by David Manoa
Tevita Suarvea: Manukau Vice
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David Manoa
SMASHWORDS Edition
Copyright 2014 David Manoa
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The author asserts the moral right to be identified as
the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, information storage and retrieval systems, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the author, with the exception of a book reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
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“Kid, you’re up.” I said to my new rookie partner Jessica Smith. There was something different to her, unlike my previous partner Anna. Holding her file the look on this woman’s face had fearlessness etched all over and a deep-rooted look of vengeance.
Easy on the eye too. I thought.
I pinched my nose to adjust to the scent of perfume she wore. The police locker rooms were like a gym the rancid smell of sweat and old spice. To describe the look of this place is like a morgue with humidity. While she prepared I read over her file. Her results, damn near embarrassed most of the men here. For a woman in a petite frame, she packs a lot of power. Her physicals were off the chart they were almost superhuman. It was odd though, there was no comprehensive info on her psychometrical testing just a pass mark.
“Don’t call me that Rooks! My Name is Jessica.” She said slamming her locker door and shoving her gun into her holster. She walked up to me and I tilted my head down.
“I will call you by your name when you prove yourself.”
“Kid…” I added.
“Rooks, I was top of my class with distinction and merit in all my modules!” She sneered. Jessica stepped towards me and looked up to me face to face. She stood about five feet six inches she had straight, brunette hair, tied into a pony tail. Her body had the muscle tone of a fitness model. Ruby red lips.
“Well, here in the real world that doesn’t mean shit.” I said succinctly. I put on my vest and loaded the 9mm ammunition in my Beretta when I hit back at her. “Kid, Things are going to get dangerous out there and it’s going to be raining bullets when we take these motherfuckers down. I need you as my eyes and ears.”
“Hell no. I’m not going to end up as tactical support like your last partner. They assigned me to be your partner for active duty!” Jessica was so adamant she had her hands on her hips, her face boiling with anger, the muscles in her arms tensed up.
“She’s right Rooks,” A familiar voice alerted me when I turned my head.
“Anna? What the hell are you doing here?” I said.
“Gosh, you’re still the same. Still trying to be a one-man band.” Anna said while she shook her head. After the events at the Hive, she was transferred into the military operational side with my brother. All of it classified. A whole lot of bullshit.
“What brings you here?” I said.
“Rooks the operation I’m on, crosses over with the undercover sting you and Jessica are about to engage in. I will need to brief you both. Meet me in the briefing room in five minutes. In my mind, to get Intel this late always had ramifications on our operation. I hope it was information that would make things easier. Jessica nudged me when she walked past, turning her head to the direction of the briefing room when she whispered, “I told you so.”
I arrived a bit later, to the displeasure of Anna, who glanced at her watch when I sat next to Jessica. I noticed that she had deep scars on her wrists and when she caught me staring, she folded her arms to cover.
“Rooks for god’s sake pay attention!” Anna said.
“Sorry.”
She brought up the images of the men we were trying to apprehend – One of them was Brody. I watched when she used a laser pointer to highlight his image, the red dot on his head. It was frustrating to let him go at the time.
“After you took down the major distribution channel for the heroin that was being imported, it severely dented their operation. But with Brody unaccounted for and reports of the heroin still readily available on the streets we isolated another distribution source in the Manukau area.”
Anna brought up the image of the key target – Jasper Kayne, a gang leader who frequents the illegal street racing scene in the industrial area of Manukau. The guy we are after. He was one ugly rooster with a tattoo of a bulldog on his right cheek and of stocky build. The file on him had numerous offences which were pardoned, a corrupt legacy of my ex-police chief Jeremy Renner.
“We know all this. What’s the intel you have?” I said.
“Rooks you impatient bastard I will get to it shortly.” Anna said annoyed at my attempt to rush her. I heard Jessica snickering beside me – I was not amused.
Anna flicked the slide over to the disturbing images of the heroin addicts that stirred my memory. They had flesh rotting on their main limbs from the inside out, the decay so bad you could see the exposed muscle and bone they looked like the living dead.
“They look like zombies.” I said.
“Rooks, the info I’m about to disclose is classified. But you need to know that Jasper is behind something more sinister.”
I turned to Jessica to see her wincing at the disturbing images.
“Rooks, when you exposed the chief and stopped their operation you changed the whole game. The prices for heroin rocketed so much that the dealers were cutting smaller amounts and using bulking agents to stretch the supply. This in turn created a type of heroin called Krokodil.”
I knew there would still be a significant amount of heroin out there in distribution. The bulking agents they used created toxic variant’s which lead to that zombie-like symptoms in the images brought back memories. I came across Krokodil in the special forces when I was posted in Prague in the pursuit of a terrorist. To see the addicts decaying on the side of the street. It sickened me to even see ten year old kids wasting away. My jaw clenched at the images if this ran rife in our city. Fuck that.
