Forget Me If You Can ch-20

by Peter Corris

  He spooned the coffee into the filter. ‘If everything goes well, Christenson and all the other bent bastards’ll be off the force and in gaol. I’ll go back to work.’

  It was hard to believe that he was serious, but everything in his body language and manner suggested that he was. I sipped the last of the beer and was looking forward to the coffee. Oldcastle would do a crossword and listen to music. I’d get on with reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and maybe have a Cutty Sark before bed.

  A knock on the door startled me out of this pleasant anticipation. Oldcastle lived a lonely life and, apart from a neighbour dropping in to discuss something about the maintenance of the block and a misdirected pizza deliverer, there hadn’t been any callers. I waved Oldcastle back towards the kitchen, unshipped my. 38 and moved to a position beside the door. You don’t stand in front of the door and you don’t put your eye to the spyglass in these situations, not if you value your life. You keep a few bricks between you and whoever is outside.

  ‘Who is it?’ I said.

  ‘It’s Mick Gordon, Cliff. Open up. I have to talk to Marty.’

  Gordon’s voice carried well and Oldcastle heard it. His pleasure was evident. ‘Mick,’ he said. ‘Let him in, Cliff. It’ll be good to see him.’

  It was the first time this cold, aloof man had used my name. I was touched in an odd way. I put the gun away and unlocked the door. Gordon came in, eyeing me warily. He wore a sports shirt and slacks, smelled faintly of Scotch and was carrying a newspaper. His shirt was sweat-damp under the arms and in front, but it was warm and the flat was three levels up and Gordon was a little overweight.

  Oldcastle stuck out his hand and the two men shook. ‘How are you, Mick? Jeez, it’s good to see you. No other bugger… Well, never mind. I’ve got the coffee on. Is there any of that beer left, Cliff?’

  I shook my head. Gordon grinned at me. ‘Bloody wowser doesn’t even keep a few cans in the fridge. Can you believe it? No, coffee’d be fine, mate. In a minute. Look, there’s something I’ve got to talk over with you.’

  ‘Sit down, Mick,’ Oldcastle said.

  Gordon reached into the pocket of his shirt and took out his cigarettes. ‘You know me, Marty. Can’t talk without smoking and I know how you feel about smoking inside.’ He put a cigarette between his lips and moved towards the open door to the balcony, raising the lighter as he went. Oldcastle followed him.

  ‘What is it, Mick?’

  Looking back, I should have spotted it, but it all seemed so natural at the time-the smile, the cigarette, the lighter, the casual, familiar gesture. They stepped out onto the balcony. The curtain was drawn back, the room light was on. I didn’t hear the shot but the glass door shattered and blood, bone and brain matter splattered against the wall. I shouted uselessly and jumped forward, knocking over a chair. When I got to the balcony Gordon was standing over Oldcastle, who was lying against the door with half of his head blown away.

  ‘I told him not to do it,’ Gordon said.

  He raised the lighter and lit his cigarette. He took a long drag and blew the smoke out in a steady stream. He looked at me. His expression was half-sorrowful, half-defiant and I knew what Christenson had meant by a surprise. ‘I can give you the names of two senior members of the force and a lawyer who’ll take an oath I was playing cards with them tonight.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ I said.

  The Brothers

  Fabrizio Panella was the middleweight champion of New South Wales for a brief time in the late Seventies. The title didn’t mean much to most people but it meant a lot to Fabrizio for two reasons. One, it got him two major pay nights, first against Wally Carter for the national title. The fight was a draw so Fabrizio didn’t win the title but next he went in against a Spaniard who held the European title and took him all the way to a points decision. The two fights earned Fabrizio enough to buy the Sorrento Bar in Leichhardt, where he prospered.

  But equally important was the fact that the title gave him an edge over his brother, Mario. The two had never got on. Mario fought as a light-heavy and never won a title. Light-heavy has never been a crowd-pleasing division, and ham and eggs fighters like Mario were either outpaced and outclassed by middleweights, or had to slog it out with heavyweights. Mario ended his career with two knockout losses, a battered face and a resentful attitude. He went to work for the Leichhardt Council as a gardener.

