White Meat Read online

  She was sounding more and more like someone who should stay lost. It’s often like that. Nice poor people get lost and nobody gives a damn. Someone rich and nasty goes missing and there’s a stampede. But I had to know a little more about her than I did.

  “Did she have any money?”

  “No, only what she earned, which wasn’t much. Her father paid some bills when she got stuck but he didn’t give her money. She was very bitter about that.”

  “Ted looked like a soft touch as far as she was concerned, why didn’t he see her right?”

  “A stepmother I believe?”

  “Right. That fits. And you’re surprised to find that she had connections down here?”

  He raised a theatrical eyebrow and spoke through tobacco smoke.

  “Very.”

  I couldn’t take any more. I got up, put out my cigarette and tossed off the drink. He did the same then stood looking helpless. I gave him a nod and walked out of the pub.

  My car was parked a block away; I ran through the rain, risking instant paraplegia on the wet pavement. I pulled the Falcon’s door open and sat down in a pool of water that had come in through the gap between the window and the frame. I swore and turned the key viciously. The answer was a choked whirring noise that indicated water where water didn’t ought to be. I leaned my head forward on the steering wheel and sighed. It was a bad start to a job and I felt like giving it up and getting a taxi over to Ailsa’s place and having a few drinks and getting into bed with her for twenty-four hours or till the rain stopped. But Ailsa was on a Pacific tour, looking in on her investments. I’d refused a free ride and had to stick with what I had.

  I got out of the car and stood proudly in the rain until a taxi condescended to stop for me.

  4

  Redfern is like an untidily shaped ink blot to the east of downtown Sydney. It’s one of those places that look worst around the edges where it’s bordered by factories with stained, peeling walls and rows of old terraces with rusting wrought-iron and gap-toothed skew-whiff paling fences. A couple of high-rise monsters in the middle help to make Redfern’s population density one of the highest in Australia. The taxi took me past tiny houses with flapping galvanised iron roofs, shops presenting blank, defeated faces to the streets and pubs full of Aborigines and Islanders drinking their dole money, improving their snooker and resenting Whitey like hell.

  The house in Albermarle Street was a big sandstock terrace that had once been a prosperous townhouse but was now given over to flatettes and single rooms. I held the taxi outside for a minute while I tucked Tarelton’s fifties down under my sole inside the sock. I paid off the driver, scooted through the rain, pushed open the gate and went up the steps to the door. There was no bell and the knocker had rusted solid and immovable on its hinge. Heavy metal music was blaring inside and I waited for a break in the monotonous riffs before knocking. I knocked and the music went down from ear damage level to loud. I heard feet in the passage and the door was opened by a black giant. He was wearing flared jeans and an open weave singlet; his shoulders blotted out all the light behind him and the fist he had wrapped around the door handle could have done sleight of hand tricks with a football.

  “Yup?” He left his mouth open to show fifty or so pearly white tombstones inside his pink cavern of a mouth.

  “Ricky Simmonds live here?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name’s Tickener, I’m a sports writer for The News. I want to talk to Ricky about boxing; I hear he’s a mate of Jacko Moody?

  His laugh sounded like a chain saw going through knotty yellow box.

  “You’ve got it arse-up mate, I’m the one who knows Jacko, comes from Burnt Bridge, same as me.”

  “Where Dave Sands came from?”

  “S’right, we’re all related. Look, come in outa the rain if you wanna talk about it.”

  I did. We walked down the narrow passageway through to a small living room. The giant stuck his hand out.

  “Ted Williams,” he said. “How you goin’. Beer?”

