I’m dying, Cliff,’ Kevin Roseberry said.
‘Says who?’
‘The doctors and me.’ He tapped his pyjama-clad chest. ‘I can tell.’
‘Doctors have been known to be wrong,’ I said. ‘Even you’ve been wrong once or twice, Kev.’
Kevin Roseberry was seventy-five but looked older. He’d been a lot of things in his time-wharfie, boxer, rodeo rider, boxing manager. When he won two million dollars in a lottery he hired me, who’d known him just as someone to drink with in Glebe, to get a blackmailer off his back. It wasn’t hard, the guy was an amateur, easily persuaded of the error of his ways. Kevin and I became friendly after that. He bought a big terrace at the end of my street, held some great parties. Now he was in a private room in a private hospital and I was visiting.
‘I’ve been wrong heaps of times, but not now. The big C’s got me and they reckon I’ve got a month at the most. No kicks coming. After the life I’ve led I was thankful to make it to the new century, let alone two years in. I’ve got that doctor you recommended onside.’
‘Ian Sangster?’
‘He’s a good bloke. He’s put me onto another quack who knows the score. I’m going home next week and he’s arranged for a nurse who’ll know what to do.’
I nodded. That’s exactly what I’d want for myself-not that it’ll ever happen.
Kevin used to be big but he’d wasted badly. Even his craggy bald head looked smaller. His voice was still the hoarse bark it had always been and his eyes were bright under the boxer’s scar tissue. He pointed to his bedside cabinet. ‘Let’s have a drink.’
I opened the cabinet, took out a bottle of Teachers and two glasses. I poured two generous measures and handed him his. We raised the glasses in a silent toast to nothing in particular.
‘I’ve got a problem,’ he said. ‘Who to leave my bloody money to.’
‘I could take some of it off your hands. Just say the word.’
‘Funny. You can tell jokes at the wake. No, this is serious. You didn’t know I had a kid, a daughter, did you?’
‘Never saw you with a pram.’
‘Yeah, well it was all a fair while ago. I didn’t treat the woman well and I never had much to do with the kid, nothing in fact. Back then, it was work, fights, the rodeo circuit, grog and more grog. You know.’
‘You’ve got the scars to prove it.’
‘You bet I have. The thing is, I’d like to help the kid and her mother. It bloody worries me, Cliff. I’m on the way out and I’ve been a selfish bastard all my life. I don’t believe in any of that religious crap, but I’d like to go with a sort of clean slate if I can. Does that sound nutty?’
‘No, Kev. It sounds like a decent man trying to do a decent thing. Nothing wrong with that.’
‘Good. Thanks. You helped me once and I want your help again. I want you to contact the girl and her mother and tell me how things stand with them.’
‘Meaning?’
“Well, last I was in touch with Marie, and this is nearly ten years back, she wanted nothing to do with me. Warned me not to try to get in touch with the girl. This was just before I came into the money, but I had a bit and I wanted to know if Marie and Siobhan needed anything. Marie said she was doing fine, so I backed off and I thought, fuck her. But now things are different. The house is worth the best part of a million. I blew a fair bit on horses and having fun, but there’s still a couple of hundred grand left. It’s invested and brings in a decent amount. Now if Marie’s doing well that’s fine, but Siobhan’s in her twenties and I don’t see why her mother should still speak for her. Shit, she might have children, my grandchildren. The money could be useful for them if not for… you see what I’m getting at.’
‘Why can’t you get in touch yourself-ring up or write?’
Kevin shook his head and the loose skin on his neck was grey and mottled. ‘I tried. I rang the last number I had but the people I spoke to had never heard of her. I didn’t know what else to do and I’m too crook to go hunting them up. But that’s your game, isn’t it-finding people?’
‘Part of it. I can give it a shot, Kev, but people can move a long way in ten years. Women marry and change their names. How old would Marie be?’
‘Twenty years younger than me, mid-fifties. I met her when I was managing a middleweight who fought Jimmy O’Day. She was some kind of cousin or auntie or something of Jimmy’s. A good bit older, Jimmy started real young. She was at the fight and afterwards we got talking and that.’
‘She’s Aboriginal?’
‘Just a bit, like Jimmy.’
‘That bit can mean a lot these days. You’d better give me the names and the address and anything else that might be useful. Got a photo?’
He gestured at the cabinet. ‘In my wallet. A couple of snaps from back when we were sort of together. Siobhan was just a baby.’
Snaps was right: they were polaroids and pretty faded. In one of the photos, Kevin, with more hair on his head and flesh on his bones, stood beside a tall woman who was carrying a baby. In the other, Kevin was holding the baby securely in his big, meaty hands, but the look on his face suggested he was afraid of dropping it. The woman was handsome rather than pretty, with strong features. Impossible to tell her colouring from the old pictures, but dark rather than fair, I thought. I put the photos back in the wallet. Kevin took it from me and extracted a wad of hundred-dollar notes.
‘Eight hundred do you?’
‘For starters, sure. You might have to hang on a bit longer, Kev. These things can take time.’
‘I’ll try, mate, but don’t count on it.’
I got Marie’s last known address, in Leichhardt, and left him there with the television on and the remote in his hand that was like a claw.