  I hung around the Sorrento Bar a bit, got to know Fabrizio and talked boxing with him. Prize-fighting had been outlawed by the NSW government after the last election and the debate about the effects of the ban were still being discussed. Fabrizio was in favour of the ban. He introduced me to Mario who had come into the place on some family errand. After that I used to say hello to Mario when I saw him around, mostly in the municipal parks. I like parks; I sit in them and think and wish I had a dog. But a private detective has no business with a dog, a child or a wife and I had none of the above.

  One night Fabrizio came over to where I was sitting in the cafe and plonked down another long black. ‘On the house, Cliff.’

  ‘Grazie.’

  He shuddered. ‘Don’t even try. Your accent’s terrible. I’ve got a problem. I want to hire you.’

  I sipped the coffee. Working for friends is dangerous. You can easily end up unpaid and losing a friend. But turning down friends is hard too, so I grunted.

  ‘You know my boy, Roberto?’

  I did. Roberto Panella was eighteen, a star soccer player and in his first year at university. His father was very proud of him.

  ‘He’s fighting,’ Fabrizio said.

  ‘Soccer players fight. It’s the hot Latin blood.’

  ‘No, I mean he’s boxing. In the ring.’

  Fabrizio was very anti the noble and manly art. He suffered from slightly blurred vision in one eye as a result of boxing. It was nothing much and only really affected him when he was tired, but he took it as a symbol of what time in the ring could do. He. considered himself lucky not to have been badly hurt and he didn’t want his boy to take the risks he had taken. He had refused to let him box in the Police Boys’ Club as a kid and had made sure there was no boxing in the training at the soccer club.

  I drank some coffee and waited out the diatribe against boxing. It ended with, ‘Look at Mario-a face like a pizza.’

  ‘What makes you think Roberto’s boxing?’

  ‘I can tell. Bruises, cuts. And when he doesn’t know I’m looking he makes the moves, you know.’

  I’d boxed as an amateur for several years, reaching the lower levels of the state welterweight finals. You duck and weave and it’s considered good practice to bounce around doing it as you go about your daily business. If sufficient brain damage occurs, the ducking and weaving can become like an involuntary tic. I could see why Fabrizio would worry if he saw Roberto ducking left leads when he got up from the table, weaving away from right hooks when he got a book from a shelf.

  ‘What does the boy say?’

  ‘He says no. He says he’s not fighting. He’s lying to me.’

  ‘You have to be registered to fight as an amateur in this state,’ I said. ‘Just ring up the boxing federation and…’

  ‘You think I’m a fool? I’ve done that. He’s not registered. Cliff, he’s got more money than he should have. He’s fighting for money.’ He took a small cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it. Fabrizio only smoked when he was very relaxed or very stressed. ‘He’s fighting in those fucking bloodbaths.’

  Fabrizio rarely swore and when he did it meant there was something worth swearing about. Officially, boxing was outlawed but, as foreseen by opponents of the ban, and I numbered myself among them, in closed-down factories and defunct garages fights were held which paid scant attention to the Marquis of Queensberry rules. They were called ‘smokos’.

  Out of curiosity I’d been to one of these fights at Penrith. There were four contests on the bill including a fifteen-rounder, a strictly illegal length in the legitimate game. The prelimi
nary fights were a farce and in the main event a fat, tattooed biker and an Aboriginal teenager had spilt a lot of blood and displayed no skill. The biker collapsed from exhaustion after absorbing a lot of crudely delivered punishment. All they did was give the crowd something to bet on. The audience surprised me- mostly yobbos but there were many well-heeled types too and a lot of money changed hands. A couple of hard characters controlled the betting, took their cut and presumably paid the fighters’. The equipment-ropes, canvas, gloves-was worn out and defective. There was no medical supervision and all the referee seemed to do was separate the contestants at the bell and prevent them from biting each other. If Roberto Panella had fallen into this dark, dirty world he was in serious trouble.

  Fabrizio puffed on his cigar and signalled for a coffee. He looked inquiringly at me. I shook my head. Two of the Sorrento’s espressos I can handle, but a third would have me up watching the late, late movie.

  ‘Where does Roberto live?’

