woolloomooloo Bay. Three men shuffled down the gangway of the SS King of Prussia, along the deserted Pier 6 and out through the gateway to Cowper Wharf Road.

I flashed my headlights, wound down my window and called out, ‘You’re late. I was getting worried.’

The man in front shook his head, kept walking, and said out of the side of his mouth, ‘The hotel, ten minutes,’ without breaking stride.

I got out, walked over to Harry’s Café de Wheels.

Jude, the old girl behind the counter said, ‘What’s on, Billy?’

I watched the three figures enter the pub across the road. ‘Looks like I’ll be having a drink.’

‘Eat something first. You should never drink on an empty stomach.’

‘Yeah, that’s what my father used to tell me. Along with, Avoid bad companions,’ I said.

‘Mine used to say, Never trust a man who doesn’t wear a hat to the races.’ She handed a meat pie across the counter to me.

I told her I didn’t want it. She insisted.

I moved over to the railing at the water’s edge. Seagulls squawking in the darkness. I took a bite, spat it out, tossed the remains into the drink. Then I pulled a couple of dexedrines out of my top pocket and swallowed them dry.

When ten minutes were up I waved to Jude, started moving off. She asked did I feel better now? I told her too right.

The pub was a storm of noise and cigarette smoke. I bought a beer, pushed my way through the crowd to the jukebox, punched in ‘Summertime Blues’.

Before the song had finished Chet Kimbrough, American seafaring gent and bad companion, tapped me on the shoulder and muttered, ‘Out the back.’ I followed him through to the ladies’ lounge. His mates were there already, in the company of three women of the night. Chet slipped the bolt on the door, took his leather jacket off. He reached under his shirt, brought out a rolled-up paper bag, dropped it on the table, said, ‘All right, fellers, give daddy-o the booty.’

Bad companion number two, a toothless Negro, grinned and took off his Canadian jacket. He put his hand into the lining, took out another bag, dropped it on the table. Then he went in under his shirt, took out some magazines, put them with the other stuff. He held up his finger like a magician, then unbuckled his belt and dropped his strides. The girls whistled. More bags taped to both legs. He carefully cut them free with a flick-knife, threw them on the table. He put his trousers back on and bowed. Then Chet and bad companion number three, a nuggety Scot with a crewcut, did the same. They all went back out to the front bar then, leaving me and Chet with the pile of reefers, Playboy magazines, 45rpm records and some paperbacks. I sniffed the reefers, flicked through the books: Sintime Beatniks, Narcotics Agent, Stripper, Jailbait, Junkie, On the Road.

I handed a roll of notes to Chet. He counted it, then nodded.

I put the stuff in my disposal store kitbag. ‘Why the big production?’

‘Customs guys on the wharf back there. See them? A guy on board ran out of cash, took some magazines to sell uptown. In a bag. Big mistake. Customs tracked him all the way to Ashwoods. They took him in, charged him.’

‘No sympathy for the working man.’

‘Nail on the head there, brother.’ He held up the roll of pound notes. ‘Hey, why don’t you hang with us? We’re going to get all messed up.’

‘Nah, I’m racing the clock. I’ve got to sell this dope faster than I can smoke it. See you next time.’

I bought a bottle of Remy, went back to the car and drove a little way up Darlinghurst Road, into a tiny back lane, to the house of Shirley Hill, artist, stripper and dabbler in the black arts.

She opened her door wearing a paint-spattered army shirt and tights, her hair tied back with a red bandanna. She said, ‘Hello there.’

‘Hello, Shirl. How’s things?’

‘About to get better.’ She stood aside and I walked past her, through a little courtyard into the kitchen. It smelled of cat shit and incense. An Yma Sumac record was playing on the gramophone.

Shirl followed me in. ‘Would you like a drink? I’ve got some wine.’

I thought, Never mix your drinks. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ I said.

Shirley poured me a glass of claret from a flagon.

I took a reefer out of the bag, fired it up, took a few drags and handed it across. We passed it back and forth. When it was finished I cranked up another one. Shirley got up, changed the record.

I picked half a dozen reefers out of the bag, handed them to her. She said, ‘How much?’

‘Ten quid will do.’

She went to her purse and handed me a tenner.

‘Would you like a palm reading before you go?’

I held out my hand. A black cat jumped onto the kitchen table and walked over to me, rubbed itself against my arm. Shirley took my mitt.

She looked closely at my palm for half a minute, then let go.

‘Dark forces are gathering around you.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘I do. Finish your wine and hand me the glass.’

