A Run Of Luck
Since July two years ago I’ve had a large and ongoing run of good luck. It begun late one Sunday night when I was out walking my girlfriend’s dog. The dog’s name was Prince. He was small and fluffy, a Caboodle or a Peekinauzer or some other stupid, made-up name to go with the expensive cross breed. As you can probably tell I am not a big dog fan. I don’t hate them. Actually, I feel sorry for them because this journey we humans are taking them on seems to be right away from what a dog should be. Dogs shouldn’t be carried around in handbags, I’m not sure any animal should. But that said, I just can’t see their supposed indispensability that others do. I don’t for a minute buy the ‘unconditional love’ line either. All love has a limit.
Besides what is so great about unconditional love anyway? I’d rather think I have earned any love I receive. Unconditional anything sounds like a serious case of dangerous hero worship and the attention of the unselective or unthinking.
Anyway, Penny was interstate on business for five days so earlier she had dropped Prince off at my townhouse along with his bed and his food and his bowl and a variety of chew toys some of which squeaked annoyingly each time Prince chewed them. He seemed to chew them a lot. Looking after her dog was a big step and Penny and I had discussed this escalation in our relationship first as she was unsure about whether to leave Prince with me or her elderly mother.
This was because one Sunday morning after we had been dating for a few weeks I had said, after observing Penny patiently groom Prince’s curly coat before we went out for breakfast,
“I don’t really get the whole dog thing. I mean dogs themselves are fine but the way people carry on about “fur babies”, carry them around in bags and stuff just seems bizarre to me. I mean if people care so much about dogs why do they spend thousands on some dogs while other dogs that could be had for nothing get put down every day because no one wants them. Makes no sense.”
Of course this was not the first time I had said this. I said it to all my dog owning friends. I wasn’t trying to be a smart arse, it genuinely baffled me how people couldn’t see the weird disconnect and how a lot of dog owning is more about the owner’s needs not the dog’s.
Penny stopped brushing Prince and from her position on the rug in front of the TV turned and pinned me with her beautiful blue eyes now turned cold and unfriendly.
“You do know opinions are supposed to be like dicks. You know, you can have one but that doesn’t mean you can wave it in people’s faces. A lot of people get a lot of joy from their dogs. I know sometimes people go over the top but maybe those people just really need the affection that dogs bring. Just because you like your own company doesn’t mean that everyone can enjoy being by themselves.”
I dropped it. After all the dog was hers not mine and Prince and I actually got along as far as it went. At least she didn’t let Prince sleep on her bed which would have been a deal breaker and who knows, maybe Prince was happy that there was someone who didn’t fuss over him and talk to him like he was a first-born child, long desired and only recently arrived against all odds. Penny and I didn’t talk about it again until she asked me to look after Prince whilst she was away.
We were talking on the phone mid-week on one of the nights we did not see each other.
“I have to work out of the Sydney office for all of next week. Are you up for looking after Prince while I’m gone?” She added after a pause and I knew there would be a wry smile on her face as she said. “It would be good for you.”
I think she really meant good for us, but of course I said yes. I’m not an idiot and she was starting to be important to me. Penny was right and I was self-aware enough to recognise that I tended to be selfish and want things my way. Time with Prince was supposed to help cure those things and I dare say make me more desirable as a long-term proposition. Love me, love my dog, as someone once sung.
The first time that I went to walk Prince I discovered the one thing that Penny had forgot to bring over was his lead. I thought for a while as I had no intention of buying a new one. As a make-do I found some old orange clothesline in the garage and cut a length before tying it to the metal loop in his collar.
It was late on night two of the Prince stayover and I was going to bed when I remembered that Prince hadn’t had his final walk around the block so he could relieve himself against as many trees, poles and fences as his bladder contents would allow.
I cursed but determined to do the right thing I got rugged up. It had been raining earlier and a faint drizzle was blowing in from the bay on a cold, south breeze. Prince was more than ready though and as we stepped through the front door onto the footpath we only made a metre’s progress before his leg was cocked and bursts of urine were hitting the fence post. A gust of wind chilled my cheeks. It was a wind my dad called a lazy wind. Going around you was too much work; it just wanted to go through you.
