'AW FUCK, MOUSE, now look what you've done!' Simon Esterhase threw his snooker cue into the rack in disgust. 'I sank the black, man. Why don't you stop bitching for a while? It's getting old.'
'Are you fucking serious?' Dang Huynh, known to most people as Mouse, chewed at his thumbnail. The skin around all of his fingernails was red-raw. 'I'm telling you I can't take anymore of this shit. He's a fucking psycho! What's to stop him from chopping one of us into pieces?'
Esterhase rubbed at his neck. He'd had diarrhoea every day since the Capitol Hill thing, and he just couldn't sleep right. But what was he going to do? Mouse and Tatts were losing it, and it was true that this could get them all killed. They'd all known Cutter was mental since they were kids, but he'd never done anything like this before. Now, though, Esterhase agreed with Mouse that it wouldn't take much for Cutter to turn his radar on them. He winced as images, sounds, flashed into his mind.
Esterhase sat down at his coffee table, chopped up some more pot. The ritual soothed him. He'd smoked twenty cones a day for the past fifteen years. Truth was, now when he had to be straight for some reason, he felt stoned.
Fuck, Mouse had paced the same circle fifty times.
'Man, can you sit down, Mouse? You're making my dick itch.'
'Why did he have to start with the killing? He's not going to stop,' said Mouse. 'How are we going to get out of this? He's going to get caught and we're all going up for fucking murder, man.'
Esterhase knew it. He packed a cone tightly and lit it, his lungs burning as he pulled the hit of marijuana, clean. They had always been scared of Cutter, but you just kind of ignored his sick shit back in the day. They'd all done so much time since then that none of them really knew how bad he'd become. Maybe Cutter didn't even know. The fucker was mad, that was for sure. Esterhase packed another cone.
'Here, Mouse, have this. You'll feel better,' he said, holding the bong out to his friend.
'I don't want it. I'm paranoid enough already!' Mouse wrung his hands. He had dark circles under his eyes and Esterhase noticed grey shot through his greasy dark hair. 'I keep thinking he's gonna break in my house and cut me up.' His voice cracked.
'Well, what do you want to do, Mouse? We go to the cops, we'll go down with him. They won't stop until they get the rest of us.' He lit the bong and had half the cone himself. He stared at Mouse through the smoke, red-eyed. 'We can kill him.'
Esterhase expected Mouse to freak at the suggestion. He, Tatts and Mouse had never done more than give a bloke a good flogging. The machetes were all for show. At least they had been.
Mouse said nothing.
'You wouldn't want to fuck a thing like that up though, now would ya, Mouse?'
'How would we do it?' Mouse's voice was tiny.
'You're fucking kidding me!' Esterhase gave a dead laugh. 'You've thought about it then?'
'What else are we gonna do?' Mouse pleaded. 'We've got to get out of this shit somehow.'
Esterhase looked around his rumpus room. He saw a luxurious, relaxing room to chill out in. In reality, the room was like the rest of the house, crammed with mismatched stolen property, half of it broken, all of it coated in a thin layer of grime. The walls were yellow with cigarette and marijuana smoke.
Esterhase was the pride of his family. The only child to have a job for more than six months straight, and to make it out of the housos. Shit, even his dad had only had a job once for about a year, back when Esterhase was a kid. Removalist too, just like him. But while his father had fucked his back up early, Esterhase had been smart. He'd always got others on the job to do the heavy lifting. The Maoris would work all day for smoko or some speed at knock-off time. And the job was perfect for finding places to do over.
Everything was pretty good in his life, he thought, finishing the rest of the cone.
Except for Cutter.
Lunch had been perfect, really, in every way. Well, except for the food.
Fortunately, Chloe Farrell and Andrew Montgomery had not been interested in the food. A newly retired couple sharing a muffin at the next table in the small cafe had wriggled closer on their bench seat while watching them. The man even moved his foot to touch his wife's shoe under the table. They'd been that way, once.
Andrew knew he was going to be late back, but he ordered a coffee anyway. Chloe had sparkling mineral water.
'Off the record,' Andrew said, watching her sip her drink through a straw.
'What is?' asked Chloe, ready for another joke, or flirtatious comment.
'A call came in late yesterday about the case.'
Chloe tucked her hair behind her ears. Sat forward.
'It could be nothing. Jane took it at the front desk. I was getting ready to knock off.'
'What was it?'
'Some woman. Anonymous. Gave the name of someone we should be looking at for these home invasions.'
'What was the name?' she asked, palms flat on the table, eyes serious, face angled up to his.
Andrew gave a laugh. 'You're a real little newshound, aren't you?'
'Come on, Andrew. It's my job.'
'Yeah, well, it'd be my job if anyone knew I even told you that much.'
'But you said it could be nothing. If I knew the name, I could dig around. Maybe I could help.'
'You digging around would not help, Chloe. If the tip was straight up, you would not want to go poking a stick into this guy's nest.'
'Is there anything I could say that would get you to give me the name?'
'Baby, I could think of a million things you could say to me that would make me give you anything. But that's not playing fair.'
'Okay,' she said, standing. 'Well, we'd better get back then.'
Andrew's expression was surprised, then hurt.
'I'll pay for lunch if you'll get dinner.' She smiled over her shoulder, as she walked to the cashier.