White Meat

by Peter Corris

  “Umm,” I said.

  “We’re ready to move.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Trueman’s been at Jacko, you know, hinting he might have to take a dive. Jacko’s played it smart, let Sammy think he’ll co-operate. Probably will, not for sure, you know? He’s not stupid, Jacko.”

  “I never thought he was,” I grunted. “Where does that get you?”

  “Coluzzi’s got a bundle on Rosso. Too much to lay off.”

  I felt relieved. Well done. “Good, you’ve got him then, provided Moody can win.”

  “Oh, he’ll win. Shit, you should see him, sharp and hard, he’ll kill him. He scared me when I saw him sparring, he’s that good.”

  Sunday knew what he was talking about. I respected his judgement in matters pugilistic, but he was undercutting my relief. Why was he telling me this?

  “That’s great Jimmy. I’ll be there, I’ll see you. Tell Ted Williams I’ll get the tickets I promised him.”

  “Hold on Hardy, we need your help. We want Coluzzi’s balls, not just his money.”

  “Oh?”

  “Fuckin’ right, He’s for it and you’re going to set him up for us. You can contact him can’t you?”

  I said I could. I didn’t want to, but I could.

  “OK. Tomorrow night at Trueman’s.”

  “What do I tell him?”

  “Tell him the niggers are organising and they want some of the action. Make him think he can tie up the Moody-Rosso fight. That’ll bring him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Kick the living shit out of him.”

  I suddenly felt insecure, old, in need of a rest. “Look, have you gone into this? I mean Coluzzi’s a professional, they don’t leave things to chance.”

  “We’ve been tailing his heavies for days. We’ve got ‘em all pinned. Jacko’ll be safe. There’ll be a small party going on in Newtown tomorrow night too. Just a small do — a few cops might feel like coming along though.”

  That was persuasive. They obviously meant business and weren’t going to let me off. “OK, I’ll contact Coluzzi and get back to you. You’ll have plenty of people along? Those Italians aren’t soft.”

  “Don’t worry. Tell him nine o’clock.”

  I hung up, made a cigarette, got a drink and thought about it. Siding with Sunday against Coluzzi was like backing the Apaches against the cavalry, but something was working inside me. I could have ducked it, could have pretended that Coluzzi wouldn’t buy it, got out of it some way. But I thought of the two men dead in the unfriendly town up north and the girl who’d seen too much pain and blood at seventeen. They hadn’t taken a trick in the whole mess. Noni was on her way to London, or wherever, and I was due a big cheque. I hunted around for the card, found it in some unwashed clothes and called Coluzzi.

  I got a female Italian voice on the other end and then a long, long wait. When Coluzzi finally came on the line his voice was soft and guarded.

  “I’ve been wondering about you Mr Hardy, what do you know?”

  “Hello Coluzzi. I’ve been out of town, up north with the black people.”

  “So?”

  “Maybe you’ve got problems, maybe not. The Aborigines are organising themselves a bit. I don’t think they’d be too keen on your idea of fights between blacks and Italians, not the way you see it anyway. They’d like to see their boys coming out on top once in a while, or twice in a while.”

  He didn’t say anything, forcing me to go on.

  “I’ve met their top man, Jimmy Sunday. He wants to talk to you about a deal.”

  “What deal? I don’t need a deal. Why should I meet him?”

  “Well, I’m just passing this on you understand? He says he can arrange the result of the Moody-Rosso fight. That’s to show his good faith.”

  There was a pause while he considered it. When he spoke again it was with all the straightforwardness of Lucrezia Borgia inviting you to dinner.

  “That’s interesting, very interesting. Maybe I better meet these people. Where and when?”

  I told him. He didn’t sound happy but I said that was all I’d been given. He said he’d be there and rang off.

