The Big Whatever (18 page)

Cathy's smile disappeared. She turned back to me, very grave.

“Half of that payoff is mine, Mel. The maggot owes me.” She smiled again and tossed her head slightly.

“I believe you have a gun.”

I, BANDIT

We were in a motel on Sydney Road. Rough piles of paper money spread out across the table. Next to one of the piles was my .38. I hadn't slept for four nights. Cathy was at the sink, cooking up a hit of smack. Jimmy was at the window, watching out for the Armed Robbery Squad. Stan and Denise were sitting in the lounge room, drinking gin straight from the bottle, listening to the radio, waiting for a news bulletin to find out whether the bloke I'd shot was dead.

Oh, let me tell you, my little dharma bums, there'd been many a sudden shift in tempo and some wild improvising to
bring us to this crazy and generally fucked-up point in the proceedings. Let me tell you about it.

Second thoughts, fuck that. Everyone
knows
the story. The Moratorium. Big thrill, right? We the People, boring it up the Man. Dr Jim spruiking peace in Bourke Street. A hundred thousand people marching.

Meanwhile, we the
other
people were taking even more direct action – setting charges, brandishing firearms, robbing banks. Bail up you bastards, your money or your life, look smart there, you rotten sons of trollops, and what ho, off we ride!

Oh yeah, my pets, much of our meticulously and marvellously planned brigandage worked perfectly. Banks were indeed robbed, bags filled with armfuls of money, speedy getaways effected. There was just the teensiest bit which didn't go so well, and thereby were we fucked. Royally. But that's pretty much public knowledge too, right? Given what happened afterwards.

So I'll spare you an account of every single hiccup, cough, sneeze, snort, and beg your pardon. There's some stuff the newspapers
didn't
tell you, though, so pay attention now, and learn from the mistakes of one sadder and wiser than you, my young outlaws.

It all came down to Denise. Denise, the sweet and lubricious upper-crust slummer, sometime love partner of my good self and of polymorphous Cathy, of the silent robber Stan and Jesus knows who else. Well, that same Denise, long-time devoted amateur photographer, had recently acquired a handy Bolex 16-millimetre movie camera, and without letting on to her fellow bandits, decided that our gun-toting revolutionary proceedings would make for a spiffing cinematographic assemblage. To be shown to like-minded outlaws, anarchists, narodniks, heads, hippies and no-goodniks at secret late-night underground screenings around the world.

Seasoned crooks like Stan and Jimmy, edgy new robbers like Bikey Vic, and jaded yours truly would naturally have
no truck with such suicidal carryings-on, so Denise had decided to keep her plans to herself.

So there we were, at the site of robbery number one, the Australia and New Zealand Bank in Exhibition Street. At the prearranged moment, bold robbers Stan, Jimmy, Cathy and Denise tumbled in, brandishing firearms. They'd brought those big, tough postal sacks with them to transport the booty out of there. And Denise had brought her camera, unbeknownst to her fellow bandits. A minute into proceedings she had the thing out and running, happily producing some highly verité observational agitprop revolutionary cinema which would no doubt elicit some active dialectical-type discussions in Berlin or Berkeley or Bolivia.

Stan, Jimmy and Cathy were doing the business – making the withdrawals, scaring the shitter out of bank staff and assorted customers. They realised what was happening on the cinematographic front, but it was too late now to stop the fair camerawoman.

Thing is, this wasn't your run of the mill, roscoe in the teller's face, empty the money tray bank robbery. This was your once in a lifetime, methodically clean out the whole fucking vault, cast of thousands, Cecil B whatever the fuck, Guinness Book of Records hoist. Because the lads had the mail that right then, on that day, at that time, the virtually impregnable vault would in fact be wide fucking open, as per the secret schedule, with no more than a couple of jobsworths overseeing it, and – tra-la-la – suitably armed and masked robbers, if they happened to be hip, might just swan in and have their wicked way with it.

Which is exactly what they did. They filled their postal bags with mucho big denom currency.

