Tommy decided to stretch his legs and clear his head. He shuffled past an elderly couple in search of the rest rooms and went looking for the buffet car, which was situated one carriage back. His young Kiwi friends were happy to keep watch over his Bees-Knees, which he had tucked away safely on the overhead luggage rack.
Sitting immediately behind Tommy was Pino, who had hardly moved in the three hours. He kept his sweaty hands clasped tightly over a slight bulge on his waistline. When Tommy stood, he too stood and headed for the buffet car, following just a few steps behind. Always courteous, Tommy held the door open for him.
Twenty minutes later and Tommy was at the froth end of his beer when an announcement came over the public address system, first in Italian and then repeated in English. ‘We will arrive at Venezia Station in fifteen minutes.’
As he stood from his bar stool, he noted that the train had reduced its speed drastically. It was no longer rocketing along; it was crawling. He paid for the overpriced Peroni beer, realising as he did that the train had continued to reduce speed. It was now merely trickling along. The peasant-looking bar-girl with the makings of a faint moustache handed Tommy his change, then stopped midway to look out of her carriage window to the train tracks. There appeared to be a handful of workers gathered together every fifty metres or so, wearing fluorescent orange safety vests and caps, fastening loose sleepers on the tracks.
‘Work-a-man,’ she said as she turned back to face Tommy.
‘Workmen,’ Tommy corrected.
‘Si, grazie, Signore,’ she nodded.
‘Prego,’ he smiled.
She smiled back, nodding as he walked off.
As Tommy returned to his own carriage via the transit door, he noticed the same horrible little man behind him again. No ‘thank you’, ‘grazie’ or ‘va bene’ offered as he held the door for him, he thought. Rude little bugger.
Four carriages up in the locomotive, the driver cautiously looked left and right as he eased the train through the gang of spasmodically placed workmen. Ten metres away was the next quartet of workers, each of whom was walking a little too close to the tracks. At the sound of the engine’s whistle, one of them slipped in the loose bluestone chips and fell, his leg finishing on top of the outside rail. His closest workmate instinctively leaned over to grab him, also exposing a good deal of his body to the oncoming locomotive. The train driver pulled hard on the brake, jolting the train to a violent stop.
Tommy sailed down the aisle and past three rows of seats. His right knee collided heavily with the armrest of one of the chairs and he buckled at the impact. Coming over the top of him was the lighter weight of the horrible little man for whom he had twice opened the door. He too was out of control. His 9mm Browning automatic pistol had been prised loose and had flown along the vinyl-covered floor just ahead of them both, spinning in a clockwise fashion as it travelled the remaining length of the carriage and came to rest near the far transit door.
Nobody in the carriage escaped the hard shunt of the brakes. A few screams were heard; some people lost their seats altogether and half-a-dozen bags and suitcases toppled from the overhead luggage racks. There was genuine chaos for a split second. Tommy’s knee was as sore as hell and he instinctively moved to push away the little man on top of him. His nostrils filled with the smell of his putrid body odour. To Tommy’s utter amazement, the mangy individual started thrashing into him and delivered several strong blows to his head. Something was wrong here, he thought. The pain in his knee was soon forgotten as Tommy returned the blows in defence. At least three of his punches landed to the face of the tough little guy before Tommy could push himself free.
By now the old lady who was sitting in the chair, the arm of which had nearly destroyed his knee, was screaming. Tommy got to his feet and, with his left hand holding a fist of shirt and jacket, he yelled at his aggressor, ‘What the fuck are you on about?’
Tommy received two heavy fists in reply from the little guy, straight to the side of his head. He was dazed, but still held tightly to a fist of clothing. A small Italian boy sitting two seats away was yelling as he pointed towards the far transit door. It was then that Tommy saw the gun for the first time. He understood instantly why the little man had been behind him on his way to and from the bar.
The fighter’s arms began thrashing again. Tommy could see his stained, gritted teeth. His breath stank. Tommy pushed him with all his might. The little man bent backwards over the offending armrest and onto the lap of the screaming old lady, which only increased the volume of her screams. Tommy then hit him twice in his yellowed teeth with as much force as he could, before he let go of him to run towards the gun. Exactly one pace later his injured knee had him sink in pain to the floor of the carriage. The aggressor had a second to recover. He clambered over Tommy and ran towards the gun. The entire carriage had now erupted in a chorus of screams.
