Black Ice

by Leah Giarratano

  Most often she would pause here on her way out to check her reflection in the mirror. Today, the mirror was obscured by a profusion of colour: old-fashioned roses, two dozen of them, many of the assorted-colour blooms the size of grapefruit. She'd never have found a container big enough to hold the display, but this had caused her no consternation as they'd been delivered in a heavy, lead-crystal vase.

  Christian, of course. She stepped around the corner into her study, adjacent to the entry hall, and picked up the card he'd attached from the wastepaper basket. She read it. Smiled.

  As she left her apartment, Cassie tossed Christian's card onto the hall table, where it skidded to a stop against the exquisite crystal vase.

  ***

  Cassie had no patience for the personal trainer the gym had recommended. Really, the little bitch tried to kill her on just the first machine! Instead, she watched people moving around the circuit, waited until they had finished, and hopped on each machine to have a go. A few reps was enough for each one. No point in being excessive in life.

  On the pec deck she began to feel impatient, an internal itch she'd noticed arising around this time every day for the past four days.

  Like something was wrong; missing. Something just beyond the corner of her awareness that she'd forgotten to do, that was troubling her, annoying her. She felt a sudden viciousness towards the chubby man working out on the machine next to her. His sweat was ugly and his tee-shirt horrid. Why did he bother?

  She got off the lat machine and walked to the wall of windows overlooking the city. The clock on the wall told her it was three pm. On a Friday.

  She stared down into the buildings that encircled the tower housing this gym, her eyes searching, seeking. They stopped. And something clicked. Cassie gazed, mesmerised, into the cityscape-oriented bar in the building next door, watching the beautiful people – her people – toast the end of the working week. Cocktails and business suits, straps and heels, cigarettes and champagne, lime and laughter, music, vodka, lip-gloss, tequila, flirting, texts, friends, pills, blow in the bathroom. She peered into her world like a newly ex-smoker watching someone light up. With lust, hunger, drive.

  Cassie suddenly recovered her self-possession and stood straight again, turning away from the window. She moved towards the bathrooms.

  Her handprint faded from the glass as she walked away.

  She decided to take a shower here rather than wait to have one at home.

  She picked up a towel from a pimply child at the desk and walked into the women's bathroom. In the communal dressing room, she stripped, used to being naked around a roomful of women. Two friends wrapped in towels stopped speaking for a few beats and then started again, their conversation more stilted, distracted, than before.

  Cassie barely saw them. She threw her jacket and bag into a locker and took the key. She stalked naked into the shower, wrapping her long, honeyed hair into a knot on the way.

  On her way out of the gym, newly made-up, hair sleek and shining, Cassie felt better than she had in ages. She thought perhaps she should just stop in at the shops and pick up something for dinner. From the window in the gym, she had spotted a grocery store in the complex next door.

  Within moments of stepping into the gleaming granite building, Cassie was hailed by a girlfriend she had not seen in weeks. What was her name again? That's right, Adele Taha. She couldn't refuse a catch-up. It was Friday, after all; she'd really no excuse.

  19

  Friday 5 April, 3 pm

  'Hey, Jelly,' said Jill.

  Jelly watched the kids at the skate ramp, shuffling from foot to foot, waiting for his turn. Somehow he'd got his hands on another skateboard. Someone would have relieved him of this one by the end of the day, Jill was sure of it.

  'Krystal!' he said. 'Got anything to eat?'

  'No, but I'm hungry too, Jelly,' she told him. 'Let's go get some food.'

  No point in asking Jelly where he wanted to go. Jill walked past an Asian food store – offering sticky, red duck; spicy satay noodles; steaming pork buns – past the Turkish takeaway, the windows full of fat pide stuffed with fetta cheese, spinach, nuts – and straight into McDonald's. At the counter, she ordered their usual.

  'Pay you back next time, Krystal,' said Jelly, half his Big Mac gone in a bite. 'Kasem's coming to see me today.'

  Jelly always had cash when Kasem left.

  'Yeah?' said Jill.

  'Yeah, silly. I told you the other day. You said you'd come meet him.'

  'Oh, yeah,' said Jill. 'I forgot.'

  'Well, you'd better not forget again, Krystal, 'cause Kasem said he wanted to meet you.'

  'Where are you meeting him?' she asked.

  'Orbit. Same as always,' said Jelly.

  An hour later, Jill walked with Jelly into the dim den of Orbit, a computer gaming and snooker venue. She saw an unmarked detective's car across the road. She knew it had nothing to do with her; Orbit was always being staked out. The cops knew that countless drug deals took place in its shadowy interior every day. But cracking down with the cooperation from the management was out. The place was owned by Triad gangsters who dropped by from time to time in Bentleys and Mercedes to play a round or two of mah-jongg out the back.

