Casino

by Peter Corris

  I gave him Scott’s phone number and a thumbnail sketch. He wrote notes with a gold pen on a sheet of letterhead paper. Then he got up and shook my hand. ‘Your ride’s waiting. I’ll get someone to take you down. And thanks, Cliff, thanks a million.’

  2

  That night, Glen and I ate dinner in an Italian restaurant in Petersham not far from her flat. Glen teaches part-time at Goulburn police academy and conducts refresher courses for cops around the city. We get to spend two or three nights a week together, usually at my place, occasionally at hers. She’d had a promotion and we were celebrating with whitebait and salad and Frascati.

  ‘Don’t mean to upstage you, love, but I got offered a job for two hundred grand per today.’

  Glen put down her fork with a load of whitebait on it. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Eat,’ I said. ‘You’ve been skipping meals again. I can tell. You look hungry but you’re out of practice at eating.’

  She took a forkful of fish. Glen half-likes, half-hates her job, works too hard at it and runs herself ragged. She feels guilty about not being an operational police officer, the result of a bullet wound in the arm that still sometimes troubles her. She thinks she’d like to do something else but doesn’t know what. She’s not interested in having children—just as well since I’d be the world’s worst father. We have a good time but she worries about the future. We ate; I drank more than my share of the wine and told her about O.C. and the casino.

  ‘Bet you didn’t take it,’ she said.

  I said, ‘How’d you guess?’ and wiped up the oil with a piece of bread.

  ‘Can’t see you going off to work in a three-piece suit. Besides, it’d be a seven day a week job.’

  ‘I work seven days a week now.’

  ‘When you work. You were right to knock it back. It wouldn’t suit you.’

  ‘The money’d suit me. We could go to the Greek islands and Turkey. I want to see the Crimea and Gallipoli.’

  ‘Bloodthirsty bastard. Anyway, they’re all crooked, those casinos—money launderers, tax-dodgers, you know the form.’

  ‘They seemed to be on the up and up.’

  Glen poured herself some more wine, surprised to see that I hadn’t emptied the bottle. ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Come on, Cliff, they were romancing you. Who’s behind them? And who’s behind them? And so on. It’ll be dirty somewhere, that’s for sure.’

  ‘The government’s happy, apparently.’

  ‘Hah!’

  I let it go, she was probably right and there was no point in arguing over my slight degree of doubt. I told her that I’d recommended Scott Galvani and filled her in a bit on his history. He’d been driving taxis when I met him and he helped me out of a nasty spot. He went on to get himself a law degree, the TAFE private enquiry agent’s certificate and to run a fairly successful one-man agency for a few years. I knew that he was smart, funny and ambitious. I thought that a year as O.C.’s number three man would amuse him and the dough would be welcome—he’d married a few years back and had recently fathered twin daughters.

  ‘How old is he?’ Glen asked.

  ‘About thirty,’ I said. I told her about Oscar Cartwright’s facelift and how youth seemed to be almost a theme of the casino. I explained that I’d had trouble understanding some of the computerised systems. Scott would eat all that up.

  ‘Sounds right for him,’ Glen said. ‘They’ll probably play it straight for the first year or so. Your mate should be able to take the money and walk. Might even make some useful contacts.’

  ‘So why wouldn’t it be right for me?’

  ‘You answered that yourself. You’re too old to change. Don’t look at me like that. I love you the way you are. I don’t want you to change and I don’t particularly want to go to Turkey. Sorry. Let’s have coffee.’

  I laughed. There’s something about Glen’s tough, forthright manner that amuses me. And I always know where I am with her—in good odour or bad, and why. I can’t say that about the other women I’ve been seriously involved with. It made for a good, uninhibited relationship with plenty of laughs and serious efforts on both sides to make it work. We had our coffee and walked back to her place. The storm that looked to be building had subsided after a little cleansing rain. It was a nice night. We went to bed and made love twice before falling asleep, something that doesn’t happen all that often and is very heartening when it does. Different positions, too.

  Scott rang me at home two days later.