Prince and I started walking towards the bright lights of the main north south road almost three blocks down. Everyone else in the street was inside, blinds closed against the inhospitable night. After a block, Prince calmed down, got more selective over targets and we started to make some progress rambling down the street. By the end of the second block, snug in heavy jacket, scarf, old ski gloves and beanie, I was enjoying the feeling of being the lone observer, almost a watchman on my street. Prince waddled beside me with a small dog’s self-importance and I decided with myself again that the only dog worth having was a canine of size and power like an Irish Wolfhound, or Alsatian, at least a kelpie, something that a watchman, a man who strode the dark streets alone would choose as a companion. A real dog in other words.
Just in front of us on the corner of our street and the main road was a half-built apartment block. Two and half stories tall, it was just a shell of concrete slabs and pillars and unfinished block walls. There had been no activity on the site for at least twelve months. Money had become tight and the developer had gone broke leaving the street with a half-built eyesore, overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a temporary chainwire fence that was starting to become unstable. I suppose kids played in there, maybe the occasional homeless person went in but tonight it was in both darkness and light depending on the one streetlight opposite and any side illumination from the passing headlights of the sparse traffic.
I was about to turn back when Prince, who had finally lost interest in pissing, saw a cat that had emerged from the next-door apartment block and was now going to investigate the building site, probably to have its own leisurely toilet stop. Prince leapt forward and my knot tying the clothesline leash to Prince’s collar gave way with embarrassing ease. Prince, yapping frantically, took off. The cat took one look at him and vanished into the long grass of the derelict site with Prince in hot pursuit. Cursing my own incompetence with the basics of knot tying and debating with myself as to how badly I wanted to follow Prince, I started walking towards the overgrown allotment.
Then a car roared down the main road. It was one of those small Japanese cars heavily modified, lowered, made louder and it passed across the intersection with its twin exhausts roaring so I only saw it for a second. Then there was a mighty screech as the car’s driver locked up the car’s brakes, there was a distant rumble for a few seconds and then the engine roared again. The sound got louder; the car was reversing back. Without thinking I stepped in to darkness and waited. The car came back into view and parked on the main road right on the corner outside the building site. The passenger door opened, and a figure jumped out. All I could see were grey tracksuit pants, white sneakers, and a black hoodie. The person glanced around, then quickly tossed what looked like two plastic shopping bags over the fence and into the tall weeds before jumping back in the car. They barely got in before the driver floored the accelerator and the engine spat and snarled as the car fishtailed south again. I could hear the driver gunning the engine between gear changes and then, just as the engine note started to fade, the doppler effect of police sirens took over. Before I could move, two police cars, one unmarked except for a grille and dash full of flashing blue lights, shot through the intersection heading south in pursuit.
Why do dumb criminals always want to advertise their presence? If I was a criminal I would drive a normal white car, unmodified, nothing fancy, wonderfully anonymous. I looked around at the surrounding buildings. The terrace houses opposite, the block of apartments looked just the same. No one had come out on to a balcony, there seemed to be no more lights on and no twitched blinds.
I jogged across the road to the dark back corner of the vacant lot and called out Prince’s name and to his credit, he came out of the darkness immediately if a little sheepishly. I was that pleased I patted him, enveloping him with praise for the first time ever which must have confused him as he allowed me to reattach the lead to his collar. I thought about taking him home before coming back but something told me there wouldn’t be time. I started to open the child’s sized gap between the fence panels. I didn’t so much have a plan, wasn’t really thinking, more going with a feeling that everything that was happening was somehow preordained, and when I went through the easily widened opening my feet were moving like they were being controlled by someone else, perhaps from a drone hovering somewhere in the skittering clouds above me. I started looking for the shopping bags. I was moving quickly and didn’t notice how wet my jeans were becoming from the sodden knee-high weeds. Someone would be coming for those bags soon.
