Still Riding on the Storm Read online

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the New South Wales Nurses’

  Association. God bless each and every one of them.

  A percentage of the royalties from this book will be donated

  to some animal charities the author admires.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Dedication

  A Message from the Author

  Bob’s Original Introduction

  Rider on the Storm

  The Wasted Horizon

  The Party of the First Part

  Diamond Les

  Ming the Merciless

  The Baker’s Dozen

  Amy Outhouse

  Gorgeous George

  So, You Want to Be In Movies?

  The Empty Stomach

  So, You Want to be a Righter Writer?

  I Was a Judge in a Wet T-Shirt Contest

  Whining and Dining

  Bowling for Bukowski

  About the Author

  Other books by Robert G. Barrett and published by HarperCollins

  Copyright

  A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Ha-ha. Tee-hee. Ho-ho. And phooey. To all those people who wrote to me asking, ‘what are you doing, you old bastard? Why haven’t you written a book this year, you old goat? Are you still alive, you old shit? Or are you dead? Tell us, you miserable old arse. We demand to know and we’ve got a right to know. And we want a new book. So %$@# you, you old %*&$@#. What’s going on?’

  Well, sorry to disappoint you, folks. But rumours of my death at this stage are a little premature. However, it’s been a battle with the old Bengal Lancer. But I’m sure I’ve given him a good boot in the nuts and all is explained in the last article in this book, ‘Bowling for Bukowski’. There’s also photos and a few words on my website to enhance it.

  But firstly, before I go into all that, I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all the people who wrote to me or e-mailed my publishers, HarperCollins, asking how I was. Some of the letters were hilarious. Others brought me to tears. I did my best to write back to as many as I could, but sometimes it just got a bit too much. So if any of you didn’t get a reply, I’m sorry. Nevertheless, I read each and every letter and I truly appreciated them. They gave me a fabulous boost. I don’t give a stuff what any other writer says, but I’ve definitely got the best readers in Australia. And I honestly love each and everyone of you. I truly mean that.

  Now, about this book. I don’t want you to feel cheated, but it first came out in 1996 under a similar but different title and with different publishers. It’s a bit rough and ready and the original publishers would have preferred another Les Norton, which is quite understandable. But they published it to keep me happy, so it went out a bit low-key and a lot of my readers never knew about it. But I honestly think it’s not a bad read. And if, like me, you hate political correctness, in those columns for Nine to Five magazine, ‘Whining and Dining’, I went out of my way to insult every minority group in Australia, from gays to Martians. And succeeded admirably. In one of those columns I described how I got my drug-dealing friend Ramos, took him out to a house at Tempe where he shot two other drug dealers, then pistol-whipped their grandmother before I snuck him out of the country dressed as a colonel in the Argentinean Air Force. People actually believed it and said I should be doing life in gaol, not writing columns for a magazine. But writing for Nine to Five was a lot of fun. The only trouble was, by the time I drove down from Terrigal and took my mate’s young daughter out for dinner and a movie, it was costing me almost as much as I was getting paid for the column. But brother, it was a gas walking into cinemas and restaurants with this beautiful young girl on my arm.

  You will also notice that the story ‘Amy Outhouse’ doesn’t contain any bad language. This is because I wrote it for the Daily Telegraph. And I’m sure the editor didn’t want their young readers ploughing through all the frucks and crunts you generally associate with Les Norton. But it’s still not a bad yarn. Unless you’re a bikie or a Goth.

  The story ‘Gorgeous George’, however, is a ripper. I’ve always maintained that the old saying ‘self praise is no recommendation’ is my favourite. And it’s true. But I’m convinced ‘Gorgeous George’ is the best short story I’ve ever written. It’s loaded with pathos and humour. And, oddly enough, most of the characters and incidents in it are real. Particularly the fight at the hotel in Coogee on the Sunday afternoon. Plus it also shows a side of Les Norton that will please and surprise you.

