Casino

by Peter Corris

  The cat reminded me that some things never change. I opened one of the tins Glen had bought and it sniffed at it and mewed, probably protesting at the drop in standards from the supposedly-fit-for-humans tuna.

  ‘That was an aberration,’ I told it, ‘in many more ways than one.’

  It ate about half of what I’d doled out, leaving the rest for the cockroaches, before jumping out the window without so much as a grateful leg rub. I trudged up the stairs and fell into bed with Scott’s notebook pushed under the pillow. I fell asleep with the bedside light still on and dreamed that I was working in a Las Vegas casino, wearing a maroon tuxedo with a green ruffled shirt. I kept trying to slip into a toilet to remove the clothes but Carstairs and Ralston continually barred my way. Vita Drewe was a topless croupier, swinging her breasts from side to side as she leaned over the roulette wheel. Winners got to cup their hands around her breasts as she shovelled chips at them. Losers were marched away by Ralston and Carstairs. I must have rolled onto my shoulder because I woke up with pain shooting through my arm and neck. I stumbled downstairs for pain-killers, thankful that the dream had ended.

  I woke up at about nine and made my first mistake of the day by reaching out for Glen. Not good to come up empty on your first move. I calculated I had about seven hours of being a private eye before I had to be a security controller again. I examined my face in the mirror as I shaved. The bruises and puffiness had almost gone and the scratch was little more than a dark line. Glen was right—I was a quick healer.

  Primo Tomasetti used to run a tattoo parlour in Darlinghurst near my office building. I used to rent a parking space from him before the council introduced a sticker system for residents and commercial users. AIDS had done a lot of damage to the tattoo business, what with the heightened awareness of the dangers of contaminated needles and blood, and Primo had switched horses. Unbeknown to me, he had owned the freehold on the building he’d worked out of and he sold it for big money to a developer who’d gone broke trying to turn a buck on the property. Primo, a movie buff but a practical man, had set up a small production company making promotional and instructional videos and films for corporate clients.

  His office was in Bondi Junction, in the shadow of the freeway. I drove out there in the Commodore with Scott’s notebook in my pocket and a hundred questions in my head. Primo’s new office was on the tenth floor in a tower block and his secretary recognised me from earlier visits and told me that he hadn’t come in yet.

  I looked at my watch. ‘It’s after ten.’

  She shrugged. ‘He’s the boss. He’s taken up golf.’

  I groaned. I could just see Primo on a golf course, trying to get his one hundred kilos behind the ball. ‘How long?’ I said.

  Another shrug. ‘Depends. Nine holes—any minute. Eighteen—midday if we’re lucky.’

  Primo breezed in fifteen minutes later. He was wearing checked plus-fours, a pink Lacoste shirt, a Dunlop visor and his white buckskin golf spikes clattered on the floor. When he saw me he almost dropped the oversized bag of Ping clubs.

  ‘Cliff! Cliff! Hey, Cliff, you know what? I got a birdie, an honest to God birdie. You should’ve seen the drive. Like an arrow. Ten centimetres from the hole and pop, in she goes, one putt, one bloody putt for my first ever birdie.’

  ‘I’m happy for you, Primo,’ I said. ‘Are you going to give all your slaves here the day off?’

  He lowered the clubs to the floor and lovingly fingered the seven iron. ‘Slaves, what slaves? All they do around this place is eat lunch and give me the bill. Excepting Suzie. Suzie knows what a day’s work is. If I had five Suzies ...’

  ‘You’d be able to play five days a week instead of two. You’ve got calls coming in, Primo. Better see what Mr Hardy wants and then get on with it.’

  Primo winked at me. ‘See what I mean? A worker. An honest to God worker. Okay. C’mon in, Cliff. I can give you all the time you need.’

  ‘As long as it’s ten minutes,’ Suzie said.

  Primo opened a door and I followed him into his office—big but not flashy, good view towards the city, a few framed awards and honourable mentions on the walls. He plonked himself down in a chair and took off his spikes. He had large, powerful hands that used to draw designs and wield the tattooist’s needle with uncanny skill. It occurred to me that he might be a very good golfer. He wriggled his toes in his socks and took off his visor. There was more grey in his thick hair but he looked a lot better than when he’d worked in Darlinghurst; his body looked solid rather than fat and the tan suited him. He seemed happy and I hadn’t met a whole lot of people looking that way lately.

