Cargo Cult (6 page)

Before he could even complete the
thought, the silence of the huge department store was shattered by
a small explosion, followed immediately by a terrible ringing
clamour.

Twenty minutes into his taxi ride
home, Wayne began to feel resentful at how Sam had treated him. His
resentment built gradually into anger and from there into
rebellion. He told the taxi driver to take him to another address,
one back towards the town centre.

“Are you sure, mate? The lady said
I was to get you home.”

“I know where I want to go!” Wayne
shouted, still too drunk to realise it. “She’s not the boss of the
world! Turn this taxi around! She can’t make me do anything!”

The taxi driver gave in with a
shrug. He’d done his best. “All right mate. Settle down. We’re on
our way.”

Wayne settled back into the seat
and sulked to himself. He’d missed his gig for her. “And it was
important!” he said aloud.

“Wossat mate?”

“Missed my gig,” Wayne grumbled.
“’Simportant.”

“You’re not gonna chuck up in my
cab are you mate?”

“She wants to go to the Space
Station, you know.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“She’s going to esspose them. She’s
gonna be a big, bigger, big-shot.”

“Hmm.”

“Bunch of drongos.”

For a moment Wayne lost the thread
of what he was trying to say. In fact, he seemed to have lost the
plot entirely. He was going somewhere for something. Jeez he must
have drunk a lot. “I could do with another one,” he told the
driver.

“Nearly there, mate.”

“Good. I’m fed up of this.”

The cab pulled up to the kerb
outside a small fibro house in a dim, run-down suburb. “Mind how
you go, mate,” said the cabbie. This, and the fact that they were
no longer moving, woke Wayne up enough for him to throw open the
door and stagger onto the pavement. He started fumbling through his
clothes for money he knew he didn’t have, to pay the fare but the
driver said, “Don’t worry about it, mate. The lady paid.”

“Oh right. Thank you,” said Wayne,
infinitely relieved, and pushed the door closed.

The taxi slithered off into the
night and Wayne looked around him. He suddenly realised he was at
Doug’s place. Of course! Doug’s place. He had missed the gig. The
lights were all on. Douggie must be in. He hurried up the path to
the front door and rang the bell. Good old Douggie.

He saw a dark shape in the hallway
and heard a nervous voice asking “Who’s there?”

“’S’me, Douggie! How’re y’goin’
mate?”

“Wayne?”

“Yeah! Look, I’m sorry I missed the
gig, man.”

The door opened suddenly and Doug’s
arm shot out, grabbed Wayne by the T-shirt front and dragged him
inside.

“What the fuck are you doing, man?
Standing out in the street shouting our business! And why weren’t
you here like we arranged, you dickhead? They got a shipment today.
We’re ready to go, man. We’re ready to do it. Are you ready? Are
you?”

It’s fair to say that, whatever
kind of greeting Wayne was expecting, this was not it. He’d never
really noticed before what a big, ugly sort of bloke Doug was and
all this shouting and shoving was just a bit unnerving.

“Well?”

“Er, yeah. I’m ready,” Wayne said,
feebly, his voice a little high.

“What’s going on out here?” It was
Nick, barging into the hallway like he was ready to beat them both
up. Another big ugly bloke, Wayne realised.

"It's little Wayne here. He's
finally decided to show up."

Nick was not pleased. "Where the
fuck have you been, you stupid little tosser?" He joined Doug in
pushing Wayne against the wall.

Wayne held up his hands in a
gesture of calm. "Gentlemen," he said. "I can explain everything to
your complete satisfaction." Only it came out of his mouth as,
"Gen'lmun, I c'n 'splain ev'thing yo' c'mplee sfacshun," which
didn't have the effect he wanted at all.

Nick pushed him hard against the
wall again and turned to Doug. "Jesus bloody Christ. He's pissed as
a fucking newt!"

"It'll be all right," said Doug,
thinking fast. "We'll take him anyway."

"What!"

"No. Listen. He's only got to pick
out the good stuff." He turned back to Wayne. "You can still do
that can't you?"

"I'm your man!" declared Wayne.

Doug immediately grabbed him by the
throat and pushed him up the wall. "I'm not fucking joking,
shit-head. Can you still do the job or not?"