  It left me edgy, without diversion. Ailsa wasn’t due in until the next day. A postcard told me that. The rest of the mail was just waiting to be waste paper and I obliged it. I wished I’d asked Sunday about guns. I hoped there wouldn’t be any guns. I wished Penny would come to see me but I knew she wouldn’t. I wished the fight would be called off; I read the last couple of days’ news reports on the fighters. They were both in great shape, both going to win, according to their trainers, both going to be world’s champions. Moody had made the better impression in training. He was comfortably favoured to win. Coluzzi must have got good odds on his money. I called a man I knew and got fifty dollars to win thirty-five on Moody. Then I worried. What if Coluzzi knew the man I knew? What if the man I knew told Coluzzi? I drank and smoked and worried. Then I thought the hell with it. I’m a private detective, I’m tough. I can be stupid if I want to be.

  I called Harry Tickener and we insulted each other for as long as we could stand it. He had tickets for the fight and was going himself He agreed to leave two for Ted Williams at the paper and to meet me at the club with two for me.

  “Ailsa?” he asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “Good. I expect to have company too.”

  “That’s nice. Do I know her?”

  “Your name’s never come up.”

  “OK, be mysterious. I’ll see you there.”

  “You won’t be able to miss us.”

  That was a good exit line. I wondered what it meant. Harry sounded happy. Good. If Harry could be happy maybe we could all be happy.

  25

  Twenty hours later I was happy. Ailsa flew in around eleven and we went straight back to her place and to bed. We got out of bed an hour later for something to eat and drink and then back again. After that session I smoked and we picked up the pieces. Her tan told the story of where she’d been and she filled me in on the progress of her interests in the Pacific. The picture amounted to good news and more good news. I told her I was glad about it and she scrutinised me for the irony in such remarks that usually sparks off our fights. It wasn’t there. The heart had grown fonder. I told her about the Tarelton case and promised I’d take her out to dinner when I got the cheque.

  “Oh that reminds me,” I said. “I’m taking you out tomorrow night if you’re free.”

  “Good, where?”

  “The boxing.”

  “Ugh, no thanks — horrible.”

  “Harry Tickener’ll be there.”

  “Harry’s nice but still, no.”

  “I think he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Really, that’s interesting. Who?”

  “I don’t know, and if you don’t come tomorrow night I’ll make sure you never find out. I’ll break it up and you’ll never know.”

  She yawned. “Who cares.”

  “I gather you’re not coming?”

  “Right. Come and see me afterwards.”

  We wasted the afternoon a bit more and I left. I went home and played with my pistols for a while; I cleaned them and loaded them and checked their actions. Then I wrapped them up and put them away. I’d bought some cut price Scotch and I sampled it just to see whether it was a bargain. Not bad. Quite smooth. Of course the first drink can be misleading so I had a second. I thought I detected a metallic taste so I had a third. I was mistaken about the metallic taste. It was good smooth whisky that needed drinking without any judgemental attitudes in view. I had a fourth in a calm, purely objective frame of mind.

  I ate something and showered and dressed myself in the clothes I’d worn to break into Sammy’s gym some nights before. I took the papers I’d removed then from the hiding place and stuck them in my pocket. I thought again about the guns and compromised by putting the Colt into the clip in the car. The Celica had gone back to the Tareltons
soon after my arrival back in Sydney. I had a mind-flash image of Madeline Tarelton as I climbed into the Falcon. An unscrupulous, despicable person would ring her up some time and find out just how much her husband didn’t understand her. But an unscrupulous, despicable person wouldn’t be driving to Newtown for a show-down between ethnic minorities, and he wouldn’t be haunted by the eyes of a dark girl standing stock-still while blood rained on her.

  I was nervous and early, much too early. I drove into town and down to the Rocks to kill time. The Opera House billowed up like bedsheets in a high wind. North Sydney was canopied by purplish cloud, but the sky to the east was a pale powder blue. The stratosphere was in two moods like me; my satisfaction at the conclusion of the Tarelton case, messy though it was, was tempered by the threat of the events ahead. I parked and wandered up through the city which gradually emptied around me. By eight o’clock there was only a thin line of traffic made up of people snapping up the last parking spots for their night on the town. Nine-tenths of the city was asleep and the remaining tenth was only fitfully awake in those oases of light where celluloid was spinning, liquor was flowing and there was money to be made. I went back to my clean car and drove to Newtown.