  ‘So, Cliff. How’s Glen?’

  ‘She’s okay. Am I right in thinking you’re literate in Italian?’

  ‘You wound me deeply. Of course I’m literate in Italian. How many times d’you think I had to write “I love you mother” and “Maria I adore you” on wogs?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘I can read and write it. I correspond with people back there, for God’s sake. I write letters for some of the oldies who can barely spell their own names. How they got houses in Vaucluse and yachts in Rushcutters Bay I’ll never know.’

  I pulled the notebook from my pocket, opened it where the Italian section began and handed it to him.

  ‘Can you read this and translate it?’

  He frowned, got up and scrabbled on his desk for a pair of glasses. When he had them on he looked at the first page, reading for a second or two before looking up. ‘A Sicilian?’

  ‘Right. Is that a problem?’

  ‘No. I can read it.’

  I took a reporter’s tape recorder from my pocket and set it up on the desk ‘Go for your life,’ I said.

  Primo read, stumbling, hesitating, correcting himself, for about fifteen minutes. When he’d finished he dropped the notebook on the desk, wound the tape back and popped the cassette. ‘I could get Suze to type this up for you if you’d like. Wouldn’t have to worry about her hearing it. She sort of goes on automatic pilot—bashes away and doesn’t take a word in.’

  I was staring out the window at the city trying to digest what I’d heard. ‘That’d be great. Thanks.’

  Primo buzzed Suzie in and gave her the instruction. I sensed that she was about to protest but a sideways look at me silenced her. She hurried out and the soft clack of keys started up almost immediately. Primo took a few calls and slid smoothly into his role as deal-maker, oil-pourer and standover man. I could tell that he was enjoying it, but then, he had the gift of enjoying life. He’d enjoyed conceiving the designs and decorating bodies while being a street psychologist and philosopher. I remember him telling me that he referred anyone who wanted to be marked on the face to a psychiatrist. He had only one tattoo himself—a map of the world, about ten centimetres by five, on the underside of his left forearm. ‘That’s all there is,’ he’d told me. ‘That’s everything.’

  He finished a call and hung up. I was still looking at the city, across the leafiness of Bellevue Hill and Woollahra.

  ‘Hey,’ Primo said. ‘You need any help with these people? I know a guy or two who speak the language, know the trails. Just because I don’t live in Leichhardt doesn’t mean I don’t know the scene.’

  I wanted to see the words in print, couldn’t make sense of them in my head. I was jumbling them already, unsure of what I’d heard. ‘Where do you live these days, Primo?’

  ‘Woollahra, near the course. Was at the beach but who needs skin cancer? Say, Cliff, how’d you like to do the odd job for me? Sometimes need a frightener, you know? You’ve got the moves.’

  I spun around, suddenly angry and becoming impatient. ‘Do I look as if I need work? Do I look like a bloody charity case? I’m driving a brand-new Commodore. I’m getting a grand a week ... Jesus!’

  Primo got up from his desk and came across the room in his stockinged feet. ‘Easy, Cliff. Easy, mate. I was just rabbiting on. No need to get upset. What’s wrong? All that stuff in the notebook meant
bugger-all to me. I’m sorry if I ...’

  I shook my head, trying to dispel memories, earlier events. Not again, not this shit again. I picked up the notebook from the desk and forced a grin. ‘It’s okay, Primo. I’m a bit on edge, one thing and another. What’s the fascination of golf? I’ve never been able to understand it.’

  Primo played along, the king of tact. ‘Your game’s tennis, right?’

  ‘Darts,’ I said.

  ‘Funny. Ever hit a serve as good as McEnroe? Ever whack a backhand like Courier? Volley like Edberg? No? The weird thing about golf is that, just once in a while, a hacker like me can hit a shot as good as Nick Faldo. Not a drive, shit, no. But a seven iron, a pitch, maybe a putt—per-fucking-fection. That’s the thrill.’