Wayne, wisely, composed his
features and said, "No worries. I won't let you down, Doug."

Doug dropped him and turned to face
Nick. "See? He'll be right."

"I dunno," said Nick.

"I said he'll be right. All
right?"

The two big men glowered at each
other for a moment before Nick backed down.

"All right," said Doug. "We're on.
Get the stuff. We're going now."

"Shouldn't we rehearse a bit more?"
Wayne asked but Doug's fist in his stomach changed his mind. "Quite
right," he groaned from the floor. "We've done enough
rehearsing."

They set off in Nick's four-wheel,
Nick and Doug in the front, Wayne in the back with the gear. It was
beginning to dawn on Wayne that thinking of Doug and Nick as
friends had been maybe a bit unrealistic. As he sat and sulked, it
became clear to him that the true nature of their relationship all
along had been more that of business associates. He tried to
remember how he’d got involved with them in the first place but it
was all a bit hazy.

He’d been doing a gig in a sleazy
club on the Gold Coast and it had gone well. The clientèle had been
a bit rough and he remembered thinking the room must have been full
of gangsters. Knowing that the audience was largely thugs, thieves
and drug-runners, he was strangely delighted when one or two of
them congratulated him on his set afterwards and had bought him
drinks. He’d probably had one or two too many because he found
himself sitting at a table with a group of blokes he didn’t know,
laughing and joking with them and thinking that maybe organised
crime wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

So, when one bloke, Doug, had
started talking about needing to get a team together for a job he
was planning, Wayne had said he’d like to have a go. Everyone had
been highly amused but Doug had taken him seriously and had asked
him what he thought he could contribute to the team. It had struck
Wayne as surreally like a job interview at some big multinational.
So he had answered in the same spirit, explaining his drive to
achieve, his commitment to team goals and his ambition to climb the
ladder of promotion and success. He had been a big hit and many
tough men had been weeping with laughter but Doug had pressed his
job applicant for more, wanting to know just what skills Wayne
could bring to the business of burglary. That’s when Wayne had
explained that he had trained as a jeweller for a couple of years
and had discovered he had an uncanny knack for telling a good stone
from a poor one.

A thoughtful silence had descended
on the table and then Doug had jabbed his finger at one of the
women’s necklace. “Do that,” he’d commanded and the woman, looking
just a little narked, had taken it off and handed it to Wayne with
a pout. Wayne had taken the necklace and held it under the light of
a nearby lamp. “It’s real,” he had said. Then it had dawned on him
how much it was worth. “Bloody hell! This is real! Diamonds and
emeralds. The diamonds are so-so. The emeralds are quite good.”
Doug had made him do it again and again around the table, the grin
on his tough, ugly face getting broader and broader all the
time.

A lot more drinking had followed
and, when Wayne had woken up the following afternoon, he really
couldn’t remember any more of the evening. However, Doug had called
for him a few hours later and they had begun planning in
earnest.

Now he was here, in the back of
Nick’s four-wheel, too drunk to think clearly, on his way to assist
two thugs in the execution of a crime. As a nauseating anxiety
gripped Wayne’s innards, he asked himself over and over why he was
here and how could he be somewhere else without getting himself
killed.

It had all seemed so exciting—being
a member of a gang, planning a heist, casing the premises—like
being in a cop show. No-one would get hurt, the victim would be
insured, the stupid cops would never catch them. It was fun. And
the best part was hanging out with Doug and Nick. For once in his
life, people treated him with respect and a bit of fear, seeing he
was with such well-known villains. In his fantasies, he had made
organised crime his career. He would rise to power and prominence,
he’d wear Armani suits and Gucci loafers, and his family would tell
Sam how well her little brother was doing and ask her why she
wasn’t more like Wayne. So much for being a dole queue bludger and
a wimp loser!

Yet somehow, the reality wasn’t
shaping up quite as he’d expected it. If only Doug hadn’t bashed
him. It was impossible to maintain the fiction that you’re a well
liked and respected member of the team when the boss belts you in
the stomach.

They pulled up at the back of
Steiner's as planned and it was immediately obvious that things
were not about to go well. An old ute with a concrete mixer in the
back was parked haphazardly in the cargo bay and a large hole had
been blown in the red-brick wall.

