High Season by Jim Hearn Page B

for as well. The coppers, having established I’d made their night with on-the-spot fines, got to searching everything in the boot. I had seven deals in a film canister in my toiletry bag and it was the strangest sensation watching them as they poked through toothbrushes and aftershave, squeezed out toothpaste and tipped out pills . . . but never popped the lid off the little black film canister.
    The thirty-kilometre ride back to Gosford in the police car was long and uncomfortable. And what made it worse was that, because the cops didn’t find what they were looking for, they weren’t interested in giving me a lift back up the highway to where they’d busted me. Bruce was a patient sort of guy and not one to act on instinct, meaning it would never occur to him to actually drive into Gosford and pick me up; rather he would sit there, in the middle of winter, wondering what the fuck he was doing on a drug-running trip to Queensland with someone who was clearly not on the up and up. Nor did the taxi driver have much sympathy. He insisted on getting paid before we left Gosford.
    Brisbane didn’t go well. The boys who’d paid for the smack were, to put it mildly, really looking forward to seeing me. When I explained to them that I’d been busted and had to dump their gear out the window, well, they understood it in a general sense but were nonetheless unimpressed. It was a hot and sticky few days, everyone hanging out and being quite nasty to each other. I’d put away the seven deals which were left in the film canister during the remainder of the car trip with Bruce, which meant I’d slept well in the car but now, in Brisbane, where winter doesn’t visit with any real meaning, it was obvious a holiday in the tropics had not been a good idea.
    I decided pretty quick that I never liked Brisbane anyway and in no time flat I was back wondering why I’d left my comfy rort in Newtown. Until I recalled that when I got back, it was time to start paying the Italians.

    Johnnie could see the numbers crunching uncomfortably into something like hard work and on my first day back in Newtown we had a round-table meeting where he pretty much told me what he thought of both the business and me. Which was a load off for him. And then he gave me back his key to the shop, patted me on the head, and wished me all the best.
    In three short months the business had come full circle. I was back doing seven days a week and was once more in dialogue with Doug and the Italians. In some ways that was good. It meant that I had to get my shit together and talk business. Of course they wanted to see the books, which was something I kept deferring, because the fantasyland I had created there was a Darklands—an inspired homily to the Jesus and Mary Chain album. And here’s the thing about the Jesus and Mary Chain, my favourite band at the time: my friends in Brisbane, having got busted for the bank robbery and then disappointed by me, were still keen to do a deal. In fact they were sending someone down—a friend—who wanted to get on in a pretty big way and they were wondering if I could organise it. This was good; it was cream, which was something I was always keen to be covered in. And in what turned out to be good fortune, the Jesus and Mary Chain were playing around the corner at the Enmore Theatre on the night we agreed to do the deal—and I had tickets. What became apparent, though, was that the person the Brisbane boys had sent down to do the deal was a cop and he’d organised for about six of his undercover mates to have dinner at the Pasta Man on the night of the deal. Given how desperate I was for the cream, though, I thought I still might be able to outsmart the police and walk away with the folding.
    I had known something wasn’t right when the group of six booked a table. No one booked tables at the Pasta Man, it wasn’t that kind of place. And the more they insisted on