and 1976 Olympics diehards. August puts his arms out in front, braces himself low with his bent knees. And Mum springs into his waiting arms.
‘Perfect ten!’ she says. August spins her around in celebration. They walk on and August jumps up onto a pole of his own.
Lyle watches on from afar, smiling.
‘So, you thought about it?’ I ask.
‘Thought about what?’ Lyle replies.
‘My plan,’ I say.
‘Tell me more about this taskforce.’
‘Taskforce Janus,’ I say. ‘You really need to read the paper more. The police are waging war on drugs imported from the Golden Triangle.’
‘Bullshit,’ Lyle says.
‘It’s true. It’s all through the paper. You ask Slim.’
‘Well, the taskforce might be true, but their intentions are bullshit. It’s a smokescreen. Half the senior cops around here have their Christmas holidays funded by Tytus. No bastard round here wants to stop the drugs coming because no bastard round here wants to stop Tytus’s gravy train.’
‘Taskforce Janus isn’t cops round here,’ I say. ‘It’s the Australian Federal Police. They’re focusing on the borders. They’re catching them out at sea, before they even reach the beach.’
‘So . . .’
‘So soon supply won’t meet demand,’ I say. ‘There’ll be a thousand junkies running around Darra and Ipswich looking to score but the only people with the gear will be the AFP and they won’t be sellin’.’
‘So?’ Lyle says.
‘So we buy up now. Buy up once and buy up big. Stick that gear in the ground, bury it for a year, two years, let the AFP turn that stash into diamond.’
Lyle turns to me, looks me up and down.
‘I think you need to stop hanging around with Darren Dang,’ he says.
‘Bad move,’ I say. ‘Darren’s our in with Bich. You keep dropping me around Darren’s house and then you keep chatting to Bich like the responsible, loving guardian you are and she eventually trusts you enough to sell you ten kilograms of heroin.’
‘You’ve lost the plot, kid,’ Lyle says.
‘I’ve been asking Darren about market prices. He says ten kilos of heroin sold even at current prices of $15 a gram would earn us $150,000. You let that stash sit for a year or two, I guarantee you’d fetch sale prices of $18, $19, $20 a gram. You can buy a decent house in The Gap for $71,000. We’d have enough for two houses with change left over to put in-ground swimming pools in both.’
‘And what happens when Tytus finds out I’m running a little operation on the side and he sends Iwan Krol out for some answers?’
I have no reply to that. I keep walking. There’s an empty can of Solo soft drink sitting in the gutter that I kick with my right shoe. It bounces into the middle of the bitumen street.
‘You wanna pick that up?’ Lyle says.
‘What?’
‘The can, the fucking can, Eli,’ Lyle says, frustrated. ‘Look at this place. Fuckin’ abandoned trolleys sittin’ in the park, chip wrappers and fuckin’ used nappies lyin’ all over the joint. When I was a kid these streets were clean as a whistle. People gave a shit about these streets. This place was just as pretty as your precious Gap. I tell ya, that’s how it starts, mums and dads in Darra start dropping used nappies in the street, next thing you know they’re lightin’ tyres up outside the Sydney Opera House. That’s how Australia turns to shit, with you just kicking that Solo can into the middle of the street.’
‘I reckon widespread suburban heroin use might be a quicker road to ruin,’ I suggest.
‘Just pick up the can, smartarse.’
I pick up the can.
‘The drop in the lake,’ I say.
‘The what?’ Lyle says.
‘The ripple effect,’ I say, raising the Solo can. ‘What do I do with it?’
‘Put it in that bin there,’ Lyle says.
I drop it in a black bin on the kerbside that’s stuffed full of Silvio’s pizza boxes and empty beer bottles. We walk on.
‘What’s the drop in the lake?’ Lyle asks.
Just a theory about my life. We watch Mum and August now zig-zagging through the segmented pole fences lining the park.
‘The drop in the lake was Mum’s old man leaving her when she was a kid,’ I say. ‘That’s what starts every ripple of her life. The old man takes off, leaves Grandma to look after six kids in a shoebox in Sydney’s western suburbs. Mum’s the eldest so she drops out of school at fourteen to get a job and help Grandma pay the bills and put food on the table. Then after two or three