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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 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

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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 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

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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 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

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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.