The guys did a Belush in the wee hours Sunday morning, reason Greg was looking a dishrag. All impromptu, naturally. The call came through at 2:30, at least the third that Greg actually answered. Pulling the phone out of his pillowcase it was Danny alright. The deal was sitting right there in front of Dan on the table at his place, ready to go. Good gear; and Danny knew the difference. $350 each; smack; a gram. Couple of gals had landed with it, all set if Greg said so. Danny & Mick knew of the money come through from the probate now. Greg had been shouting the pair for a few weeks. It had taken Greg a number of weeks to get the figure from the ATM straight—not two-point-nine hundred something. Plus two noughts it was. For a number of weeks Greg maintained it was a mistake; he had even been down to the branch in Acland Street where the woman told him, he maintained. With his eyesight so bad, last few years Greg hadn’t been able to do himself, anyway. Mick walked round from Robe Street to the ATM with Greg’s card. Danny put the whole of the gram in the mix off his own bat, when Greg as usual wanted saving for later. It ended up felling Danny; for a while there Greg thought he might be in trouble. Danny thought Greg had a remarkable constitution, still standing up to it like that at almost seventy. The girls were good chicks; there was plenty to go round. It wasn’t clear whether Brock was there. Brock had cropped up recently a number of times, encounters on the street and joining occasionally, for the Belushi too it may have been. Brock that was; not Rock. Rock the hairdresser was a different guy. Rock had come up to the flat in Jackson Street regularly in those days when Greg had little money, shouting him. Greg put in a couple of basins for Rock at the salon and hosted Rock at his place, let him pull the pud on the couch during the rushes. Yet Rock still thought Greg owed him something. Sometimes Rock brought a working girl and stroked off while Greg screwed the lady on his bed. The addition now this morning was Rock’s penchant watching girls pee. Number 2 Rock would have added, but Greg didn’t want a bar of that. (Ellmann’s mention of the famous compatriot’s coprophilia had Greg wanting to know the writer’s name. Famous guy on a level below even Rock.) That was Rock; not in on the Sunday morning Belushi. More in the bundle was the story of the fiancé of the richest farmer in Emerald; and somehow, unconnected albeit, also the cleaning of the fingernails in a construction site tearoom with a toothpick for a joke after sewers. (Poker faced, with the dirt looking like the stinky muck.) The farmer guy had the snazziest ute money could buy, with a mount included for rifle. The honey used to come to the caravan where the boss was housing the workers and throw gravel onto the window. When the matter got out Greg shot through on the spot. Even in those days they were farming rice and alternating some other water sucking crop, in the driest region on the planet, basically. Within the interstices somehow, Gaye entered the mix. Inevitably. The matter of impossible rescues, maybe. That someone wanted him not dead caused a raising of eyebrow. Somehow, the final episode with Gaye had previously never penetrated. Earlier, whenever it had emerged it had been blurted in the usual mash, one thing on top of the one before, through endless annals running on endlessly. This was a difficult fit. Over the years, the references to the incident over Gaye’s casket had been heard a number of times, without ever being properly grasped. It was always too much and all scrambled/bundled. A king hit delivered at a funeral. By the graveside. Under the force of the blow the victim landing on top of the casket that had already been lowered into the ground. The brother of the deceased it turned out. Greg was definitely a lover, not a fighter; nothing like a hard man. But here he was swinging at Gaye’s funeral and sending the brother into the hole after his sister. Gaye had had a very unusual blood type. Numerous people offered their kidney—Gaye’s sister, one of her friends, Greg himself, of course. None matching. The brother, a PhD in two fields, had promised, before in the end backing out. Almost twenty years later the sewer rat with the gift of the gab of his tribe was not done. Real fair dinkum Malloy.
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