Doug was furious. "Someone's done
the place already! I can't believe it! I'll kill the bastards!" He
seemed about to leap out of the car and attack whoever it might be
with his hands and teeth but Nick put a restraining hand on his
shoulder.

"Hang on a minute, mate. Let's
think about this. There's no police, right, and there's no alarm,
right, and we don't have to get through the windows, right, 'cos
there's a bloody great hole in the wall, right?"

"So what're you saying?" Doug
asked, not wanting to hear anything that didn't involve tearing
someone's head off.

"Well, I dunno," Nick confessed,
not having thought that far. "Why don't we go and see who it is,
break their arms and tell 'em to piss off? Then we just do the job
like before."

Doug liked the breaking arms bit.
"Right. Come on then." He turned to Wayne, who had been dozing
quietly. "Hey you! Bring the bag." Wayne grabbed the sports bag,
which was heavy and clanked metallically as he hefted it, and
climbed out into the still night. "Give it here," demanded Doug and
took it from him. Then, to Wayne's horror, Doug and Nick each
pulled a sawn-off shotgun from the bag.

"Oh now wait a minute!" Wayne
complained. "I don't think we need guns." With an expression of
pain and sorrow, Doug stepped up to Wayne and pushed the muzzle of
his gun into the young man's face. Immediately, Wayne could see the
mistake he'd made. "You're right, of course," said Wayne, talking
around the hard, cold steel. "I'll just shut my mouth and do as I'm
told."

Doug seemed to consider giving
himself the pleasure of inflicting some hideous injury on his young
protégé but, in the end, decided against it. Turning away with,
"Get the bag," he led the group towards the hole in the wall.

The plan had been simple but
brilliant. Steiner’s department store shared an internal wall with
Brisbane Diamond Imports Pty Ltd, which, they were well informed,
did a high volume of trade in low-grade diamonds with the East
Coast jewellers. It also handled a small number of high-grade
stones on behalf of a major outlet in Sydney. These were the stones
Doug was after and the ones Wayne was going to identify. All they
had to do was break through the wall and get Nick to blow the safe.
The security system at Steiner’s was nothing compared to the one at
Brisbane Diamond Imports, Doug had said, so that was the best way
in. Wayne didn't suppose that even Doug had expected Steiner’s to
be quite so easy.

Doug and Nick grabbed torches from
the bag and moved cautiously into the building, guns raised. Wayne
followed behind, his heart thumping. It was immediately apparent
that they were not alone. Lights flickered in several places around
the floor and strange chirrupy noises could be heard, as though
someone was playing arcade games.

"It's bloody kids!" hissed Doug.
"I'll bloody kill 'em!" There was a sudden flash and a distant
mannequin exploded into fragments. Doug and Nick threw themselves
to the floor. "Jesus! They’ve got shooters!”

Wayne, standing above them, was
confused. “What’s going on? What was that noise?”

“Guns, shithead!” snarled Doug,
getting into a crouch and heading off into the racks of clothing
like a big-game hunter stalking his prey through the African
jungle.

“Guns?” said Wayne, watching Doug
and Nick disappear into the darkness. “Oh, guns!” He ducked down,
looking around himself in sudden alarm. Then he got onto all fours
and crawled under the nearest clothes rail.

As Doug and Nick crept through the
maze of hanging dresses, they could see that the groups of lights
were coming together. Nearing the gathering point, the strange
chirruping noise suddenly started to make sense, as if they could
suddenly understand the language of birds. Doug poked his fingers
in his ears and wiggled them vigorously to make it stop. Yet, when
he removed them, it was still there.

"What about this one then?" said
one of the voices.

"That's good," answered another.
"No-one else has chosen anything quite that small. You should be
very noticeable. Who are you, by the way?"

"I am Klakk."

"Klakk! It's me, Trugg. I'd rub
slime glands with you if only we had some."

They both laughed merrily.

“You'll need some of these,” said
Trugg, holding out a pair of court shoes. Klakk took them and
sniffed them. “They're clothes for the feet! See?” Trugg lifted a
foot to reveal a strappy, satin sandal with a three-inch heel.
“Braxx said that all the humans in the pictures are wearing them so
we should too. It makes the balancing a bit hard but you get used
to it.”