Frederick's Coat Read Online Free Page B

partner-in- crime and their mild criminal activity — even drinking with the cops felt part of the natural order of things. He and Evelyn rented a quality seventh-floor apartment west of Sydney University, with a good view of the city, and it came completely furnished too.
    ‘How can we afford it?’ Evelyn asked, but a young mother has little resistance when it comes to her children’s comfort. Nor was shesuspicious of the husband she loved, even his occasional unfaithful absences. No need to tell her the rent was a hundred and fifty a week, close to the average worker’s wage, and that he’d paid six months in advance and still had a chunk in the bank. He said his father made good money from ‘mug punters who waste their cash on chasing an impossible dream. And I get a cut.’

    Having more money than the average Joe Blow brought a different life in Sydney. Like a nice car instead of one that didn’t cause financial hardship every time it broke down. A year-old Jag didn’t break down. Able to go out on the town, hit the nightclubs, get laid. Could live it up without wrecking the household budget and occasionally take Evelyn out, her parents happy to have Leah for the night.
    One night, at a well-known seafood restaurant, it occurred to Johno that he and Evelyn didn’t have as much to talk about as before, as if each was travelling down their own pathway in life. He’d also noted Evelyn’s parents asking trickier questions about what he did for a living.
    Shane rented an apartment not far from Johno. He keener on little Leah than her father. Johno teased Shane about never being able to hold onto a girlfriend for long, but he won the war: ‘Just because you didn’t grow up with a mother to love you. Sometimes, J, I think you don’t deserve a wife like Evelyn. And you could try harder to love your own kid.’ Words that might have hit the bull’s-eye — were Johno mature enough to take heed. But coming from Shane?
    The relationship with the cops didn’t, couldn’t, remain distant. Not when he and Shane were handing them big lumps of cash at least once a month. One day Marsh said to Johno, ‘Call me Marshie. He’s Croydo. And Nick is Nick the Prick to his mates. So let’s see if you can win the right to call him that without getting your heads stoved in.’
    Five of them, three detectives and two professional crooks, boozing it up at pubs around the inner city, taking the piss, telling jokes, playing pool, feeling they were getting to know each other as any team would. Was Johno who tested the changed relationship by calling Nick Jarvis,Nick the Prick — with a smile, that is. It could have gone either way, but Nick didn’t turn ugly, had them all falling about the place by saying ‘You forgot the word “big”!’ and flopping out an oversized penis.
    The next time they were drinking together Marshie said, ‘Might be time for some female company before we shag dogs start snapping at each other.’
    So Johno got to discover that sleeping with a hooker is joyless, mechanical and even an act of self-loathing. Shane, though even less keen, showed his weaker character by doing what the others did. In the back of Johno’s mind was the thought that his mother, being a junkie, likely turned tricks.
    It became customary after every job that the five got on the booze together. All right, so Johno passed every time on the massage parlours and whorehouses, used his wife and two young kids as excuse. His horny friends would tell him, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing out on, Johno.’ He did, actually, and intended raising the matter with Shane one of these days, to tell him he was a hypocrite.
    For three more months after his second child Danny was born, the jobs came from the dockies, as well as the occasional driver for a trucking firm inviting the theft of his rig. It didn’t occur to Johno and Shane that their police partners committed no crime other than receiving money from them. And where was