  The last story, ‘Bowling for Bukowski’, is mostly me having a good laugh at myself about what happened to me over the last three years. As well as a tribute to a writer I admire. But what I went through over the last three years wasn’t all that funny. And it’s the reason I haven’t been writing. After you read it, I’d like to ask a favour of you. If you know anyone who’s got the old Bengal Lancer, tell them to try the mixture in the article. Give it two or three months, get some tests, then ask them to write to me and let me know how they got on. I honestly think I’m onto something here. And if I thought that article could help some people with their problem I’d be over the moon. Then I’ll tell the world.

  Team Norton T-shirts and caps are still available. Just write to PO Box 382, Terrigal NSW 2260, and Lisa the Possum Princess will look after you. But make sure you include a phone number with your order in case things stuff up. And don’t give the new Possum Princess too much lip, or Otis will be around to open up a big can of whup ass on you. Sorry to use a bloody American expression, but I reckon that’s a good one. And Muhammad Ali worked it brilliantly.

  So that’s about it for the time being. Once again I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all those people who showed me their kindness. It was fantastic. Now I’m going to rest up, get some exercise and get into shape to write another Les Norton book. I’ve got the idea for it in my big ugly Woody Allen. Which means it will be out in late 2012. Shit! That’s the year of the Mayan calender prophecy. Bloody hell! What if I just get the book finished and we all get washed into the ocean? I say. Be a bit of an inconvenience — wot.

  All the best,

  Robert G. Barrett

  Terrigal, 2011

  BOB’S ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

  A lot of my readers write to me wanting to know why I don’t write more than one book a year. Well one day I might, but at the moment I’m too lazy. I’m worried I might burn out a bit and if I did I’d be writing it for the taxation department. Still, you never know what might happen in the future. In the meantime, however, I got talking with my publisher and we came up with this one — Rider on the Storm. It’s a lot of short stories and articles I wrote years ago for People, Playboy and Penthouse, which should please my many women readers because I imagine a lot of them would not be regular subscribers to these magazines. There’s also a couple of stories that never got published. You must appreciate these stories were written quite a few years back and they’re dated now. Plus I was pretty rough and raw then and, in the case of two of the Playboy articles, I was a bit of an ‘angry young man’ at the time, banging my poor, balding head against the literary door and seemingly getting nowhere. But it’s a fact — I was on the dole at times, I did go to gaol because I couldn’t pay my parking fines, I was cleaning toilets and working as a kitchen hand and the sheriff did come round to take my old Holden Kingswood with no second gear, along with what little furniture I had, around the same time the bank was going to repossess my house. A lot of fun it wasn’t, being a writer back in those days.

  Also in this book are some columns I wrote in 1994 for a Sydney magazine called Nine to Five. At the time I was being driven mad by the local drunks wanting to put shit on me or pick a fight with me b
ecause I’d finally kicked a bit of goal. The old ‘tall poppy’ thing. ‘Who the #@%*! do you think you are.’ ‘I knew you when you used to work in a %$#*! kitchen.’ ‘You %$#@*! from Sydney are all the same.’ One mug even wanted to fight me because I forgot his name. I ended up grabbing one hero by the throat, a coke dealer, and got charged with assault. I beat that and the cops pinched me in court for cheering. It was alleged I swore at the defendant. When the magistrate said he didn’t hear anything, this boofhead local cop said he read my lips. It’s the truth. So I had to go back and beat that one too; it cost me heaps. Though I should have known what to expect from these hillbillies. All the inbreds and clickers on my old man’s side of the family were born and bred on the Central Coast going back to 1856. My great-grandfather, Richard Bigmore Barrett owned half of Empire Bay through a convict grant. I remember living on my aunty’s farm and going to Empire Bay school when it was one room and the teacher, Mr Jones, used to cut our hair. I’ve tried to hide it, but all the Barretts could communicate by banjo, don’t worry about that. Anyway, I thought I’d give the local drunks a rest for a while before I finished up on a murder charge. So I rented a home unit in Bondi to soak up the atmosphere of my other old home town and write The Day of the Gecko. And inadvertently became a columnist.

