Directive RIP by Stuart Parker
*
‘We’ll take my car,’ said Tentative.
‘Are you going to tell me the name of your friend now?’ replied Furn.
‘Ronald Caven. And never call him Ron.’
‘Why not? Parents who name their kid Ronald are really just passing the buck onto everyone else. You’re sure he’s going to hand over twenty kilograms of ganja with a handshake?’
‘You’ve never seen gratitude translated into a large chunk of dope?’
‘More often I’ve seen large chunks of dope translated into dead bodies.’
‘Well, only dirty cops see the clean side of the drug trade.’
Furn pulled open the boot of the Honda sedan and removed the three black shoulder bags with numbers scrawled on name tags.
‘I’m taking these with me,’ he said.
‘What’s in them?’ asked Tentative suspiciously.
‘I’ve packed in a toothbrush for starters.’
‘Do cops ever tell the truth?’
The bags were surprisingly light on Furn’s shoulder. He slammed closed the boot. ‘Let’s go.’
Tentative’s metallic green BMW had been avoiding dust under a cover in an Authority Exchange alleyway. The cover was removed and the engine started with an almost psychopathic whisper.
Twenty minutes later Tentative was smoothly parking in front of a warehouse somewhere amidst the Essendon Airport back-blocks. Furn smirked to himself. An isolated warehouse was just what he wanted.
‘No need to say anything unless something goes down.’ Tentative calmly got out of the car. ‘You got any bullet proof jackets in those bags of yours?’
Furn shook his head and took with him the first of the three bags. ‘You’ll just have to stay alive the old fashioned way: not get shot.’
The warehouse front was more modest than those surrounding it but the interior given up by stubborn roller door was as expansive as it was well lit. Furn would have been a lot more relaxed if this Ronald Caven had been using the light to read a newspaper. There was a man standing in the centre of the floor, with hands in pockets, doing casual the way Sicilian hitmen kissed cheeks. He was tall and lanky, his whole suit flapping off his body like a windless sail on its mast. His brown hair was carefully gelled and styled, and his dead eyes had been hollowed out by callousness. The kind of man that if he were a next door neighbour you wouldn’t be letting your cat out to play.
‘You Ron?’ Furn called out with distaste.
‘Where’s Ronald?’ came in Tentative over the top, indirectly answering Furn’s question while trying to keep things civil.
‘Was it Ronald you wanted to see or your own little pot of gold?’ The man chuckled with the pun. ‘My name is Monday Stanley. Tomorrow it’ll be something else. What’s on offer here is a key and a number that will tell you where to put it.’
Stepping into open spaces during a drug transaction was about as safe as dozing off with a street hooker and your favourite swollen wallet but Furn did not hesitate. Perhaps his distaste ran as deep as that. If this man was going to make a move he wanted to ensure it was a wrong one.
Tentative, a step behind, was again belying his nickname. ‘Your name might change but it’ll just be another way to describe the same stink. Where’s Caven?’
Stanley pursed his lips as though he were working in lipstick. Then he relaxed them into a tortured smirk. ‘Silent partners don’t answer questions. They don’t ask them either. They hear that someone is trying to extort fifteen kilograms of product and they make some noise.’
‘Noise?’ In Furn’s experience the only time drug dealers were ambiguous was when they were talking double cross or murder. The hand inside his pocket pressed the number one automatic button on Jock McClean’s mobile phone. How much time did he have? Better count down from ten. It worked for the astronauts.
Tentative had stopped in his tracks too, scanning the warehouse’s dark extremities. Snipers wearing anything less than fluorescent aerobics tops would be virtually impossible to see.
‘Noise,’ Stanley reaffirmed. His hand went to his earlobe. That was the signal. Cold blooded killers didn’t get nervous ticks.
‘Down!’ Furn screamed, slinging the shoulder bag at Stanley.
Bullets started coming. Crack, crack, crack. A tool box took one for Furn. He would have climbed through the subsequent hole if only he could.
The explosion out of the bag did for his eardrums what vodka did for his head. Numb and dazed bravery soon followed – relative bravery: there was no way he was sticking around to check up on Tentative; this debacle was his party and perhaps even his brainchild. He ran without direction, the smoke followed him like one of those schoolyard friends you shared your play lunch with. He pressed the second automatic dial number. Another loud bang and the average sniper would assume it was the cavalry. Too bad for the BMW, but it would be even worse if he hesitated long enough for Tentative to reach the driver’s seat.
He made it to the door of an office. A name had been scratched off its glass. An instant later it had been shot out altogether. Furn dived behind the large grey metal desk beyond. It was seemingly the same material as that used in the Pope Mobile, for an incoming volley of rounds harmlessly ricocheted away. Furn levelled his piece over the top and discharged a burst of his own, not that he was going to risk the top of his head in pinpointing exactly what there was to aim at.
The BMW’s death roar was huge and was accompanied by a chorus of warehouse windows blowing in. The firing stopped with it. A headache had never had such an explosive cure.
Furn rolled over like he had just hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. Could he sleep off that pain in his side? It was warm and sticky to the touch. Just how much ordinance had McClean packed into those bags? Furn probed the wound with a handkerchief; if half his side was missing, he preferred to find out from a distance. The handkerchief was dampening. Fortunately, he was wearing black. He could walk the streets without eliciting cries of horror. Now that his target had reverted back to the Hyun Gang, he needed to wander the well-trodden streets of Narcotics World.