eXXXpresso

By Dave Warner

Nice guy Rick Boski always seems to wind up on the wrong end of fate’s boot. Rick was so desperate to earn money to keep his wife Marietta happy that he took a third job guarding a dope plantation, then fell asleep and was still asleep when the cops arrested him. Rick should have been out of jail in six months but couldn’t stand idly by while some angry inmates knifed a fellow inmate, a bent ex-cop. His altruism earned him another twelve-months inside. But he didn’t waste his time. Now he’s out with a brand new plan to change his life and maybe win back his wife. Rick’s plan is coffee.
It is the year 2000 and Rick can see that coffee is the industry of the future. He is going to open his own café with a prison theme – fold-down bunks for seating, bolted tables, bars that can be slid across to give the sensation of being in jail. He’s done the math and he knows he has a sure-fire winner. Borrowing money isn’t easy for an ex-con but drug-dealer Guthrie, is prepared to loan him the money. Of course, non-payment will lead to dire consequences but Rick isn’t worried on account of he has a term deposit maturing in time to repay the loan. The problem is Rick has never bothered to close the joint account he had with Marietta always thinking that was confirmation they'd never get back together. Marietta has now fallen in love with Thaiphoon Tony, a junior Asian kick-boxing champion, and needs big bucks to secure him a title fight but doesn't have fifteen dollars let alone fifteen grand ... until she looks in the old joint bank account and finds it flush. She always intends to pay Rick back but for now, she thinks she needs it more than he does. So when the day of reckoning arrives to pay his loan shark, Rick discovers his bank account is empty. Fate, has crushed him again, and Guthrie’s goons will shortly crush him in a much more painful manner.
But then fate seems to turn. Cell-phones are just starting to gain popularity and Rick’s new phone looks like most others so it’s not that surprising that he happens to pick up the wrong one from the betting shop. He knows who it must belong to – a shifty guy carrying a package. But before he can give the phone back Rick gets a call on the phone. `We have the twenty-five grand, do you have the package?” What else could this be but a drug-deal, figures Rick. All he has to do is pretend he has drugs and swap a worthless pack of icing sugar for the cash. Only trouble is the package turns out to be the sexy, glamorous, dangerous Zeen - exactly the kind of girl Rick falls in love with.

In the richest square mile of dirt in the world a bunch of triple-crossing desperados will have their fate determined by a state-of-the-art espresso machine.
eXXXpresso is an Antipodean, Elmore Leonard style adventure by author Dave Warner winner of Australia’s premier crime-fiction prize, the Ned Kelly Award.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Warner
• Release date: Jun 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463290521

Dave Warner

Dave is an award-winning novelist (Ned Kelly for Best Australian Crime Fiction, WA Premier’s Award for Literature) with nine published adult crime novels and a number of non-fiction books on sport and music.  He has a long association with Aussie Rules and was commentator for Sydney Swans games in the 90s on Kick AM and 2GB.

Book preview

EXXXPRESSO

Dave Warner

Website http://www.davewarner.com.au

Twitter @suburbanwarner

Instagram davew.author

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written prior permission from Anthem Pty Ltd PO Box 580 Balgowlah 2093 New South Wales Australia. [e-mail]

Copyright Dave Warner 2000

First published 2000

ISBN 9780463290521

Smashwords edition 2018

Other crime fiction titles by Dave Warner

Big Bad Blood (Amazon Kindle)

City of Light (Fremantle Press)

Before It Breaks (Fremantle Press)

Clear to the Horizon (Fremantle Press)

Albums Mugs Game, Free Kicks, Correct Planet, Suburbs in the 70s, Surplus and Dearth, The King and Me, WHEN.

