Peter Corris: Casino

‘Don’t mean to upstage you, love, but I got offered a job for two hundred grand per today.’

Glen put down her fork with a load of whitebait on it. ‘Doing what?’

‘Eat,’ I said. ‘You’ve been skipping meals again. I can tell. You look hungry but you’re out of practice at eating.’

She took a forkful of fish. Glen half-likes, half-hates her job, works too hard at it and runs herself ragged. She feels guilty about not being an operational police officer, the result of a bullet wound in the arm that still sometimes troubles her. She thinks she’d like to do something else but doesn’t know what. She’s not interested in having children-just as well since I’d be the world’s worst father. We have a good time but she worries about the future. We ate; I drank more than my share of the wine and told her about O.C. and the casino.

‘Bet you didn’t take it,’ she said.

I said, ‘How’d you guess?’ and wiped up the oil with a piece of bread.

‘Can’t see you going off to work in a three-piece suit. Besides, it’d be a seven day a week job.’

‘I work seven days a week now.’

‘When you work. You were right to knock it back. It wouldn’t suit you.’

‘The money’d suit me. We could go to the Greek islands and Turkey. I want to see the Crimea and Gallipoli.’

‘Bloodthirsty bastard. Anyway, they’re all crooked, those casinos-money launderers, tax-dodgers, you know the form.’

‘They seemed to be on the up and up.’

Glen poured herself some more wine, surprised to see that I hadn’t emptied the bottle. ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Come on, Cliff, they were romancing you. Who’s behind them? And who’s behind them? And so on. It’ll be dirty somewhere, that’s for sure.’

‘The government’s happy, apparently.’

‘Hah!’

I let it go, she was probably right and there was no point in arguing over my slight degree of doubt. I told her that I’d recommended Scott Galvani and filled her in a bit on his history. He’d been driving taxis when I met him and he helped me out of a nasty spot. He went on to get himself a law degree, the TAFE private enquiry agent’s certificate and to run a fairly successful one-man agency for a few years. I knew that he was smart, funny and ambitious. I thought that a year as O.C.’s number three man would amuse him and the dough would be welcome-he’d married a few years back and had recently fathered twin daughters.

‘How old is he?’ Glen asked.

‘About thirty,’ I said. I told her about Oscar Cartwright’s facelift and how youth seemed to be almost a theme of the casino. I explained that I’d had trouble understanding some of the computerised systems. Scott would eat all that up.

‘Sounds right for him,’ Glen said. ‘They’ll probably play it straight for the first year or so. Your mate should be able to take the money and walk. Might even make some useful contacts.’

‘So why wouldn’t it be right for me?’

‘You answered that yourself. You’re too old to change. Don’t look at me like that. I love you the way you are. I don’t want you to change and I don’t particularly want to go to Turkey. Sorry. Let’s have coffee.’

I laughed. There’s something about Glen’s tough, forthright manner that amuses me. And I always know where I am with her-in good odour or bad, and why. I can’t say that about the other women I’ve been seriously involved with. It made for a good, uninhibited relationship with plenty of laughs and serious efforts on both sides to make it work. We had our coffee and walked back to her place. The storm that looked to be building had subsided after a little cleansing rain. It was a nice night. We went to bed and made love twice before falling asleep, something that doesn’t happen all that often and is very heartening when it does. Different positions, too.

Scott rang me at home two days later.

‘Hey, Cliff, thanks a million.’

‘You sound like O.C. already.’

‘He’s a character, isn’t he? Seriously, Cliff, I’ve got to thank you. Things were getting pretty lean what with Gina not working and the twins and all. And you must know how business has been. I’ll be able to hire some help, give Gina an easier time.’

‘Good, how are the kids?’

‘Just great. One’s as dark as me and the other’s as fair as Gina.’

‘So what’re you calling them-Cher and Madonna?’

‘Claire and Rosa. Listen, Cliff, just out of interest. Why’d you knock it back?’

Fair question. The weather had broken and we’d had a day and a half of heavy, warm rain. The damp walls were sweating and a stain on the living room ceiling that I liked to think was vaguely the shape of Australia was spreading to become more like Africa. I’d had trouble starting the Falcon after a quiet day at the office and, as I’d suspected, the non-payer had run true to form. A few phone calls suggested that he’d become a non-resident of our fair city. Still, I didn’t have to wear a three-piece suit or get my hair cut more than once every two months.

‘Too old,’ I said. ‘Also, I thought your Mafia contacts’d make you the right man for the job. Think you can handle it?’

‘No worries. But a year’ll probably do me. Be good for my book. Have I told you about that?’

‘Remind me.’

‘Dago Days: the memoirs of an Italian private eye. I’ve got to go, Cliff. I’ll be in touch.’

‘Love to Gina, Cher and Madonna.’

He laughed and hung up. I’d been to the wedding and could remember Gina clearly. She was a tall, fair-haired girl with a smooth, slightly olive complexion. Striking. Galvani, Australian-born of Sicilian parents who had wanted to give him a distinctively Australian first name, was nuggetty and dark. He had been a near-Olympic standard wrestler and his personal library featured shelves of Penguin classics. He claimed to have finished Moby Dick, making him the only person I knew who had. I got drunk at the wedding and danced, something I never do when sober, but I couldn’t remember who with. I must have gone on my own because it happened in the hiatus between Helen Broadway and Glen Withers. A bad time.

The rain stopped and the walls sweated less and the ceiling stain retreated, ending up about the size of South America. The Falcon performed better in the dry weather. Glen did her teaching and ran her courses and enjoyed her promotion. I did the usual things-a spot of bodyguarding, a little summons-serving, and acted as a consultant for a documentary film-maker who was making a movie about private enquiry agents-strictly off-camera stuff. Glen bought herself a CD player for her birthday because she was flush and I bought her several CDs because I wasn’t-Crosby, Stills amp; Nash, The Big Chill, that sort of thing.

I heard from Scott once, a few weeks after he took the job. He rang and asked me to run a check on a player at the casino whose behaviour was giving them some concern.

‘I can put a bit of this work your way, Cliff, if you’re interested,’ he said.

‘I’m interested.’ It’s not often that doing someone else a good turn brings results for yourself.

The man in question was a toy importer with political aspirations. His products were shoddy and illegally labelled, and his solid financial front turned out to be a tissue-thin facade of debts and deals that would fall down at the first puff of an adverse economic wind. He had some unfortunate personal habits, too, like steering his BMW convertible with his feet when he had a skinful. I reported to Scott and I got a cheque accompanied by a card-’with the thanks and compliments of Scott Galvani, Security Manager, Sydney Casinos Ltd.’ Very nice.

A few weeks later I was driving back from a job in Campbelltown and switched on the 11 p.m. news. I heard that police had cordoned off an area of the Balmain peninsula and were searching for the men who had shot and wounded another man in a house in Louisa Road. The victim was Scott Galvani, thirty-one, of Rozelle. ‘Mr Galvani,’ the newsreader said, ‘is a former private detective, now head of security at The Sydney Casino.’