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  signs on both doors. Robbie climbed into the passenger seat and passed Lee a folded piece of paper. ‘You’re now a licensed tow-truck driver, insured through us in case you damage

  one of the mugs’ vehicles. From now on you can fill up at the depot, where we’ll meet every day, at eight. I’ve been told not to come round here anymore.’

  There was a question in Robbie’s eyes, and a deeper envy.

  Lee privy to something that Robbie wasn’t.

  The Ford started with a throaty roar as Lee engaged reverse, pulled back over the drive and rolled onto the street. He put her in first, but didn’t lift the clutch. ‘You don’t need to babysit me. You want me to drop you at the depot?’

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  Robbie looked thwarted in some way. ‘I’m acting on

  orders … Just like you. I go back to the depot alone, Kinslow’s gonna freak.’

  That question in his eyes again, hoping that Lee would

  share. Instead, Lee nodded. ‘Alright, where the fuck are we?

  And which way do I go?’

  Lee’s helplessness seemed to appease Robbie, and he

  laughed. ‘We’re in Inglewood, north of the city. Take a left toward Beaufort Street. Turn right there.’

  They drove down the quiet suburban street of bungalows

  and weatherboards until they hit the busier road. At the

  corner, on the stop signs, on the rubbish bins and on a steel-grey electricity exchange box were plastered posters.

  Asians Out. Every Job for an Asian is a Job LOST to a White.

  Jews make up 50% of the richest 1%.

  The Holocaust is a LIE.

  Robbie was grinning from ear to ear. He nodded to turn

  right and Lee pulled into the morning traffic, moving off the higher ground toward the city glimmering in the distance.

  On every bin, street sign and bus stop were the same posters.

  Hundreds of them among the people going about their

  business, the newsagents and delis, the sandwich bars, real estate agents and pubs.

  ‘Slow down, right … here.’

  Lee looked to where Robbie was furtively pointing across

  the truck. Furtive because of the two paddy-wagons on the

  footpath. Three coppers leaning on the bonnet, looking out

  over the traffic. Behind them was a burnt-out shopfront,

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  the glass windows shattered across the pavement. The sign

  above the burnt awning read ‘Hop Sing Chinese Restaurant.’

  The inside charred and caved in, water-soaked.

  On the corner two tall young Asian men comforted an

  older woman in an ankle-length coat, her face hidden but

  her shoulders trembling. Beside them an old Chinese man

  stared into the traffic, stunned, nothing in his expression.

  Robbie wound down the passenger window, started rubbing

  his fists in his eyes, the universal boohoo gesture. The young men stiffened and watched them pass, their faces a mask of

  hatred.

  ‘Oh, fuck me,’ said Robbie. ‘That’s beautiful. Wish I had a camera. Show and tell tonight at the debrief.’

  ‘Tell me how you did it,’ Lee said.

  The traffic opened up in the right lane and Lee rolled

  the Ford down into Mount Lawley. Robbie took his time

  answering, but finally couldn’t help himself. ‘There was a

  busted eave. We got a weed-sprayer and hosed petrol into

  the roof. Forced a back door and doused everything. Final

  thing, we smashed the front window and tossed in a Molotov.

  Wwhhhooooshh! Bang! No more chogie restaurant in our neighbourhood.’

  Lee got the Ford out from behind a bus and turned

  onto Vincent Street. ‘I guess you chose it because it was a standalone building,’ he said.

  ‘Very observant. Yeah. We don’t want to be burning down

  any Aussie businesses.’

  In the park to their left was a mob of blackfellas, gathered 91

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  under the reaching arms of a Moreton Bay fig, wearing

  beanies and heavy flannel. In the cool morning air the

  dampness rose off the cut grass and surface of the lake,

  whose edges were retained with brickwork.

  ‘What’s this park called?’ Lee asked.

  Robbie sniffed, looked around for a sign. ‘I don’t know.

