The Stalk Club Read Online Free

attire and taken the train into the city.  He checked the time on
his mobile phone and quickened his pace. 
    Five
minutes later Manuel arrived at Pellegrinos Italian restaurant, where he had
been eating free of charge every Friday night since his release, courtesy of
his friend Bruno Trulli who managed the restaurant.  They had first met almost nine
years ago when at the age of sixteen Manuel had started working there.  Initially
Manuel had planned to stay just long enough to earn enough cash to buy a
battered Subaru WRX that his friend was selling, but he soon began to enjoy the
energetic machinations of working in a busy and successful inner-city
restaurant.  He worked hard, and progressed from dishwasher to kitchen hand, in
the process, discovering a natural flair and ability for food preparation.  Through
his efforts he earned the respect and friendship of Bruno who encouraged him and
arranged for him to commence a chef apprenticeship.
    Unfortunately
things didn’t quite work out as planned.  Manuel had been involved in street
gangs since he was ten.  Although he played his part well enough in their territorial
disputes, petty crimes and other delinquent acts, it wasn’t by choice or desire
that he was involved.  It was just a way of surviving adolescence in the deep
western suburbs neighbourhood where he lived.  If you weren’t in a gang you
were an easy target for those who were.
    On a
hot and muggy January night seven years ago he had gone out cruising and
drinking beers with his friends.  They tried to gatecrash a Facebook advertised
party in Blacktown, hoping to meet some new girls and score some food and booze,
but were turned away.  Things got a little heated, a few punches were thrown
and they were chased backed to their car by a group of twenty youths.  Manuel
was fuming as he’d caught a lucky punch from some big private schoolboy hero
and his nose was broken and bleeding.  As they drove away, Manuel impulsively
grabbed his friend’s handgun from under the seat.  He had planned to fire into
the air to scare them, but his rage got the better of him.  When he saw the guy
who had smacked him, jeering with his friends at their car, he pointed the gun
in his direction and pulled the trigger.  His shot went wide and killed a fifteen
year old girl.  Manuel had just turned eighteen years of age, was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Goulburn Jail.
    In
prison he soon realised he was just a child, alone among men.  He was harassed
and assaulted from day one, by members of the various cliques that existed there
and anyone else who was in the mood for fun, or whose tastes ran to brown smooth-skinned
teenage boys.
    Before
long Bruno Trulli came to visit him.  He was Manuel’s first visitor.  His
mother, who was the only family he knew of, abandoned him after his arrest,
saying that it was the straw that broke her back.  He didn’t blame her as it
was the straw that almost broke his back too.  In the stark and bland visitors
centre Manuel broke down in front of the old man.  He cried for the first time
since he could remember and told Bruno he didn’t think he could survive for
much longer.  It was then that the old man saved him.  Bruno somehow arranged
for the right people inside the prison to keep an eye out for him.  It didn’t
quite amount to protection and it didn’t mean that Manuel’s incarceration was
the equivalent of a holiday in the Maldives, but it was enough to give him the
breathing space he needed to find his feet in the prison system.  It was enough
to help him survive.  Manuel asked how Bruno achieved this, but the old man
just smiled and said that he had a lot of friends.  Manuel knew that he owed the
old man his life, absolutely and completely.
    Despite
the watchful eye of Bruno’s connections and Manuel spending as much of his time
as he could away from the general populace working or studying, his time in
prison was pockmarked with its fair share of