Peter Corris - Casino

I could see it. Access to perfection. Unusual. Suzie knocked and came in with several pages of print-out. I thanked her, shook Primo’s hand and left the office.

I sat in the car and leafed through the transcript. Then I played the tape and read as I listened. Suzie’s typing was certainly fast, but it wasn’t altogether accurate and I made a few scribbled amendments as I leafed through the pages. Cracking Scott’s code wasn’t difficult. ‘Number one’ was his oldest brother, Ken. Brother Joe, younger than Scott, was ‘number two’. I had heard Scott refer affectionately to Joe as a ‘knee-jerk greenie’. Joe was an architect with strong environmental convictions. A pain in the arse to anyone planning to cut down a tree or lay a brick in what he considered a wrong place, Scott had told me. Ken was at the other end of the spectrum. A property developer with his own construction company, demolition outfit and waste disposal business, he agreed with Joe on no topic under the sun. Scott, caught in the middle, had spent a lot of time and effort over the years arbitrating between them.

Scott had stumbled on the fact that Ken’s company was part of the Australian conglomerate that made up the Sydney Casinos corporation. No harm in that, but when Joe had come to Scott with a story about how an architect named Julian Clark had been stood over and blackmailed by one of Ken’s lieutenants, Scott’s antennae went up. Clark was no lightweight. He was the boss of a big firm, Clark, Perkins amp; Wells, of the kind that Joe Galvani had little time for, but this project had been a pet one for him. According to Scott’s account of his conversations with Joe, Julian Clark had had a dream of designing a casino. Although he’d scarcely put pen to paper in years he’d come up with a design for the Sydney Casino that he considered his masterpiece.

Clark had a weakness for casinos in more ways than one. He’d been an enthusiastic player at the Sydney shop from the day it opened and before they’d perfected their system for monitoring the resources and habits of the clients. The architect had got himself into serious trouble by playing and losing big stakes backed by cheques and credit cards that could not be honoured. He was a quarter of a million in the hole before the problem had come to the casino’s attention. A deal had been worked out for him to pay off the debt, but Ken Galvani’s representative had put a simple proposition to him-withdraw the design from the consideration of the board or the arrangement would be cancelled and Clark would be bankrupted. Knowing of Joe Galvani’s reputation for straight dealing and opposition to his brother, Clark had come to him for help.

Joe, in turn, had come to Scott who had not long taken up the casino job. Scott’s notes contained an account of his conversation with the architect, as well as research into Ken’s position in the management structure and the procedures covering tenders for design, construction and location of the permanent site for the casino. In his notes, Scott speculated about Ken’s motives. There were a number of tenderers for the designing job and Scott had worried about the confidentiality of the system. Scott was a bright operator and he’d homed in on the central question-was there something unique about Clark’s design that would explain Ken’s motive, or was he just throwing his weight around generally?

An entry posing that question was the last one in Scott’s notebook. I flicked back through the pages of transcript to the point where Scott had noted Clark’s address. I stared out through the windscreen at one of the pylons that held up the freeway. High above me the tyres were thumping across the lane markers.

‘Louisa Road,’ I said aloud. ‘Shit me, he was on his way to talk to the architect again.’

I was conflicted, as the Americans say. Suddenly, the fact of Gina being under the control of Ken Galvani disturbed me. It sounded as if Ken was pulling a lot of strings. On the other hand it was imperative to talk to Joe Galvani and to Julian Clark, to try to penetrate the mystery Scott had been scouting around. I dithered; I played back parts of the tape and ran my eyes over the pages, looking for answers and leads I knew were not there. The Commodore came with its own car phone, of course. I rang Gina’s number and got the same, worrying, recorded message from Ken.

Scott had noted the address and number of Joe’s office in Greenwich. I called it and got an engaged signal. I hung up, waited, and called again with the same result.

I sat back in the comfortable bucket seat and tried to feel my way around the various questions. Was Julian Clark a stocky, dark guy who owned a silver-grey Mercedes? It would help if he was. Was Ken Galvani holding his sister-in-law hostage in some way? Had he arranged for his brother to be murdered, and if so, what did an architect’s design for a casino have to do with it?

I riffled through the sheets to see if Scott had entered phone numbers for Julian Clark. No luck. The nearest intact telephone directory proved to be a ten-minute walk and a long wait away. I fumed outside the box while an overweight woman ploughed her way through the books, keeping the phone to her ear and making several calls. She seemed to need all the books at once. I gave up on her and went in search of another phone. The one in the Oxford Street pub had no accompanying directories. I had a beer anyway for my nerves and went back to the booth. Fatty had gone and I seized the yellow pages. The offices of Clark, Perkins amp; Wells were in Chatswood. I groaned at the thought of the drive and hurried back to the car.

I pressed the buttons and rehearsed aloud what I would say.

‘Mr Clark, my name’s Cliff Hardy. I’m a private investigator and I’m… I was a friend of Scott Galvani. I’m calling about… ‘ What? The blackmail attempt? The threat that made you withdraw your design for the casino? Your gambling debts…?

I decided that it was impossible to handle over the phone, cut off the call before it was answered and started the engine. About the last thing I wanted to do was drive to the other side of the city, but no-one ever said that this kind of work was about doing what you wanted. At least I had a good car, with air-conditioning, tape deck and AM/FM radio, to do it in. As I drove I thought about calling Glen until I realised that that would be as difficult a call as the one to the architect. My ex-wife Cyn had made the point long, long ago.

‘You can’t separate the two, Cliff,’ she’d said. Your grotty professional life and the rest. Anyone involved with you feels like a client or a suspect or a bloody victim. You just haven’t got room for anything else.’

I drove back to the city, immune to the elements in the air-conditioned car and protected from a lot of the normal irritations of driving. The Commodore answered the hands and feet instantly; the power steering made it feel as if I could do a couple of other things while driving- like practise my forehand or throw a triple-twenty. I was in the tunnel before I realised that I’d put myself on that route. It wasn’t intentional; I’d made a vow not to use the thing until I’d heard that the millionth car had passed through it. I was deeply suspicious of the tunnel. It seemed like a denial of the bridge and I was a passionate believer in the bridge. Some Melburnian had told me that his kids were terribly disappointed when they’d first crossed the bridge-they’d expected to drive over the arch. In a way, I sometimes felt that I was driving over the arch when I made the crossing. One of my grandfathers had worked on the ferry that had carried people across before the bridge was built. I learned that after I had worked on a case that had forced me to mug up on the history of the coathanger. I think I’m a throwback to that ancestor.