  His hand was hard but he didn’t put any muscle into the handshake. Closer up and in the light he looked well under seven feet and probably didn’t weigh more than seventeen stone. He was a bit soft in the middle, not much, just a friendly amount. He was one of those big men who never have to get to their feet in anger in their lives. There were no fighting marks on him. I said yes to the beer and sat down in an armchair between the TV set and the stereo equipment. Williams had turned the volume right down and the record was spinning around on the turntable making angry, soft scratching noises as if the musicians were furiously struggling to be heard. A refrigerator opened and closed in the kitchen, there were two popping noises and Williams ambled back with two king-size cans of Tooheys Draught in his left hand. I took one and he dropped down into a chair opposite. He took a long pull on the can then leaned forward, stretched out a hand and plucked the arm of the stereo player off the disc with the delicacy of a scientist extracting snake venom. I said “Cheers” and drank some beer.

  “Yeah. Now, what d’ you want to know about Jacko?”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “How many fights has he had?”

  “Ten or eleven, prelims, won ‘em all.”

  “Knockouts?”

  “Mostly. Look, Sammy Trueman coulda told you all this.”

  “Yeah, I don’t like Trueman, that’s why I want to see Ricky.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “He trains there doesn’t he?”

  “Sort of. Ricky had two fights and lost ‘em both.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  The laugh ripped out again. “Nothing mate, just this,” he held up the beer can, “and this.” He made a ring with his left thumb and forefinger and stuck the little finger of his other hand through it. He didn’t let go of the can. I laughed.

  “I see. Well, he’s probably better off sticking to that. I wanted to have a word with him about Trueman, whether he’s right for Jacko, you know. He might be too good for Trueman. Do you know where I can find him right now?”

  He lost interest a bit and took a minute before answering me. He used the time to suck the rest of the beer in the can out in one long gurgle and crush the aluminium tube as if it was cardboard. He flipped it across the room at a beer carton. He missed.

  “Anything in it for me?” His black pupils were stark against the cloudy whites, his lids fluttered down a bit and I was conscious that it hadn’t been his first beer of the afternoon.

  “Tickets to Jacko’s next fight?”

  He sparked up. “That’ll do me. How do I get ‘em?”

  “I’ll leave them for you the day before at the front desk in at the paper, King Street, know it?”

  “Yeah, good. OK, I’m not exactly sure where Ricky is but I know he went down to La Perouse. You’ll find him down there if you ask around. Can’t miss the car — big black Chevie, a Biscayne with white stripes on the bonnet.”

  I asked him whether Ricky had gone down there on his own and when he went.

  “What’s today, Monday? He went early last week. Monday or Tuesday. Not on his own, he had that white chick Noni with him.”

  He seemed to be about to speak again and I finished my beer and let him have the silence.

  “Funny thing, Ricky’s a popular boy just now, you’re the second bloke been asking for him.”

  “Who else?”

  “Don’t know, didn’t see him. Freddy, he lives here too, he saw him and told me.”

  “Oh yeah. White man was he?”

  “Yeah, old guy, real pale.”

  I nodded and stood up. I held the beer can in my hand and Williams pointed to the carton. I tossed the can in and thanked him. When I left the room he was putting the arm back on the record; an ear-splitting guitar chord, distorted by the wah-wah pedal, tore into me as I reached the front door. I put the wood between me and the sound and went down the steps to the street.<
br />
  The rain had stopped and the grey sky had thin, pale blue rents in it. I stood outside the house and a young Aborigine in a faded green track-suit came jogging down the street sticking out his hands in jabs and hooks. He went through the gate and bounded up the steps. I walked down the street towards a phone booth. A green Fiat pulled out from the kerb on the opposite side of the road and took off up the hill in a smooth effortless glide. The driver looked vaguely familiar in the quick glance I got at him but I dismissed the possibility. The only person I knew who could afford that car was Ailsa and she drove other things. I called the NRMA, gave them the location of my car and took a taxi back there. In the cab I prised Tarelton’s money out of my sock. Some of it was mine already.

  The blue van was pulled up beside the Falcon and the guy in overalls had his head under the bonnet when I arrived in the cab. I waited while he did what I could have done except that for fifteen bucks a year I reckon I should keep my hands clean. He pulled himself out, took a look at my membership tag and told me to start the car. It kicked first time, he slammed the bonnet down and waved. I gave him a thumbs-up and crept out into the five o’clock rush.

