by Peter Corris
The gunman knew it too; he sighted on my chest and gestured for me to drop my hand. I did it; at that range he couldn’t miss.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what’s this?’
Another man edged cautiously from a room off the passage. The gunman was medium-sized and wide with a bald head and an almost immobile face. The second man was younger, not out of his twenties. He had long dark hair and a slack, shocked expression on his face. He said, ‘Shoot him,’ so I liked him less than the other who could’ve shot me but hadn’t tried.
‘This isn’t the bargain basement, sport. I don’t do it in job lots.’
‘Come on,’ the dark one said. ‘He seen every thing. You’ve gotta… ‘
‘I don’t have to do anything. Look at him. The man’s carrying a gun. He could be a cop. Or he could be someone I can talk to.’
‘That’s right,’ I croaked.
‘Shit! You just want more money.’
The gunman kept his pistol, which looked like a silenced. 22, very steady. ‘That’d help,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of the hall. We can sit down and you can use the phone.’
We went through to the big living room which was dark because all the curtains had been drawn against the light and the heat. The gunman didn’t seem to have any trouble seeing; he gestured for me to sit in a chair in the corner and for the other man to use the phone.
‘Hey, don’t give me orders. Just kill him.’
‘You don’t have the clout to order a kill, friend.’
The dark man picked up the phone and hit the buttons. He waited, began to speak and stopped. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes, but tell him it’s important.’ He read the phone number slowly and clearly and hung up. ‘We gotta wait.’
The gunman smiled; until then his face had been so still I was surprised he could do it. ‘Why don’t you make us a drink, Charley?’ he said.
‘Fuck you. And my name isn’t Charley, it’s…’
‘Shut up, you bloody amateur. Charley’ll do. Get us a drink, unless you’d rather hold the gun?’
My eyes had grown used to the gloom; it was a big room with a bay window and some low, unobtrusive furniture. The hi-fi looked good and new, so did the TV and VCR. The gunman sat three metres from me and out of the way of all distraction. He saw me judging distance and angles and shook his head. Charley came in with two drinks, whisky and ice.
‘One for him, too.’
‘What the fuck for?’
‘You’re paining me, you know that? I didn’t like having to bring you along in the first place and I’m liking it less. Just do as I say. It might help him talk. By the way, sport. You might put the gun on the table here. Easy.’
I took out the. 38 and put it on the coffee table. I had to lean almost out of my chair to reach it. The gunman would have had to get up to take it but he didn’t bother. He gestured for me to sit back. Charley returned with a solid Scotch and I took a drink thinking that the odds had shrunk from short to hopeless.
‘Name?’
‘Hardy.’
‘Cop?’
I shook my head. ‘Private. Partners hired me to look into the card business.’
He nodded. ‘Anything to trade?’
I shook my head again. I was thinking about throwing the glass and risking a. 22 in the body, but the precise way Hayward had been plugged deterred me.
‘This is a big operation,’ Charley said. ‘The trump won’t want any loose ends.’
I jerked my thumb at the passage. ‘Is that what he was?”
‘Yeah. He was leavin’ tracks.’
I drank some more Scotch and sneered at him.
‘Big operation my arse,’ I said. ‘Hitting a department store for a few thousand. Fake credit cards. That’s not big, it’s medium at best. I think our friend here better worry about getting his fee.’
‘He’ll get it,’ Charley said. ‘This is really big. Three dead men.’
‘I make it two, Lean and Hayward.’
‘I was countin’ you, arsehole.’
‘You talk too much,’ the gunman said contemptuously. He sipped his drink. ‘Why don’t you just tell him all you know while you’re at it?’
Charley threw his Scotch straight down. ‘Why not? He’s dead when the phone rings. You think the Partners stuff is small time? You’re right. But it’s a practice, you dumb arsehole, and it’s not the only one.’
Suddenly it all made sense-the thorough testing of the data base, the relatively small yield. ‘Practice for what?’
