Rock Solid

by Paul Slatter

  “You said they were done by a Swedish guy. A syintist and he put extra stuff in to make you happy, they better be them ones, right.”

  “Yeah they are,” Rann said, “same Swedish guy. Came from Auckland, used to play rugby for the all-blacks.”

  “You said he was a white guy.”

  Fuck me.

  Sitting down, Archall took a deep breath and felt the stiffness in his pants as he sucked air through the gap in his teeth. Pulling out his phone, he opened the calculator function, started doing math, and said, “You got 30,000 packets with six tabs in each at five dollars a tablet, less the tenth commission fee we spoke about, so that is, that is, that is—let’s say four dollars and seventy-five a tab and there’s six in the pack that makes it, eight hundred and fifty-five say thousand dollars for your box.”

  “And your tooth,” Rann said.

  “Yeah, that’s a given.”

  Then out of nowhere, Rann said, knowing full well he was never going to see the prick again, “Why don’t you give me 50% upfront now for the next batch so as you can buy exclusivity with me and when the next batch comes through, as I know I’ve got a buyer and don’t need to go through any bullshit, then you can have them for 30% less including your tenth commission.”

  Archall Diamond weighed it up. He’d got the fractional ‘-ths’s all worked out—that was easy, but percentages were still an issue, and 30% less sounded like he was on the losing side. And as straight as this plastic Punjabi turban-less cocksucker seemed now, there had to be an angle, and top of it all, he didn’t know what exclusivity meant. Either way, even if the stuff here cost him $800,000 at $4.75 a pop, then he was going to double that and sell them at $24.00 and get back about three million. So, he said, “You can forget the 30% less shit and the exclusivity clause because from now on, you’se only gonna be dealing with the Diamond. And when the Diamond gives upfront money, the Diamond’s gonna be cashing his money off coupons, so next time round you’se not getting the five dollars a tab less the tenth. You’se getting five dollars less a twentieth ’cos for that kind of deal Rasheed took a third straight off the top. But he ain’t here and it’s me your dealing with and you looking at taking a hit on the ‘-ths’s. If you don’t like it, you can go cry me a river—tremble and shiver ’cos Archall Diamond’s in charge now.”

  Math still wasn’t Archall Diamond’s strong point.

  Rann’s Sikh god Guru Nanak was definitely looking out for him.

  ******

  Settling on a simple extra three hundred thousand upfront for the next batch of pills, Archall Diamond would never see Rann Singh again. Rann stood on his balcony, one million one hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars richer.

  Writing ‘keep on smiling’ on the front of a sealed envelope and hoping it would get stuck in a tree, Rann dropped Archall Diamond’s front tooth over the edge to him and his two goons, who were just as stupid as Archall was—if not more. Then carrying the cash in a blue sports bag, a small amount of clothes, and his Kenyan passport, Rann came out the front door and, with his head feeling like a boiled egg, jumped into a taxi, hit the first international bank with a branch in Nairobi, bought seven banker’s drafts to the tune of one hundred grand each, and carried on to the airport where he proudly bought a business class seat all the way to Nairobi via Munich. At nine thirty in the evening, just as he was about to board the plane, he kept his promise to Nina and called Charles Chuck Chendrill, “Here superstar detective,” he said, “if you’re on the beach at English Bay waiting for the fireworks to happen, then you will’ve probably heard, there’s supposed to be some skydiving lunatic going to come flying in and swoop the crowd, but I can tell you, save your neck for later, ’cos the guy’s name is...”

  “Paawan,” Chendrill said for him, “I know, we’re supposed to meet.”

  And without a breath, Rann carried on, “Well Paawan won’t be coming ’cos he’s dead. A man named Archall Diamond killed him—lives at Rasheed’s place now—he floated him as he likes to call it. Put him in a truck inner tube, weighted him down, and kicked him off the pier as the tide was turning down there in that part of Surrey where the people live and pretend they from another district. Let him float out to sea. Archall Diamond did it because Paawan was fucking his sweet girl.”

  “And how do you know this?” asked Chendrill.

