Wet Graves (7 page)

I took a walk around the back streets, making the dogs bark but drawing comradely nods from the other nocturnal strollers.

By 9.15 I'd run out of streets and was sharp and dear-headed. A plane passed over, low down and with landing lights blinking, as I reached into the car and took out the licensed and totally legal Smith & Wesson .38 automatic. As I put the weapon in the pocket of my leather jacket I had the thought that ninety-nine per cent of the people I'd seen and spoken to since I'd arrived in Leichhardt would have disapproved of me carrying it in their suburb. I disapproved myself, more or less, but there was that dangerous one per cent who thought and acted differently. It was still too early to find Jackson playing games, but it wasn't too early to ask around, politely.

Four doors down from the Bar Napoli is another coffee shop in which very little coffee seems to get drunk. It's small, crowded with tables, has a big flashy espresso machine and they work hard at creating a busy atmosphere. The TV is always on;
La Fiamma
and other papers and magazines lie about, and there's always at least one table with coffee cups and full ashtrays sitting on it. They sit there for a long time. Also sitting for a long time are a succession of men who smoke, watch the TV with one eye and the street with the other. In Australian they're called ‘cockatoos'; I don't know what they're called in Italian.

I went past the Bar Napoli and gave Bruno the sign. Then I walked into the other place and nodded to the man sitting near the door. There were no other customers but there was a guy sitting on a stool behind the bar. He was dark and thin, not more than twenty years old, and he was reading an Italian soft porn magazine with deep concentration. I bought cigarettes I wouldn't smoke and a cappuccino I wouldn't drink from him and put two twenty-dollar notes on the counter. He made change for one of the twenties and I pushed it and the other note towards him.

“You know me, don't you, mate?” I said.

He shook his head.

I pointed at the door. Bruno stood there, all five foot three and fifteen stone of him. He nodded and the man behind the bar scooped up my money. His accent was straight inner-west Sydney. “It's too early,” he said.

“I'm looking for someone.”

“Who'd that be?”

“Rhino Jackson.”

“Haven't seen him for a fuckin' month, the bastard.”

“My sentiments exactly. I'll go up and watch for a bit.”

He shrugged and went back to his tits and bums. I pushed past a couple of empty tables and went up a set of stairs placed so far back from the light in the room that you couldn't see them from the street. I made out that I could hardly see to climb them; I hung on to the rail and almost stumbled on the first landing. It occurred to me that it wouldn't hurt for the porn freak and anyone else to think I was half-drunk or half-blind. No one worries about a blind man; no one presses warning buzzers. I pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and walked into the room where they sold plastic chips and scotch rather than cigarettes and cappuccino.

I've been in dozens of such places in my time and, although they all smell the same and share a certain look, each one has something distinctive about it. Some look fixed and established, as if they've been there since Federation, others look as if everything could be wheeled out the door and the place turned into a carpet display centre inside thirty seconds. This one specialised in European sporting motifs—there were photographs of boxers, cyclists, soccer players and others on the walls. Most of the sportsmen were Italian, but there were some Yugoslavs among the water polo players and some Austrians among the skiers. In a glass case was a soccer ball signed by a couple of dozen people; an unsigned pair of boots was in another case.

There were about twenty people in the room. A six-handed card game was going strong in one corner, and there were three playing and a couple watching at a baccarat table. Two roulette wheels were yet to attract players and another baccarat dealer was giving himself a hand of patience while he awaited customers.

Four men were rolling dice under the eye of a large character who slightly resembled one of the photos on the wall—the one of Primo Camera. His dark, hooded eyes followed me as I moved around the room. I stopped at the bar and bought some chips and a scotch and soda. This seemed to comfort Primo, who went back to concentrating on the rolling dice. There was a little talk, not much, some drinking and cigar-smoking going on, not much. The place was just warming up, like a car with the motor running but no gears engaged.

I took my chips to a roulette wheel and lost them in fairly rapid order.

“Bad luck,” said the croupier, a small, sleek-haired character starting to look old before he was thirty.

