My theory was built on hints and mortared up with guesses and intuitive leaps. I worked on it as I plodded through the steamy heat towards my car. Richard Selby looked to be at the bottom of it; I assumed he was Henry Brain’s benefactor, the one who had set the works in motion and had followed up by talking to young Booth, the lawyer. He had a stake in it, his wife and kids were in line for the Chatterton money or threatened with the cold shoulder. He had a lot to lose but the question was — how had he got into the game? The obvious answer was in response to something dropped from Henry Brain’s wagging, alcoholic tongue.
The car was a sweat-box; I wound the windows down and drove along with the other perspiring prisoners down past the park to lower Pitt Street. I parked a few blocks from the station, stuck the. 38 in my pants and hit the street. The place was listed in the book and I reached it in a couple of minutes. There were two windows above an army disposals store; one said Spartacus and the other said Health Studio in big, freshly painted letters. I went up a narrow staircase and met the same words again, this time on two plate glass doors. Smaller letters said that the manager of the establishment was Leonidas Green. I went into a small room formed by six-foot-high movable partitions. A girl was sitting at a desk reading a magazine, smoking and drinking coffee from a polystyrene cup. Her yellow hair fell down from a centre part that ran like a white scar along her skull. She looked up and gave me a fifty carat smile with capped teeth, red lips and eyes like jewelled spiders.
‘Good afternoon sir,’ she breathed, ‘are you interested in building your body?’
‘Not really, I need a new one.’
She smiled at lower voltage. She was wearing a sleeveless dress the colour of her hair and an even, sun-lamp tan; she drew on her cigarette and showed me her profile when she blew the smoke away. Her voice was phoney-American.
‘How can I help you?’
‘Is Mr Green around?’
‘He’s very busy. If you could tell me your business.’
I cave her a card. ‘A few questions, no trouble.’
‘I’ll see.’ She got up and came sashaying around the desk on three-inch heels.
‘I’ll see, too,’ I said and went through the gap in the partitions with her.
We went into a gleaming room about sixty feet long by thirty wide. The polished boards gleamed, chrome barbells and other equipment gleamed, but the gleamingest things of ill were the mirrors that ran around all four walls. There was even a mirror on the back of the partition that formed the reception room. They ran from floor level up to the height of a tall man and after taking a few steps into the room I felt as though I was surrounded. The girl swayed over to where three men were throwing a medicine ball around. They stood about ten feet apart at the points of a triangle and they were heaving the big ball hard, mixing up low and high throws. We stood back and watched for a minute and when one of the players missed his catch the girl stepped forward.
‘Mr Green, there’s a gentleman to see you.’
The shortest man in the group, a chunky guy with crisp curling grey hair, jerked his head around impatiently.
‘Not now Ronnie, tell him to come back later.’
I moved around Ronnie and stepped up to him. He was about five ten and four feet across the shoulders; muscles bulged everywhere under his black singlet. He was middle-aged but the skin on his face was tight and smooth. The other two were carbon copies — six-footers with waved hair and vacant expressions. Their muscles looked to be trying to burst out of their singlets and shorts and run away to start life on their own.
‘Let’s make it now,’ I said. ‘It won’t take a minute and then you can go back to playing ball.’
The Adonis on the left suddenly flicked the medicine ball at me, I moved aside and it hit Ronnie in the stomach. She collapsed and coffee from her cup flew everywhere and her cigarette dropped onto a canvas mat. Green swooped on the butt and snarled at the ball-thrower.
‘You fuck-wit Kurt, go and get a mop.’
The other man helped Ronnie up; her spider eyes blazed and she shook off his hand. Green was holding the smoking butt between two fingers as if it were a dead mouse.
‘I’ve told you not to smoke in here Ronnie,’ he said. ‘Go away, I’ll talk to you later.’ He passed the cigarette to her and bent down again to pick up my card which the girl had dropped. He read the card and clapped his hand to his forehead theatrically.
‘Oh my God, what do you want?’ He eyed me professionally and noticed the bulge. ‘Keep the gun where it is will you? I’ve got some sensitive people here, they’re likely to faint at the sight of a gun.’
