White Meat Read online

  A clock above the bar, old enough to be the missing link with the sundial, struck two and we let the barman take our glasses away and mop up our puddles. Outside a fine rain was falling and we turned our collars up and dashed for the doorway across the street.

  “Why did you bring me out in this?” I asked him. “I was drinking at home, you could have come over.”

  “You said you were interested in fighters,” he sniffed. A drop of moisture that wasn’t rain hung off the end of his long, thin nose.

  “You’re getting a cold Harry, you shouldn’t be out. Yeah, I was interested in fighters, when there were some.”

  Tickener blotted his nose with a tissue. “There’s one here, I want to get your opinion on him.”

  “Why? And why the hush-hush?”

  “Might put some money on him next time he’s up, might do a story on him.”

  “Well, your security’s lousy and I thought you were above all that now, the sports page?”

  I told him about Tarelton’s grapevine but he shrugged it off.

  “I like to keep my hand in. Come up and have a look at him.”

  We went up three flights in a building which had probably served a dozen different purposes since it was built in the middle of the last century. There were signs that it had been a stables on the lower level with living quarters above and it had been a sweatshop factory and a rooming house at different times and probably a brothel. Now the ground floor was a dry-cleaning plant, the second floor accommodated a dental technician and a small instant printing joint that looked dodgy. The top floor was taken up by Sammy Trueman’s gym.

  The room was about a hundred feet square and neon lit because the grimy, cob-webbed windows let in practically no light. A bank of lockers stood along one wall and a partitioned-off section contained a changing room, a toilet block and Trueman’s office. The ring was in the middle of the room on a metre-high platform. The canvas was stained with sweat and blood. Incongruously the ropes were new, bright yellow, and the padding over the hooks and post tops was pillar-box red. In one corner a battered heavy bag hung from a hook in the ceiling and a punching ball on a stand stood a little to the left. The light bag in the opposite corner was red and shiny like a tropical fruit.

  A big man, thick in the waist and shoulders, with a neck like a bull and frizzy white hair on his head and arms, came out of the changing room, plodded up to the bag and began pounding it. He danced a heavy one-two, one-two on the thin canvas mat. The noise was like a tattoo on a snare drum played a bit slow. Sweat started to roll down his pink shoulders and seemed to trigger off all the latent odours in the place. A stink of liniment, resin and cigarette smoke blended in the air, asserted itself and then faded to become an atmospheric background. A dark-skinned youth limped out, took a rope off a peg and started skipping; he had one slightly withered leg and he was clumsy on every second swing.

  Sammy Trueman had been a useful lightweight in the years after the war when that division was in the doldrums. He held the Australian title for a short time and lost it to someone whose name I forget. It doesn’t matter because Jack Hassen came along soon after and cleaned them all up. Sammy kept enough of his dough to get a long lease on the gym. He kept the equipment in reasonable shape and he’d trained a few boys who did alright without ever making headlines.

  He came shuffling towards us as we came through the door into the gym. He was wearing shoes, old grey trousers and a V-necked sweater the same colour. The top of a mat of grizzled chest hair showed over the V. Below that the sweater ballooned out like a yacht’s spinnaker in a high wind. Sammy was hog-fat, as the old-time fight writers used to say. He looked nearly twenty stone, double his old fighting weight. But then it had been a quarter of a century since Sammy had been in the ring and since then he’d spent more time with the bottle than the heavy bag.

  “Harry — Cliff boy,” he wheezed. “Good to see youse. Come to look over the new Dave Sands.”

  I shook his hand. “I guess so. I saw the last three.”

  Sammy’s wheezing changed to a note that suggested he might be laughing. He thumped Tickener on the arm. “No way to talk is it Harry? This boy’s the goods, eh?”

  “Could be Sammy, could be. I hope so anyway, the fight game’s in the shits at the moment.”

  “You never said a truer word,” Trueman said sadly. He didn’t add that it was mis-match merchants and dive-dealers like him who’d helped it to get that way.

