8 Hours to Die

by JR Carroll

  His pajama pants were twisted around the wrong way, for some reason—they seemed to be on back to front. And on his pillow there was a strong smell: Uncle Luc’s cologne.

  In his doped-out mind he tried to piece together his confused night-time experience. It felt as if he were rolling into a vast, empty space, unable to stop. He was reaching out, trying to grab hold of something, but nothing was there, and he continued rolling, rolling, rolling …

  He picked his way through the debris from the party to the bathroom, where he was sick. The toilet bowl was disgusting; someone had used it without flushing afterwards. That made him even sicker.

  Stefan realised he was going to bed drunk most nights, but he just accepted that as part of his life now. Even though it made him feel dizzy, spaced out, and sick in the mornings, he could never resist the lure of the dark-coloured bottles on Luc’s tray, or the cold can of Moosehead beer in the fridge, no more than he could stop himself from smoking Luc’s cigarettes. What did it matter?

  In the weeks that followed, Stefan found that he often didn’t feel well enough to go to school in the mornings. He’d get up at Uncle Luc’s insistence, get dressed and force down some breakfast, and then set off for school. But he knew Luc would be gone by nine thirty, as he started work at ten thirty, so Stefan would linger a bit down the street before returning home and hitting the sack again.

  These days he was hung-over most mornings.

  He’d get up again about lunchtime, eat something from the fridge, then sit down to watch TV. Sometimes he’d put on a dirty video. If that were the case, he’d fix himself a drink to go with it.

  One time Luc came home to find him flat out on the floor. There was a half-empty bottle of Rosso Antico Vermouth on the coffee table. Stefan was so out of it he didn’t even realise Luc put him to bed.

  On the days when he did go to school, by mid-morning he was slumped on his desk, fast asleep. The teacher would shake him awake, and Stefan would raise his head, drugged-out, eyelids gummed together, wondering where he was.

  One Sunday morning following a party, Stefan ventured into Luc’s bedroom. His uncle was snoring his head off. Stefan found his wallet on the dresser and removed a twenty-dollar bill. Then he tip-toed out, opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. His mouth was bone dry. When he’d finished it he had another, and while he was drinking that he crept back into Luc’s room and took another twenty from his wallet. He had plenty more in there—a hundred and eighty bucks.

  He had no problem stealing from his uncle. It didn’t even seem wrong to Stefan. His only worry was getting caught red-handed, but that didn’t seem likely as long as he chose his moments, when Luc was out to it.

  Stefan always thought it odd that his uncle never ticked him off over his drinking, which had reached binge proportions. He just seemed to accept it, or pretend it wasn’t happening. Stefan figured that since he wasn’t his own son, Luc didn’t particularly care what he did. He was certainly tolerant. No, more than that: it was as if, by not doing anything about it, Luc was approving of his bad habits.

  16

  Tim was inspecting the storeroom next to the kitchen on the other side of the front door. Had to be a weapon in there with all the stuff he’d stashed away over the years.

  There was a claw hammer on a shelf. He picked it up; hefted it. Could he use a hammer on a man if necessary? The answer was yes, he told himself. Backed into a corner, anyone’d do any damn thing to survive. But Tim was not in any way violent by nature. Even as a cop, he’d used force and plenty of it on occasion, but had never fired his weapon outside the pistol range. He’d bought the Glock he kept at home for protection after numerous threats against him in the course of his legal duties, but it had never been fired in anger either. So this was new territory for him.

  A hammer wasn’t much up against two, probably three guns. But it would have to do.

  He turned around. Amy was right there at his shoulder.

  ‘What are you going to do with that?’ she said.

  Up close he saw there was an intense gleam in her eyes, a sort of white fire that told Tim she was pumped with fear and adrenaline. It changed the look of her face into something he barely recognised as his wife’s.

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ he whispered. Outside the house, they’d gone quiet for the moment.

  ‘Maybe they’ll go away,’ she said in a hollow sort of voice. She didn’t even sound like Amy.

