“You’ll be amazed, kid. Lucky also I have the best motorbike mechanic in Heropa, Alex Raymond, t’keep it tuned. Cars’re more my speciality.”
“Like ’60s comicbooks are mine?”
“Vaguely related. Speaking o’ which, I been meanin’ to badger you, kid, somethin’ that reporter Gypsie-Ann brought up. You know there’s a star missing from the Southern Cross on the togs yer wearin’?”
“That’s related?”
“In a roundabout fashion.”
While he was in costume, Jack at least didn’t have to don the mask, seated there in the passenger seat behind tinted windows.
He was wearing rounded 1970s Persol Ratti sunglasses — not for any fashion statement (Jack had no idea about style, brand or vintage), but because he continued to suffer ill-effects from yesterday’s drinking binge and had found the pair in the Big O’s dresser — which still hadn’t been cleared out.
Louise had taken pole position in his battered mind. He’d resolved to apologize, even if he couldn’t explain the nature of said apology. She deserved better and he felt like an arse.
“This isn’t a Kiwi thing?” the Brick rattled on, oblivious. “You know, their flag having had four stars while ours has five?”
Jack realized he had to respond. “Nope, nothing New Zealand about it. I swear.” He marked the shops they passed, along with people on the sidewalk, others crossing the roads, more parking their cars. Joe-average citizens in suits, hats and skirts, hunched over elderly types, and kids with school bags and caps. All of them pursuing a private early afternoon mission, some personal course of action no one else knew about. “I guess it was aesthetics — balance.”
“Y’guess? You dunno? Correct me if I’m wrong, but ain’t that there the Eureka Stockade flag stuck on yer chest? I ‘member from history class the thing havin’ five stars. The one in the middle’s missin’ — ain’t it?”
“I didn’t design this suit.”
“No?” The Brick looked sideways at his partner. “Then who did?”
“I wouldn’t want to bore you, mate.”
“Since when did you worry yerself ’bout that? And, well, hey, I got the time if you got the stamina — we won’t meet PA fer another half hour thanks to this here toddler-gridlock. Takes a lot to get me noddin’ off.”
“That true?”
“Well, a bit.”
They detoured round a timber W-class tram that hogged the middle of this particular thoroughfare, but again got caught up in traffic.
Jack glanced up at the hopper windows on the side of the tram and saw a bunch of passenger faces running the gamut from annoyed to asleep. The driver, in his peak cap and white gloves, seated behind a round cornered windscreen at the front, focused somewhere dead ahead — presumably at the backside of a grey, metal-clad van that had the words ‘Mitchell Armored Truck Co.’ stencilled across it.
“You ever been to Richmond District, Brick?”
“Not since they locked-down the place.”
“Two years ago I busted in there — pretty easy thing to do when you’re desperate and scavenging,” Jack mused. “You get to know the breaches in the fence and you’re up on the clockwork patrol routes by security. Either that, or you end up in the clink.”
“At the very least — they don’t like people breakin’ their li’l rules. Much as I hate t’play the age card…what were yer folks doing durin’ these bloody risky high jinks?”
“Arrested. Taken away.”
“Any reason?”
“Sedition.”
“Ah. That classic. How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Seen ’em again?”
“What do you think?”
The Brick nodded at the road ahead. “Got’cha. Go on, kid.”
“Well, yeah, I found this weatherboard house in a back-road in Richmond, name of Duke Street, if I remember right. The area was a shit-hole, like the rest of the neighbourhood, this house no different. Leaning to one side, about to collapse, just like its brothers. Nothing special.”
“Presumin’ yer gonna fill me in to the contrary, lemme hop in first — why then bother takin’ a look-see?”
“Funny thing. The house had a corroded brass nameplate screwed into the woodwork, beside the front door, barely readable, but I could make out the name: ‘Deaps’.”
“The hell, you say.”
“The hell, I do. Figured anything to do with Wolram E., the big banana running Melbourne, shouldn’t be sneezed at.”
“One hundred percent agreed. What’d you find?”