I remembered Jimmy O’Day. He was a fast-moving middleweight back when boxing was very much in the doldrums. He fought in the clubs, had a few bouts in New Zealand, and won the Commonwealth title, which meant practically nothing at all. I saw him once at Parramatta and thought he was pretty good without being sensational. He was a boxer rather than a puncher, and that didn’t please the pig-ignorant club crowd all that much. He dropped out of sight after losing the title to a Maori. I still had contacts in the boxing world and it might be possible to get a line on Marie O’Day through him if all else failed.
It took me a couple of days to clean up a few other matters before I got around to visiting Leichhardt. The young woman at the address Kevin had given me, a neat single-storey terrace not far back from Norton Street, remembered Kevin’s call and could only say she knew nothing about former residents.
‘I think it had been a rental property in the past,’ she said. ‘Tess and I had a lot of repairs to do when we bought it.’
I got the name of the agent she’d bought through, thinking they might have had the letting of the house beforehand, and thanked her.
‘Does the house have a history?’ she asked. ‘Like a criminal past?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, you look like a policeman or… something.’
I rewarded her with an enigmatic smile.
Ten-plus years ago, when Marie O’Day was there, Leichhardt was already gentrifying, with properties turning over quickly as people took their capital gains elsewhere and new residents moved in, renovating and restoring. None of the houses in the vicinity looked as if they were owned by old-timers who knew everything that went on in the street. I knocked on a few doors and got confirmation of that impression. As a last gasp I tried the corner store at the end of the street, one of the few survivors. The proprietor was an elderly Italian with limited stock, just hanging on. I bought some things I didn’t need and asked him how long he’d had the shop.
‘Twenty years, mate.’ His accent was pure Italo-Australian.
I showed him my PEA licence. ‘I’m looking for a woman who used to live at number 76. Her name’s Marie.’
He shook his head. ‘They come and they go.’
‘Good-looking woman, darkish maybe, with a child.’
He sparked up. ‘Oh, si, Marie, with the kid. I couldn’t never get the name right.’
‘Siobhan.’
‘Yes. I called her honey because of the colour of her hair. Beautiful hair.’
‘She was in here a lot, Marie?’
‘Most days. Nice woman. No trouble. She do something wrong?’
‘No. I don’t suppose you know where she went when she left here?’
He rubbed his hands together and looked around at his meagre stock. ‘I’m trying to remember. Some people say, “Carlo, I’m off to Queensland”, and I say, “Take me with you”-for a joke, you understand. But no, Marie, she just…’
‘What?’
‘Si, I remember. Her cousin paid her bill. I let her have a little bit of credit because she always paid when she got her pension. But I didn’t see her to say goodbye, ciao -she used to try to speak Italian. But this man came in and paid. He said he was her cousin.’
‘What did he look like?’
Carlo squared his shoulders and set his fists in front of him. ‘Qui cosa!’
‘A soldier?’
‘No.’ He drew his index fingers across above and through his eyebrows. ‘With the scars. Like you. A boxer.’
Trueman’s Gym in Erskineville retains the name although Sammy Trueman died years ago. It has undergone periods of prosperity and adversity, renovation and neglect. Now, with boxing in Sydney on the upswing, partly due to the charisma of Anthony Mundine, the gym had attracted a respectable number of wannabe fighters paying respectable fees for the facilities. Footballers use it and some actors, waiting for the follow-up to Cinderella Man.
For generations the gym has served as a poste restante address for fighters and trainers often too down on their luck to afford proper accommodation. A couple of sports journalists drop in regularly in search of colour for their columns. I go there once in a while just to stay in touch with the business I had thought of taking on professionally until a hard left hook from Clem Carter in an amateur six-rounder convinced me otherwise. I’d done some work for a couple of the trainers and managers over the years, scaring off touts and persuading promoters to pay what they owed.
Wally Tanner was one of those trainers and I knew he hung out at Trueman’s, always on the hunt for a promising fighter. I didn’t think he’d trained Jimmy O’Day, but O’Day had certainly put in time at Trueman’s and there was a good chance Wally would know something about him.
In the old days a boxing gym smelled of tobacco smoke, sweat and liniment, now it’s just the sweat and liniment. It was early in the afternoon, not the best time when most of the fighters have jobs and only get to the gym after they knock off, but Wally was there watching a couple of heavyweights plodding around the ring.
He nodded to me. ‘Gidday, Cliff. Look at these no-hopers. It’s a disgrace to let ‘em in a ring.’
‘As they say-they’re slow but they can’t hit.’
‘That’s right. Haven’t seen you for a while. What brings you around?’
‘D’you remember Jimmy O’Day?’
Wally turned disgustedly away from the ring to watch a skipper and a kid working on the speed ball. They didn’t please him either. ‘Sure I do. He was a good boy-good, not great. Why?’
‘I’m trying to locate a cousin of his named Marie. I’m told they were pretty close at one time.’
Wally was an old school racist. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘well they’re like that, aren’t they? Especially when one of ‘em’s got any cash. Jeez, they bled Dave Sands dry. Lionel too, I reckon.’
‘Any idea where Jimmy is now?’
‘Be in Redfern, wouldn’t he?’
