I woke up inside a small gloomy room with points of light stabbing in through the roof. The floor was rough planking with heavy metal strips binding it down. The light was about the same as in a cinema just before they start showing the ads. The room was drafty. It was also moving. My head throbbed viciously when I moved and I dropped back down on the pile of sacking and carpet scraps where I’d been thrown. I closed my eyes and let myself adjust slowly to the surroundings. When the headache had settled down into sync with the noise of the engine and the wheels I admitted to myself that I was in the back of a small enclosed truck. I crawled and lurched about the cabin checking the walls and rear doors. Tight as a drum. Through a chink in the floor I could see the road rushing past at a steady pace, but there’s no way to tell from moving bitumen which way you’re headed. I pounded on the wall near the driving end of the truck and got no response. I was locked in as safe as the crown jewels and nobody was going to do a thing about it. I wadded up the packing, put my head down and drifted off to sleep.
I dreamed I was crushing rocks on the Long Bay rock pile and then I got over the wall and made it down to La Perouse. The crowd around the snake pit was immense; it flowed over the road and up the grassy slope towards the houses on the hill. I pushed my way through the throng which was mainly made up of blacks until I got to the fence. The pit was full of snakes of all sizes and hues writhing about and rearing up to strike at the audience. Penny was in the middle of the pit with a python coiled about her and she was screaming for help. I was trying to get over the fence and the people around me were laughing because a big black snake was waving its head in front of me, darting at me and holding me back. I yelled something and woke up drenched with sweat and clutching at the empty air.
I sat in the truck while it cruised along for what seemed like ten hours. My watch had stopped at eleven a.m. and if there’s any way to tell the time from inside a closed truck I don’t know it. The traffic noise picked up at one point indicating that we were passing through a town. I heard the rattle of a train a bit later – that still put us anywhere on the east coast. I was edgy from tobacco withdrawal and almost hallucinating from the effects of two hard blows on the head within twenty-four hours. Also I was scared; there were a few bodies in shallow graves, courtesy of the grass producers and I didn’t want to join them. I tried to quell the fear and kill the time by sorting out the parts of the case so far.
Noni was on the run, maybe semi-unwilling, with an unidentified man who was prone to violent solutions of his problems. What they were running to was a mystery. A woman named Trixie Baker was involved, fatally as it turned out. There was something in Noni’s past that connected her to the live man and the dead woman and I wouldn’t begin to unravel the affair until that secret was yielded up. I gave it away at that point and concentrated on my thirst. I thought about exactly what sort of drink I’d like to have in what circumstances and settled for a middy of old with a double Teacher’s on the side. The saloon bar of the Imperial Lion with Ailsa along for company would be nice. I went to sleep again.
The truck stopped suddenly and threw me against the wall. I swore and struggled to get up, then the doors opened and a blaze of electric light flooded and blinded me. I crawled to the edge of the tray and stopped there like a rabbit transfixed by a spotlight. I heard a snigger and then an accented voice told me to get down. I dropped off the end of the truck and my knees buckled when I hit the ground. I heard the snigger again and thought it would make a good target for a fist if I ever felt strong enough again to make one.
My eyes adjusted to the light and I took in that I was in a warehouse of some sort. The ceiling was high and the floor was hard cement. Two hundred-watt bulbs hung down close to my face like lit-up heads in nooses. Four men were standing near a new green Fiat sedan parked beside the truck. I’d seen three of them before, the two who’d taken me in Macleay and the one in the camelhair overcoat. He’d been in Trueman’s watching the Moody workout. The fourth man was dressed the same way as the others in a suit with highly polished shoes. He had a frizz of dark curly hair around a bald top. I didn’t know him.
The one in the two-hundred-dollar coat spoke with a guttural voice in an accent that was almost stage Italian.
“Mr Hardy, you’re putting me to a lotta trouble. Why you sticking your nose in my business?”
“What business would that be?”
“You’re smart, an investigator,” he drew the word out ironically, “you think it out.”
“You’re the olive oil king,” I said. “You’re going to rough me up for using peanut oil to fry my chips.”
One of the Macleay boys stepped forward and slammed me in the gut. I felt the breakfast of God knows how long ago rise in my gorge. I straightened up.
“I don’t know what your business is Mr…?”
He laughed. “That’s better. No jokes. Coluzzi. You were at the gym watching the black, Moody. You go to see Ted Williams, you see Sunday in La Perouse, then you go to Macleay.”
