Read The Big Whatever for Free Online

and turn a blind eye to joints smoked, pills dropped. We let the girls run their own race, but insist they do nothing out of line on the premises. At the end of the night the cash box is bursting.
    So we do it again two weeks later, then again a week after that, then we open up Saturday nights as well. I work the door while Max holds the stage, plays MC. The cops come around, but since we aren’t selling grog, just giving it away, we’re not technically breaking the licensing laws, so there isn’t much they can do other than accept a small consideration and a glass of plonk.
    All in all, a not bad way of turning a modest dollar. The last of the good times.
    Just before Christmas, eleven at night. The place is three-quarters filled. Party lights, music, boys and girls. Abe Saffron and the biggest Maori lad I’ve ever seen wander up the stairs, stop at the door, look inside. There’s a hundred and fifty people in the room, dancing under the lights. The band in the corner is playing loud. I’m sitting right there at the door, taking the cover charge.
    Abe’s face crinkles into something that could be a grin, could be a grimace, and shakes my hand. “Bill Glasheen, it’s been far, far too long. We miss you. You should come and visit.” He doesn’t introduce the Maori bloke, but slowly looks around the room again, nodding. “You’ve done pretty well here, pretty well.” He looks back at me, and says, “Congratulations.”
    My blood runs cold. “Abe, it’s not that much.”
    â€œNo really,” he says, “You’ve shown the mugs something.”
    Max is on the bandstand singing “Love, Love Me Do,” in his strangled cocky voice. Abe nods in his direction and laughs. “The fifth Beatle, eh!”
    â€œHe likes to sing his songs,” I say. “So, Abe, what brings you here?”
    He grin-grimaces again. “Let’s get away from this row, so we can chat. Lucas here will mind the door for you.”
    We go downstairs, sit in Abe’s Merc.
    It comes out soon enough. After praising our get up and go once more, Abe delivers a more studied assessment of the business. He quickly identifies our most vulnerable point: the crappy location. And he’s right. Each week we have to spend two or three days handing out leaflets at the Cross, otherwise no one is going to troop across town to a forlorn, semi-industrial precinct, no matter how rocking the party might be.
    Abe sympathises and then, as though he’s thinking aloud more than putting forward a proposition, “I’ve got this room upstairs in Oxford Street,” he says. “Got it on a long lease. Doing nothing at the moment.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œUsed to be a dance academy or something. Has a good floor, a small stage. A block down from Taylor Square. It’s not the Cross exactly, but a good spot for—” he nods back towards the room, “that sort of thing. No neighbours.”
    Then he stops, looks at me, and waits.
    â€œYou’re about to put it to me, Abe, so go ahead.”
    â€œWe’ve had our dealings, Bill. I know you’re reliable. A man can make an advance to you and it’ll come back on time. I don’t trust your mate up there so much, but I trust you, and that’s good enough.”
    â€œSo?”
    He lays it out: We take over the Oxford Street space. Abe will get us a liquor license, put in a couple of slot machines, maybe later on run a game out the back. We’ll keep the door and the bar, but kick back a percentage to him. It’s more or less extortion, in that we don’t have much choice. But the deal itself isn’t too bad, and the way things are going it could work out well for us.
    So in the new year we move. We call the club the House of Cards. We get the license. And Abe’s right, of course. It’s much easier to get a regular, big-spending R&R crowd to the Oxford Street