Peter Corris: Casino

Saturday morning. I was in Gleebooks, the old shop near St Johns Road where I like the clutter, browsing the second-hand Penguins section, when I was bumped from behind.

‘Don’t turn around. I’ve got my back to you. Keep doing what you’re doing. I’m Joe Galvani.’

The voice was low-pitched, fast and very nervous. I could hear pages turning and I pulled out a copy of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not and leafed through it. Although it was more than thirty years old the binding was holding firm, more than you can say for modern paperbacks. I muttered as if I was addressing the printed page. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

‘I hope so, too. I have to talk to you. I know I wasn’t followed here. You?’

‘I don’t think so.’

He said nothing for a few seconds and I let my eye run over the passage where Harry Morgan dumps the Chinese illegals overboard. Tough stuff. The shop was busy as always, with people squatting to look at the low shelves, swarming up the ladders for the high ones, pulling out books, reading, checking prices, probably doing a little shop-lifting too, some of them.

‘There’s a park next to the church across the road. Meet me there in a couple of minutes.’

If we hadn’t been followed, what was the point of not looking at each other? I turned round just as he put his book back and headed towards the door. He had the Galvani look all right-the black hair and square shoulders. In build he was somewhere in between Ken the slob and Scott the fit. He had his shoulders hunched and his hands thrust into the pockets of a poplin jacket as if he was trying to make himself invisible- he couldn’t have been more conspicuous if he’d tried. I decided to buy the Hemingway. I had to wait a while to be served. I wandered down the street, crossed at the lights and entered the small park. Good choice, hedges and trees blocking it off from the street and plenty of shaded and sheltered spots within.

Joe was sitting on a bench near the toilet block. He had an open newspaper in his hands but I could tell he wasn’t reading it. From twenty paces away I could see the trembling of his hands and the sweat on his face. He lit a cigarette which seemed to steady him a little. His nervousness got to me and I checked the park out thoroughly before approaching him. Readers, talkers, soft-drink swillers, all clear. I sat down next to him on the bench and watched his smoke drift in the still air.

‘I know what Ken’s doing,’ he said. ‘I know what he’s threatening.’

‘Then you know how dangerous this is.’

‘Yes.’ He smoked for a while, taking deep drags. When he’d smoked the cigarette down almost to the filter, he lit another one from the stub. ‘I gave up this miserable, stupid bloody habit five years ago. Now look at me. I’m back on it worse than ever. My wife can’t stand it. She says kissing me is like licking an ashtray. It’s just one more thing I’ve got against Ken.’

‘I’ve got a few against him myself. What I want to know is why? Why did he put the frighteners on Julian Clark? Why does he need a month’s grace?’

He talked a blue streak, smoking the whole time, still nervous, but relieved to get it off his chest. He said that Ken had a major interest in a site in Ultimo-one of the contenders for the permanent home of the casino. Ken’s holding was concealed by a thick smokescreen of interlocking companies, but he stood to make millions if this site was chosen and to lose heavily if it wasn’t.

‘He owns it, virtually, but it’s costing him a fortune in interest and so on,’ Joe said. You understand?’

I said I’d heard of such things. ‘But I still don’t see why…’

‘The site isn’t near the water. You can’t bloody see the water from it. Julian’s design was brilliant, far and away the best, but it was the worst from Ken’s point of view because it depended on proximity to the harbour. Two of the other sites provide that. Ken had to eliminate it. He’s pulling all sorts of strings to get it to go his way. He’s desperate I think. He… ‘

He stopped, visibly upset. I could see where this train of thought was leading and felt I had to say something to deflect it. ‘That’d be illegal, wouldn’t it-to be a big wheel in the corporation running the casino and owning the site as well.’

Wrong tack, Cliff.

He nodded miserably. ‘The bastard. My guess is that’s what Scott…’

I patted his shoulder as he lit another cigarette. ‘OK, Joe. I get the picture. It sounds as if he’s put everything on the line.’

He threw the cigarette away and crumpled the packet in his hand. ‘I’m fucked if I’m going to do this. He’s cost me a brother. If I go on like this it’s going to cost me a wife as well. Fuck him! Fuck him! Yeah, the rest of his businesses are on the nose. He’s overcommitted in every bloody direction. If he doesn’t get this through he’s down the tubes. Christ. Hardy, you can’t imagine how much I want that to happen.’

I could. I was with him all the way. My life was a mess and I was very eager to make someone else’s the same, worse if possible. But it was one thing to want it and another to bring it about. I watched him as he glanced nervously around the park, twisted his wedding ring and fiddled with his lighter as if he was already regretting the destruction of the cigarettes. As an ally, he wasn’t very inspiring.

‘I tried to get in touch with you just before Ken’s boys got rough with me,’ I said. ‘I was told you were sick.’

‘Yeah. When Scott died I tried to pretend it had nothing to do with Ken. Then Julian came to me again and told me Ken’s latest threat. I couldn’t pretend any more. I went to Ken and he nearly went berserk. He told me about you and said he’d kill Gina if anyone interfered with his plans. Including me. He didn’t threaten my wife and kids, but he wasn’t far off doing it. I had some kind of breakdown. I’m all right now.’

I doubted it. I got up and suggested we walk around a bit. I wanted to see how he moved, how tense he really was. You can tell a lot from the way someone walks and reacts to other moving objects. He welcomed the idea and jumped up jerkily. Worrying. We strolled around the park and he seemed to relax a little as we went. A dog dashed past with its young owner running after it, calling its name. Joe grinned briefly at the sight. A dog-lover or a kid-lover. He wasn’t doing too badly.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I understand what you’re saying, but nothing’s changed. From what I’ve seen of it, that house of your parents’ makes a pretty good prison and Ken has several nasty types to do the heavy work for him. Gina’s his ace-in-the-hole.

‘If I… if we could get her out things’d be different. But I can’t see how.’

‘There’s a way,’ he said slowly. ‘There’s a way.’

We were at the north end of the park, almost to Glebe Point Road with the Ancient Briton just across the way. It was nearly noon. ‘Come and have a drink, Joe,’ I said, ‘and tell me all about it’

Finding a quiet spot to talk in in the Ancient Briton is no easy matter, what with drinkers, pinball players and the race broadcasts. The best time is in the lull immediately after a race when the winners and losers drift over to the TAB section to collect or attempt to redeem their losses. As a form of gambling it seems to me to have it all over cards and dice and little balls rattling round in a spinning wheel, but to each his own. Joe’s drink was white wine and mine was old beer. We retreated to a dark corner and drank while waiting for the race hubbub to subside. When it was quiet enough, Joe said. ‘They go to church on Sunday. That’s the key to it.’

‘Who does?’

‘My mother and father, Ken and his wife and their kids. Gina doesn’t go. She isn’t a Catholic and she refused to bring the twins up as Catholics. That’s another thing the old people and Ken have got against her. Scott was like me-didn’t care one way or the other. Ken’s a pillar of the church- big contributor, wants one of his boys to be a priest and one of the girls a nun. All that shit. It’s very important to him. He puts on his thousand dollar three-piece and goes to church, no matter what.’