by Paul Slatter
Then Rasheed said beneath the roar of the traffic as it passed by, “And you need to give me sixty percent of whatever you’re getting from the hard-on pills you’ve got coming in.”
Rann stood there watching as the trucks passed and wondered if he’d heard the man right. So, he said, “Tell me that again?”
“Sixty percent of what you make from your pills goes to me.”
He had heard right, so he said, “You’ve picked a strange spot to start negotiations.”
And waiting for a truck to pass, Rasheed said, “I did it because I knew no one else would be here.”
It was an odd notion Rann thought, standing at the side of the road with hundreds of cars passing by every minute or so and thinking he was alone. He said, pointing to the cars, “I don’t get it, if no one’s here, who the fuck are they then?”
Rasheed said, “You and I are alone, we can talk and neither of us can cause trouble because hundreds of people are watching and they don’t even know it.”
Rann looked to the passing traffic packed together but moving quickly. It was an odd notion, but kind of right. He said, “Why should I pay you money for my pills when they get here, when it’s got sweet fuck all to do with you.”
Rasheed smiled and said straight back, “Because there’s a middle man with everything in life, and you need distribution and I control things around here, my friend. If you want to sell your pills, you need to go through me—the same as if a movie producer wants to show his film, he has to go through the theatres because they’re the guys with the means to get it out there and I’m the means to get your little pills out there. So you need to start realizing this and come to an arrangement or you can try peddling them in some other town.”
Rann shook his head and looked out to the traffic as it flowed past and took a deep breath, tasting the fuel in the air. This was bullshit, more nonsense, another prick trying it on, and he’d come all the way here on the bus to hear it. Then he heard the guy say, “And as you’re going for the big stakes now, hitting up millionaire realtors and shit, you need to start weighing me in on the blackmail funds as well and keep away from the big guy in the loud shirts.”
“I would have thought a big prick like that could look after himself,” Rann snapped back.
“He can. So, I’m telling you, you are best to stay clear of the fucker. It’s advice, nothing less.”
They stared at each other. Rasheed continued, “So how many of these pills you got to sell and how much you looking for them?” Keeping it light now, saying it like he was buying baseball cards.
“I’ve got 180,000 tablets coming in, 30,000 packets of six, and I want eight bucks a tablet.”
Rasheed did the math. Then said, “I’ll give you three dollars a packet as long as they work, and they’ll need testing first. That’s it—ninety grand, that’s what they’re worth to me. If you don’t like it, go sell them yourself, but I don’t advise it as you’ll be doing it for the next ten years trying. And you’ll be treading on my toes, which isn’t healthy because I’ll fucking kill you and then maybe after if I fancy it, I’ll kill your family also—just for kicks.
And that’s when Rann felt the rage come from somewhere deep inside his soul, blacking him out as it had so many times before.
******
Chendrill read about Rasheed’s demise the next morning as he’d left Dan’s mother’s house and drove the Ferrari back into town and saw it on the front page of the newspaper he no longer bought or read, but did this time.
‘Local Gang Member Found Dead’
Below it was a picture of Rasheed in a turban, sporting two big knives crossing blades at the front.
An hour later, he called Ditcon at the Vancouver Police Department. It’s not that he wanted to hand a murder on a plate to the one man who liked to step in and take credit for all the other police officers’ work within the homicide section, but enough was enough with this guy who liked to throw things off his balcony. And he’d simply said, “It’s Chendrill, the guy you found dead at the side of the road last night was killed by another Sikh by the name of Rann Singh.”
And after just enough time had passed for Ditcon to write Rann Singh’s name on a piece of paper, Ditcon had said, “We know, we’re already on it.”
Hearing the conceited prick’s tone, Chendrill wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Then he heard Ditcon say, “We’re all over Mr. Singh. Do you have an address?”
“If you’re all over him, why do you need an address?” Chendrill asked as he looked down at the floor and waited for the reply that never came.
Ditcon didn’t have a clue and chances are if he’d have taken the guy there himself this morning, he’d already have let the guy go by now. Ditcon was too stupid to realize a good thing when he got it and was more interested in his own ego than in some gang banging East Indian, so he said, “I’ll take that as a no then.”
To which Ditcon replied, “We’re not at liberty to make any statements at the moment.”
God, the man annoyed him.
No, but you’ll be calling me asking for my information the moment you realize you’ve got nowhere, won’t you, you prick, Chendrill thought as he considered hanging up the phone but instead said, “Now I’ve given you a suspect. When you bring him in, ask him what he does for a living. He’s a blackmailer and when he denies that, check out where he’s just been in Asia and ask him about the drug Sildenafil. It’s the drug that makes your dick hard, but I’m sure you’re already aware of that. See what he says—the guy killed Rasheed—I know it and now so do you.”
And Ditcon replied, “I’m already aware of the Asian trip and the blackmail. Thank you for your information.”