  ‘He shares a house in Annandale with some friends-two boys and girl.’ Fabrizio looked dubious about the arrangement, but he was struggling to be a modern parent. ‘It’s a nice house, in Johnson Street.’

  ‘You’re sure he hasn’t got a decently paid part-time job? They do exist. And maybe he’s just watched Raging Bull too much.’

  The coffee came and Fabrizio took a sip and a puff. He frowned and sighed and it wasn’t because the coffee was bad. He was a very worried man. ‘He’s got the same job he always had. Mario got it for him-three nights a week at the council maintenance depot. He checks the mileage on the vehicles, washes them down, stuff like that. He works hard but the pay isn’t much. Lately, Cliff, he wears beautiful clothes.’

  ‘Okay, what d’you want me to do?’

  Fabrizio looked at me directly and I could feel him weighing our relationship in the balance. We’d shared experiences, stories, bottles of wine, but I was still an Anglo, and childless. ‘He goes to expensive restaurants.’

  That said a lot. He was already getting intelligence reports on his son. He would feel demeaned by this and not exactly uplifted by hiring a private detective.

  ‘I’ll help any way I can,’ I said. ‘Let’s leave it like that. I’ll ask around and… ‘

  ‘No!’ He brought his big boxer’s fist with the spread, flattened knuckles down on the table. The coffee cups jumped. ‘I will pay you what you usually charge. I want you to find out who got my Roberto into this shit! Then I will deal with him.’

  I hadn’t seen Roberto Panella for over a year and when I saw him coming out of the big Annandale house I was shocked at the change in him. He’d grown a couple of inches, not surprising between sixteen and eighteen, but he’d also bulked up in the shoulders and chest in a way that suggested weights or the heavy bag or both. What really rocked me was the black eye he was sporting. I’d caused and suffered a few of them in my time. It’s not a one-punch thing, contrary to popular opinion. The flesh around the eye is mashed between the glove and the bone by a series of blows and is deeply bruised. Those shiners can last more than a week and if you get too many of them the skin can be permanently darkened and coarsened.

  Otherwise, Roberto was in great shape, jumping out of his skin. He unlocked a battered white Corolla hatchback, tossed in a gym bag and a backpack and skipped around to the driver’s door. He pulled smoothly away from the kerb, drove to the Booth Street lights, turned right and threaded through to Arundel Street in Glebe opposite the university, where he got one of the last all-day parking spots. He took out the backpack, locked the car and jogged towards the bridge over Parramatta Road. He was wearing jeans, a football shirt and sneakers and he moved as only an eighteen-year-old athlete can move.

  A going-on-fifty-year-old ex-athlete has learned a trick or two in his time, like people forget things and come back to their cars, or change their mind about what they’re doing. I waited in my illegal parking place until I was sure Roberto had gone for good before selecting a key on a ring that holds more keys than any ring should and crossed the street. It was the work of a couple of seconds to lift the hatch on the old car, zip open the gym bag and sift through the contents. I was back in my car when the parking attendant came into view. I drove off and stopped in Glebe Point Road for a coffee and a think.

  Roberto’s gym bag had held a singlet, shorts, socks, a jockstrap, a pair of boxing boots and a mouthguard. There was also the business card of Freddy Trueman, who ran a gymnasium in Newtown. The card was embossed on good quality cardboard with Freddy’s name in capitals. Aerobics and weight training were the gym’s specialities. In the old days, Freddy’s card had featured crossed boxing gloves. ‘Former Australian featherweight champion,’ it had said, which was true. But the word was that Freddy had got the title when the former champion was having trouble making the weight and had thrown the fight in return for a percentage of Freddy’s earnings from then on. It was a fairly standard arrangement but it backfired this time because Freddy had lost on a second-round KO in his first defence and was finished after that. He’d gone on to become one of the worst of the old-style fight manager-trainers-a real chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out merchant. I was surprised that he was still in business and even more surprised that he had such a flash card.

  I drove to Newtown and parked in one of the gentrified streets off the main drag. Freddy’s gym had been spruced up: there was a stylish sign over the footpath outside, a fresh surface on the stairs and a new handrail to replace the old one that had given you little support and many splinters. The renovations continued inside: paint job, polished floors, resurfaced mirrors and new equipment including weights and exercise machines. A dozen or so men and women were working up serious sweats. There was one unoccupied boxing ring.