  Tim did not reply. There was no way this crew was leaving without giving it their best shot. But he didn’t want to say that to her. Let her believe what she wanted—for now.

  Main thing was to keep a cool head. Rash or impulsive action brought on by panic would be fatal. He was pretty sure he could keep himself in check, but what about Amy?

  From the corner of his eye he noticed the outside sensor light had come on. They were less than two metres away, separated only by a bullet-sprayed door. He moved Amy silently into the kitchen, out of the line of fire in case they started shooting again. He’d pulled the curtains over the shattered window, all the windows. His gut told him the kitchen seemed to be the best option. Better to take them on right here, first line of defence, rather than have them coming to find you, guns blazing. He’d decided Amy was right about not going upstairs. At least here they had some sort of a fighting chance of stopping them from getting in.

  He wasn’t optimistic about that.

  Bang.

  The door shook but did not budge. Amy grabbed Tim’s arm.

  Bang.

  Silence, then a moment later: Bang.

  OK, Tim thought. They’re trying to kick it in.

  Bang.

  The door moved with each impact but otherwise stood firm. But for how long? Whoever was doing this was no amateur—they were monster kicks. The walls and floor shook; objects on shelves rattled.

  Bang.

  Tim rushed to the dining room, swept everything off the table. Then with great effort he tipped the table over.

  It was a heavy table, handcrafted from redgum planks. Cost an arm and a leg. He slid it over to the doorway on the polished wood, crunching glass fragments from the shattered kitchen window, turned it around with much grunting and gasping, and slammed it hard against the door.

  Bang.

  Tim stood behind the table, legs apart, hammer in hand, heart thumping in his ribcage, breath coming in short, explosive bursts from exertion and fear and whatever else was going on inside his body.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  The door held. He glanced behind at Amy. She was now standing on the staircase, tearful, arms folded tight across her chest, lines of stress etched on her face. He tried a bit of a grin. It did no good.

  Bang.

  *

  Christo gave it up.

  ‘Fuck that,’ he said. ‘Need some dynamite. Got any in the car?’

  It wasn’t that stupid a question. Cornstalk had been known to carry the odd stick; that or some Molotovs, a Claymore, whatever was needed to get the job done.

  Stav had his head back, blood-drenched bandanna clamped on his face.

  ‘How’s that nose?’ Cornstalk said.

  ‘Not that flash,’ Stav said. ‘I can taste blood down the back of my throat.’

  ‘Serves you right for sticking your face in, you dumb Canuck,’ Cornstalk said. ‘What’d you expect him to do, give you a big French kiss?’

  That got a laugh from Christo.

  ‘Hey, you can kiss my dumb Canuck’s ass, goddamn midget,’ Stav told him. ‘I don’t see you doing so good with your fuckin’ Bruce Lee routine.’ He threw away the bandanna in disgust. ‘I get my hands on that fucker, he’ll know about it. Rip his fuckin’ liver out and make him eat it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t take it so personal,’ Cornstalk said. ‘Man’s only defending his life and property, same as you’d do.’

  Stav produced his gas lighter, snapped it on. Adjusted the flame to the max. ‘Let’s see if we can’t fire up the sit
uation a bit,’ he said. He shoved his hand through the shattered window. Whoosh. Up went the curtains.

  That brought back memories.

  Stav stared at the fire eating up the fabric. As always the sight of flames transfixed him, transporting him back to another place far away and a time so distant in his mind it felt made up, as if he had lived part of another person’s life, or dreamed it. Right at this moment, as the bright yellow light reflected in his eyes, he was powerless to do anything but gaze on as the flames licked eagerly at the timber window frames, desperate to consume them along with the rest of the building, and anyone inside.

  17

  By the time he was released from Long Bay in September 2001, Sammy Paxinos had developed the mindset of a hardcore career criminal. While in prison he had been placed in the Violent Offenders Therapeutic Program, along with some of the worst offenders in New South Wales. Being naturally inclined towards violence, he learned more from his association with them than from the program, which he regarded with contempt. It was like being back in school, run by shrinks and do-gooders.

