Back in the 1980s, I worked for a firm that did pretty much everything: bobcat work, tree lopping, demolition, rubbish removal, deceased estates, cleaning your windows, brick paving, the works. The crew changed a lot, even in that short space of time, but Ricky Angel was always there. He had nothing to do with the owner of the operation. Just loved hard work. But he loved a lot of shit out of work that made him kind of dangerous. The people he knew. But more about that later. Payment was cash in hand. In fact, pretty much everything happened off the books.
The boss had said,
‘Ricky and Justin, small truck, city and suburbs run.’
Ricky was short but all muscle. His biceps bulged out of the tight black t-shirt. He wore khaki cargo shorts with black work boots. Dirty blond hair, black eyes, a shit-eating grin, permanently switched on.
We drove into the centre of Melbourne and did rubbish removals from outside the normal council pickups—down laneways and alleyways.
Ricky threw me the keys.
‘You drive,’ he said.
He rolled a joint, lit up, inhaled deeply, blew smoke high and wide out the window. Offered it to me.
‘Can’t when I’m driving,’ I said.
We dropped the load in the St Kilda tip. Ricky, stoned, took over the driving and put heavy metal into the tape deck. Metallica or something — I hated metal. It was sooo fucken loud.
We drove out to Oakleigh. On the way, every time I asked what we were doing, he’d tell me to be patient and then,
‘Just fucken wait. You’ll see.’
We pulled into the driveway of a small single-fronted house and he motioned for me to get out. We walked to the front door, and Ricky opened the screen. Sitting in the lounge room, on the floor, was a small woman with light brown hair and a long nose. She wore moccasins, stoned washed jeans, and a blue singlet with no bra. A kid in a cot on one side. A mull bowl and bong on the other side. Some infomercial on TV. It was about thirty degrees outside and felt like about forty inside.
Ricky said,
‘You don’t have a fan, Chantelle?’
‘In the bedroom.’
He walked out of the room and the girl on the floor said,
‘Ricky can be rude sometimes.’
Ricky came back with a huge stand-up fan and turned it on full blast with rotation. I made to stand as close to it as possible.
Ricky said to her,
‘Got anything for me?’
‘Driver. Some speed. E. Bit of weed.’
‘Driving what?’
‘Putting together a crew.’ She turned, gave me a look of contempt, warning. Said,
‘I’m thinking you’re ok cos Ricky brought you in here, but if any of this gets out, I’ll cut your fucken balls off.’ She made a slashing motion with her right arm.
Ricky said, ‘He’s cool. He’s a newbie but he’s cool. I’m training him.’
I stood closer to the fan. Sweat dripped down my spine. I wondered what the hell I was doing there.
Ricky said,
‘What’s the deal? A van or something?’
‘Chadstone Shopping Centre. Early Monday morning. Takings from the weekend. Been happening every week for the past ten months. They’ll hit it at 6 am.’
‘Got it. Get the weed, E and shit. Me and Justin got work to do.’
She brought back a Coles shopping bag with her and handed it to Ricky, said,
‘Number of the guy running the crew’s in there.’ We turned to leave. A boy, about eight-years-old, sprinted out of a bedroom somewhere, laughing. Ricky knelt down, and the kid ran straight into his arms. Ricky hugged him tight, said,
‘Gotta go, Jase. Next time we have a kick in the back.’
‘Cricket.’
‘Ok, cricket, next time, tomorrow I’ll be back.’
Ricky let go of the boy, but the kid latched on to his neck. Ricky laughed and pushed the kid away saying,
‘Come on, Justin, out the bloody door.’
Back in the truck, he said,
‘Not a word,’ the grin disappeared for a few seconds, ‘or you’ll regret it your whole life. I mean it. Not the boss, or Casey, none of the others. We clear?’
‘Clear. Is that kid yours?’
‘No, but I love him like he was.’
‘You live here?’
‘I stay two or three nights a week.’
The shit-eating grin was back.
‘Mate, don’t underestimate Chantelle. She’s one hard bitch. Organises crews all over the fucken state, mate. You want a driver, some muscle, a bashing of some prick. Robberies. Drugs, obviously. She’s got someone to do it. You fuck up, she’ll ruin your life.’
‘Why did you bring me here?’
‘I barely know you, but you’re the most naïve guy I ever met, all smiles handshakes and howdy-do di’
‘But, this isn’t my world.’
‘Alright, it’s a summer job is it? Before you go back to the real world. Mate, there are more psychopaths in business than in jails.’
I got my fifty-dollars cash at the end of the day and bought a stick of Thai buddha for twenty from Ricky. Went home to my one-room studio flat in South Yarra and got stoned.
Maybe a month went by. It was a Monday night. The news started, same old stuff, then a story about a heist at Chadstone Shopping Centre. Two guards bashed. One in a coma. Forty thousand stolen. Police asking for information from the public. No CCTV.
Shit.
A week goes by. Another Monday. Me and Ricky again. Driving out to Footscray for a job cleaning up after a mobile disco in a church hall.
I said to him, ‘I saw the news last week, the job at the Chaddy Shopping Centre. Was it you?’
‘What’d you reckon?’
‘Yes.’
We cleaned up the hall pretty quick. Had an hour to get back to another job back over the Westgate Bridge in Malvern.
‘I need to check on something around here. Won’t take long,’ he said.
‘We pulled up outside a weatherboard house in Yarraville— peeling paint and a huge uncut hedge across the front so you couldn’t see the front door, window, nothing.
‘I might stay in the car,’ I said.
‘No way. C’mon, nothing bad here.’
A guy in a leather waistcoat, bald, face tattoos, opened the door. Ricky nodded,
‘Nathan, going to let me in?’
