The Scotch he’d bought me suddenly tasted thin and sour. I put the glass down and reached for my tobacco packet. He offered me a filtertip.
“No thanks. What do you know about the girl, her background and friends?”
“Not much.” He lit up himself and held the match for me. Nice manners, but my foot itched. “You’ve met the father, I haven’t. I know her mother died some years back. She went to a private school on the north shore… I’d remember the name if I heard it. Friends? None that I know of, she doesn’t make friends easily. She used…”
“What? What were you going to say?”
He took a deep draw on the cigarette. “I was going to say she used my friends. Funny expression but I suppose that’s what I meant.”
She was sounding more and more like someone who should stay lost. It’s often like that. Nice poor people get lost and nobody gives a damn. Someone rich and nasty goes missing and there’s a stampede. But I had to know a little more about her than I did.
“Did she have any money?”
“No, only what she earned, which wasn’t much. Her father paid some bills when she got stuck but he didn’t give her money. She was very bitter about that.”
“Ted looked like a soft touch as far as she was concerned, why didn’t he see her right?”
“A stepmother I believe?”
“Right. That fits. And you’re surprised to find that she had connections down here?”
He raised a theatrical eyebrow and spoke through tobacco smoke.
“Very.”
I couldn’t take any more. I got up, put out my cigarette and tossed off the drink. He did the same then stood looking helpless. I gave him a nod and walked out of the pub.
My car was parked a block away; I ran through the rain, risking instant paraplegia on the wet pavement. I pulled the Falcon’s door open and sat down in a pool of water that had come in through the gap between the window and the frame. I swore and turned the key viciously. The answer was a choked whirring noise that indicated water where water didn’t ought to be. I leaned my head forward on the steering wheel and sighed. It was a bad start to a job and I felt like giving it up and getting a taxi over to Ailsa’s place and having a few drinks and getting into bed with her for twenty-four hours or till the rain stopped. But Ailsa was on a Pacific tour, looking in on her investments. I’d refused a free ride and had to stick with what I had.
I got out of the car and stood proudly in the rain until a taxi condescended to stop for me.
4
Redfern is like an untidily shaped ink blot to the east of downtown Sydney. It’s one of those places that look worst around the edges where it’s bordered by factories with stained, peeling walls and rows of old terraces with rusting wrought-iron and gap-toothed skew-whiff paling fences. A couple of high-rise monsters in the middle help to make Redfern’s population density one of the highest in Australia. The taxi took me past tiny houses with flapping galvanised iron roofs, shops presenting blank, defeated faces to the streets and pubs full of Aborigines and Islanders drinking their dole money, improving their snooker and resenting Whitey like hell.
The house in Albermarle Street was a big sandstock terrace that had once been a prosperous townhouse but was now given over to flatettes and single rooms. I held the taxi outside for a minute while I tucked Tarelton’s fifties down under my sole inside the sock. I paid off the driver, scooted through the rain, pushed open the gate and went up the steps to the door. There was no bell and the knocker had rusted solid and immovable on its hinge. Heavy metal music was blaring inside and I waited for a break in the monotonous riffs before knocking. I knocked and the music went down from ear damage level to loud. I heard feet in the passage and the door was opened by a black giant. He was wearing flared jeans and an open weave singlet; his shoulders blotted out all the light behind him and the fist he had wrapped around the door handle could have done sleight of hand tricks with a football.
“Yup?” He left his mouth open to show fifty or so pearly white tombstones inside his pink cavern of a mouth.
“Ricky Simmonds live here?”
“Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Tickener, I’m a sports writer for The News. I want to talk to Ricky about boxing; I hear he’s a mate of Jacko Moody?”
His laugh sounded like a chain saw going through knotty yellow box.
“You’ve got it arse-up mate, I’m the one who knows Jacko, comes from Burnt Bridge, same as me.”
“Where Dave Sands came from?”
“S’right, we’re all related. Look, come in outa the rain if you wanna talk about it.”
I did. We walked down the narrow passageway through to a small living room. The giant stuck his hand out.
“Ted Williams,” he said. “How you goin’. Beer?”
His hand was hard but he didn’t put any muscle into the handshake. Closer up and in the light he looked well under seven feet and probably didn’t weigh more than seventeen stone. He was a bit soft in the middle, not much, just a friendly amount. He was one of those big men who never have to get to their feet in anger in their lives. There were no fighting marks on him. I said yes to the beer and sat down in an armchair between the TV set and the stereo equipment. Williams had turned the volume right down and the record was spinning around on the turntable making angry, soft scratching noises as if the musicians were furiously struggling to be heard. A refrigerator opened and closed in the kitchen, there were two popping noises and Williams ambled back with two king-size cans of Tooheys Draught in his left hand. I took one and he dropped down into a chair opposite. He took a long pull on the can then leaned forward, stretched out a hand and plucked the arm of the stereo player off the disc with the delicacy of a scientist extracting snake venom. I said “Cheers” and drank some beer.
“Yeah. Now, what d’ you want to know about Jacko?”
“How old is he?”
“Eighteen.”
“How many fights has he had?”
“Ten or eleven, prelims, won ‘em all.”
“Knockouts?”
“Mostly. Look, Sammy Trueman coulda told you all this.”
“Yeah, I don’t like Trueman, that’s why I want to see Ricky.”
“I don’t get you.”
“He trains there doesn’t he?”
“Sort of. Ricky had two fights and lost ‘em both.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
The laugh ripped out again. “Nothing mate, just this,” he held up the beer can, “and this.” He made a ring with his left thumb and forefinger and stuck the little finger of his other hand through it. He didn’t let go of the can. I laughed.
“I see. Well, he’s probably better off sticking to that. I wanted to have a word with him about Trueman, whether he’s right for Jacko, you know. He might be too good for Trueman. Do you know where I can find him right now?”
He lost interest a bit and took a minute before answering me. He used the time to suck the rest of the beer in the can out in one long gurgle and crush the aluminium tube as if it was cardboard. He flipped it across the room at a beer carton. He missed.
“Anything in it for me?” His black pupils were stark against the cloudy whites, his lids fluttered down a bit and I was conscious that it hadn’t been his first beer of the afternoon.
“Tickets to Jacko’s next fight?”
He sparked up. “That’ll do me. How do I get ‘em?”
“I’ll leave them for you the day before at the front desk in at the paper, King Street, know it?”
“Yeah, good. OK, I’m not exactly sure where Ricky is but I know he went down to La Perouse. You’ll find him down there if you ask around. Can’t miss the car – big black Chevie, a Biscayne with white stripes on the bonnet.”
I asked him whether Ricky had gone down there on his own and when he went.
“What’s today, Monday? He went early last week. Monday or Tuesday. Not on his own, he had that white chick Noni with him.”