Rex Goot was a little more interesting. Older than the others at about thirty-four, he’d had a topsy-turvy career as a rider with some big wins, long, bare stretches and more than his share of suspensions for minor infringements. He was considered a good reinsman but ‘cranky’ and inclined to let owners and trainers know his opinion of their horses and methods. He was separated, rented a modest semi in Randwick and his last maintenance payment cheque for his two children had bounced. His wife had re-presented it only to have it bounce again. Then it was third time lucky with a very angry Mrs Goot having to cough up the default fees.
‘He’s paying the mortgage on the former family home in Concord,’ my informant, an enterprising bank data base man told me, ‘but he was late with the last one and the next’s due tomorrow.’
‘Did he have enough on hand to cover the last payment?’ I asked.
‘That’ll cost you more.’
I thought about how characters like this were making money from characters like me by tapping keys. What a world.
‘Day after tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Tell me about how he stood last time and what he does this time. Then charge me.’
‘I got it.’
He meant what he said. He had my Bankcard number and had a way of charging fees against the card. I didn’t know how he did it and didn’t want to know. The charge appeared on my statement as ‘Security Enquiries’ and I could bill my client without difficulty. What a world.
I turned my attention to Bruce Bartlett. A press photo showed him as a big, beefy character with a dimple in his chin. There’s no way to run the standard check on bookies-they handle a lot of cash and everyone knows that their accounts are elaborate fictions. The taxation people leave them alone as long as they get a reasonable whack. Trying to calculate the real income wouldn’t be worth the grief. Still, I poked around and found out what I could. My chief informant was Perce Kelly who runs an SP book in the Bedford Arms hotel in Glebe. Bookies are Perce’s speciality.
We met in the back bar of the Bedford, not far from Wentworth Park where Perce did a lot of his business. I put a schooner of Old down in front of Perce and sipped at my middy of light.
‘What d’y drink that piss for?’ Perce said.
‘I use unleaded petrol, too.’
Perce shook his head and drank a third of the schooner in one pull. ‘Christ help this country if there’s another war.’
‘Brucie Bartlett,’ I said. ‘What d’you know?’
Perce told me that Bartlett had started off with a country licence and worked his way up to the city tracks. He was a man good with numbers but with no flair. Not Perce’s style.
‘Can you see him taking bets on the nod from Tommy Herbert?’
Perce rolled some White Crow and lit up. ‘Maybe. Just.’ He downed another third of the schooner. ‘Not really.’
‘Jesus, Perce. That’s not a lot of help.’
Another suck on the rollie, another pull on the beer. ‘What I mean is, Cliff, I can’t see Tommy fuckin’ betting with him!’
‘Would the ten grand fine hurt Bartlett much?’
‘Nup. He wins.’
Perce’s glass was empty, something that usually he dealt with straight off. Now he smoked and turned the glass in his hands.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Brucie used to be in partnership with a bloke named Kelvin Johnson. They fell out and split up. Bad blood. Kelvin had lots of style but no fuckin’ sense, if you know what I mean. They weren’t suited. It happens. Happened to me when I had a licence. Funny thing, though, about that day at Randwick
I knew Perce’s style. The next move was up to me.. If I didn’t make it, he’d come up with a yarn about the old days. I took a fifty out of my wallet and put it on the table. I finished my drink and picked up the glasses. ‘I like funny stories,’ I said.
According to Perce, Johnson and Bartlett had become rivals as bookmakers and had run something of a vendetta against each other which had been costly to both. There were a lot of technical details about laying off of bets which I didn’t fully understand, but the upshot was that the two men were locked in a somewhat irrational conflict that spread to include their two sons who had also been friends at one time.
‘But Kelvin’s finished,’ Perce said. ‘He must’ve been stretched pretty thin and the race before the one Tommy got rubbed out for fucked him. He took some big money on the long-odds thing that won. Took it late and couldn’t lay it off anywhere. And you wouldn’t believe it, but Kelvin bets himself. Big. He was probably on the favourite. He got screwed and Brucie was crowing.’
‘Was Bartlett…?’
Perce rubbed the side his nose in the age-old manner, rolled another White Crow and worked on his schooner.
It doesn’t do to make too much use of the one source. Spread the enquiry around and you reduce the risk of feedback and fuck-up. I went back to my other informants, particularly the former clerk of the course. Des Joseph describes himself as a ‘sober alcoholic’. The booze cost him his job and his family and was on the way to stripping him of everything until AA saved him. He works as a drug counsellor and I met him through one of my clients who was making a serious attempt at drinking himself to death. Des helped him to pull out of it and I’ve referred a few other people to him since. We get along although sometimes I think he eyes me as a prospective customer. We met, as always, in a coffee shop at the Cross.
‘This is twice in three days, Cliff,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you’re not working up to seeing me about something else.?’
‘I’m sure. Say a number of jockeys were under investigation by the chief steward. Who’d do the investigating?’
‘They’ve got a couple of blokes, more or less in your line.’
‘Would anyone collate the information?’
Des sipped his long black and gazed past me out to Darlinghurst Road where probably every third person was a likely candidate for his services. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘They call the jockeys under investigation in one by one, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would anyone look at the information on them across the board, other than to consider if they’d colluded about something?’
Des doesn’t waste words. ‘No,’ he said.
My bank computer man called the next day to tell me that Rex Goot was late with his last mortgage payment and seemed to have become short of cash a couple of months before.
‘Nothing going in or too much going out?’ I asked.
‘Bit of both. Looks as if he hasn’t been banking some of his earnings.’
I thanked him; he checked the expiry date on my card. That’s the way he is. I sat down with my notes and drew my diagrams with the connecting arrows, names in boxes, question marks, ticks and crosses. When I thought I had it all nutted out I called Tommy.
‘I think I’ve got it,’ I said.
‘Jesus, what’s it been, five days? You could’ve strung it out for twice this long. You’re throwing away money.’
‘Okay, I’ll get back to you.’
‘Ha-ha. You know me, Cliff, I’ll joke on my death bed. What’ve you got?’
‘A theory.’
‘Shit.’
‘With facts. Can you get hold of race tapes?’
