Roll With It

by Nick Place

  He was about to suggest that Wildie and this kid, whoever he was, go for a wander, leaving him and Louie for a few minutes so they could get reacquainted, when Wildie, looking towards the door, hissed ‘Stig’ and he saw the look on Wildie’s face.

  Lou did too, watching Stig and the big guy turn to stone, their faces turning insolent and blank, as a cop dressed in cycling gear materialised from the blinding sun of the café door. Lou thinking the guy looked slightly ridiculous in lycra shorts and shirt. He had the wrong haircut and somehow the wrong face for the look.

  The cop had his back to them as he asked if he could buy bottled water there. Then asked if, in that case, he could maybe trouble them for a glass of tap water? Thanking the chick behind the counter.

  ***

  It’s funny how a glance is all you need, Laver thought. You just had to relax and let your brain remember the details. Four people. Three men and a girl with coloured hair. No read on the girl, but the guy opposite her, a guy who didn’t fit, looking scared. The other two giving Laver the look only criminals give police. One, bearded and orange hair. The other, tan and lean. Both big. Both thirty, give or take.

  Laver’s spider sense going haywire from the moment he heard a word whispered as he came through the door. Was it ‘Cig?’ The two men stiffening. He was feeling eyes on his back now. Who were they and what was going on? A drug deal? The other two at the table didn’t feel right for that.

  Laver sipped his water and turned around.

  The guy against the wall was looking at him and now looked away, doing it at a careful pace. The bigger guy, with orange hair, like fairy floss on his head, hunched, turning his back to Laver.

  He wandered over to the table. They were all staring at him, except orange-hair who very deliberately wasn’t. The kid next to orange-hair pale. The girl not much better.

  ‘How you all doing?’ Laver said. ‘Great day out there.’

  Silence.

  ‘Everything okay here, people?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ It was the guy against the wall, in the singlet. Who Laver now knew was the leader.

  ‘Just making conversation. You nervous?’

  ‘Why would I be?’ That dead-eyed stare. Laver wondering, do they have classes among crooks to learn it?

  ‘No idea. What’s your name, son?’

  Laver seeing his eyes burn on the word ‘son’, but the guy holding it together. Saying, ‘Do you mind, officer? I just hit town and I’m trying to catch up with my girlfriend here.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Laver said happily. ‘Is that right, Miss?’

  The girl nodding. Looking at her coffee.

  Laver saying to the guy, ‘You didn’t give me your name.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  Laver giving him his own dead-eye cop stare before glancing to the younger guy with the silly hat down the end of the table. ‘How are you, mate? All good?’

  The kid swallowing and nodding. The girl still staring at her coffee. Now taking a sip.

  Laver taking his time. ‘Mind if I pull up a chair? I’ve been riding for hours.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding, aren’t ya?’ said orange-hair, finally giving Laver a glance, but getting a harsh look from his mate.

  Laver saying to orange-hair, ‘They prison tatts, buddy?’

  The other guy getting up, saying, ‘We’re actually on our way, so you can have the table. Catch you later, Louie. I’ll drop by.’

  ‘How about you don’t?’ said the girl.

  Orange-hair was on his feet as well. Big, now he was standing. Very big. Laver sipping his water as they left. Noticing the dweeby guy exhale. Watching how the girl gave it a few moments before she said, ‘Let’s talk about this later, Jake,’ went to the counter and paid the bill. She asked if she could borrow a pen, scribbled something and walked back over to their table, handing a slip of paper to Jake. ‘My number. For the project.’

  Then she was at the door, checking the street before she left.

  Laver and the dweeb now alone. Laver saying, ‘Who were those guys, Jake?’

  Jake, staring at the magical piece of paper in his hand, saying, ‘I have no idea. I think they’re hippies.’

  ‘Hippies? They didn’t look or act much like hippies. You don’t know their names?’

  Jake shook his head. ‘Nope. And I’m happy if it stays that way.’

  Laver finishing his water and thinking, well, that makes one of us.

  He headed into the sunshine, where Cecy was staring off down the street.

  ‘Eleven ball. Corner pocket.’

