Ferrari: the final chapters ... for now

More to come, as soon as I can get some more of the green pills ...



CHAPTER 5


Duiffin loaded the Heineken into the back area cooler in the 412; the
generous cargo area of the ancient but mighty 12-cylinder chariot was
perfect for the coming war mission. As the Funkraum got in the driver's
seat, nodding agreement, he gestured to his old friend to get in the car
so they could blast. He started the car, and revved it a bit to get the
old girl primed and ready. They took off in a cloud of dust and tire
smoke as the monster engine bit through every gear, chirping through
second and then laying great skids through the next two gears as
Funkraum redlined it and power shifted at the same time. He left a fine
coating of snuff on the silver ball shifter, as he worked the gears and
smiled at the howl of the engine after each shift. He looked wickedly
at Duiffin. "So, what's on the bloody tape that is so damn interesting,
anyway?"

Duiffin was sipping Heineken number three. "How the bloody hell should
I know?"

Funkraum looked at him dismissively. "You know exactly what the bloody
hell I mean, you tosser. You don't think I know that you were delivered
some sort of commercial video tape, very mysteriously, at a recent
concourse?"

Some Heineken went down Duiffin's windpipe and he audibly choked,
blowing a fine beer mist from his nose. "Whaaat?? What am I, a mark?
Are you spying on me?"

Funkraum looked at him like a weasel with a wriggling, fresh fish in
it's mouth. "If we are to be a team, we must function as a team. Teams
know each other, their habits ... their movements, even. I happened to
be at the show, and watched you and Gretch out, to make sure you were safe."

"I don't know bloody shite about you!" Duiffin was incredulous at this
turn of events. "Whenever we go out you just show up at my door, like
an apparition with a nice car. You usually wear the same Burberry
overcoat or that ridiculous safari suit. I don't even know if you own a
shirt! Happened to be at the show, my arse!"

"What do you mean? What about my tuxedo shirts?" Funkraum the weasel
was now wolfing that fish down with a fiendish, sloppy grin while
Duiffin gave him the evil eye.

"Those shirts are stored at the club, maintained by the club, and
replenished by the club whenever you tear one, burn one up, get your
man-gel all over it while "working on your notebook", or leave one with
some twink at your suite at Portwich. The only thing that makes them
your shirts is that somebody hands you one when you ask for it.

"Anyway, back to the car show. As long as you were there you should
have walked up and bought us a drink. You could have looked at the tape
yourself. I'm sure it's a fake. It doesn't play on any bloody type of
tape machine on this planet. It's not commercial; I let my buddy at
SkyNews try it on a gauntlet of tape machines at the station. It didn't
even fit in most of them. U.S., Japanese, even Russian VCRs sneer at
it. And, my SkyNews buddy even thought the tape channels inside the
tape were sealed. It was meant as a warning, or a prop of some kind. I
figure either Springer himself, or a Blofelt operative, left it there.
Maybe just to let us know they were on to us."

Funkraum signaled for the pint of brandy. "How do you know I didn't
look at it? He smiled the weasel smile again. "Anyway, Springer is so
rattled he couldn't track an earthworm dying on the sidewalk. He's
probably sitting in a lounge in some dingy airport in the Czech Republic
trying to forget who he is. I hear in that country they specialize in
black market Class C pharmaceuticals. If we need to find him we can't
go wrong there. But Blofelt might have thought it funny. I'm not
worried, anyway ... not yet. I haven't seen anybody on our tail, we're
ahead of Blofelt's plans by about nine hours, and we should be able to
do our business at the Cal-Neva and be in Costa Rica by tomorrow night."

Duiffin swigged some brandy. "If you had looked at it, you would have
seen who left it there, maybe even preserved its body long enough for me
to get a good look at it. No, you showed up just in time to look in my
car, probably for some loose change, and then sneak off so your eyes
could walk up and down my wife when we walked up. Her name is
'Gretchen', by the way – not Gretch. I don't even call her that. Now
tell me you didn't have any binoculars, you pathetic letch."

"I had left them at a table in the concourse, I'm afraid. Pity – a
particularly nice Bushnell."

"Right. A table in the concourse. Perhaps you should inquire at the
lost & found." Duiffin started thinking about the volumes of pictures
of his wife he had posted on the Internet recently, the ones of her with
the latex and the various poses and acts and ... decided to change the
subject. "Shame about the club, though."

"Yes, I suppose so, but as long as we can get the members out and
retrieve what we're going there for, we're aces." Funkraum swigged his
brandy. "We can always build another club in that area. It's not like
there's a shortage of land!"


£ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £

CHAPTER 6


Meanwhile, on the other side of the world:

"And finally, we're getting reports of a .... melee, at the AAF Mansion
in Portwich. The Mansion, a private club for exotic car owners was
reportedly attacked by two men, their identities to this point unknown,
who took a large quantity of clothes, food, cigars and cognac before
fleeing in a stolen Ferrari 412i. Several clubgoers' cars were damaged
in the fracas. There has been a suggestion that the two thugs may
actually have been members, but no information has been officially
released. For SkyNews, I'm Davi-"

A grimy hand reached up and turned the TV hanging over his table to a
different channel. Thick-boned, partially nude Czech girls cavorted
with a Clydesdale in an Alpine meadow. Better. Jerry Springer went
back to the bar and sank into the seat of his cheesy green
Gauthier-knock-off chair.

"DAMN! What the fuck have I gotten myself involved in?"

He was wetting-his-pants scared in the Czech Republic. He was in a
dirty, smoky lounge at Karlovy Vary airport, in what used to be known as
the city of Karlsbad (to the Germans, anyway, who'd spent some time
there). Three shot glasses sat before him, but only the fourth one in
his hand had any vodka in it. His Czech drug connection lived close to
the Ohre River, not far from the airport, but he was two hours late for
their meet. Now his hands were sweating and he peered around
constantly. Agents, he thought to himself. Agents, my ass. Who the
fuck are these guys? Why does everybody want that tape? He tried
repeatedly to imagine why anybody besides the subjects of Tape 47, and
his former assistant Angel, even knew it existed.

Not that any of them were going to present any problems. He figured
he’d buried that trail for good. Bob and Sherrie were dead. One week
after Jerry discovered the tape was gone, they were the victims of an
unfortunate accident. While on a driving vacation through a ghetto in
eastern Cincinnati, they happened by a block-long steel substrate
plating plant in the midst of a catastrophic explosion. Authorities
later discovered what was left of a massive ammonium nitrate bomb, like
those favored by fringe militia groups and radical anarchists. The bomb
had only partially detonated; had the entire thing gone boom, it could
have taken out the entire eastern portion of Cincinnati. Only three
items were left to identify Bob and Sherrie: one of Bob's front teeth
(the one with the blue diamond sunk into it) found partially buried in a
nearby tree, a rental car receipt fluttering in the air two hours later
in a field 17 miles away, and the outline of a license plate that had
been blast-seared into the concrete roadway in front of the plant. The
police made a print from the outline and matched it with the other items
to make the identity. There were no caskets, or urns, at the memorial
service.

And Angel, unfortunately, did end up falling out that office after all,
several days after that fateful last conversation with her boss on his
way to the airport for a flight to Heathrow. Jerry learned upon
disembarking in London that Angel had been vacuuming his office when a
sudden, Category F5 tornado sucked her out of the window and over the
ledge, before strangely dissipating to nothing. She was found stuck
halfway through the roof of an El Camino at the base of the building,
three feet shorter than she used to be.

And now Jerry sat at the bar with a shot glass, tapping out a signal for
more liquid courage. A wad of crumpled twenties spilled out of his
hand; he'd seen no currency exchange but guessed that good old American
Jacksons were perfectly acceptable anywhere these days. The bartender
walked over, grunted, set down four shots and took his money.

The door to the bar opened with a booming creaking noise. A
bored-looking and disheveled Czech rushed in and sat down across from
him. "You have all the money, no?"

Springer took a bulging manila envelope from his jacket pocket. "Hello
to you too, Atoly. My flight was a nightmare, thank you very much." He
took a deep breath. "Were you able to get the big Oxys?"

"Yis, my American friend. Oxycontin. 250 mg. Not available in US."
He dropped a pill bottle in Springer's lap. "For patients on their
death bed only. This is not candy." Atoly glared at Springer. "Maybe
you, Jerry, maybe you are on your death bead?"

"Just give me the shit and leave me alone." This is the part Springer
hated with a passion. He just wanted at it now, without the chit-chat.

"OK,OK, Jerrrrrry. Everything here." He dumped onto the table sandwich
bags of Percocet, Dilaudid, Darvocet, and Vicodin, and boxes of
injection vials of liquid Darvon, Demerol and morphine. "I couldn't get
any grass. My regular guy out. I give you another number you can check
before you leave town. You are leaving town, right?"

Springer shifted nervously in the faux designer chair. "I don't know
why you care, but yes, I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Why do you care?"


MC

--
"Garcon!! More lithium!"

<<Ecstasy scares me a bit more because it kills by dehydration and irregular
heart rythyms>>

Ecstasy kills by deydration or, strangely enough, can lead to a possibly fatal
condition known as hyponatraemia. Too much water in your system can lead to a
deficiency of sodium in your blood.

Gee, drugs sound like so much fun to me.

C.