Black Ice Read online

  Jacob and Brent were standing. They all stared at him expectantly.

  'What? Sorry?' he said. Damn, he could never concentrate when he was nervous.

  'What's your next class?' Jacob asked.

  'Organic Synthesis and Reactivity,' said Damien.

  'Have fun with that,' said Jacob and laughed as he and Brent headed off.

  Damien knew that Jacob had enrolled in Medicine in his first year, swapped to Sports Science at the beginning of last year, and by July had moved to Arts, hoping to major in Philosophy. When Damien had asked why he'd dropped Sports Science, Jacob had told him he that he didn't like the campus he'd had to move to.

  'Too many fat chicks,' he'd declared.

  Erin hadn't left with Jacob and Brent, thank God. Damien got up and walked around to where she stood.

  'Where are you off to now?' he asked her.

  'Linguistics,' she said.

  He grimaced. She smiled. He cleared his throat. She shuffled her feet. Oh for fuck's sake! Damien felt like any minute now a tumbleweed would roll through the dining hall between them.

  'Um,' they both said, at the same time.

  'You go,' he said.

  'Well, it's about this weekend. I was wondering . . .'

  Oh my God. It was going to be just like Helen Chin. She was going to ask him out!

  'Well,' she continued. 'My friends and I – we really liked those pills you got for us last week, and I wondered if you could get us some more?'

  'Oh,' he said. 'Okay.'

  Damien didn't usually do the selling. They had Byron for that. Damien got to know people who'd want to buy, who were already buying, and would put Byron in touch with them. Erin and her friends had come to know that Damien knew Byron, and he'd hooked them up directly a couple of times.

  'That's great, Damien! You're a darling.' And Erin reached up, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. On the mouth.

  'See you tomorrow, then,' she said. 'And thanks for lunch!'

  She walked away.

  Dickhead. Dumb. Mute. Tool. Could he do nothing right?

  'Erin!' Damien called and started to jog after her. He skidded to a stop when he reached her side.

  ***

  'Here, take these first.' Damien handed Erin two tablets and a bottle of water from the mini-bar.

  'What are they?' She'd swallowed them before she'd even asked.

  He stared. People had no idea what chemicals could do to their bodies.

  She looked so gorgeous tonight. She had this stretchy white top thing on, cut real low, and, well, she was really, ah, big, up top. Damien had to look at his shoes when he answered.

  'It's okay,' he said. 'It's just B6 and L-tryptophan.'

  'Vitamins,' she said.

  'Well, technically L-tryptophan is an amino acid,' he said.

  'Are you shitting me?' Erin started to look worried.

  'No, really. It's okay. For maximum effect, and to give your brain the best protection, I should have started you on a few things a week ago. These will both help increase your serotonin levels.'

  'Isn't the eccy gonna do that?' she asked. She swept her eyes around the suite, like she had been doing every couple of seconds since she walked in. He didn't blame her. The Opera House glowed like their own private moon on the inky harbour directly beyond their balcony. He reckoned he could have just about thrown a rock onto the steps. Whitey had the music pulsing, but not loud; just a rhythmic throbbing that prodded beneath the conversations of the eight people in the room.

  'Actually, the ecstasy draws on your brain's own serotonin, the chemical that makes you feel so great when you take it,' he said. 'It forces your neurones to release all you've got stored, so you're flooded with feel-good for a few hours.'

  'And it feels so good,' she said. 'Are you going to roll tonight too, Damien?' Erin took a step closer and peered up into Damien's eyes. From this angle, his own private view eclipsed the Opera House any time. He had to drop onto the couch and grab a cushion.

  'I don't use it,' he said.

  She dropped down next to him. 'Someone told me that if you crush the tablet up and snort it, you get a better rush,' she said.

  'Well, you can get the dosage in your bloodstream up a little more, up to around seventy-five per cent, but when it drips down the back of your throat it tastes terrible,' he said. 'I'm told,' he added.

  'Some people shoot it up.'

  'Some people are fucking suicidal,' he said. 'You'd want to be pretty sure about what the pill had been cut with before you started shooting it directly into your vein.'

  'Ew. I wouldn't do that anyway.'

  'You probably wouldn't like the other method either.'

  'Which is?'

  'Shafting. Inserting it into your arsehole. Up to ninety per cent absorption into the bloodstream.'

  'Hmm. How revolting. Let's stop talking about this. It's killing the magic. Don't you think it's a beautiful night?'

  Erin moved a little closer, brought her face close to his. She smelled like fairy floss. He licked his lips.

  'You know a lot about ecstasy,' she said.