  I could see it. Access to perfection. Unusual. Suzie knocked and came in with several pages of print-out. I thanked her, shook Primo’s hand and left the office.

  18

  I sat in the car and leafed through the transcript. Then I played the tape and read as I listened. Suzie’s typing was certainly fast, but it wasn’t altogether accurate and I made a few scribbled amendments as I leafed through the pages. Cracking Scott’s code wasn’t difficult. ‘Number one’ was his oldest brother, Ken. Brother Joe, younger than Scott, was ‘number two’. I had heard Scott refer affectionately to Joe as a ‘knee-jerk greenie’. Joe was an architect with strong environmental convictions. A pain in the arse to anyone planning to cut down a tree or lay a brick in what he considered a wrong place, Scott had told me. Ken was at the other end of the spectrum. A property developer with his own construction company, demolition outfit and waste disposal business, he agreed with Joe on no topic under the sun. Scott, caught in the middle, had spent a lot of time and effort over the years arbitrating between them.

  Scott had stumbled on the fact that Ken’s company was part of the Australian conglomerate that made up the Sydney Casinos corporation. No harm in that, but when Joe had come to Scott with a story about how an architect named Julian Clark had been stood over and blackmailed by one of Ken’s lieutenants, Scott’s antennae went up. Clark was no lightweight. He was the boss of a big firm, Clark, Perkins & Wells, of the kind that Joe Galvani had little time for, but this project had been a pet one for him. According to Scott’s account of his conversations with Joe, Julian Clark had had a dream of designing a casino. Although he’d scarcely put pen to paper in years he’d come up with a design for the Sydney Casino that he considered his masterpiece.

  Clark had a weakness for casinos in more ways than one. He’d been an enthusiastic player at the Sydney shop from the day it opened and before they’d perfected their system for monitoring the resources and habits of the clients. The architect had got himself into serious trouble by playing and losing big stakes backed by cheques and credit cards that could not be honoured. He was a quarter of a million in the hole before the problem had come to the casino’s attention. A deal had been worked out for him to pay off the debt, but Ken Galvani’s representative had put a simple proposition to him—withdraw the design from the consideration of the board or the arrangement would be cancelled and Clark would be bankrupted. Knowing of Joe Galvani’s reputation for straight dealing and opposition to his brother, Clark had come to him for help.

  Joe, in turn, had come to Scott who had not long taken up the casino job. Scott’s notes contained an account of his conversation with the architect, as well as research into Ken’s position in the management structure and the procedures covering tenders for design, construction and location of the permanent site for the casino. In his notes, Scott speculated about Ken’s motives. There were a number of tenderers for the designing job and Scott had worried about the confidentiality of the system. Scott was a bright operator and he’d homed in on the central question—was there something unique about Clark’s design that would explain Ken’s motive, or was he just throwing his weight around generally?

  An entry posing that question was the last one in Scott’s notebook. I flicked back through the pages of transcript to the point where Scott had noted Clark’s address. I stared out through the windscreen at one of the pylons that held up the freeway. High above me the tyres were thumping across the lane markers.

  ‘Louisa Road,’ I said aloud. ‘Shit me, he was on his way to talk to the architect again.’

  I was conflicted, as the Americans say. Suddenly, the fact of Gina being under the control of Ken Galvani disturbed me. It sounded as if Ken was pulling a lot of strings. On the other hand it was imperative to talk to Joe Galvani and to Julian Clark, to try to penetrate the mystery Scott had been scouting around. I dithered; I played back parts of the tape and ran my eyes over the pages, looking for answers and leads I knew were not there. The Commodore came with its own car phone, of course. I rang Gina’s number and got the same, worrying, recorded message from Ken. Scott had noted the address and number of Joe’s office in Greenwich. I called it and got an engaged signal. I hung up, waited, and called again with the same result.

  I sat back in the comfortable bucket seat and tried to feel my way around the various questions. Was Julian Clark a stocky, dark guy who owned a silver-grey Mercedes? It would help if he was. Was Ken Galvani holding his sister-in-law hostage in some way? Had he arranged for his brother to be murdered, and if so, what did an architect’s design for a casino have to do with it?