  Nine to Five is a kind of ‘advertorial’ magazine with a big circulation in Sydney orientated mainly towards women. The editor and I used to flat together years ago and he asked me, seeing as I was living on and off in Sydney at the time, if I was interested. I thought, okay. It’ll pay the rent on the flat and it might be a bit of fun. So I came up with the idea of a food and film column called ‘Whining and Dining’. Naturally, seeing as the magazine was mainly for women, I made the column as sexist and politically incorrect as I possibly could. I wrote about all these repulsive, weird women I met through Madam Zelda’s Zanzibar Dating Service before I fled from Terrigal and holed up in a flat in Bondi owned by a Colombian drug dealer called Ramos after I helped him steal a car, bash and kill his ex-partners and then I smuggled him out of the country on a false passport dressed as a colonel in the Argentinian Air Force. The funny part was some of those sheilas that read Nine to Five thought it was all true. The column was a buzz and Nine to Five got swags of letters about it. But with researching and writing The Day of the Gecko and running backwards and forwards between the Central Coast and Sydney it got a bit hectic for me so unfortunately I had to end it. But it was a lot of fun at the time and I hope my interstate readers might like a slice of Sydney they’re not aware of, and I hope my readers in general will like the stories and articles in this book which they may not have read before. So if possible — please enjoy.

  Thank you, team.

  I’ll see you in the next book.

  Robert G. Barrett

  Terrigal, 1996

  RIDER ON THE STORM

  Les Norton and Billy Dunne hadn’t been at work outside the Kelly Club for half an hour before Norton realised there was something else on his workmate’s mind than the weather. It was a very ordinary Saturday night in late March: cool, with drizzly rain and a light southerly wisping up Kelly Street. Not a night to get enthused over even for the end of another working week. But Les knew Billy Dunne almost inside out now and there was definitely something on the ex-boxer’s mind other than a shitty Saturday night in Sydney. They stepped back with a smile and a greeting to let a well-dressed party of four punters into the club, then Norton scuffed idly at something on the footpath with the toe of his R.M. Williams before speaking.

  ‘Are you okay, Billy?’ he asked.

  Billy Dunne shrugged indifferently and appeared to look away. ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘I’m all right.’

  Norton smiled. ‘Yeah. But there’s something on your mind, isn’t there?’

  Billy looked at Norton and sort of returned his smile; but Billy’s had a tinge of weariness about it. ‘Yeah, I s’pose you’re right, Les. It’s that bloody Johnny Rayburn again.’

  ‘Oh! Fuckin’ him,’ spat Norton.

  Rayburn was a complete and utter no-good egg and a psychopath who’d been down from Brisbane a bit over six months. A brown-haired, good-looking sort of bloke, he was super-fit from doing three years in Boggo Road for armed assault and had got out with a mean streak in him wider than the Great Dividing Range. In the relatively short time since Rayburn had arrived in Sydney, he’d established quite a reputation for himself with a gun and a razor, his fists and boots. He was making most of his money standing over the hookers around the Cross and the Eastern Suburbs and different gamblers. He’d beaten a few of the girls up pretty badly and there’d been a couple of killings that were almost certainly down to him. But no one was prepared to give any evidence so the cops couldn’t get anything on him and no one was game to say too much to him at all because Rayburn was the type of dropkick that wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in you, kick you half to death or run a razor down the side of your face. Price put the word out for him not to come anywhere near the Kelly Club, to leave his punters alone, and told the boys to bar him. But he came up one night with some wombat he’d teamed up with for a bit of a show of strength out the front. Les and Billy had to cop a certain amount of shit from him and it was all Billy could do to stop Les from putting one on Rayburn’s Gilbeys there and then, tough and all as he was. Billy really had to put overtime on Norton, because even if Les had sorted Rayburn out, he would have just bided his time and shot Norton in the back of the head one night. Rayburn and his mate eventually drifted off, but it left a very crappy taste in both their mouths, especially Norton’s, and Billy hoped Les and Rayburn never crossed paths somewhere. Billy would have put his house on Les, but his workmate was too good a bloke to finish up with a bullet in the back from some creep who really wasn’t worth two bob.