  “’Cos Diamond told me, and so did his girl Nina, but she ain’t gonna be around to say otherwise. She’s leaving, same as me, as Diamond just bought all those tablets you pretended you had and the guy’s no good at math, so I’m out of your hair. If you don’t believe me, see if he shows tonight. See if the man flies in like he’s supposed to and when he does, buy him a beer from me. But if he don’t, then you’ll know where he is and apparently he weren’t a good swimmer.”

  Then taking him by surprise, Chendrill said, “You know that postman’s still in a coma, don’t you?”

  And Rann said, “Well he shouldn’t answer the door wearing nothing but a hat, then should he?”

  And with that, Rann Singh, the blackmailing Swahili-speaking Sikh with a ten dan black belt in karate and a blackout temper, was out of Chendrill’s life for good.

  ******

  Chendrill sat in the executive box up above the sands of English Bay, no longer looking to the sky. He put his phone back into his pocket. Leaning over, he said to Sebastian the same words Rann had just spoken, as deep down he knew they were true.

  “Save your neck—he’s not coming.”

  Rasheed had been looking out for the man over a week ago when they’d met the night before he’d died—maybe at the hands of his kung fu friend who outside the restaurant he remembered had given him the hardest kick to the throat he’d ever felt.

  “How do you know, Chuck?” asked Sebastian, who’d only walked a couple of blocks to get to the bay and now sat in his section with an empty row of chairs and a view of the fireworks far worse than he had from his living room, with its luxurious penthouse view out across the bay. Patrick had called with some bullshit excuse, he’d thought. Dan hadn’t called, but he wasn’t expecting he would and Mazzi, he knew, liked to be with the people on the sand. But Chuck was there for him, there with his new girl holding her hand, hoping Sebastian wouldn’t see, but he had and it was wonderful. Turning as he heard Chuck say to him, “Maybe I could be wrong though, so keep an eye open—but I doubt it.”

  Then he sat there and without thinking, he squeezed Tricia’s hand for a moment. Looking at him, she said, “What’s the matter?”

  Chendrill shook his head, but deep down he wished he was a cop again. Intelligence like that used to come to him all the time when he was and it was simple enough after a while to sort the seed from the chaff, and this wasn’t the latter. He said, “Just work.” Or that’s what it used to be, but now he was an overpaid babysitter who scared off blackmailers and tracked down the odd pimp cum psychopath in his spare time—but that one had been for Daltrey.

  Slowly, the sun began to set and Paawan hadn’t shown as he’d wanted to, coming in from the heavens as he spiralled down, leaving his trail of smoke high in the sky from the canister strapped to his ankle and letting his chute go at the last minute to drift down to the applause of hundreds of thousands on the beach.

  He’d been planning it for months, Rasheed had said, letting everyone he could know it was a secret, telling all and sundry to keep it on the low down, knowing before long, everyone would know his name and would be waiting. But as the crowd waited for the man to fall from the sky, he didn’t show, just as Rann Singh had said.

  The first tester rocket ripped up from the barge as twilight set the stage for a million people to sit in awe. It was in amongst all these people that Sebastian felt more alone than he ever had. Standing, he placed his hand upon Chendrill’s shoulder, made his excuses, and thought of Patrick as he made his way against the flow of latecomers hopeful of finding a place to stand or sit and watch in silence as the night sky filled with its spectacle of color and light. The guy
had come into his company looking for a makeover and turned the place upside down. It was quite funny really, even if he was getting himself on the hook for millions, but what the heck, he could make a hundred and still be comfortable—and he’d never made a movie, so it would pass the time.

  He’d let everyone have some fun and watch the chaos, he thought, then bring in a heavy hitter producer he knew to straighten out the nonsense, pay for the thing himself, and keep final edit so nothing bad could tarnish his and Slave’s already good name. It would be fun watching Patrick bullshit his way through it all and as long as Adalia Seychan behaved herself and the script was fine, which it would be in the end, all would be good.