“I went to the toilet in between.”
He struggled to keep his hands and feet still. “I told you no jokes. Why you hanging around these people?”
“What’s it to you?” I was puzzled that he hadn’t mentioned the marijuana. He was prepared to use muscle on me but not to go all the way. He was talking to me for some reason rather than having me kicked into paraplegia – that gave me some leverage but it was hard to judge how much. I snapped my fingers.
“I’ve got it, you’re the boomerang king…”
The knuckle man moved again but I was ready for him this time. He swung his foot and I went down, got hold of it, lifted, twisted and flipped. His arms flailed and he went over and belted his head into the bumper of the truck. He groaned, rolled over and lay still. His mate exposed a knife but Coluzzi motioned him to stop.
“My business is fighters, Mr Hardy… one of my businesses. I’m interested in the black fighters. I want to put them in against my boys, the Italian boys. We would get terrific houses no? A lot of money to make.”
“Honest fights?”
He spread his hands apologetically. “We see. Maybe. You could do yourself some good.”
“How?”
“First, you tell me who you working for and what’s the angle.”
Some light dawned. Coluzzi figured he had competition and he wanted to know more about it. He was a shrewd guy who wanted to sew the whole thing up neatly before he put any time and money into it. Maybe he did have competition. In any case my skin seemed to depend on him continuing to think so.
“Did you have me bashed outside a pub in La Perouse?”
“No.”
“You had someone watching me in Newcastle?”
“Sure.”
The man I’d thrown was on his feet again looking very pale around the edges. The man with the blade was looking anxious to have a go and the priestly character was very quiet and still. If I was going to get out of this without any more of the physical stuff this was the time to talk.
“I heard a whisper that something like this could be on,” I said.
“Yeah? Who from?”
“Tickener, the reporter. I don’t know his sources.”
“What you snooping around for – Redfern, Macleay, La Perouse, the black belt?”
The priest sniggered and Coluzzi spoke sharply to him in Italian. At a guess he was telling him to shut up or he’d do something unpleasant to him that would cramp his style with the ladies. Coluzzi repeated the question angrily.
“I’m looking into it for Harry,” I improvised. “I haven’t got on to much yet but I’ve got no axes to grind. I could keep you informed. I’ve been in the middle so far, copping it from both sides. Maybe it’s time for me to come off the fence.”
“How do you mean?”
“I got bashed in La Perouse as I said. My guess is that was your opposition.”
Coluzzi scratched his jaw and turned aside to talk to the bald man. The bruisers stood flapping their ears and I listened to the flow of Italian, catching a word here and there but not making much sense of it. The bald man did most of the talking and Coluzzi did a lot of nodding. He swung back to me.
“Adio’s got a good question. If you help me and I get ridda this opposition you talk about and you talk to the reporter, where does that leave me?”
It was a good question. I looked at Adio with respect and he gave me a tight, sardonic smile. I took out my wallet and showed him the money in it. Twenty-three dollars.
“I’ve got about twice that much in the bank. I could use some more. You don’t pay tax on money you win on fights.”
He didn’t look convinced but the money argument was intelligible to him.
“What about Tickener?”
“He doesn’t own me. There’d be one condition though.”
“What?”
I looked at the two enforcers in their padded shouldered suits and narrow crocodile skin shoes. They looked well fed, they were probably pampered by their women and generous to a fault with their kids. In Coluzzi’s service, though, they were vicious thugs and their indifference to the dead woman in Macleay suggested that they’d done worse things than hit people on the head. I pointed to the taller man.
“Give me a free swing at him with the blackjack.”
Coluzzi laughed gutturally and rapped out some more Italian. The other two men smiled, the tall one didn’t smile. His face lost a few shades of colour and his mouth twitched as Coluzzi dipped into his mate’s pocket and lifted out the blackjack. I gathered that the tall man’s name was Carlo. Carlo stood stock still and ground his teeth together. He seemed to be setting his bones and gristle and tensing his flesh against the cruel bite of the cosh.
I tossed it in my hand; a short, palm-sized hard rubber grip with about six inches of whippy, lead-loaded rubber attached. Carlo screwed up his eyes and swayed just a little. I pulled back my arm and stretched out my other hand to touch him on the left ear. He flinched a fraction. I swung hard at his head and let the blackjack go just before my hand got in range; it sailed over his shoulder and crashed against the tin wall. Carlo sagged slightly at the knees. His face was dead white and his eyes were hard with hate. I slapped him lightly on the face and let out a harsh laugh that didn’t sound as nervous as I felt.
