10
I thought I’d cause some alarm, stir the possum, but what I got was panic. Your illegal gambler these days must be a spineless type compared with the men and women in Perce Galea and Robin Askin’s day. They’d talk to the cops, buy them drinks, swap racing tips and go off to the lockup as if it was all part of the fun. Mind you, those were wide-open days when MPs and magistrates winked and nodded so much they looked as if they all had palsy and tics.
As far as I could see from poking my head around the corner, this lot all wanted to abandon ship. I could hear persuading voices and protesting ones; voices were raised in anger and threats were uttered. A motor boat came up in response to a hail from the houseboat. Two motor boat types in jeans and padded jackets came on board to back up a man in a dinner suit who was talking about money.
With the class of the company dropping, I felt safe in moving from my position along to a doorway that led inside the houseboat. Just inside the door were steps, going up and down. I went up a flight and came to what appeared to be a controls room. It featured a console with blinking lights, a navigator’s desk, several office chairs and windows giving a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view from a point about six metres above the water. I went down the steps and came to a short narrow corridor with a door at the end of it. I held my shoulder against the door so it couldn’t open and peered through a window in the shape of a porthole into the gambling room.
The place was about ten notches up from the one behind the coffee shop in Leichhardt. The bar was a thing of beauty-polished wood and steel, padded front, velvet-covered stools, all the trimmings. The socialising part of the room was lit by chandeliers: discreet, hooded lights hung over the tables and picked up the deep, rich colours in the paintings and tapestries on the walls. It should have been a scene of relaxed self-indulgence; instead, it looked like a children’s playground after a rainstorm. Chairs had been knocked over and glasses of wine spilt, and cards and chips were scattered across the green baize surfaces. The barman and a couple of dealers had kept their places but they were frozen, not touching any of the accoutrements in case the clients came back and protested that they’d been nobbled. A few last wisps of blue-grey smoke were drifting slowly towards a fan outlet. A classy joint, catering for the smoke-sensitive.
In the far corner of the room a blue velvet curtain hung over an opening. Another gambling room perhaps, or executive space? I could get up adjacent to that area by opening the door at my shoulder. I had to move; a few people wandered back into the room, no doubt with stories of a crashed Porsche and a terrorist. They wouldn’t find the brick immediately in the dark, but it wouldn’t take too long. I eased back and opened the door. The man in the next stage of the corridor was surprised to see me, which gave me a tiny advantage. I needed it because he was big and he wanted to stop me. He said something impolite and aimed a punch at my head, but I’d already moved the head and started a punch of my own. I got him low and hard. He grunted and sagged and I hit him again on the back of the neck. He went down and fumbled in his jacket pocket. I used my knee to bang his head against the wall, and he stopped doing anything.
I stepped over him and took out my. 38. I was pretty sure the guy on the floor hadn’t been reaching for cigarettes. A door faced me at the end of the passage; it had a glass panel in it and a face appeared there. I pointed the gun and the face vanished. Another door was positioned to open into the space I’d seen from the porthole-the room behind the velvet curtain. What the hell? I thought. I’ve flattened one of them and I’ve got a gun. I’m tough. Someone’ll have to talk to me. I opened the door and stepped over the bulkhead.
The room was dark. Then, suddenly, it was flooded with light. I was half-blinded and things happened in a fast blur: a man rose up from the floor, pointed a camera at me and took a series of pictures. Someone came from behind me and chopped the gun from my hand with a blow to my upper arm. I swung a punch with the other hand and the photographer got a shot of that, too. The punch ended in the empty air and I lost balance. It only took a good shove to deck me. I went down hard and felt solid boots hit me in the ribs on both sides, with near-precision.
“Not the head.”
I recognised the voice and turned my face towards it but a hand ground my nose and chin down hard into the carpet. My arms were brought together behind my back and I heard the snap of metal on metal.
“Jackson?” I mumbled into the carpet.
“Right first time, Hardy. Why is it you’re always on the floor when we meet?”
I tried to scramble up, and a strong arm helped me by pulling on the handcuffs.
“Easy, Arch,” Jackson said. “Don’t mark him. And watch his feet. He’s a tricky bugger.”
A short, strongly built man pushed me back against the wall. He grabbed a heavy swivel chair and used it to pin me there. I spat grit and fluff from my mouth and, with my vision more or less restored, I looked around the room. It was set up for very private card games-antique table with an expensive cloth, adjustable chairs, shaded light. There was a bar, smaller and less fancy than in the other room, but equipped for most tastes. The men in the room came in a variety of shapes and sizes: Rhino Jackson had changed a lot in the twenty-five years since he’d given me the quick count. He had been slight then, with quick, jerky movements. He was more like thickset the last time I’d seen him, a few years back, and since then he’d put on flesh uniformly from his neck down. The extra weight gave him a solid, immovable look. His tightly curled, gingery hair was now almost entirely grey. I didn’t recognise the photographer, who stood fiddling with the camera, or the guy Jackson had called Arch, the one who’d applied the handcuffs. The other man in the room, sitting at the card table with a cigar going, was Barry Tobin, formerly Detective Inspector Barry Tobin of the New South Wales police.
I’d had two run-ins with Tobin, both unpleasant. On a scale with my best friend at number one and worst enemy at number ten, Tobin would come in at around eight.
Tobin was gross, no other word for him. Not very tall, he was ninety per cent blubber. The dark hair he’d been so vain about when he was young had gone, and the chief colour in his face was ruby red. But-unless the food and brandy had done to his brain what it had done to his body- he was smart.
He puffed on his cigar and tapped it carefully into an enamel ashtray on the table, taking care not to get ash on his three-piece suit. Still a dandy. “You were pretty easy to flatten, Hardy,” he said.
I blinked. “Eye problem.”
“I know, I know. Let’s have a look at the pics.”
The photographer handed him some Polaroids. Tobin held them towards the light. He laughed; the sound came out breathless and strangled. “Look at this, Rhino. He’s blinking like Dicky Harrison. Remember Dicky, Rhino? That flasher we used to pick up and have some fun with? He used to blink like that. Always pissed, of course. Are you pissed, Cliff?”