‘I wouldn’t,’ the gunman said. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘Screw you. For when they bring in the Australia Card. We’re gonna be ready to crack it wide open. We’ll get millions out of it before they know what’s fuckin’ happened to them.’ He smiled triumphantly but his face still looked unambitious and dumb.
‘Who’s we?’ I said.
The phone rang. I finished my drink and looked at the gunman who put down his glass and indicated that I should do the same.
‘Yeah,’ Charley said into the phone. ‘He’s here.’ He listened and then extended the phone to the gunman. ‘Wants to talk to you.’
The gunman got up in an easy fluid movement, kept the pistol on me and took the receiver. He listened, said ‘Understood,’ and handed the receiver to Charley.
‘What’d he say?’
‘He said to make it a double. Sorry.’ He shot Charley in the head. I moved like a twelve-year-old, springing from the chair, hitting the floor in a diving roll and grabbing my. 38 from the table all at once. I heard the. 22 crack and I got one shot off that went into the ceiling, but by then I was almost behind a high-backed chair and the gunman was facing a heavier calibre gun and a more desperate man. He fired once at the chair but he was already on the retreat. He was quicker than me; by the time I was clear of the chair and had hurdled Charley’s body, the passage was empty apart from the slumped body of Kent Hayward. The door was flapping open. A face appeared in the opening, a woman.
‘Hey,’ she yelled.
I said, ‘Call the police.’ Then I looked at Hayward and the gun in my hand. I tried to look reassuring but she covered her face with her hands and shrank back. ‘No, don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it myself.’
The bodies brought Frank Parker, who listened quietly to what I had to say while a forensic man bustled around the room and the uniformed cops dealt with the ambulance, the other residents in the flats and sundry spectators. I gave Frank everything, including Monty Porter’s name and his connection with Hayward. I told him what Charley had said about the practice run for the Australia Card, as close to word for word as I could recall it.
‘They’re starting early,’ was all he said.
‘Think you’ll be able to tie Porter in with this guy?’ I pointed to the chalk on the chair which marked where Charley had died.
‘What d’you reckon? Describe the killer for me.’
‘Thirty, maybe a bit more; bald head, maybe shaved; brown eyes, maybe contacts; five nine… ‘
‘But maybe he had lifts in his shoes. Maybe his teeth were false. No, nothing’ll tie up to anything else. Well, your clients’ll be happy. You’ve given them Hayward. End of story.’
‘You might find out he owed Porter money.’
Frank laughed. ‘Porter hasn’t got any money. Not a cent. How he lives in a two million dollar house when he’s so poor beats me.’
‘Will you tell the Federal people about this?’
‘I’ll tell them. It’ll take me a couple of days to write the reports. Then you know what’ll happen? They’ll issue a statement confirming the high integrity of the Australia Card.’
I shrugged. ‘Who cares?’
Frank looked at me. ‘Not very public-spirited.’
I watched the forensic guy put my. 38 in a plastic bag and label it. I thought about the statements I was going to have to make and the forms I’d have to fill in to get it back. Bureaucracy. ‘I don’t want a bloody Australia Card,’ I said. ‘When
I want another card I ask the dealer.’
‘Box on!’
I’m finished with boxing,’ I said. ‘I don’t go and I don’t watch it on TV.’
‘Why not?’ Jack Spargo drew a stick figure in the dust on my office window. He gave the figure boxing gloves.
‘I read about a British medical report on the brain damage boxers suffer. One fight can do it, an amateur fight even. A bloody spar can kill a few thousand brain cells.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I had a few amateur fights myself, Jack. D’you realise that I might be suffering brain damage?’ I looked around the office, at the walls that needed painting, the carpet that needed replacing. ‘I could be smarter than this maybe.’
Spargo spun around from the window and laughed. He still moved well although he was pushing sixty. ‘That’s for sure. Well, I’m sorry that you won’t help a mate.’
‘He’s your mate, not mine.’
‘Cliff.’
‘He’s a has-been. A never-was.’
‘He went ten rounds with Foreman.’
‘Foreman’s a preacher of some kind now, isn’t he? He must’ve got religion earlier than we thought to have let Roy Belfast last ten rounds.’
