by JR Carroll
‘One more time,’ Cornstalk said. ‘Then we turn this place into a slaughterhouse. Where is the fucking dope?’
But Zanotti wasn’t helping. In the end they dragged him outside, put him on a hog and took him all the way back to Dave Hegarty’s workshop. As they were leaving, Cornstalk issued a warning to the family.
‘Anyone calls the police, we cut him up into beef jerky. Then we come back here, take out the whole fuckin’ lot of you, burn the joint down. You got that, missus?’
She did indeed.
‘No police,’ he repeated. ‘No fucking one. Or else.’
She nodded her head; hysterical, frantic.
*
In the workshop Cornstalk fired up the oxy-acetylene. They had Zanotti chained up to a steel pillar. Cornstalk ripped open his shirt and pulled down his pants. Zanotti screamed as Cornstalk brought the blue flame closer to his hairy chest.
‘Start a fuckin’ bushfire in that,’ Cornstalk said.
First he burnt off one of Zanotti’s nipples. The howls of pain were ungodly, primeval. Still he wouldn’t give it up.
‘Just a matter of time,’ Cornstalk told him. ‘Up to you when.’
Off went the second nipple.
Tears streamed down Zanotti’s face, disfigured with a level of pain Cornstalk could only imagine. You had to give it to the guy.
Cornstalk lowered the flame.
‘Next stop, salami department,’ he said. He knew that would do the trick. No red-blooded Italian was going to sacrifice his most treasured piece of equipment, not for anything.
And so it proved.
When he’d recovered sufficiently, Zanotti took them to a self-storage place in Canberra. He didn’t have his keys to undo the padlock, but it was nothing a quick chomp of the boltcutters couldn’t fix.
Inside, the plastic one-kilo bags were stacked neatly. There were at least a hundred of them: one hundred kilos of Bolivian cocaine. A true bonanza.
That shipment started finding its way up the noses of addicts Australia wide within weeks. With his share of the proceeds, Cornstalk bought himself a flat in Coogee and a couple of high-end muscle cars. He splashed out on women, two, three at a time, five-star hotels, Bali, spent days on end at Star City casino. There he picked up his next girlfriend. She claimed not to be a hooker, but Cornstalk had his doubts. He’d had enough hookers in his time to know one when he saw one.
Her name was Sandy. She was hot, a wild thing, like most of his women, could drink like a man and loved the whole biker scene. Dressed for the part in skimpy denim shorts and tank tops, no bra. Bit of a pocked face, probably from drug abuse, but so what. Sandy was probably the most compatible squeeze he’d found yet. He wasn’t ashamed to take her to club functions. She could hold her liquor and didn’t arc up like some.
And, in the aftermath of his first big payday, Cornstalk finally quit working for Hegarty, so as to dedicate himself to the life of an outlaw. It was another stepping stone. The parting was amicable, and they remained friends for a time.
In the winter of 1998, Cornstalk’s father was run over by a car while crossing the road one night when he was drunk. Cornstalk had had little to do with his family since becoming an outlaw and didn’t really feel much in the way of grief at the old man’s passing. But respect had to be paid, and he arrived at the church with a crew of a dozen or so in full club regalia.
The wake was held at a pub in Captains Flat, an old mining town about fifty clicks from Queanbeyan, where his father was known. A handful of Angels, including Stav, came along in a show of support. In the middle of it a car pulled up outside and someone sprayed about a hundred bullets into the place. Miraculously, no one was hit. By the time Cornstalk made it out into the street the car had gone.
Subsequent inquiries led him to a Sydney identity who was a bodyguard to one of the city’s top gangsters. That was all Cornstalk needed to know.
About a month after the attack at Captains Flat he and several others, including Stav, abducted this hard man in broad daylight in an underground car park in George Street. They drove him in his own car to a far-flung suburb southwest of Sydney, where they parked in wet pastureland at the rear of a new housing estate. There they interrogated the bodyguard.
