There was nothing to be said in favour of smokos. They were a reaction to many things- the moves by governments to control and perhaps ban boxing, the actions of Mike Tyson in Las Vegas, disappointment at the demise of Fenech and the defeat of Kostya Tszyu. I saw them as a foretaste of things to come if the pressure to ban boxing was successful. Previously, in English-speaking countries, all such efforts had failed and pugilism had survived, usually being conducted under worse conditions than before. I had no doubt that it would be the same again, but the smokos were jumping the gun. There was no protection for the fighters; they were breaking the law and liable to assault charges if discovered. Medical facilities, I’d heard, were minimal, and the equipment was often in poor condition-important when you’re talking about the hardness of floors that men might fall down on with force.
I was breaking the law myself by attending and didn’t feel altogether good about it. I had a professional excuse of course, but that wouldn’t cut any ice if the cops decided to raid the place. Truth was, I was interested to see what such fights were like because I knew that courage and desperation would be on display and they’re always interesting to witness. But I didn’t kid myself-the reason smokos existed was not, as their defenders said, to give outlets to aggressive young men. The reason was money. Australians are said to be willing to bet on anything. They’d certainly bet on two men prepared to fight almost to the death. According to all accounts, a lot of money changed hands at a smoko.
The arrangement had been for Wesley and me to go together but he rang me late in the afternoon to tell me that he couldn’t make it. Mandy had been taken to hospital with a complication to do with her neck injury.
‘She’s paralysed,’ Wesley said.
‘Jesus. What’re they saying?’
‘What they always fucking say-wait and see. I’m at the hospital now and I’ve got to stay here. I’m sorry, man.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You stay there and do what you can. Is your daughter there?’
‘Yeah, I wish…’
‘I know, Wes.’
‘You take care, Cliff. There’s some mean bastards at those things and some heavy stuff goes down. You can’t trust Tank not to double-cross you. And look what happened to that Alessio kid.’
‘I’m not a kid. All I’m going to do is identify him and follow him to somewhere I can catch up with him when it suits me. I’ll be right. You take care of Mandy. I’ll be in touch.’
In one way, I was relieved. It’s hard to be inconspicuous in the company of Wesley Scott, and if I was going to be able to play this thing the way I wanted, that’s how I’d need to be.
The day had been hot but the Sydney evening breezes were doing their job when I set off for the west. I was wearing jeans, sneakers and a black T-shirt with my freshly washed bush shirt loose over it. The cosh was coiled in my hip pocket; the Smith amp; Wesson was in the glove box. I had a couple of hundred dollars in cash to bet with and the car was full of petrol. I bought six cans of VB so that I could swing them from a finger by the plastic strapping. Makes a handy weapon that, even if you’re forced to drink two or three of the cans beforehand.
You have to wonder what the local cops thought about a procession of cars crawling along dirt roads to nowhere late at night. A football club barbecue? A Vietnam veterans’ reunion? A republican movement convention? Surely not an illegal prize fight, not in this day and age. In the old days, when first bareknuckle and then glove fighting were outlawed, the organisers took great care to do two things-first, pick an out-of-the-way spot for the fight and advertise only among ‘the Fancy’. Second, ensure that for one reason or another the local constabulary turned a blind eye. It wasn’t unknown for the district magistrate to referee the stoush.
It wasn’t a crush, but there was certainly more traffic than you’d expect for that neck of the woods and I noticed a few iridescent markers on the trees here and there just in case we got lost. Not much chance of that. I found myself following a white Mercedes with the vanity numberplate CHAMP. Whoever the champ was, he clearly knew the way, even though his erratic driving suggested that he might have started celebrating something a trifle early. I swigged from a can as I drove just to get into the spirit of things.
The Merc driver flashed his high beam at a dark spot and I saw the light glance off chrome and duco somewhere ahead. Another few minutes brought us into a clearing behind a long, narrow brick building with an iron roof. I could hear a generator humming and there were lights showing in the building and under a big marquee strung between it and some trees. I switched off the engine and my lights, grabbed the cans and opened the door.
A large figure loomed up out of the dark and gripped the door, holding me half in and half out of the car.
‘Evening, sir.’
‘Evening.’
‘Password, please.’
It had slipped my mind. What the hell was it? I was wondering whether I was going to have to grease a palm or two when it came to me. ‘Rust,’ I said.
‘Very good, sir. Please leave the beer in the car. You can buy drinks inside.’
So much for my improvised nulla. Tall and wide, he strode off to intercept the next arrival. I locked the car and went towards the marquee where a bar had been set up, if you call a couple of trestle tables with a keg of beer, an array of bottles, plastic cups and some buckets of ice a bar. About thirty men and five or six women stood around drinking. Most of them were smoking, an unusual sight in a group that size. Twenty-five dollars bought me an admission ticket and another five bought me a can of beer. At those prices the organisers were going to make money whatever happened inside.
I sipped the beer and surveyed my fellow aficionados. The men came in all shapes and sizes but were much of an age, forty and over. Some were in suits, some were as casual as me but there was no one in stubbies and thongs. The word you’d use to generalise was prosperous, or nearly so. The women came in only one category- young, thin and good-looking. They were fashionably and expensively dressed and most of them were showing some gold somewhere. Their companions wore suits and were drinking spirits. Most of the women had champagne. The best-looking of them all was a tall redhead in a tight, short green silk dress with a black jacket. Her partner was twice her age, fat and bald. She had to bend over to talk to him.
His mobile phone rang. He answered it and turned away from her to talk. She caught me looking at her and smiled. There was a lot of promise in that smile, but before I could return it Fatty was snapping his fingers at her and handing her the phone. I moved away so I could watch them from another angle. She finished with the phone and gave it back. Fatty was putting it away when a man who looked something like the attendant who’d met me appeared at his side and spoke to him. Fatty, a foot shorter, nodded, switched off the phone and handed it over. He was given a ticket. It looked like security was tight. Lucky they didn’t frisk me and find the cosh. More cars arrived, more drinks were bought and people began to move into the building. Just out of curiosity, I wondered who Champ was. All I could tell from behind was that he was big with square shoulders and wearing light clothes. I settled on a 190-centimetre heavyweight in a cream suit who was smoking a cigar and trying to make some time with the redhead. Fatty was looking worried but not about the woman. His hand strayed to his belt where presumably he usually kept his mobile phone. Then he remembered and looked annoyed. Workaholic.
I finished the beer, dumped the can in a rubbish bin and went inside. A ring was set up in the middle of the space with rows of plastic chairs on all sides. I estimated there was seating for about two hundred people and the chairs were filling up fast, first come first served. I got on the aisle, giving me a good view, although I was a fair way back. Fatty, the redhead and the man I’d decided was the Champ, sat in front of me. I could always admire her shapely neck and the back of her head if I got bored by the fights. The smoke was thick and getting thicker, it was no place for the respiratorially challenged.
A batch of large, athletic attendants appeared and began handing out sheets detailing the night’s entertainment. There were five fights only, two four-rounders, two six-rounders and a main event described as a ‘KO contest’-only to be concluded by one of the fighters being unable to continue. The weight divisions were ignored in favour of ‘catch weights’, meaning that lightweights could be fighting middleweights and middleweights heavyweights and everything in between. The preliminaries were glove fights, the main event was almost a throwback to the nineteenth century-the fighters would have taped hands but no gloves. It was all totally illegal and I could understand the rigmarole of the password, the ban on mobile phones and the breadth of shoulder on the attendants.