Spargo looked hurt. He opened his Gladstone bag and put a battered clippings book on my desk. I didn’t want to look at it. ‘I’m a private detective, Jack, not a nursemaid. Do you realise how silly it’d look? “Ex-champ hires minder”.’
‘The Yanks’ve done it for years.’
‘They elect senile presidents and cut up all their food like babies before they eat it too. Doesn’t mean we have to do the same.’
Spargo pushed the book towards me. ‘He’s a good bloke.’
I opened the book. Just the way it was put together made me sad. These days, sports stars and actors keep their cuttings in fancy books with plastic envelope leaves; Roy Belfast’s history was in a thick school exercise book-the clippings were pasted in lumpily; some were folded. They were already yellow and dry like fallen leaves. It was a familiar story with a few variations. Roy Belfast was a country boy, big, with a straight eye and a fairly fast left jab. He won the Australian heavyweight championship at nineteen from nobody in particular. There was no one much around for him to fight and he was ready to go stale when he got a chance to meet a Jamaican for the Commonwealth title. Roy was outclassed for five rounds but then he got lucky and cut the Jamaican who had to retire. Then the Jamaican went to jail on a drugs charge and Roy defended the title against a Brit cast in the same mould as ‘Phainting’ Phil Scott.
Give him his due, Spargo handled Belfast well. He avoided the serious Americans and got him a few fights with people he could handle low on the card of big fights. Then the chance to fight Foreman came up. I turned over the pages slowly.
‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ Spargo said.
‘No, probably not.’
Foreman was regrouping after his loss to Ali. It had been a big paynight for Roy, bigger than he had any right to expect. Sheer courage kept him upright for ten rounds; I looked at the post-fight photo-Belfast’s head was swollen to twice its size and his boyish features were obliterated.
‘What happened to all the money?’ I said.
Spargo shrugged. ‘They’d shrunk it down pretty far before it got to us.’
‘And now Belfast wants to make a comeback. What does he want to do? Buy a pub and drink himself to a title?’
Spargo shook his head. ‘Roy don’t drink. Never did. He’s been to business college, Cliff. He’s studied up on things. Wants capital to open a video store specialising in sports films. He reckons he can make it pay and I want to help him.’
‘That’s original at least. But it’s been twelve years. Belfast must be… ‘
‘Eleven years. Roy’s thirty-one. That isn’t old. Look at Jimmy Connors.’
‘Nobody ever beat Jimmy Connors over the head with a tennis racquet. Roy’ll get hurt.’
‘I don’t think so. Three fights and that’s all. He’s very quick. He’ll stay out of trouble.’
‘The crowd’ll love that,’ I said. ‘They really appreciate the finer points since Fenech.’
‘Fenech’s a…‘ Spargo stopped and grinned. Scar tissue puckered around his eyes and he sniffed through his old fighter’s nose. ‘You always like a joke, Cliff. Maybe that’s why Roy wants you around.’
‘I can’t see it.’
‘You know the creeps that come outa the drains in this business. The proposition merchants, the blokes with a girl who’d like to meet the champ, the pushers?’
‘Yeah, I know them.’
‘So you can spot them and run interference. Also you know some press people. That’d be useful. Two weeks. Cliff. That’s all.’
‘Two weeks! That’s not long enough to train. Who’s he fighting-Boy George?’
‘He’s been in training three months. This was set up a good while ago. It’ll look like a quickie but it ain’t.’
‘Who, Jack?’
‘Boss Tikopia.’
It could have been worse. Tikopia was a Maori who’d beaten all the light heavyweights south of the equator which wasn’t saying much. ‘What’s in it for him? Fighting a has-been?’
‘He’s built up, like Spinks. Wants to move up and take on the big boys. He figures he can find out what it’s like with Roy.’
‘What it was like.’
‘Roy’s sharp, Cliff. Weighs 14.1. That’s lighter than he usta be.’
I considered it. I weighed 12.2 which was heavier than I usta be. I could do with a couple of weeks boxing training. It was April and a clear, crisp day outside. ‘Where’s he training?’