  Laver missed the shot and cursed – but not too loudly. The pub was almost empty, with only a few diehard early drinkers nursing their glasses.

  Mitchell Dolfin scowled and tilted his head as he surveyed the table, then leaned over his cue and doubled the four ball into the middle pocket.

  Laver nodded his admiration and sipped his beer.

  ‘Flipper, how big a role do you think intuition plays in police work?’

  ‘I thought we’d agreed we weren’t going to talk work, especially with me not supposed to even speak to you at all.’

  ‘I’m not sure playing pool can lead to a suspension.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it, the way the Force is going.’ Dolfin missed a length-of-the-table attempt at the six ball and wandered over to his beer. ‘So, intuition,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Once you’ve done it for as long as we have, how much do you work by knowledge of laws and procedures as against your gut?’

  ‘Clearly, this is a loaded question.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess it is.’

  Flipper munched on a chip. ‘So why the loaded question?’

  ‘I saw two guys yesterday. In Smith Street. My spider senses went nuts.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I don’t know. They were heavying some greenie chick and a nerd.’

  ‘Yep, they sound like major criminals. Your shot.’

  Laver assessed the angle on the blue ball and the corner pocket. ‘No, you don’t get it. The moment I saw them, I knew. They were the real thing. Bad guys, Flipper. Genuine bad guys.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Went over and said hello.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘One of them, the one who seemed to be in charge, said he had just arrived in town and was catching up with his girlfriend.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She confirmed it but seemed glad to get out of there.’

  ‘Jesus, not exactly Tony Mokbel in his prime, mate.’

  Laver had bent to play the shot but then stood again, looking at his mate. ‘Flipper, I told you. This is about your gut. It wouldn’t have mattered if they were shopping for flowers. I knew who these bastards were. The leader is shifty and criminal. The other guy is big and dangerous. Prison tattoos. He’s definitely violent. And they’re out there now.’

  ‘Rocket, working on the Noble Taskforce has brought home to me exactly how many potentially violent arseholes are walking around Melbourne at any given time, whether they’re officially underworld or not. There’s hundreds of crims or potential perps out there. Big deal.’

  Laver finally bent and hit the blue ball. Click. It dropped. He addressed the orange ball, saying, ‘Because these guys might actually be new in town. You’re right; cops usually have a working knowledge of every perpetrator going around. But I reckon these guys are fresh off the boat.’

  Flipper sighed. ‘Mate, you know full well that all you have to do is keep your head down for a while. Ride your bike.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You’ve been out there pedalling for five minutes and the Major Crime cop in you is looking for Underbelly 6.’

  Laver stepped away from the table to sip his beer. ‘I’m saying that my cop senses haven’t vanished overnight just because some dickhead in head office has planted me in lycra. And my cop senses didn’t like these two at all. Would it kill you to ask around?’

  Do
lfin almost snorted his beer as he drank. ‘Did you get their full names and addresses? Maybe their licence or passport details? Ask them to ink some fingerprints?’

  ‘I think the violent one called the other guy Cig.’

  ‘Cig? As in “cigarette”?’

  ‘Maybe. It sounded like it.’

  Dolfin laughed out loud now. ‘Mate, you’re fucking losing it.’

  ‘Could you ask around?’

  ‘Has anybody heard about a mad smoking criminal genius hanging around Fitzroy, possibly saying hi to his hippie girlfriend? Sure. It’s your shot.’

  Laver circled the table, looking for any sort of angle. Dolfin watched him and said, ‘I’ll keep an ear out. How’s that?’

  ‘All I can ask.’

  ‘Fucking right it is. Moving on, how’s Marcia?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your almost-fiancée.’

  ‘Oh, her.’

  ‘Like that, huh?’

  ‘Yep. Crisis dinner tomorrow night.’

  ‘You’re kicking nothing but goals at the moment, buddy.’ Flipper sipped his beer. ‘Where?’

  ‘She’s nominated Brunswick Street, like I haven’t been seeing enough of that strip lately. Some place called the Vegie Bar.’

  ‘Vegetarian,’ Dolfin grinned. ‘Sounds an unlikely place for a cold-blooded killer like yourself.’