“So stopping one evil created another.” Jessica said noting the info in her tablet. Anna nodded when I stroked my chin to evaluate the situation.
“Rooks, Jasper must have numerous labs cooking up the Krokodil that he’s distributing in the Manukau area. It would make sense to find the labs rather than taking Jasper down. I need you and Jessica to continue your undercover operation to expose them.”
“Understood Anna, we gotta go. We will relay anything that comes to hand.”
“Be careful out there.”
Anna got up and left while I zoned out for a few minutes. In my mind, I would get spotted a mile away since the illegal street racing scene is a young person’s game. I turned to Jessica. Who was busy tying her hair back.
“Kid, I need you out there to infiltrate, I will be out of place and too obvious.”
“I can see that old man!”
“I’m not old, just out of place.”
Jessica said nothing and raised an eyebrow.
“How old do you think I look kid?” I asked.
She tilted her head to the right and pursed her lips. Then she stepped closer to scrutinize me. Looking up and down, then to the side. She paused and then gave a cheeky glance to my arse.
As if you could tell my age from that, I thought.
“Umm…”
“Well, how old kid?”
“Your height and the condition of your muscles do make you look young. Hard to tell since you have caramel coloured skin that hides all the wrinkles.”
“Where?” I said. Touching my face.
Jessica paused then smirked not quite finished with her deductions.
“You wear a t-shirt that is obviously o
ne size too small and the amount times you swear makes me think you’re in your late twenties. But the dead giveaway is your strong jawline, and the two day old unshaven face not to mention the stray gray hairs on your head that put you at forty.”
“Fuck you, I’m not forty!” I baulked.
Jessica laughed, and I focused back on the job.
“Are you up for this? Cause I need you out there.”
“Rooks, this is what makes life, worth living for,” she said.
***
The bottom parking lot of the Hive was littered with police cars. It made me think if there was a reason why so many officers should be here and not out on patrol. It turns out there was training for an exchange programme with the police in Mumbai, India. The reforms we went through made them adopt the same platform. Consolidation. More money for the government.
There was still the rubber skid marks and potholes at the entrance when I drove into the front entrance the last time. Jessica walked over to the passenger side of the car when I threw her the key.
“Kid, you drive. We need to head to the impound lot first.”
“Why?”
“These unmarked cars will give us away it will be too obvious.” I said.
I threw my gear into the unmarked police car. It was a late model Black VF Holden V6 3.8 litre. The last of the police cars that were allocated before the manufacturer ceased production. I cringed at the four-cylinder hybrid electric eco-cars they had in the pipeline, I could probably catch more criminals in my bicycle then in those pieces of shit.
We drove for about three kilometers when we arrived at the impound lot to see a plethora of seized vehicle’s. A lot of them were modified or unsafe cars that were confiscated from the introduction of the boy racer laws. That allowed the police to seize them for a period of thirty days or if the offense was serious the power to completely crush the car.
That was fun, although I would have preferred to have the car in the gun range so I could shoot the shit out of it. “C’mon kid, hurry up and pick one.” I said being very conscious of the time.
Jessica dismissed my comment and inspected every vehicle mentioning the modifications to the cars. She settled on a Blue Nissan R34 Skyline GT-R, which was highly modified. I zoned out when she mentioned the upgraded Turbos, external wastegates, adjustable boost controllers, etc. It was all babble and bullshit to me. The car was bloody uncomfortable too with its race seats. I wanted to rip it out so I could sit in the back.
Jessica started up the car, the exhaust note was deep and aggressive she gave it a few revs and I could hear a peculiar sound. She raised her eyebrows at me from each one.
“You hear that Rooks? That’s power.”
“Why is the car making a sneezing noise every time?” I said
Jessica turned to me briefly rolling her eyes when she put the car in gear as we moved out of the impound lot.
“Rooks, you really don’t know anything about cars do you?”
“Apart from the make and model of the vehicle - No.”
“Well, here’s your first lesson old man.”
Before I could say anything more, she dropped the clutch and floored the damn thing making me fallback into the seat with whiplash.
“Slow down kid!” I said gripping hard on the seat belt. I leaned over to my right and looked at the Speedo, it showed us doing around 160km on the motorway.
My ears were aching hearing the sound of the intake suck in the air and the whirring sound of the turbo’s spooling, there was this jet sound every time the revs would hit over 6000 rpm. Each time she would change gear it would plant me back into the seat. I damn near went deaf and almost a quadriplegic being a passenger.
I could see why she was top of her class in the driving module in the academy. We were passing cars like they were standing still. The centre lights became a solid line from the speed we were doing. I stared at Jessica, who seemed to be in control, focused.
“Rooks don’t be a pussy we have to get to the industrial area where they gather before they all disperse. Anyways you’re the one who said to hurry.” I glanced at my watch, to confirm, it’s ten minutes before midnight.
