The Big Whatever (11 page)

What had I to lose?

A blond-haired young man was sitting in the car. Looked harmless enough, like a surfer or uni student. He got out as we approached.

“Mel, this is Mark, alias ‘the Boy Wonder.' Mark, meet the Man.”

The kid's pupils were as big as marbles.

We shook.

“So what have you got?” I said.

Vic shook his head. “Let's go for a walk.”

We strolled down the road towards the milk bar. A hot, humid Melbourne summer's day.

“Mark, tell Mr P. how you got interested in drugs.”

“How I got started, you mean?”

“Yeah, all that. Mel, you'll love this.”

The kid smiled shyly. “Well, a few years ago, when I was fifteen, I read an article in the Sunday paper. About pot.”

“And?”

“And it was interesting. It said that when smoked in a cigarette, it produces a sense of euphoria in the user.”

“So?”

“So I looked up ‘euphoria' in the dictionary – ‘a feeling or state of intense excitement or happiness.'” He paused, looked from Vic to me. “I
knew
I wanted that.”

“Who wouldn't?” said Vic. He turned to me. “Who said the education system was up to shit?” To the kid he said, “Go on.”

“Well, I found out,” he said, looking from Vic to me, “euphoria is produced by a number of substances besides pot – like opium, heroin, cocaine, amphetamine sulphate.”

“True enough,” I said.

“I set about trying them all. A psych nurse got me the cocaine. That was pretty good. She got me some amphetamine sulphate, too. Also good. Then I tried heroin.
Really
liked that one. And then someone brought back a little opium from Penang. It was okay, but I liked the others better.”

“Tell him about your troubles,” said Vic.

“Well,” he said earnestly. “I found I wanted to get high regularly and often. But it was no good having to depend on others.”

“True,” I said.

“So I started breaking into chemist shops, raiding their drugs cabinets.”

“Uh huh.”

“It's quite easy. I did it many times, and there were no repercussions. At first. But then I had a bit of bad luck and was busted.”

“Right.”

“More than once. I was sent to jail.”

I shook my head.

“I did three months. It wasn't so bad. Plenty of time to consider things. I decided I would have to change my ways. I realised that if I kept doing chemist jobs, I'd get caught again sooner or later. So I availed myself of one of the training programs in jail. I did the Higher School Certificate.”

I looked at my watch. “Get to the point, kid.”

“I did first level science—” he paused, looked at Vic, then back to me, with a shy smile, “Chemistry, actually.”

Vic looked at me, grinning hugely.

I turned to the kid.

“Young feller, you have my full attention,” I said.

“I found out quite a bit about organic chemistry. Especially in regard to what are called psychoactive substances. I found out cocaine and heroin are made from organic substances which are not that easy to get. But amphetamine sulphate – shit, I could make that myself.”

Vic looked at the boy proudly then turned to me. “You
see where this is heading?”

“You got a taste for me?” I said.

The kid looked uncomfortable. “I've only made one test batch so far.”

We were outside the milk bar. Vic said, “Let's go in and get a milkshake.”

We took a booth in the semi-dark at the back of the shop, ordered cappuccinos. There was no one else in the place.

“So, show me,” I said.

The kid pulled a double-O cap from his pocket, tipped a little powder onto the glass tabletop. It had a weird glow to it.

“It's yellow!”

“It's not perfect. The next batch will be better.”

Vic said, “Just give it a go, Mel, for Christ's sake.”

I rolled up a dollar note, sniffed it up.

Vic put his hand on my arm. “Still a few bugs. It gives some people a headache. It goes away. Excellent piss after that.”

My head started thumping. Every heartbeat was like a biff in the skull. Serious pain. Aneurism, haemorrhage territory. I reeled back, clutching my head. “You cunts have poisoned me.”

“Just give it a moment.”

Seconds later the headache stopped. My scalp contracted. I shivered. It was good. It was
very
good.

The kid said, “I know precisely what the problem was. Next lot will be even stronger but no side effects. I guarantee it.”

They were both looking at me, waiting.

“What do you need? And how long will it take?”

Within a week we had the Boy Wonder installed in a laboratory – by which I mean a tin shed way out back of a deserted farmhouse, hidden behind trees, on a dead end road, out Echuca way. The kid was very thorough, clean and careful. And he knew his science. Gave me hope for the coming generation.

The makings had been easy enough to get, and sure enough, the next batch was sweet – no cranium-busting, just a good clean speed buzz.

By the new year Vic had started selling the shit to his bikey mates, who by all reports were taking to powder drugs with great enthusiasm. Some of them were selling it on to interstate truckies and the like, footballers even. The brawling and troublemaking routinely instigated by those various chaps changed somewhat in character, but what the hell, life is change, is it not, my jaded little nihilists?

I was moving respectable quantities of the powdery stuff to the Carlton heads, extracting a few spondulicks here and there. By now I'd rounded up a crew of serious speed freaks, boys and girls who liked good shit and knew they liked good shit and didn't fuck around.

The Boy Wonder made himself useful in his off-hours by helping me with my music gear. Soon he was setting up the stage for the whole band, handling the PA and so on – he was good with electrics – brilliant, actually. Hotted up my amp, worked on Bobby's PA.

When the next batch of sulphate came in I took a bag of it to show Stan. It was six weeks since the weekend house party. He and Jimmy were staying in a big old terrace house in East Melbourne. Good pad, full of dark Victorian furniture, Persian rugs and whatnot. Denise and Cathy had moved in too. Cosy.

