Hoi Polloi (15 page)

The entrance and exit of the course are not guarded as usual by whitecoats old and fat and dozing on stools at this time of the day but by blueshirts—a row of police blocking each wood archway or pacing with pistol handles sticking out from their belts like an ear. Four blueshirts have surrounded a man. They shove their fingers into his jean pockets with such force his bum-crack is exposed. He’s wearing only a T-shirt shape of brown arms and white body because a blueshirt is shaking out his T-shirt like a table cloth and turning it inside-out. Another blueshirt peers inside the man’s mouth, another is pulling apart the man’s newspaper form-guide and jiggling each page as if expecting something to drop. They tell the man to sit on the grass and remove his shoes and socks. They flick and shake these as if to remove a stone or some sand. When nothing falls out they toss his shoes and socks into his lap. I slow my walk to watch but one of the blocking and pacing blueshirts tells me not to waste my time lollygagging and looking at scum like that and waves me through the exit to have me get on my way.

Up Alison Road, the ginger man said. Up Alison Road and keep going to Cowper Street. Keep going and cross into Avoca Street. Keep going along this chain of parked cars looking for a green Zephyr. There’s one. This must be it. Green with a few dings, a heat-ripple aura from the sun. Yes, this must be it. Nothing to do now but wait as instructed. I cross the street to a patch of tree shade and sit in it on the warm concrete. To pass time I build a leaf-dam to block ants from going about their business en route to a hole in the footpath.

The ginger man is jog-walking up the street towards me. With him is a man almost his spitting image—his brother?— same body shape, face lines, complexion, though his hair is shorter, his tracksuit pants red not blue, and now that he’s closer I see his hand tattoos are of spider-webs and a blue skull rather than rough handwriting. My chest thumps. Fear. Even though the ginger man calls me his little mate and smiles, puffing slightly, he snaps his fingers for me to obey him and give him his things, quick, quick, snap, snap, “Give it to me here.”

I tremble and fumble to present the wallets as fast as he demands. I almost drop the watches from my cupped palm. The spitting image man glances about worriedly. Ginger man passes him the watches and bracelet and he acknowledges they are Nice Tin. Ginger man opens the wallets, pinches the brown-green edges of the bills and plucks them into his tracksuit pocket, saying that he’s very grateful to me for my help because things got very hot there suddenly for him and he doesn’t mean the weather. He had to do a dump and run. But everything’s fine now thanks to me. He flips through the wallets’ Diners Club cards, a photo of some children, a driver’s licence. He pockets the driver’s licence and Diners. “Here’s your ten dollars. See you Periscope,” he says stretching over a brick garden wall in front of a block of flats and dropping the wallets into a rubbish bin there. He puts his finger to his lips. “Mum’s the word? Ay?” He unlocks the Zephyr’s driver door and hops in, reaching over to pop up the lock for the spitting image man. They both wince at sitting on burning upholstery. Ginger man has to use his handkerchief to grip the wheel and steer away.

It’s the talk of the Members Bar. Police are warning patrons to beware of pickpockets. The loudspeaker suspects three teams have been active on-course today.

Women inspect their handbags, purses. Men put down their beer glasses and dig in their pockets: left and right trouser, inside and outside coat. They compete to speak as experts on the subject of pickpockets: how the bastards will be professionals, professionals can slice open a hip-pocket like so with a blade cutter—the wallets just drop into their hands like fruit. The audacity of them! They snip off watches as easy as cutting string. They have no trouble with handbags, they unsnib them and take a lucky dip inside without you feeling a thing. “Isn’t that right, Frank?” they call out to the racecourse detective who is nudging through the smoke-shrouded bar two steps this way, two steps that like a distracted dance. He removes his porkpie for the women and asks, unsmilingly, if anyone wishes to report possessions missing. He glances at his fob watch impatiently and tips it back into his waistcoat.

“What’s this mob’s go, Frank?” they ask firmly as if his superiors. “What’s the story?”

The story, he tells them, is that this mob appears to be a gang from the Western Suburbs. They work a classic Fly, Gloves, Legman routine: the Fly chooses his Joe, moves in against the flow of people, bumps into him, in-out with his hand, passes the wallet to a Glove who catches it in his newspaper like a softball mitt and in turn passes it to a Legman who bolts as quick as a hare.

“Caught anyone, Frank?”

“We’re working on it,” he replies coolly.

Winks stands beneath the race replay television. He’s telling a girlie that he keeps his spondulicks
here
in his side pockets. He produces a wad of cash from his right pocket then stuffs it deep down against his thigh. You can’t feel a thief’s hand go into your hip-pocket, sweetie. You can’t feel it go inside your coat or your jacket. But you can always feel a hand go down here. “It’s a very sensitive part of the body,” he winks to her. “It’s like an alarm. Go on. Try. Try and take my money without me feeling it.”

He begins walking on the spot as if taking a casual stroll. The girlie slowly slips her hand into his pocket, grimacing with carefulness. He keeps strolling on the spot and doesn’t react until she has delved to a depth where the cash would be and he can’t stand the tickling sensation any longer and bursts out laughing, clasping his hands over the bulge of her hand. She pulls his money out and playfully waves it under his nose, not allowing him to grab it away. When finally he does snatch it he kisses her on the cheek in the same rapid movement.

“Isn’t that right, Frank? Keep your money in your side pocket?” he asserts more than asks.

“If you say so Sir,” the detective replies. “All your possessions accounted for?”

The girlie puts her fingers up to her mouth in mock panic. “I’m short twenty dollars. Will the police reimburse me?”

“The last race is where that twenty dollars went,” says Winks, laughing and holding her closer by her hollow.

The detective pinches his hat brim politely and moves on.

