your taxes, don’t send any filth through the post, it’s legal enough.’
‘What’s in it for you? I mean, to be frank, you’re being much more co-operative than I expected,’ I said.
‘Blood’s thicker than water.’
‘With the greatest respect, Dick—’
‘Let me finish. Blood’s thicker than water and therefore a good basis for a business relationship. This is what you do: you get some stock produced, sell it in Sydney. You pay all your own expenses and keep whatever you can make. In return you pay me a royalty for use of the idea, say ten percent of your gross sales. Twice-yearly payments would suit me. Cash, of course. And, naturally, I pay you the same for any of your ideas that I use.’
‘All right then, I’ll think about giving it a go, for a trial period. But listen, Dick, there’s a mate of mine, he’s good at thinking up schemes and shit. How would you feel about him coming in on it?’
‘If you trust him, then so do I. What’s his name?’
‘Max Perkal.’
‘He’d be of the Jewish faith?’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Not at all. I was just going to say, your four-by-two tends to be skilled at this sort of thing. Good money managers. He could be a real asset.’
Max Perkal was a pretty fair musician, he knew loads about the entertainment game, and he’d never once rooked me, not really. But what he wasn’t one little bit of was a good money manager.
I said to Dick, ‘Yeah, a real asset.’
The following week Dick sent me an ancient battered book called The Business of Life, by T. Whitney Ulmer. According to the cover it was a book of original mottoes, epigrams, oracles, orphic sayings and preachments for Men of Enterprise and Seekers of Wisdom.
In his accompanying letter Dick said:
Have a good look at this almanac, Bill. It has been my constant companion and adviser in business and all other areas of my life. It is the key to knowledge and financial success. It has helped immeasurably in attaining clarity of thought and prudence in action, and it may even help you make your fortune.
The way to use it is this: whenever you are facing a dilemma, are confused, unsure or otherwise at a loss, you hold the problem in your mind, close your eyes and open the book at random, and then read the preachment or motto. I cannot tell you how or why it works, but it usually comes up with an answer which is uncannily pertinent to the problem.’
I put the letter down and opened the book. It matters not whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice, I read.
Max didn’t take much convincing to come on board. The dance game was running dead but his cabaret show was firing, especially since he’d added the sultry exotic dancer Lovely Lani to the act. He was on a winning run, so he thought, and the time was right for expanding his enterprises.
We got together, reviewed Dick’s merchandise and then decided to kick off trading with Dick’s plastic monkeys’ paws and the smoking cure. I ordered a dozen boxes of monkeys’ paws from the factory in Hong Kong, and Max had a local printer run up two thousand copies of the smoking cure booklet.
But then Max’s scheming mind really got to work, and at the end of two weeks we had a whole range of mail order items either ready to sell or in production. These included a betting system and two different courses in guitar and piano accordion. We had adverts made up, all ready to go except for a postal address. For Trotguide we had this:
And this one for the back page of the Classics Comics:
And another for Man magazine:
Max had dummied up the guitar and accordion courses from his own collection of tutors, sheet music and old song books. The betting system was something he and a pal of his, Neville, had worked out years before. It had never been known to turn a quid for anyone, but nor had anyone lost too badly with it either. Neville was now a fast-rising Labor barrister, and happy to hand full ownership of the betting system over to Max. In fact, he was insistent he receive no money of any kind from the sale of the system and that his name not be linked with it, nor with any aspect of our enterprise. It’s nice when your friends have faith in you, I told Max.
For our temporary office and storeroom, we had been using the downstairs flat at Perkal Towers, as Max’s block of flats at Bondi Junction was known, but in our third week of business Lovely Lani arrived at his door in tears and announced that she needed somewhere to live. The previous weekend her parents, Greeks, had caught her act, the Tahitian Fire Dance, at the Maroubra Junction Hotel, and now her persona was extremely non grata in the strict orthodox household. So Max, ever the gent, invited her to move into the downstairs flat for a special mate’s-rate rental. Max said we could rent a good room in the city for less than he could pull on the flat.
I checked out city real estate. I’d prefer a room with a view, I told the agent, nothing fancy, maybe Macquarie Street facing the botanical gardens. I spent an afternoon inspecting stately old buildings occupied by accountants, barristers, gynaecologists, and the like. After seeing several horribly expensive such premises, I went back to the real estate office and asked the agent, who could afford to pay rents like that? He said plenty of people. He looked at his watch, asked me did I want to think about it for a while, as he had things to attend to. I told him, listen, there must be something cheaper.
Well, he said, there was a room, downtown. It might better suit my budget, so long as I didn’t mind sharing the premises with chows and lurk merchants. If I wanted to have a look, the place was called the Manning Building. I could get the key from the tenant next door to the empty office, one Murray Liddicoat.
It was a run-down, four-storey building in the Haymarket, backing on to the Capitol Theatre. At street level there were two Chinese restaurants, a disposal store, a shoe shop and a milk bar. There was a laneway out the back where some shifty-looking Chinese blokes were hanging about.
I took the stairs to the first floor, strolled along the corridor past a rag-trade workshop, a supplier of artificial limbs, an elocution teacher, a wig maker, an ‘art studio’, and two charities I’d never heard of. A middle-aged woman walked out of one doorway marked ‘Association of Breeders of British Sheep’. She glanced my way. I said, ‘Excuse me,’ but she hurried away before I could continue.
I knocked on an unmarked door, went inside. There was an old bloke sitting at a bench, a piano accordion in pieces in front of him. I asked where I’d find Murray Liddicoat. He said he didn’t know. I tried three more rooms, got nothing but suspicious looks. I walked slowly back along the hallway, taking in the atmosphere of malpractice and dubious enterprise. It wasn’t Macquarie Street, but I had to admit, it was my kind of place.
I went into the sweatshop, Conni Conn Fashions. A good-looking girl with long straight brown hair was sitting at the front desk. She was reading a paperback, smoking a black cigarette. I said hello.
She slowly turned to face me. Her eyes were brown and bright, despite her serious expression. She was done