Cover design Craig Burkill

Chapters

Author Notes

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Author notes

Back in the early 1990s I wrote a screenplay for a short film that turned out to be the genesis for Exxxpresso. The late, great amazing guitarist Johnny Leopard had tuned me on to Elmore Leonard and I found Elmore’s style of character-driven, complex plot with a lightness of touch, optimism even, suited my sensibilities. After I had written a couple of hard boiled, dark crime novels (City of Light and Big Bad Blood) and a series of clue-puzzle whodunnits (my Lizard Zirk series) I was ready to have a go at writing a uniquely Australian version of an Elmore Leonard style novel. Exxxpresso is the result, a bunch of hopeless characters needing to be protected from themselves as much as each other.

This novel began life as a screenplay in the days when mobile or cell phones were burgeoning. It was producer Charlie Musca who told me about a time when he and another guy mixed up their phones which looked identical. This became if you like the inciting incident for the story. It is remarkable now in less than twenty years how different technology has become but for those younger readers who may become confused by some parts of the novel here are some important facts re life in 2000:

In Australia in 2000 mobile phones were not cheap, though their cost was reducing. There was limited or no ability for sending text messages and phone companies charged big rates by the minute to use a mobile network. There were no smartphones and phones were not cameras – at least the kind of phones most people could afford.

There was little or no social media: Facebook, My Space, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat either did not exist or were in their infancy. Only email was established.

If away from your landline most people had to make long distance calls using public phones which ate up coins rapidly.

Preparing this version for the e-book I made some minor changes. I would still love to see Exxxpresso made into a movie or mini-series so if you’re a producer looking for a crime story with twists, heart and humour, contact me via my website. www.davewarner.com.au

I would like to thank those who helped me on the original publication and for this reboot, my daughters Violet and Venice who helped type and style it.

Chapter 1

A gun, even a nine-millimetre pistol was a lot fucking heavier than you thought. Especially if you had to keep it level trained on a small glass rectangle like Guthrie had these last fifteen minutes or so. In fact, how long had it been?

`Time?’

He snapped the word the way a rich bastard snaps a fiver off the top of a roll for a go-fetcher, a valet or that sort of person.

`Six fifty-seven.’

Joel’s whisper crept over Guthrie’s shoulder heavy and slow as an elephant’s foot.

Yea. That’s right, Joel was with him up front. Wade was guarding the back door just in case The Dutchman broke his pattern and came in that way. It was amazing how difficult it was to concentrate when you were naturally buzzing.

6.57. Guthrie pulled that info back through his brain like a fish and chip man trawling hot fat for a stray chip.

6.57.

That made it about twenty minutes since they’d picked the back door lock and snuck through to this spot. The reception hall he figured you’d call it.

Guthrie laughed at that. The irony of it. Reception.

Yea, one fucking reception it was going to be all right.

His brocaded vest, which he knew was too small for his gut, but which he liked anyway because it was the sort of thing Mick Jagger would wear, stretched with the laughter. He felt good. This was right. This was the correcto mundo way to go. His blood told him that.

When the ripple of laughter stopped, like a horse you backed that was leading right up to the shadows of the post, getting the staggers as you tried to will it on to victory, his mood quickly grew dark and angry. That shouldn’t happen. Not in this day and age. Happiness should be permanent. But there you are, one second you are congratulating yourself on your smarts, ready to smell that money right out of the bookie’s bag, next thing you get this uneasy feeling. You can’t even say which particular horse it is but you know something is swooping late, ready to destroy your plans. That uneasy feeling was what had killed his laughter. He didn’t like the fact that it had snuck into his brain. Now of all times. Like some burp building in the middle of a pash with a hot piece of snatch.

He snapped his fingers, threw out his palm to Joel.

`More.’

Joel didn’t respond.

Guthrie had Joel’s number. Joel thought he was eating too much of those pills. As if Joel had any fucking say in it. Fucking hired help. Who did they think they were? Wade was no better. The pair of them had been nothing but monkeys in bow-ties when Guthrie had given them the opportunity to join his growing operation in important, proactive capacities. Guthrie held his hand out behind him until he felt Joel put two of the small tabs in his palm.

`That’s the last.’