  'Yeah, well, I guess I'm well read.'

  She moved even closer. 'Anyone would think that you make it yourself,' she whispered. 'My own little chemistry boy.'

  25

  Monday 8 April, 1 pm

  'Hey, chemical brothers!' said Byron when Damien opened the front door. He flopped down onto the lounge. It was back to the real world: Merrylands and the stench of their rented house. Damien moved back to the sink where Whitey was, trying to keep hold of the feeling from the hotel last night.

  'Ah, we might have a problem,' said Byron.

  'What?' Whitey and Damien spun around.

  'Nah, man. It's all good. Nothing like that!' Byron laughed. 'Shit, you guys are tense,' he said. 'It's not the law.'

  'What, then?' Damien turned back to the stove. He couldn't afford for this batch to get too hot. He'd had to start again once already this week, and it had cost a lot of time. He had two essays due on Friday.

  'Well, it's not really a problem. We should think of it more as an opportunity,' said Byron.

  Damien and Whitey continued to work.

  'A business opportunity. A chance to expand, widen our networks.'

  'We don't want to expand,' said Whitey.

  'We're happy with our networks,' confirmed Damien. He smiled. Erin had called him three times today. He got a hard on every time his mobile sounded.

  'That's probably where the problem part comes in,' said Byron.

  'What are you talking about, Byron?' asked Whitey. 'Are you on the goey? You're making no fucking sense.'

  'Well, you see, I've got a friend who wants to meet you guys. He wants to talk to us about collaborating.'

  'Not interested,' said Damien.

  'Forget it,' said Whitey.

  'Yeah, but he's not going to just let it go at that,' said Byron. 'I think if you meet him and listen to what he's got to say it would be better for everyone.'

  Damien ran some more water over the sides of the container to cool the liquid a little more. He added sixty-five grams of 3,4-methylenedioxyphenylacetone to the formahide and checked the temperature again. One-ninety degrees. Another five hours to go. He rubbed at his face and leaned back against the counter. 'Better for who?' he said. 'You? We told you, Byron. We don't want this any bigger. Haven't you got enough money? It's getting hard to spend all this cash.'

  'I don't think you're listening,' said Byron. He stood up from the couch and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. 'We don't have a choice.'

  'The fuck we don't have a choice,' said Whitey. 'Who are you talking about, anyway? Who is this prick you want us to meet?'

  'Kasem Nader,' said Byron.

  Lying in bed that night, trying to punch his pillow into some sort of shape he could settle into, Damien could not sleep.

  This is not good, he thought. This is bad. He should never have let Whitey bring Byron Barnes in on any of this.
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  When Damien had realised he had the know-how and access to the ingredients required to make good quality MDMA – ecstasy – he had at first kept it from Whitey. He knew Whitey would put it on him hard and not give up until they'd at least tried to cook up a batch. Damien knew this, because Whitey had been on about it since Year 11, when Damien had told him he was going to go for a degree in Medical Chemistry.

  Damien didn't want to get involved in anything that hurt people, but he'd read up on the drug and been pretty surprised to learn that MDMA had only been made illegal in 1985, and that psychiatrists had actually used it therapeutically before then. He had downloaded the articles for two current studies being conducted in Spain and Israel using MDMA in an attempt to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

  The main danger, he learned, was when people used too much – chewed through all of their serotonin stores – which left them suffering chronic depression. And the other major problem lay with bad cooks: people who didn't know what they were doing, or who used dangerous substitutes for the chemicals that were hard to come by. That wouldn't be a problem for a properly trained chemist, he'd thought. And if people were going to be using it anyway – more than a hundred thousand ecstasy tablets every weekend in Australia – maybe it would be doing the right thing to make it properly.

  Whitey had brushed aside the rest of Damien's concerns – like some recent findings about brain damage in animals – and within a month, they'd made their first press of pills. Whitey swallowed their first-ever tablet, washed down with a glass of six-dollar-a-bottle sparkling wine. Now, Whitey only drank Veuve Clicquot, but said that not even Veuve could improve on Damien's E.

  But then Whitey had pushed the envelope. And Damien had been too much of a blow-arse to knock him back. It had begun as an intellectual exercise. Would he know how to cook meth, Whitey had wanted to know.

  Damien knew that his weakness lay in his limitless curiosity for testing and chemical experimentation. He could admit to that flaw. He was also beginning to realise that he was easily seduced by flattery, especially when his ego relating to his intellect was stroked. He knew that Whitey could sometimes play him like a violin, and so, three months ago, Damien had cooked their first batch of ice.

