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.
20
I was doing it all by reflex now, bouncing from point to point and not initiating anything, but that’s the way things break sometimes and I had the feeling that my bounces were taking me closer to the nerve centre of whatever the hell was going on. Selby’s firm was listed — the Titan Gymnasium I Equipment Co. Its factory and office were in St Peters, a short drive, but a hot, bustly one in four o’clock traffic. I dragged myself back to the car and broke all the rules about drug use by swigging some of the Irish whisky before I started and smoking a cigarette as I drove.
I passed the dark, satanic chimneys that landmark St Peters and started threading through the streets that are a mixture of light-industry, factories and terrace houses. Selby’s place was a big, red-brick structure with a flat face sitting flush with the pavement. It had big roller doors at either end and a glass-panelled door in the middle.