The guy pulled the door wide open. Ricky walked in. I followed. Nathan came behind me.
In the lounge room, the curtains were drawn and it was dark, the air filled with pungent dope smoke. A guy with long hair sat on a black, cracked leather couch. TV on with the sound muted. Two Dobermans were strutting around like they were looking for a place to sit. I hated those dogs; they scared the shit out of me. One of them started on a low long growl. The guy with long hair, stood up, saying,
‘Shut it, shut it.’ The dog lay down. ‘Bitches,’ he said to me, ‘they’re more protective, more jealous than male dogs, you get it?
‘Yeah.’
‘My name’s Anton.’
I nodded.
Anton said to Ricky,
‘Let’s go outside’
To me he said,
‘Just be cool, sit down and the dogs won’t bother you.’
I sat on a brown sofa.
He and Ricky walked out of the room.
I sat there for ten or fifteen minutes not game to move a muscle. The bitch had started to growl again, and I needed a piss badly. I heard raised voices and swearing. A door slammed somewhere. The dogs started barking and growling. I sat dead still. Ricky came back into the lounge, said,
‘Let’s go, let’s go.’
I looked at him and then the dogs and he said,
‘Don’t worry, just get up, follow me.’
I walked stiffed-backed out of the lounge down the hallway, all the while thinking the dogs would run me down. Nathan came up behind me fast, grabbed my shoulder, and I froze. He said,
‘Door’s locked. Need to let you out.’
Shit.
I walked out, turned around, and Ricky pushed past Nathan with that shit-eating grin and said,
‘Those bloody stupid tattoos, you…’
‘Careful lover. Careful. Remember where you are. Who I am.’
Ricky laughed and I followed him to the truck. He started the engine, said,
‘Prick, bloody prick.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘That job at Chaddy. That guy with the tattoos, he hit the guard, put him in hospital, a coma. Supposed to be a nice, easy job. Told him he was an idiot. Chantelle knows. That guy in there, in that house with the long hair; he’s her best guy. I go to bed with her, but this guy makes her money. I told him the cops would be onto us. Said I’d lag him in if he ever came near me or the boy. You met, Jason, the boy at Chantelle’s house.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said more confused than ever.
Two or three weeks went by. Ricky and I worked together every day. He’d explain the world to me, and I’d listen making my own mind up later about what he’d told me.
On a stinking hot day later than month we went back to Chantelle’s place during the early morning. The guy with long hair was there. Ricky shoved past him and into the hot lounge room. No fan to be seen. He said to Chantelle,
‘What the hell is he doing here?’
‘Working. You don’t own me.’
I could hear the Dobermans barking somewhere. The guy with long hair said to me,
‘Don’t piss yourself, they’re out in the car.’
Ricky turned on the guy said,
‘You, get the hell out, now. Now!’
The guy smirked and Chantelle said,
‘Too far Ricky, too far.’
Long hair said goodbye to Chantelle, turned and left. Chantelle said,
‘Cold drink in the fridge, Ricky.’
‘Fuck that guy.’
‘He’s a keeper, Rick. Doesn’t get squeamish on jobs. Does what has to be done.’
‘We got work to do.’ He grabbed me by the arm, said,
‘Out, let’s go.’
Ricky wasn’t at work the next day or the day after that. I asked Casey where he was.
‘Got locked up,’ Casey said.
‘What? What happened?’
‘Cops charged with him with kiddy fiddling. That young boy at the house in Oakleigh with his girl, Chantelle. She put him into the cops.’
‘It’s not true,’ I said. ‘It’s not true. I saw them together. No way.’
I remembered what Ricky had said to me in the truck the first day I met her. What she was capable of.
‘Justin. Just do the work, mate. Best not talk about it, not with the crew or me, ok?’
‘Alright, alright. I get it.’
I thought about Ricky hugging the boy to him. The boy, totally unafraid. I couldn’t believe it was true.
I went to work day after day. Was teamed again with Ahmed. A big, lazy guy who moved like a sloth and had no sympathy for Ricky. I started hating the job.
The trial came three months later. Ricky went to jail. Hard time. Maximum-security—no prison farm for Ricky. I quit the firm and got a job in a call centre. Went to university, which was always the plan.
About seven or eight years later, I ran into Casey at Chadstone Shopping Centre. The scene of the hold-up that no-one was ever charged for and I asked her,
‘What happened to Ricky?’
She sighed heavily, said,
‘He made an impression on you, didn’t he?’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Short version. Ricky got out of jail, went to see Chantelle, who had a new boyfriend, and he told Ricky to get lost. But Ricky keeps trying to see her and the young boy. New boyfriend threatens him again. Chantelle, the bloody crim, she gets an AVO served on Ricky. Ricky can’t get work. I feel sorry for him, give him three days a week. One night he climbs the back fence at Chantelle’s place, and the boyfriend thinks he’s a burglar, or so he said, and he clobbers Ricky over the head with a shovel. Kills him.’
‘Jesus.’
‘There’s a bit more. Boyfriend tells the cops his version, they believe him, and there’s no trial. Self-defense. Happy now?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Thanks.’
We went our separate ways.
I continued on at university for several months, studying hard and making a life living in a share house. But I got sacked from the call centre for taking too many days off, and the bills started coming in, and the Abstudy money wasn’t enough. I looked around for part time work but couldn’t find a job. I rang Casey, and she said,
‘We need someone, you know what it’s like. People coming and going.’
‘I know. I remember.’
‘You sure about this. Last time didn’t work out so well.’
‘I’m sure.’
by 
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Great story, Sean. Loved the dialog.