  ‘So what’s the prick done now?’ said Norton tightly.

  Billy sucked some air in through his teeth and looked uncomfortable.

  ‘He bashed up one of Lyndy’s girlfriends.’

  ‘Your missus?’

  ‘Yeah. You know Sharon Chesher?’ Les nodded. ‘He broke her jaw and knocked out three of her teeth. Gave her a kicking as well.’

  ‘Nice bloke.’

  ‘Okay, Sharon’s a working girl. But she’s an old friend of Lyndy’s and she’s not a smacky.’ Billy looked directly at Les. ‘Anyway, we ain’t actually pillars of society ourselves, are we?’

  ‘I never ever said we were.’

  ‘But there was no need to do that to her.’ Billy made a kind of futile gesture with his hands. ‘So Lyndy’s asked me if there was something we could do.’

  Norton thought for a moment as another two punters stepped into the club. ‘Why don’t we have a word with Price after work? He always knows the best way to sort these things out.’

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Billy. ‘I think you’re right.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Christ! It’s a cunt of a spot to be in.’

  Norton gave his workmate a wink. ‘Leave it till after we knock off.’

  Apart from the lousy weather the night went over fairly smoothly. The only bit of bother was a big, drunken Tongan who wanted to get in. As he swaggered up to the door, Norton sank a left rip into his solar plexus that just about crushed his sternum, a short right that broke his jaw and another left that spread his lips all over his face like minced steak. As he hit the deck, Billy kicked him in the forehead for good luck. Then they dragged him to the lane just up from the club and left him there with a metal garbage bin jammed over his head and shoulders. He was still snoring and bleeding there peacefully when they checked on him around three after they got the last punter out and closed the place up for an after-work drink in Price’s office.

  The boys had picked up their wages and Les was on his third bottle of Eumundi Lager, Billy was into another bourbon, Price and George Brennan were drinking Dimple Haigh and Eddie, in his customary black leather jacket, black Reeboks and black jeans, was seated in the corner sipping a Crown Lager when Billy told Price what
was on his mind. The silvery-haired casino owner picked absently at the cuffs of his light-blue suit while he and the others listened intently. When Billy had finished, Price looked thoughtful for a moment, then a kind of smile formed on his face.

  ‘You know, it’s funny you should bring this up, Billy,’ he said. ‘But me and Eddie were just talking about him earlier.’

  ‘You were?’ Billy looked surprised.

  ‘Yeah.’ Price took a good sip of his Scotch. ‘I had a meeting with some of the other casino owners yesterday. Rayburn’s been drawing a lot of heat round the Cross lately, with his killings and bashings and whatever. Heat we can well do without. The papers are starting to run with it; which means the politicians and the wallopers’ll have to look like they’re doing something.’ Price took another sip of Scotch. ‘So we’re going to knock him. And I got elected to do the job.’

  Immediately all eyes turned to Eddie Salita, quietly sipping his beer in the corner. He put his drink down, folded his arms and returned the stares.

  ‘Well, what are you all looking at me for?’ he demanded.

  ‘Ohh, what do you mean, what are we all looking at you for?’ guffawed Norton. ‘Why do you think we’re all looking at you?’

  Eddie shook his head. ‘Jesus! You’re fuckin’ good.’

  ‘Yeah,’ grinned Norton. ‘And you’re not real bad yourself, either.’

  Eddie rubbed his hands together and flashed his devilish white smile followed by a sinister little laugh that anybody familiar with him knew he let go when he had something up his sleeve. ‘Heh, heh, heh! To tell you the truth, I’m gonna do it tomorrow night.’