The little man picked up the firearm and spun around to face his foe. Tommy seemed to come from nowhere with his 180-centimetre, 85-kilo frame and collided full on with the little man, who in turn had nowhere to move as his back was slammed firmly against the door. His head smashed brutally against the heavy safety glass of the transit door. The impact was so intense that it caused the pane to shatter. Blood tricked from the gunman’s nose. The pistol dropped heavily from his hand and the little fighter slumped from the door to the floor, dead.
Tommy too slumped to the floor of the carriage; the impact had winded him and his shoulder muscles burned from the struggle that had unfolded with the tough midget. He looked back along the aisle, frantically searching for the face of Massimo in the crowd. He was nowhere to be seen in the flow of terrified passengers evacuating the carriage via the opposite transit door. None of them had thought to stay long enough to gather up luggage or possessions. Among those fleeing were the two New Zealand backpackers. All Tommy could think of was to flee the train himself, but in the opposite direction. He leaped gingerly across to his seat to grab his shoulder bag and, after negotiating his path over the body of his aggressor, he jumped from the train and hobbled as fast as he could across the railway tracks towards some warehouses, bag over one shoulder and pistol in one hand. A milling mix of railway workers watched dumbfounded as the carriage completely emptied with crazed passengers scattering in all directions.
Tommy peered around the corner of a building no more than 600 metres from the trainline. He leaned his back against the wall of the rust-stained building before slumping slowly to the ground. He desperately needed to rest his knee. His gasps for air were so audible that he covered his mouth with his left hand, praying that no one would hear. His right hand still held tight to the 9mm Browning pistol as he unbuttoned his shirt in an attempt to cool down. He looked again around the corner, along a laneway to an estate of postwar saw-tooth warehouses. He was in the industrial zone of the town of Mestre, the edge of the thin strip of water, Laguna Veneta, just before the long bridge across to Venice. The storage rooms were all locked up, except one.
A tiny teal and bright yellow forklift was loading the back end of a small refrigerated truck, two factories from where he stood. Having caught his breath and regained his composure, he stepped forward on his leg. He stopped. The rush of adrenalin required for flight had all but drained from his body. He felt the soreness to his limb increase but he was so used to firearms that he had completely forgotten about the handgun he was carrying. Tommy unclipped the straps to his shoulder bag and stuffed the Browning inside his clothing before he recommenced his attempt at walking normally towards the truck. The sign above its parked position read Trimbole Pesce Prodotti: a wholesale fish supplier, he reckoned, by the smell. All he could think of was ice for his knee. Relief was only steps away. So far the forklift driver hadn’t noticed him as he methodically loaded his vehicle and then disappeared once more inside the wholesaler’s.
Tommy eased his way between the side of the truck and the warehouse wall, to the unlocked driver’s door, which he quietly opened. He figu
red by now that if the local Carabinieri were any good, they would be racing along the train tracks to hear the thirty-odd versions of the events that had just taken place. Knowing witnesses, the one thing Tommy was sure would be consistent to all was that ‘a big man killed a little man, and the big man ran away with the gun’. It would be a long time before the Carabinieri would find the true identity of the little man, if they bothered at all. He was sure that their focus would be on the armed Australian heading to Venice.
He reached over and grabbed a fist full of invoice dockets fastened to a clipboard on the driver’s seat, and tried desperately to decipher where the load of fish was headed. Anywhere but Venice, he hoped, as this would undoubtedly be the course of the Polizia, after not finding their suspect amongst the warehouses. The only name on the delivery docket he could read was Quadri, which meant nothing to him. His investigative work was interrupted at that moment by the sound of the driver approaching, speaking in rapid Italian and gesturing goodbye to the forklift operator. Tommy hobbled to the rear of the truck, threw his shoulder bag forward onto the platform, and heaved his sore body up and on to the apron. He slid along the floor of the vehicle and secreted himself behind several polystyrene cartons of lobsters and oysters, pleased at the chunks of ice on top of the lobster bins. He heard the freezer van’s door being locked tight and settled in for a chilly ride.