Fuck, ‘I’m already aware.’ The man was an asshole, how was he aware? Had the guy told him? No—Chendrill had right there and then. He’d given Ditcon the case right there on a plate, and true to form, he’d still managed to steal it.
That’s why everyone hated him.
But Rasheed was still dead and Chendrill had only been drinking with him the night before, both of them sitting there, Rasheed in his turban and Chendrill looking like a parrot in a bright red Hawaiian, watching girls ride the bull with their tits bouncing about. But there you go, the man was a gangster not a postman, and gangsters get killed. It came with the territory. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
******
Rann Singh left the storage locker facility and was still trying to work out exactly what had happened as he rode the train back to his apartment out in Surrey. The cops had been nice. They’d asked what happened and all he’d said was they were talking and when he’d looked away, a truck had passed and when he looked back, Rasheed was on the ground and he’d called the ambulance.
“Did you see the licence plate? What type? Color? Make?”
It was busy, he couldn’t remember. But what he really couldn’t remember was whether he’d pushed the gang leader into the truck’s mirror or if Rasheed had stepped back himself. The rage inside him taking over and him blacking out for that split second after he’d been calling him a plastic Indian, calling him a Paki like they used to when he was a kid and then telling him to leave the big guy who wears the shirts be and forget the money because it was just bullshit anyway, and he was going to have to shell out almost all of what he’d make from the Sildenafil he was bringing in.
Why should he? he thought. Let him drive his fucked up Merc with the low tires and smoked out windows down to the airport and stick it in long stay and get on a plane to Thailand, source it all, and risk the death penalty or the rest of your life looking over your shoulder or behind bars sending it back over the border. Then having a Canadian customs guy already there in place—some guy scared of losing his family—and waiting for it on the other side so as he can check it through, giving it the all clear when it hits the post office downtown.
Let him do all that and then give away all the money to some fuckhead who thinks he’s king shit just cause he speaks Punjabi and has a cou
ple of Indian princesses as girlfriends. No, the rage that ran through him was strong. He couldn’t remember if he pushed him or if the guy had stepped back into the truck’s wing mirror that buried itself in his head and crushed his skull.
Chapter Eleven
Samuel Meeken was happy. The local telephone company was keeping the last remaining public phone box going on Denman Street in downtown Vancouver operating at his request, and as long as no one spent the afternoon using it to call their granny, he was going to put on his new cowboy boots and hat and go fishing.
He was in good shape now coming into his fiftieth year. The 500 sit-up and push-up routine he adhered to after each day at the post office was paying off—his stomach tight and chest muscles bulging under the layer of carpeted chest hair that he liked to comb before bed each night.
Samuel Meeken wasn’t straight, he wasn’t gay, he wasn’t Bi, he wasn’t A, B or even C sexual—he was multi-sexual, and that’s what he’d say when he was asked in the post office canteen.
“I’m multi—I like to have sex with all living things, except children.” And that’s when the other postmen and postwomen stopped talking to him.
And now he was going fishing.
Standing by the window, he pulled back the curtains and stood there dressed just in his cowboy hat, boots, and chest hair, looking down from the 5th floor at the crowds passing the public phone. He dialed its number into his cordless, listened to it ring, and watched, waiting as the river of people passed below, some looking, but most ignoring the public phone’s electronic chime. Seconds passed as maybe a hundred fish came through, then out of the crowd a lady stopped, taking a breather from the weight of the basket of groceries wedged firmly in the trolley she tugged along behind her.
Cautiously the old lady moved towards the phone taking a look, then, pulling her trolley closer, she looked around at the shops and the others passing by paying no attention. Then on instinct like a hungry fish striking a baited hook, she reached out and picked up the phone to hear Samuel Meeken say, “Don’t be frightened.”
The old lady looked around and said, “Sorry?”
Samuel Meeken carried on, “Look up to my window and don’t be frightened.”
The old lady looked up, her eyes not as sharp as her younger self had once been, “I’m sorry?”
“Look at me I’m up here, above you.”
The old lady looked up to the sea of windows above. Then she saw him on the 5th floor and said, “I see you, are you the cowboy?”
“Yes, I’m the cowboy, don’t be frightened, I know you want me.”
And she answered, “What do I want?”
“You want me.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, come up to my apartment.”
“Sorry?”
“We can make love.”
The old lady stood there for the moment as the realization of what the man who was naked in the window above her dressed as a cowboy was saying. But she’d grown up in Calgary, so she knew what cowboys could be like and it wasn’t the first time she’d been hit on by one—even if the last had been in 1964. So, she said, “I’ve just bought some milk. I need to get it into the fridge or it’ll spoil and I’ve got a chicken in the oven.”
And so, it went on throughout the day, Samuel Meeken standing waiting, with his fishing rod in his hand trying to reel in anyone he could—except children. It was about three hours later when the police came.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a police car, and in fact it was usually the best part of the whole fishing trip itself; unless, of course, he actually caught a big one on the line and they were stupid enough to come up.