The slow voice again, begrudging.

Fuck it, these guys better smarten up their act or they were out.

`Maybe he’s not coming?’

To Guthrie’s ear, Joel sounding almost wishful at the prospect. Like he didn’t have the bottle for this. Maybe he didn’t? Maybe Guthrie himself was the only one who cared if The Dutchman ate up the operation. After all, it was his business. These guys were just employees, clocking on and off, using the home gym he’d set up for them. Not bloodsuckers exactly, but hardly what you’d call motivated. Or dedicated. Not like those Japs. They treated their employer with respect. Maybe he should look elsewhere? Get some Vietnamese?

Na, those bastards were too motivated. Stab him in the back the moment he looked the other way. No, what he needed was something between the Gooks’ ruthless ambition, and these lazy steroid junkies. Maybe he’s not coming? What sort of negative shit was that? He didn’t need negative shit.

`He’s coming.’

Guthrie said it as much to convince himself as Joel. But then, it had to be right didn’t it? He’d staked out this place for a month. Every Thursday The Dutchman came in at 6.45 p.m. Sometimes with two bodyguards but always at 6.45. Through the front door. And just in case, Guthrie had Wade standing at the back. So The Dutchman was twelve minutes late. Well, maybe thirteen now. No reason for panic. No reason for fucking negativity. Maybe that was why he sensed that black shadow of a horse swooping down the outside. Joel’s and Wade’s bad vibes. Yea, shit, that’s what it was. Well, they’d just have to grow some balls. Tonight had to be when Guthrie made his move. The Dutchman was close to doing a deal with the bikies. Once that went down the balance would be irrevocably altered. Oh sure, the bikies made noises like that wouldn’t affect his operation.

`You’re eccies, coke and acid,’ they’d say, `Dutchman is still smack, we’re still speed and guns.’

But there was a lot of heat on smack. The Gooks were getting stronger in there every day. No different to how world wars started. A little bit of greed, a lot of necessity. There was only so much territory to go round. If the Gooks’ snipped The Dutchman’s smack margins, was he going to let his empire gradually fade? No fucking way. But taking on the Gooks was too hard. The same Chinks that were supplying The Dutchman from mainland China were the cousins of his new competitors. Not real cousins, but you know, they all ate from the same rice-bowl. So it was a natural The Dutchman would move sideways. Into Guthrie’s territory. The Dutchman was already trying to muscle in on coke. Guthrie had suspected that for a long time. Ever since his own figures had started to level off about three months ago. He allowed himself a laugh at the memory of how he got the confirmation. Offering that dumb coke-head Robinson, some free blow. Robinson puts the straw to his nose, bends over the line and WHAMMY! Next thing he knows the straw is sticking up through his nose like a periscope. Guthrie had shoved the coke-head’s noggin hard down, so the straw actually came poking up out the top of his nose. Like a fucking periscope! The blood dripped all over the coke but he gave Guthrie what he wanted: The Dutchman had been supplying half the clubs in Northbridge. Free foil of smack with any coke they bought off him.

So The Dutchman had to be stopped. And it had to be tonight.

`What’s the time?’

Joel sighed and was about to reply when they both heard the front iron-gate swing open. The Dutchman fancying himself as some sort of yuppy. Two-storey inner-city terrace, iron gate with little spears on top. Guthrie bet if he went through the kitchen he’d find one of those things grinds coffee beans and a fridge full of natural spring water.

Finger on the trigger Guthrie gripped the stock hard. The Dutchman was careless. He thought all he needed was state-of-the-art surveillance and alarm shit. Thing was, you could get any four-eyed nerd who liked to march to the beat of the Bolivian powder to bypass that shit. Throw in a power blackout over four blocks and you were home free. That’s all it had taken for Guthrie to be in the driving seat.

The shadow walked up towards front door. A blurry shape became visible through the rectangle of coloured glass.

