Matthew Flinders' Cat (9 page)

Suddenly furious again, Billy kicked out at the bench and felt a stab of pain shoot through his knee. The Aborigine lay face-down, his mouth pushed hard against a wooden slat. It was not unusual for a drunk to throw up while in a coma and if this happened, Williams could possibly drown in his own vomit. Billy knew he’d have to move him so that he lay on his side with his mouth free to breathe. He told himself the bastard could die for all he cared, but knew this wasn’t true.

Billy sighed. ‘Why me?’ he exclaimed, appealing to the sky, then unlocked the handcuff about his wrist and rested the briefcase against the leg of the bench. Williams lay with one arm folded under his stomach while his other hung loosely over the side of the bench, his fingers slightly bent and his knuckles touching the pathway. Billy attempted to roll him over onto his side but the bench proved too narrow and its backrest prevented the black man’s body from turning. Billy pulled Williams forward so that half of his body rested over the lip of the bench. Bending his knees to take the man’s weight, he gave a great heave and managed to roll Williams on to his side, his head now turned outwards towards the path, his mouth and nose free to breathe. The effort caused Billy to breathe heavily and his nostrils picked up the sour smell mixed with stale alcohol fumes on the black man’s breath. He pulled back involuntarily and it was then that he saw it. Clutched in the Aborigine’s fist was the wad of fifty-dollar notes he’d seen in the pub.

Billy could scarcely believe his eyes. He’d temporarily forgotten about the money, but now with Williams lying there, he couldn’t leave him on his own. He reached down, expecting to have to pry the notes from the stockman’s fist, but the moment he touched the blackfella’s fingers they relaxed and the stash of pale-yellow plastic notes rolled free and rested on the bench against the stockman’s stomach. Billy’s heart started to pound and, despite himself, he glanced down the pathway to make sure nobody was coming before he reached for the stash. Bending down, he clicked open his briefcase and quickly dropped the money into its interior, snapping it shut, as if by his action he could make the money disappear from his mind.

Billy had no intention of stealing the blackfella’s money. Nor did he want to have the responsibility of keeping it for him. If he was robbed, something that could happen easily enough, or stopped by a policeman, just as Phillip Orr had done this morning, how would he explain himself? He felt both vulnerable and guilty.

Billy tried to think what he should do, but the money confused him, it was too great a responsibility and he simply couldn’t cope. He told himself that he wasn’t supposed to be responsible for anything or anyone. That was why he was among the homeless. As a derelict, he didn’t have to feel guilty any longer. He’d paid the price, he was free of obligation to his fellow man. Why should he care about the black bloke? He was a drunk and drunks get rolled, it was what happened in the big smoke. He thought about putting the money back, shoving it into the pocket of the stockman’s moleskins. Maybe Williams would get lucky and wake up and still have it. Even if it was stolen, it was none of Billy’s business anyway.

But Billy couldn’t do that. He knew that even if the cops found Williams first, the likelihood of him getting his money back was zero. A couple of grand found in the possession of a derelict was a bonus no police officer was going to pass up. He imagined the scene. ‘Here, mate, here’s your fags and lighter and we found this,’ and the cop handing him back his cash. What a joke. It would be a first for the boys in blue all right and, shortly after, the cop who’d returned the money would be officially certified as mentally deficient and dismissed from the Force.

Billy thought about writing a note and stuffing it in the blackfella’s shirt pocket, telling Williams he’d meet him at Foster House, a hostel known as a ‘Proclaimed Place’, run by the Salvation Army and available to drug addicts and alcoholics who would be brought in to sleep it off. Foster House, among other such places, was referred to among derelicts as the drunk tank. Billy hated the drunk tank the God-botherers offered him in the name of charity and a government subsidy. A night spent in the dormitory at any one of the drunk tanks depressed him for days afterwards. Even though he would be too drunk to protect himself when admitted, the twenty-six men in the windowless dormitory who cried out in their sleep, vomited and defecated upset him more than he liked to admit. While the charities made every effort to keep the dormitory safe and clean, waking up in a drunk tank was not an experience anyone would voluntarily submit to. Though sometimes it was necessary, as instanced by Williams, who was unable to protect or care for himself.