  To get to La Perouse you stay on Anzac Avenue all the way passing through the suburbs that blossomed there after the first war. The old permanent building societies and friendly societies lent the money to fill up this part of Sydney and its red brick uniformity is their monument. The streams of cars moved sluggishly along the wet road between the traffic lights in congested fits and starts. I battled along in the middle lane letting the wild men barrel past me on the right and staying out of the way of the geriatrics and rabbits on the left.

  The traffic thinned out as the road swung down towards Botany Bay. Long Bay jail loomed on the left. I’d spent a few unpleasant weeks there on remand and didn’t want to be reminded of it. I speeded up for the last slide down to La Perouse. The place is named after the French explorer who spent a few weeks there in 1788 before going off to get himself eaten somewhere in the Pacific. It might have been a clean, pretty spot in his time but it isn’t pretty now. Botany Bay is polluted to hell. On bad days the sea has a dark, oily sheen and the few scraps of beach are grey and faded as if leached of colour by the hand of man. The foreshore has been mostly swallowed by roads and is dotted around with drab municipal buildings that wear a low-grade military look. I drove around the streets of La Perouse for a while getting the feel of the place. There were a lot of overgrown gardens and falling-down fences and houses that needed paint jobs badly. The rain had cleared out to sea; a purplish grey cloud lay out over the coast like a deep bruise in the sky and the landscape was bathed in a yellowish translucent glow.

  I drove down past the kiosk and the pit where the snake man does his weekend show and stopped the car by a rail above the narrow beach. I got out, rolled a cigarette and watched a young Aborigine throwing a boomerang out over the water. The weapon left his hand shoulder-high, climbed steeply about ten yards away from him and moved off in a high air-cleaving circle. It made its banked turn fifty yards out and spun back slowing down until he plucked it out of the air like Young Griffo catching flies. He threw three or four times and each throw was perfect. I finished the cigarette and scrambled down the path to the beach. He saw and heard but ignored me until I was close.

  “Nice throwing.”

  “Thanks, wanna try?”

  Boomerang throwing is something all Australians think they can do by instinct. I knew better.

  “No, haven’t been here long enough.”

  He grinned. “It’s easy, show you.” His thin brown arm snapped out like Jacko Moody’s straight left and the boomerang seemed to be grafted onto his hand. He lifted the arm and threw in a short, chopping motion that launched the boomerang off in a skipping, dancing spin; it arced out and came back humming like a model plane. I ducked and he threw his hand up. The wood slapped home with a crack that rang out over the water and bounced off the old island fort a hundred yards offshore.

  My knee joints creaked as I lifted myself up.

  “You’d have won if they’d banned guns.”

  “Yeah, some hope.”

  He swung around and fronted me. He was nearly as tall as me but rail-thin. His thick lips were bluish and he breathed heavily through them like a runner at the end of a race. His nose was a flattened ruin. He shifted his feet and flexed his thin sloping shoulders. He was twitching with bottled-up energy. I pulled out the makings, began a cigarette I didn’t want and offered him the packet.

  “Thanks.” The slim fingers with their tulip pink nails made a smoke as thin as a Mexican bandit’s cigarillo. I got out matches and we lit up.

  “Know a bloke named Ricky Simmonds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Know where I can find him?”

  “Might. Why d’you wanna know?”

  “I’m looking for his bird, Noni. Know her?”

  “Yeah. You a cop?”

  “Private enquiry. I just want to locate her, nothing heavy,”

  He smiled, reached out and patted me on the chest — the hand hit metal and leather.

  “What’s that for then? Rabbits?”

  “You never know. Look all I want to do is get a line on this Noni, report back to her old man and pocket a few bucks. I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “No trouble for Ricky?”

  “None, why?”

  His mouth split open in a wide grin that showed white teeth stained around the edges by tobacco and a fine network of white scars around his eyes. I realised suddenly that he wasn’t young at all, he was closer to forty than twenty.

  “Nothing. We’re related, and trouble follows Ricky. Who told you he was down here?”

