‘You wouldn’t tip Morris off about Hardy would you, Tank?’
‘Fuck, no. I wouldn’t tip Stan Morris off if there was a truck about to hit him.’
‘Okay,’ Wesley said. ‘And…’
Turkowitz crinkled his forehead. ‘What?’
‘Come on, Tank. The password.’
‘Oh yeah, almost forgot. Password’s “rust”.’
It was Wesley’s turn to look surprised. ‘Rust? Why?’
‘If I told you you wouldn’t believe me.’
17
Wesley invited me back to his place for a meal, promising West Indian cooking. His house was in Haberfield, a Federation job on a big block leaving room for a sizeable swimming pool and a garage that had been converted into a gym. Mandy I’d met before briefly. She was small and slight and Wesley would be able to lift her with one hand. Maybe he did. She thanked me for giving them something to cling to about Clinton and her tired smile made me hope like hell that they were clinging to something solid. Clinton, with his narrow, fine features, favoured her.
‘Pauline’s out busking,’ Wesley said. ‘Mandy doesn’t like it but Pauline enjoys it and says she needs the money. What d’you think about that, Cliff?’
Mandy was watching me. ‘I like buskers when they play what I like,’ I said.
Wesley took three cans of light beer from the fridge and popped them. ‘Diplomatic. You know what I mean. Keeping kids safe. Jesus, our parents hardly had to worry about it.’
I accepted the beer and took a sip. ‘Can she handle herself?’
Mandy poured her beer into a glass. ‘We’ve had this discussion a hundred times, even before Clinton… ‘
‘Tae Kwon Do,’ Wesley said. ‘I wouldn’t back you against her.’
‘Surviving in the city’s mostly a matter of confidence,’ I said. ‘It sounds as if she’s got it.’
‘Yes, she has,’ Mandy said. ‘I hope you’re right. Dinner in twenty minutes.’ She saluted us with her glass and drifted off to the kitchen. I noticed that she held her head rather stiffly and remembered about the whiplash. What you really needed was luck. Confidence wouldn’t do you much good when a couple of tons of metal hit you, or some crazy with a gun came wandering your way. Still, it sounded pretty convincing at the time.
Wesley showed me the gym with some pride. ‘I’ve got machines here ain’t never been seen. Prototypes, man.’
‘For what?’
‘Fine-tuning. Show you.’
He showed me, by moving massive weights long distances in ways that I didn’t really understand, but I grasped enough to see that he’d made significant improvements to the standard equipment.
‘Could be money in this,’ I said.
Wesley finished the can he’d set aside and towelled off the light sweat he’d raised. ‘Yeah, if all this with Clinton gets sorted out I’ll think about raising some capital and getting on with it.’
Between the two of them, they’d shown me just how much was riding on my fragile information and hopeful assumptions.
The smoko was set for 10.30 p.m. at an abandoned Mechanics’ Institute building in a hamlet near Badgerys Creek that had lost its name along with its population somewhere between the wars. Turkowitz had given me a sketch map which he strongly urged me to eat after memorising it. His little joke. I matched it with some maps I had of the area and formed a pretty good idea of how to get there.
There was nothing to be said in favour of smokos. They were a reaction to many things- the moves by governments to control and perhaps ban boxing, the actions of Mike Tyson in Las Vegas, disappointment at the demise of Fenech and the defeat of Kostya Tszyu. I saw them as a foretaste of things to come if the pressure to ban boxing was successful. Previously, in English-speaking countries, all such efforts had failed and pugilism had survived, usually being conducted under worse conditions than before. I had no doubt that it would be the same again, but the smokos were jumping the gun. There was no protection for the fighters; they were breaking the law and liable to assault charges if discovered. Medical facilities, I’d heard, were minimal, and the equipment was often in poor condition-important when you’re talking about the hardness of floors that men might fall down on with force.
I was breaking the law myself by attending and didn’t feel altogether good about it. I had a professional excuse of course, but that wouldn’t cut any ice if the cops decided to raid the place. Truth was, I was interested to see what such fights were like because I knew that courage and desperation would be on display and they’re always interesting to witness. But I didn’t kid myself-the reason smokos existed was not, as their defenders said, to give outlets to aggressive young men. The reason was money. Australians are said to be willing to bet on anything. They’d certainly bet on two men prepared to fight almost to the death. According to all accounts, a lot of money changed hands at a smoko.
The arrangement had been for Wesley and me to go together but he rang me late in the afternoon to tell me that he couldn’t make it. Mandy had been taken to hospital with a complication to do with her neck injury.
‘She’s paralysed,’ Wesley said.
‘Jesus. What’re they saying?’
‘What they always fucking say-wait and see. I’m at the hospital now and I’ve got to stay here. I’m sorry, man.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You stay there and do what you can. Is your daughter there?’
‘Yeah, I wish…’
‘I know, Wes.’
‘You take care, Cliff. There’s some mean bastards at those things and some heavy stuff goes down. You can’t trust Tank not to double-cross you. And look what happened to that Alessio kid.’
‘I’m not a kid. All I’m going to do is identify him and follow him to somewhere I can catch up with him when it suits me. I’ll be right. You take care of Mandy. I’ll be in touch.’
In one way, I was relieved. It’s hard to be inconspicuous in the company of Wesley Scott, and if I was going to be able to play this thing the way I wanted, that’s how I’d need to be.
The day had been hot but the Sydney evening breezes were doing their job when I set off for the west. I was wearing jeans, sneakers and a black T-shirt with my freshly washed bush shirt loose over it. The cosh was coiled in my hip pocket; the Smith amp; Wesson was in the glove box. I had a couple of hundred dollars in cash to bet with and the car was full of petrol. I bought six cans of VB so that I could swing them from a finger by the plastic strapping. Makes a handy weapon that, even if you’re forced to drink two or three of the cans beforehand.
You have to wonder what the local cops thought about a procession of cars crawling along dirt roads to nowhere late at night. A football club barbecue? A Vietnam veterans’ reunion? A republican movement convention? Surely not an illegal prize fight, not in this day and age. In the old days, when first bareknuckle and then glove fighting were outlawed, the organisers took great care to do two things-first, pick an out-of-the-way spot for the fight and advertise only among ‘the Fancy’. Second, ensure that for one reason or another the local constabulary turned a blind eye. It wasn’t unknown for the district magistrate to referee the stoush.
It wasn’t a crush, but there was certainly more traffic than you’d expect for that neck of the woods and I noticed a few iridescent markers on the trees here and there just in case we got lost. Not much chance of that. I found myself following a white Mercedes with the vanity numberplate CHAMP. Whoever the champ was, he clearly knew the way, even though his erratic driving suggested that he might have started celebrating something a trifle early. I swigged from a can as I drove just to get into the spirit of things.
The Merc driver flashed his high beam at a dark spot and I saw the light glance off chrome and duco somewhere ahead. Another few minutes brought us into a clearing behind a long, narrow brick building with an iron roof. I could hear a generator humming and there were lights showing in the building and under a big marquee strung between it and some trees. I switched off the engine and my lights, grabbed the cans and opened the door.