  Coon Park? It’s always full of ’em. We have our sport

  sometimes. Give ’em some of this.’

  Robbie smacked his fist into his other hand, but Lee didn’t believe him. He knew how handy the average blackfella was;

  male or female, old or young.

  ‘Did this used to be wetlands? Smells like it.’

  Robbie laughed. ‘That’s not the lake you’re smelling, mate.’

  Lee didn’t comment any more. He’ d meant the dampness

  and tannic smell, the unlikely presence of so much water

  on higher ground, meaning an underground spring or

  watercourse.

  ‘Let’s get on the freeway and see what we see. Hope your

  first day on the job isn’t like mine was.’

  Lee lit a cigarette and offered one to Robbie, who shook his head. Robbie was waiting for Lee to ask him about his first day, and when he didn’t, took a deep breath. ‘Mate, no shit, my first day! I was riding with Kinslow, over on Leach Highway.

  We heard the coppers on the UHF. Got there in a jiffy, even before the coppers. It was at the lights in Booragoon. Fucken peak-hour traffic. Some motorcyclist had come across the

  bonnet of a little Jap-crap Camry or something like it. The bike was in the intersection. The rider’s body was snapped

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  around a light pole. No shit, the Camry driver, little bloke in a suit, looked like a schoolteacher or something. He was out in the intersection kicking something around, raving like a spastic. Kinslow just said, “Oh fuck,” and I looked closer.

  The motorbike rider had lost his head. The schoolteacher was out in the intersection, kicking around the helmet, the poor bastard’s head still inside it. He was kickin it around like a soccer bal , and shoutin at it, kickin and shoutin, the head rolling all over the place. The bloke was in shock, see – didn’t even know what he was doin. I held him by the shoulders

  while Kinslow give him a little tap on the chin, just to settle him down. Then he started throwin up and weepin. Fuck me.

  The coppers arrived and I had to go get the head, just so traffic could resume. Carried it in the helmet. Just the stump of his neck showin, the visor still down. Fucken sick, mate, what you see in this job sometimes.’

  Perhaps it was the speed, but the pitch of Robbie’s voice kept rising as the excitement of describing the experience built.

  ‘Mate, I think I will have one of those cigarettes.’ Robbie’s hands were shaking as he lit up, blowing smoke out into the morning traffic. ‘You don’t talk much, Lee, do you?’

  It was an accusation, and Lee didn’t acknowledge it, turning south onto the freeway. He tuned the UHF as he drove. There were some things he needed to know, however. ‘What are the

  police codes for the different call-outs?’

  ‘Not as smart as you think, are ya?’

  ‘Guess not.’

  Lee only had to wait, and pretty soon Robbie began his

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  training spiel. Lee listened intently, because it was what he needed to know. When Robbie was finished, he added, ‘You

  don’t look like a Nazi.’

  Lee shook his head, spat out the window.

  ‘Something funny, smart boy?’

  This was how it was going to be, all day. Robbie needling

  him, hoping for a reaction. />
  ‘I’m not a Nazi.’

  ‘Then what the fuck is Kinslow interested in you for?’

  ‘I’m a prospect, was a prospect, in the Knights. My father

  started it, back in the seventies, when he got back from

  Vietnam.’

  ‘Sounds like a bikie gang. Kinslow told me it’s called The

  White Knights.’

  ‘Used to be. Not anymore.’

  ‘White Knights, as in … noble and pure?’

  ‘Kind of the opposite. It’s supposed to be ironic.’

  Unusual y, Robbie didn’t reply. Lee looked at him. Robbie

  didn’t understand.

  ‘You mean, like sarcastic?’

  ‘Yeah, like sarcastic.’

  Robbie was an open book. In between changing lanes,

  Lee looked at him again. Could anticipate the next question.