‘Come on, Wally, keep up. There’s Aborigines in parliament, in the law, in business.’
‘Not ex-boxers. The money goes and they get on the grog.’
‘Have it your way. I’ll ask someone else.’
‘Hang on, don’t get shitty. I don’t know anything about a cousin, but I did hear that Jimmy was doin’ something. What was it? Oh, yeah-he’s got a band. They play country music’
‘What’s the name of the band?’
‘Dunno. I just heard someone mention that Jimmy was the leader. I suppose he plays the guitar and sings. Don’t they all play the guitar and sing, the leaders?’
‘Mick Jagger didn’t play guitar, though I gather he does a bit now.’
Wally would’ve spat into the sawdust in the old days, now he just sneered. ‘That ponce. Big in the bedroom, but I’d like to see him inside the ropes.’
‘The man’s over sixty.’
‘So am I, and I can still go a bit. Better than them two.’ He turned away to watch the cumbersome sparrers and I left him to it.
It was a lead of a sort, and what you always dread in the early stages of an investigation is the absolute dead end. Avoid them for a while and you can start to make progress if you know your business.
I don’t buy many CDs these days after replacing a lot of my seventies vinyls and cassettes. I don’t really keep up much since Cold Chisel and Dire Straits, though I quite like The Whitlams. With country music I mostly preferred the women-Patsy Cline, Lucinda Williams. I’d bought Kasey Chambers’s first album at Hot Music at the Cross and that’s where I went next.
The place is distinguished from many others by having staff who know about the stuff they sell and how to get it if it’s not in stock. The young woman I approached had a fair amount of silverware in her face, a lot of eye makeup and an indoor pallor.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘do you happen to know about a country music band with a leader named Jimmy O’Day?’
‘Would that be James O’Day?’
‘Could be.’
‘Well, sure-they’re called the Currawongs. Want to hear them? They’ve got two albums.’
She put a disc on and gave me the headphones. I’m no great judge of country, but the music sounded tight and professional. The lead singer had a sweet voice, something like Gram Parsons. I listened to a couple of tracks and nodded.
‘I’ll take it.’
I produced the plastic and as she was inspecting the disc and wrapping it, I asked if she knew where the band played.
‘You like it that much, eh? Maybe you want the other album?’
‘This’ll do for a start.’
‘Okay, worth a try. Their webpage is on the line notes. You can probably find out from that. I know they tour a lot, like all those groups. Have to make a living, dude.’
‘Don’t we all, isn’t it a pity?’
I took the disc to my office and inspected it. The album was simply called The Currawongs. The photograph of the band was small and dark and I wasn’t able to identify O’Day from that. Any one of the four-keyboard player, two guitarists and drummer-could have been him, but the notes said that James O’Day was the keyboard man, singer and lyricist. I looked at the photo again but couldn’t match the man at the piano with the kid I’d seen in the boxing ring nearly twenty years back.
As you'd expect, the band's webpage was Currawongs. net. I got it up and learned more. One of the guitarists was Brian O'Day, James's brother, and the drummer, Larry Roberts, was their cousin. The other guitarist was Luke Harvey. The band had evolved from several earlier groups and taken their name a few years back. They'd toured the east coast extensively and played at the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival. Biographical information was sketchy; no ages were given, there was no mention of Aboriginality or boxing, but the title of one of the songs, 'Blues for Jimmy Sharman', struck the right note. Sharman Senior and Junior were the bosses of the most famous of the old-time touring boxing-tent shows. It was looking good.
As the cluey woman in the music shop had thought, the band’s dates were listed on the website. In two days’ time they were playing at the Bulli Hotel in the Illawarra. Easy drive, pleasant setting. I took the CD home and played it. It didn’t make me want to rush out to buy the other one, but I liked it well enough. The songs had a freshness to them and varied between bluesy laments, standard country stuff and something verging on hard rock. There seemed to me to be a touch of the Stones in country mood, with a bit of Van Morrison, maybe some Paul Kelly, and that note in O’Day’s voice that reminded me of Gram Parsons, especially on the downbeat tracks. I listened closely to ‘Blues for Jimmy Sharman:
You went in much too often
And you got real beat down
When the country boys who took a glove
Weren’t just the usual clowns
But you stayed at it longer
Than they ever thought you might
‘Cos your woman and kids was hungry
And Dad you had to stand and fight.
Sounded as if he knew what he was singing about.
I phoned Clarrie Simpson, one of the journalists who frequented Trueman’s and someone I occasionally had a drink with. We shot the shit for a while. Clarrie was semi-retired and glad to talk.
‘Remember Jimmy O’Day?’ I asked.
‘Yeah-held the Commonwealth Mickey Mouse middleweight title, briefly.’
‘Know anything about his background?’
‘I should. I wrote a piece about him.’
‘His father?’
‘Tent fighter with Sharman Junior.’
Thank you, Clarrie. ‘How old would Jimmy be now?’
Clarrie’s of an age where everyone not as old as him seems to get younger. ‘Not old,’ he said. ‘He started young and he quit right after that Kiwi beat him. Nasty, that was. He got cut badly above both eyes and they didn’t stop it as soon as they should have. I’d say early forties. Anything in this for me?’
‘Could be, not sure.’
