The Big Whatever by Peter Doyle Page B

of restitution. Which meant he was here to kill me. Then find Cathy and kill her.
    â€œWhat’s that?” said Alex, nodding at the bag of speed on the table.
    The only card I had to play, is what it was.
    â€œSpeed.” I said it casually, but watched him closely. A flicker of interest there. “Pure. Laboratory-made,” I said. “It’s the new thing.”
    He nodded, but didn’t make eye contact.
    I had to use the pause. “So now that you’re here, Alex,” I said, “obviously there are things to discuss. There’s the question of what I owe you for that hash—”
    â€œShut up. Where’s the rest of your money?”
    â€œâ€”and perhaps the question of whether you want to be part of this new speed thing—”
    Barry stood up, took a step towards me, and gave me a backhander that sent me sprawling off the chair and against the wall.
    I got half-upright, put my hands up. “There is no other money.”
    Silence.
    I looked at Alex. “Have you ever known me to hang on to bread? You know that’s not me, Al.”
    More silence. Try another play.
    I stood up carefully. “So normally the next step would be, you guys kill me, right?”
    Alex looked at me a while, but said nothing.
    â€œBut that’d be exactly the wrong move.”
    Still nothing.
    â€œFor you. Because you’d be shorting yourself.” I sat down at the table again.
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œThat money right there is all I have . . . for now. But there’s more money to be had. A lot of it. I can let you in.”
    â€œSelling speed? I hate speed.”
    â€œSomething else.”
    â€œ What else?”
    â€œThe biggest robbery ever committed in this state. Fuck that, in the whole country.”
    â€œAnd what exactly would that be?”
    â€œTattersall’s Lottery. We’re going to take the whole lot.”
    I’ll spare you the sordid details, young seekers, but over the next hour your silver-tongued correspondent managed to stave off his own homicide by offering Alex a piece of the speed action and a percentage of the forthcoming Tatts robbery.
    What robbery? I hear you yodel. Well, that was it – I was improvising, jamming on a crazy speed riff, a long, twisting tale about a super-heist involving some expert break-and-enter men, with big paydays for all players. Alex listened. Fact was, I’d bought a lottery ticket just the day before, and that’s what popped into my head.
    I went on, stitching together bits and pieces of every cheap detective book I’d ever read, turning it into some kind of Ben Hall-Ned Kelly-Darcy Duggan-Scarlet Pimpernel adventure, decorated with cries of “Bail up, you bastards, or we’ll ventilate your scurvy spleen!”, high-speed getaways, complex switches and costume changes, secret codes, hideouts and whatnot, ending up with our band of urban bushrangers having foiled the traps yet again, sharing a tankard or two of rum. What ho, me lads!
    I kept spieling. I threw in a bit of technical talk. Offhand-sounding, professional. Couldn’t name the other players, of course.
    Alex, good-hearted simpleton and comic-book reader that he was, wanted to believe it all. I almost had him, I could see that.
    The other bloke, Barry, was a different story. He said nothing the whole time. But I could feel him there, and the more I tried not to look his way, the more I sensed his presence.
    And all the while I was laying out the plans, strange and freaky images kept forming in my head. Many faces. A cowering dog. A frightened child. A sense of prolonged pain. All emanating from Barry.
    At one point I paused and let myself glance his way. He was smiling at me.
    â€œYou get it, don’t you?” he said brightly.
    â€œDon’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, but my voice was shaky and hollow. The psychotic cunt was reading my mind. At least, he knew I was picking up bits of