“Have you seen Rhino Jackson lately?”

He inspected the end of his spatula and picked off a piece of fluff “I didn't think you were a serious player. Cop?”

“No. Who would I talk to about who comes in here and who doesn't?”

The croupier grinned. “Not me, that's for sure. Why don't you try him?” He jerked his head at Primo.

I wandered away from the table with my drink and thought about that. I had the distinct feeling that talking wasn't Primo's long suit and that, if I insisted, he'd roll me down the stairs just to keep his wrist in practice. I was on the point of buying more chips when a party of a dozen or so, including four or five women, came in. Immediately the place seemed to pick up a glow. The noise level went up, people starting buying drinks and jostling good-naturedly for position at the tables.

I had to queue for my chips. The door opened and Lou Campisi walked in. Lou had been a jockey until he grew too big, then he played League for a while but he proved to be too small: his middle-sized physique had done the dirty on him twice. It might have embittered some men but Lou took it in his stride. He went energetically into SP bookmaking, race-fixing, supplying illegal drugs to football players and scalping finals tickets. Anywhere there was a quick, soiled dollar to be made out of racing and football, Lou was on the spot. He was also an associate of Jackson's. They probably discussed electric saddles and quick counts, ring-ins and tank jobs together. I bought my chips, fifty dollars' worth this time instead of the previous ten, and moved away quickly so that Campisi wouldn't see me.

Watching an addicted gambler play is a bit like watching an alcoholic drink. You know they enjoy it up to a point, but that point quickly passes and simple need takes over. Campisi was drinking steadily and losing. He made several trips to the chip desk and his original plunging style gave way to a more cautious approach. All this meant was that he lost more slowly. Towards the end he started to get a bit desperate, he had a winning run at baccarat, but it soon petered out, and I moved in on him when I calculated that the two chips in his hand were his last.

“Hello, Lou,” I said. “How's tricks?”

He turned his bleary, loser's eyes on me. “Lousy. Who're you?”

“You remember me, Lou. Cliff Hardy. I helped to unfix one of your fixes a few years ago.” Three years before, to be precise, when I'd been employed by a horse trainer to find out who was bribing his riders.

“Push off, prick,” Campisi said.

I showed him my stack of chips. “Lose the ones you've got there and then come over and see me. These could be yours.”

“I'm winning, cunt.”

“You'll never win, Lou. You just play. Go ahead, play.”

He placed the chips on the red and lost. I'd moved back to watch him. He went through his pockets, first for chips, then for money. He came up empty. A woman at the roulette wheel gave a shriek as her ball dropped in. Campisi wet his lips and looked around for me. He saw me, hesitated, lit a cigarette and came across.

“You got some kind of a proposition, Hardy?”

I moved across to the wall furthest from Primo, and Campisi followed me. ”Yes, there's something you could help me with, if you've a mind to.”

Another squeal from the roulette table where a knot of people had gathered. Campisi glanced across. “Wheel's running hot.”

“You could get in on it.” I clinked the chips together.

“What do you want?”

“Information. Solid, factual information. The kind that checks out or I come back and point out to you that you made a big mistake.”

“Sure. Sure. You're tough. What d'you want to know?”

“Where to find Rhino Jackson. Tonight.”

Campisi wet his lips. “I don't know. I …”

Clink. Clink. “Yes, you do.”

He was tempted but very afraid. The noise in the room had mounted, along with the level of smoke and the fumes of whisky; the women's perfume was giving the air an extra tang. To addicts such as Lou Campisi it was like the kiss of life. He wanted to go on breathing it, suck it in deeper, but …

He shook his head. “I don't know where he is.”

The reluctance in his voice told me that he did know and something else—he almost wanted me to force him to tell. I gripped the .38 in my pocket and lifted it up a few inches so that Campisi could see it. “Feel like knocking this place over with me, Lou? We could do it.”

He turned pale and the hand holding the cigarette for nonchalance shook violently. “Are you crazy? Get away from me!”

