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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 high-grade stuff on a cheap kitchen scale with

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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 to 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 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

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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 . . .”

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

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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.