I banged on the door, waited a while. A movement of the curtain, then Stan opened up. Jimmy the Thug was in the kitchen, reading a Phantom comic. The girls were off somewhere.

I chopped up a couple of lines right there on the kitchen table, stood aside and bid Stan and Jimmy to go for it. They did just that.

“Well,” I said, “you want?”

Stan glanced at Jimmy. Jimmy said nothing, but then
he moved his head in the shiftiest, most minimal nod you've ever seen.

Hello, I thought, who's in charge here?

“Where's it from?” said Jimmy.

“I made it. I mean, I had someone make it. A chemist.”

Jimmy went back to his comic.

“All right Mel,” said Stan after a few seconds, “leave us an ounce.”

I could sense Jimmy to the side, watching.

I'd hoped, expected, Stan would want an ounce, and had one already weighed out. I dropped it down in front of him.

“You haven't asked me the price,” I said.

Stan looked at me lazily. “No.”

“All right, no need to go strange. I'm hip. This one's on the house. But then we're square, agreed?”

Stan smiled. “Sure thing, Mel.”

I took my leave. I had calls to make. As I got in my car and pulled out, a bloke was walking stiffly down the street. Young and bulky, Leisuremaster slacks and brown shoes. Bad haircut. A cop? Could be.

I drove on at moderate speed, careful not to look at him. In the rear view mirror I saw him turn into Stan's gate. I pulled around the corner and walked back just in time to see the door open. Stan shook hands with the squarehead and invited him in.

I drove home rattled. Maybe it wasn't the Man. Maybe it was just some guy, some underworld cat. Yeah, and maybe I was King Zog of Albania. Old Mel's radar does not lie. What did it mean? A bust? Didn't figure.

As I parked and walked towards my flat, I was still distracted. So distracted I didn't see the two men in the lobby waiting for me until one of them had belted me a beauty, twisted my arm behind me and pushed me to the floor, his knee rammed into the middle of my back.

ICEBERG MEL

“Señor Parker.”

I craned my head up off the tiles.

“Oh, Alex. Hi,” I said, cool as I could manage. “Get this cunt off me, will you?”

Which earned me a sharp punch in the kidneys.

A long pause. Then a sigh.

“All right, Barry, let him up. Open the door, Mel.”

I got up slowly, looked around. The heavy was an ape-like young fellow, easy six and a half feet tall. Sweaty, with a deranged look in his eyes. Watching me with a half-grin, itching for me to make a move. Not without my trusty .38, boyo! Which was inside.

I dusted off my threads and fished for my front door key. The goon grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm again.

“Relax, Igor,” I said. “If I make a play, you'll be the first to know.”

He laughed, but not in a pleasant way.

Alex slowly shook his head. “If only you knew.” To the ape he said, “Get him inside, and we'll get this over with.”

Not a good thing to hear, my young dharma bums.

Five minutes later we were sitting around my kitchen table. They hadn't found my gun, which was well stashed, but they'd found my money and the speed – half a pound of it in a plastic bag, now sitting between us on the table.

My faithful readers, you'll remember Alex, aka ‘the Greek.' Let me tell you a little more about him. He came from a true gangster family. Hard bastards. No peace and love and kindness at all. Very big on the vendetta. Knives. Blood oaths. Alex himself was more into hanging out at Push pubs, taking drugs, listening to rock music, getting laid. A short, slightly rotund bloke with olive skin and curly hair, still sporting that bushy hippie beard. A jolly fellow at heart, not cut out for high-stakes crime.

But I was digging a different Alex now. Not interested in getting anything from me. No questions, no demands, like that I maybe should make some sort of restitution. Which meant he was here to kill me. Then find Cathy and kill her.

“What's that?” said Alex, nodding at the bag of speed on the table.

The only card I had to play, is what it was.

“Speed.” I said it casually, but watched him closely. A flicker of interest there. “Pure. Laboratory-made,” I said. “It's the new thing.”

He nodded, but didn't make eye contact.

I had to use the pause. “So now that you're here, Alex,” I said, “obviously there are things to discuss. There's the question of what I owe you for that hash—”

“Shut up. Where's the rest of your money?”

“—and perhaps the question of whether you want to be part of this new speed thing—”

Barry stood up, took a step towards me, and gave me a backhander that sent me sprawling off the chair and against the wall.

I got half-upright, put my hands up. “There is no other money.”

Silence.

I looked at Alex. “Have you ever known me to hang on to bread? You know that's not me, Al.”

More silence. Try another play.

I stood up carefully. “So normally the next step would be, you guys kill me, right?”

Alex looked at me a while, but said nothing.

“But that'd be exactly the wrong move.”

Still nothing.

“For you. Because you'd be shorting yourself.” I sat down at the table again.

“How so?”

“That money right there is all I have . . . for now. But there's more money to be had. A lot of it. I can let you in.”

“Selling speed? I
hate
speed.”

“Something else.”

“
What
else?”

“The biggest robbery ever committed in this state. Fuck that, in the whole country.”

“And what exactly would that be?”

“Tattersall's Lottery. We're going to take the whole lot.”

I'll spare you the sordid details, young seekers, but over the next hour your silver-tongued correspondent managed to stave off his own homicide by offering Alex a piece of the speed action
and
a percentage of the forthcoming Tatts robbery.