North Sydney Chinese restaurant.
I downloaded the photographs onto my computer and sent them as an attachment in an email to Chang, asking him if he could identify the man. Chang phoned me almost immediately.
‘I’m sending someone to see you,’ he said.
‘Really? Why?’
‘He’ll explain.’
‘Come on, Stephen. Who are we talking about?’
‘My 2IC, Karim Ali.’
‘You know what I mean. Who’s the bloke in the photos I sent?’
‘It’s not something to talk about over the phone.’
‘Give me the name or I won’t be here when your guy calls.’
‘He’s Selim Houli. You don’t want to know him. Watch out for Karim, he’ll be there soon.’
He hung up. I went to my notebook and saw the name I’d transcribed from Standish’s list: Selim Houli was one of the gamblers who was said to have taken serious money from Malouf. According to Standish’s notes, his club was the Tiberias in Darlinghurst Road. I Googled it while waiting for Chang’s offsider.
The website for the Tiberias Club featured audio and video on its attractions. Its cocktail bar was a shimmering light show with barmaids in fishnets, g-strings and nipple pasties serving customers wearing expensive clothes and jewellery and having a wonderful time.
There was a small dance floor with no more than twenty tables arranged around it in front of a small stage. A button click brought the scene to life with jazzy music playing and three men and three women performing a routine that stopped just this side of actual sexual activity in all its many and varied forms. It was only a brief sound and movement bite, but it was skilfully shot with effective lighting and the performers were top class. An expert, expensive, erotic production.
Static again, the site provided details on provisional and actual membership, the club’s privacy policy, restrictions on photographic and recording devices and strict rules about insobriety. The floor show must have been on a loop, because it came on again without me activating it just as I heard the doorbell ring downstairs.
I went to the door, looked through the peephole, and saw a dark-faced young man with a serious expression. I opened the door.
I’ve been hit quite a few times in quite a few places, but the blow that came at me then was faster and more surprising than anything I’ve experienced. It drove the wind out of me, collapsed me at the knees, and seemed to blind me, all in an instant. Then time slowed down. One second I was standing and conscious and the next I was floating towards the floor. I tried to throw out my arms to shield myself against the fall but I couldn’t move them. I didn’t even feel the bump.
When I came out of the fog I was sitting in a chair in what I sensed rather than saw was a darkened room, with plastic restraints around my wrists. I could hear something disturbing the air but couldn’t make out what. It was as though my senses had all been diminished; I couldn’t see, hear or smell properly.
It’s said that ‘Gentleman’ Jim Corbett was paralysed by Bob Fitzsimmons’s punch that robbed him of his world heavyweight title. I’d never believed it but I did now. A kind of paralysis had made me useless back in the doorway of my house and something similar, but even more debilitating, was happening now. What’s that noise? What’s that smell? Why can’t I see?
A light came on and I lifted my hands to shield my eyes from it. At least I could move and close my eyes. The noise stopped and I realised it had been music, coming from not so very far off. The light swung away and I opened my eyes. A man I recognised as Selim Houli was sitting opposite me about a metre away. He was smoking a cigar.
‘Mr Hardy,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’
I was in my shirtsleeves and I tried to scratch at my upper left arm where I felt a pain, but the restraints stopped me.
‘Yes,’ Houli said. ‘A small injection to tranquillise you.’
For a second I wondered whether I
I downloaded the photographs onto my computer and sent them as an attachment in an email to Chang, asking him if he could identify the man. Chang phoned me almost immediately.
‘I’m sending someone to see you,’ he said.
‘Really? Why?’
‘He’ll explain.’
‘Come on, Stephen. Who are we talking about?’
‘My 2IC, Karim Ali.’
‘You know what I mean. Who’s the bloke in the photos I sent?’
‘It’s not something to talk about over the phone.’
‘Give me the name or I won’t be here when your guy calls.’
‘He’s Selim Houli. You don’t want to know him. Watch out for Karim, he’ll be there soon.’
He hung up. I went to my notebook and saw the name I’d transcribed from Standish’s list: Selim Houli was one of the gamblers who was said to have taken serious money from Malouf. According to Standish’s notes, his club was the Tiberias in Darlinghurst Road. I Googled it while waiting for Chang’s offsider.
The website for the Tiberias Club featured audio and video on its attractions. Its cocktail bar was a shimmering light show with barmaids in fishnets, g-strings and nipple pasties serving customers wearing expensive clothes and jewellery and having a wonderful time.
There was a small dance floor with no more than twenty tables arranged around it in front of a small stage. A button click brought the scene to life with jazzy music playing and three men and three women performing a routine that stopped just this side of actual sexual activity in all its many and varied forms. It was only a brief sound and movement bite, but it was skilfully shot with effective lighting and the performers were top class. An expert, expensive, erotic production.
Static again, the site provided details on provisional and actual membership, the club’s privacy policy, restrictions on photographic and recording devices and strict rules about insobriety. The floor show must have been on a loop, because it came on again without me activating it just as I heard the doorbell ring downstairs.
I went to the door, looked through the peephole, and saw a dark-faced young man with a serious expression. I opened the door.
I’ve been hit quite a few times in quite a few places, but the blow that came at me then was faster and more surprising than anything I’ve experienced. It drove the wind out of me, collapsed me at the knees, and seemed to blind me, all in an instant. Then time slowed down. One second I was standing and conscious and the next I was floating towards the floor. I tried to throw out my arms to shield myself against the fall but I couldn’t move them. I didn’t even feel the bump.
When I came out of the fog I was sitting in a chair in what I sensed rather than saw was a darkened room, with plastic restraints around my wrists. I could hear something disturbing the air but couldn’t make out what. It was as though my senses had all been diminished; I couldn’t see, hear or smell properly.
It’s said that ‘Gentleman’ Jim Corbett was paralysed by Bob Fitzsimmons’s punch that robbed him of his world heavyweight title. I’d never believed it but I did now. A kind of paralysis had made me useless back in the doorway of my house and something similar, but even more debilitating, was happening now. What’s that noise? What’s that smell? Why can’t I see?
A light came on and I lifted my hands to shield my eyes from it. At least I could move and close my eyes. The noise stopped and I realised it had been music, coming from not so very far off. The light swung away and I opened my eyes. A man I recognised as Selim Houli was sitting opposite me about a metre away. He was smoking a cigar.
‘Mr Hardy,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’
I was in my shirtsleeves and I tried to scratch at my upper left arm where I felt a pain, but the restraints stopped me.
‘Yes,’ Houli said. ‘A small injection to tranquillise you.’
For a second I wondered whether I
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