WesterlyMagazine

The Cook

I wait behind the wheel of the stolen Camry sedan while they do the armed robs — three of them. Two servos and a late night chemist. Not a few k’s from where they live.

Such is the life of a moron.

They whoop and rap and smoke the short drive back to the port city, down along the eerily quiet Capo D’Orlando Drive, through gritty sulphur halos and clanking marinas and the smell of diesel and antifoul and rotting seaweed. We park before the long line of Warner’s crayboats and trawlers, strung with red and green halogen caps, decks awash in hard fluorescent light.

Danny and his friends divvy up the eight hundred cash and transfer the weapons from the stolen car to a nearby Falcon ute, the rush of the thieving gone now they’re at work.

Prison full of kids like this. There because they want to be, the stupid ones to prove themselves to others, the smarter for themselves.

But Danny’s not prison material, and his friends aren’t the kind to stand by him, should he be marked out for special attention.

I hadn’t allowed Danny to talk about what he was doing for Warner, either in the car or at his flat. Ogilvie would certainly have bugged the car, perhaps the flat. But I let the others in the Camry bray how they worked the presses for Warner, who’d been importing high-end E from Amsterdam, cutting it down by 50% and re-pressing his own pills with his own logo: Jagger lips.

The kids worked the presses all night, another shift worked days, cray season nearly over. Warner’s fleet could easily get out into international water, to trawl up submersible barrels tagged with homing devices, his MO now for close to two decades.

Danny and the kids expect me to take the Camry and leave, but when I don’t, there is anticipation in their eyes. Mastic has offered to knock Warner for me, but because I’ve always refused, it’s assumed that I intend to do him myself.

Warner has never denied killing my son, Kevin.

Warner strides down the dock towards me, white gumboots stained with fish-guts and scale, black boardies and skin-tight bluey, bunched forearms and hairy hunched shoulders, the body of a worker.

Danny stays beside, but the other kids draw back.

Warner right in my face, stale sweat and ashtray mouth, flecks of fish blood on his cheek, eyes yellow beneath the sulphur light, moths batting around our heads.

Ogilvie will be watching from nearby.

He knows our history, was a beat copper when Warner and I ran plantations for Joe Italiano in the Gascoyne. Warner married into the family, took on the fishing licences as both a cover and a going concern, has done well, never gone to jail.

I’ve gone the way of most. Habit. Jail. Habit. Jail.

But along the way I’ve taken on the trade, become the best at what I do.

A good cook is excused things that put others in shallow graves.

Except for one thing.

Warner puts out his hand, but he’s so close it’s more like a jab to the stomach.

Ogilvie will be watching, long-lens camera at his eyeball.

But Ogilvie is not the only one watching. Danny flinches when I take Warner’s hand, something that is noticed by Warner. ‘You got work to do?’

Danny’s face is unreadable, until he meets my eye. Disappointment. Disbelief. A flash of something else.

I have chosen Warner.

Had in fact chosen him years earlier, made a promise of sorts, when an emissary of Warner’s was transferred into the SHU. A wiry old Noongar crim, with blurred tattoos and oiled rockabilly hair, large fighter’s hands. He told me about Danny, his message not couched in threat. Said Warner thought I’d like to know. Because of that unspoken history of ours. Fathers both dockworkers, did time together at Freo jail, drifted into the only union that would have them, the Painters & Dockers, before my dad went bush. Did he want me to hire Danny, or fuck him off?

Warner could see that Danny was no hard nut, had his father’s weakness for the powder, but missed his father’s luck. I say luck, because like most junkies my age, it’s always the people around me who die, people like Danny’s mother, so many others. I survive, like a curse.

But not Danny. He was headed one of two ways — neither good.

Hire him, I’d said. Then nothing else. No news. No threats, or further importuning.

I’d appreciated that. And I had my own reasons for wanting to be close to Warner.

I go back to Danny’s flat and have a shot, drift quietly in my body, seated slumber, nodding bringing me round. Hours pass like the years have passed, my whole fucking life, sleepless but asleep, the old anaesthetic.

The deal is good. Warner’s set-up is good. I’ll be making MDMA at nights on a customised trawler, out on the Sound, when it’s still. Plenty of ventilation, all the newest kit. The precursors there, dropped off in the shipping lanes, direct from India.

Ogilvie can’t get to Warner, not with his connections. Warner has men in the Ports Authority, the local drug squad. The Federal coppers would work alone for this reason, but they would need boats and choppers to get to the floating lab, and Warner would hear.

Warner is also safe from The Nongs and the others, because of his father-in-law, even if I’m not. Mastic has boasted widely that if I don’t work for him, then I won’t work for anybody. Has put it about that I owe him, for his protection inside, and now he’ll have to demonstrate that he isn’t full of shit. His signature demonstration involves a ballpein hammer.

I’ll live on another boat, nearby the lab, safe as long as I don’t leave the port. I’ve told Warner that I’ll work for a year, pocket the money, take Danny and head elsewhere, up North, or New Zealand, start again.

He doesn’t trust me, but that’s no surprise. It’s still worth his while.

I’ll be close to him, and I’m a patient man.

The explosion at the port rocks the apartment, sets clarions in the street to wailing. From the kitchen I see flames down on Capo D’Orlando, fizzing white, incendiary secondary detonations, oil black streaks over the watercolour night sky.

The moment I think of Danny my legs weaken, and then I see him limp into the street. Vomit into a gutter. Limp towards the Charger, pop the boot, drop in a canvas bag, lean his weight on the closed trunk.

I understand. Feel a surge of panic. Start grabbing stuff, hearing Danny’s key in the lock.

Turn, stand to face him.

‘Warner’s dead. Danny? Warner.’

His face tells the truth. He’s burned on his neck, suppurating red blisters, what looks like a broken wrist wedged into his armpit, pupils dilated, in shock.

Eyes already on the coffee table, the fit-pack and powder.

I sit him down and fix him, watch his pupils screw inward, take the Charger keys from his hand and help him to his feet.