Kurt was back with a mop soaking up the spilt coffee. The other he-man had wandered off towards a wall. He picked up a small bar-bell and began moving it one-handed from waist level to shoulder; he turned sideways and looked lovingly at the overblown muscles in his upper arm. I pulled out the photographs and gave them to Green.
‘I’m looking for this man. Do you know him?’
He gave them a bored glance. ‘Hard to tell, I don’t think so.’
‘Look again, it’s important.’
‘Just who do you think you are? I’ve said I don’t recognise him.’
Raised voices and a flurry of movement took our attention to the end of the room.
Green groaned, ‘Not again,’ and hurried off towards the commotion. Kurt shouldered his mop and followed; his mate moved in front of the mirror like an entranced Narcissus. At the far end of the room, away from the windows, four men were gathered around two who were lying on a canvas mat. A big, fat character who was polishing one of the mirrors stopped work and turned to watch the others. The men on the floor were stripped to their athletic supports and they lay in a line with the soles of their feet touching.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Green.
‘A bet,’ he said grudgingly. He addressed one of the men on the mat. ‘What is it this time Carl, five hundred?’
Carl put his hands out behind his head and took a grip on a medicine ball. ‘Seven fifty,’ he grunted. Green shrugged. ‘Fifty against,’ he said.
‘You’re on Leo,’ said one of the watchers, a tall, heavily muscled citizen with a widow’s peak of slick black hair. Kurt and one of the other body-builders got their bets down and Carl’s companion flipped himself up into a squatting position, still keeping his feet braced against Carl’s.
‘Carl’s betting he can get the medicine ball up to where Saul can touch it and back above his head seven hundred and fifty times. It’s murder on the laterals, want to bet?’
‘No,’ I said but despite myself I was interested. Carl looked to have the equipment for the job; his stomach was quilted with muscle and his neck and arms were grotesque storehouses of power.
The mirror cleaner had let the fluid dribble down the surface and there were bubbles of spittle beside his mouth which was slack and open; fat clustered around his neck and sat in a great roll around his waist under a stained T shirt. Apart from me he was the only man in the room without perfect muscle tone.
Carl came up in an easy, oiled movement with the medicine ball outstretched, Saul patted it and down he went and up, and down and up like a machine set to stamp out a thousand identical parts. After a hundred, great ropes of veins stood out in his neck and forehead and sweat ran in the clefts around his perfectly defined muscles. At two fifty his breath was coming in short gusts and I was betting mentally against him; everyone in the room was riveted except the mirror-gazer who kept on pumping and admiring the result. I glanced across and saw Ronnie, on tip-toe looking over the partition. A man came past her and up to Green but I was too interested in the contest to notice him: Carl had passed five hundred now and the spectators were counting, softly, rhythmically, five sixty-one, five sixty-two, sixty-three..
I saw a movement in the mirror and moved but I was too late to miss the punch altogether; Leonidas Green’s fist took me under the ear and toppled me sideways. I fell sprawling over Carl and Saul and the rhythm was broken and the men started to swear. Green came at me again and I ducked and rolled over and was on my feet. I moved into him and hooked him in the stomach and it was like punching a tree. He came on and I kicked him in the knee. He buckled and I hit him flush on the nose. Carl and Saul were on their feet shoving at each other and yelling and one of the muscle men came at me with a short, chromium bar in his hand; I let him swing it and put the heel of my hand hard into his face when he was off balance — blood spattered from his nose over the mirror. For a measureless instant I saw it all in reflection — Carl and Saul wrestling, and another man on the floor with blood welling through his fingers and Green on his knees yelling for someone to take me out. Then I was spinning around, backing up to the glass and pulling one of the muscle men with me when something sailed over my shoulder and shattered the mirror. The glass showered us and big sections of the mirror split and felt like guillotine blades. The noise stopped the action and I got my gun out and pointed it at Green’s gut.
‘Tell them to give us room Green,’ I panted, ‘or I’ll blow a hole in you. Tell them!’
Green waved his arms like a man signalling a plane in. ‘Go away,’ he moaned, ‘go away. Oh Christ look at the place, what a mess.’
