The Big Whatever Read Online Free PDF Page B

head a little. “Really? Well, he is kind of posthumously famous, I suppose.”
    â€œAnd it’s about me .”
    She stopped smiling. “Some of the fame rubbed off. Who wrote it?”
    I held up the cover.
    â€œMel Parker? Never heard of him.”
    â€œMel Parker . . . Max Perkal. Get it? And the character who’s me is called Johnny Malone. It’s written like a novel, but it’s obviously about Max and all that happened. It sounds like Max. Actual Max, raving off his head. Not someone trying to sound like him. Him .”
    She looked at me, waiting.
    â€œMax has been dead for three years, Anna. More than three years.”
    â€œIs it that long?” She took the book from my hand, turned it over, flipped through it. “Where’d you get it?”
    â€œIt was in the cab.”
    She was thumbing for the title page.
    â€œIt’s not there,” I said. “Ripped out.”
    â€œHey, that’s pretty fuckin’ weird all right,” she said, and handed it back to me. “ Someone’s got their eye on you.” She smiled again. “Anyway, come over later for a smoke, if you feel like it.”
    I locked the door after her, sat back down. When I picked up the book, my hand was shaking. I put my head back, closed my eyes, started replaying the old tapes.
    * * *
    Back then. A warm autumn night. The whole job, start to finish, is sweet as can be. Within a minute of the truck backing into the loading dock, the roller door opens from inside. Multi is already making progress on the vault out the back. He has it busted withinthirty minutes, all alarms disabled. The four men work quietly and steadily for the best part of an hour until the vault is empty, the truck full. The nightwatchman remains absent, as arranged.
    Electronics. Small components in boxes. All sorts of things, but the most valuable is some sort of new computer gear just arrived from America. Schottky Bipolar Ram. Except for Multi, none of us even know what it does, but it’s valuable, and a handful of in-the-know people in South Africa, New Zealand, Hong Kong are prepared to pay plenty for it.
    After less than an hour we drive away slowly through the dark streets of Alexandria and pull into a warehouse about a mile away. The gear is unloaded, sorted into groups, and repackaged. Over the next two days it gets delivered to our buyers. Our last job had been a furniture shop – lounge and dining suites, fridges, stereograms – so everyone involved just loves this stuff.
    Two weeks later the crew gets together at a house in Collaroy to divide the whack. The money has come in from the on-sellers with no big complications. Everyone is happy. A perfect hoist. Beers, scotch and wine are drunk. Soft drink for the kiddies. Multi lifts a glass of champagne, and says, “To miniaturization, the way of the future,” and everyone laughs. Then we happily go our separate ways.
    I’m left with a nice bundle for my contribution, which involved getting the right hoisters together, and doing a bit of driving. My pal Max Perkal, noted Sydney musician and ratbag, had a stake in the job too, a smaller one. But between us we now have the wherewithal to expand our current, sort of legitimate, enterprise.
    The year before, the US military had done a deal with the Australian government: henceforth many planeloads of US servicemen would arrive in Sydney each week to blow off steam before being shipped back to Vietnam. This “R&R” – rest and recuperation – promises to give Sydney its biggest night-life boom ever.
    For two weeks we watch the hordes of bored Yanks milling around the Cross. Then we rent a place in Glebe, a big room onBridge Road, and put the word out to the R&R guys, big party this Friday night. We invite some girls. Max and two other musos do a human jukebox thing, playing Beatles, Stones, Creedence songs. We charge a goodly snip at the door, offer free mugs of flagon wine,