  ‘Hey, Cliff, thanks a million.’

  ‘You sound like O.C. already.’

  ‘He’s a character, isn’t he? Seriously, Cliff, I’ve got to thank you. Things were getting pretty lean what with Gina not working and the twins and all. And you must know how business has been. I’ll be able to hire some help, give Gina an easier time.’

  ‘Good, how are the kids?’

  ‘Just great. One’s as dark as me and the other’s as fair as Gina.’

  ‘So what’re you calling them—Cher and Madonna?’

  ‘Claire and Rosa. Listen, Cliff, just out of interest. Why’d you knock it back?’

  Fair question. The weather had broken and we’d had a day and a half of heavy, warm rain. The damp walls were sweating and a stain on the living room ceiling that I liked to think was vaguely the shape of Australia was spreading to become more like Africa. I’d had trouble starting the Falcon after a quiet day at the office and, as I’d suspected, the non-payer had run true to form. A few phone calls suggested that he’d become a non-resident of our fair city. Still, I didn’t have to wear a three-piece suit or get my hair cut more than once every two months.

  ‘Too old,’ I said. ‘Also, I thought your Mafia contacts’d make you the right man for the job. Think you can handle it?’

  ‘No worries. But a year’ll probably do me. Be good for my book. Have I told you about that?’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘Dago Days: The memoirs of an Italian private eye. I’ve got to go, Cliff. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Love to Gina, Cher and Madonna.’

  He laughed and hung up. I’d been to the wedding and could remember Gina clearly. She was a tall, fair-haired girl with a smooth, slightly olive complexion. Striking. Galvani, Australian-born of Sicilian parents who had wanted to give him a distinctively Australian first name, was nuggetty and dark. He had been a near-Olympic standard wrestler and his personal library featured shelves of Penguin classics. He claimed to have finished Moby-Dick, making him the only person I knew who had. I got drunk at the wedding and danced, something I never do when sober, but I couldn’t remember who with. I must have gone on my own because it happened in the hiatus between Helen Broadway and Glen Withers. A bad time.

  The rain stopped and the walls sweated less and the ceiling stain retreated, ending up about the size of South America. The Falcon performed better in the dry weather. Glen did her teaching and ran her courses and enjoyed her promotion. I did the usual things—a spot of bodyguarding, a little summons-serving, and acted as a consultant for a documentary film-maker who was making a movie about private enquiry agents—strictly off-camera stuff. Glen bought herself a CD player for her birthday because she was flush and I bought her several CDs because I wasn’t—Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Big Chill, that sort of thing.

  I heard from Scott once, a few weeks after he took the job. He rang and asked me to run a check on a player at the casino whose behaviour was giving them some concern.

  ‘I can put a bit of this work your way, Cliff, if you’re interested,’ he said.

  ‘I’m interested.’ It’s not often that doing someone else a good turn brings results for yourself.

  The man in question was a toy importer with political aspirations. His products were shoddy and illegally labelled, and his solid financial front turned out to be a tissue-thin facade of debts and deals that would fall down at the first puff of an adverse economic wind. He had some unfortunate personal habits, too, like steering his BMW convertible wit
h his feet when he had a skinful. I reported to Scott and I got a cheque accompanied by a card—‘with the thanks and compliments of Scott Galvani, Security Manager, Sydney Casinos Ltd’. Very nice.

  A few weeks later I was driving back from a job in Campbelltown and switched on the 11 p.m. news. I heard that police had cordoned off an area of the Balmain peninsula and were searching for the men who had shot and wounded another man in a house in Louisa Road. The victim was Scott Galvani, thirty-one, of Rozelle. ‘Mr Galvani,’ the newsreader said, ‘is a former private detective, now head of security at The Sydney Casino.’

  I used the mobile phone to find out where Scott was and wished I had a siren as I drove down Parramatta Road towards the RPA hospital. When I got there they told me that he had died without regaining consciousness.

