Casino ch-18 Read online

  Casino

  ( Cliff Hardy - 18 )

  Peter Corris

  Peter Corris

  Casino

  1

  I looked at the card he’d laid on my desk after he’d finished shaking my hand. He was Oscar Cartwright and he was evidently the director of Sydney Casinos Ltd.

  ‘What do you know about casinos, Mr Hardy?’

  The man now sitting in the client chair in my office looked as if he could buy the whole building. If he did he’d certainly junk the chair. He’d told me to call him O.C., but so far I hadn’t done it.

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I’ve been in a few-Monte Carlo, Hobart, Port Douglas, places like that.’

  ‘I gather you don’t like ‘em much. This one’s different.’

  I shrugged. Thousand-dollar suits, gold watches and silk ties tend to bring up my levels of resistance. ‘I was in one in Las Vegas a few years back. It had a tiger in a cage in the lobby. I still didn’t like it.’

  He laughed, showing expensive teeth. Everything about him was expensive-the blow-waved hair, the aftershave, the tan, the facelift. Oscar Cartwright had fifty-year-old eyes in the thirty-year-old face, which made him a hard man to read and not an easy one to like. Still, he was sitting there, breathing the stale, cheap air in my office, and obviously about to make me a proposition. The three other little jobs I had on hand were from a small payer, a slow payer and a probable non-payer-I couldn’t afford to take too strong a dislike to Oscar’s grooming. And he had laughed, that was something.

  ‘They told me you were a comic. I like that. They also tell me you’re tough and honest. I like that even more.’

  Oscar was the sort who liked to anticipate the next question. He told me who ‘they’ were- several satisfied clients over the past couple of years. One of the jobs had sent a man to hospital, hence the reputation for toughness. I guess the honesty tag comes with my low prices. The shabby office two floors up from St Peters Lane in Darlinghurst, and the fact that my new Hong Kong linen suit cost about as much as Oscar’s shampoo and trim probably helped reinforce the image.

  ‘It’s nice to be well-regarded,’ I said. ‘Especially in this game, but all I’ve ever done in casinos is lose money. If you’re looking to set up a security system and so on, you need a specialist in that kind of work.’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s all in hand. You know we’re opening next week?’

  After years of wrangling, a solution to the Sydney casino question had finally been worked out. I’d followed the machinations in the press in a random kind of way. As I understood it, a local syndicate with an acceptable amount of foreign backing had been granted some kind of provisional licence. ‘So I heard. Best of luck. You’ll be putting people to work. I’m all for that.’

  ‘I want to put you on the payroll, Cliff.’

  I couldn’t resist. ‘O.C.,’ I said, ‘I’m already in work.’

  Keeping his tight young chin firm, he let his middle-aged eyes drift around the room, taking in the battered filing cabinet, the frayed carpet, faded holland blind and the scarred desk. He rocked back a little on the chair, causing it to creak dangerously. ‘I’m not saying you’re not making a living, but you could be doing a whole lot better.’

  ‘I know that. I could be working for one of the big agencies that’ve tried to suck me in over the years. I could be driving a BMW with a mobile phone. I could have a desk with a pot-plant and a fax machine. But then I couldn’t go off to Hong Kong for a week when I’d made a few bucks or just piss off to the Central Coast when I felt like it.’

  Cartwright leaned forward. I could see white wrinkles on his tanned neck and when he got interested in what he was saying rather than how he looked, there was a little stomach sag. ‘A year with us and you can have it all.’

  ‘A year’s a long time in the private inquiry business,’ I said. ‘With all these regulations coming in, the whole game could be belly-up before…’

  ‘All the more reason to listen to what I have to tell you.’

  I sighed and leaned back in my own chair, making it creak almost as much as the other one. I was never much of a chess player and he’d put a good move on me. ‘OK, O.C., what’ve you got in mind?’

  ‘You’re still taking the piss out of me. I want you to know that I can see that. And I can live with it.’