Cathy cut a fine figure as usual, holding a sawn-off article, a beret on her shapely noggin. Jimmy and Stan, both dressed in black jeans and black t-shirts, looked hip and existential, like they'd strolled out of a Froggy film. The two other men on the job were speedy young sharpie types, and
didn't let the side down in the edgy good looks department. Too good not to catch on film, right?

According to the plan, Vic and his incendiary comrades should be detonating a charge on the King's Bridge at that very moment – which would provide a further distraction for any police who weren't already on crowd-control duty in Bourke Street.

And sure enough, at a little after one p.m. there was a big, deep, window-rattling boom in the distance. At which bank staff and customers shat themselves. The Viet Cong had arrived. The end of the world.

The robbers were happy. No police had shown up.

Outside the bank a car was waiting, at the wheel of which sat your trusty correspondent, drafted in at the last moment because the professional driver had pulled out due to a sick mum or some such. So there I was, right across the road, propped in a loading zone, motor running. Patiently waiting for my muchachos to emerge.

I had freely partaken of the powdered relaxants, a couple of hefty packages of which were stashed under the driver's seat. Oh yeah, I didn't tell you – Cathy and I had robbed the Captain that very morning. It was easy enough. We knocked on his door, put the gun in his face. Give us your drugs. We extracted the dope, not even properly hidden, from a cupboard in the kitchen. The Captain said very little, staring at Cathy the whole time. She was quiet, efficient, no bullshit, thank you very much. The shit between those two, dig, I did
not
want to know. We left the flat with two housebricks of tightly compressed white powder.

Again with the Cathy, the gun, the drug ripping and running thing. Some cats never learn, dig? Anyway, that was that. We stopped at my pad to sample the goods, then off we fucked, to rob banks and support the revolution.

First robber to come out of the bank was Jimmy, holding a big swag. He looked around. No wallopers. He nodded to the crew inside. Next came Denise, bum first, pointing
her camera back inside. At Cathy, in fact, who stepped out into the sunlight a second later, a big bag in one mitt, the sawn-off in the other. She stopped, smiled at the camera, raised the weapon, Black Power salute style. Good footage, no doubt. Then came Stan carrying a swollen bag of booty. Camera-shy, he dodged around Cathy, looked left and right, started towards the car. After him came the sharpie lads. Each of them detouring around Cathy, the laughing showoff, but everyone too busy to take in what was happening behind them. The four boys were already halfway across the road when the bank clerk appeared in the doorway. Young verging on middle-aged. White shirt, tie, sleeves rolled up.

Gun in his hand.

He's right behind Cathy, who's blocking Denise's view of him. I can tell he'd had expected to run outside waving his gun only to find the bold bankrobber types had all long since bolted. Which would have left him looking good at zero risk to himself, showing his employers how devoted he is to their cause. But now here they were still, poncing about with revolutionary salutes and whatnot.

He stopped in the bank's doorway, uncertain what to do. Then, rather than demand a laying down of arms, a return of purloined cash, he shakily raised his gun until it pointed at Cathy's back. Blind confusion on his face.

Not sure how it happened, but a second or two later, there was I, trusty .38 in hand, standing in the middle of Exhibition Street and firing past Cathy and Denise into the bank, in the general direction of the clerk. Don't know how many shots I fired, but the plate-glass door shattered, and there were screams.

I became aware of Stan and Jimmy yelling. The girls were running like billy-o towards the car. I could hear sirens.

I got back in the driver's seat and off we went. Passed a fire engine on Nicholson Street, going the other way.

We stopped behind a factory in Richmond, where three cars were waiting for us. The sharps took off in one, with
a single bag of loot. Jimmy and I put the rest of the loot, another two big bags, into the second car. Stan and the girls headed off in the third car to the Moratorium.

Twenty minutes later Jimmy and I pulled up outside a motel on Sydney Road, booked the night before, two rooms for the lot of us. We'd hardly said a word the whole time.

We jammed the swag into a closet. No need for high security now. Then we stood back, the door still open, and just stared at the bags.