An hour later, after a journey in heavy traffic, Tommy sensed that they had come to a final stop. The overweight driver finished off a handful of pistachio nuts and walked to the back of his small truck. He threw most of his not-insignificant weight on to the lever and snapped open the seal on the door. He spat a few broken shells from his mouth as he slowly prised the door ajar. He reeled backwards suddenly into a crowd of passing tourists with a look of utter shock at the sight of an upright Tommy positioned as close to the rear of the door as had been possible. His now near-empty Bees-Knees draped over his shoulder, he was wearing virtually every piece of clothing he owned and still shivered noticeably. Without a sound he stepped from the truck as fast as his frozen limbs would allow and vanished into the crowd. The still open-mouthed driver gaped as he watched him fade away before he hit his palm to the top of his forehead and exclaimed loudly in his native tongue.
Twenty paces further on Tommy broke free of the crowd and out of view of the truck driver, to find himself standing dead centre in the Piazza San Marco, the heart of Venice. He spun 360 degrees, taking in the seemingly hundreds of arched stone columns and dozens of shades of grey. Behind the truck, which the driver had already begun to unload, he read Caffe Quadri on the ornate façade of one of the finest restaurants in northern Italy. His shoulders slumped as he fell in line with a group of Chinese travellers hovering in an orderly fashion behind their native guide, who was holding a peach parasol high in the air. They looked Tommy up and down, in his layers of clothes and laughed raucously, causing a couple of hundred pigeons to take to the perfect blue sky.
The early evening tourists on the pretty outside boardwalk at Harry’s Bar sipped Bellini cocktails, Campari and soda and the occasional martini, no doubt reliving their favourite James Bond moment. Tommy, now thawed in the late afternoon sun, and back to a single pair of jeans and an Armani shirt, could see himself being squeezed out of his comfy position. He had settled up with the waiter for his whisky sour and was in no doubt that he had to find somewhere to hide, if only for one night. He couldn’t help wondering where Massimo might be. He would certainly be aware that his little assassin was no longer on this planet. Tommy’s only consolation was that Massimo too would be surely trying to stay shy of the Carabinieri, who would be on high alert in Venice.
His knee felt slightly better, no doubt the enforced and prolonged ‘icing’ had helped. He took the side lane along Harry’s Bar and worked his way back to the Piazza San Marco, through the wafting scent of steamed mussels and coffee beans. A short cut through the five-star Luna Hotel Baglioni, Venice’s most ancient and exclusive, had him exit at the other side of their restaurant, to face a labyrinth of tiny lanes, just proud of the main piazza. Only a short stroll along the eastern porticos and Tommy dropped himself into a chair and table for one, hard up against a pillar at the Florian, the famed tearoom in Venice since 1720. This beautiful relic of a bygone era was an emblem of impeccable service and offered a selection of gourmet finger food and an impressive list of teas and coffees at absurdly inflated prices. The tearoom guests swelled onto a goodly portion of the square as an orchestra played Puccini soothingly in the background. Not the sort of location that one would expect a lunatic gun-wielding Australian evading arrest to sit, was Tommy’s whisky-induced rationale. He ordered a round of salmon and artichoke cream sandwiches and a pot of chamomile tea and practised his best Pommy accent. He turned the collar up on his shirt and disappeared into the Times.
Tommy sat mulling over the economic problems facing Britain for the next three hours, and watched the tables fill and empty a few times over. The occasional pair of Carabinieri fussed through the laneways on the opposite side of the piazza. At closing time he took his bill into the reception area at the Florian under the guise of wanting to purchase a gift. Once the bill had been settled, he politely requested the toilet and was directed to the upstairs bathrooms. At the door, he quietly took instead the stairs up to the private level, past the staff change rooms, down a short corridor and into a storeroom that to his delight housed the table linen for the restaurant. An hour later, when the final light had been turned out in the early closing establishment, he bedded down for the night.
A far-too-cocky Donny stepped into a backwater pub in North Melbourne. He was alone and he wore his coollest gear: patent black snake-skin pointy-toed shoes, black drainpipe denims, black T-shirt and black leather coat. Inside, at the ‘tough guys’ bar, Donny gave a nod to the barman, who instinctively pulled him a pot of beer. He headed for a pair of Asian toughs leaning on the far end of the bar. The pot of beer was placed in front of him at the same time that Donny took his bar stool. The Asian pair both shook Donny’s hand, one smiled broadly while the other, the boss no doubt, just nodded. They then chatted away quietly among themselves.