He wasn’t giving them anything, they could go jump. Then Cornstalk handcuffed him to the steering wheel, and produced a can of solvent. When the bodyguard saw the solvent his eyes widened. Still he would give them nothing; they didn’t know what they were getting into, who they were dealing with, and so on. Cornstalk emptied the can over the man’s head, clothes and throughout the car. Then he produced a box of matches. The tough guy chained to the wheel started shaking uncontrollably; sweat popped out all over his face and he began to beg for his life.
Cornstalk called men like him ‘Hollywood tough guys’: they were hard men all right, as long as they had a shotgun in their hands and a gang to back them up. Get them on their own and they went to water. This one pissed his pants.
Cornstalk asked one more time: ‘Who was in the car at Captains Flat?’ Through chattering teeth the bodyguard confessed that he was the driver, but not the shooter. That was another crime figure he was reluctant to name. ‘You don’t kill me, he will,’ he told them. Cornstalk lit a match. He asked what it was all about, and the hapless prisoner said it was orders from a major crime kingpin based in Kings Cross, where most of the organised crime in Sydney originated. Apparently this kingpin was concerned Cornstalk was encroaching too far into the heart of the crime scene; he had been in business with Alfredo Zanotti and didn’t appreciate losing all that dope. It had taken him several years to find out who was responsible, and the time had come to stop Cornstalk in his tracks.
Cornstalk was impressed and flattered that his reputation had reached so far into the Sydney underworld. But that was beside the point. ‘Didn’t you realise that was my father’s wake you shot up?’ he said. The match died and he lit another.
‘I’m sorry, man. I was under orders. Wouldn’t have done it otherwise.’
‘Who was with you—the shooter?’
‘I can’t say, mate. I really can’t. If it gets back—’
‘Don’t worry about it getting back,’ Cornstalk said. ‘I’ll deal with that. Just give me the name. No one’ll know you snitched to save your filthy hide, ’cept us.’
A few more minutes of this, a few more matches, and the bodyguard finally coughed up the name. It wasn’t anyone Cornstalk had heard of, but then he wasn’t into the Kings Cross scene. He thanked the bodyguard for his cooperation, and then flicked a lit match into the car amid terrible howls and screams. He’d had to do it; the guy was soiling his pants now, but later on he might want to back up, and Cornstalk wasn’t giving him the option.
Not long afterwards, a notorious gun thug name of Gordon Landau was shot dead outside a fast-food restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Bronte. No witnesses came forward, despite police appeals to the public; no one was ever charged with Landau’s murder.
So it went on.
Somewhere among the mayhem that made up Cornstalk’s daily life, Sandy fell pregnant. And so a baby Cornstalk came into being. His son, whom he named Rory, was born on the eve of the new millennium. Cornstalk was a week past his fortieth birthday.
By this time he’d put three men in the graveyard and plenty more in hospital. He’d been charged with one of the murders, but acquitted when the prosecution case collapsed after a key witness suffered acute memory loss at the last minute. ‘These bikers all look the same to me,’ he’d said on the witness stand. The cops were so dirty on that. They thought they had him.
He’d also done a year’s hard time for GBH and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, namely a claw hammer. He knew the ins and outs of the judicial and prison system and had developed into a handy barrack-room lawyer, which antagonised the cops, who’d come calling at all hours of the night in hopes that Cornstalk would do something deranged so they could lock him up. But Cornstalk kept his cool for the most part; called
them filthy names but refrained from violence under great duress.
During his son’s first year, Cornstalk began jumping into the sack with a woman who belonged to a fellow gang member. He’d had half an eye on her for some time, and the opportunity finally arose. At first it was just an occasional thing, but then it grew into a full-blown affair. He hadn’t planned it this way, but there it was. She was a hornbag of that sluttish type Cornstalk had never been able to resist: a dirty little bitch. She even described herself as a root rat.
So, while Sandy was wheeling little Rory around in his stroller, Cornstalk was giving it to his squeeze at a motel down the road. Queanbeyan is a small town. It had to end with a bang—and it did.
One night, November 2001, the girlfriend was having a row with her de facto husband, who suspected she was on with Cornstalk. Rumours had reached his ears that they’d been seen going in and out of motels. She finally exploded in a torrent of toxic, alcohol-fuelled abuse, telling her de facto that Cornstalk’s dick was so much bigger than his. It was a night of such physical and mental violence and truth-telling on both sides that nothing could be salvaged from the marriage; it was all she could do to stop him from driving out to Cornstalk’s place with his shotgun to wipe out his tribe.