  Jelly jogged over to a pool table, holding his skateboard under his arm.

  'Kasem!'

  'Brother.'

  Jill saw Jelly pulled into a brief embrace by a tall, swarthy male in a black jumper and dark denim jeans. As the man pulled away from Jelly, she quickly checked him out for other identifying features. Close-cropped black hair, a broad nose that looked as though it had been broken a couple of times and a ten-centimetre vertical scar close to his right eye. His chest was huge, and looked rock-hard from where Jill stood.

  'Who's this?' the man said. Kasem seemed to be giving Jill just as thorough a visual evaluation. She stepped back a smidge.

  'This is Krystal,' said Jelly. 'She's my friend. I told you about her. Say hi to Kasem, Krystal.'

  'Hi, Kasem,' said Jill.

  'This is the kick-arse hoodlum who saved your life the other day, Jelly? She looks too . . . sweet.' Kasem Nader closed the distance between himself and Jill and smiled down at her.

  Although she would have preferred to walk out, or maybe arrest him, Jill smiled back at Nader, blinking her eyes a couple of times for good measure.

  'I wanted to meet you, Krystal,' said Kasem, 'to thank you for helping out my brother, Jelly, here.'

  'No problem,' she said. 'It was fun.'

  Nader smiled. 'Yes, fun,' he said. 'You wouldn't happen to have caught any of their names, would you, Krystal?'

  'Nah. Pussies pissed off pretty quickly.'

  'That's a shame. You're sure, now?'

  'Yep.'

  Jelly wandered off to play his favourite arcade game with a handful of gold coins from Kasem, who watched him leave, smiling.

  'Can you play pool, Krystal?' he asked.

  'You could find out. We could have a bet.'

  'There's a lot I wouldn't mind finding out about you, Krystal,' he said. 'What kind of money were you thinking about?'

  'I've got five bucks left,' she said, pulling the note out of her bra and smacking it down onto the snooker table.

  'Tell you what, Krystal,' he said, picking up the money. 'If you win, I'll double your money. But if I beat you, you come to a party I'm giving out at Merrylands tonight.'

  Jill wasn't certain that she could have won anyway, but of course she threw the game. She was playing pool with Kasem Nader, and losing meant an invitation right into the heart of his world.

  By eight pm, Cassie Jackson considered Adele Taha the best friend she'd ever had. Within ten minutes of running into her, she'd found herself in the very same bar she had spied from the gym. Sitting now, legs crossed, on a tall barstool right by the window, Cassie turned her head to look up at the gym. Not so much because she wanted to see it again – ugh, once was enough – but because she knew that her profile from this angle was killer,
and the boy in the beautiful suit who was buying her drinks would be afforded an even better view.

  Adele sat at the barstool opposite her. Another beautiful boy in a suit by her side. Cassie felt a kick under the table. Adele wanted her attention.

  'Saxon, sweetie,' Cassie purred with a smile to the man at her elbow. She tilted her empty glass backwards and forwards in her fingertips. 'I'm so thirsty.' She watched him walk to the bar with his friend. Saxon. What a ridiculous name. At least she wouldn't forget this one.

  'You wanted to say something, darling?' she said to Adele.

  'Do you have anything on you?' asked Adele in a whisper.

  Damn it. Cassie had been getting ready to ask Adele the same thing.

  'Nothing,' she said. 'My body is my temple.'

  Adele gave a snort of laughter. 'Oh, very good, darling,' she said. 'Well, I know where we can get some.'

  'Some what?'

  'Anything.'

  'Well, what are we doing here, then?' said Cassie. 'Let's go.'

  'What will we do with Blake and Saxon?' asked Adele.

  'I'll give them my number. I'll let Saxon buy me drinks again another night.'

  Cassie zipped up her leather jacket as they waited out the front of the building for their taxi. She didn't see the woman in the BMW driving past whack her husband on the arm when he almost mounted the gutter ogling her.

  'Where are we going?' she asked her friend.

  'To a party,' said Adele.

  'Lovely,' she said. 'Where?'

  'Merrylands,' said Adele, and laughed.

  Cassie gaped at her.

  'Merrylands,' she said finally. 'Can't say I've ever been there, but with a name like that it should be fun.'

  Seren and Marco had his favourite for dinner. Again. Second time in the four days she'd been out. Smooshed-up tacos. Long ago, she'd figured that taco shells cost too much and that no-name corn chips would do just as well. She told Marco that the dish had been invented when a little boy dropped his taco and found it tasted even better all broken. They piled smashed corn chips, minced beef, shredded iceberg lettuce, chopped tomato and grated cheese onto their plates. Seren dolloped some plain yoghurt onto hers and Marco added tomato sauce.