  My next surprise was the sight of Freddy Trueman coming towards me. He’d lost about thirty kilos since I’d last seen him. He was plump now rather than gross and, in a white silk shirt, grey slacks and black slip-ons, sleek rather than slobby. His thin white hair was fluffed up and he wore tinted glasses. His eyes used to be permanently bloodshot.

  ‘Cliff, boy. How are you?’

  ‘Hello, Freddy-not as prosperous as you by the look of things.’

  He glanced around the big, bright room with its gleaming chrome and polished surfaces and let out a wheezy laugh, the product of hundreds of thousands of cigarettes. ‘Yeah, this fitness thing, it really caught on. And I had the right spot-you wouldn’t believe the amount of money in Newtown these days.’

  I looked at his shrunken waistline. ‘You’re taking some of your own medicine.’

  He patted his stomach. ‘Diet and exercise, son. Diet and exercise. You don’t look too bad, all things considered. Come for a spot of aerobics?’

  I wished I could take the glasses off; his eyes had always given him away, even in the ring.

  He was the living embodiment of ‘shifty’ and I couldn’t believe that he’d changed. He also frightened easily. ‘Got an office somewhere, Freddy?’ I said. ‘Nice desk?’ I moved forward and backed him towards the nearest wall.

  ‘Hey, hey, what’s the big idea?’

  I don’t know what I would have done if the weight-lifters had come to his aid, but they didn’t. I put one foot on his right polished loafer and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. A button spun away on the polished boards.

  ‘Still train real boxers here, do you?’

  ‘Sure. Amateurs, you know. The old game’s dead.’

  ‘How about Roberto Panella?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Italian kid. Eighteen. Middleweight I’d say. He’s got a shiner on him the size of a saucer.’

  ‘Don’t know him.’

  ‘I found your card in his gym bag. I’m working for his father. You must remember Fabrizio. He’s not happy. He’s making threats against those responsible for getting his boy into fighting.’

  ‘Jesus. Okay, Cliff. Ease up. Come back here and we’ll talk.’

  I released him and he straightened himself up, stepped briskly ar
ound me and ushered me to the back of the gym where there was a partition wall. His office was small and there was no teak or leather but it was a big improvement on his old set-up of a laminex table and plastic chairs. The furniture was modern and the boxing pictures on the walls were framed instead of cellotaped to the wall as in the old days. Freddy sat behind his desk and I perched on a corner of it. He looked up at me anxiously.

  ‘Bobby Pain,’ he said. ‘That’s the name he goes by. Good, eh?’

  I ignored that. ‘He’s fighting smokos, right?’

  Freddy shrugged. ‘Kids want to fight. They always will. They want the dough, too. This law’s a fuckin’ farce. When’s the last time anyone died in the pro ring in New South?’

  ‘I know the arguments. What’s your cut?’

  ‘Shit, Cliff. I don’t train him or manage him or anything. He comes in, uses the equipment, spars a bit with amateurs, with the headgear and all. That’s it.’

  ‘Who handles him?’

  Freddy stroked the loose flesh that sagged around his chin from when he was fat. ‘Fabrizio Panella was a bloody good fighter.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘But Mario was a bum.’

  I had a few words more with Freddy and went off to spend the rest of the day doing routine things. I was back at the gym, playing on the exercise machines when Roberto came in at about 6 o’clock. The first thing I noticed was that he didn’t look at himself in any of the mirrors the way most of the other patrons did. The second thing was the seriousness of his workout. He skipped, shadow-boxed, used the light and heavy bags and sparred with an Aboriginal featherweight. Roberto wasn’t much slower than the lighter man and he was beautiful to watch. I’ve seen a lot of fighters over the years, enough to be able to tell when a kid has what it takes. Roberto had ring sense-he always knew where the ropes and corners were and if you can control the territory you’re on the way to controlling the opponent. He also knew how to pace himself, how to get the other guy to waste energy and when to move up on him. It was point-scoring, fight-winning stuff.