‘Wants to talk to you.’
The gunman got up in an easy fluid movement, kept the pistol on me and took the receiver. He listened, said ‘Understood,’ and handed the receiver to Charley.
‘What’d he say?’
‘He said to make it a double. Sorry.’ He shot Charley in the head. I moved like a twelve-year-old, springing from the chair, hitting the floor in a diving roll and grabbing my. 38 from the table all at once. I heard the. 22 crack and I got one shot off that went into the ceiling, but by then I was almost behind a high-backed chair and the gunman was facing a heavier calibre gun and a more desperate man. He fired once at the chair but he was already on the retreat. He was quicker than me; by the time I was clear of the chair and had hurdled Charley’s body, the passage was empty apart from the slumped body of Kent Hayward. The door was flapping open. A face appeared in the opening, a woman.
‘Hey,’ she yelled.
I said, ‘Call the police.’ Then I looked at Hayward and the gun in my hand. I tried to look reassuring but she covered her face with her hands and shrank back. ‘No, don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it myself.’
The bodies brought Frank Parker, who listened quietly to what I had to say while a forensic man bustled around the room and the uniformed cops dealt with the ambulance, the other residents in the flats and sundry spectators. I gave Frank everything, including Monty Porter’s name and his connection with Hayward. I told him what Charley had said about the practice run for the Australia Card, as close to word for word as I could recall it.
‘They’re starting early,’ was all he said.
‘Think you’ll be able to tie Porter in with this guy?’ I pointed to the chalk on the chair which marked where Charley had died.
‘What d’you reckon? Describe the killer for me.’
‘Thirty, maybe a bit more; bald head, maybe shaved; brown eyes, maybe contacts; five nine… ‘
‘But maybe he had lifts in his shoes. Maybe his teeth were false. No, nothing’ll tie up to anything else. Well, your clients’ll be happy. You’ve given them Hayward. End of story.’
‘You might find out he owed Porter money.’
Frank laughed. ‘Porter hasn’t got any money. Not a cent. How he lives in a two million dollar house when he’s so poor beats me.’
‘Will you tell the Federal people about this?’
‘I’ll tell them. It’ll take me a couple of days to write the reports. Then you know what’ll happen? They’ll issue a statement confirming the high integrity of the Australia Card.’
I shrugged. ‘Who cares?’
Frank looked at me. ‘Not very public-spirited.’
I watched the forensic guy put my. 38 in a plastic bag and label it. I thought about the statements I was going to have to make and the forms I’d have to fill in to get it back. Bureaucracy. ‘I don’t want a bloody Australia Card,’ I said. ‘When I want another card I ask the dealer.’
‘Box on!’
I’m finished with boxing,’ I said. ‘I don’t go and I don’t watch it on TV.’
‘Why not?’ Jack Spargo drew a stick figure in the dust on my office window. He gave the figure boxing gloves.
‘I read about a British medical report on the brain damage boxers suffer. One fight can do it, an amateur fight even. A bloody spar can kill a few thousand brain cells.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I had a few amateur fights myself, Jack. D’you realise that I might be suffering brain damage?’ I looked around the office, at the walls that needed painting, the carpet that needed replacing. ‘I could be smarter than this maybe.’
Spargo spun around from the window and laughed. He still moved well although he was pushing sixty. ‘That’s for sure. Well, I’m sorry that you won’t help a mate.’
‘He’s your mate, not mine.’
‘Cliff.’
‘He’s a has-been. A never-was.’
‘He went ten rounds with Foreman.’
‘Foreman’s a preacher of some kind now, isn’t he? He must’ve got religion earlier than we thought to have let Roy Belfast last ten rounds.’
Spargo looked hurt. He opened his Gladstone bag and put a battered clippings book on my desk. I didn’t want to look at it. ‘I’m a private detective, Jack, not a nursemaid. Do you realise how silly it’d look? “Ex-champ hires minder”.’
‘The Yanks’ve done it for years.’
‘They elect senile presidents and cut up all their food like babies before they eat it too. Doesn’t mean we have to do the same.’
Spargo pushed the book towards me. ‘He’s a good bloke.’
I opened the book. Just the way it was put together made me sad. These days, sports stars and actors keep their cuttings in fancy books with plastic envelope leaves; Roy Belfast’s history was in a thick school exercise book- the clippings were pasted in lumpily; some were folded. They were already yellow and dry like fallen leaves. It was a familiar story with a few variations. Roy Belfast was a country boy, big, with a straight eye and a fairly fast left jab. He won the Australian heavyweight championship at nineteen from nobody in particular. There was no one much around for him to fight and he was ready to go stale when he got a chance to meet a Jamaican for the Commonwealth title. Roy was outclassed for five rounds but then he got lucky and cut the Jamaican who had to retire. Then the Jamaican went to jail on a drugs charge and Roy defended the title against a Brit cast in the same mould as ‘Phainting’ Phil Scott.
Give him his due, Spargo handled Belfast well. He avoided the serious Americans and got him a few fights with people he could handle low on the card of big fights. Then the chance to fight Foreman came up. I turned over the pages slowly.
‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ Spargo said.
‘No, probably not.’
Foreman was regrouping after his loss to Ali. It had been a big paynight for Roy, bigger than he had any right to expect. Sheer courage kept him upright for ten rounds; I looked at the post-fight photo-Belfast’s head was swollen to twice its size and his boyish features were obliterated.
‘What happened to all the money?’ I said.
Spargo shrugged. ‘They’d shrunk it down pretty far before it got to us.’
‘And now Belfast wants to make a comeback. What does he want to do? Buy a pub and drink himself to a title?’
Spargo shook his head. ‘Roy don’t drink. Never did. He’s been to business college, Cliff. He’s studied up on things. Wants capital to open a video store specialising in sports films. He reckons he can make it pay and I want to help him.’
‘That’s original at least. But it’s been twelve years. Belfast must be… ‘
‘Eleven years. Roy’s thirty-one. That isn’t old. Look at Jimmy Connors.’
‘Nobody ever beat Jimmy Connors over the head with a tennis racquet. Roy’ll get hurt.’
‘I don’t think so. Three fights and that’s all. He’s very quick. He’ll stay out of trouble.’
‘The crowd’ll love that,’ I said. ‘They really appreciate the finer points since Fenech.’
‘Fenech’s a…‘ Spargo stopped and grinned. Scar tissue puckered around his eyes and he sniffed through his old fighter’s nose. ‘You always like a joke, Cliff. Maybe that’s why Roy wants you around.’
‘I can’t see it.’