  ‘Well, I probably won’t be armed, so the lettuce should be safe.’ Laver leaned over his cue. ‘Thirteen ball. Side pocket.’

  Click.

  ‘Damn!’

  ***

  Jake’s boss, Barry, had always spent a lot of time on the phone – but now he seemed to have it grafted to his ear. More than that, he spent the majority of his time with his office door closed. If the door happened to be open, Barry was giving you a furtive glance every time you walked past, looking like you’d caught him in the middle of something sordid. None of it encouraged Jake to go in there and raise the idea of putting political stickers on half the products in the supermarket below.

  Jake walked the aisles, peering at labels and trying to work out how to tell if something was genuinely environmentally friendly, rather than just packaged in green with a sunflower on the front of the box. Picking up a box of washing powder, Jake read: ‘Ingredients include surfactants (anionic and nonionic) and enzymes.’ He had no idea.

  He’d waited until yesterday, the day after their attempted meeting at the Soul Food Café, to use the phone number he couldn’t believe she had given him, texting Lou to ask how she was. She had replied, all business, with the news that she had left a book for him at the front counter of Friends of the Planet: a book that had done all the legwork, digging into the ownership of companies making everything from breakfast cereals and toilet rolls to eggs, and looking at the manufacturing process. He’d picked up the book yesterday, and was surprised by what he read. Jake hadn’t realised a farm could label their eggs as ‘free range’ just by letting the battery hens stagger around a pen measuring about a metre squared for a few minutes once a day. He never knew that a lot of wine was created using animal products; the wine ‘fined’ or filtered through egg white, milk powder or even isinglass, which apparently came from the swim bladder of a fish. Jake had a whole new understanding of how artificial fragrances in products were often made from petroleum that wouldn’t degrade and could cause problems for animals and fish after being trashed.

  Jake was looking at the Heidelberg Groc-o-Mart in a whole new way.

  But Lou was getting antsy. They’d texted a few times today, with Lou all business, asking if he was reading the book and when could they timetable the placement of the stickers, finally sending him a text reading ‘Bar Open. Brunswick Street. Tonight.’ He needed an answer, now, so he finally took a deep breath and headed for Barry’s office.

  The door was closed and Jake stopped in his tracks. He wasn’t about to interrupt whatever his boss was up to. Briefly, Jake found himself wondering if Barry was addicted to online pornography. Then realised how badly he didn’t want to know if he was.

  Behind the door, he heard his boss’s voice say, ‘Christ, it’s a long way to Heidelberg from there.’

  Another man’s voice said, ‘Our mate’s not stupid. Don’t ever forget that, Barry. Not ever.’

  The door opened and the man came out, looking slightly startled as he almost walked straight into Jake, but then recovering and walking straight past. Jake only seeing a stocky man in a bomber jacket, maybe suit pants. European-looking. Italian? Greying hair and a hard face. Gone.

  Jake knocked on the half-open door and could have sworn Barry jumped in his seat.

  ‘Jake. How long have you been standing there for?’

  ‘At your door? I haven’t been.’

  ‘You’re there now.’

  ‘I just arrived.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Barry was fidgeting, a hand lurking near the phone as if he was dying to pick it up. ‘All going well in the store?’

  ‘I guess so. I haven’t heard any complaints.’

  ‘I need you to be on top of things down there, Jake. I’ve got a lot of management issues going on. Franchise issues. Head office stuff. I can’t be worrying about expiration dates on dairy products or the strawberries going off. I need you to be right on top of your game just now.’

  ‘Sure, Barry. I’ll “Go go Gadget” hard.’

  Barry stared at him.

  ‘That was a TV show.’ Jake cleared his throat. ‘Well, a cartoon.’

  ‘I have some calls to make, Jake. Off you go, boy.’

  ‘Um, Barry, can I ask you something?’

  Barry sighed. ‘What?’

  ‘Um, a friend of mine, well, actually me. I had an idea that might be fun, to put some stickers on a couple, well, quite a few products as a kind of—’

  ‘Mate, I haven’t got time. We’ll have to talk about it later. Off you go. Shoo.’

