My eyes adjusted to the light and I took in that I was in a warehouse of some sort. The ceiling was high and the floor was hard cement. Two hundred-watt bulbs hung down close to my face like lit-up heads in nooses. Four men were standing near a new green Fiat sedan parked beside the truck. I’d seen three of them before, the two who’d taken me in Macleay and the one in the camelhair overcoat. He’d been in Trueman’s watching the Moody workout. The fourth man was dressed the same way as the others in a suit with highly polished shoes. He had a frizz of dark curly hair around a bald top. I didn’t know him.
The one in the two-hundred-dollar coat spoke with a guttural voice in an accent that was almost stage Italian.
“Mr Hardy, you’re putting me to a lotta trouble. Why you sticking your nose in my business?”
“What business would that be?”
“You’re smart, an investigator,” he drew the word out ironically, “you think it out.”
“You’re the olive oil king,” I said. “You’re going to rough me up for using peanut oil to fry my chips.”
One of the Macleay boys stepped forward and slammed me in the gut. I felt the breakfast of God knows how long ago rise in my gorge. I straightened up.
“I don’t know what your business is Mr…?”
He laughed. “That’s better. No jokes. Coluzzi. You were at the gym watching the black, Moody. You go to see Ted Williams, you see Sunday in La Perouse, then you go to Macleay.”
“I went to the toilet in between.”
He struggled to keep his hands and feet still. “I told you no jokes. Why you hanging around these people?”
“What’s it to you?” I was puzzled that he hadn’t mentioned the marijuana. He was prepared to use muscle on me but not to go all the way. He was talking to me for some reason rather than having me kicked into paraplegia – that gave me some leverage but it was hard to judge how much. I snapped my fingers.
“I’ve got it, you’re the boomerang king…”
The knuckle man moved again but I was ready for him this time. He swung his foot and I went down, got hold of it, lifted, twisted and flipped. His arms flailed and he went over and belted his head into the bumper of the truck. He groaned, rolled over and lay still. His mate exposed a knife but Coluzzi motioned him to stop.
“My business is fighters, Mr Hardy… one of my businesses. I’m interested in the black fighters. I want to put them in against my boys, the Italian boys. We would get terrific houses no? A lot of money to make.”
“Honest fights?”
He spread his hands apologetically. “We see. Maybe. You could do yourself some good.”
“How?”
“First, you tell me who you working for and what’s the angle.”
Some light dawned. Coluzzi figured he had competition and he wanted to know more about it. He was a shrewd guy who wanted to sew the whole thing up neatly before he put any time and money into it. Maybe he did have competition. In any case my skin seemed to depend on him continuing to think so.
“Did you have me bashed outside a pub in La Perouse?”
“No.”
“You had someone watching me in Newcastle?”
“Sure.”
The man I’d thrown was on his feet again looking very pale around the edges. The man with the blade was looking anxious to have a go and the priestly character was very quiet and still. If I was going to get out of this without any more of the physical stuff this was the time to talk.
“I heard a whisper that something like this could be on,” I said.
“Yeah? Who from?”
“Tickener, the reporter. I don’t know his sources.”
“What you snooping around for – Redfern, Macleay, La Perouse, the black belt?”
The priest sniggered and Coluzzi spoke sharply to him in Italian. At a guess he was telling him to shut up or he’d do something unpleasant to him that would cramp his style with the ladies. Coluzzi repeated the question angrily.
“I’m looking into it for Harry,” I improvised. “I haven’t got on to much yet but I’ve got no axes to grind. I could keep you informed. I’ve been in the middle so far, copping it from both sides. Maybe it’s time for me to come off the fence.”
“How do you mean?”
“I got bashed in La Perouse as I said. My guess is that was your opposition.”
Coluzzi scratched his jaw and turned aside to talk to the bald man. The bruisers stood flapping their ears and I listened to the flow of Italian, catching a word here and there but not making much sense of it. The bald man did most of the talking and Coluzzi did a lot of nodding. He swung back to me.
“Adio’s got a good question. If you help me and I get ridda this opposition you talk about and you talk to the reporter, where does that leave me?”
It was a good question. I looked at Adio with respect and he gave me a tight, sardonic smile. I took out my wallet and showed him the money in it. Twenty-three dollars.
“I’ve got about twice that much in the bank. I could use some more. You don’t pay tax on money you win on fights.”
He didn’t look convinced but the money argument was intelligible to him.
“What about Tickener?”
“He doesn’t own me. There’d be one condition though.”
“What?”
I looked at the two enforcers in their padded shouldered suits and narrow crocodile skin shoes. They looked well fed, they were probably pampered by their women and generous to a fault with their kids. In Coluzzi’s service, though, they were vicious thugs and their indifference to the dead woman in Macleay suggested that they’d done worse things than hit people on the head. I pointed to the taller man.
“Give me a free swing at him with the blackjack.”
Coluzzi laughed gutturally and rapped out some more Italian. The other two men smiled, the tall one didn’t smile. His face lost a few shades of colour and his mouth twitched as Coluzzi dipped into his mate’s pocket and lifted out the blackjack. I gathered that the tall man’s name was Carlo. Carlo stood stock still and ground his teeth together. He seemed to be setting his bones and gristle and tensing his flesh against the cruel bite of the cosh.
I tossed it in my hand; a short, palm-sized hard rubber grip with about six inches of whippy, lead-loaded rubber attached. Carlo screwed up his eyes and swayed just a little. I pulled back my arm and stretched out my other hand to touch him on the left ear. He flinched a fraction. I swung hard at his head and let the blackjack go just before my hand got in range; it sailed over his shoulder and crashed against the tin wall. Carlo sagged slightly at the knees. His face was dead white and his eyes were hard with hate. I slapped him lightly on the face and let out a harsh laugh that didn’t sound as nervous as I felt.
Coluzzi echoed the laugh with more feeling. Some of the tension evaporated and I asked him for a cigarette. He snapped his fingers and a packet of king size Chesterfields was produced. I took one and Carlo’s offsider lit it. I sucked the smoke deep and expelled it in a long stream, it floated up and hung like ectoplasm in the harsh light. A few more vigorous bursts of Italian between Coluzzi and Adio settled it. Coluzzi came forward and looked hard into my face; he was a few inches shorter than me and had to tilt his head up to do it. The skin stretched over his jaw and pulled taut around his neck. I saw for the first time that he was old, wrinkled by age but without a spare ounce of flesh on him. He looked like a Corsican bandit, hardened by years of sun and rain, good for a fight until the day he died.
“Alright Mr Hardy,” he said, “you’re on. I want to know what you find out. Everything.”
“How do I reach you?”
He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a card; Adio produced a gold pen and he scribbled a number on the back of it. He handed the card to me. On it was printed “Aldo Coluzzi, Merchant,” and an address in the city. He hadn’t mentioned the marijuana. I wondered why but wasn’t about to raise the question now. The less said about that the better. Coluzzi looked pleased with himself and rubbed his hands together.