The fallout was comprehensive for Cornstalk. Jumping the bones of a comrade’s woman was right up there on the scale of offences. At a special meeting he was charged with first-degree disloyalty and asked if he had anything to say in his defence.
‘It was just the sex,’ he told the kangaroo court. ‘Didn’t mean jack shit. Hell, you can have my woman, you want her. I don’t give a rat’s arse.’
It wasn’t the point and it didn’t go down well, with Jaws or anyone else. The aggrieved husband, a longstanding club member, argued hotly for the maximum penalty. No one, not even Dave Hegarty or Stav the Canadian, was in Cornstalk’s corner. He was out of friends. But it wasn’t only disloyalty to a comrade that had brought Cornstalk undone. The general opinion was that he was way out of control. His eagerness for extreme violence, lone wolf tendencies, the serial court cases and associated negative publicity had dragged the club into the spotlight; now they had to put up with unwanted police attention. It was bad for the club; bad for business.
This latest offence was the excuse they were looking for to cut him loose. Listening to the charges, Cornstalk figured that most of them were trumped up or exaggerated, that he was on the rise and regarded as a threat to the leadership, and that was the real reason he had to go.
Cornstalk was stripped of his patches, given a severe beating and thrown out of the motorcycle club. He lurched away into the night, face smashed and bloodied, his beloved bomber jacket ripped to shreds and his domestic life in tatters—Sandy had moved out with a pledge, calmly, icily delivered, that he’d never see his son again. His only thought, however, was that he was no longer a Hells Angel. It was pretty much the end of days as Cornstalk knew them.
20
Right now Cornstalk was sitting on a tree stump, one of a cluster that had been fashioned into an outdoor setting around a table made of redgum planks. He was smoking a cigarette and trying to figure out a way into this fucking fortress. Although he’d never admit it in front of the troops, he blamed himself for not doing enough homework. He should’ve asked more questions.
He’d assumed it would be a pushover. Like banging a hooker: get in, drop the load, be gone. Had he known otherwise, he would’ve come better equipped—battering ram, stolen from a cop shop; some dynamite; his Ford 350, a war horse with industrial-strength bullbars that he could’ve driven through the front wall, as he’d done once when they ram-raided a drug warehouse.
Stav appeared out of the dark and sat on a stump next to him. He tilted his head, holding his nostrils so the blood would flow backwards. There was no sound apart from the low throb of the generator.
‘You’ll have to get that fixed,’ Cornstalk told him. ‘Set it straight again. Looks like you’ve copped one from Danny Green.’
‘Pain in the ass,’ Stav said. He too lit up a smoke. Christo was prowling around the house, occasionally muttering to himself, trying to find a chink in its armour.
‘Worst case, we’ll have to burn the fucker down, flush ’em out,’ Stav said.
‘That’s an absolute last resort,’ Cornstalk said. ‘Fire brings attention. Remember there’s only one road out of here. We don’t want to be running into fire trucks and cop cars, redneck witnesses coming out of the woodwork.’ He threw down his cigarette, gave Stav a look. ‘Bearing in mind there’s a dead body back at the store.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Stav said. ‘Spilt milk.’
Cornstalk gave it a beat or two. ‘What was that all about anyhow? If you don’t mind my asking.’
Stav took his time answering. Cornstalk wondered if he ever would, and then Stav said: ‘Sometimes I get this … red mist in front of my eyes. When that happens, I’m not accountable.’
‘Red mist,’ Cornstalk said. ‘What the fuck is that about?’ But he didn’t expect anything further by way of explanation. He wasn’t disappointed.
‘You don’t want to know,’ Stav said.
‘Tell you what I do know,’ Cornstalk said. ‘There’ll be a truckload of DNA back at that store. In the past, wouldn’t have mattered. But, mate, this day and age, DNA rules. There’ll be something on that rug we wrapped him in, under his fingernails, other stuff in the shop you touched. You’ve got the old boy’s blood on your clothes. And that bandanna you just threw away’s got your blood on it. That’s your DNA, right there. Ties you in with the dead guy. And if you’re tied in, so am I, and Christo. See what I’m driving at?’