I had tracked the bags in flight and even in the shadows I found the first one in seconds. It was filled with plastic bricks of white powder and there were smaller sandwich bags with the same powder. I tied the handles back up and put it back in the weeds, glad for the gloves which were now doing more than keeping my fingers warm.
Finding the other bag took longer. I was getting nervous. With a shaky hand, I pulled out my mobile, turned on the torch, and there it was just a metre away, hidden in a narrow wedge of deeper darkness at the wall’s foundation. I turned off the torch, grabbed the bag and came back around the wall into some shallow streetlight.
With shaking hands, I undid the tied handles and peered inside. There were bank notes, in big wads tied with thick rubber bands. The bag was almost full.
It was then that two cars turned on to my street from the main road and pulled up at the site. These cars were bigger, quieter, and driven within the speed limits. I froze, hidden from view behind the half-built wall. The engines were turned off, their lights went dark and I sneaked a peek around the wall. Quietly, three men using their phone torches and the fourth with a powerful hand torch got out of the cars and quickly, efficiently began to look for a way through the fencing. Prince barked once, twice which was annoying until I realised that he was giving me a few extra seconds to escape. I undid the lead from his collar and Prince charged off again, this time towards the four men who quickly pinned him in their torch beams. From my position behind the wall, I could see Prince barking hysterically but covering his options, he was also waving his tail. I shook some of the wads of cash on to the wet grass, then dropping the bag I grabbed five of the thick wads of notes and creeped the other way, diagonally, to the brightly lit front corner of the lot and got a break. There was a bigger hole in the fence, but it was clearly illuminated in the bright streetlight. With no real choice I went through it, all the time waiting for yells from the men behind me. Now I was on the footpath of the main road. I thought quick. I jumped a low fence into the yard of the neighbour who fronted the main road and shared a side fence with the building site. I took off my beanie, put the bundles of cash into it and hid it under the ratty hedge. Then I ran down the side of the house praying there were no dogs or gates. I ran into the back yard and my luck still held. The fence between the yard and the side fence of the apartment block was also low enough to climb. As quickly and quietly as I could I climbed over and jumped on to the unit block’s overgrown side path.
Taking a deep breath I tried to think of a story. I had to. Much as I disliked the dog, I liked Penny. High on adrenalin, I ran down the path and back on to my street, emerging some twenty metres behind the four men who stood in a circle at the back of the one of the cars. Luckily they had their backs to me and I could pretend I was approaching the area for the first time. One of the men was squatting, holding Prince by the collar who looked pleased to have found some new friends and he was jumping up, trying to lick his captor’s face. One of the other men was putting something in the car boot. I presumed the two shopping bags.
Attack being the best defence, I jogged towards them and yelled out with as much fake anger as I could muster.
“Hoy! That’s my dog.”
No doubt I surprised them. They all jumped, one cursed and I swear another reached for something in his coat as they all swung around.
“I’ve been looking for him everywhere. He got off his lead, back up there chasing a cat.”
I pointed behind me back up the street and kept walking towards them. Prince, right on queue, started wiggling to get free. I was going for amiable dickhead, figuring that would be the best persona for the situation.
I wouldn’t have let him go but the man who was holding Prince did and the dog ran to me. I took the clothesline out of my pocket and retied the end to his collar.
“Thanks for finding him. Need to get back to the missus, she will be wondering what I am up to.”
Three of the four men looked at the guy who had been putting the bag and bundles in the boot. He shrugged, mumbled something that I didn’t catch and one of the others, who struggled to master a smile when he stared at me said,
“Sure no problem. You didn’t see anyone else walking around in the last fifteen minutes did you?”
“No mate, heard the cops come screaming down the main drag, a while ago, saw them too, they were fucking flying but I was still a couple blocks away and looking for this little shit.” I paused.
“Why you guys lost a dog too?”
I was being cheeky but I kind of wanted to know what they would say.
Three ugly faces hardened and one broke into a grin.
He was the one who started walking towards me.
He was thick but not real tall, about mid 40s but in the semi dark he looked plenty scary enough and I thought I could be in real trouble. He reached into his coat pocket when he was a couple of metres away and pulled out what I thought was a wallet until he came close enough for me to see that once unfolded it was a police ID badge.