I took out my smartphone to confirm the image of the person we were to identify and follow. Jasper Kanye wouldn’t be hard to find, the tattoo being the dead ringer. It was so faded it was hard to make it out if the tattoo was a bulldog. To me it appeared he had a black dick on his cheek.
“Kid, where did you learn to drive like that?”
“I had a life before all this Rooks.”
“Did you frequent the illegal drags back when you were young?”
No response.
“Did you steal cars?”
“Of course not, I wouldn’t be a cop would I?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“Fuck you, Rooks.”
We arrived at the industrial area of Manukau, on Roscommon Rd. My Watch had at me 23:55. The place was packed with modified cars all parked up on both sides of the street, and on the grass verge in the middle. It was a four-lane road separated by a grass verge two lanes each side. Shit there must have been at least 200 cars. I would have had a field day here with my quota.
There were groups of people congregating on each side, like any car scene there were bonnets open and people chatting away and drunk dickheads trying to start shit. Up ahead there was a set of traffic lights up ahead where cars were racing. There was a boy in a black hoodie who pressed the pedestrian button to control the lights before the cars raced. There seemed to be some queue for cars to race. Jessica pulled up to the side and we reversed back in line with the other cars on the verge.
We were next to an old school Cadillac, which had hydraulic suspension. The guy in thought he impressed Jessica with it’s up and down and side to side movements.
She started laughing when the guy was trying to be staunch.
What a dickhead. I thought.
“Rooks, where here. Those traffic lights up ahead are where the big boys play. They race for either slips or cash.”
“Slips?” I said not being in twine with the car culture.
“Pink slips, Car ownership papers its a lucrative business.” She said.
“Ok, Rooks what now?”
“Let’s find this motherfucker ...”
Street racing was always a problem, but the police turned a blind eye to the industrial places out in Manukau, I read reports of them cracking down in this area but it forced them to disperse to other areas. Places that were populated, places probably where my local MP could not bear to have a racket and anti-social behaviour. Better to leave the devil in places you know then ones that you don’t.
There was a thick cloud of white smoke when we walked passed a car doing a burnout in the middle of the street with rubber debris flying into the air. It was doing a full 360 with the driver yoohooing holding his beer can out the driver window.
I was trying to have some restraint but it was frustrating. I would have loved to book the guy for being stupid, I would have been happy to press the button to crush his car.
Jessica moved up coughing from the inhalation of the smoke when she pointed, her vision averting to the group of men preparing to race.
“There he is, getting into the car, to race the White Mitsubishi Evolution 6.”
I squinted to see Jasper in the vehicle opposite a Red Mazda RX7 it sounded like a damn lawnmower, with its exhaust spitting out flames. There were three guys behind him counting the cash as they placed their bets, no sign of Brody. But I noticed they were carrying weapons. There was a bulge in the shape of a gun behind their backs. We went back to the car so I could equip the extra gear of cash and my weapons.
“Kid, this is what we are going to do. Give me the keys, and I’ll drive over to race him after they are done. I have about a grand to put down, It will get me close enough where I can place my smartphone in his car to track him.”
Jessica paused to process when she hit back at me.
�
�Rooks, send me in. You would get found out the moment you open your mouth.”
“Kid it’s too dangerous, I will handle this!”
“These guys will scrutinize the cars before racing, it’s a way of sizing up the modifications if they decide to race. You won’t know what to talk about.”
“Listen, you’ll embarrass yourself. You’ll stall the car the moment you launch it. Do you know how to even drive a car with a triple plate ceramic clutch?”
I frowned with no idea what she was on about, I shrugged my shoulders.
“Exactly,” she said.
“Come on, I can do this... Were partners right?”
“Wrong. – You’re my responsibility.”
“Your’e not my babysitter… think!”
Jessica got flustered with frustration. I almost had to turn the air-con in the car, she was that pissed off.
“Okay, Kid you’re up. I don’t like it though.” I said begrudgingly.
Jessica looked like an excited school kid as if her daddy bought her pony, she kissed me on the cheek.
“The fuck”
“Kid was that for? And why are you wearing lipstick.” I said wiping my cheek.
“All women do, Rooks. I won’t let you down.”
I quickly grabbed Jessica’s arm, unsure whether to let her go. The piercing sound of the cars racing in the background, the spine tingling chill of the night air, made me feel, uneasy.
“Kid, wait.” I reached into my jacket to pull out an earpiece.
“I need you to put this on, I will monitor your every move. If I get even a whiff that you’re in danger, I’m fucking pulling you out. I think it’s easier to track him, if you race for the pink slip to your car so we can plant the phone and track him, you have to lose.”
Jessica parted her hair aside to insert the earpiece. When her hand gripped my arm, the tension she put on me gave me her assurance.
“Sounds like a plan, I’ll be fine, I got this.” She said
