The Blood Source

 The Blood Source

  copyright 2015, Ann Michaels

  Contents:

  Chapter 1 -Into Night

  Chapter 2 -Deadset

  Chapter 3 - Hiding Out

  Chapter 4 – By Blood

  Chapter 5 - Dress-ups

  Chapter 6 – Loneliness and Oceans

  Chapter 7 – Cliff Hanger

  Chapter 8 - Che palle!

  Chapter 9 - Biker Man

  Chapter 10 – A taxing Time

  Chapter 11 – Just a Little Crush

  Chapter 12 – Work and Play

  Chapter 13 – Knife in the Draw

  Chapter 14 – family Matters

  Chapter 1.

  Into Night

  I felt wet and there was a crushing weight upon me. I could hardly breathe and the metallic aroma of blood filled my nostrils. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see. Then the whole brutal scene began to flow back through my mind and I realised that the man who had forced me into his car at gun point, was pinning me down upon the rough grass. He wasn’t moving.

  Slowly I began to push his body off me. He weighed a ton. Then, I saw the great carpet of stars rolled out in the bottomless night sky and I became aware of the smell of damp earth, and the growl of cars on the highway. I felt like I had returned to earth, and that by degrees, my mind was filling back up with memories, and meaning.

  I felt for the man’s pulse. Nothing. I looked down; I was still holding the gun. A Glock pistol with an extended 30-round magazine. I looked about: it was night and I seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I pressed my fingers onto my damp, black t-shirt, and the glittering sheen of moonlight showed me that my fingers were stained red. It was not my blood.

  I then remembered traveling out along a dark road, passing the old Blacktown Drive-in movie place; the gun aimed at me the whole time. Was that ten minutes ago? Or two hours ago?

  I bent over the body, and pushed the man over. Hell! He was heavy. A mass of muscle and bone: useless now, and already breaking down. I searched the front pockets of his cargo pants, as he lay half on his side, like a slab of meat. Nothing. I opened his leather jacket; I saw a white t-shirt emblazoned with a skull, flowers, and snakes; saturated with blood, and a bullet sized hole in the middle of the chest. I slipped my hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, it was lined with slick, red silk and I pulled out a leather wallet, and mobile phone.

  There was a thick wad of money in the wallet; all hundred dollar bills. Must be about at least ten thousand bucks here, I thought. I pulled out a few cards: American Express, Diners Club, Mastercard. And more. I held them up to catch the moonlight and saw that some were in the name, Pasquale Scamardo, and others, Dino Fuda.

  I pushed the heavy body, the back of the jacket a mess - a crater of blood. I checked the back pocket of the trousers and found keys. I scooped them up, and considered what I should do next. I took my own phone from the back pocket of my jeans, and called the Organised Crime Squad; Sargent Tiernan answered. Did that man ever go home?

  ‘Sarg, its Agent Carras…..I’ve got a problem’.

  ‘You’re alive! What the hell happened? We heard someone ordering you to ‘get in’, on the mobile microphone, but then, it seems that a disabling device was used. We had no idea where you were until a few minutes ago, when your phone came back online. A car should be out there soon.’

  ‘The guys dead’, I said flatly. ‘I jumped him before he got me, and managed to turn the gun around’. I paused, ‘straight through the heart’.

  ‘You’ll need to go into protection’, Sargent Tiernan said urgently. ‘The Sciarra Outfit are ruthless and stop at nothing. This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were just supposed to collect information, Agent Carras’.

  ‘I know, I know’, I muttered as I moved away toward the parked vehicle. I could hear the sirens wailing now, and there was no way I was going into protection. That would be the end of me, I’d likely be rubbed out by the Sciarra Outfit, and I’d never return to the job I loved.

  I opened the door of the Mercedes, jammed the key in, and the engine roared to life. I floored the accelerator, and fired out of there with no lights. I took a hard left, and ripped along the dark, unlit and deserted road.

  A few seconds later, the squad cars must have reached the place where my mobile phone lay on the bloodstained grass, next to the gradually stiffening body. Meanwhile, I had passed what appeared to be a giant, skeletal monster ready to pounce; although the sign proclaimed a mere water park; a place of sun and fun in daylight hours. Then I was out on the highway, heading west.

  The Mercedes, in which I was bulleting down the highway, was a high-top cargo van. This vehicle, had delivered what appeared to be cans of tomatoes, to the pizza shop, where I was working under cover. Except, instead of tomatoes, these cans actually contained, ecstasy tablets. This, I had only learned about an hour ago, as I was taking a ciggy break out the back of the pizza parlour, at just past ten o clock on a Monday night. The slow time.

  I had been hunched in behind the evil-smelling, old, boarded-up, outdoor dunny, when the oaf who had kidnapped me, drove in from a back alleyway, and unloaded a few boxes, into a detached, darkened garage. I then heard him on his phone, talking in a low voice, reporting that he had delivered the ‘Vitamin E’.

  Unfortunately for me, the oaf had smelt the cigarette smoke, and decided to investigate. He nabbed me a short time later.

  Smoking was bad for me in so many ways, but this was a new one.

  I thought about my workmates, Angie and Damon; they would both be wondering what happened to me, and why I didn’t come back from my break. I hoped they were OK. They were little more than kids; both uni students trying to earn money to pay rent, and eat. I’d grown fond of them in the last few months, in which I had worked nights, undercover, at Joe’s Pizza in Leichhardt, on Parramatta Road.