  I riffled through the sheets to see if Scott had entered phone numbers for Julian Clark. No luck. The nearest intact telephone directory proved to be a ten-minute walk and a long wait away. I fumed outside the box while an overweight woman ploughed her way through the books, keeping the phone to her ear and making several calls. She seemed to need all the books at once. I gave up on her and went in search of another phone. The one in the Oxford Street pub had no accompanying directories. I had a beer anyway for my nerves and went back to the booth. Fatty had gone and I seized the yellow pages. The offices of Clark, Perkins & Wells were in Chatswood. I groaned at the thought of the drive and hurried back to the car.

  I pressed the buttons and rehearsed aloud what I would say.

  ‘Mr Clark, my name’s Cliff Hardy. I’m a private investigator and I’m ... I was a friend of Scott Galvani. I’m calling about ...’ What? The blackmail attempt? The threat that made you withdraw your design for the casino? Your gambling debts ... ?

  I decided that it was impossible to handle over the phone, cut off the call before it was answered and started the engine. About the last thing I wanted to do was drive to the other side of the city, but no one ever said that this kind of work was about doing what you wanted. At least I had a good car, with air-conditioning, tape deck and AM/FM radio, to do it in. As I drove I thought about calling Glen until I realised that that would be as difficult a call as the one to the architect. My ex-wife Cyn had made the point long, long ago.

  ‘You can’t separate the two, Cliff,’ she’d said. ‘Your grotty professional life and the rest. Anyone involved with you feels like a client or a suspect or a bloody victim. You just haven’t got room for anything else.’

  I drove back to the city, immune to the elements in the air-conditioned car and protected from a lot of the normal irritations of driving. The Commodore answered the hands and feet instantly; the power steering made it feel as if I could do a couple of other things while driving—like practise my forehand or throw a triple-twenty. I was in the tunnel before I realised that I’d put myself on that route. It wasn’t intentional; I’d made a vow not to use the thing until I’d heard that the millionth car had passed through it. I was deeply suspicious of the tunnel. It seemed like a denial of the bridge and I was a passionate believer in the bridge. Some Melburnian had told me that his kids were terribly disappointed when they’d first crossed the bridge—they’d expected to drive over the arch. In a way, I sometimes felt that I was driving over the arch when I made the crossing. One of my grandfathers had worked on the ferry that had carried people across before the bridge was built. I learned that after I had worked on a case that had
forced me to mug up on the history of the coathanger. I think I’m a throwback to that ancestor.

  The tunnel had none of that impact. It was like being on a conveyor belt. I felt as if the smooth tarmac would carry me through to the other side whether I drove the car or not. I found myself speeding up to get through it more quickly, and when I emerged into the light I was exceeding the speed limit by twenty Ks. Dangerous to muck around with the forces of nature like that. I eased back and began to think again of what I might say to Julian Clark. Nothing helpful came to mind. Come to think of it, my record with architects wasn’t so hot. Cyn had been an architect, probably still was, as well as happily remarried and a mother of two.

  They say you can buy anything in Chatswood and it’s probably true. Costs you, though. I put the tape and the transcript in my pocket, fed a parking meter a block away from where Clark’s office was located and decided to eat and think first. I was charged enough for a salad sandwich to buy two loaves of bread and a couple of lettuces and tomatoes in Glebe. Virtuously, I drank mineral water, promising myself something stronger when I’d finished with this tricky interview. I strolled through the buying shoppers, who didn’t seem to know that there was a recession on, and the lookers who clearly did.

  As I approached the steel and glass tower I saw a clutch of police vehicles parked near the entrance. There were a hundred or more people clustered outside the building, some of whom seemed to be upset. The cops were trying to control the crowd and comfort the distressed. I couldn’t get close enough to see what was going on. I circled around and found a similar scene at the back—a hysterical woman, cops under pressure, talking urgently into their car radios, looking edgy. I returned to the front and pushed through close to the section of pavement that had been roped off. An ambulance was drawn up with its wheels over the kerb and the white coats were clustered around a shape on the ground.