I held his arm and kept him from backing off. “Listen, Rhino's trying to put me out of business. I go up in front of a court next week and I'm history. But it's just a misunderstanding. We can sort it out.”

He wavered, “I dunno …”

“If this thing goes through and they lift my licence I'm done for. I can't make a living. I'd just as soon take what they've got in here and blow. Leave Sydney. Go north with a big piece of cash.”

“You're crazy. This place is protected. Look at that big cunt over there. One man couldn't handle him.”

“Two,” I said.

“No.”

I sniffed and let a wild look come into my eyes. “I'm going to do it and you're in.”

“No, no! Shit, Hardy. Take your hand outa your pocket. All right, all right. I'll tell you where Jackson is. Just back down, will you?”

I let him see both hands and began tossing the chips from one to the other. “Yes, Lou?”

“You won't let on it was me told you?”

“Lou, would I?”

“An' you'll give me the chips?”

“You're doing an awful lot of asking, Lou, and not giving anything.”

“He's on a houseboat.”

“That's nice. Where?”

“I don't know. It moves around.”

“Come on, Lou. You're playing games. The wheel's going to go cold on you.”

“Look, all I know is, he's in partnership with Reg Bailey, who's an ex-cop, like him. They've got this houseboat with all the gambling gear on it—high-class stuff. It moves around. Goes from one, what d'you call it?”

“Mooring?”

“Right. From one mooring to another. What the fuck do I know? From Palm Beach to … anywhere on the fuckin' harbour. I've never been on it. It's a top-class thing—trainers, owners, politicians, doctors—big money.”

Lou's association of certain professions with big money would have been of interest to sociologists; for me it gave his statement the ring of truth. But not the ring of helpfulness. I let the chips stay in one hand and closed my fist over them.

“Hardy,” Lou begged, “that's all I know.”

“Boats have names, Lou. Even houseboats. Give me the name and we're in business.”

“Fuck you.”

“They wouldn't register that.”

“The
Paravotti
.”

“What?”

“Paravotti, Pavarotti
, like that. Bailey's some kind of music nut, I heard. The boat's named after an opera or somethin'. Hardy …”

I poured the chips into Campisi's sweaty palm. “Thanks, Lou,” I said. “Big help.”

“Fuck you.”

7

I went back to the Crown, got hold of another glass of dollar red and the yellow pages. Ten years ago I'd have been able to telephone all the marinas on the harbour, but not now. At a rough count there were about a hundred of them. Some weren't possibilities, of course—glorified boatsheds where you couldn't tie up anything much bigger than a dinghy. But there were still too many imposing-sounding ones—‘Middle Harbour Moorings' ‘Peninsula Marina', ‘Clearwater Luxury Marina'—that could, presumably, accommodate a houseboat, to make a ring-around possible.

Paul Guthrie was a client from a few years back. He'd been an Olympic sculler and later a successful businessman. A satisfied client, as it had turned out, he was quite big in boating circles and might know where you'd tie up a houseboat if you happened to have one. The trouble was I didn't know whether he was still alive. Too often these days when I ring old clients I get recent widows. But I dredged his address up from my memory and found him still listed in the telephone book. Not proof of existence—some widows never change the listing—but encouraging.

I sat by the same phone as before, fed in the money and punched the buttons. Guthrie's brisk, no-nonsense voice sounded impatient but was just an indicator of his energy.

“Paul Guthrie.”

“Cliff Hardy, Mr Guthrie. You might remember …”

“Of course I remember, Cliff. Of course I do. How the hell are you? You said you'd drop in on us but you never did.”

He was right; I always say it and I never do. “I'm sorry. I've been busy, I guess. How are the boys?” I referred to his two adopted sons, both in trouble at one time.

“Just fine. Me ‘n' Pat're grandparents. But you don't want to hear about that. I hope you want some help. God knows I'd like to do something for you after what you did for us.”

“I'm glad you feel that way. It's not a big thing. I'm looking for a houseboat called the
Pavarotti
. I don't suppose you know it?”