I shook hands with him cautiously. 'Dick Browning,' I said. 'How're you going, Blue?'

  'Blue?' said Flood. 'What sorta name's that?' He was peeved at being left out of the last stage of the deal.

  'Can't you see his red hair?'20 I said. Tait's deep red mop was visible under his cap.

  'I don't get it,' Flood said.

  While the men inside the shed did their business and Flood sulked, I chatted with Tait. He'd flown in the RAF during the war so I had to tread cautiously in exchanging war reminiscences. Luckily he was more interested in his own exploits than anything else, so he didn't notice my vagueness about battalions and battles. After a while the buyer and the old bandits came out, all smiling. The buyer nodded to Tait and strode towards his plane.

  'See you, Dick,' Tait said. 'There's a bar on South Clark Street, the Spitfire, I drink there when I'm in town. Leave a message there and I'll get in touch. We'll have a beer.'

  'Righto, Blue.'

  We watched while Tait turned his plane, taxied and took off. Charley handed thick envelopes to Flood and me. Ollie had unscrewed the top of a silver flask. He took a swig and handed the flask to Flood.

  'Drink up, Mike. A good bit o' business.'

  Flood drank. 'What's my end?'

  'Twenty four grand. Same for Dick. Have a drink, Dick.'

  I did. I was stunned. It was more money than I'd ever had before. Mind you, I'd earned it. I took my turn at the flask which contained first grade bourbon.

  'Well, Dick,' Charley said, 'those Mounties sure took it hard when you left. Have any trouble with old Eli?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'Figured you would, but he was the man to get you through. Any complaints now?'

  'No, but I have got a question. Why did you go to all that trouble to recruit someone up in the Yukon? Why didn't you just send someone in from the American side? Someone like Mike could've gone in and got that gold much easier than I did.'

  Charley took a long drink and wiped his whiskers with the back of his hand. 'Thought about it, but it wouldn'a worked. If we'd sent someone in from the American side he'd have known where he was when he got the gold and how to handle the country. He coulda taken off in any direction. We needed someone like you – a regular babe in the wood.'

  'But after Mike found me he could've taken off with the gold.'

  'I figured you'd stop him. After what you'd been through you wouldn't be about to let one man rob you.'

  That's where he was wrong, of course. Flood could've taken the lot, probably. But then again, I might have been angry enough to try to stop him. I'm just glad I didn't have to try.

  'Time to go, Bob,' Ollie said quietly, 'and lay off that stuff. You gotta fly us outa here.'

  Charley grinned at me, shook Flood's hand and mine and strolled back to the plane. Ollie took a deep drink from the flask, capped it and put it in his pocket where I heard it clink against metal.

  'So long, Matt,' Flood said.

  The bourbon was warm in my stomach and I drew deep on a Fatima as I watched the big bi-plane bounce across the field and sail up into the sky. It circled the field and then headed off towards the south; first the sound receded and then the plane was a diminishing speck among the clouds.

  Flood felt the envelope bulging inside his coat pocket, slapped his hands and rubbed them together. 'Time to howl!'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Time to howl!'

  17

  I never saw Matt Tolliver, Coldknife Bob Carter or Mike Flood again after that day at the airfield, but a man with a sporting disposition and twenty four thousand dollars to spend doesn't lack for appreciative company. After all the privations and terrors I'd been through I was ready to howl, as Flood put it, and howl is what I did. Chicago was the place in which to have a good time in the 1920s and I should know because the good time I had practically put me in the grave.

  For one thing, the Volstead Act had never been taken seriously in the Windy City. Certainly not by the Mayor, Big Bill Thompson, who ran the place for the first few years the Act was in force. The bars and cabarets were open around the clock, the old hands told me, and even when I first dipped my finger into the Chicago fleshpots in 1923, Prohibition was a joke. There was an honest Mayor by this time. I forget his name,21 but sixty per cent of the cops were in the pay of the bootleggers and a goodly percentage of the politicians and judges were in the same boat. Anyway, most of them were such good customers they wouldn't want to see a single bottle broken. So one man's honesty didn't do anyone much good, or harm, depending on the way you looked at it.