‘Typical.’
I rang the Bulli Hotel and found out you could book a table close to the stage for a meal and a ticket to the show for a price that wouldn’t take too much of Kevin’s retainer. Pay by credit card. Why not?
I booked into a Thirroul motel, thinking that I’d probably have a drink or two and wouldn’t want to drive back. A short hop from there to Bulli. Great old pub on the highway, heritage protected for sure. The structure had been preserved and the renovations hadn’t destroyed the charm. A Hyundai people-mover and trailer were parked in the lane beside the pub. The room where the band was to play held about twenty tables and there was plenty of standing room with a bar at the back. I gave my name and was shown to a small table off to one side with a clear view of the stage. I ordered a bottle of Houghton’s white burgundy and the barramundi with chips-what else do you eat on the coast within the sound and smell of the waves?
The wine was cold and the food was good. The room filled up quickly with all the tables being taken and the standing room packed. Evidently the Currawongs had a following. They came on about ten minutes late, which is pretty standard. The MC just spoke the band’s name to raucous applause and went off. Before the lights went down I got a good look at the keyboard man. James was Jimmy all right-the same dark curly hair, olive skin and fluid movement. I couldn’t see the boxing scars but, like me, he had the heavy brows that stretch the skin and lead to cuts. The band tuned up briefly and launched into one of their country rock numbers I hadn’t heard. The crowd had and showed its approval.
They played for forty-five minutes, switching from fast to slower but never slow, and keeping the energy up. James, as I told myself to think of him, was active at the electronic keyboard, standing up when appropriate and giving it some body as well as fingers. All four seemed to be on top of their game with some good slide guitar at times and nice harmonies. They took a ten-minute break and came back with more of the same. James didn’t do the corny stuff of introducing the band, but each member had a couple of solo moments that said more than words. I paced myself with the wine and still had a third of the bottle left when they did their last song and their encore. I was probably one of the oldest people there, but I was on my feet and cheering like the youngest.
‘James will be signing CDs in the bar when he catches his breath and has a drink,’ the MC announced.
A crowd clustered around as O’Day propped himself against the bar with a beer to hand and chatted to the people buying the record. As I got closer I could see the scar tissue, which gave him a slightly threatening look. Even if you didn’t know he’d been a fighter, he’d strike you as someone not to mess with. I took the album I didn’t have from the roadie who was supervising the business and paid cash for it. I hung back until I was the last in the line.
‘Hi,’ O’Day said, ‘enjoy the show?’
I handed him the record. ‘I did.’
‘What name?’
‘Cliff Hardy. I’m a private detective and I want to talk to you.’
He paused the pen over the record. ‘Yeah, what about?’
‘I saw you fight a couple of times when you were called Jimmy.’
He scrawled something illegible and stood. ‘Good for you. I’m off now.’
‘Hang on.’
I moved to stop him and suddenly the roadie and someone else were beside me, hemming me in against the bar as O’Day slipped away. The roadie threw a punch. I ducked it and gave him a hard one to the ribs that crumpled him. The other man attempted to kick me in the balls and I up-ended him. He came back quickly in a karate stance. By this time some of the hard-core drinkers had clustered around, ready to enjoy the second show of the night. I didn’t oblige them. I pulled out my wallet and held up my PEA licence card.
‘Federal police,’ I said. ‘Don’t make things worse for yourself.’
He straightened his body and unflexed the stiffened fingers. ‘Sorry, I was just…’
‘Doing your job. It’s okay.’
The drinkers lost interest. I looked about but the roadie had gone. I went out onto the tiled verandah and around to the side where the band’s people-mover and trailer had been parked. Gone. When I went back into the pub the karateist had faded away as well. Great work, Cliff, I thought, you scared everyone off and learned bugger-all.
I went back into the room and recovered my bottle. My hair was in my face, my shirt was half pulled out from my pants and I was angry. A frightened-looking kid behind the bar handed me a cork and I gave him a nod that didn’t make him any happier. A woman came bustling towards me; she was angry, too.
‘I don’t care who you are,’ she said. ‘I’m going to report you for causing a disturbance here.’
‘Who’re you?’ I said.
‘I’m the events manager.’
‘In your place I’d do exactly the same thing, but think about it. Would a bit of a stoush after the band finished playing really do your venue a lot of harm? I don’t think so.’
She was smart enough to take the point. She was pushing middle age but holding up well. She wore a white blouse, blue velvet jacket and black trousers with heels that made her tallish. Her hair was dark with red highlights.
‘You’re not a policeman,’ she said.
‘No. I told Jimmy O’Day that before things got wild.’
‘Jimmy?’
‘We go back a bit. You are…?’
‘Rennie Ellis. Well, you’ve made life interesting tonight, but you’d better take your bottle and go.’
‘Who was the guy with the karate moves?’
She shrugged, nicely. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you do. I’m booked into the Thirroul Lodge, room six. I’ll be there until ten am tomorrow. I’d like to talk to him and I could make it worth his while.’
‘Goodnight,’ she said.
At the motel I parked the wine in the mini-bar fridge and opened one of the small scotches for a nightcap. I’d barely tasted it when a knock came on the door. I opened it and Rennie Ellis stood there with a trench coat draped around her shoulders and a bottle in her hand.