I drained it and gave it to her. She peered into the glass, rolled the last drop around, then looked at me strangely. I shivered.

‘There’s unfinished business. A trembling hand reaches into the icy depths for an elusive quarry.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just the messenger.’

‘How about the daily double for Randwick next Saturday?’

‘You know I never get anything as clear cut as that. You’ll have to make do with Unfinished Business and Icy Depths.’

‘How about Travel and a Dark Stranger?’

‘Funny you should say that. They’re both there too.’ She reached over and took my hand again. ‘And so is Bad News Arriving by Telephone. You’ve got the fortune teller’s lay-down misère.’

It was dark when I stepped out into Darlinghurst Road. Shirley’s connection to the other side was better than she knew. A bloke was in my car, looking in the glove box, another leaning against the mudguard.

The lookout pegged me. He said something and the other turned around to face me. They were both in their early twenties, dressed casual, but they weren’t your run-of-the-mill thieves. The one who had been in the car was Italian, or maybe Greek. He had his black hair cut short and neat and he was standing up straight. The other one had blond hair, tanned skin, a surf-club type. Plain-clothes policemen.

I sauntered over with what I hoped passed as a cavalier attitude and said to the Italian, ‘So Enzo, what were you doing in my car?’

‘Looking for evidence of criminal activity.’

‘Such as?’

He looked away and back again, then with an elaborate show of unconcern said, ‘Oh, take your pick.’ He started counting on his fingers. ‘Sly grog and dutiable imports; SP betting slips, pak-a-pu tickets, two-up coins or other gaming paraphernalia; stolen milk money, hub-caps or V8 badges; or maybe even some of those sex drugs we’ve been hearing about.’ He’d run out of fingers. ‘From what I hear, pretty well anything small-time and crooked would be your go, including living off the immoral earnings of a woman. Would that be right, Glasheen?’

He wasn’t completely wide of the mark, except for the V8 badges. There’s another one for the list, I thought—Always obey the law. I shrugged.

He looked over my Customline. ‘You’re driving a pretty good car for a two-bob petty crim. Makes me wonder what you’ve really been up to lately.’

‘Hard work and clean living,’ I said.

He spat on the ground near my foot. ‘You’ve never had a real job in your life.’

I looked at my watch. ‘Listen, I’m in a bit of a hurry, boys. Tell me, is this official, or are you after a donation or something?’

The surf-club type stepped forward then. ‘Smart bastard, eh? You feel like having a go, do you?’

I nodded, rubbing my chin. ‘I get it, it’s unofficial. Well, fellers, as I see it, your tough bloke act shows some promise but I’m afraid it still needs work. Stick with it, you may get there one day. Meanwhile, you, Luigi, hang on to your job in the fruit shop.’ I turned to the lifesaver. ‘But I really think you’ve got the makings of a pretty fair comical sidekick.’

I moved past them towards my car. The surfer grabbed the shoulder of my coat and threw a punch at me. It might well have done some damage, except the other bloke grabbed him at the same moment I ducked, and the punch went wide. I turned around ready to box on if I had to, sincerely hoping it wouldn’t be necessary. The Italian took the blond aside, spoke a few words to him. Then they both turned to face me, grinning in a way I didn’t care for one little bit.

The surfer straightened his cuffs and said, ‘Yeah, you’ll keep. Go ahead, give cheek all you like, gummo, because you’ve got some real surprises coming!’

I said, ‘Yeah, sure, sure,’ and got in the car.

I drove off, saw the coppers in my rear-view mirror still standing there, watching me. I went around the corner into Liverpool Street and stopped, opened the bottle of Remy and took a long pull. I had a strong impulse then to cancel all other engagements, go back to the Rock’n’roll and get blotto. But I fought it. For one thing, I told myself, those blokes were too junior to worry about. And regardless of how shaky my nerves were, I still had a living to earn.

I took another swig of brandy, started up the car again and drove through the city, down to Harmony House, the music store at Circular Quay, where upstairs in the recording studio my arrival was being eagerly awaited by Max Perkal and his group, the Percolators. In 1958 Max and his band of would-be hipsters between them accounted for about seventy percent of the total demand for Indian hemp in the entire city of Sydney.

They were in the main studio. I sat down with the engineer, handed him the brandy bottle and watched the proceedings through the control booth window. Max and the boys were playing back-up to the lovely Del Keene, singer, dancer, comedienne, and, as of two months ago, my ex-girlfriend.