Now he sat there still in his cowboy hat and boots with a towel wrapped around his waist as the young cop Williams drove him to the station. Samuel called out with his hands cuffed behind him, looking to the sexy cop in the front seat ignoring the whole thing as though it was just another day in the park, which was exactly where Samuel, sitting there with his erection playing tents with the towel, wanted Williams to take him.
******
Marsha was equally excited, and having just received $20,000 for doing nothing but pout, was about to leave the sound stage in L.A. when she got the call from her agent Gill Banton who was having a barbecue at her home in Venice Beach and wondered if she would like to come. Not sure what to do, she said, “Totally.” To which Gill replied, “Is that a yes or a no?”
“Oh totally, I was just going to meet this guy I met at the shoot, he’s from Guatemala.”
“What does he do?”
“Things”
“Which things?”
“Things with the lights, cables, you know.”
Gill did, the guy was a lighting guy and she said back down the phone, “That’s great, come here, but don’t bring the Guatemalan—besides I thought you were still in love with this Dan guy?”
She was, they’d met in Vancouver after she’d gone there for a shoot just so she could do just that, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Now she’d told the world press they were in love. It was quite a mess. Then Gill said, “There’ll be someone here for you to meet. He wants to do a shoot with you, he’ll pay well—but you’ll need to meet him first.”
And when she arrived, she met Patrick.
Patrick stood by the pool in his new linen shirt, trousers, and haircut, smiling at all the people around him. He was here now in amongst the beautiful people, the door well and truly opened for him by Sebastian and Mazzi Hegan—who for the moment were on fire—and he’d stepped right in.
Real estate was old news and celebrity management was the way forward he’d decided. The only way to get anywhere in his eyes was to start at the top and Marsha was just that.
He’d been out for the day shopping with Dee. She was weird in the way she dressed—purple boots and leggings with bright red hair—but she was cute for a woman of 40 and somehow, they got along. Gone were the cashmeres and in came the style—silks and cottons and trousers, alligator skin shoes and shirts that fell together with strange ties which he was sure would never work but they did and for just under $30,000 and a quick donation trip with his old loafers and shirts to the local realtor college, he was set—plus her fee of course.
And now he had Marsha in his sights, coming through the door with her little chubby assistant following behind making her look all the more skinny than she was, and gliding up to him she said, “I’m looking for Gill, she lives here.”
The reality was that she hadn’t seen her in such a long time she’d forgotten what she looked like. Patrick said, “Gill, your agent?”
“Ya, she lives here.”
Patrick stared at this woman who was possibly as beautiful as his old girlfriend whom he used to let play with him and said, “I’m Patrick.”
Marsha looked back at him, taking herself away from the rest of the crowd who were discretely looking at her and held out her hand, in the limp fashion people do when they don’t really want to touch and said, “Marshaa.”
Patrick took her hand and said, “Marshaar?”
And Marsha nodded saying, “That’s right, with an A, Marshaa. Like Marshal, but without the Le.”
‘Le’ as in the ‘Le’ when you first learn the alphabet in kindergarten—Fuck this woman was dumb, he thought, incredibly beautiful, incredibly rich, and incredibly dumb. This new line of work he was interested in was going to be easy. Then he said, “I’m from Vancouver. I hear you were just up there on a shoot.” Marsha nodded and closed her eyes giving her answer more impact.
“Yeah,” then she was silent for a second and opening her eyes, asked, “Do you know Dan?”
Patrick didn’t, but he knew who she meant. He, like most of Vancouver, had seen the posters of him and the odd one of her licking the sweat off his chest. So he said, “Hey yeah Dan, great guy. We were just out.”
And she asked, “Did he say anything about me?”
And Patrick carried on, “Of course, he’s all for you. Says he c
an’t wait to meet up again. We were talking about management and letting me take the stress off things—you know, letting you be who you are, and letting him be the guy he is. Let the agents fight it out and let the guys like me keep the wolves at bay.”
“Yeah right, keep the wolves in the forest, yeah.”
Then he said, “You want me to get him to call?”
And Marsha, the girl voted the sexiest woman in the world, who had just decided to change the pronunciation of her name, looked at him and, like a little girl blushing in the school yard, bit her lip and nodding her head said, “Yes.”
Then he saw Gill coming towards him, her sling-backed $2,000 shoes clicking below her long legs flowing free in a sheer red skirt. Reaching them she smiled and said, “Oh—great, so the two of you have already met.”
And Marsha replied, “Hi, I’m Marshaa. I’m looking for Gill.”
Gill stared at her for a moment and as the moment passed, realized the girl wasn’t kidding. She said, “Marsha, I’m Gill, love.”
Fuck me, Patrick thought, this is going to be easy.
Chapter Twelve
Dan sat in his room staring at two hugely intricate electronic circuit maps side by side and listened to Chendrill talking with his mother in her bedroom, his big voice booming through the ceiling. They’d just been at it again, the two of them, and now even Chendrill had started to groan.
