Читать книгу Goodbye Lullaby - Jan Murray - Страница 10

'Motherfuckers,' said Rex as he stood, arms folded, at the front door of the Resistance, looking across the road to the black Holden parked on the curb. They had him under surveillance. Him, the shop and his customers. But mostly him, Rex Lapari, ex United States Marine, late of a Thousand Oaks, CA, washed up on Australia’s shores for want of anything better to do.

Despite the darkened windows, he knew it would be Ramsey slouched in the back seat of the cop car. Big Man, sitting there smug behind his dark glasses, the Resistance firmly in his sights. Probably slurping on a double strawberry malt; the one he didn’t need, the one he’d had his side-kick collect from Bert’s Corner Store at the bottom of the terrace. He fought down the urge to cross the road and up end it all over the prick’s brown trousers. He loathed brown trousers. Loathed belligerent old cops like Ramsey and the menacing way they kept cruising past the Resistance and parking themselves across the road under the big macadamia tree.

He rubbed the scar at his temple. The Springboks. A reminder of how necessary it was to resist the Ramseys of this world.

He and a student, one of Miki’s legion of fans, had been flat out since sun-up this morning hanging her pictures and generally getting the place tarted up for the opening on Saturday night.

Images From the Front he was calling it––same as her last book––and nothing was going to stop him getting her exhibition looking fantastic. She should be here to bathe in the glory. If he wasn’t such a pathetic cripple he’d be the one up north dropping those guys off and she’d be down here taking her bow. But Miki wasn't the cocktails and applause type. More a woman who dug doing it, not talking about it. He knew she'd climbed mountains in Nepal, trudged through South America with guerrillas; all for the sake of her art.

He often wondered where she learned to use a camera the way she did.

He gave a salute to the Holden and went back inside. If the phone rang he'd hear it. If not, someone passing would give him the word. Everyone except the pricks across the road knew they took their calls on the public phone. Their complicity, what he loved about this neighbourhood, he thought as he stood behind his counter to undo a parcel of new arrivals while his offsider climbed a ladder over by the far wall.