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How It Works

THE DAY JIMMY FLOOD SAYS, “I GOT ME A HELICOPTER,” and Ginger

Baumgartner nods out next to him with a face-plant onto
the kitchen table; and Marco Da Silva beside her reaches
out an arm and lifts her head to scoop two caps of heroin
out from under her cheek; and Blacky Harbottle cuts the

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high-grade stuff on a cheap kitchen scale with whatever
he can find that’s white and powdery to make it go farther
on the street; and Louella Poule looks on through watery
drug-pinned eyes as Melody Tenbrink tosses her cookies
in the john adjacent the kitchen after smoking her modest
rock of crack; and, well, this is the day everything will dip
even lower for everybody (if that’s possible) on that
delicate balance scale of a drug addict’s existence, for
this is the day the Cuban and the Mick are at the front
door, fists about to pound, then not, instead two pairs of
boots put to it and a crash heard round the world as
everyone in the kitchen at the back of the house are on
their feet (save Ginger Baumgartner) and Louella Poule
grabs a jacket using it as a catch-all at the edge of the
table, Blacky Harbottle scraping scales, dope, baggies and
ashtrays, coffee cups and newspapers and half-eaten
donuts and anything else on the table over the side and
into the jacket, a .22 pistol tossed in at the last minute
and Louella Poule bundling it all up and making for the
open kitchen window dump it out directly on the head of
the undercover narc huddled there.

So, how it works . . . as the main host of undercover cops,

uniformed cops and police personnel in general assault
the back door of the house, the front door bears the brunt

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of the other attack -- the “Cuban” and the “Mick” -- two
undercover narcotics officers of dark and nasty reputation
on the streets, judged no better than the criminals
themselves by most of the druggies they routinely hunt
down and bust, beat and rob. The so-called “Cuban”, real
name Peter Manfred Rourke, of rotund hairy six-foot-five
frame and dark and swarthy complexion – well -- not a
Cuban at all but in reality part “Black Irish” would anyone
believe -- and with pirate’s eyes sunk deep into shadowy
sockets above a black scraggle of beard. And the Cuban’s
partner, the so-called “Mick”, real name Ruben Gerald
McFadden, who is, in fact, also part and even more Irish
but of the fairer set, of hair light brown leaning to red and
topping a lankier frame built tall and wiry with eyes of a
psychotic hue of pale blue, slightly bulging especially
when enraged, as they often are, and he who is thought
to be even more dangerous than the bigger meaner
looking Cuban. And as is their M.O. and spirit for their job
it is not an uncommon occurrence for the two to break
into Irish song in honour of their heritage, and this usually
done while in the heat of a drug bust, as they do now.
They sing:
“O Paddy, dear, and did you hear the news that’s going
around . . .”

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So, how it works . . . let the front outside door of the
house on St. Catherine Street on Vancouver’s upper east
side fall inward then to the darkened inner hallway --
sound of wood splintering as door stops, door jambs, door
casings fly; hinges, dead bolts and strike plates airborne
and wood screeching as two pairs of large-size Daltons
kick out in perfect unison to bring that door down.
They sing:
“The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on English ground
. . .”

. . . and the Cuban and the Mick gaining entrance to the

hallway that leads to another door and it too sent
crashing inwards off its supports with hinges and screws,
spiral and ring shank nails and cement-coated sinkers
pinging off the linoleum and cheap wall paneling of the
next room not withstanding the fact that often enough the
doors assaulted by this team are unlocked and unbolted
in the first place, but such are the temperaments and
aforementioned spirit of these two narcs that what would
be the fun of gaining entrance through doorways the
established ways when one has the credentials to simply
shout the word, “Police,” and have license to destroy all
that lies in one’s path.