  By the time he marched through the gates back into the real world with his overnight bag containing his few meagre belongings, he had built up an imposing upper body from many hours spent lifting weights. Early in his sentence he’d got into a couple of scraps and showed he wasn’t to be messed with. People left him alone from then on.

  Zed didn’t fare as well. Housed in a different part of the prison, he was beaten to a pulp in the recreation room one day by an associate of Frank Matteo. He was put in an induced coma for some time, and when he finally emerged he wasn’t the same old Zed. He was brain damaged to within an inch of his life—a cot case.

  Sammy visited Zed several times before giving it up as a bad job. Zed was a drooling vegetable, completely unaware of anybody or anything. He’d also stacked on the weight from lying in a wheelchair all day, eating but doing nothing else. It was depressing.

  Zed’s parents, who were charged with the responsibility of caring for their son for the rest of his days, didn’t exactly welcome Sammy with open arms. He didn’t bother reminding them that the whole thing was Zed’s idea in the first place. That was made perfectly clear at the trial.

  So he cut Zed loose, with deep misgivings and a heavy heart, after all they’d been through together. But he had to move on and without the help of his own family—they’d mostly disowned him long before. His father wiped him even before the trial; his two sisters had married and wanted nothing further to do with their no-good brother. His extended family no longer existed in his world. He didn’t care about them anyway.

  His ever-loving mother was the only one to stick by him. To her, he was still an Adonis, even if he did have a few flaws. She was fiercely defensive of him. Anyone badmouthed her boy, she’d fly into them with her customary rage and then cut them off forever. She was the only one to regularly visit him in prison, against the wishes of her husband. She would probably have left Sam, except that he controlled the purse strings. She would’ve had no hope of surviving on her own. Since he couldn’t go home because of the old man, Sammy was living in a rooming house deep in Sydney’s west. It was set up by Corrective Services especially for ex-cons reentering society. It was basic but tolerable. The other residents mostly seemed to be screwballs, heavily medicated schizophrenia or paranoia sufferers who were calm and well behaved most of the time but who could go ballistic for no apparent reason, raving on about someone stealing cash or meds from their room. Sammy did his best to ignore them.

  The only one he really got on with was a biker named Rafe, who’d just done a nine-year bit for murder. He’d taken out a love rival by torching his car while the victim was sleeping in the back seat. Rafe was tough as they came but funny, a regular comedian whose specialty was doing John Cleese imitations, and mimicking the screwball residents when they were out of control. He was a scream; Sammy often had tears running down his face watching him. Even the screwballs laughed. But maybe they didn’t know any better. Maybe they thought he was for real.

  People came and went in that rooming house. Some committed crimes and went back to prison; others disappeared into the streets, never to be seen again. One committed suicide. There were a lot of revolving-door recidivists, inmates who couldn’t handle life on the outside: they would do something, a burglary or an act of vandalism, then wait to be arrested, simply to get back into the system where they felt at home and would be fed three times a day.

  Sammy found it hard getting a job, mainly because he was highly selective about what he was prepared to do, but also because of his aggressive bearing, the don’t-fuck-with-me set of his face and the crude prison tatts that adorned his body. They were random markings, symbols, words, whatever, that had no special significance but they did put people off.

  Not that he wanted to earn an honest living. He had other plans in mind. But since he was on parole he needed to keep his nose clean, or he’d finish up back in Long Bay to complete his sentence. Sammy had no intentions of going back in the can, so for the time being he needed a job, to pay rent and feed himself, buy a car and a TV.

  Trouble was, not many jobs were on offer at the time. There was a recession on, apparently.

  Eventually, in desperation, he found work at a huge factory that made cardboard boxes. This turned out to be as boring and soulless as prison—even more so, because he was at it all day, including overtime if required, doing all the lowly, menial jobs around the place for minimum wage.

  Some days he felt like decking the foreman, who was a power-hungry son of a bitch, but he held himself in check. For six, seven months he did this, taking his pay packet home every week to his crummy lodgings full of raving madmen.