Billy knew the routine well enough. He’d call Mission Beat and tell them of the stockman’s whereabouts. They’d come in their van to fetch Williams and put him in the drunk tank for the night, where Billy would meet him in the morning after he’d sobered up. There was only one thing wrong with this idea, he had to hang onto the money in the meantime, a responsibility he wasn’t prepared to accept. In his present state, Billy was convinced the presence of the money in his briefcase placed him in terrible danger. His paranoia was not entirely without reason. If Casper Friendly blamed him for the scam going wrong, he might decide to teach him a lesson and come looking for him with some of his henchmen. Casper believed in intimidation and he and his men would proceed to kick the living daylights out of Billy. Then they might search his briefcase and when they found the money, there was a good chance they’d do him in. Casper wasn’t stupid and Billy wasn’t just another derelict whose word couldn’t be trusted. They’d tell themselves that left alive he’d be a reliable plaintiff, dead he would become just another unfortunate statistic among the homeless. Billy’s hope was that the bottle of scotch Williams had paid for had left Casper legless and that he’d wake up having forgotten the entire incident.

Billy couldn’t help feeling sorry for himself. From the moment he’d been quarrelled awake by Arthur and Martha, things had started going wrong. First the boy, then the cop, then Sam Snatch putting undue pressure on him, and after that Casper Friendly, and now the blackfella passed out on his own private writing bench. It was little comfort to Billy to think that somewhere in the vicinity there were fifty or so mynah birds wishing their forefathers had remained in India.

Billy tried to think coherently. The only way he could be rid of the responsibility of holding onto the money was to accompany Williams in the Mission Beat van to Foster House, where he’d hand the cash over to Major Pollard. Pollard was a man of God and Billy would make him swear not to tell anyone that he’d returned the money, though this plan also had its problems. God-botherers were consumed by the duty of honesty and Pollard would be forced to ask himself how Billy or, for that matter, Williams had acquired the money. Pollard would then be compelled for the sake of his own protection to tell someone else or he could be indicted for possessing stolen goods. Billy was a lawyer and he knew that secrets are only kept when the incentive to keep them leads to a greater gain than may be had by revealing them. God’s people may not have judged the poor souls they cared for, but they were under no illusions about their charges and weren’t silly enough to place themselves in jeopardy by accepting the word of an alcoholic.

Secrets always come out. He could hear it now: ‘Did you hear about Billy O’Shannessy? He found this stash, enough to stay drunk for six months, and returned it to its rightful owner, an Abo bloke who’d come in from the bush.’ He’d be regarded as the ultimate fool, a laughing stock among the city derelicts who equated honesty with a characteristic most often found among the mentally retarded.

Billy made his way back to the nearest telephone booth in Macquarie Street and put a call through to Mission Beat, instructing them that he’d wait for them at the Botanic Gardens gate across the road from the State Library. Williams, he told the operator, was completely out of it, probably in a coma, and they’d need an extra person to help carry the stretcher.

The woman on the switch at Mission Beat had a high-pitched and whingeing quality to her voice and Billy heard her sigh heavily on the other end of the phone. ‘We’re short-staffed, the volunteers only come on after five, you’ll have to help with the stretcher.’

‘Nah, I’ve got a crook leg,’ Billy said, in a coarser accent than his own. He’d done enough for Williams without having to hobble along holding on to one end of a stretcher.

The woman at the other end of the phone gave an audible sigh, ‘Hang on a moment,’ she said. A couple of minutes later her voice came back on the line, ‘It will be about half an hour, wait at the gate.’ The phone went dead.

To Billy’s surprise, the van did arrive half an hour later and Billy explained that the bench on which Williams lay was a hundred metres or so inside the park. The driver, a fit young Maori in a red and black Canterbury Crusaders’ rugby jersey, nodded and then turned to a skinny bloke beside him who looked as if he might be on drugs. ‘You git the stretcher out the back, hey.’ The young bloke started to get out of the van. ‘Nah, wait on, lemme park first, hey.’ The Maori indicated to Billy to step aside and pulled the van up onto the pavement before reversing to get as close to the gate entrance as he could.