The fat man had melted away somewhere leaving his mirror clouded and streaky, another six-foot stretch of glass was blood spattered and broken pieces littered the floor. There was a deep gouge in the polished boards where the thrown bar-bell had landed after it hit the mirror. I wasn’t feeling so good myself.
Green got up off his knees and I signalled him with the gun to move to a corner where there was a chair and a low bench. He moved and did some more arm waving.
‘Leave us alone. Kurt, Carl, get this mess cleaned up and piss off. We’re closed.’
He seemed to have the authority he needed and some to spare. Two of them picked up the man whose face I’d smashed and carried him like a baby. A section of the mirror swung out and led to a locker-room and storeroom evidently, because they came back with brooms and wet towels and got to work on the devastation.
Green plonked himself down on the bench and gave me and my gun an ugly look.
‘Do you know what those mirrors cost?’ he barked.
‘I didn’t throw it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want any trouble. Now I’m going to ask you again, do you know anything about the man in those pictures?’
He paused and looked keenly at me; his eyes seemed to be mocking me or maybe they were just hostile. ‘I said I didn’t know him,’ he said deliberately.
I brought the gun up a few inches but he knew I wouldn’t use it; we both knew it. He relaxed and I wondered if he was thinking about trying to take me, but there was a deep cut under his knee, bruised around the edges and dripping blood, and I didn’t think he’d risk it.
‘Why did you start all that?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t like coppers of any kind.’
‘Bullshit. Who was the guy who spoke to you when Carl hit the five hundred?’
The eyes mocked or were hostile again. ‘Nobody. He was putting on a bet.’
I looked at the clean-up gang. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Didn’t you see?’ Green sneered. ‘He got in the way of some of the glass, I imagine he’s gone for stitches.’
I tried to bring the man’s features back and up into focus but I couldn’t. I hadn’t bothered to look at him closely, I’d been too interested in the stupid medicine ball game. He was big and dark, I had that much, but nearly all of them were big and dark.
‘What’s his name?’
‘I’m not going to tell you. What are you going to do — shoot me?’ He laughed and ran his hand over the grey hair.
‘There’s a racket here,’ I said. ‘I can smell it.’
‘No racket here, my friend, I make men into the men they want to be. That’s all.’ He started to stand up and let out a gasp when the weight fell on his injured leg. He slumped down onto the bench. ‘You’ve cost me money. I wouldn’t come around here again if I was you.’ He drew in a breath and yelled, ‘Ronnie!’
The girl stuck her head around the partition, she saw the gun and pulled back out of sight.
Green yelled again. ‘Ronnie, get me the first aid box… and bring a hand-out over here.’
She came teetering across the boards as the clean-up finished. Her eyes were big and frightened and her expensive top teeth were chewing on her ripe lower lip. She was carrying a white case about the size of a shoe-box and a piece of foolscap-sized, buff-coloured paper fluttered in her hand.
Green stuck out his leg. ‘Clean this up, Ronnie.’ He took the paper from her, folded it down the middle and handed it to me.
‘This is a legitimate business, probably more legitimate than yours. Have this in exchange for your crummy card.’
I put the gun away and took the paper, feeling bad. It had the name of the joint printed stylishly across the top with a photo of Green striking a pose beside it. I put it in my pocket and got up. I had nothing more to say. I felt that if I threatened to shoot out all his mirrors Green would still laugh at me. I was preoccupied with the thought that Warwick Baudin and my bonus and everything else that mattered might have passed within touching distance of me. Green swore when Ronnie started in on his wound and I felt a little better about it all.
I unshipped the. 38 when I passed Ronnie’s desk and watched for vengeful lurkers on the stairs but there was no one. The disposals store bristled with bayonets and knives and there was a gun-shop next to that; the place was high on weapons and low on intelligence and I included myself in that. I bought coffee and some aspirin in the next block and sat rubbing the sore spot near my ear and wondering about my next move. I pulled out the Spartacus Studio’s blurb and looked it over: Leonidas had his name in about ten times and there were testimonials to the efficacy of his courses from satisfied Mr Victorias and Mr Queenslands. A name near the bottom of the screed took my eye — the supplier of weight-lifting and gymnasium equipment to the studio was Richard Selby.