‘We got off on the wrong foot,’ she said, and handed me the bottle. ‘A peace offering.’
I took the bottle-champagne. ‘Come in.’
She moved past me and looked at the room. ‘A while since I’ve been here,’ she said. ‘Not bad. They’re trying.’
‘I was having a nightcap. Want a scotch?’
She dropped the coat on a chair and sat down on the arm. ‘I’ll take the other half, sure.’
She was a good-looking woman with a full figure and the sort of confidence that comes with experience on top of adequate self-esteem. She sipped of the scotch, bent easily and picked up the book I’d put down beside the chair, intending to read for a while before going to bed.
‘Dark Safari? she said. ‘Paul Theroux. What’s it like?’
‘Good. Confirms my feeling that I don’t want to go to Africa.’
‘What do you want?’
‘To know why you’re here.’
‘Knew you’d be direct. Anything else?’
‘I asked you in, didn’t I?’
She drank the rest of the scotch. ‘I saw you in action in the pub. I was impressed.’
‘Didn’t come across to me.’
‘That was for the management. I’m here for me now.’
It was a semi-invitation I couldn’t refuse. We finished the scotch in the mini-bar and opened the champagne. She told me she was a swimming instructor not getting too many clients given the time of year. She said she was tired of young surfies and old hippies. At some point she moved to the bed and we were sitting together and things went on from there. She kissed as though she needed to, and so did I. She had a condom in her coat pocket and by the time I’d kissed her breasts and slid my fingers inside her I was ready. We pulled back the covers and made love vigorously enough to pull the sheets away from the mattress. After we finished we clawed at the sheets and blankets, suddenly aware that it was cold.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘My first private detective.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘Someone heard you speak to James O’Day. That someone told me.’
‘Is it the person I think it is?’
‘Could be. Tell you in the morning. I’ve got another rubber-think you’re up to it?’
‘Not now.’
‘In the morning?’
‘Possibly, just possibly.’
Rennie was the sort of woman who knew what she wanted and what she was prepared to give. We were comfortable together in the morning-both feeling better about the world and ourselves.
‘Where’s the breakfast?’ she asked. ‘The soggy toast and the cold coffee?’
‘I don’t eat breakfast.’
‘Oh Christ, an ascetic’
I pointed to the miniature scotches and the empty champagne bottle. ‘Hardly.’
She had a quick shower and got dressed. ‘Well, that was fun, Cliff, and I’m going to get Claude to call in on you. He might know why James O’Day took off like that and why they heavied you-tried to, at least. Are you trouble for him, the singer?’
‘Not at all. Would you believe I just want some information about his auntie.’
She laughed. ‘Big case.’ She blew me a kiss and was gone.
I showered and dressed, tidied the room a bit, put the condoms and the bottles in the rubbish bin. The day had dawned fine but cool and I could smell the sea as I stood outside the room with a cup of instant coffee. A Holden ute, about the same vintage as my Falcon, pulled in to the slot beside it. The man who got out looked bigger and darker in the daylight than in the pub gloom. He wore jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt that revealed his muscles and tats. There were rings in both his ears-not a good idea if you’re serious about fighting people who know how to fight.
‘You’d be Claude,’ I said. ‘Gidday, my name’s Cliff.’
He didn’t offer to shake hands, but he didn’t try to kick me. ‘Rennie says you’re okay.’
I nodded.
‘You freaked Jimmy a bit last night.’
‘Didn’t mean to. Come inside. Want some coffee?’
He smiled. ‘You’re a private eye, on expenses, right? How about a beer from your mini-bar?’
We sat at the table in the room, me with my instant and him with a Crown Lager. He drank half of it in a gulp. ‘Hits the spot. Rennie mentioned money, too, and she says you’re not after James for nothing dodgy. How much money, bro?’
‘Depends-on a scale from a hundred to two hundred depending on the information.’
‘Not a lot.’
‘Got a better offer right now, Claude? Look, I’ve got no grief for Jimmy. I saw him fight when that was his name.’
He drank some more beer and looked less hostile. ‘Yeah? He was good, wasn’t he? I was too young to see him.’
‘Pretty good and he quit when he was ahead. He’s in a better business now. Might hurt his ears, but it won’t scramble his brains.’
‘Right. That’s why martial arts is better, I reckon, ‘cept there’s no money in it.’
‘Which brings us back to where we were. Why did Jimmy sic you guys onto me and take off like that? What’s he worried about? Tell me that and I’ll pay you something, tell me how to get to talk to him and I’ll up the ante.’
‘Tell me what you’re on about first. Then I’ll think about it.’
I made myself another cup of coffee, got him another beer and told him, without mentioning names or sums of money. When I finished he rolled the bottle in his hands as an aid to thought and decision-making.
‘That was a pretty neat move you made on me in the pub.’
I shrugged. ‘I always think one foot off the ground leaves you vulnerable.’
‘If the other guy’s quick enough. I was a bit pissed, a bit slow.’
I nodded. It was probably true. He was circling; I played along. ‘How d’you come to know Jimmy anyway? Are you related?’