  Angie was studying to be an accountant. She was petite and dark and pretty, with large, dark blue eyes. She had been working nights at the pizza place since high school. She said she had stayed working there, because, the boss only turned up to collect the nightly takings, and other than that, pretty much left the workers’ alone. The other employee, Damon, was a social work student. He was shy, lacking in confidence, and just a little bit gay. But his Catholic family didn’t know this, I’m sure. I reckon he was biding his time, playing it safe, until he had the resources to get out on his own. They were both good kids.

  Funny, I was not that much older than them at 28, but I felt a hell of a lot more ancient. That’s what this undercover detective gig does to you. I loved the job, though. It was always interesting and often exhilarating, and, I had worked my guts out to get to where I was. I felt my insides drop. Was my career over? Was I now a hunted person? Both the Sciarra Outfit, and the police, would be looking for me. I knew I was taking a big gamble here, handling things my own way. But I wasn’t prepared to go into protection. The Sciarra Outfit were too strong, and they had their snaking tentacles everywhere. I knew if I did go into protection, I would be set up; found one day, dead, from a drug overdose, and soon forgotten. No. I would do things my way.

  I was heading out to the bush, to an old shack out near Sofala, on the way to Hill End, where my dad had taken me when I was a kid. It was only a humpy, really, built out in the bush. Dad had only used it now and then, when he went out panning for gold. Dad was always hoping to strike it lucky.

  Hill End and Sofala were damn near ghost towns now, with the days of the gold rush, riches and bustle, long since gone.

  To get to this place, I had to head toward Bathurst, but turnoff to the right before I reached the town. Then, I had to drive for some time through the spill of suburbs, and just keep driving as the houses thinned out.
Soon I would reach Wattle Flats, the place where my ancestors, on mum’s side, used to own a gold mine. Not much happening here now, I thought, as I drove through a town whose large graveyards hinted at former glories.

  I go past the turnoff to Sofala and head out on the steep, gravel road toward Hill End. About half way along that road, right in the middle of no place, with no houses and no lights, I have to swing to the right, off the road, and drive for a short time, until, I came to the shack. You couldn’t see the dwelling from the road; you just had to know where to go. I hoped that I did.

  I gritted my teeth, as the van climbed upward, vibrating and convulsing on its hair-raising journey on the unsealed road in utter darkness. I was feeling a bit outside myself and disoriented; like I was only attached to the world by a very thin, gossamer thread. At least I hadn’t seen another car or person for the last hour, which was good. Then, whether it was instinct or memory, I wasn’t sure, but I found myself, steering hard to the right, and bumping along through long grass, past clumps of trees standing about like ghosts in the moonlight. And then, there I was.

  Memories came flooding back of the past, of dad trying in his own way to be some sort of father to me. Quickly, I blocked a tsunami of memories which threatened to drown me, and turned my mind away from that mad rush of emotion, and back to my present predicament.

  I parked behind some trees, and rummaged around in the glove box for a torch. I found one. I also grabbed a chocolate bar, one of a small collection, and ate it hungrily. Killing a man and escaping from the law requires a lot of energy, I thought, ironically.

  I was about to grab the man’s mobile phone and wallet and take them into the shack to examine them, when I thought about what Sargent Tiernan had said about my mobile phone being off-line, whilst I had been traveling in this van. There must be some kind of phone disabling device fitted, I reasoned. So, if I were to take the phone outside of the van, the Sciarra Outfit would probably be able to track the phone, and me, straight away. And this phone could have spyware on it, like, TRACKER SMURF, which could easily pinpoint my geolocation.

  So, I sat there in the dark, with the wind moaning softly outside and looked through the dead man’s phone. I looked through his call log and copied the numbers down onto the back of an old invoice in the glove box. From what I could gather, Pasquale Scamardo didn’t appear to have a girlfriend, but, his phone log showed frequent calls, to what appeared to be an Eastern Suburbs phone number, listed under his contacts as, Angel’s Place, which just had to be a massage parlour. Business or pleasure? I pondered.

  Pasquale Scamardo, or, Dino Fuda, or whoever he was, also appeared to be very vain. I scrolled through about 100 selfies of him, posing in his bathroom and bedroom, flexing his muscles and showing off his giant Crucifixion tattoo. In many of the photos, he was wearing miniscule Calvin Klein underpants of assorted colours, and bulging right out of them. I had to look away. I’ve always found overt egoism and narcissism pretty repulsive.

  However, in a couple of the bedroom photos, I could see some very distinctive skinny trees outside the window, with yellow/green foliage. And behind the trees sat the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.

  The area looked like East Balmain. I remembered staying there as a kid, with my Aunty Zeta and her dog LuLu, just after mum and dad had separated. I would have been about six years old at the time. Wow! I thought, with amazement, that was over twenty years ago.

  I put the phone back into the glove box, and jumped out of the car. Switching on the torch, I began to step carefully through the tall, dry clumps of grass, which seemed to grope my legs, as they moved about in the swiftly flowing breeze, toward the disreputable looking old shack.

  It’s funny how much bigger things look when you are a kid. The shack, now, looked little more than a cubby house: dark, decrepit and creepy.

  I was fervently hoping that I would not encounter any snakes or any other creepy crawlies in the grass, or in the shack. Once, when I was staying here as a kid, I went to the cupboard to get some bread to make a sandwich, and I had come eye to eye with a snake, which was resting in there. Dad got it out with a broom, and threw into the bush. That was a hairy experience, I can tell you! But it was dad’s view that, the snake had just as much right to live, as we did.

  I kicked the door open; everything was dusty, but undisturbed. I checked the cupboard and found a few tins of baked beans, and bottles of water. I grabbed an old, army blanket off the shelf and collapsed into the beat-up old rocking chair that we had picked up of the side of the road, years ago, and covered myself, hardly noticing the dust, spider webs, and objectionable smells.

  It had been a very eventful night. I fell asleep.