  He was trying very hard and I’ve always had a soft spot for triers, being one myself. I relented to the extent of admitting that I didn’t have a lot of work on hand and that things had been slow of late. I was already almost regretting the trip to Hong Kong. Glen Withers and I had had a good ten days hammering the plastic and the mattress in the four-star hotel. We’d taken tea in The Peninsula Hotel and fantasised about staying in the place with the rich and famous. One night would have broken the bank. I jerked myself away from these memories to concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘Come and take a look. What’s the harm?’

  The implication, that my time was valueless, irritated me. ‘What would be the good?’

  ‘I’ll pay your hourly rate.’

  I had to laugh at that. ‘I’m a private inquiry agent in a small way of business, Mr Cartwright. I’m not a lawyer or a CPA. I charge by the day- $150, if I think the client can afford it.’

  He was already out of his seat. He took his wallet from off his hip and slid out three fifty-dollar notes as if he could keep producing them for half an hour. Then he was moving towards the door in his slightly built-up Italian slip-ons which might have got him up to five foot nine, just. I’m six feet and half an inch; I had that on him. ‘You’ve got a deal. A day’s pay for an hour’s tour, maybe two hours. I say again, what’ve you got to lose?’

  Gambler’s talk, and I’m not a gambler. Money talk, and I’ve never been seriously interested in money. But there was an enthusiasm and eagerness and energy about him that did appeal to me. I picked up the money and stuffed it into my pants pocket, hooked my wrinkled jacket off the back of the chair and stood up, hoping he wouldn’t hear the joints creak. “Where’re we going exactly?’

  He smiled. “You’ll be taken and you’ll be dropped back, Cliff. You don’t have to worry about a thing.’

  He had a white stretch limmo with driver parked in St Peters Lane. The car just fitted in the space between the workshop that specialises in repairing European automatic transmissions and a big roller door that opens so seldom it’s impossible to say what goes on behind it. Cartwright introduced me to the driver, whose name was Graham, as ‘Mr Hardy’.

  ‘Cliff,’ I said, reaching through the window to shake hands. ‘I hope you don’t have to wash this thing.’

  ‘We have people for that,’ Cartwright said. ‘I believe in employing specialists. Graham’s never hit an unnecessary bump, have you, Graham?’

  ‘That’s right, O.C.’

  I climbed in the back with Oscar and we could really have spread ourselves out if we’d wanted to. There was a mobile phone with fax attachment, a minibar and a TV with built-in VCR. The late February day was warm with high humidity and some dark clouds building in the south. That was outside; in the limmo the air-conditioning was set for perfect comfort.

  ‘Drink, Cliff?’

  I shook my head and watched him prepare a Perrier as if it was Dom Perignon. The limmo purred away down the lane and I waited for the bump at Forbes Street. No bump. Either the suspension was superb or Graham was the artist Cartwright proclaimed him to be. My 1980s Falcon has a reassuring number of knocks and rattles. I’ve learned to diagnose its state of health by those sounds and to take appropriate action, often too late to save a vital organ. There were no such signals from the limmo. We whispered along William and Park Streets and swung right at Elizabeth.

  ‘I remember now,’ I said. ‘Da
rling Harbour- a temporary location and a provisional licence.’

  Oscar knocked back half of his glass of mineral water in a gulp and chewed on an ice cube. The pricey dental work was good, he chewed recklessly. ‘Right, right. But we’ve spent a bundle on setting it up, and if everything works out right we’ll keep it as an overflow venue. Meantime, it gives us a chance to show what we can do.’

  ‘And the authorities a chance to pull the chain on you.’

  Cartwright wagged a manicured finger at me. ‘You’re hostile. Shouldn’t be hostile.’

  He pronounced it ‘hostil’ and I began to wonder where he called home. His dress, speech and mannerisms were a strange mixture of Australian and American. These days Americans can get that way from living here for years and Australians from watching a lot of television. I was finding O.C. harder and harder to read. But I had $150 of his money in my pocket and the least I could do was be civil.