He laughed. ‘You think I’m an Abo? I’m Maltese, mate. I played in the band for a while, wasn’t good enough when they got on to the bigger gigs and recording and that. No hard feelings. I do a bit of work for them now and then. I’m good at the electrics. Okay, well Jimmy had this manager who ripped him off every which way. The guy’s a crook, but he’s still trying to get a share now that they’re getting bigger. I reckon when you said you were a private detective Jimmy thought you were on his case. That’s why he gave Chicka and me the sign.’
I took two fifties from my wallet and handed them over. ‘That again if you tell me how to reach him. But you contact him first and tell him I’m not any sort of threat.’
‘If you’ve lied to me, I’ll fuckin’…’
I gave him the money. ‘I’m sure you would, but it’s not like that and you know it.’
‘He hangs out in Newtown, him, a couple of the guys, and Jimmy’s wife.’
He gave me the address and I tossed across my mobile phone. ‘Give him a ring.’
He shook his head. ‘Too early, man, they wouldn’t have got back till late and probably had a bit of a blast, you know. Good gig, sold some records.’
Claude gave me the phone number off the top of his head and said he’d ring at around midday. He advised me to call mid-afternoon when they’d be ‘mellow’.
They say that terminally ill people can get a surge from good news. I rang the hospital and left a message for Kev that I was making progress.
I took my time on the drive back to Sydney and it was almost midday when I reached Newtown. I had a quick drink in the Marlborough and then threaded my way through the narrow streets to the address Claude had given me. It was a two-storey terrace on a corner, two blocks from King Street and a block away from the Memorial Park. Biggish place, room for quite a few people. There looked to be a small courtyard out the back with a vine of some sort growing wild. The narrow front porch was mostly taken up by the wheelie bin and the two recycling bins, but there was space for a couple of pot plants that looked as though they got a certain amount of tending. No broken-down sofas, Jack Daniels bottles, defunct TV sets. Rock groups had cleaned up their act.
I parked fifty metres away and used the mobile. I got an answering machine telling me the names of the residents and asking me to leave a message. My response was interrupted.
‘This is James O’Day. Claude phoned me about you. Where are you?’
‘Outside.’
‘Stay there. I’ll come out and we can go for a walk.’
I met him in the middle of the street. Newtown people walk on the street because the footpaths are narrow and often blocked by overhangs from front gardens and the trees planted in the gentrification era. He still looked like a middleweight-medium tall, sloping shoulders, narrow waist. He wore jeans and a flannie, denim jacket with a sheepskin collar. He held out a hand, not to shake, a gesture of apology.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘You should be. You cost my client two hundred bucks.’
He smiled as we walked down the street towards the park. ‘That what you paid Claude? Good for him. You said you saw me fight. Was that just a line?’
We reached the park and began walking down a path beside a wall covered in graffiti, some of it not too talentless. ‘No, I saw you a couple of times when you won. I didn’t see the one you lost.’
He took his hands from the pockets of his jacket and touched the scar tissue. ‘I got cut. Best thing that ever happened to me.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Made me quit before my brains got mushed. You’ve done a bit yourself, eh?’
‘Amateur only, before headguards came in. I did enjoy the show and I did buy the record. Bought the first one, too, when I was trying to get a line on you.’
‘Wow, that could put fifty cents or more in my pocket. Okay, now we’re here let’s get to it. Claude said you’re looking for someone in my family. He was a bit vague, the way you were, I suppose.’
This was evidently a familiar walk to him and he was setting a cracking pace. He swerved off onto another path and I had to trot to catch him.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve mapped out this kilometre track and I do five or six circuits when I’ve got the time.’
‘Terrific. I do something the same around Jubilee Park in Glebe, but right now I’d rather talk than trot.’
‘Fair enough.’
We cut across the grass where some kids were kicking a soccer ball around, past a group that looked to be in some kind of therapy session, to a bench in the sun. Just to appear professional, I took out my notebook and leafed through it.
‘About ten years ago, you paid a corner store bill for a woman named Marie O’Day in Leichhardt. The shopkeeper said you looked like a fighter. I got onto an old-timer at Trueman’s who knew you’d gone into what he called the music business. Tracking you down wasn’t that hard after that but then…’
He smiled again, the smile he’d given to the photographers in his fighting days and on the stage in his new incarnation. ‘We ran into a spot of bother. Okay, I’m impressed with your investigative skills. Did you find out that after boxing I went to TAFE to get an education and worked on my piano playing until I was game to perform in public?’
‘No.’
‘You just thought I segued from middleweight champ to rock star?’
I was getting sick of this. ‘Look, Jimmy,’ I said, ‘I don’t give a fuck about your brilliant career. I’ve got a client who needs to make contact with Marie O’Day and any kids she might have-to her and their advantage.’
He wasn’t used to being talked to like that and his first reaction was antagonistic. He swivelled on the bench and his handsome face took on the sort of look boxers wear when they touch hands before the fight. I didn’t react-not what he expected. He struggled for control.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I deal with too many arseholes.’
‘And too many people who’re scared of you.’
‘I suppose. You’ve got it right. Marie’s my cousin. She was leaving Leichhardt and she was short of money so I paid her bill. Wasn’t much.’
‘You ever heard of Kev Roseberry?’
