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.
In the old days, betting on the fights was an impromptu business organised by the spectators themselves. Not so here. Before the first fight the attendants worked the aisles, accepting and rejecting bets proposed by the punters. The fight card showed how many smokos the fighters had participated in and their win/loss record. Just to be in the swim, I bet ten dollars on Mario (no surnames were given), in the red corner to beat Paddy in the blue at even money. The redhead bet on Paddy with some of Fatty’s money.
The preliminaries were unremarkable except for the lack of skill of the fighters, the ruthless urging of their seconds, the laxity of the referee and the bloodlust and ignorance of the crowd. None of the fights went the distance and most of them would have been stopped earlier due to blatant fouls-eye gouging, low blows and use of the elbows-in a legitimate contest. The referee’s job seemed to be limited to seeing that the fighters didn’t kick each other in the balls and the seconds didn’t belt their man’s opponent with the stool.
The attendants took orders for drinks and delivered them and most of the crowd was pretty well stoked by the time of the main event. Fatty had slipped out, maybe to drain the dragon, and the Champ had his hand up under the redhead’s dress-not a very hard thing to do. I’d lost both bets and was disinclined to throw more money away. It was hard to tell in mayhem like this, but I had a distinct feeling that the results had been orchestrated well in advance of the event. I got another beer and settled back to watch what was the business end of the evening for the fighters, the punters and especially for me.
18
Tank Turkowitz appeared at ringside with his fighter, who was named Kito, and a couple of handlers. Kito was a Maori heavyweight, liberally tattooed and decked out in very flashy boxing gear-tasselled boots, knee-high socks, silk shorts, satin robe. His opponent was Albie, a pale freckled character with wide shoulders and stick-thin legs. When he took off his towelling robe you could see the good muscle definition in his arms and on his chest, but he had to be giving away twenty kilos and fifteen centimetres. He wore plain black boots without socks, black shorts and his taped hands were big, out of proportion to the rest of him. Kito looked to be in his twenties; Albie was thirty if he was a day, with a battered face and going thin on top.
The redhead laughed when she saw him move to the centre of the ring. ‘I could beat him,’ she said.
I noted Albie’s economy of movement, good balance and battle-scarred face and doubted it. Albie had only two attendants, a middle-aged, fortyish man with a hawk face and a hard body, probably Stan Morris, and an Aborigine who was almost as big as Kito. He had a flattened nose, an earring and dreadlocks. He tried to keep his belly pulled in but it was getting away from him fast.
According to the card, Kito had had ten fights for ten wins. Albie’s record was eight fights, six wins, a loss and a draw, but if he hadn’t had at least fifty fights in the legitimate ring and some in the tents I was no judge. I signalled to an attendant and put fifty dollars on Albie to win inside five rounds. I got odds of three to one and was happy. The redhead turned to look and listen.
‘You think that ugly bugger’ll win?’ she said to me.
‘I do.’
‘Huh. The strong, silent type. Okay, I say the coconut’ll cream him.’
She laughed at her own joke and so did Champ. Fatty, who was back in his seat, didn’t react. I thought it was worth a smile.
‘I’m betting a hundred on the coconut.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s your money.’