Peter Corris: Casino

I looked at the card he’d laid on my desk after he’d finished shaking my hand. He was Oscar Cartwright and he was evidently the director of Sydney Casinos Ltd.

‘What do you know about casinos, Mr Hardy?’

The man now sitting in the client chair in my office looked as if he could buy the whole building. If he did he’d certainly junk the chair. He’d told me to call him O.C., but so far I hadn’t done it.

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I’ve been in a few-Monte Carlo, Hobart, Port Douglas, places like that.’

‘I gather you don’t like ‘em much. This one’s different.’

I shrugged. Thousand-dollar suits, gold watches and silk ties tend to bring up my levels of resistance. ‘I was in one in Las Vegas a few years back. It had a tiger in a cage in the lobby. I still didn’t like it.’

He laughed, showing expensive teeth. Everything about him was expensive-the blow-waved hair, the aftershave, the tan, the facelift. Oscar Cartwright had fifty-year-old eyes in the thirty-year-old face, which made him a hard man to read and not an easy one to like. Still, he was sitting there, breathing the stale, cheap air in my office, and obviously about to make me a proposition. The three other little jobs I had on hand were from a small payer, a slow payer and a probable non-payer-I couldn’t afford to take too strong a dislike to Oscar’s grooming. And he had laughed, that was something.

‘They told me you were a comic. I like that. They also tell me you’re tough and honest. I like that even more.’

Oscar was the sort who liked to anticipate the next question. He told me who ‘they’ were- several satisfied clients over the past couple of years. One of the jobs had sent a man to hospital, hence the reputation for toughness. I guess the honesty tag comes with my low prices. The shabby office two floors up from St Peters Lane in Darlinghurst, and the fact that my new Hong Kong linen suit cost about as much as Oscar’s shampoo and trim probably helped reinforce the image.

‘It’s nice to be well-regarded,’ I said. ‘Especially in this game, but all I’ve ever done in casinos is lose money. If you’re looking to set up a security system and so on, you need a specialist in that kind of work.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s all in hand. You know we’re opening next week?’

After years of wrangling, a solution to the Sydney casino question had finally been worked out. I’d followed the machinations in the press in a random kind of way. As I understood it, a local syndicate with an acceptable amount of foreign backing had been granted some kind of provisional licence. ‘So I heard. Best of luck. You’ll be putting people to work. I’m all for that.’

‘I want to put you on the payroll, Cliff.’

I couldn’t resist. ‘O.C.,’ I said, ‘I’m already in work.’

Keeping his tight young chin firm, he let his middle-aged eyes drift around the room, taking in the battered filing cabinet, the frayed carpet, faded holland blind and the scarred desk. He rocked back a little on the chair, causing it to creak dangerously. ‘I’m not saying you’re not making a living, but you could be doing a whole lot better.’

‘I know that. I could be working for one of the big agencies that’ve tried to suck me in over the years. I could be driving a BMW with a mobile phone. I could have a desk with a pot-plant and a fax machine. But then I couldn’t go off to Hong Kong for a week when I’d made a few bucks or just piss off to the Central Coast when I felt like it.’

Cartwright leaned forward. I could see white wrinkles on his tanned neck and when he got interested in what he was saying rather than how he looked, there was a little stomach sag. ‘A year with us and you can have it all.’

‘A year’s a long time in the private inquiry business,’ I said. ‘With all these regulations coming in, the whole game could be belly-up before…’

‘All the more reason to listen to what I have to tell you.’

I sighed and leaned back in my own chair, making it creak almost as much as the other one. I was never much of a chess player and he’d put a good move on me. ‘OK, O.C., what’ve you got in mind?’

‘You’re still taking the piss out of me. I want you to know that I can see that. And I can live with it.’

He was trying very hard and I’ve always had a soft spot for triers, being one myself. I relented to the extent of admitting that I didn’t have a lot of work on hand and that things had been slow of late. I was already almost regretting the trip to Hong Kong. Glen Withers and I had had a good ten days hammering the plastic and the mattress in the four-star hotel. We’d taken tea in The Peninsula Hotel and fantasised about staying in the place with the rich and famous. One night would have broken the bank. I jerked myself away from these memories to concentrate on what he was saying.

‘Come and take a look. What’s the harm?’

The implication, that my time was valueless, irritated me. ‘What would be the good?’

‘I’ll pay your hourly rate.’

I had to laugh at that. ‘I’m a private inquiry agent in a small way of business, Mr Cartwright. I’m not a lawyer or a CPA. I charge by the day- $150, if I think the client can afford it.’

He was already out of his seat. He took his wallet from off his hip and slid out three fifty-dollar notes as if he could keep producing them for half an hour. Then he was moving towards the door in his slightly built-up Italian slip-ons which might have got him up to five foot nine, just. I’m six feet and half an inch; I had that on him. ‘You’ve got a deal. A day’s pay for an hour’s tour, maybe two hours. I say again, what’ve you got to lose?’

Gambler’s talk, and I’m not a gambler. Money talk, and I’ve never been seriously interested in money. But there was an enthusiasm and eagerness and energy about him that did appeal to me. I picked up the money and stuffed it into my pants pocket, hooked my wrinkled jacket off the back of the chair and stood up, hoping he wouldn’t hear the joints creak. “Where’re we going exactly?’

He smiled. “You’ll be taken and you’ll be dropped back, Cliff. You don’t have to worry about a thing.’

He had a white stretch limmo with driver parked in St Peters Lane. The car just fitted in the space between the workshop that specialises in repairing European automatic transmissions and a big roller door that opens so seldom it’s impossible to say what goes on behind it. Cartwright introduced me to the driver, whose name was Graham, as ‘Mr Hardy’.

‘Cliff,’ I said, reaching through the window to shake hands. ‘I hope you don’t have to wash this thing.’

‘We have people for that,’ Cartwright said. ‘I believe in employing specialists. Graham’s never hit an unnecessary bump, have you, Graham?’

‘That’s right, O.C.’

I climbed in the back with Oscar and we could really have spread ourselves out if we’d wanted to. There was a mobile phone with fax attachment, a minibar and a TV with built-in VCR. The late February day was warm with high humidity and some dark clouds building in the south. That was outside; in the limmo the air-conditioning was set for perfect comfort.

‘Drink, Cliff?’

I shook my head and watched him prepare a Perrier as if it was Dom Perignon. The limmo purred away down the lane and I waited for the bump at Forbes Street. No bump. Either the suspension was superb or Graham was the artist Cartwright proclaimed him to be. My 1980s Falcon has a reassuring number of knocks and rattles. I’ve learned to diagnose its state of health by those sounds and to take appropriate action, often too late to save a vital organ. There were no such signals from the limmo. We whispered along William and Park Streets and swung right at Elizabeth.