Chapter 9.
Biker Man
I must have dozed off for a moment, as I was woken by the buzzing, cutting sounds of a helicopter above me. I didn’t move, as I probably looked just like a sun worshipper where I was.
The chopper moved away, and I jumped up and ran up over the sand and into the public toilets to fix myself up a bit. I was almost dry now, but I had no money and no way to get back to Surry Hills, where the bag of loot and guns was stored in Rhonda’s shed.
So I left the beach and began to walk along the nearest road, in what I thought was the general direction of Surry Hills, imagining that such a walk would take me at least two days. However, as I stopped, waiting for some cars to pass, so I could cross a road, a bike rider drew up alongside of me.
‘Hi’ I said. ‘How would I get to Surry Hills, walking from here?’ Then, before the poor bloke could answer, ‘I added, ‘must be a huge hike, eh?’
‘Nah’, came back his laconic response. ‘Only takes a bit over an hour. When you drive, you have to go around the long way. But on foot, it’s just over five kilometres, if you go via McPherson Street. It takes about an hour and ten minutes’. Then he told me the ins and outs of all the roads I needed to take, and he was off, with a swoosh and a wave.
I really enjoyed the walk back to Surry Hills, and I also felt that, I had learned a special secret, as I never imagined that Bronte and Surry Hills were really so close. I would do this walk again, one day, for pure pleasure…. I hoped.
As I walked, I also had time to think about my next move, as far as the Sciarra Outfit was concerned. My thoughts also strayed to John Johnson. I felt that he liked me, but as a divorced man with a child, he was hesitant; not eager to entangle his heart and his life, with another so readily, as he had done when he was younger. Relationships with others, I mused, can be the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences of our lives, but also, the most damaging and disabling.
I had almost got married once. I was only twenty and pregnant to this handsome tradesman named Scott. Luckily, Scott dumped me at the altar and a short time later, I had a miscarriage. It could have been worse: I could have had a kid with the dipstick.
Rhonda rushed forward and hugged me as I entered her little café. Then she held me out from her, eyeing me sideways, and said, ‘So you lost the wig?’
‘It’s a long story, Rhonda, but I promise I’ll tell you about it when I can’.
‘OK sweetie’, she smiled. Then she became serious and said, ‘If you are in some trouble, I’m here’.
‘Thanks Rhonda, that means a lot to me’, I replied. I spoke the truth; so few people will go out of their way to help a stranger that they barely know. Believe me.
It is strange how you can have an instant connection with someone, like I felt with Ronda. Then there are people you may be related to by blood, who you may know your whole life, and yet, never feel close to them.
Again, I needed another disguise. But for the time being, I just unzipped my bag, as I came to a quite alley, and shoved the short, blonde wig on my head, and pushed my own hair out of the way, as well as I could, as I walked the streets toward the Surry Hills Library, to use the internet,.
The Surry Hills Library is an interesting building. Atheistically, I am not sure how I feel about it, but as a future concept for sustainable design, it is important, with its many energy saving features, and water conservation. There are, for example, grasses growing on the roof top, as a form of insulation, and plants are also used to filter the air, which is drawn in through the atrium.
The library was packed with people today, so, I had to lurk about for a while, as I waited for a spare computer to become available. Finally, I got one and I went back to Pasquale Scarmado’s Facebook page and browsed his ‘friends list’, and associated people, as I searched for information. I found a conversation with someone called Tika Honey, who was going to a party on New Year’s Eve, on a superyacht moored in Rushcutters Bay. She had asked Scarmado, whether he would be working there that night. ‘Yes siree’, he had replied.
It was New Year’s Eve tonight. I was going to a party.