  “It’s wet enough outside, Sammy,” I grunted. “Don’t get your sawdust damp. Let’s have a look at your boy.”

  “You’re a hard man Cliff, but OK, stick around, you’ll really see something.” He turned around ponderously and waddled off to the changing room. A tall thin young man came out of the door before he got there and Trueman grabbed his arm.

  “Get your gear on, Sandy,” Trueman spluttered, “you’re going three with Jacko.”

  The youth nodded but darted a few looks around him as if he was looking for a place to hide. He walked across to a locker, pulled out tape, gloves and protective devices for above and below the belt, and went through the door after Trueman.

  Tickener and I walked across and sat down in canvas chairs with steel frames in a row often lined up beside the ring. As we did so two men came into the gym. They were both dark, Mediterranean-looking, with the same cut to their clothes. They shook water off their hats, peeled off their coats and sat down in the chairs at the other end of the row. One of them, more burly and swarthy than the other, shot six inches of gleaming white shirt cuff and looked at his watch. Tickener pulled out his Camels and started one without offering the pack to me — he knew what I thought of them.

  “Fuckin’ depressing place,” he said.

  “Always was. Think this boy’ll make a difference?”

  “He just might. Here he comes, take a look.”

  Trueman came out along with a young Aborigine who had to lean down from his six feet to hear what the fat trainer was saying. He was wearing old boxing boots, baggy shorts and a torn singlet — not a gymnasium cowboy then. Trueman broke off when he noticed the Latins in the chairs. He gave them a quick nod and muttered something to his fighter. The boy put his sparring helmet on over a thick crop of bushy hair. With the hair covered he looked a bit like Dave Sands whom I’d seen once — the night he’d knocked Chubb Keith out cold in the fourteenth round. Four months later Sands was dead, his chest crushed in a truck smash. This kid had the same neat, handsome head, massive shoulders and those spindly Aboriginal legs that never seem to give out. Trueman led him across to where Tickener and I were sitting.

  “Jacko Moody,” he belched through the words. “Scuse me. Jacko, this is Cliff Hardy and Harry Tickener.”

  “Gidday,” he said, “pleased to meet you.” His voice was young but gruff. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, a hundred and sixty pounds or so and as tough as teak. We shook hands. Moody did a little jig. He was raring to go and made me conscious of my beery breath, tobacco-stained fingers and short wind. Still, I didn’t have to be that fit. Taking and handing out beatings was only incidental to my work.

  The thin lad called Sandy had togged up and was standing about lackadaisically in the ring. Moody climbed through the ropes and leaned back against one of the supports while Trueman taped and gloved his hands. The trainer squeezed a dirty towel out in a bucket of grimy water and hung it over the lower strand of rope near Moody’s corner. No-one was attending Sandy but he was probably better off.

  “Orright Jacko, Sandy, let’s see what youse can do. I want a lot of punches, not too much steam in ‘em, but mix it a bit if you feels like it. Bit of a show for the gentlemen, eh?”

  Trueman hit the gong mounted at the base of the ring support and the boys moved forward towards the centre of the canvas square. I knew Moody was something special when I missed seeing his first punch. He put a hard straight left into Sandy’s face and a right rip into his ribs before the white boy got set, and that was the pattern of the round. Sandy w
asn’t unskilled and he wasn’t slow, Moody was just immeasurably better in all departments and he hit clean and often and tied Sandy up in knots. They broke out of a clinch of Sandy’s making at the end of the round; Sandy’s chest was heaving but the Aborigine hadn’t raised a sweat.

  It was much the same in the second session except that Moody stepped up the pace a little and made Sandy look worse. But he still hadn’t thrown or taken a really hard punch and if they can’t do that they can’t do anything. The fighters took their rest, shaped up again and Trueman suddenly yelled at Sandy to have a go. He bullocked forward and got a good short right up under the Aborigine’s guard onto his chin. Moody moved his head back a fraction to take some of the force out of it and to bring Sandy in, then he stopped him short with a straight left and brought over a right hook. The fair boy’s arms flopped to his sides, his knees buckled and he went down, disintegrating like a demolished chimney tower. Moody stepped back, instinctively seeking the neutral corner then he moved towards Sandy.