She was singing a tune she and Max had co-written called ‘Kiss Crazy’. It was intended to be their ticket to television stardom, if only they could get it arranged right. The song was a straight twelve-bar, but Max had put some stops at the end and added bongos to give it a Latin feel, he said. To me it sounded more like Charleston than cha-cha, but what would I know? I asked the engineer what he thought. He told me that in London before the war he’d worked with all the greats—Formby, Fields, Lynn—and if this was a hit record, he was in the wrong game.

They finished the song and Del came out to listen to a playback. We said hello and kissed. She made a show of waving away the alcohol fumes. I went into the studio.

Max was retuning his guitar. He said howdy partner. At the age of thirty-five he had already clocked up twenty years in the entertainment business. As a one-time Hawaiian guitarist, hillbilly yodeller, juggler, piano player, band leader, radio actor and now bearded bongo beater, Max Perkal had experienced pretty well all that show business had to offer, barring success.

Lachie the drummer came bouncing over to me, slapped me on the back and asked if l had any dope. I told him maybe, did he have any money? He said no, but he would have tomorrow, or maybe the day after, and he’d gladly pay me Tuesday for a reefer today. I thought of the ‘money can spoil a good friendship’ line, but kept it to myself.

I said, ‘Shit, Lach, fair go. You think I’m in this game for fun?’

He said, ‘Man, you’re wound tight. You need to loosen up a bit. You better crank up one of them reefers fast, get mellow.’ Lachie using hip talk with a broad Aussie accent.

I lit up a couple of reefers and passed them out, received assurances from the band that, too right, they’ d square up with me next week, no problem.

Del came back into the studio. She frowned when the smoke was offered to her. Lachie asked did I have anything else. I left the brandy and dexes with them and went back out to the control room while they recorded yet another take, then another.

Having provided the reefers, I was more or less redundant. I hung around reading an old Downbeat, then took a spare guitar and went out the back to practise my strumming. Sitting there, plunking on the guitar, I sort of hit on an idea, a kind of hillbilly-shuffle thing. My guitar playing was still at page three of The Mickey Baker Jazz Guitar Book, but I could strum enough to get out of trouble and this shuffle feel was sounding pretty catchy to me.

Over half an hour or so I came up with some words, half sung, half spoken against a C chord.

There’s no one I can talk to, they’ve all got troubles of their own

I try to tell how bad I feel, I’m on my Pat Malone

But I found a way to have your say, all you folks who have no one

Just sit right down and tell it all to good old number one.

Then came a sung chorus, which went up to the F chord.

Talking the blues to myself

Get another bottle down off the shelf

Tell your troubles to the wall

When there’s nobody who cares at all

Tell the cat how bad you feel

Tell the pooch about your rotten deal

I’m just talking the blues to myself.

Chuffed, I scribbled the lyrics down and went back out to the studio. They were all listening to the latest take of ‘Kiss Crazy’. The general feeling was that that was as good as it was going to get.

Del said she was too tired for any more tonight and went home. But the mob were flying now, full of dexes, Remy and reefer, and they were unwilling to call it a night. They went back to their instruments, jammed on ‘Honky Tonk’ and ‘Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid’, and then I said here, have a go at this, and sang them ‘Talking the Blues’. They thought it was sort of funny and over the next twenty minutes we worked out a quick arrangement, with the whole lot of them singing along on the chorus, sounding like a bunch of drug-addled pisspots. Max switched to steel guitar and played a solo in the middle. The engineer had a bit of tape left over, so we recorded the song right then. It was two o’clock before everyone bolted, but I hung around for a while finishing off the brandy with the engineer while he packed up.

Outside at two-thirty I had some trouble getting the key in the ignition, and when I did the headlights didn’t work. I got out and looked. Both headlights had been kicked in. Then I noticed the new defect notice pasted on the windscreen and a ticket stuck under the wiper. On the back of the envelope was written in pencil ‘Ray Waters, Lest We Forget’.

I drove home along the back streets to my pad at the Kia Ora flats in Moore Park Road and fell asleep in the armchair. At four-thirty the telephone rang. I fumbled with it, picked it up and said hello. The other end hung up. An hour later it rang again and the same thing happened. I left it off the hook.

I woke later with a dry mouth, still in the armchair. It was just getting light outside. I replaced the handset and five minutes later the phone rang again. Without thinking, I picked it up, said hello. There was no reply but I could hear sounds in the background.

There was a kind of laugh, then a voice said, ‘We’re going to get you, cunt.’

I lit a smoke. My hand shook. One more for the list: Never get mixed up in a cop-killing.