Guthrie was supposed to wait. That was his own plan. Wait until the door was open, let the fucker see who had outsmarted him, blast him. But the pills were just kicking in, syncing how good he felt in his brain with how good he felt in his blood, intersecting, shouting at Guthrie there was no time like the present, the bullets would go through that glass and wood like it was paper and smash into The Dutchman. Threat gone. Bang, like that.

Guthrie pulled on the trigger and the bullets went crashing out the way they were supposed to. No hesitation, no misgivings with those fuckers. As far as hired help went, they were they best.

Chapter 2

The shirt didn’t feel that unusual. Nor the jeans. It wasn’t like it was the first time in twenty-seven months he had worn them. There had been outings. Funny word that, `outings’. More suited to kids. But they sort of were kids, Rick supposed. He really couldn’t think of any better word to describe a bunch of cons being chaperoned into the outside world by their guards. So, wearing jeans and a shirt like now, while he wouldn’t say that felt `normal’ yet, it wasn’t like, alien to him or anything. That first time, about six months ago now, that did feel weird. At Casuarina he’d never had a day outside in fourteen months. Then when they transferred him here to the farm, he’d spent six months watching the other guys go on outings with the screws. Six months of proving he was no escape risk before finally his time came. Counting the fourteen months in Casuarina, twenty months all-up since he’d been inside. Climbing out of the prison overalls and into some jeans for the first time in nearly two years had felt like, like when you’ve been laid low for a week by the Asian flu and you get out of bed and stand on your legs the first time. Strange, weird, but good all the same because you know you can still do it. That’s how it felt that first time. Then when that van went out the gates of the farm, which is what they called this place, a prison `farm’, well that was like being an astronaut or something. Like going into a new world. What the screws had done that time was, they took them to the beach and they all played volleyball and swam, which was pretty good fun. It was a long way from the beach where the farm was, and in Perth you didn’t want to ever be a long way from the coast. Closeness to the ocean or the river, which ran from the ocean, determined how high up the social ladder you were.

So the farm, being out by the hills heading east, heading towards the desert if you like, that was bottom rung.

Rick reckoned that the screws, who all lived out here near their work, took the cons to the beach because they missed it themselves. Most of the screws were Poms. So they probably came from Yorkshire or somewhere where

they’d been sucked in by Home and Away all that beach, all that ocean, all those lithe young bods in bikinis, and then found they were stuck out in the foothills heading towards the desert. So you could see why the screws would want to go to the beach during work hours. It was fucking hot in this place in summer.

Rick came from Newcastle, over the other side of the continent in New South Wales, and people there thought they knew hot, and maybe if you worked next to the blast furnace in the BHP steelworks like his grandfather had for thirty years, maybe you did. But the ordinary cit over there, sticking a board on a rack or sucking on an icy-pole down the local deli, they had no idea what `hot’ was. No compared to here in the West. Their hot, was mild here. His first year in the maximum-security prison at Casuarina, Perth had eleven days in a row over the old hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Because you could always add five degrees on the Perth temperature for this far inland that meant it could have been fifteen or sixteen consecutive centuries here. And the Fremantle Doctor, the big breeze that blows in from the ocean in the afternoons and cools down the city, the one the cricket commentators like Tony Greig are always talking about when they are broadcasting from the WACA, forget it. By the time it got to here, it was weaker than a dying man’s breath. Perth was the furthest significant dwelling area, for that read city, from any other significant dwelling area, in the world, was what Rick had read in the prison library. That surprised him. He would have thought some of those former Soviet provinces that ended in `tan’ would have given it a run for its money. Still, when he thought about it, he had to concede that Adelaide was the nearest city, and that was a two-hour flight in a jumbo.

He was nervous now. Getting real nervous.