  “Leave him, Jacko,” Trueman roared. “Don’t spoil a good punch. Go and have a shower.”

  Moody nodded, banged his gloves together and took off his helmet. He vaulted over the ropes and danced off to the dressing room. Sandy sat up groggily and Trueman wiped his face with the dirty towel; the boy swore and pushed it aside.

  “You’re orright Sandy, you had a go, done your best. I’ll fix you up later.” Trueman thumped the sitting boxer on the back and got out of the ring. Blood suffused his face from the effort of bending and it was a full minute before he got together enough asthmatic wind to speak.

  “Great eh? What did I tell youse? Bit of work on the killer instinct and he’ll be ready.”

  “Is that why you wouldn’t let him help the other boy?” Tickener asked.

  “Yeah. He’s got to get tougher, enjoy seeing ‘em down.”

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  Trueman was about to reply when a noise over by the door stopped him. The big pink man who’d been pounding the bag the whole time was barring the way to a man trying to get into the room.

  “Let me in, get out of my way.” His voice was high and thin. “I don’t want to make trouble, I just want to see Ricky.” He struggled against the immovable flab and muscle in front of him, then he yelped when he caught a smack in the mouth delivered at about one tenth of the bruiser’s force. I got up as the big man was manoeuvring the intruder into a position where he could get a good swing at him.

  “Sick of you,” Pinky grunted.

  “Sling him out Tiny,” Trueman yelled.

  I grabbed the big, fair arm and pulled it down.

  “Better not Tiny Pinky,” I said. “You could go for assault.” I tightened my grip but he could still have broken it easily. Confusion spread across his flat, piggy face and he looked across at Trueman.

  “Fuck off,” the trainer said to the intruder. “I’m sick of people coming around looking for that bum. Fuck off, Ricky’s not here. You’re upsetting my boys.”

  Tiny let go of him and the man straightened his clothes. He was on the small side with brown hair, regular features and a rather glossy, artificial look to him. His voice was stagey, clearer than necessary.

  “Just tell me where he lives then, and I won’t bother you.”

  “Dunno,” Trueman growled. “Piss off. Tiny, get back to the bag.”

  The gorilla moved away and the newcomer turned to go.

  “Just a minute,” I said. I went over and put my foot down on Trueman’s instep. “Where’s Ricky live?”

  “I said I dunno,” he gasped.

  I bore down a little. “Where, Sammy?”

  Pain screwed up his eyes and cut his voice down to a reedy whisper.

  “Albermarle Street, Redfern, 145.” I lifted my foot. “Shit Cliff, what’s it to you. Look, what do you think of my boy? Good?”

  I beckoned to Tickener who got up and moved to the door with me.

  “He’s great Sammy. I hope he’s got some brains left when you’re finished with him. He won’t have anything else.”

  Trueman staggered to a chair, sat down and started massaging his foot. Tiny sank his fist into the heavy bag. The boy with the withered leg tapped the light bag. Sandy sat on the canvas rubbing his chin. The Latin gentlemen hadn’t moved. We went out.

  3

  He was leaning against a wall lighting a cigarette when Harry and I came out of the gym. Again, there was something exaggerated about the way he did it, the way he cupped his hands and flipped the spent match down the stairs. He was good-looking in an old-fashioned, Leslie Howard sort of way, and he turned a boyish smile on us.

  “Thanks very much. That ape could’ve hurt me.” He put a hand up to his face to make sure it was all there just the way he’d left it.

  “Forget it,” I said. “Gymnasiums aren’t places to barge into shouting names. You’re Saul James, right?”

  He looked pleased and trotted along abreast of me as I started down the stairs after Harry.

  “That’s right. You’ve seen me on TV?”

  “No, I only watch TV when I’m sick. Big Ted Tarelton told me about you.”

  It deflated him. He said nothing more while we went down the stairs and he seemed to take a great interest in the end of his cigarette when we stopped in the doorway.