  He carried on up the street, weaving through the crowd and the youth—some already drunk on cheap booze—Fluffy was home alone, he thought, and would be all afraid—the duvet placed against the window hung with safety pins from the curtain rail of his bedroom doing little to dampen the explosions that would terrify the poor dog’s mind. And as he opened the bedroom door, he reached down and held little Fluffy in his arms and stood looking from the living room window high above the city in his penthouse suite out across the bay at the night sky as the fireworks started racing and swirling high into the heavens, the thoughts came of Alan, who he missed so dearly. As the tears came, sending small streams of sadness and joy running down his soft skin, he held Fluffy tight to his chest as he had held Alan years before down there in amongst the crowds, when it was just the two of them in amongst a million other souls who all cared about nothing else for that moment bar an explosive sky.

  Chendrill sat there alone with Dan’s mother, the sole occupants of a ten-thousand-dollar box courtesy of Sebastian, and watched the sparkles rain down from the heavens. Tricia lay in his arms, her head resting softly on his chest as he leaned back in the chair, watching the red and gold, pink and blue sky that matched one of her boyfriend’s shirts, thinking she was in love now as Chendrill watched the crowd thinking that somewhere out there amongst them all, Archall Diamond would be sitting there too—and he wanted to speak to him.

  And he was right, only Archall wasn’t sitting, he was laying, upside down, back to front with the crowd, with his head down in a hole in the sand and his face twisted up towards the sea like a patient in a dentist’s chair, trying to stay still long enough for gravity to hold his tooth in place, so as it could grow back in.

  He’d done his work for the day, bought the other batch of hard-on pills the flash Paki with the now bald head had hanging around. He’d handed them out to his dealers and anyone else who’d take them for free—just at first, of course, let them circulate for a bit. Keeping his tooth in with his tongue as he spoke, he’d told them as he distributed the tablets, “They were made in Scindinavian by a rugby syintist who’s a black guy and cool ’cos I know him, lives in Auckland in Sweden, is a professor at a university there.’

  And they work he’d said, “I’se had a boner all day and your dick gets so hard you can’t believe the tricks you can do with it.”

  ******

  The next morning, like a dog looking for an old bone it had buried, Chendrill drove away from his apartment, dropped Tricia off at her home, and checked on Dan, who hadn’t moved from the same spot, it seemed, he’d seen him in the evening before. He drove out of town and ripped the Aston Martin along the highway, heading east towards Surrey.

  He reached the monster home painted bright pink that used to be Rasheed’s, looked at the two terracotta lions that guarded the entranceway, and walked through, taking a peek in the garage as he did. Then the front door opened and he heard Archall Diamond say, “You looking for Rasheed? Well he’s not here because he’s dead.”

  Chendrill looked at the guy, standing there in his track suit and running shoes, but with a fat gut. He said, “Who gave you the fat lip?”

  And Archall said again, “Rasheed ain’t here, he died.”

  Chendrill stared at the man looking back at him touching around his front tooth with his tongue. He said, “You got any of them pills that make your dick grow?” And watched as Archall Diamond shook his head.

  Then heard him say, “No, but I like your shirt.”

  Chendrill nodded appreciating the compliment and thinking the man did have taste after all. Then he said, “Thanks, you ever heard of a guy by the name of Paawan?” And watched as Archall Diamond opened his mouth and took a deep breath, showing his front tooth with a diamond in it, his tongue pushing hard up against its bottom.

  “Who’s looking?” And Chendrill offered out his hand.

  “Chuck Chendrill, private investigator. We met before at the bar, just before Rasheed passed on but for some reason you kept to yourself.”

  As Archall nodded, trying to look cool, closing his mouth and turning his head from side to side, he said, “Yeah, it’s the way I operate. You looking for Paawan? I don’t know, he was a friend of Rasheed’s, nothing to do with me.”

  “Was? Like he’s dead?” Chendrill said straight back, knowing the man had already fucked up putting the skydiver in the past tense.

  And Archall Diamond quickly came back, “No I mean he was Rasheed’s friend and Rasheed’s dead, that’s what I meant.”

  “He’s still alive then?”

  And Archall shrugged, saying. “Could be, could be alive, but you know he liked to try to fly and you can’t say one way or the other with those kind of people. When you walking, sometimes you see birds all squashed on the ground, feathers all over the place and shit. You know those people, they ain’t easy to insure.”

  “Neither are gangsters,” Chendrill said.

  And Archall came straight back at him, “Yeah but gangsters don’t need insurance because they rich.”