  ‘I’ll keep an open mind,’ I said. ‘And I’ll take a light beer.’

  The casino was in one of those Darling Harbour structures that seem to be made out of glass and white-painted plastic tubing. Oscar explained that his syndicate had taken over a shopping complex that hadn’t been able to find enough tenants and that they had a three-year lease, although their casino licence ran for only two years.

  ‘Gotta take chances in this business,’ he said as the limmo slid down a ramp into an underground car park. ‘Something not everyone understands. We’re dealing with people and money. They’re the only factors, but how volatile’s that for a combination?’

  I gave Graham a wave as he glided off. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Powder keg. Contains everything-advertising, fashion, greed, style, you name it. The casino business is at the cutting edge of the human psyche.’

  We’d gone through a set of automatic glass doors and we were walking along a mirrored passageway decorated with large vases that cried out for big flowers. I stopped and burst into laughter. ‘Where the hell did you learn that?’

  He laughed with me. ‘Don’t ask. They have these bullshit courses in the States. I’ve done ‘em all. Kinda fun. In case you’re wondering, Cliff, or inclined to check up, my real name’s Colin Cartwright and I was an SP bookie in Marrickville before I saw the light. I’m telling you, compared to the horses, the casino business is honest- house percentages and all.’

  I liked the man. As he gave me the deluxe guided tour he spouted about the percentages that would go to the government, the hospitals that would get built, the charities the casino would sponsor. I believed him. He explained how all the materials used in the refitting of the building- the carpets, the lights, the furniture-were Australian-made. Even the gambling equipment, the tables, the roulette wheels, the poker machines-all Australian.

  ‘You know what? The kips they use at some places’re made of Malaysian timber. Can you believe it? Rainforest timber from a place where half the country’s sliding into the sea.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re a conservationist.’

  ‘Sure, why not? Well, what d’you think of the joint, Cliff?’

  Despite myself, I had to admit that it was impressive. The decor was plush without being gaudy; there were excellent dining and drinking areas and places where people could do all the things the casino offered in a smoke-free setting. That had to be a first. The facilities for the staff were of a high standard and Cartwright explained the computerised monitoring procedures that checked on the fair operation of the equipment and the customer screening that was designed not to let low-rollers get themselves into high-roller territory. The security arrangements were terrific-sealed tellers’ cages, pneumatic money chutes, time locks, drive-in strongroom, automatic doors, a minimum of weapons.

  ‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘How long before it breaks even?’

  ‘Depends. A year.’

  ‘You’ve got everything you need. On paper, a first-class security set-up, top staff…’

  We were in his office, a medium-sized room with a good view over the city. He was on the Perrier still and I was on my second glass of white wine-well, I was being driven back, wasn’t I? There was a bookshelf, something you don’t see in every office, and the books looked read-a lot of stuff on gambling and business management, but also some dictionaries of quotations, biographies and novels.

  ‘You’re sharp. You’ve put your finger on it. This is all on paper and it’s not worth much unless the right people are running it, particularly the right man at the top.’

  I drank some of the very good dry white and didn’t say anything.

  ‘I want you to head it all up. Hire the security staff, supervise the whole operation. You’ll be the number three man below me and my systems manager. Office just like this one. Secretary, the works. The job’s worth around two hundred grand a year-car, clothing allowance and rent of a flat in the package, expenses. A one-year contract. Option to renew. What d’you say?’

  I’ll admit I thought about it. My Glebe house was crumbling around me for lack of maintenance, business wasn’t good and was unlikely to get better. I was healthy but a few old injuries were slowing me down a touch. The Hong Kong trip had given Glen and me a taste for travel. I wanted to see… But I only thought about it for a minute, maybe less. I finished my drink and put the glass on the low teak table beside the scale model of the casino.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s an attractive proposition, but I just don’t have the temperament to work inside an organisation. I’m no good at routine. I don’t like doing the same thing twice even. I do it, of course, but I duck it as much as I can. Also, I’m a bit erratic. Your job would involve a hell of a lot of repetition and attention to detail.’