  “Ted Williams.” I explained the way of it, he listened, not very interested except when I said I’d seen Moody spar.

  “What’d you think of him?”

  “Terrific. Too good for Sammy Trueman.”

  “That’s what I reckon.” He grinned again and the scars showed like badges of rank on the dark face. “He’s a bastard, Sammy. Rooked me rotten. You interested in fighters?”

  I said I was.

  “Maybe you seen me. Jimmy Sunday.”

  “Jimmy Sunday. Yes I did. You had a great go against Booni Jack. Draw wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I fought two draws with Booni, Melbourne and Brisbane. Bloody hard man Booni.”

  “You weren’t bad yourself.”

  He sucked on the last inch of his cigarette and flicked the stub away. He expelled the smoke with his wheezy fighter’s breath and did another little shuffle on the spot. He was wearing only a thin football sweater over a singlet and the wind coming off the water was sharp. I shivered inside my layers of cloth.

  “Why don’t we go and have a drink,” I suggested, “while you make up your mind whether you’re going to talk to me.”

  He slapped the boomerang in his palm. “Orright.” He lifted his arm and sent the boomerang off again. I moved away and watched it swing up into the pallid, darkening sky. It came back about knee high and he jumped neatly over it and let it land a few feet behind him.

  “Nice one.” I picked it up. “You’re good. Where’d you learn, Burnt Bridge?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “A guess. Fighter country.” I tossed the boomerang over to him and we walked towards the path up the low cliff. He asked my name and I told him. He nodded. We reached the car and I got in.

  “Bit of a bomb,” he said as I turned the key a few times till the motor caught.

  “Yeah. I hear Ricky’s got a Chev.”

  He grunted. He disapproved of the Chev.

  “Where to?” I asked as the engine was ticking over.

  He named a pub and directed me through the streets. We went through a smart section on into the low-grade housing with the overgrown privet hedges and the bungalows wearing defeated looks like the faces of old men in a dole queue. I parked outside a pub that looked nearly old enough for La Perouse to have had a few vins in. Li
ke all the best pubs it occupied a corner block and had a balcony running around two sides above the street. The timbers were lifting on its walls and the wrought iron was pitted and blasted by the salt air. It was dark now and the rain had started again. The light flooding out through the windows of the public bar had a soft, amber glow like the beer itself.

  Jimmy Sunday pushed open the door which had “Public Bar” etched into the frosted glass. The room was quiet, the after-work drinkers had gone and the evening regulars hadn’t come in yet. Two old Aborigines were sitting over their middies and a game of cards in one corner and in the narrow space between the short section of the L-shaped bar an intense quiet game of darts was in progress. One of the players was dark, the other two were young white men with the long, greasy hair and leather jackets of bikies. The painted circle, flanked by ancient, cracked black boards, was flooded with light from a naked bulb mounted above it.

  We moved up to the bar. Spilt beer had lifted strips from its rubberised surface and the draining trays were rusted around the edges. We both put one foot on the rail and an elbow on the streaked surface in a ritual that means absolutely nothing. The barman looked like a football player gone to seed. Flesh hung off his face and shirtsleeved arms and his belly kept him well back from his work.

  “Two middies,” I told him. “Old?”

  Sunday nodded. The barman pulled them, his thick fingers were puffy and mottled like supermarket sausages but they did the job neatly. I slid five dollars across to him, he made the change and I left it on the bar. We drank some beer. I asked Sunday if this was his local. He said it was and borrowed the makings from me. He rolled a cigarette, lit it and expelled the smoke in a thin stream through the next mouthful of beer.

  “Made up your mind yet?”

  “Not yet,” he grunted. He looked at the money on the bar, reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. He signalled to the barman and spread the money out on the bar. The fullback pulled two more, the sausage fingers flicked out the right money with the delicacy of a croupier. I looked around the room. The greasy cards flipped over noiselessly, the darts bit into the pig bristle with soft pops like reports from a silenced pistol.