  Thought about what he’ d say. How the Knights started as a

  bikie gang, made up initial y of Vietnam veterans, still had the chain-of-command of a bikie gang. Funded their operations

  through selling drugs and guns, like a bikie gang. Were feared around town, just like a bikie gang. Had ‘good mates’ in the 94

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  local coppers and among the guards at Greenough Prison,

  too. Their clubhouse the gun range. Recruiting only through the original families.

  ‘Your father was the president.’

  ‘Yeah, he was.’

  ‘And now he’s dead.’

  Lee met Robbie’s eyes, which were smug.

  ‘ Kinslow told me that too. Something about one of the other leaders, getting found buried in the sand dunes behind your house. Your father did it. Then he got payback.’

  Lee ignored him. He understood now why Kinslow wasn’t in

  the room last night, with the old man and the others. The last thing Lee had heard, before the ether threw him backwards

  off a cliff, was the old man saying that Kinslow could come in now. His job just to deliver Lee to them, and take him back to the house. Run the tow trucks. Be the public face.

  ‘You don’t like me much, do you?’

  Another goad. The antagonism in character, looking for

  weakness.

  ‘Kinslow also told me that your gang might’ve knocked off

  a bloke running for Geraldton mayor. That true? Cos he was

  makin noises about dope plantations in the area. The cops

  bein too friendly with organised crime figures? That kind of thing. Why would Kinslow say that if it weren’t true?’

  ‘You believe everything he says?’

  Robbie snorted. ‘But you’re just a prospect. You wouldn’t

  take a hand in anything like that. Stil , you reckon you’re better than us, that’s pretty obvious.’

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  What Robbie said about Lee being a mere prospect was

  true. Most of the things that the Knights were notorious for had taken place when Lee was a child. Like the time a Korean sailor had allegedly raped a local girl, whose father took it to the Knights, and not the coppers. Twenty armed Knights, led by Lee’s father, had taken over the ship at port, placed a guard on the gangway. According to the legend, they bashed every

  member of the crew, then invited the girl’s father on board to lay into the rapist. Then they set charges in the ship’s hold and blew out its side, before setting it on fire. The wreck was still there on one of the local beaches, where it was dragged and dumped after sinking. None of the sailors had reported

  what happened, claiming injuries after the explosion. They

  flew home minus one crew member, whose charred body was

  found after the blaze.

  Or the time one of the local coppers came to the Knights

  with a problem. Up in Broome, some of the dope and speed

  dealing had been taken over by members of a NSW bikie gang, went by the name of the Fangs. They even went so far as to

  start wearing their patches around town, scaring the tourists and setting up a clubhouse. The local sergeant didn’t want it known in the city that he’ d lost control of the situation, would be bad for his career. Could the Knights help? Lee’s father and ten others packed their gear into Land Rovers and headed

  north. They kidnapped the ringleader and held him out in the desert. They made a time and place for the exchange. It was a trap and an opportunity for some live-fire training. They ambushed the bikies with heavy automatic fire, killed them

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  all and buried them deep. Sent the severed head of the leader, packed in dry ice, to the club headquarters in Bankstown.

  Stories like this, and more. Lee had grown up with them,

  heard them recited in the schoolyard by the other kids, behind his back. He didn’t know if any of them were true, except that his father never talked about them. His father liked telling stories, but would never talk about crimes that were true, even to his son.

  The traffic on the Narrows Bridge was heavy, and Lee

  scanned the emergency lanes in both directions, the river

  opening up wide and shallow.

  ‘You don’t want to be part of the movement we got goin,

  that’s fine with me. Only room for true believers at the pointy end of the spear.’

  Lee thought about answering with a question, but he couldn’t be bothered. He’ d grown up in a largely white town, and had never seen much evidence of the so-called superiority of his own race.

  Robbie was a good example.