  Barry actually waved him away with a hand and then picked up the phone and started dialling. Jake stood awkwardly until Barry turned his back on him, his balding head visible over the back of his office chair.

  Jake skulked back to his own desk. What would the new Jake do? Wait until Barry had time for him or be bold?

  Maybe Barry would have time later this afternoon.

  ***

  All the waiting was driving Stig crazy. Coming face-to-face with a cop, even a bike cop, didn’t mean anything, he told himself, but it had somehow unnerved him, to the point that they’d barely left the house for two days. Wildie didn’t seem to care. Wildie could play the Xbox for hours, completely still except for the movement of his wrists and thumbs on the controllers. Stig couldn’t work out how the bastard managed to stay so lean and fit when he was immobile for so much of the time. Meanwhile, Stig prowled the house and wondered what was happening out there. Who else he should call. Whether Melbourne dealers were giving him the thumbs up or down. Whether he should seriously consider the Wild Man’s crazy plan to directly approach Jenssen’s man in Melbourne.

  Stig had had six cups of instant coffee. They were out of milk. He’d done push-ups and sit-ups. He’d had a wank. There wasn’t a decent book in the house. He was out of rollies papers, which was probably a good thing, going by the bloodshot red of the eyes staring back at him in the mirror.

  Stig decided to go for a run, even though it looked like it might rain. It had been almost a fortnight since he’d last run along the Byron beach and his body needed action.

  From Thornbury, he headed south into Northcote and followed Separation Street to Fairfield, then realised where he was and thought, it’s only another couple of kilometres to Heidelberg, feeling great now his muscles were warmed up.

  Stig stopped at the edge of the car park, sweating heavily but pulling his Dreamworld baseball cap down further over his eyes. The Groc-o-Mart was as he remembered it, a barn of a place with specials posters on the glass doors and trolleys scattered around the car park. Barry Paxton’s office was on the first floor, but the blind was dow
n so Stig couldn’t see anything. It also meant Paxton couldn’t see him.

  But then, shit, Paxton emerged from the sliding doors, talking to a younger guy in a white shirt and dark pants, the young guy almost chasing his boss as Paxton walked fast. They got to a car where Paxton beeped open the door and got in.

  Barry waving his arm, and Stig close enough to hear him yell, ‘I haven’t got time for bloody marketing plans. Write me a memo or an email or a proposal on floral paper. I don’t care. Just piss off.’

  Really giving it to the younger guy who Stig thought looked vaguely familiar but had no idea where he’d seen him before.

  And then realised.

  The young guy was walking back towards the Groc-o-Mart as Paxton’s car was starting to move.

  Stig realised he was standing near an exit.

  He got out of there.

  ***

  Jake watched Barry’s car disappear towards Upper Heidelberg Road and sighed deeply. If he waited until Barry gave him a hearing, Lou would be long gone, planting stickers and falling in love with the assistant manager at some other supermarket in Coburg or even Collingwood. Jake considered letting New Jake have his head. The upside was that bloody Barry was so distracted at the moment he probably wouldn’t even notice if Jake and Lou painted Friends of the Planet slogans in red paint all over the walls of the mart.

  Jake was almost back at the store’s front door when the sensation crept up on him, as though from the side of his brain. Two men sitting in a white car, off to the southern end of the car park. Was he imagining things? He turned and looked at the car – it was empty. Jake wondered if he was losing it.

  As far as rallies go, it was pretty pathetic. Laver had taken a while to work out what the motley crew of sixty or so were complaining about. He was pretty sure it was something to do with the G20 summit, but since Obama had been elected anti-American sentiment was a lot harder to whip up. Laver ticked them off his list of clichés: the guy with a goatee and a crocheted beanie carrying the obligatory anti-nuke sign, tick; the guy in a full black body stocking with an effigy of somebody in a suit, carrying a briefcase, tick; the militant feminists, tick; the Aboriginal flags – black and red behind a large yellow sun, tick; a woman waving a ‘Get Out of Afghanistan!’ sign, tick. All these random elements, thought Laver, arms folded as he watched them half-heartedly chant and hand-clap their way towards Federation Square along the Birrarung Marr grasslands by the river.