  I took an apartment in the Blackstone Hotel, spent a big wad on clothes and an even bigger one on a yellow Studebaker and proceded to hit the high spots. I called myself Richard Kelly, grew a neat moustache, and tried to forget Australia, and Douglas Fairbanks, and bootleggers and the Mounties and all the other individuals and organisations that had done me wrong. [Browning rambles a little at this point and only odd words, such as Dudleigh Grammar . . . bloody army . . . Billy Hughes22. . . can be discerned. The tape stops and Browning evidently resumed in a more coherent frame of mind some time later. Ed.]

  Minette Kirby really taught me the Chicago ropes. She was a singer in the Midnight Reveille, a cabaret on Diversey Street on the North Side. When I wandered in there in my new clothes and with pockets bulging with money, Minette must have felt that all her prayers were answered. All she asked of life was a non-stop flow of booze, non-stop sex and non-stop excitement. Cabarets, restaurants, racetracks, gambling joints and bars were her natural habitat. She called money 'fun tickets' – in fact they were among the first words I ever heard her say. She had just finished a song (she couldn't really sing but when she was steaming and wriggling in front of a microphone nobody noticed), and she was heading for the bar. I'd tipped a waiter who'd brought some champagne to my table and she bent and handed me a twenty.

  'You dropped some of your fun tickets, handsome,' she said.

  'Keep it,' I said. I was drunk already. 'Have a drink. It might improve . . .'

  She threw back her head and let go a throaty laugh that was more tuneful than her singing. She wasn't more than five foot two or three but her lean, whippy body was perfectly shaped and you didn't think of her as small. Her neck was slender and her head was sleek, with close-cropped dark hair and big, hooded violet eyes.

  'Improve my singing, you were about to say.' She slung herself around a chair at the table and let me see her small breasts under the tight, silky material of her dress. T can think of three men who'd shoot you for saying that.'

  I wasn't too drunk or too new to the city not to believe her. 'Well, I didn't mean . . . that is . . .'

  'Happens I agree with you.' She pulled the champagne bottle from the bucket, put it to her mouth and drank in long, gurgling sucks. When she took it away the bottle was half empty and its top was red from her painted lips. 'If I c'd drink ten gallons of this stuff every day maybe I c'd sing like Bessie Smith.'

  I suppose you could say that we tried to find out whether that was true. They threw us out of the Reveille sometime around dawn and we went back to my apartment and began a binge that lasted . . . well, to tell the absolute truth, I'm not sure how long it lasted. Looking back, it seems that sex was the only exercise I got and liquor the only nourishment, but that wasn't really true. We ate at fancy restaurants and in the big homes of the politcal bosses on the North Side. Minette had entrée into those circles and we went to many a lunch along Lake Shore Drive and many a soirée on Kenilworth Avenue. Me in a three piece silk suit with spats and a cane and Minette in a backless dress that ended at her knees, we'd arrive in the Studebaker and leave in a taxi because we were too plastered to travel any other way. There were lots of other bright young couples just like us – no one gave it a thought.

  Minette also liked slumming. We'd drink rotgut rye in neighbourhood bars beside the El and listen to jazz in the negro joints that were slowing creeping south from the inner city ghetto. We ate spaghetti and drank dago red in places along Halstead Street in Little Italy where every second shop was a still or a fermentery. All that was risky, but the most dangerous thing of all, and the kind of fun that Minette liked most, was to hang around the cabarets and nightclubs frequented by the gangsters. The Reveille was one as I've said and also the Rendezvous and the Green Mill.

  'C'mon, Dicky,' Minette would say, 'fill a pouch with fun tickets and let's go to the Mill.'

  I'd deposited my funds in the First National Bank but after that deposit all transactions had been withdrawals. I kept a shoebox of the stuff in the apartment and simply filled a wallet or a couple of pockets before going out. Twenty thousand dollars stretched a long way in Chicago in those days – you could have a night on the town and come home with change out of fifty – if you didn't gamble, that is. Minette and I were gambling fools; fortunately she won at least as much as I lost so it wasn't so bad. Still, there weren't many sub-fifty buck nights.

  One night I'll never forget, we togged up and were ready to go when I found the shoe box was unexpectedly empty. I laughed it off and borrowed a hundred from Minette but she had a funny look in her eye. She was wearing nothing but her shoes and stockings and a little dress that seemed to be made out of bits of glittering string.