  *

  Then, one cold night in July 2002, he and Rafe went to meet a man at a pub in Granville. He was a biker; an old associate of Rafe’s before he’d hit the nick. And according to Rafe he had a job lined up that paid a lot better than sweeping up a factory floor.

  Rafe had been—still was, after a fashion—a member of a gang called Death Merchants, or ‘DM’ as he referred to it. DM specialised in factory and warehouse robberies, ram raids, truck hijackings and ripping off drug dealers. Seemed everyone was into that last one, it was practically a national pastime. But it wasn’t the deal on the table that night, down at a rough dive called the Horny Goat, in the industrial backstreets.

  Rafe bought some drinks and then introduced Sammy to Dingo, a fiftyish man in battered biker gear with the letters DM stitched all over it, along with a logo that featured a motorcyclist enveloped in flames. Dingo had unruly hair, bushy moustache and goatee, and tatts on his eyelids, neck, arms and hands—probably everywhere else as well. He wasn’t a pretty sight. Sammy recognised the crude markings on the backs of Dingo’s hands as prison work, same poor quality as his own. Thing about prison tatts was, the standard was rough and ready but they gave the wearer street cred in spades. They showed you meant business; people tended to step out of your way.

  Dingo gave Sammy a long, hard stare. That, too, spoke of prison. Sammy wasn’t intimidated—he believed he could take Dingo down if need be. He wasn’t scared of him, or anyone.

  ‘Where’d you do your time?’ Dingo asked. He took a long pull on his schooner. The foam coated his moustache; Dingo left it there as if that was normal for him, even though he looked ridiculous.

  ‘Long Bay,’ Sammy said.

  ‘What section?’

  ‘They put me in the program for violent offenders,’ Sammy said. ‘Along with a bunch of nut cases and losers.’

  ‘Violent offenders,’ Dingo said.

  ‘That’s right. Violent Offenders Therapeutic Program. We’d sit in this room and talk about our feelings, our families, what made us do bad things. It was shit, but better than breaking rocks or whatever.’

  ‘Let me set you straight, my friend,’ Dingo said. ‘Everyone in prison is a loser. By definition. Else they wouldn’t be there. That includes you. Am I right?’

&
nbsp; ‘Guess so,’ Sammy said. He’d never once thought of himself as a loser.

  ‘So … what bad things did you do?’ Dingo said.

  Sammy told him all about Frank Matteo, about how his mate Zed was reduced to a slavering cripple in a revenge attack by one of Matteo’s crew in prison.

  ‘I heard about that,’ Dingo said. ‘It was in the papers. Tough. Prisons are dangerous places. This Matteo—he still alive?’

  ‘Think so,’ Sammy said. ‘Had twenty-seven stab wounds, but he pulled through somehow.’

  Without taking his eyes off Sammy, Dingo took another long pull on his schooner, this time emptying it.

  ‘Maybe you should square off with this joker. Put him away for good. For your mate.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ Sammy said, just to please him. He had never thought along those lines. Zed was a lost cause. Sammy wasn’t going back there.

  Rafe butted in at that point. He’d been silent so far.

  ‘Can we cut to the chase?’ he said to Dingo. ‘Pleasant as it is to listen to you guys chatting away.’

  Dingo grinned at Rafe. ‘You fuckin’ clown.’ He turned again to Sammy. ‘This idiot is all action, not much thought behind it. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good man. But in this caper, planning and preparation are the keys to success. You got to figure out the systems in place for stopping guys like us, and then find a way through them. You take someone on in your crew, you got to be sure he’s right for it. You got to be able to rely on him to do his part without fucking up. Else we all finish up in the can. And here endeth the lesson.’

  Sammy bought a fresh round of schooners. When he came back, Dingo and Rafe were laughing at something Rafe had said. Sammy wondered if they we laughing at him.

  When he sat, Dingo got down to business. Leaning over the table he said: ‘There’s this container depot in Matraville. Full of trucks carrying imported goods ready to be delivered to their destinations. Only there’s one truck that isn’t gonna make it. It’s loaded with imported Scotch whisky. What we do, we go in there and steal that container.’