Partly it was because he was wondering if old Alf had finished painting the tiny pieces of furniture. He wanted the whole model complete when he took it out of here because he couldn’t afford somebody to do that on the outside and he wasn’t real keen about coming back if Alf still had finishing touches to do. The plans had long been ready. Skillman, the draftsman who was in for some Queensland property scam, had drawn them up for something to do. That was one good thing about prison, a big support system. Like a college or something. There were computers and photocopiers and library books, and people who could teach you things. Not all just hot-wiring cars and rigging explosives, though there was that too, especially at Casuarina. But here at the farm it was almost academic. Broadlands was in for down-loading child porn off the Internet and so he was a mine of info on computers. The screws never let him near them unless he was supervised, but he was the one told Rick about surfing the net and how Rick could do research on his business idea. Then when Rick had the info on all his likely competitors and stuff, he took the idea to Irving Gould two cells up.

Rick kind of wished Bondy was still out here at the farm.

Bondy, Alan Bond, was the greatest entrepreneur Perth had ever known. He had won the America’s Cup for chrissake and brought the event to Perth in 1987. That’s when the café society had really begun, so that was why Rick was particularly fond of him, seeing as that was where his future lay. They had tickertape parades for him and his Australia 2 crew all around the country. Then in the ‘89 crash Bondy lost all his dough and the next thing he was in here for some shonky business with a painting. Thing was, as Rick saw it, the real reason he was in here was because he had lobbed into the country as a penniless Pom. If he had gone to the same schools as all those other guys who hadn’t won the America’s Cup when they tried year after year, then he would have been fine. Rick sort of had this fantasy Bondy might have liked his idea so much he would have given him a stake, or at least found some business contacts with seed money.

It was Irving Gould who had first told him about seed money. Irving was no Bondy but he was a businessman with plenty of smarts. He was doing time for counterfeiting Stussy and Mambo gear and flogging it through market stalls. Both the business plan he had written up on the library p.c. and the counterfeit Van Heusen shirt Rick was wearing, he owed to Irving. Irving made sure all the screws got a shirt too, so nobody was hassling nobody.

Among the many facts Gould had drummed into Rick was that a business plan wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. A business plan was a financial condom to make bankers feel they weren’t going to catch anything bad if they climbed into bed with you. It was a get out clause for later recriminations was all it was. What it wasn’t, was a plan to make money. That had to come from you. And if you were intending to run a small business like Rick you had to make sure of five things.

Most importantly did the public want your product? Then, if they did, why yours instead of your competitors? If you could satisfy both of those criteria you had to make sure you had enough money for plant and stock. Then you had to make sure that you didn’t need too many staff to make the thing work because staff costs were the killer in any small business. Lastly, you had to make sure that you wanted to do this, because if you employed somebody else to do it, you could be absolutely certain they would rip you off. If your business went well, they would rip you off because they would convince themselves the business was going well because of them, and by giving them a job all you were doing was ripping them off. If the business was going badly, they would blame you for tainting them with failure and they would rip you off to punish you. The only people you could trust were close family. Did Rick have any family? Gould had asked.

This was a moot point. For Rick’s tenth birthday Rick’s dad had given him a plastic Steve Austin – Six Million Dollar Man toy. Three days later he quit the family for good in a hail of blue metal from under the wheels of the GTS Monaro on which he had lavished more time than he ever had on Rick. That was twenty years ago and Rick hadn’t clapped eyes on him since. The choice of toy said a lot about the old man. For a start the toy was expensive, but even by age ten Rick hated Colonel Steve Austin. Rick’s dad spent a lot of money on things that gave nobody, even himself, any pleasure. The woman he’d left Rick’s mum for had champagne tastes on a beer budget. Most of his waking hours Rick’s old man spent in the pub grizzling about her. Eventually he torched the Monaro - another expensive toy that he spent most of his time cursing - hoping to scam the insurance, but miscalculated and wound up in a burns unit in some place near Wagga Wagga.

The woman threw him twins. The last Rick heard, his dad was working some circus up Queensland way and the woman and the twins had a fire-eating juggling act going.