  'I know it's Spring,' I said, 'but won't you be cold?'

  'Stupid. I'm gonna wear the coat.'

  'Coat?'

  'Honest, Dicky, you're so stewed so much of the time. Don't you remember bringing home the mink?'

  I didn't. She went to the closet and pulled out a blue mink that shimmered in her hands. She slipped it on and her small body with its neat, trim head looked so alluring wrapped in the luxurious coat that I started to forget about going out. She pushed me away.

  'Later, Daddy. We can do it on the coat if you like.'

  In the car I wondered whether I'd emptied the shoebox to buy the coat. I couldn't remember. I told myself I was drinking too much and that it was time to slow down. But at the Green Mill, where we went that night, slowing down wasn't in style and all Minette understood was stepping on the gas. Result was that I was pretty high after an hour or two when a middle-sized man in a dark suit appeared in front of me out of the smoke haze.

  'I'm Jack McGurn,' he said. 'Could we have a word?'

  'Sure.' I dropped into a chair at my table. Minette was dancing with a pansy actor so there was nothing to worry about there. Some nights I had to practically peel the men off her and it was only my size and fit-looking appearance that let me get away with it. 'Sit down and have a drink.'

  'I don't drink much.' McGurn sat down and watched me while I lit a cigar. 'I've got a nickname, you mighta heard it.'

  'Teetotal Jack McGurn?' I laughed. It was incautious of me; he looked tough but he wasn't big and he was so smooth he seemed almost friendly.

  'No, and I wouldn't joke about it if I was you,' he said softly.

  I had enough liquor inside me not to notice the steadiness of his dark eyes and the ruthless set of his wide mouth. 'What can I do for you, Mr McGurn. Kelly's my name, by the way, Richard Kelly.'

  'So they tell me. You could start by telling me where you got the coat.'

  'Coat?' I felt that I'd said the word like that once before.

  'Yeah, the mink. Looks exactly like one that got stolen from my car some time back. And here it turns up on your broad. This needs an explanation.'

  'You don't think I stole it?'

  Tell you the truth, I don't know what a coat stealer looks like. But, no, I don't reckon you'da stole it. Point is, what you going to do about it.'

  I laughed. 'I suppose you expect me to give it back?'

  'It's an idea. What'd the broad say about that?'

  'You'd hear it, so would everyone within three blocks.'

  He laughed. 'Like that, eh? I got one just the same, maybe two. But what I mean is, who didja buy it from? I can't have punks stealing from my car and getting away with it.'

  'I can't remember.' He suddenly seemed less friendly; the cigar tasted like ashes and I felt the need of a drink. 'Minny asked me the same question and I can't recall a thing about buying it. Apparently I was drunk when I brought it home. Sorry.'

  'Sorry?' McGurn murmured. 'Sorry isn't the word.'

  'Look, man to man, I just don't remember. You're an Irishman. You know how it is with us when we take on a drop too much. Kelly's the name, we're famous for forgettin'. . .'

  The look that came over McGurn's face was enough to make you close your eyes and mouth and pray to still be alive when you opened them. Then he smiled; the smile spread across his lean, dark face and became a throaty laugh. The people around had fallen quiet while McGurn was talking, now the conversation started to buzz a little and bottles clinked against glasses. McGurn roared like a bear as his laughter shook him and everyone around laughed with him. I laughed too, with relief and in deep puzzlement.

  Eventually, McGurn recovered. He got up from the table and walked towards the door shaking his head and gesturing for his pals to join him. Together they shouldered their way out of the place. I heard McGurn say 'Irish' and laugh again before he went through the door.

  I smiled foolishly and had another drink. Crisis over, Browning says the right thing again, I thought. Wonder what I said. Minette appeared beside me; she was trembling slightly and I thought she must be cold in the string dress even though the temperature in the cabaret must have been in the eighties.

  'What'sa matter, love?' I said.

  'What did he want?'

  'Wanted your mink. Said it was his.'

  'Jesus. Did you give him the ticket?'

  We'd checked the coat in on our arrival and I had the stub in my pocket. 'Course not. Simple mistake. Chap was a real gentleman and we settled it, one Irishman to another.'