  I parked half a mile from the gym and walked through the streets. Any one of the couple of black people I passed could have been Sunday’s confederates, or none of them. It seemed to me that Coluzzi was a brave man to agree to a meeting in this territory. I’d have insisted on neutral ground. The thought bothered me as I walked along. Coluzzi was totally professional to all appearances and this was a bad move. I scouted around the gym looking for signs of trouble but everything was as quiet as a synagogue on Sunday. I walked back to my car and took out the gun. The door to the building was open and I took the stairs as quietly as I could. On the stars the stale smell of tobacco smoke and the reek of sweat blended into a threat of mustard gas. The place whispered of tension and danger. It was a good place not to be.

  I pushed open the door to the gym. The bulb over the ring was glowing, making a sickly greyish patch of light in the centre of the room. My feelings of threat and danger became more intense; I felt as if I were walking into an ambush prepared especially for me. Still, I went. I took a couple of steps into the room and strained my eyes at the darkness that hung in every corner. There were no sounds, no movements. I looked again at the ring, this time with eyes that had grown used to the gloom. What I’d taken for shadow at first glance now didn’t look like shadow any more. It had shape and bulk but it was very still. I moved quickly across to the ring and climbed through the ropes,

  Jimmy Sunday lay there with his eyes open, staring up into the bulb the way no living eyes could. He was wearing a polo-neck sweater and jeans. The rolled neck of the sweater was soaked with blood and blood had seeped through and run in a trickle across the canvas floor. I crouched beside him feeling sad and sick and furious with myself. Every instinct should have told me that Sunday would be out-matched coming up against Coluzzi. I had know that, but I’d let myself be persuaded otherwise because I was being easy on myself. I’d dramatised my own self-sacrifice of siding with the Aborigines and ignored the objective facts — that they didn’t have a chance. I had the resources to do something about it, I had the cop contacts, or I could have headed Coluzzi off somehow. But I hadn’t and this was the result.

  Death does different things to different faces. I’d seen my father dead and ready for departure in a funeral parlour; his skin was painted, a thing unimaginable in life. He looked like a waxworks dummy and my mother just said “It isn’t him” and we went away. She didn’t even cry.

  Death in the raw, violent death, is different again; I’d seen the evil stamped like a stencil mark across some dead faces and innocence blooming on others. In death Jimmy Sunday looked younger than he had in life and I was reminded that I’d thought him young when I’d first seen him at a distance. The scars from boxing and boozing and living had been almost erased and his brown skin was smooth and taut. Somehow that made it worse. I closed his eyes and went away. There was nothing else to do, not there.

  I left the gym and walked back to my car with my shoulders hunched and the pistol tucked into my waistband. I felt an urge to use it on Coluzzi or one of his apes but at the same time I recognised that as the immature and useless impulse it was. When I got home I had a drink and poured another, then I called the Sharkey number. When Rupe came to the phone he was nervous. When I identified myself he was hostile. I told him that Sunday was dead and asked if he had any family. There was a silence before he spoke.

  “Yeah, sort of. A woman and a kid, not his, but same thing.”

  “Did you know about the plan to move against the Italians?”

  “A bit, not much. I wasn’t gonna be in on it. Too fuckin’ old. But I heard Jimmy was gonna give the word at lunchtime today, but no-one seen him since last night. Where’d you see him?”

  I told him and he said he’d send someone over there.

  “Who done him?” he asked.

  “I can’t prove it Mr Sharkey.”

  “Ah, what the fuck does it matter. You got anything else to say?”

  “No. Just that I’m sorry.”

