Harvey was having a good time. I sat there remembering good times and feeling the $505 in my pocket-I’d rather have had five dollars and someone to have a good time with. Then I got to thinking about whether you could have a good time with five dollars. It was boring on the stairs.
Whatever Harvey and Lulu did took about an hour and left Harvey looking as if he’d been dragged from the surf. He came lurching out with his shirt undone and his fly open. He smelled like an overused sauna.
‘Never had anna thin’ like it,’ he said. ‘In-credible.’
‘I got the impression you were regulars.’
‘Huh? Oh, sort of. Coast clear? Less go, I need a drink.’
We went out into the lane and that’s where they were waiting. Two big men which made four big men, except that one of the big men was drunk and he was my responsibility. One of them stepped forward, looked closely at Salmon and ignored me.
‘Salmon, we’re going for a trip.’
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ I said.
‘Shut up, you, You can go back inside and look at the tits, we don’t want you.’
I guessed that the bloke who hadn’t spoken was the real muscle so I moved a little closer to him which also took me back towards the door. I gave him a short, hard right well below the belt and brought my knee up as his crotch came down. He groaned and gripped himself there; the other one was reaching inside his coat for something but I had a gun in my waist holster at the back and it came out smoothly as I turned around. I jabbed it hard into the talker’s neck and then pulled it back and held it a few centimetres from his nose.
‘Get back against the wall, Salmon,’ I said. ‘What’s the other one doing?’ I was staring into my man’s eyes trying to convince him that I’d pull the trigger if I had to. I seemed to succeed; he dropped his hand from his coat and stood very still.
‘He’s holding his balls,’ Salmon said.
‘You sober enough to kick them if he looks frisky?’
‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘Where’s those fuckin cops?’
‘We could find some,’ I said. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘Now, what’s the point?’
‘Okay,’ I moved the. 38 a little closer to the nose. ‘You see how things are. Mr Salmon’s not vindictive. You and your mate can walk down there and turn the corner and go home or I can shoot you somewhere. What’s it to be?’
‘We’ll walk,’ he said.
I heard a shuffling step and then the dull sound of a hard kick being delivered and then another. A man groaned and whimpered. I held the gun steady.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Nothin’,’ Salmon said. ‘This one can crawl. Let’s go.’
I moved back to the wall and we watched the guy who’d been kicked lift himself up off the ground and steady himself. Neither of them looked at us. They walked and hobbled down the lane and around the corner. Salmon and I went the other way out to the neon-lit street.
‘You were good, Hardy.’
I grunted. ‘Why’d you kick him?’
‘I was feelin’ good. He spoiled my night.’
The next day Salmon spent the morning in bed. He made a few phone calls in the afternoon, watched some TV. I went out and got some Chinese food and a paperback of Dutch Shea Jnr by John Gregory Dunne. We ate, I read; Salmon watched commercial television and went to bed early. I slept on the couch but not well; I spent most of the night reading and drinking instant coffee so that I’d finished the book by morning. Good book.
On Friday morning I told Salmon I needed some fresh clothes and wanted to go to the bank, so I had to get back to Glebe. That was all right with him because he wanted to go to Harold Park that night anyway. We had our discreet police escort over to Glebe, and I did my business with Salmon hanging around looking bored. Putting a couple of hundred in the bank to cover a mortgage payment probably wasn’t a very big deal to him.
In the afternoon I watched some more of the tennis while Salmon yawned over some back-issue magazines he found in the living room.
‘You miss these inside.’ He flipped over the pages of a mid-year National Times.
‘How did you find it? Prison, I mean.’
‘Hot and hard. You ever been in, Hardy?’
‘Not really, short remand at the Bay.’
He snorted derisively and seemed to be about to say something. Then he yawned and turned another page. John Alexander was giving ten years away to Peter Doohan and the games were going with service.
About half an hour earlier than I’d have thought necessary, Salmon announced it was time to go.
‘It’s too early,’ I said. ‘It’s just down the road.’
‘I want to get a good park.’
‘I thought we’d walk. Do you good.’
‘No, we drive.’
He was paying. We drove. I like Harold Park; somehow, even though they put in new bars and generally ponced the place up a few years ago, they managed not to kill the atmosphere. With the lights and the insects swarming in the beams and the Gormenghast houses up above The Crescent, the track feels like a special place- just right for what happens there. The race call and announcements over the PA system boom and bounce around in the hollow so that everybody knows what’s going on. You get a cheerful type of person at Harold Park-it’s almost a pleasure to lose money there.
Some sort of change had come over Salmon. He was decisive about where he wanted us to park-out on The Crescent, well down from the Lew Hoad Reserve-and for the first time he showed a real interest in our police escort.
‘Give ‘em plenty of time to pick us up,’ he said as I locked the car.
‘If they’re any good, they won’t need help.’
‘Just do as I say.’
We walked around to the main entrance in Wigram Road and I looked across to the pub.
‘That’s it,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The Harold Park-the pub over there. Didn’t you say it was one of the places you wanted to visit before you took your trip?’
Salmon glanced at the pub which was doing its usual brisk race-night business.
‘Skip it,’ he said nervously. ‘The rozzers with us?’
They were, two guys in casual clothes looking like family men on a matey night out. They went through the turnstiles a few bodies behind us. I could feel the tension in Salmon as we stepped out of the light into an area of shadow in front of the stand.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now we lose ‘em. Right now. We make for the exit over near the car.’ He moved quickly, pushing through clutches of people heading for the bars and the tote; the mob swirled around us with no pattern yet, no fixed positions taken, and the gaps closed up behind us. I sneaked a look back after a while and caught a glimpse of the cops anxiously inspecting a toilet entrance.
Salmon moved fast on the way back to the car. He hugged the wall and people got out of his way.
‘They’re likely to leave someone watching the car?’
I considered it. We hadn’t been evasive at any time, rather the reverse; anyone who knew my habits would wonder why I’d drive such a short distance, but not too many cops knew my habits.
‘Doubt it, but there’s no time for a recce. That pair’ll be on our hammer pretty soon.’
‘Right. Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘North.’
I took Victoria Road to the Gladesville Bridge and ran up through the back of Pymble to pick up the turn-off to French’s Forest. RBT seemed to have quietened Friday night down: the traffic moved smoothly and after