Coluzzi echoed the laugh with more feeling. Some of the tension evaporated and I asked him for a cigarette. He snapped his fingers and a packet of king size Chesterfields was produced. I took one and Carlo’s offsider lit it. I sucked the smoke deep and expelled it in a long stream, it floated up and hung like ectoplasm in the harsh light. A few more vigorous bursts of Italian between Coluzzi and Adio settled it. Coluzzi came forward and looked hard into my face; he was a few inches shorter than me and had to tilt his head up to do it. The skin stretched over his jaw and pulled taut around his neck. I saw for the first time that he was old, wrinkled by age but without a spare ounce of flesh on him. He looked like a Corsican bandit, hardened by years of sun and rain, good for a fight until the day he died.
“Alright Mr Hardy,” he said, “you’re on. I want to know what you find out. Everything.”
“How do I reach you?”
He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a card; Adio produced a gold pen and he scribbled a number on the back of it. He handed the card to me. On it was printed “Aldo Coluzzi, Merchant,” and an address in the city. He hadn’t mentioned the marijuana. I wondered why but wasn’t about to raise the question now. The less said about that the better. Coluzzi looked pleased with himself and rubbed his hands together.
“So, Mr Hardy, she’s arranged. We understand each other. Now you show a little trust and take another ride in the truck.”
I was expecting tricks, double-crosses, anything, but this looked a little too obvious.
“Why?”
“You don’t know where you are. I want it that way.”
He sealed it by handing me my gun. Then he turned away and he and Adio got into the Fiat. There was no question of argument. Carlo and the other hood had an unsatisfied look about them that I wasn’t anxious to test. I climbed up into the back of the truck. Its doors closed. I heard a heavy sliding door being opened and then we were bumping over a rough surface for a while before getting onto a road. I checked the pistol – empty breech, empty clip. We drove fast for what felt like an hour and then cruised to a stop. The doors swung open and the lights of the night flickered outside.
“Out,” said Carlo.
I got down and stood uselessly in the middle of a small lane running between two high factory walls. The Italians didn’t speak. They shepherded me over to the left-hand wall and motioned me to press my face into it. I did and waited for the sap or the kidney punch. Nothing happened. They got back into the truck and drove off. I didn’t even get the licence number. I turned around and stood with my back against the wall and waited until the sweat running down my chest reached body temperature. I started walking and found that I was in Annandale, quite handy to home. I hailed a taxi and was there in a few minutes.
I used a key I kept hidden under a half brick behind a pot plant to get inside the house and smelled the familiar odours, even if a bit stale. From habit I’d picked up the newspaper and taken it with me. A glance at the date reminded me that I had no idea of the time. It was two a.m. This whole thing had started a bare forty hours ago and I’d already covered a lot of territory for Tarelton’s money. But there are no prizes for that. As of now the trail was cold. It was time for some brain work. For that I needed help. I found some stale tobacco in the house and rolled a couple of cigarettes. I got a flagon of wine and a soda syphon out of the refrigerator and sat down with an ashtray and a glass. After finishing the cigarettes and lowering the level of the wine considerably the pattern of things still eluded me. I seemed to have two different problems on my hands.
One was Coluzzi and the fight game. Well that was nasty with the knives and all, but there was nothing much in it for me. I’d have to discuss aspects of that with Harry Tickener. And I still worried about the marijuana farm. Maybe there was some connection between Coluzzi and the mess Noni Rouble was in. That had two sides to it – a black and a white – and I was sure they were connected. There was something up there in Macleay, some time back and involving money, only money. A pale, flabby, violent man had been told to forget about it. I didn’t think he would. I was beginning to get a feeling for what that money trouble might be, and I didn’t think it concerned a map to Lasseter’s lost reef.
That was as close as I got to clarity. I thought about the list of great black fighters who’d come out of the game with nothing to show for their scarred eyes and broken hands and slurred speech. I thought of Jimmy Sunday and Penny Sharkey, and I thought about Harry Tickener again.
I finished the drink and went upstairs. I got out of my pants and shoes and sweater and sprawled on the bed pulling a blanket over me. The light was on but it didn’t bother me a bit.