‘Sure,’ Stav said, shifting slightly. ‘But no one’s here. No one’s seen us. We can’t be placed at the scene.’
‘So far,’ Cornstalk said. ‘But someone always shows up. There’s always a pair of eyes somewhere out there.’
They both looked at the bush, looking for a pair of eyes maybe, glowing in the dark. Nothing.
Cornstalk was also mindful of the fact that he was driving his own car. Wouldn’t take much for someone to ID it, someone driving the other way: Three men in a black BMW X, registration CORNY. Not much room for doubt there. Maybe he should’ve stolen one for the job. He was becoming lazy in his middle age, assuming this was a simple get-in, get-out gig.
Assumptions, assumptions … They would be a man’s downfall.
‘Wonder why we do this shit sometimes,’ Cornstalk said, thinking out loud. Surprised himself, hearing those words leave his mouth.
Stav gave him a sideways look. Didn’t say anything at first, but drew thoughtfully on his cigarette.
‘Someone has to,’ he said.
They looked at each other in the dark. Cornstalk could see Stav was grinning. They both burst out laughing at the same time.
‘You’re a good trooper,’ Cornstalk told him. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Just wish you’d exercise a bit more self-discipline sometimes.’
‘You get what you get,’ Stav answered.
‘Don’t I know it.’ There wasn’t any point going on about it. Stav was right: damage was done.
Eventually Cornstalk’s gaze came to rest on the generator shed.
‘Let’s crank up the pressure,’ he said.
Stav watched as Cornstalk headed off towards the car, disappearing into the darkness. When he came back into the light he was carrying his powerful waterproof torch. He went to the small shed, opened the door and shone the beam inside. In a couple of seconds the generator’s drone died, and everything went black.
‘See how they like that,’ he said. ‘People freak out in the dark. They don’t act rationally.’
*
Tim and Amy were sitting next to each other at the top of the staircase when everything went dark. Tim knew instantly what had happened. Amy grabbed him.
‘What going on?’ she said.
‘Mind games,’ he told her. ‘They’ve turned off the power, that’s all.’ He was trying to
play it down. But Amy wasn’t buying.
‘That’s all?’ she said. ‘What are we supposed to do now? They could do anything, and we wouldn’t know. We can’t see. We’re trapped like rats.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Tim said. ‘They’re just trying to rattle us. Doesn’t make it any easier for them to get in. Sit tight. I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Where’re you going?’
‘Not far. Just downstairs. Stay right there.’
He made his way down the circular staircase, using the handrail as a guide. When he got to the bottom he groped to his left until he found the door to the storeroom, which he opened. He knew that on the floor were five kerosene lanterns, purchased from Gus’s store. Next to them were boxes of firelighter matches, the long ones, all set up for just such an emergency.
He lit one of the firelighters, used it to ignite the wick in one of the lanterns. A soft light gradually filled the space. He lit another two lanterns then ascended the stairs again, holding one of the lanterns in front of him. When he reached Amy he caught a glimpse of her face. In the lamplight she looked quite grotesque with fright.
‘Here you go,’ he said, and set the lantern down beside her before going back downstairs. He lit up the remaining two lanterns, spread them through the house: one on the kitchen counter, one on the dining room table, a third in the lounge room at the rear, on the floor; the last one upstairs, in the second bedroom, so they could move around if necessary.
*
Outside, they watched as the glimmer of lamplight spread through the house.
‘So much for not acting rationally,’ Stav said. ‘Next brainwave?’
Christo called out from near the back of the house. He was standing by an old corrugated iron water tank.
When Cornstalk reached him, he said: ‘There’s an attic window on the second floor. Give us a leg up here. Reckon I can get in.’
Upon inspection Cornstalk saw that there was indeed an old-fashioned attic window protruding from the sloping iron roof on the top storey. Must be the bedroom, he thought. There was a matching one further along. The rooms were obviously recent additions, but built in the same style and with the same materials as the original farmhouse, which must’ve been at least a hundred years old.