Not far away, standing next to a tall pedestal table, was a frumpy-looking piece, her huge arse squeezed into a pair of tired jeans. She sipped from a glass of rough red wine and spoke flirtatiously to her male companion, who needed a darn good shower and a packet of razor blades. A worn-out Nike sports bag was slung casually over his shoulder, the hidden covert camera trained perfectly on the two Asians and Donny. It was textbook surveillance. The videotape captured the serious Asian handing Donny a wad of money, which must have totalled at least $10 000.
Donny seemed to look everywhere around the bar except at the two Toe Cutters, who discreetly and expertly filmed his every move. Donny secured the wad of money in his back pocket. He straightened himself up and walked quickly from the bar.
Wearing the same clothes, Donny jogged up the steps of the Bar 99% strip joint in Melbourne. It was five in the afternoon, and the after-work office crowd had yet to appear. Donny stepped into the nightclub unchecked by the security guards, and weaved his way through stacked tables and chairs towards a room at the back. The inside security guy flicked his head towards one of the private lap-dance rooms.
The instant the door was opened, Barry White’s ‘Shaft’ could be heard pumping through the speakers. A gorgeous redhead was hard at it, one hand resting on each of her client’s knees as her amply endowed body gyrated to the rhythm. She looked up and smiled her russet lips as Donny entered. He was acknowledged less warmly with an off-handed wave by the otherwise engrossed client. Donny sat and watched the routine. The stripper leaned back against the wall and raised both arms into the air to clasp her hands around a huge pole. Each hip moved up and down in alternate timing as if her butt was kissing the pole. A blue chiffon sarong lay on the floor to one side of the tiny room, leaving her dressed in nothing more than the briefest turquoise G-string and tiny rhinestone s
tudded bra that failed to cover her oversized silicon-enhanced breasts. Her hands left the pole to seductively unclip the back of her bra and she leaned forward to her client. He reached out with both hands, grabbing a breast in each as she nuzzled into him. The sound of the world’s best fake orgasm moaned from her pouting mouth. The track ended and she ever so lightly messed her hands through his hair and slipped her miniscule panties down just a fraction to reveal that she was indeed a genuine redhead. As she walked out, a crisp $100 bill was wedged between the sparkling sequins of her tiny g-string.
Once the door was closed Donny got straight down to business. He pulled a clear plastic bag from his inside coat pocket and threw it on his mate’s lap; his mate was slowly coming back to earth. The bag contained 200 ecstasy tablets.
‘Fix us up next week,’ said Donny, ‘It’s on the tick.’
‘Muchas gracias,’ replied the non-Spanish drug dealer. ‘How’s supply?’
‘Drying up,’ said Donny. ‘But good news, the wogs have got a shit-load coming through in a couple of months.’
‘There’s always wild stories like that about, Donny.’
‘This story’s not wild, Kemosabe. I’m connected to it and we’ll have enough eccies to flood Australia. Just you wait.’
The drug dealer smiled in return.
‘Gotta get back to work to knock off,’ was Donny’s closing comment as they hit a high five. He left the room and headed out of the nightclub. As he jogged down the main steps and out onto the street, the digital movie camera stashed in the observation van parked across the road filmed his departure and the operative tapped away on his surveillance log, which was transmitted instantly back to the Toe Cutters office via wireless.
‘Yes, I’m the same detective from Melbourne who rang yesterday— and the day before,’ replied a frustrated Sandra, waiting on the telephone line for an update on Lynette Peterson’s progress. Every day since the tragedy she had called, and every day she had been faced with the same animosity from the hospital staff, and the same sterile comment, ‘The patient is still critical, still in a coma.’ Sandra guessed that she couldn’t entirely blame the nursing staff for their bland one-liner on the health of their most newsworthy patient. After all, the key suspect was another Melbourne detective. She dropped the phone despondently. It was time to knock off, she thought, as she gathered up her handbag and waved lazily to Spud and Leigh on the way out.
On the Run Page 16