  'When he started laughing I thought you were dead, and me and everyone else . . . what did you say!

  "Bout what?'

  'About Irishman.'

  'Name's McGurn. Irish name like mine, ah . . .' Just then to be honest I couldn't recall what name I was using but I was sure I was on the right track.

  'You fool. That was Machine Gun Jack McGurn.'

  'What I said . . . McGurn . . .'

  'He's about as Irish as Mussolini. His real name's Vincenzo De Mora.23 He's Scarface Al Capone's chief enforcer.'

  It was partly the heat and the smoke of course, but I fainted dead away.

  18

  You might not think that a healthy young man who'd seen a bit of life could fritter away two years and twenty thousand dollars on nothing but drinking, womanising and raising hell. What an opportunity, you might say, to study or invest and make something of himself. Well, I let the opportunity slip by and did the hell-raising. As the fun tickets ran low Minette Kirby got nervous and one day she took a powder with her mink coat and the other trinkets I'd bought her. I moved from the Blackstone, of course and slowly descended through cheaper apartments to a series of rooms on the lower south side, getting ever closer to the El. The standard of the female company dropped too; I seem to recall an Ellen who wanted to marry me and a Susan who didn't, but the memories are dim.

  Still, living was cheap and for a while I had debts to call in from my days of affluence, when I'd handed the stuff around like How-to-Vote cards. When the goodwill ran out I made ends meet by hocking things and then by betting on horses at which I've always been luckier than at cards, dice or women. But the horses will get you in the end and sometime during my third winter in Chicago I started to drive empty trucks to the Canadian border and bring them back full. I knew it was a mug's game but I'd lost my ambition. I was only twenty-seven24 and, after the things I'd been through, I somehow felt that I was lucky to be alive and let it go at that.

  I spent some of my time in the dago joints and rot-gut speakeasies, not slumming as before, but settling into them as comfortable haunts. I had my best times in the Spitfire Bar and Grill on South Clark Street when Bluey Tait, the Australian pilot who'd flown the Buffalo buyer in for the Yukon gold, was in town. Bluey would fly anybody and anything anywhere – liquor of course, small quality loads; Chinamen with suitcases full of marijuana from Mexico to California; flowers from the South to society weddings in the North; wives to lovers and jewellery to fences. On our first meeting in the Spitfire he looked closely at me and saw my hand shake as I lifted my drink.

  'Are you hung?'

  I nodded. It was three in the afternoon and I'd been up all night drinking and losing at cards. I'd had but one hour's sleep because my head hurt too much to let me sleep.

  'I've got the cure, mate.'

  'Listen, Blue, I'm very glad to see you, or I will be as soon as I feel human again. But don't come any of that goanna oil, dingo piss bullshit with me. I'm from the same neck of the woods, remember?'

  'Nothing like that.' Blue shrugged his narrow shoulders into his flying jacket. He drained his beer and pulled his goggles out of a pocket. 'Come with me. Just as you are. Don't take another pill. You might bring along a little hair of the dog – not for now, for after.'

  I bought a pint of rye and followed him out of the bar. My yellow Studebaker was history but Blue had a serviceable Ford in which he drove me to the airfield. I protested at every bump and had to hold my head steady in my hands but I managed to keep the seal on the rye, out of curiosity mainly. He used the Ford to tow a small plane out of a hangar – the airfield had undergone some improvements in the past two years and now had a tarred strip, several hangars and windsocks. For all its bright red and yellow paint and shiny metal, the plane looked fragile standing in the flat, open expanse with a pale grey sky above.

  'I'm not going anywhere in that bloody thing,' I said.

  'Just up and down, mate. A few minutes in the air's all you'll need. Think how nice it'll be to take a drink and light up a smoke with your head as clear as a bell.'

  My head was pounding and my vision was blurred. My love of life itself must have been at a low ebb. I shrugged. Blue pulled a leather coat and helmet and some goggles from the plane and I put them on. The helmet was tight, but what the hell, a little more pain wasn't going to matter. Blue was bounding around like a cocker spaniel which was infectious. Any minute now, I thought, he's going to ask me if I'm game.

 

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