  “I know about Noni.” I said. “We better have a talk about it. Drink?”

  He nodded. Tickener wanted to talk about Moody and so did I but it looked like work would come first. He tagged along when I suggested the pub across the road. We made the dash through the rain again.

  “Let me get them,” James said. Harry and I didn’t kick. We sat down at an ancient table; I rolled a cigarette and Tickener got a Camel going. We watched cynically while James got served. He was slim and he wore a waisted suede coat to accentuate the fact. They’d eat him alive in Redfern. He couldn’t even get himself served in a Newtown pub. He tried waving his money and clearing his throat and the barman ignored him until he was good and ready. James was red in the face when he got back to us, but we watched with polite interest as he lowered three double Scotches onto the scarred beer-ringed boards. He sat down.

  “Cheers.”

  We drank a bit. I studied his face. It was mostly full of conceit to my eyes but there were some signs of something else in it. Maybe it was character, maybe worry. He had tried to get into Trueman’s after all.

  I introduced Tickener and told James that he was a reporter. The actor looked interested and asked what branch of reporting Harry was in. When he was told he lost interest. He transferred his attention to me.

  “And what do you do?”

  I told him. “I would have had to see you soon anyway,” I said, “I take it you’ll co-operate with me?”

  He nodded.

  “Give me the story.”

  He told me that he’d met the girl two years before when she had a small part in a play he was in. They set up house with an understanding that there were no ties. The girl went off for a week once a month and she claimed to spend this time with her father. James said he didn’t check.

  “That seems odd,” I said.

  He shrugged and drank some of his Scotch. “That was the deal.”

  “Did you go off too?”

  He looked smug. “Occasionally.”

  I was liking him less by the minute and wanted to get the interview over. Tickener looked bored. He finished his drink.

  “Look Cliff, I’ve got to go. What did you think of Moody?”

  “He’s good, give him a bit of time.”

  “Yeah. He’s fighting soon, I’ll get you a ticket.”

  I thanked him. The reporter nodded to James and thanked him for the drink. He wrapped his big tweed overcoat around him and bustled out of the pub. For no good reason it crossed my mind that I knew nothing about Harry’s sex life.

  “Can you remember that address?” I asked James.

  “Yes.” He recited it back.

  “What do you know about thi
s Ricky?”

  “Almost nothing. He’s an Aborigine, but not dark I gather.” He said it quickly as if it made a difference. “Noni met him when she was doing a TV film, he was an extra.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Young.” He hated saying it. “About eighteen.”

  “Why do you bring his name up?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s disappeared, I just thought . . .”

  I got it. It was like that, never far below the surface in silvertails like him. I pulled out the street photo of the girl and showed it to him. He confirmed that it was a good likeness. I grilled him a bit on other contacts the girl might have had but he had the idea of the black stuck in his mind and had nothing else to suggest. He offered to buy another drink but I refused. I didn’t want to be obligated to him.

  “Has Mr Tarelton hired you?”

  I said he had.

  “That means I can’t?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I would if I could. I want her back.”

  I believed him. It was the only plus about him I could see.

  “I’ll keep in touch with you. Where do I reach you?”

  “The Capitol theatre, I’m rehearsing a new play. I’ll be practically living there for the next few weeks.”

  “Carrying on, eh?”

  He looked at me sharply. “I have to, work’s scarce, even for me.”

  The Scotch he’d bought me suddenly tasted thin and sour. I put the glass down and reached for my tobacco packet. He offered me a filtertip.

  “No thanks. What do you know about the girl, her background and friends?”

  “Not much.” He lit up himself and held the match for me. Nice manners, but my foot itched. “You’ve met the father, I haven’t. I know her mother died some years back. She went to a private school on the north shore . . . I’d remember the name if I heard it. Friends? None that I know of, she doesn’t make friends easily. She used . . .”

  “What? What were you going to say?”

  He took a deep draw on the cigarette. “I was going to say she used my friends. Funny expression but I suppose that’s what I meant.