  ‘You’ve seen what we’re doing. We can’t advertise in the

  papers. Jew money means no newspaper or radio or TV station will take our advertising dol ar. So we win the propaganda war on the streets. Just because there aren’t many of us, doesn’t mean shit. We’ve got the heart. The coppers and ASIO are

  already lookin at us, and I say that with pride …’

  The pain in Lee’s head wasn’t getting any better. He took

  his sunglasses off the dash and put them on. There were

  pelicans on each of the light-posts that straddled Canning

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  Bridge, and he admired their symmetry: the giant forms, pink gullets and intelligent eyes trained on the river south, waiting for a school of mullet to break the surface. The broth-coloured water lapped at the sandy shore, sedge and reed-banks rising up to the steel barriers of the freeway. There were a couple of joggers and cyclists moving over the path. An old man wading and casting for flathead on a submerged sandbank. A couple

  leaning into one another, seated on a park bench. Normal life, and all of it alien to him.

  If Lee kept to the freeway he’ d end up on a coast road to

  Bunbury, and from there it was coastal town to coastal town, right until the Nul arbor. He could start again, somewhere

  east. He had petrol money for a few days, and could take on paying work the rest of the way.

  But what if it was true that his father was alive, somewhere in the city?

  Despite what Lee felt when he looked at civilians going

  about their day-to-day – the yearning for a life of his own – his father was all that Lee had.

  ‘Those Knights that killed your father. They know where

  you are and what you’re doing?’

  The smugness was back in Robbie’s voice, helping himself to another cigarette, looking down the freeway and everywhere

  but Lee.

  Lee turned the Ford onto Leach Highway, into the suburbs.

  If Robbie wondered where they were going, he said nothing.

  He was flicking through the tapes in the glove box.

  ‘We got to get you away from this metal shit. There’s some

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  good local bands. White pride and plenty of piss an’ vinegar.

  You’re not jacked off at me,
are ya? And where you headed?

  This way lies Fremantle. Freo Rocks turf. They see me down

  there I’ll get scalped. Those wog boys are mean with a knife.’

  Lee looked for a deli on one of the side streets. He needed an iced coffee or some black aspro. He noticed parked cars

  and recognised the gabled roofline of the standard shopfront.

  Robbie was still talking when Lee pulled up, palming the

  wheel into a park.

  ‘You get me something? How ’bout a White Knight? Nah,

  just jokin. Get me a sausage roll and sauce?’

  Lee nodded and tapped his pockets, the fold of cash stil

  there.

  Beside the front door, angling his face into the sunshine,

  was a black guy in his teens, seated on the footpath nursing a can of Fanta and an unlit cigarette. Black jeans and a sleeveless East Perth footy jumper, long curly hair, barefoot. He didn’t look at Lee, who went inside the flystrip curtain doorway and straight to the fridge. He took a litre of iced coffee and pressed it to his forehead, then opened it and drank half of it down.

  ‘Hey. No.’

  A thin voice from the front of the store. Over the top of the aisle laid with titty magazines, greeting cards and newspapers, an old Chinese woman waggled her finger at him. Lee finished the iced coffee and took out some cold Mars bars, another litre of iced coffee. He made his way around the aisles and put the empty and the full on the counter. Lee was a good foot taller than the old lady, and he looked down onto her pale scalp

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  and grey roots as she made his change. Despite the damage

  to his face she wasn’t scared of him. She offered his coins and smiled, even met his eyes. ‘Sorry. We get some bad customer.

  They steal.’

  ‘Fair enough. No worries.’

  The pie warmer contained the usual. He thanked the old

  lady and went out into the sun, peeling himself a Mars bar.

  He felt better already as the coffee, sugar and milk hit his stomach. He was tossing the empty carton into the nearest

  bin when he heard a sound behind him. He’ d forgotten about the black kid in the footy jumper, who was right in his face, holding up a cigarette.

  ‘Nummery wa?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You gotta light for me nummery?’

  Lee stepped back. The guy smelled like campfire smoke. His

  bloodshot eyes were warm and brown.

  ‘You got a light, cuz?’