  Marco stirred the mess together and Seren immediately lost her appetite. The sauce looked like blood, and the smells and sounds of the slaughterhouse flared briefly in her kitchen. She pushed her plate away.

  'Hey,' she said, shaking her head, trying to disperse the memory, 'do you remember Angel?'

  'That lady from gaol?'

  'Yeah. My friend. She ate with us a few times when you came to visit.'

  Marco shovelled another forkful into his mouth. He stared at her. His hair was so dark, but he had her huge blue eyes, framed like works of art behind his spectacles.

  'Anyway, she's getting out this weekend,' she continued. 'And guess what?'

  'Nnnnfff?' Marco mumbled through a mouthful of cheese and chips.

  'She got a unit downstairs. In this block. We arranged it while we were in there, so that we could hang out together now.'

  'Okay,' he said. Then, 'Can Jake come over?'

  'Of course. If it's all right with his mum. Does he live far away?'

  'I dunno,' said Marco. 'I'll call him.'

  'After dinner,' she said. Seren leaned back from the table and tried not to stare at her son eating. Things are going to be all right, she promised him silently. Things will be okay. She forced herself not to think about Monday morning and the world outside these walls.

  20

  Friday 5 April, 10 pm

  There was no indication that a meth lab was being run from this place. Jill hadn't expected that to be the case anyway. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but it hadn't been the 1970s, two-storey, double-brick, family home that she walked into with Jelly and Kasem Nader later that evening. From the entryway she could hear male voices within. She peered around Jelly's bulk into a lounge area.

  All around the room sat men around Nader's age, eating plates of food, watching TV and speaking in low voices. Even with the Cobra .45 tucked into a holster above her ankle, her adrenalin was a hot, thin wire coursing under her skin. As far as she could see, she'd be the only female in a room of perhaps ten males.

  She stood near the entryway with Nader. Jelly, obviously comfortable here, immediately moved towards a buffet of food spread out across a table in the lounge room.

  From the outside, the house looked more like she might have imagined for the home of a criminal – a five-foot brick wall surrounded the property and there were bars on every window, but this seemed in keeping with the rest of the homes in the neighbourhood, as far as she could tell. On the inside, Italian-style furniture of the same era as the house blended somewhat uncomfortably with Middle Eastern rugs and paintings. An elaborate hookah pipe sat on a low coffee table; photos of children perched on sideboards and hung on the wall.

  'This is my parents' home,' said Kasem, watching her check the place out. 'They're overseas. I stay here with my brothers sometimes.'

  'So you throw a party while Mummy and Daddy are away?' said Jill. 'Aren't you a little old for that, Kasem?'

  Nader smiled at her, but his eyes stayed flat. Jill resolved to tone down the sarcasm.

  'Well, Krystal,' he said, 'I guess it's less of a party than a gathering of friends. These people here work with me or for me, and I trust them. There will be a few more people joining us, but perhaps I may have misled you a little. I'm not much into big, noisy parties. We'll all be having something to drink and eat tonight, we'll talk a little business, but that's about it. If you're uncomfortable, I can run you home now.'

  'No, it's okay, I guess,' said Jill. 'I just thought there would be more girls here.' She smiled up at her host. Her firearm might extend only six inches, but it held ten rounds, and she reckoned she could make her way out of here any time she liked. 'I'm pretty hungry,' she said. 'And that food looks great.'

  Cassie got out of the cab thinking she should probably have just swallowed her pride and gone and made up with Christian. All he'd really done was to drop her off at the hospital. Of course, he should have stayed with her, made sure she was okay, or at least come and seen her the next day. But he had sent the flowers, and he had left repeated messages. Still, she decided he could wait a little longer for forgiveness.

  But the outside of this house did not look like her kind of party venue. She shot a look at her friend, who shrugged and smiled. She waited as Adele spoke into the intercom unit in the wall.

  'Trust me, girlfriend,' Adele told her. 'You're going to thank me in ten minutes.'

  Now, that did sound promising, Cassie had to admit. The gate buzzed open and she followed Adele up the pathway towards the front door. At least the place smells agreeable, she thought, breathing in the scents of spice and hashish. They waited for the front door to be opened.

  The food was as good as it looked. Jill selected small morsels of tender chicken, which left her lips sticky with lemon, garlic and onion. She dolloped several of the colourful dips onto her plate – white bean; roasted capsicum; cumin-scented hummus – and a spoonful of the creamiest garlic aioli she had ever eaten.