‘Might’ve, not sure.’
‘He’s the bloke Marie took up with and had the child by. He trained some bloke you fought and that’s how they met.’
‘I don’t remember him. When I was fighting all I thought about was fighting. Full stop.’
‘Marie didn’t tell you who the father of the child was, and you didn’t ask?’
He shook his head. He’d relaxed by now and was half turned away, watching the people in the park. His voice was full of irony, sarcasm, anger. ‘You know what Abo women are like, fuck anyone.’
‘That’s a bloody stupid thing to say and you know it.’
He sagged against the backrest and all the aggression was gone. ‘They call me an Uncle Tom, you know, some of the people, because I don’t make a thing about being Aboriginal.’
‘That’s understandable, sounds as if you’ve got a problem with all that. I’m sure you’re not alone, but I’m not your psychiatrist. Roseberry’s dying of cancer. He’s got some money to leave and he wants to know about Marie and about her kid, Siobhan, if there’s any grandchildren and if they need help. No, make that if Marie’d accept it. She told Kev years back that she didn’t want to know him.’
‘How did he treat her?’
‘With neglect.’
‘Got a guilty conscience now, has he? Is he some kind of religious freak?’
I sighed. ‘I’m getting tired of talking to you, Jimmy. Can you tell me anything about Marie and Siobhan or not? Yes or no. Yes, and I’ll be grateful, no, and you can fuck off and I’ll tackle it some other way.’
‘You’re a hard bastard, aren’t you?’
‘Sometimes not, sometimes I have to be.’
‘What’s in it for you?’
I got up and started to walk back towards the path. A soccer ball came skidding towards me and I kicked it back as hard as I could. The kid closest to me shouted when it went past him.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
I got to the path and kept walking. I heard footsteps behind me. O’Day tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Come back to the house. I’ll help you find Marie, but it’s tricky.’
O’Day took me through the house to a back room he’d set up as an office-cum-recording studio. There were guitars lying around, a drum kit, a couple of keyboards and electronic equipment I couldn’t identify. He rolled and lit a joint which he offered me. I refused.
‘Got a beer?’
‘Juicehead.’
He fetched a can and we sat facing each other over a tangle of cables.
‘Marie’s had a lot of trouble in her life,’ he said. ‘Grog, blokes, illness. She went hyper-political and got into demonstrations, sit-ins, protests. She got bashed by the police and hurt pretty badly. She’s on a disability pension and just getting by. I help her out from time to time, but she’s proud and doesn’t like it. I do it through a third party. Also, she reckons I’ve sold out to whitey.’
‘What about Siobhan?’
From just puffing, he now drew deeply on the joint, sucked the smoke in and held it down. Then he did it again. He seemed to need the comfort of it, or perhaps something else. I took a sip of beer and waited.
‘She’s with Marie. She’s got a kid. They’re doing it tough.’
‘Where are they?’
‘She won’t accept charity from-’
‘Whitey, okay. This isn’t charity, Jimmy-it’s long overdue support money from a decent man trying to make amends.’
‘Marie doesn’t admit there’s any decent white people.’
‘And that’s as stupid a thing as what you said before.’
‘I know. Okay, I’ll tell you where they are and you can try your luck.’
‘You won’t come with me?’
He sucked hard on the joint again and shook his head.
‘Why not?’
He’d smoked the joint almost down to the end but he wasn’t done. He drew on it again until it must have singed his fingertips. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
He let the roach fall to the floor, got up, went to one of the keyboards, hit some switches and began to play. Straight blues riffs. He was stoned. He kept playing, seemingly in a trance. I looked around the room and saw a desk with a computer and printer wired up to other equipment. I opened a drawer in the desk and found a contact book. There was an entry for ‘Marie O’ with an address in Marrickville but no telephone number. I copied down the address and left him to do whatever he thought he was doing, wherever he thought he was.
My mobile rang as soon as I started the car. It was a nurse at the hospital where Kev was being treated. She said that Mr Roseberry’s condition had deteriorated and that he wanted to see me urgently. He’d asked the medical staff to hold off on palliative medication until my visit.
‘It’s that bad?’ I said.
‘I’m afraid so.’
I drove to the hospital and was ushered into Kev’s room. A man I didn’t know was there with Kev’s doctor who I had met, and a nurse. Kev was propped up in the bed and the life seemed to be leaking out of him. His voice was a croak.
‘Sorry to rush you, mate. Is she alive, Marie?’
‘Yes, Kev.’
‘And the kid?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s all I needed. You’ll do the right thing, I know. Okay, let’s get this bloody thing signed. This is Ed Stewart, Cliff. He’s a solicitor and pretty honest for a lawyer. That’s a joke, Ed.’
Stewart smiled dutifully and produced a document which he, Kev and the nurse signed. The effort seemed to drain Kev to the dregs. He held out a hand and I shook it, gently. ‘Ed’ll explain it to you, mate. I knew I could count on you and…’
A spasm shook him and robbed him of the power of speech. He nodded at the doctor and closed his eyes. The nurse shepherded Stewart and me out of the room. We stood in silence outside the door for a second before walking away.
‘I hope I’m up to making a joke as I go out,’ Stewart said.
‘Me, too.’