I own ten dollars. The first money I’ve ever earned. But it’s stolen money. Perhaps it was from someone right here in the Members: from that handbag, in that pocket. Winks’ pockets even. It serves them right. It serves Winks right too for not paying attention to God’s athletes except as odds and form and weights to be carried, too busy with beers and hollows to be bothered with the child-men dealing out beatings. This ten dollars is God’s money. It’s for his use, and that makes the stealing right. It makes justice.

I wait for the ginger man the following Saturday. He doesn’t appear. I wait the Saturday after that, though that Saturday is a Rosehill race-day. And so is the one after that. I wait and wait at Rosehill and Randwick. I’m here, I mutter to the air, to nobody. “It’s me, Periscope. It’s Periscope.” At home I’m the first to be dressed for the races instead of a sulky dawdler. “He’s caught the bug,” Heels says. “Isn’t it nice that we’ve found something we can do as a family?” I search for the green, dinged Zephyr in Alison Road, in Cowper and Avoca streets.

The next Saturday when the races are at Warwick Farm and Heels and Winks decide to take the train because War-wick Farm is in the “woop woop”, I go there too and take up position among the yellow toenails and scuffed minglers, the slippery river of paper. But the ginger man doesn’t come. I never see him again. I cellotape the ten dollars to the back of my bedhead. I’ve imagined many tens of dollars that would be added by helping the ginger man sneak his pickings off course. I can’t understand why praying hasn’t brought him to me. I’d be angry at God but what a notion—to be angry at God. Who dares be angry at God? If this is another test of me, what test could that be? A test of patience?

Could it be a test of resourcefulness? If so, could it be that I’m supposed to become a pickpocket to help his athletes by myself? I have no accomplices. The racecourse detective spoke of a Gloves with a newspaper, a Legman, a Fly. Am I meant to work alone? I begin to observe where people keep their wallets. There are hip-pocket people, there are inside-pocket people. There are no-wallet men whose cash is crumpled and needs to be teased out so they don’t spill their change. There are women whose handbags gape and swing like binoculars. There are women who keep their handbags clipped tight to be carried under their arms like rugby balls.

At home I begin to practise my moves. It is Sunday. Heels and Winks will be gone for the afternoon. They say they’re inspecting a business to buy. There is also an apartment they think is worth a look. I’m not to leave the flat. I’m to amuse myself in some way, which shouldn’t be too hard surely. And don’t open the door to strangers.

Winks’ wardrobe slides across. His smells stir, swirl onto me—his citrus Q-Tol aftershave, his creamy Brylcreem and hardly detectable whiff of BO. His suits hang side-on like people queuing—two blue pin-stripe, one shiny copper-brown, two dark grey, two shingle grey. I part the queue, choose the copper one for practice. I slip my right hand through the front, pretending to barge open the jacket in a mash of race-day bodies. I measure my success by how little the jacket swings on the rail. In my mind this equates to how heavy or light my touch is, how easily noticed by a victim. Speed is also important. My hand must be in-out of a pocket in an instant. This works best, I discover, when my hand is perfectly flat as a karate chop.

It’s going to take a lot of practice for the suits not to swing. Perhaps more practice than I have the patience for. My left hand is the steadier. It’s my natural hand, stronger, nimbler, the hand I use to throw a ball or hold a bat. My right hand might be my writing hand, but that’s only because of a piece of string. My left hand is my real hand.

After an hour’s practice I’ve moved along the line of suits, my fingers tonging from the pockets a handkerchief, a three-week-old race book. And a fifty-dollar note. Those new fifty dollars the government brought out. I decide to cellotape it to the back of my bedhead with the ten dollars. Then I decide against that. Then for it. Is it theft to take this fifty dollars from my own father? I wouldn’t want to thieve from my own father. But he is my father and therefore it can’t be theft. Theft is taking from people you don’t know. I will tape the money to my bedhead, theft or no theft. Let this be the way my father helps God’s athletes.

On Heels’ side of the wardrobe which takes up three quarters of the whole space, dozens of pink and gold, blue and floral dresses and gowns hang like a bunched curtain. On the ledge above, three pyramids of hat boxes—brimmed hats on the bottom, brimless in the smaller boxes on top. Each hat crammed with tissue paper. They are hats which themselves wear hats of plastic to protect their stiff veils and rose posies of cloth. At one end of the rack, zipped in its own transparent raincoat, Heels’ mink coat the colour of a dirty cloud. The colour she calls sable. Hardly ever worn, but “that’s not the point,” she says. “It’s very expensive and nice to say you own one.”

Her shoes of three shades—black, tan, fawn—stand at attention in rows. Along the wardrobe’s back wall, black, tan, fawn handbags to match them. Some stuffed with tissue paper; others contain a sediment of loose change she calls
chicken-feed
and hairpins, an eyebrow pencil, peppermints, peppermint foil, a face-powder puff. I balance a bag on the edge of the bathroom vanity and practise flicking apart the two metal fingers that snib it shut. When, half an hour later, that can be done without the bag toppling to the floor I practise unsnib-bing it and dipping my hand, my karate chop, inside in the same movement. When that can be done—it takes no more than twenty minutes—I open the wardrobe drawers. Winks’ side, top drawer: clothes brush with tiny holsters for nail clippers, a comb, tweezers, a tub of Brylcreem, cuff links, spare watch, stopwatch, arm braces, tie pin. Heels’ side, top drawer: jewellery box, headscarves with Cleopatra patterns, sunglasses, evening gloves. The jewellery box is laden with tangled treasure: bracelets, pearls, rings with amber, diamond and purple stones, clip-on earrings like metal rocks that I attach to my earlobes, stretching them painfully.