Rick’s mum and younger brother were still in Newcastle but Rick was too embarrassed to contact them. His older sister, the person he was closest to in the whole world, and the reason he had come to Perth, had drowned in a boating accident a year before he went down. Her husband didn’t want to know him.

Which left Marietta.

And Marietta, if he was honest with himself, was the real reason he was nervous, not whether old Alf might finish painting the miniature furniture in time.

Alf was in the hobby room up the end of the hallway, just getting the right shade of grey on the tiny bars when he saw the lean, fuzzy image of Rick Boski coming towards him. Lean because Boski was one of those wiry sorts, a tad under six foot, who never stacked on weight, even with prison grub. Fuzzy because Alf’s eyesight was definitely getting worse. But new glasses would be an admission of old age. And that he had no intention of acknowledging. Not when he’d entered the system in the old Fremantle gaol so long ago that he still had twenty-twenty vision, and could sleep all night without having to get up for a piss. So he’d put up with the fuzziness, keep a few pangs of regret at bay, and a little conceit intact.

`How’s it coming?’

Boski leaned down towards the model, hands in his jeans’ pockets, like some house-owner checking on the plumber, as if his presence might stop him getting ripped off. It never did. Alf knew. He used to be a plumber.

`Nearly done. The shade of grey was tricky but I’ve got it now.’

Usually he would charge for this service. Couple of packs of smokes, some books. For Boski though, it was a freebie. Boski didn’t belong in the system. Sure you could say Irving Gould or Skillman didn’t belong here either. Not to talk to them or look at them. But fifteen years inside had given Alf a camera to the soul, and in their soul those guys were here because they deserved to be. Boski had an innocence like he should have been one of them park rangers or something, fixing up birds with broken wings or pushing whales back into the ocean. Alf hoped the guy was savvy enough, and dare he say it, nasty enough, to last in the rough and tumble world of small business.

Boski looked up with a smile on his dial.

`It looks great. You have to let me give you something.’

Alf repeated that it was his going-away present to Rick.

`What about this?’

Boski was pulling at the shirt Irving Gould had given him.

`You kidding? You’re a Mens, I’m an Extra Large.’

`You could trade it.’

The bloke was proposing to give him the shirt off his back, unbelievable.

`You can’t walk out of here with no shirt.’

Rick waved that concern away. `Goose is picking me up. He’s about my size. He’ll have a shirt I can borrow.’

Alf sidestepped the shirt offer.

`Say hi to the Goose for me.’

Goose Gordon had been out a couple of months. It had been Goose who’d told Alf about the circumstances surrounding Boski’s incarceration. As with a great many of the boys, it had revolved around a woman.

According to Goose, three years ago Rick Boski was a hard working young man, in over his head with a mortgage and new wife, neither of which he could afford. This Marietta used to dance for one of the pub lingerie outfits but Rick didn’t fancy his wife flashing her tush to guys like himself, so he told her to quit and get another job. This other job she got was shopping. Not shoplifting, just plain old shopping.

With plastic.

At this she was very good, in fact the K-Mart girls dubbed her Imelda. To pay the bills, Rick was working in a tyre place from 9 to 5 then doubling as an office cleaner, finishing in the early hours of the morning, catching a few zeds, then up again at the tyre place. Six days a week, and six nights. Then one of his mates, who was really just an acquaintance, suggested he might make some extra cash on Sundays minding a dope crop out Gin Gin way.

Marietta had pleaded with him to spend the time at home but there were so many bills to pay that the thought of a couple of hundred cash, tax free, for doing nothing but literally watching the grass grow, was too tempting. So Rick took the Gin Gin job. After all he figured it wasn’t like it was hard work. The second week he’s out there, trouble.

After two hours of sitting in a steamer chair listening to the cricket, Rick had fallen into a sound sleep. He was still sleeping as the cops rolled up and burned the crop. At first they thought he was dead he was so still. Then they heard him snoring.

The cops told Rick all of this later back at the cells. They had lifted the steamer chair across into the van and carted him, chair and all, back