  “Till they fuck up and go to jail or die like Rasheed. Who killed him?”

  “You looking for Paawan or you looking for what happened to Rasheed? If it’s Rasheed, go ask the cops, they looking into that one. As for the prick who thinks he can fly, go ask someone who gives a shit.”

  Then, throwing it out there, Chendrill said, “I heard you took Paawan crabbing only it was him you used as bait.”

  And watched as Archall Diamond opened his mouth again and pushed up on his diamond studded front tooth. Then he said, “Well only fools listen to bullshit.”

  And only fools kept inner tubes, concrete breeze blocks, and chains in their garage after they’d used the same apparatus to drown someone, Chendrill thought as he said his thanks and left.

  He reached the Aston, climbed in, and was about to leave when Archall Diamond appeared at his window and, pushing his front tooth up with his tongue as he spoke, asked, “So, you gonna let me know who’s been going around saying I been killing people then?”

  And putting the car into gear, Chendrill looked at him and said as he began to pull away, “You.”

  ******

  So Rann Singh was right, Chendrill thought, as he cruised away from the house looking to Archall Diamond getting smaller in his rear-view mirror, standing there with his finger in his mouth, he’d dig deeper, get to the bottom of it, then wait till he hit the downtown core and have Williams make the arrest.

  And what was the deal with the guy trying to talk with either his finger in his mouth or his tongue sticking out?

  ******

  Archall Diamond stood watching as the guy in the cool shirt and the Aston Martin disappeared up the road and turned the corner, and thought, fuck him what did he know? The guy coming here uninvited, getting smooth with him. He had nothing, had fuck all, wasn’t even a real cop, then he said out loud, “Go look for the fucker in the ocean if you’re that worried about him and take some scuba gear with you—it’s a big place—you big fucking ape.”

  He took a deep breath and calmed himself down. Yeah, he thought, it’s a big place and even he couldn’t tell how far the riptide had taken him before the man dropped under—after all, there’s no way he could have swam out, not after having the car squash him down like it had. “So, fuck him,” he said
again out loud and put his finger on the bottom of his diamond centered front tooth, pushing it hard back up into his gum. Fuck it was getting sore. That plastic prick wannabe Punjabi Rann doing his kung fu shit on him like that when all he was there for was to do a deal. Next time he saw him, he’d float him for what he did with his foot. Yeah, he’d float him—float the fucker like he had with Paawan ’cos he kicked his tooth out—that’s what he’d do. But what about the tablets? he thought, as he walked up the steps to the big door of the house. He needed the fucker for the tablets, and the tablets made him feel good. Then he got it and smiled as he worked it out in his mind. All he’d need to do was go to Sweden himself like the plastic Punjabi had, find the guy at the university there, it shouldn’t be hard, how many black guys were science professors in Auckland? It’d be easy—everyone was blonde over there anyway. That’s what he’d do, go there, sort it out, cut out the middle man, come back, wack a few tabs back, and break open the cocoa pops. And that, he thought, as he reached the kitchen with a big grin on his face, was exactly what he was going to do right now.

  ******

  Chendrill hit the highway and wondered how Dennis, the dentist with the beautiful wife, was doing and felt a tinge of guilt inside as he passed by the turnoff from the highway to where the man had lived. Was he still in the basement and was the high-end whore who could no longer walk sucking his dick now? He hoped so, he thought, hoped she’d seen the light and settled down with the good man, which Dennis no doubt was. But could the man stay with her knowing she was only there because she’d been hobbled? Truth was he probably could, and for as long as she was with him, hobbled or not, he would love her, cherish every moment they were together and hope that she would not ever leave him again.

  Two hours later and with the family size packet of cocoa pops now empty, Archall Diamond was done, spent, exhausted, his dick so sore from propelling cereal into the air from its tip he could hardly move. This problem with his tooth though was becoming an issue. Three times he’d lost it under the fridge and it was obvious the thing wasn’t growing back like it was supposed to, at least not in any hurry—so still naked and with the air of resignation falling upon him, he picked up his phone with its diamond studded case and called the new driver, Steven, who he’d replaced himself with, and said, “Listen, I need you to find me an underground dentist.”