Peter Corris - Casino

‘That’s the first nice thing you’ve done for me,’ I said. ‘But I’ll still beat the shit out of you if I get the chance. Where’s your bald-headed mate? I’d like to have a go at him too.’

‘You’re not having a go at anyone, Hardy,’ Galvani said. ‘What I’d really like to do with you is stick you in a barrel and slip you into the harbour somewhere.’

I grinned at him and felt the blood on my mouth from where I’d bitten myself and from where the tape had been ripped away. ‘But you can’t, because if the casino loses two security men in a couple of weeks questions are bound to be asked and you don’t want that.’

He looked at me disgustedly. ‘Christ, you’re a fucking mess. How could someone who’s supposed to be smart like you get yourself so screwed up?’

‘It’s a talent, also Scott was a friend of mine.’

A silence fell in the grey-painted, soulless room. Runty leaned against a wall and looked bored. Galvani took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one with a gold lighter. ‘It was an accident. A bloody awful accident. Should never have happened.’

‘Yeah. What about Clark, the architect?’

‘He jumped.’

‘After someone scared him shitless.’

‘He was shitless, gutless and everything else. I suppose you’ve got it all worked out?’

‘Not by a long way. How about some more water?’

Galvani waved at Runty who complied, but this time I collected a mouthful and sprayed it over him. He got ready to hit me but Galvani stopped him. This was getting better and better all the time, now I was protected property. Any minute he’d be untying me and offering me a real drink.

‘In a way, Hardy, I blame you for getting my brother killed. But we won’t go into that. What I will do is try to keep you alive. You want to stay alive, don’t you?’

I didn’t answer.

‘You do nothing for a month, understand. You just do your job here and that’s all. Plus whatever other shitty little business you’ve got on the side. I don’t care. But you don’t talk to anyone about this-not to your copper mates or your lawyer mates or your journalist mates. No one!’

‘Why would I agree?’

‘Because if you don’t, Gina is dead. As far as I’m concerned she’s a stuck-up northern bitch who’d be no loss. My family’d take care of the kids better than she can. So, you get it? Do fuck-all for a month and she lives, interfere and she’s dead.’

‘Why a month?’

He dropped his cigarette on the highly polished floor and stood on it. ‘No more talk. No explanations. I won’t say take it or leave it because you can’t fucking leave it, can you?’

He was right there. My mind was teeming with questions but I could tell I wasn’t going to get any answers. I’d only learned one thing-he’d said I was to do my job ‘here’, meaning we were somewhere inside the casino. Not much help. I stared at him, trying to think of something to threaten him with, something to exert some leverage. And I didn’t have a cracker. Galvani would have Scott’s notebook and the tape and transcript for sure. If Julian Clark had really jumped there’d be no hard evidence of a connection there. They could patch up the Commodore and I still didn’t know what lay behind it all.

Galvani must have seen the defeat in my face because he smiled. His jowls wobbled a bit and he relaxed his body, letting his belly sag forward. He was a long way from being Pavarotti-shaped, but getting there. I would have liked to swing a couple of punches into his flab. He said something in Italian to Runty.

‘Sorry, I only talk Australian.’

‘Shit,’ Galvani barked. ‘Get the needle. This fucker’s going back to sleep.’

When you wake up from a bad dream, you’re relieved to find that everything you were dreaming about has gone. This was the reverse. I came awake in my own bed and knew instantly that it was all true. The physical evidence was clear-the sore arm, chafed wrists and ankles, dry throat and mouth and a listless feeling, something like a hangover, something like heat exhaustion. My clothes were neatly folded on a chair. Sitting on top of them were Scott’s notebook, a cassette tape and a set of car keys. My watch was on the bedside table-it was 1 p.m. I’d lost about twenty out of the last twenty-four hours. Realising this made me feel weak, as if I was losing control of everything.

I struggled out of bed and picked up the notebook. The pages dealing with Scott’s investigation of his brother had been torn out. It was a fair bet that the cassette had been wiped. I pulled on my tracksuit pants and opened the window onto the balcony. A maroon Commodore, freshly washed, was sitting there behind the dusty Falcon, sparkling in the afternoon sun. I stared down at it, thinking of driving the thing to the casino for the next month while I did nothing about the mess I’d stumbled into. The thought made me feel sick. I wanted to crawl back into bed. I wanted to call Glen and tell her all about it. I wanted to get Ken Galvani into some quiet enclosed space and bounce him off the walls.

Impossible. My metabolism began to return to normal and I realised I was still parched and hungry. I went downstairs and saw the message light blinking on the phone. I hesitated before hitting the button-Glen? Vita? Ken Galvani?

‘Hi, Cliff. O.C. here. Sorry to hear you’re crook. Not to worry. Rest up and get in when you can. Might give me a call if you can’t make it tonight. So long.’

There was nothing edible in the kitchen and I was about to go out shopping when I became aware that I smelled like a hide tanner. I showered, shaved and shopped. Then I made an enormous meal of toast and scrambled eggs and ate it with a glass of white wine cut with mineral water. The cat got a tin of sardines. I cleaned up, washed a pile of dirty clothes and the time to go to work rolled around. Before leaving I checked the cassette and confirmed that it was blank. A thought occurred, the first useful one since waking up. I phoned Primo’s office and got fast-fingers Suzie.

‘Suzie, this is Cliff Hardy.’

‘He’s out, looking at locations, so he says. I bet he’s on the golf course. His wife complains that the pro at Woollahra sees more of him than she does. He’s even talking about going on a diet to improve his swing. I can’t believe it.’

‘Wouldn’t hurt, but I don’t need him. You remember typing something up for me yesterday?’

‘Off a tape, sure.’

‘Have you still got it on the hard disk?’

‘Would have. I don’t wipe ‘em till the end of the week.’

I asked her to run off another copy and send it to my office. It wasn’t much in the way of evidence or defiance, but it was something.

For the next week I walked through the job at the casino like Robert Mitchum in a movie role. I did everything the easy way, trod on no toes but took no shit. Business was good and everyone was happy. Ralston reported to me that he’d narrowed down the list of dark-haired regulars who drove Mercedes to six and he gave me the names. Julian Clark’s was on it. I thanked but didn’t enlighten him and he appeared to be incurious. A guy with his problem gets through one day at a time and doesn’t look for any more trouble than he’s already got. Oscar asked me how I was doing with the Galvani investigation and I studied him closely as he did so. It was an innocent inquiry, I was sure. Oscar was what he seemed- an effective, image-conscious front man, neither more nor less than that.

The casino was equipped with a swimming pool, spa and gym and I spent a lot of time there, freeing my shoulder, making sure the muscles didn’t atrophy, working my body while my mind was on hold. I would have dearly loved to know why Ken Galvani was so anxious to have a free hand for a month, but I didn’t dare ask around. I assumed the new Commodore was bugged and came to dislike driving it. I sang and spouted obscenities for the listeners, if any. Childish stuff. On the roads and moving around generally, I spotted tails a couple of times and did my best to lose them. Sometimes I succeeded. I had the transcript of the tape in my office, but I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with it. The inactivity and frustration drove me mad. I thought of driving to Galvani Senior’s house to check out the security, of contacting Joe, of hiring someone to do these things for me. The trouble was, I believed Ken Galvani’s threat. There had been something implacably cold and bleak and committed about him. I felt guilty enough about Scott and Julian Clark, I didn’t fancy bringing about the orphaning of Scott’s kids. I thought about snatching Ken and reversing the pressure, but I never saw him around the casino and I knew he had considerable backup. I drank a good deal and swam endless laps to work it off.