The young bloke got out and approached the back of the van. ‘Gidday, mate,’ he said, smiling at Billy and offering his hand. Long strands of dirty, sandy-coloured hair fell to his shoulders and his small goatee was decorated with several pimples on the right side of his mouth. Heroin usually brought out pimples so he was probably on a methadone program and attempting to stay clean. His yellow cap was turned the wrong way round in the current fashion. Billy ignored his outstretched hand, which the kid didn’t seem to mind. ‘Helpin’ yer mate out, that’s good,’ he said, nodding his head several times. ‘No worries, we’ll take care of him.’

Billy grunted, resenting the kid’s cheerful outlook. He was supposed to be a miserable prick, wasn’t he? He noticed that he wore long sleeves, buttoned at the wrist, another sign that he was concealing needle scars. Alcoholics hated heroin addicts and he’d been robbed on more than one occasion by dead ringers for this bloke. Billy thought about the money in his briefcase and what this bloke might do to him if he knew about it.

The young guy threw open the back of the van, which contained no surprises for Billy, who’d been a passenger in it on more than one occasion. A brown padded vinyl bench ran down either side with a stretcher hooked onto the inside roof by means of several brackets. The interior was designed to be hosed clean with a minimum of fuss and Billy’s nostrils were immediately assailed by a strong smell of disinfectant.

The bloke on detox, for that’s how Billy now regarded him, started to pull at the stretcher, which refused to budge. Then the Maori came around, ‘Nah, it’s clupped at the back, you got to git in an’ unclup it.’ Not waiting for his helper, he jumped into the back of the van and unclipped the stretcher, pushing it from his end so that it protruded out of the back of the van for the youngster to pull it free.

‘You new to this work?’ Billy asked.

‘Yeah, doing three months’ community service.’ He laughed, ‘Could be worse, a mate of mine’s digging out blackberry bushes for Woollahra Council on South Head, bloody hard yakka.’

He’d been right, the young bloke was a junkie.

The driver jumped from the back of the van. ‘Righto, let’s go fetch your brother.’ He turned to Billy, ‘My name’s Hopi.’ He indicated his assistant with a nod of the head, ‘This is Jimmy. You show us where to go, hey.’

Billy led them into the Botanic Gardens, down the main path and then they branched off on to a smaller path leading to the giant Moreton Bay fig. Billy was conscious of the magpies carolling in the big dark tree silhouetted against a washed and clear summer sky.

They reached the rock pool and Billy led them around the back. ‘He’s round here,’ he said, pointing. Then he saw that Williams was missing.

‘You sure that’s the bench?’ Hopi asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, quite certain.’

‘Lotsa benches in this place, hey?’

‘No, not around here. He was out to it, comatose. I shook him, shouted at him, he didn’t move. He can’t have gone far.’

Hopi shook his head. ‘Mate, I can’t leave the van on the pavement, I’ll get a ticket.’ He removed a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. ‘Says here the client is reported as being unconscious.’

‘That’s right, he was.’

‘It’s the rules.’ The big New Zealander shrugged.

‘It’s the rules. We’re allowed to take him in without his permission if he’s unconscious. If he ain’t, he’s got to agree to come.’ He spread his hands and smiled, ‘Which he can’t if he ain’t here. Sorry about that.’ He nodded to the young bloke, then jerked his head, indicating they should leave.

‘Wait on!’ Billy cried, ‘He could be lying somewhere close by, in the bushes.’

The Maori looked back and said, not unkindly, ‘You find him, call us again, we’ll come for sure.’

Billy walked over to the bench and sat down, panicstricken. He had the best part of five thousand dollars in his briefcase and its rightful owner had disappeared.

Technically he’d stolen the money. His leg hurt and he needed a drink badly, he couldn’t remember when he’d been this sober this late in the day. Somehow he had to find Williams, track him down and give him back his money. It wasn’t his responsibility what happened after that, he’d done his best, even called the drunk wagon on his behalf.

Billy rose wearily from the bench and made for the Moreton Bay. Its dark-green foliage reached almost to the ground, and if you didn’t mind the bat shit, its semi-dark interior was an ideal place to sleep it off. Williams would have come around, seen the tree and had the nous to crawl into its safety. He was from the bush, he’d have a strong sense of survival.