He trains some athletes and footballers and basketballers but his big thing is training fighters for smokos-you know, the all-in bareknuckle brawls they hold in out of the way places.’
I’d heard of these events-brutal, no-holds-barred affairs that attracted the worst elements in the community of violence-washed-up boxers and footballers, street fighters, standover men, bouncers and the drug-pushers, gamblers and pimps that circled around them.
‘It sounds like the right scene.’
‘Man, you got it right,’ Wesley said. ‘If you’re going to talk to Tank Turkowitz you need my help right now!’
‘I don’t want to fight him. I just want to talk to him.’
Wesley flicked the towel at me. His spirits were definitely up. ‘With Turkowitz, Cliff, talking and fighting is much the same thing.’
16
Wesley said he’d ring Turkowitz to set up a meeting and would get back to me with the where and when. The workout had left me stiff and sore. I went to the Leichhardt squash centre and spent half an hour in the sauna and spa and, as always, couldn’t decide afterwards whether I felt better or worse. I drove to the office, made a neat package of the report, the annotated maps and the receipts and mailed the lot off to Rex Nickless. After doing the arithmetic I discovered that there wasn’t as much left of his money as I’d thought. Somehow, that made me feel better.
I spent the day attending to the minor matters that only took phone calls and faxes to deal with-a surveillance of a factory to be arranged a month hence, a subpoena to be served and a promise to meet a journalist to talk about a case I’d handled three years ago, a promise I probably wouldn’t keep. While waiting for Wesley to call I brought my personal case doodle up to date. This is the diagram I draw which shows the names of all the people involved and the connections between them and sometimes stimulates thought and questions. I added Tank Turkowitz to the picture, connected him to Mark Alessio with an arrow and to Clinton Scott with a dotted line that indicated a possible connection. It all looked very nice. In theory, Turkowitz would tell me who’d supplied the steroids to Angela and I’d somehow find Clinton sniffing at the same trail and stop him. In theory. When I’d finished I was sorry that I’d made the diagram-I had to add too many question marks to feel confident about any of it.
Wesley phoned late in the afternoon to say that he had lined up a meeting with Turkowitz at his gym for 6.30 that evening.
I said, ‘Should I bring my gun?’
‘Don’t joke. Bring your patience and forebearance and your capacity to be insulted without having to retaliate.’
‘I always do that.’
‘Hah. How’s the body?’
‘Sore.’
‘Teach you not to neglect it. I’ll meet you there. Here’s the address.’
He gave it and I jotted it down. Zetland wasn’t even a place to drive through in my experience, let alone one to visit unless you need something of a light industrial nature. On my way home I stopped at the library, looked it up in Ruth Park’s guidebook to Sydney and discovered that it was named after an undistinguished aristocrat, the Earl of Zetland, who was a mate of one of the nineteenth-century governors. Undistinguished was appropriate.
I drew out some money thinking that it might help to soothe the beast if it turned savage, equipped myself with a small, lead-weighted cosh that snuggled into a jacket pocket and set out for Zetland. Wesley was already there when I arrived at 6.20, sitting in his old Volvo and listening to ‘PM’. I rapped on the window and he wound it down.
‘Go in early,’ I said ‘Advantage of surprise. Old private eye trick.’
‘Bullshit. Mandy says we should call in the police-arrest you, arrest Tank, arrest Nickless, arrest everybody.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Neither does she. She’s just anxious. I didn’t tell her about the woman and the burns. It made the story kind of thin.’
‘Let’s try and firm it up.’
The gym was a converted factory-concrete surrounds, high-set windows, flat roof. A loading dock ran down one side of it and there were holes in the cement out front where a chain link fence had been removed to make way for cars to park. The nine or ten cars were a mixed lot, from a Merc and a souped-up Mini through several Japanese compacts down to a battered VW, identical to one I’d owned twenty years ago. There were no houses in the street, just factories and storage facilities, all quiet at this time of day.
We went in through an automatic-opening front door to a carpeted reception area where some money had been spent-grey paint, concealed lighting, pot plants, stairs with a polished rail to a mezzanine floor. Through another set of doors I could see gymnasium equipment under fluorescent light that bounced off the many mirrors around the walls.
‘I don’t see a boxing ring,’ I said.
‘There’s a kind of bear pit out the back.’
We approached a counter where a short man with no shoulders, no chin and no hair stood tapping a pencil on the surface in front of him.
‘Members only,’ he said.
Wesley fronted the desk and the physical differences between the two men made you wonder if they were of the same species. ‘Wesley Scott. To see Tank.’
The man nodded and showed small, badly decayed teeth. ‘He said to challenge you.’
‘You did that,’ Wesley said.
‘Up the stairs, gents.’
We went up the staircase and Wesley knocked at the door that had a sign reading Manager on it.
I said, ‘Manager?’
Wesley shrugged. ‘Tank manages rather than owns for tax purposes.’
‘Wise,’ I said.
‘As I told you, Tank isn’t dumb.’
The door opened and a giant stood there, filling the space. He was over two metres tall and must have weighed more than 150 kilos. He stood in the doorway but his belly, enclosed in an immaculate lightweight suit, protruded out beyond it. His head was shaved and oiled and it and his neck made a continuous column down to shoulders like a wardrobe. Wordlessly, he opened his arms to embrace Wesley who stepped nimbly back.
‘No way, Tank. I don’t need any crushed ribs.’
‘Wes, my man, I’m hurt.’ The accent was heavy, a product of some part of New York City.
‘You’re not and neither am I. Tank, this is Cliff Hardy.’
I nodded and kept my hands in my pockets.
Turkowitz grinned, showing gold-filled teeth. He also had a diamond stud in one ear. ‘Hi, Hardy. I see my man here has briefed you.’
I smiled and said nothing. I was glad to have his man along as my man. From the look of him, you could whale away at Turkowitz with your hands and feet and even your little cosh for an hour and he’d still break you in half.
‘A bit of your time, Tank,’ Wesley said.
‘As much as you want.’ Turkowitz stepped aside, waved us in and shot back his snowy French cuff to consult a gold Rolex. ‘As long as it isn’t more than fifteen minutes.’
The office was about as tastefully got up as you could manage in a space carved out of a factory. The carpet, desk and trophy cabinet were a hymn to past success and present prosperity. Turkowitz motioned us into chairs and sat behind his desk. He folded his massive hands on the surface in front of him. His manicured fingernails gleamed.