We went into a waiting room and Stewart showed me the paper. ‘This is Kevin’s last will and testament, revoking all others, while of sound mind, blah, blah. He had me draw it up this morning. It leaves his estate to be divided equally between Marie O’Day and her daughter Siobhan. And there’s provision for any issue Siobhan might have. You are named as the executor.’
‘What if I hadn’t been able to confirm that they were around?’
‘He seemed to have every confidence that you would.’
Kevin Roseberry died that night. As executor I was responsible for his funeral arrangements. I made them and tossed up whether to contact Marie and invite her along. I decided not. Dealing with her was going to be tricky enough without it happening in an emotion-charged atmosphere. Kev was cremated; I said a few words, so did some of the denizens of the pubs he’d frequented. We had a bit of a wake at the Toxteth Hotel and that was that.
Stewart, the solicitor, said he’d put Kev’s estate through the probate process and then it’d be up to me to arrange the distribution of the assets. No point in putting it off any longer. I drove to Marrickville, located the flat in a small block sitting in a sea of concrete, no balconies, and wearing an air of defeat. I knocked and the woman who answered was recognisable as Marie of the photograph, but only just. She was rail-thin and haggard; her dark, wiry hair had a wide white streak in it of a kind I’d seen before. Not a cosmetic touch-the effect of hair growing back on the site of a serious wound.
‘Yeah?’ she said, packing as much hostility as it was possible to get into the word.
‘Ms O’Day, my name’s Hardy. Your cousin James O’Day gave me your address because there’s something very important I have to discuss with you.’
‘What would that be?’
‘Can I come in, please? It’s to do with quite a lot of money and better discussed in private.’
‘I don’t want any money from Jimmy.’
‘It’s not from him.’
‘I don’t know anyone else with money.’
‘You knew this man. Come on, it won’t take long.’
For a minute I thought she was going to slam the door but she didn’t. She stepped back and let me push through and follow her. I doubted that she’d ask me to sit down or do anything even mildly hospitable. The front door opened straight into the living room, which was shabby but tidy. There was a TV set and a VCR, a well-stocked bookshelf and a milk crate filled with baby toys near one of the chairs.
She was wearing jeans, sneakers and a faded black cardigan. She crossed her thin arms over her thin chest and gripped her shoulders as if she was physically holding herself together.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Kevin Roseberry died a couple of days ago.’
‘Well that’s one less white prick.’
‘He had quite a lot of money when he died.’
‘Bullshit. What he didn’t piss up against a wall he gave to the bookies and the TAB.’
‘He won a lottery, Ms O’Day. He owned a house worth almost a million dollars and there’s a couple of hundred thousand in investments. I’m a private detective. Kevin hired me to find you. He wanted you and your daughter to have the money. I understand there’s a grandchild, too.’
Her hands flew from her shoulders to her face and she collapsed into a chair. She lost colour and her olive skin went a blotchy pink.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘Crook heart.’ She fumbled in the pocket of her cardigan and got a pill jar in her shaking hand. ‘Get me a glass of water, will you.’
I went through to the kitchen and filled a glass. When I got back she was struggling to get the top from the bottle. I helped and shook a pill out into her hand. She got it to her mouth and I helped her steady the glass as she drank.
‘Thanks,’ she said. The colour slowly returned and she pulled herself up from the slumped position. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Jimmy told me you were ill.’
‘Jimmy talks too bloody much. So he told you about Siobhan and the baby, eh? They’re at the park just now. Lovely little kid. Prick of a father, but, just like… Did I hear you right-Kevin left over a million bucks?’
I nodded.
‘To me and Siobhan?’
‘And the grandchild. Kevin hoped there were some.’
She drank the rest of the water. ‘Sit down, Mr… whatever your name is.’
I sat and she looked around the room. ‘Crummy, isn’t it? All we can afford on a couple of pensions. Look, who’s got the say about this money?’
‘When I told Kev I’d located you he made me the executor of his will, so the answer is-me.’
She said nothing for a minute, fixing me with a stare that seemed to strip me bare. ‘Kevin wasn’t a bad man. Just weak, like so many.’
‘Black and white,’ I said. ‘And like some women.’
The first smile I’d seen from her appeared, making her look younger and stronger. ‘You’re not so bad. Okay, let’s see how you handle this-I’ve never been certain that Siobhan was Kevin’s child. Could’ve been one of a couple of others. I was a wild girl at the time. You’ve met one of the other possibles.’
‘Jimmy.’
‘Right. He’s sure she’s his although she’s fairer than both of us. Buggered him up and he gave me a very hard time when I kept saying I wasn’t sure, which was the truth. Oh, I know he gets a bit of money to us from time to time. Bet he doesn’t know I know.’
‘That’s right.’
The smile came back. ‘Men. All right, Mr Detective, what d’you make of all that? Kev’s left his dough to a woman who fucked around and a child and grandchild who might not be related to him at all.’
I didn’t even have to think about it. The will was rock solid, there was no clause about verifying parenthood or anything like that.
‘Kev was a gambler like you said, Marie. I reckon he’d have taken a punt.’
I put the Currawongs CDs on the shelf somewhere between the Beatles and Dire Straits and whenever I play them I raise a glass to Kev.