“For some reason,” I said, “I can't see that as actual money. Money you'd spend, buy stuff with.”

Jimmy glanced my way, his dial almost deadpan, just the tiniest trace of a cold, amused smile.

“Yeah?” he said, in a way that might have been genuinely curious or might've signalled his bemusement at how slow I was at catching up.

“I mean, fuck me. This much . . . it's, like, it's
too
much,” I said. “Too much to have, too much to spend.” Then I thought some more. “Jeez, come to think of it,” I said, “how many coppers will they assign to this?”

Jimmy kept looking at me, his expression unchanged. Waiting for me to catch on. But I didn't, not then. He said, “Better have a quick taste,” and proceeded to cook up a blast.

Afterwards, we sat there a while, smoking cigs, digging the stone. In all the time we'd hung out in each other's general vicinity, I had never really talked to Jimmy, one to one. He'd had no cause to start up any sort of chummy old mateyness, and nor had I.

He still had that cool and knowing look on his face.

“You know, Jimmy,” I said, “I'd always thought Stan was the boss, and you were sort of the quiet mate.”

“The sidekick?” he said.

“I guess. But now I get it. You're like the bass player or the drummer who leads the whole outfit from the backline. The singer and the lead guitarist poncing around for the crowd, but you hold the reins.”

He gave me the “you're a slow learner” look again and shrugged. He didn't say me nay.

“When you and Stan first came to me with the speed, last year, that was your operation, right? Not Stan's?”

He smiled, sort of.

“So why come to me?”

“I like you, Mel. You're kind of loose.”

I grinned like a fool.

“But underneath all that, what you're really about is looking after number one.”

My smile went.

“Means I know which way you're likely to jump. It's a good thing.”

And that was that. He stood up. “Better go and find our comrades,” he said.

“The black jeans, black t-shirt thing,” I said. “Whose idea was that?”

He stopped, grinned again, just the tiniest bit sheepish. “Denise's,” he said.

“Ah. You knew about the camera?”

“Not really.” The almost-smile said otherwise.

“So you've got a bit of the show-off in you after all,” I said.

And off we sloped.

The others were waiting, as per the plan, at the corner of Bourke Street. There was an exchange of hugs and kisses, and off we trotted, part of the great anti-war throng.

Looking back at it all now, I struggle to believe it really happened. Of the great revolutionary-type gestures – your Eureka Stockade, your Jerilderie Letter, your “Such Is Life” and whatnot – the fact of me and Cathy, Stan, Denise, Jimmy, anti-war marching down Collins Street, singing ‘The Internationale,' not even an hour after pulling maybe the biggest Melbourne heist ever –
that
particular moment, my ardent little students of history, deserves to be remembered.

Denise was still schlepping her confounded movie camera, which I thought was loony, but by this stage no one else seemed to care. They were ecstatic. Jimmy and Stan, and Cathy, were not giving much away, but despite all the smack they'd hit up, their eyes were bright.

It was dawning on me slowly. For a certain type of armed robber, Jimmy and Stan's type, it wasn't really about the money, about getting it, spending it carefully, making it last, being judicious. It was the act itself. Get caught, go to jail? So be it, just so long as you make a fucking big splash on the way, behave with suitable dash and flash.

Which I could dig, a little – but really, only a little. Mel says, if you want to make a splash, go to the fucking swimming pool. Need to express yourself? Play funky Hammond B3 organ. Make etchings. Grow roses. Do flower-arranging. Whatever. But that afternoon, at the march, holding hands with revolutionary-type brothers and sisters, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to smash the state or go and hide somewhere.

Jimmy disappeared into a phone booth a little after we'd joined the march, came back with the news that the Building Society rip had gone bad. Two blokes had been nabbed, another two got away, but without the money. The Sunshine Pipefitters payroll heist had gone to plan, though. Hadn't counted the take yet, but it looked good. The explosives side of the project had, as we already knew, been more or less successful, in that there had been a fucking big bang on the King's Bridge. No one had been hurt, although it turned out a tram had its undercarriage blown to the shithouse.