  And now this.

  Damien had always known that the ice would be trouble. He'd figured on making just boutique quantities for a few very loyal and lucrative customers who wanted some product they could trust. Whitey hadn't pushed the matter. Very good of him, given that there was nothing that they could do to increase supply anyway. Sourcing enough pseudoephedrine to create what they made now flew them just under the radar of the law.

  He had thought that the trouble would come in the form of one of the customers suffering a psychotic breakdown and coming to find him. Although Byron was their distributor, he was only one step removed, and hardly to be relied upon to protect them should some mad motherfucker or his family put the heavy on him.

  Damien also worried about a possible explosion. He used the Nazi method to cook the ice, which involved reducing the pseudoephedrine using lithium and anhydrous ammonia – an air conditioner refrigerant – and the chemicals were highly unstable, even just in contact with water. He had nightmares about Whitey getting greedy and playing chef on his own one day while Damien was at uni.

  And then there were Byron's current drugs charges. Although they were only for possession of pot – a pissy little charge that ordinary citizen could have thrown into a drawer with the parking fines – with Byron's history it meant automatic lockup if he was convicted. Last time he'd faced court he'd copped a suspended sentence – free to leave provided that he did not break any law during a two-year period. He seemed pretty positive that he was going to be able to get off his current charges with the help of some VIP lawyer. Still, Damien knew the cops could follow Byron here at any time. He knew everything he was involved with right now was risky.

  But Damien had never considered that the threat facing him might come in the form of Kasem Nader. Had someone told him, on day one, that this would be the case, he would have lost his recipes and told Whitey that he needed to find someone else to live with.

  Kasem Nader. Damien had always been grateful for the cred he got just growing up on the same block as the Nader brothers. His stories in Year 10 at lunchtime had helped him finally shrug off the 'godboy' and 'churchie' labels. He'd watched, relieved, as the school bullies had turned their consideration to the fat Asian kid who always smelled like rice.

  No one ever got sick of hearing about the police busts at the Nader residence. They happened weekly for a while when Damien was in Year 10. He found he had a gift for setting the scene – describing Mrs Siham Nader running into the street in her nightgown, screaming at the cops who dragged her sons away.

  And her boys never went without a fight. From his street-facing window, Damien watched the brothers being slammed by at least four coppers every time. The streetlights spotlit the faces of the arresting officers, orgiastic in their chance to bash a Nader. The boys were invariably thrown limp into the paddy wagon.

  Except for Kasem. Brother number two. Loved or feared, often both, by everyone in this suburb, and many beyond.

  Damien had perfected the art of watching. To have been spotted watching a Nader brother takedown and doing nothing to assist would have been suicide. He would turn off all lights in his bedroom and shove a towel in the crack under the door. He'd then create the tiniest chink in his aluminium venetian blinds, and stand up against the wall, still. Focus on the gap, peer through. With the lighting in his street, upgraded by the council when the Nader boys moved in, he could see just as well as if he'd sat on his porch with a Coke, watching the show.

  And one night he'd seen Kasem in full flight. The problem, as far as he could tell, was that the bald probationary constable had shoulder-charged Mrs Nader when she clutched at Kasem as they'd dragged him across the lawn. Damien had stood, transfixed, as she'd tottered with the shove. She had reached out for her son, who couldn't get an arm free, and had then fallen onto the road, landing heavily on her backside, her hijab dislodging. She'd sat there, sobbing. Her other sons howled from their home, restrained, as usual, by the rest of the Merrylands cops on duty.

  Damien hadn't bothered looking at the house. He watched Kasem.

  Nader had seemed to go limp. Damien saw him have a word with one of his captors, perhaps a reasonable request – do you mind if I help my mum? Damien would never know whether the cops had briefly let him go to help his mother up off the road, or whether Kasem had broken away by brute force, but either way, when he moved, Kasem went nowhere near his mother. He exploded away from the officers holding him and sprinted towards the bald probationary constable. Although they stood at around the same height, Nader's king hit drove the cop's feet out from under him, and he smacked onto the road, the back of his head first, without even trying to break his fall. Damien thought he'd heard the crack from his room; he would always tell it that way, regardless.

  Everyone in Merrylands knew that the cop never came back on the job. Some said it was stress leave, some said his parents had to shave and shower him now; shit, some said the prick died that night, right there on the road, and was buried at Rookwood. Damien had needed to know. He'd eventually learned that the cop was pensioned out hurt-on-duty and he now drove trucks interstate. His brothers in blue had a permanent hard-on for Nader, especially because he'd done only three months for the assault.