“Sir, we are busy here with police business. If you didn’t see anybody else around in the last ten, fifteen minutes or have any information that might be of assistance I would appreciate it if you left the area and went home to your wife.”
He put his ID away before I could see a name but I knew I was being too clever for my own good.
“Yes of course,” and I turned tail and headed for home feeling his eyes boring into my back.
When we got back home it was now well after midnight and I still needed to go back and collect the money I had left bundled in my beanie. How long were these guys going to hang around for? Prince curled up in his cozy dog bed and fell sound asleep. I waited another hour and then changed my clothes, putting on darker tracksuit bottoms and a fleece top and runners and then, leaving Prince emitting little doggy snores that could, at a stretch be thought of as cute, I went to get the money.
This time I walked right around the block before coming to the house that faced the main road and was next door to the building site from the other direction. The main road was quiet now. It was just before 2.00am and I jogged around the corner into my street with my heart pounding, but as I had hoped the cars and the men were gone. The cat was back though, sitting in the middle of the footpath in front of the flats. It crouched down, as surprised as the men had been earlier at my sudden appearance. Ignoring it, I ran back down the side path of the unit block and backtracking jumped into the back yard of the house, ran through, found my beanie in the dark at the base of one of the fenceposts and after taking the bundles of cash out and zipping them into my fleece’s pockets I jammed the beanie on my head and jogged for home.
When I got home I put the kettle on and pulled the money out of my pockets. Each of the five bricks of money was a pile of one hundred bank notes reversed in tens. I counted them twice and relished the different feel on my fingers that the crisp, less used hundred-dollar bills had compared to other banknotes. Criminals are lousy at counting because instead of $50000 I had $50200 on my kitchen table. Not that I was complaining.
After counting the money I turned off the light, sat in the dark, drank my tea and thought a lot. I took the money down the internal stairs to the garage and put it into the large surfboard travel bag, nestling the bundles between the fins of one of my surfboards. It was one of two that was stored up on racking in the garage. The money was as safe there as anywhere.
Just before dawn I slipped into bed so filled with nervous energy it took me another half an hour to go to sleep. Yet I awoke feeling refreshed to a cold but brilliantly sunny morning.
About 8.00am before I turned my laptop on for the day’s work, I walked Prince down the street following our path from the previous night. I had thought of something that I wanted to check. I got to the corner outside the abandoned building site, loitered with Prince and very carefully checked any surrounding buildings for security cameras. We crossed over and did the same but saw nothing that could have recorded my presence or the guys in the cars the night before. Just before we walked back home, a Ute pulled up outside the site and two guys dressed like tradies got out and without having to look, found the hole in the fence that we had all used the night before. Under the guise of measuring and pointing they acted out a charade of preparing for some new work. Careful not to show any real interest I pretended that there was something was wrong with Prince’s collar, reasonable enough given my skill with knots, and squatting down, I fiddled with the collar and lead connection while watching the two men commence another search for the missing notes. I got up and left them to it. As far as I could tell they never looked at Prince or me.
On the Friday afternoon Penny flew in from interstate and our cosy threesome was reunited. But something felt different, sometimes you know and you just don’t want to admit it to yourself. Other times you’re not sure and if you just wait a while things might become obvious. Penny asked me how I now felt about Prince after a whole week together. I said that our two countries could move forward to a shared future based on mutual values etc blah blah. She did not find this as funny as I did.
Two weeks later Penny told me that I was dumped. She said she had found someone she wanted to be with more. Also, she couldn’t be with someone who did not share her feelings about dogs. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. The only thing I was sure of was that her Sydney trip had not been all business. Luckily, I hadn’t told her about the money.
I was lonely for a few weeks and felt stupid when I realised I missed Prince as much as Penny. We had of course, shared a secret adventure and I was surprised at how much his scampering and yap, yap, yap had become tolerable if not adorable. It wasn’t heartbreak though, so after a very long and enjoyable surfing holiday, I adopted a cat and named her Pennywise.