‘Pearl Beach. Gym up there, big flat an’ all. You can move in today.’
Pearl Beach sounded good and I had nothing serious on hand. ‘I’ll come up and take a look at him. If he looks as if he can stay on his feet for ten rounds I’m in.’
‘He’s the best heavyweight we’ve had since…’
I held up my hand. ‘Don’t, Jack. Please don’t. Nobody’s the best since anybody. That’s all bullshit.’
Jack said a name but he said it under his breath. He told me the fight was being promoted by Col Marriott who used to be a lot of things and still was a few besides a fight promoter, not all of them virgin white. But he had the Entertainment Centre booked and a TV deal and Jack said Belfast’s expenses were generous so they’d be able to cover my fees. I noticed that there were a few blank pages at the back of the clippings book as I handed it back to Spargo. We shook hands. The next day I packed a bag and drove to Pearl Beach.
I’d seen Belfast fight a few times and knew him slightly. I’d never heard anything against him other than the usual fight talk-pity he wasn’t five centimetres taller, or five kilos heavier, or had a bigger punch. Meeting him again, ten or more years later, I was impressed. He was one of those people who seem to improve with age. He hadn’t filled out around the middle like most retired fighters, perhaps he was a bit heavier in the shoulders. He’d kept his thick brown hair; his good-natured face carried a few more lines but no noticeable boxing scars.
‘Good to see you again, Cliff.’
We shook. ‘Hello, Roy. Nice spot you’ve got here.’
We were standing outside a big house set back a few streets from the beach. Belfast and Spargo had been sitting on deck chairs on the front verandah and had come down the path towards the gate. Spargo looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Yeah, well, we’ve got the back bit.’
Nothing could detract from the good weather and the pleasure of the beach, but Roy Belfast’s training camp didn’t inspire confidence. The ‘gym’ was an old hall temporarily fitted out with boxing equipment that had seen better days. The ‘flat’ was the back half of the big house, a series of lean-tos with small windows and an outside dunny. Against that, morale was high and there were lots of places for Belfast to run and train out of doors.
Roy and Jack Spargo shared a bedroom, I had another room and Rhys Dixon, the sparring partne
r, slept on a couch in the sitting room. The place was cramped but friendly. We did the usual things-watched TV, played cards and talked boxing. I spent a bit of time on the phone talking to journalists and arranging interviews and photograph sessions. I intercepted some phone calls and pamphlets from an anti-boxing and blood sports group. It wasn’t anything a fifty-kilo eighteen-year-old from the Receptionist Centre couldn’t have done.
Belfast was sharp in training. He was a tiger for roadwork and delighted in making Jack puff as he tried to keep up on his old hub-geared bike. Sometimes Belfast ran ten or twelve kilometres; I’d run the first three and wait for him and run back. Spargo showed a few videos of Tikopia’s fights; if I’d had to fight him I would probably have run the whole twelve kilometres.
Belfast was calm and good-natured most of the time. He put a lot into his sparring sessions with Dixon though, and I thought about that British medical report when I saw Rhys go down after a heavy right, headgear and all. Belfast apologised and helped him up.
‘Sorry, Rhys.’
‘For what? I slipped.’
One of Spargo’s training innovations was beach sparring. He made Belfast wear heavy boots while Rhys jumped around him barefoot. The sand got cut up and Roy had to labour to move his feet and keep his balance. I took a turn at it; Belfast went easy with me but I could sense the strength in his legs and the weight he could have put into his punches with those heavy shoulders. After ten minutes I collapsed, winded.
Belfast grinned. ‘You lose if you go down without being hit, Cliff.’
‘I’m buggered.’
‘Too much wine and sitting about.’
‘Wait till you’re forty plus, sport.’
‘When I’m forty I’ll have a string of video shops and be sitting pretty.’
‘I hope so, Roy,’ I said.
Spargo and Dixon were walking back along the beach towards the car. Belfast pulled off his T-shirt and boots. ‘Come for a swim,’ he said. ‘Give me a chance to have a word with you without Jack around.’