Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

Finally he looked up at Jen, who was still smiling.

He smiled back, surprised. ‘Not angry?’

Jenny laughed, stood up against him, held both his hands. ‘Angry?!

Christ, Macca, I’m amazed you’ve lasted as long as you have.’ She roughed his hair, kissed him on the cheek. ‘You’ve been very brave about it.’

Slightly boozed, they walked along the Esplanade to the Umi restaurant where Mac had a reservation for seven-thirty. He told Jen what she needed to know and left everything else vague: there was some freelance work for the government and he’d technically keep his gig at the uni as one layer of cover. He’d go onto half wages, paid by the Commonwealth, and be paid per diem for any contract work they gave him. Mac didn’t want to lie to Jenny, but there were good reasons to keep things non-specifi c. You didn’t want the wrong people making links back to your family.

The maitre d’ came over with two menus, spun on his heel and led the way through a narrow bottleneck near the bar.

Mac almost ran into the back of Jen as she suddenly stopped. He felt her tense through her upper back and he looked down to see a pair of legs and expensive cowboy boots in her path. They belonged to an Italian-looking bloke with lead-guitarist hair and a black Tex-Mex ensemble.

Mac pushed alongside Jenny but she jammed her arm back to stop him coming too close.

The bloke looked her up and down and, nudging the heavyweight Thai thug sitting beside him, said, ‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t little Miss Toohey.’ He smiled, fl ashy but lopsided. ‘Oink, fucking, oink!’

‘G’day, George,’ said Jenny conversationally. ‘Free at last and the fi rst thing you do is audition for The Three Amigos. Nice.’

Seeing violence fl ash in the bloke’s dark eyes, Mac pushed through in front of Jen and tapped George’s leg with his foot. ‘Coming through, champ, if you don’t mind.’

George kept his legs where they were and the Thai eyeballed Mac.

Mac looked straight back at him, wondering why Thais wore their gold chains on the outside of their T-shirts. There was a brief moment of bristling silence during which Mac decided the fi rst one to stand up got a straight right in the teeth.

George broke the deadlock and, pulling his feet back, motioned them through like a courtier, saying, ‘Have a nice night, folks.’

Mac grabbed Jen by the hand and pulled her into the dining area.

Nine months had passed since Rachel was born and this was the fi rst time they’d gone out without her. Mac’s folks, Frank and Patricia, had been coming down every second weekend, but Jenny hadn’t wanted to use their in-law babysitting credits to go drinking. Mac said he didn’t understand that, and Jenny had replied that she wasn’t asking him to.

They moved to wine, drank steadily, let the tension out. The altercation with George got Jenny talking about the old days, when she was working the narcotics detail out of Brisbane, and George Bartolo and his cousins were satisfying the Gold Coast’s endless desire for cocaine.

Two penniless brothers – George’s father and uncle – had migrated from Sicily in the early 1960s, worked the concrete gangs in Sydney, bought their own truck, won the contracts for the big construction pours and then headed to Surfers Paradise to build their own dreams. By the 1980s they had a publicly listed development-construction-management company which owned hotels, apartment buildings and shopping centres across Australia and into Malaysia.

Now they hobnobbed with politicians, campaigned winning horses at the Magic Millions and had built – as a gift to the city of the Gold Coast – a security compound for battered women and their kids.

And between them, these two Aussie icons had fathered fi ve sons with nothing on their minds but easy money, fast cars and stupid women.

Jenny had been part of the team that put away George, Christian and Luca Bartolo for the importation of twenty-three kilograms of cocaine. They’d fi ngered the mule – a Portuguese-Australian fi shing-boat owner – and sequestered him for three and a half days at his Southport unit, ignoring phone calls and early morning drive-bys and taking it in turns to keep the mule quiet. When a messenger masquerading as a pizza boy was sent over to pay a visit, the cops ordered the fi sherman not to open the door.

The Bartolos held out almost until day four, but fi nally the lure of $18 million worth of drugs proved too much. They stormed the apartment, demanded the drugs, threatened the mule with handguns and almost hugged the twenty-three plastic packets that were sitting in a black Puma sports bag on the kitchen bench. Which was when Jenny’s crew stepped into view and arrested all three, the whole thing on tape and a Crown witness who stank of fi sh.

‘Surprised to see him here again?’ asked Mac, as the latest round of dishes arrived.

Jenny shrugged. ‘He got nine years, six non-parole. Must’ve behaved himself.’

Mac poured the last of the Wither Hills sauvignon blanc, dead-soldiered it in the ice bucket and nodded to the waiter for another.

There was a candle in a red glass between them, the dying light of day fl ickered on the Pacifi c. Around them were fl ash women in big hairdos, pearls and high-rise heels, but looking at Jen in her Levis Mac reckoned he was ahead on points.

Jen’s face had changed slightly since Rachel was born, a little less plump but with a lot more laugh lines. She was still very pretty. She was on twelve months’ maternity leave from the Feds, the end of which was eleven weeks away. Every bone in Mac’s new-father body wanted his wife to stay at home with Rachel, but he knew Jen was ready for that fi ght; ready like he was never going to be.

‘Sorry about uni,’ mumbled Mac. ‘And the freelance stuff – it’s routine work. Nothing to worry about.’

Jenny smiled, sipped the wine. ‘It’s me you’re worried about, isn’t it, Macca?’

He looked out over the sea and exhaled. Part of him wanted to tell her that he didn’t want her going back to being a frontline cop, not against the scumbags she dealt with. He’d grown up in a cop household and it was bad enough being a boy with a detective dad.

He didn’t want Rachel having to wear all the crap that went with it.

Mac could have done that whole song and dance – he’d sure rehearsed it enough. But he could also own up to who he’d married.

He remembered the night he’d realised that his own family was not the neat patriarchy projected to Rockhampton. His mother Patricia had just gone back to Rockhampton Base Hospital where she was a senior nursing sister. Mac was ten and his sister, Virginia, eight and there’d been some mix-up one afternoon about who was supposed to pick up Ginny from her swimming squad. Frank had made sure the argument was all about his wife going back to work and Mac remembered lying in bed, hearing his mother say, ‘Well that’s who you married, mate. Why don’t we start with that?’

Mac looked back from the window, they locked eyes and Jen smiled. Mac smiled back, raised his glass and felt a sigh rush between his teeth.

‘A toast,’ said Mac, raising his glass. ‘To mothers, wives and cops.’

They clinked and drank, then Jenny got out of her chair, came around the table, kissed Mac on the left ear, put both arms around his neck and snuggled in. ‘I love you, Mr Macca,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘You’re a beautiful man.’

They staggered slightly as they walked south on the Esplanade. Jenny’s right arm was across Mac’s shoulderblade and she leaned into his neck, the warm breeze off the beach blowing her scented hair and wine breath into his face. Jen was incredibly strong – she’d gone back to the pool when Rachel was one month old and was already swimming for an hour at a pace that Mac couldn’t hit for two laps.