  3

  I went to the funeral with Glen. The church was in Manly and they buried him in the cemetery in Fairlight. The day was hot and the business was done with all the Roman Catholic trimmings, making it slow and exhausting for the principals and tedious for the others. The Galvanis and Spadonis appeared not to like each other very much, being southerners and northerners, but they were united in their grief. There were a lot of kids who grew fractious in the church and unruly in the graveyard amid the white plaster Madonnas and ornate tombs. I found it all ghoulish. I knew that Scott thought religion was for the simple-minded and that he’d be as pissed-off at all this carry-on as I was.

  Glen was moved by it. She looked elegant in her dark green dress, one source of pleasure in all the nonsense. My suit was a few shades too light in colour and somewhere along the line I’d undone my top shirt button and loosened my tie so that I was looking a bit dishevelled when the dirt hit the lid. This drew disapproving glares from a few of the veiled, black-clad matrons. Gina was surrounded by them and I scarcely caught a glimpse of her.

  ‘That’s it,’ I whispered to Glen. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You have to go back to the house,’ she said. ‘It’s the decent thing to do.’

  So we joined the procession back to the Galvani residence in Balgowlah Heights. Scott’s father had done well for himself, building up from being an immigrant pastrycook to becoming one of the biggest manufacturers of pasta in Australia. They’d long ago made the jump from Leichhardt to Middle Harbour and the huge, over-elaborate house was a monument to that transition. Set on a double block with high fences all around and a three-metre brick wall in front, it resembled a fortress. I parked between a white Mercedes and an oyster-coloured Mazda with leopard-skin seat covers.

  ‘Scott didn’t grow up here,’ I explained to Glen as we mounted some marble steps. ‘In fact, he seldom visited.’

  ‘Shush.’

  In my discomfort I’d been speaking too loudly, and a woman on the Galvani side had heard me. I loosened my tie a fraction more and we went on up into the house. It was crowded and noisy. The church service and funeral might have been pompous and solemn, but the Italian version of the wake celebrated the continuation of life, especially for the men. The wine was flowing freely and I poured a few down quickly. I wasn’t hungry, but plenty of the other guests were and the mountains of food quickly become hills and then small heaps. There were a couple of Australian-Italian cops present and they fell into conversation with Glen, leaving me to wander about with a glass, to stare out through a picture window at the patio, the swimming pool and the tennis court, the manicured flower beds and the bowling green lawn.

  The back garden featured a gilded and enamelled grotto—a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Inside, the pictures had heavy frames; the furniture was all fat, dimpled and padded. There was nothing of Scott here—nothing of his athleticism and scepticism, wit and irreverence, his love of books and good talk. This was all saying Yes, I-love-you, to the angels of success and excess, the god of the bottom line.

  I turned away from the picture window when I heard the wail of an infant. From behind a door came soothing sounds and I stood rooted to the spot, drinking wine, knowing what I was going to see next and dreading it. After a few minutes Gina came through the door. She was wearing a long black dress and a veil, but I could see a few strands of her blonde hair escaping from the confines of the headgear.

  ‘Gina, I ...’

  She pushed the veil up and looked at me. Her wide, generous mouth was set in a hard, thin line and her blue eyes glittered like the enamel on the Virgin’s shrine. The intensity behind them made me take a backward step. My hand felt big, hot and clumsy wrapped around the glass, and my tongue was dry and swollen in my throat. I suddenly felt drunk and incapable. It’s a wonder I didn’t stumble. She swept the veil down and glided past me without a sound as if she was a creature not quite of this world.

  I was badly shaken. I leaned against the silvered, vertically striped wallpaper and tried to regain my composure. I put my glass down on the first level surface I came to, blundered through the house, detached Glen from a small group and almost pulled her through the door and down the steps.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ she protested. ‘We haven’t even spoken to ...’

  I kept yanking her and descending. I had a headache building and I was sweating inside my shirt and suit coat. I pulled off my tie and ripped the stitches in the jacket tugging it off.

  ‘Cliff, for God’s sake, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Will you drive, please?’

  We were crossing the bridge before I could compose myself enough to speak. I told Glen about the look in Gina’s eyes. The disdain, the contempt. The hatred.