  His answer was the sharp click of the connection being broken. That did wonders for me. I sank some liquor and poured some more. The glass suddenly felt as heavy as lead, full of reproach. I set it down and started working through my little red book of telephone numbers. My first call was to Grant Evans. The second, back to me, was from a policeman in Macleay. My next call was to a security organisation in the city. I followed that with a call to Major Ian Mahony who was head of the security firm that guarded Macleay hospital. I had to give him references in the constabulary and the military. They seemed to satisfy him and I got an interview arranged with him for the following morning, in Macleay. I poured the liquor back into the bottle and went grimly off to bed to prepare myself for my busy day.

  My last conscious thought was that 1 had put the finger on Jimmy Sunday for Coluzzi.

  26

  Busy is right. The radio alarm woke me at six o’clock. I came swarming up out of a dream in which I’d been fighting a ring full of people with my bare fists. I must have set my jaw resolutely in the dream because it was aching like fury when I got out of bed. I made coffee and swilled down aspirin and caffeine tablets. The coffee was stale, this case had dragged on and I’d neglected my domestic necessities. I promised myself some fresh coffee and clean sheets when I’d done what I had to do. I had a shower and let the water play on my injuries, a split scalp and battered knuckles, both beginning to heal. I had lost two teeth, knocked out clean, and another was very loose. That wasn’t such a bad score except that I was still waiting for the cheque to justify them. Today, I’d be on my own time, the way to go out of business someone once told me.

  I drove to the airport through a clear, mild morning. The traffic seemed to acknowledge the clemency of the day by parting in front of me and staying back to allow me through. As before, there was no crush for the flight to parts north. I handed in Penny’s unused return ticket and my unused Newcastle to Sydney section plus some cash and got a return ticket to Macleay. I had no luggage, no guns, no hand grenades, just my bright, sharp wits and my tarnished old soul. I bought the papers and a copy of Ragtime and boarded the plane. The papers told me everything that was going on in the country around that time which was nothing; Ragtime gripped and held me like a new lover and I didn’t lift my face from it for the whole trip. I knew what I was going to do in Macleay. I didn’t have to think about it any more. I got a taxi into town and arrived at Major Mahony’s office punctually at nine-thirty which was just as well. Mahony was a Britisher in his fifties. His face spoke of hot parade grounds and long nights over the bottle in the mess. He was bulky behind his mahogany desk. Pink scalp showed through thinning silver hair but he still had a few good, bullying years in him.

  “You come well recommended, Mr Hardy,” he barked, “but you ask a lot. Convince me.”


  It was an old tactic and the only way to confront it was head-on.

  “What do you think of drugs Major — hemp smoking and things like that?”

  He glared over the pipe he was stuffing, a big black job that looked fit to roast a quarter pound of shag.

  “Hate it. Degenerate. Catch any of my people at it and out they go.”

  “Precisely. That’s why I’m here. If you co-operate with me it’ll help to close down a drug-growing and distribution point in this part of the country.”

  He grunted and puffed at the pipe.

  “Hemp you said?”

  “Hemp certainly, but you know where that leads.”

  “Do I not. I was in the Middle East for long enough — people lolling about, pansies . . .” He broke off choked, I suspected, by his excitement, but he coughed as though the tobacco smoke had caught in his throat. I followed up quickly.

  “All I need is access to the woman, ten minutes alone with her, then the services of a stenographer for a few minutes.”

  “Sick woman, Mr Hardy, very sick. I checked with the hospital this morning. She’s dying.”

  “Does she know?”

  “Yes, they told her. She insisted on knowing. Does that alter your plans?”

  “No.” I could have added “on the contrary” if I’d intended to be perfectly frank with him, but I didn’t.

  “I suppose it can’t do any harm considering the circumstances,” he mused. “The woman might be glad to perform a last service.” He looked at me enquiringly.

  “I think she will.” I hated myself for indulging him in his pompous humbug, but I had no choice.

  “Very well then.” He picked up a pencil and scribbled a note.

  “Take that to the operations desk outside and you’ll get what you want.”

  I stood up and assumed as respectful an attitude as I could without saluting. I don’t think he’d have minded if I had saluted.

  “Thank you Major. Great help.” We shook hands. He managed to turn the gesture into a condescension for him and a privilege for me.