  He looked gratifyingly disappointed, but not shattered. He knocked back his Perrier and gazed out over the city. It struck me that things looked very different through clean windows. Dirty ones like mine lend a shadowy, double-imaged look. Trees can appear solider than buildings, clouds and roofs can seem to touch. From Oscar’s office everything looked clean-edged and sharp. I think I prefer the shadowy stuff.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘They told me there was no way. Still, I reckoned it was worth a shot. You like the place, though?’

  ‘As casinos go, it’s the best I’ve seen. Thanks for showing me around, thanks for the offer, thanks for the drinks.’ I reached into my pocket. ‘I can’t take any money for this.’

  There was a different look on his surgically-tightened face now, tougher, less charming. ‘Hang on, I haven’t finished. You can still earn the money by recommending someone to me. Call it a consulting fee. Someone good who can do the job.’

  Funny thing was, I’d had the name of someone who would be good at the work as Oscar was showing me around so I didn’t have to think about it long. ‘Scott Galvani could be your man.’

  I gave him Scott’s phone number and a thumbnail sketch. He wrote notes with a gold pen on a sheet of letterhead paper. Then he got up and shook my hand. ‘Your ride’s waiting. I’ll get someone to take you down. And thanks, Cliff, thanks a million.’

  2

  That night, Glen and I ate dinner in an Italian restaurant in Petersham not far from her flat. Glen teaches part-time at Goulburn police academy and conducts refresher courses for cops around the city. We get to spend two or three nights a week together, usually at my place, occasionally at hers. She’d had a promotion and we were celebrating with whitebait and salad and Frascati.

  ‘Don’t mean to upstage you, love, but I got offered a job for two hundred grand per today.’

  Glen put down her fork with a load of whitebait on it. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Eat,’ I said. ‘You’ve been skipping meals again. I can tell. You look hungry but you’re out of practice at eating.’

  She took a forkful of fish. Glen half-likes, half-hates her job, works too hard at it and runs herself ragged. She feels guilty about not being an operational police officer, the result of a bullet wound in the arm that still sometimes troubles h
er. She thinks she’d like to do something else but doesn’t know what. She’s not interested in having children-just as well since I’d be the world’s worst father. We have a good time but she worries about the future. We ate; I drank more than my share of the wine and told her about O.C. and the casino.

  ‘Bet you didn’t take it,’ she said.

  I said, ‘How’d you guess?’ and wiped up the oil with a piece of bread.

  ‘Can’t see you going off to work in a three-piece suit. Besides, it’d be a seven day a week job.’

  ‘I work seven days a week now.’

  ‘When you work. You were right to knock it back. It wouldn’t suit you.’

  ‘The money’d suit me. We could go to the Greek islands and Turkey. I want to see the Crimea and Gallipoli.’

  ‘Bloodthirsty bastard. Anyway, they’re all crooked, those casinos-money launderers, tax-dodgers, you know the form.’

  ‘They seemed to be on the up and up.’

  Glen poured herself some more wine, surprised to see that I hadn’t emptied the bottle. ‘Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Come on, Cliff, they were romancing you. Who’s behind them? And who’s behind them? And so on. It’ll be dirty somewhere, that’s for sure.’

  ‘The government’s happy, apparently.’

  ‘Hah!’

  I let it go, she was probably right and there was no point in arguing over my slight degree of doubt. I told her that I’d recommended Scott Galvani and filled her in a bit on his history. He’d been driving taxis when I met him and he helped me out of a nasty spot. He went on to get himself a law degree, the TAFE private enquiry agent’s certificate and to run a fairly successful one-man agency for a few years. I knew that he was smart, funny and ambitious. I thought that a year as O.C.’s number three man would amuse him and the dough would be welcome-he’d married a few years back and had recently fathered twin daughters.

  ‘How old is he?’ Glen asked.