  ‘She’d be in a state something like hysteria,’ Glen said. ‘Something as sudden as that, two little kids ... It’s a female nightmare come true. You can’t take it on board this way, Cliff.’

  ‘She blames me.’

  ‘She has to blame someone or something. A couple of weeks ago she was probably singing your praises along with Scott. My mate Cliff, who got me this beaut job ...’

  ‘Don’t, love.’

  ‘Snap out of it, then. She’s young. She’ll recover. That place reeks of money. They’ll see her right. She gave him children ...’

  ‘Daughters,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure they count.’

  Glen gunned the motor, police-driver style, and sent the car whipping around the turn into Wentworth Park Road. ‘Are you trying to pick a fight?’

  I leaned back in the seat. ‘I’m too pissed to fight.’

  ‘Probably got something to do with your over-reaction. Let’s go up to the beach for a couple of days. You might catch your first flathead.’

  We went to Glen’s house at Whitebridge where I ran on the beach, swam, read, drank wine and didn’t catch any fish. I had trouble letting go of the feelings that had been stirred up in me by the sound of Scott’s daughters and the look in the eyes of his wife. I was morose, not good company, and Glen and I had more than the usual number of disagreements.

  Back in Sydney and on my own for a time while Glen was on a tour of country police stations, I rang my chief police contact, Frank Parker, and asked him if any progress was being made on the murder case. As far as the press was concerned, the case had got cold very quickly.

  ‘Nothing,’ Frank said. ‘We don’t even know why he was there. He got out of his car and two men approached him. One of them shot him twice. They drove off in a car the witness couldn’t identify. The descriptions are useless—medium this, ordinary that. You know. And that’s all.’

  ‘What about speculation?’

  ‘Who knows? Connected to the job at the casino? Or some case he was working on or had worked on? We’ve got good people on it, believe me, but so far there’s nothing. If anything happens I’ll let you know.’

  I kept busy and tried to forget that look in Gina Galvani’s blue eyes. The jobs trickled in and I did them and paid bills with the proceeds. Financially, I was treading water and I sometimes felt that I was doing the same in my relationship with Glen. A card appeared in my letterbox informing me that ABC Roofs & Guttering Ltd had detected damage to the capping
and coping of my tile roof and inviting me to call them for a quote on the cost of repairs. I called and they quoted. I couldn’t afford it. Everything seemed to be on hold.

  I was in my office on a cool Monday morning, about to go out to post two reminder invoices to clients and to eat lunch, when the phone rang.

  ‘Hardy.’

  ‘This is Gina Galvani.’

  I clutched the phone so tightly my knuckles cracked. ‘Yes, Gina.’

  ‘I’m in the city and I want to see you. Can I come now?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You’ve got the address?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She cut the call and I replaced the phone, moving almost in slow motion. The voice hadn’t been quite as cold as the eyes, but cold enough. I forgot about the invoices and lunch. I tidied the office, which took only a few seconds, while my mind raced. Gina, I knew, was in her late twenties and well-educated. She’d been a publicity officer in a government department when Scott had met her and he’d boasted of her languages, wide reading, extensive travel experience and sophistication. Surely she wasn’t going to come in with a weapon and express that hatred I’d glimpsed? I dismissed the idea, but it lingered worryingly around the edges as I brewed a pot of coffee, rinsed out two mugs and set out the sugar and the long-life milk. I was as nervous as a first-up parachutist when I heard her footsteps in the passageway.

  I opened the door before she could knock. ‘Come in, Gina.’

  I won’t say she gave me a friendly smile, but it wasn’t the malocchio either. She didn’t appear to be carrying any weapons. She walked into the office and sat in the client chair without brushing it down or testing it for soundness, indicating some kind of confidence in me. She put her bag on the floor and crossed her legs. She wore a royal blue blouse with a darker blue skirt. Her fair hair was tied up inside a black scarf and she wore dark tinted stockings with black shoes, medium heels. I made all these professional observations as I was negotiating my way behind my desk.