Peter Corris - Casino

The car handled well and I complimented the man in charge at the Newtown service station where I left the cheque.

‘Good. How’s Glen?’ he said.

I used to play football myself in Marrickville when I was a member of schoolboy and junior district teams. Then it was a solidly WASP working-class area, always with a few more churches than I felt comfortable with. It’s changed enormously over the past decades with Greeks, Turks and Vietnamese moving in and giving it life and variety. I drove down Addison Road and took the turn at Livingstone Street just to see how the bizarre three-winged building on that corner was looking. My work rarely took me to this part of Sydney and I hadn’t seen the place in years. The building is like a cross between a Moorish palace and a redbrick university administration block. I’d been told that it was put up by a squatter with a large family and has served many functions since, like a Salvation Army training school. I was pleased to see that it was still standing. At a guess it had been converted into apartments.

The football ground was beside the Cooks River to the east of the municipal golf course. The Gregory’s told me that a strip of parkland ran alongside the river for several kilometres, with picnic spots and barbecues. The last time I was close to the Cooks River I would have thought twice about eating anything within a hundred metres of it. I parked near the entrance to the golf club, ducked under a fence and went through a clump of trees and across a stretch of grass to the oval. I seemed to be haunting sporting arenas lately, but this time I had a Smith amp; Wesson. 38 revolver in a holster that sat above my right buttock. It might have made me look a little lop-sided, but a one-armed private detective can’t afford to take any chances.

The afternoon was cool and a couple of players were already jogging around the oval, slinging a ball between them, getting ready for the time when their courage and collarbones would be on the line. I wandered across to the group of watchers, some in shorts and singlets, others in civvies. They were standing in several knots of two or three, watching the ones doing the sweating. A couple of the onlookers broke away and joined the doers. My arm was aching and I hooked my left thumb into my belt and let it hang there. An overweight man in white singlet and shorts and wearing a floppy hat jogged out onto the oval. Despite his size he ran well, an old athlete gone to seed but retaining the moves. He gesticulated and shouted and the players fell into a series of routines, doing his bidding.

I moved into the shade, close to four men, two white and two black, who were standing around a half-carton of beer cans. Resch’s Pilsener. Good beer.

I used to be a Rugby Union man and only got interested in League when I took up with Glen, who is a passionate Newcastle supporter. I’m still divided about the merits of the two codes, and was a little surprised to see that the players seemed to be concentrating on speed and ball-handling skills rather than the more physical stuff. One of the Aborigines, built more on the lines of a tennis player than a footballer, plucked a can from the box and came towards me.

‘Fancy a beer, mate?’

I accepted the can and opened it awkwardly, one-handed. ‘Thanks.’

‘Wouldn’t be from the press, would you?’

I drank some of the cold beer and shook my head. ‘No.’

He finished off his own can and crushed it expertly in his hand. ‘Club supporter, eh?’

‘No.’

Our conversation attracted the attention of another member of the drinking group, who joined us. He wore a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, striped tie and red braces. He had a can in each hand and offered one to the Aborigine who declined with a shake of his head. This man was red-headed with a fair and freckled skin. He was about my size or a fraction taller, around the 185 centimetre mark. He was ten years younger than me and carried a good deal more flab. Vita would not have approved.

‘Who’s this, then?’ he said.

The Aborigine glanced at the players and winced. ‘Jesus, Brian,’ he said.

I took a long sip of the beer that was warming up fast but still tasting good the way properly brewed beer should. ‘Is Brian Roberts out there?’

‘Who wants to know?’ the redhead said.

‘Told you, I’ve got some business with him.’ I turned to the Aborigine. ‘Could you point him out to me, please?’

‘In the red singlet. Mad bastard.’

‘What’s it to you?’ The redhead again, and the can he was drinking wasn’t his first in recent memory, maybe his fifth or sixth.

‘Told you, I’ve got some business with him.’

I watched the big, dark man in the red singlet and white shorts weave and twist his way down the field, avoiding two men detailed by the coach to stop him, and intimidating another into stepping aside. He seemed to moving from side to side excessively. “Why’s he doing all that fancy side-stepping?’

‘Had a knee problem,’ the Aborigine said. ‘Had surgery on it at the end of the season and now he’s testing it out. Going too hard, like always. He’s my brother. He’s been like that since he could fucking walk, probably before.’

I laughed, put the can down on the grass and stuck out my hand. ‘Cliff Hardy.’

‘Lenny Roberts. What’s wrong with your left hand?’

‘I buggered the shoulder. Frozen shoulder they call it.’

The blow that came almost from behind staggered me. I’d turned slightly to talk to Roberts, and the redhead had thumped me somewhere around the left shoulder-blade. I left the can on the ground and turned back towards him.

‘I’m Bob Grady-Brian’s manager.’

‘Bullshit you are,’ Roberts said. ‘Brian sacked you a couple of weeks ago. Fuck-all good you ever did him.’

This seemed to infuriate Grady and to decide him to take out his anger on me. He raised a meaty, freckled fist and waved it in my face. ‘Some kind of sports agent are you, shithead?’ he roared. ‘Turds like youse are fuckin’ everything up.’

He swung a punch at me from close range, but he was so badly balanced and poorly coordinated it was child’s play to avoid it. The anger that had been building in me since the incident in Eastern Park reached flashpoint. I swayed back from the inept punch and hit Grady three times-all with my right-in the ribs, nose and throat and he went down like a kite when the wind drops.

‘Hey, man,’ Roberts shouted in my ear. ‘Hey, take it easy!’

I realised that Grady had sagged to his knees and that I was setting up to finish him off the way it had happened to me the day before. I pulled the punch and bent down for my can. ‘You’re right. Sorry. I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen.’

Grady wasn’t badly hurt. Lenny Roberts helped him up and told him to piss off if he couldn’t behave himself. Grady thought briefly about having another go but decided against it. He walked over to the other group, took a can and sat down on the grass. I sucked the skinned knuckles that were stinging again now and drank the rest of my beer. Roberts looked at me warily.

‘Not a cop, are you?’

‘No. Private investigator. I just want a quick talk with your brother. Nothing heavy.’ I explained the circumstances and Roberts listened, dividing his attention between me and the action on the oval. I saw Brian Roberts go down hard and bounce straight back up. His brother let out a snort of relief.

‘I think that all got sorted,’ he said. ‘Anyway, you can ask Brian when he has a spell. Should be soon. Shit, you can whack. Done some boxing?’

‘A long time ago.’ I unhooked my thumb and moved the stiffening-up arm. ‘Bit early for all this training, isn’t it?’