A bit of Biff

By R.M. Winn

Biff Mc Leod is unorthodox, laid-back and deceptively eagle-eyed. His humour is original. Take his quirky description of a bar fight- sounds like a short-sighted hippo trying to root a rhino in a glass factory.

With Anika, his accomplished kick-boxing partner from Melbourne, they take on the drug scene, picking up clues in unlikely places from Brisbane to Cairns.

There's Ugly Dougie, known for wrapping barbed wire around his victims and feeding them to the crabs. And Kelly, ex-midshipman bar owner who knows the street scene and passes info to Biff- for a price. Then there's Gordo, the used car salesman by day and brothel boss by night, along with MaryLou, the prostitute with secrets. Nasty ones. And many more.

Incredibly fast paced with a big cast woven through a tapestry of cold-blooded murder, shootouts, knife fights, suicide. Twists and turns, big semi-trailers and little towtrucks, car chases, prostitutes, pimps, mules and stand-over men - it's all here.

And the most hilarious sex scene ever.

Not forgetting Bozo, Biff's dog. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.M. Winn
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386610373

Book preview

A BIT OF BIFF

R.M. Winn

Junkyard Dog

© R.M. Winn 2017

First published in 2017 by Junkyard Dog

ABN  63735033695

Telephone  [phone]

Email  [e-mail]

This work is copyright. Aside from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder.

This work is fictional. Any perceived similarity between a character in this work and an actual person, living or not living, is coincidental and is not intended.

Cataloguing in Publication data:

ISBN 978-0-646-96651-9

Title: A bit of Biff

Author/contributor: Winn, R.M.

Date of publication: 28-02-2017

Format: PB

Size: 198 x 130

No. of pages: 252

Publisher: Junkyard Dog

Printed and bound in Australia by McPhersons

1

For fuck’s sake, Jack. Don’t send me some bloody galah like last time. This is hot and I don’t want anybody fucking it up. I need somebody undercover for a couple of months, preferably a sheila, and preferably all arse and tits too. Okay? And smart.’ Then he added, ‘And with a bit of ticker. Are you listening to me, Jack?’

‘Course I’m fuckin’ listening.’

Biff had a mobile hotline, 0000 000 000, ‘dial it in the dark model’, to Jack Regan, the Police Superintendent. It bypassed red tape and bullshit. In fact, only the upper echelon of the force knew Biff existed. He didn’t have a rank, just a number, a reputation, an elephant gun that he called a pistol and a very different approach to life and his job.

At that moment he was standing in the dunny of his hotel room, back to the doorway and straddling the throne. Unusual. Also unusual was for Biff to be extending his left forearm and half of his head through louvre frames minus the glass at the back of the cubicle. But it was necessity. By leaning his phone against the metal downpipe of the second storey of Duffield’s down-at-heel, Criterion hotel, the phone reception was a little better. The fact that galvanized plumbing had been used attested to the age of the pub, at least fifty years, nearly as old as Biff’s phone. The Criterion was a one-star rating and because Biff had got pissed there the night before with a reliable informant, if there’s such a thing, that’s where he’d ended up.

‘Bring somebody up from Sydney or Melbourne,’ Biff continued. ‘Brisbane is too local. Trust me. Actually I don’t give a fuck if you don’t trust me. Let me run with the job and I’ll get results.’

‘You’ve got no respect, Biff.’ Jack sighed, shook his head and wondered what the bloody maverick was up to. He was the best in the land but you’d never know it. ‘What are you on to?’ Jack queried resignedly. ‘And what do you need?’

‘Drugs. I haven’t got time right now to go into it but one of the Senior Sergeants at uniform gave me a tip. He said it’s too big for them and gave me some leads. They’re under staffed to buggery as it is. He thought I could handle it, that I’d know the right channels. Jack, I’ll take the heat off you if you want ... but I need five thousand expenses and eight for me over and above my salary.’

‘Huh,’ he heard Jack say, which translated into ‘Bullshit, no hope.’

As usual Biff knew he’d get the expenses and he also knew he had no chance of the eight G.

‘Five exes and three for yourself,’ Jack countered.

‘Agreed, then. Five and five. Deal?’

Resounding silence.

‘Well?’ Biff demanded.

‘It’s hard these days, Biff. Too hard. We’re over budget as it is and we’re supposed to be cutting back.’

‘I’m over budget too but I don’t grizzle about it all the time, do I? It’s not as if it comes out of your own pocket. Mine has to.’

‘Be reasonable, Bruce.’ As soon as Jack opened his gob he knew he’d fucked up and he’d blown his chances for further successful negotiations. Biff had told him early in the piece that having a name like Bruce was how he’d learnt to fight.

‘You and I both know I could go freelance tomorrow, you miserable bastard,’ Biff said.

Jack knew well that Biff wouldn’t last six months outside the force. Probably Biff did too if he stopped and thought about it a bit. Imagine him gathering information for divorces or tracking missing persons who wanted to be missing. Nope. He needed the adrenalin.

‘All right, then—five and five it is. It had better be good or heads will roll, mine first.’

‘Jack, you’ve been feeding me that sort of horse shit for years. Don’t know why you bother. Thought you’d see it my way in the end. See you see in three months with a string of scalps. If I run out of money, I’ll contact you.’ Click!

Thinking a bit of a cleanup might be in order Biff walked the length of the narrow hallway from his room to the shared bathroom to have a shower. As he pushed the door open, he ran slap bang into the mirror, metaphorically speaking. Shit! It had been late last night and he’d pretended to himself that he’d been working. His face showed otherwise. Thirty-three and looking more like forty-three. Lean jawline. Dark hair. Good looking, but definitely hung-over. Two day growth didn’t help but without a razor he couldn’t do much about that. Piss that mirror off.

The gurgling shower was in keeping with the rest of the plumbing, either scalding him or freezing his arse off. And because of his height the shower rose was too low for him anyway and the stream hit him in the back of his head or his forehead depending on whether he was coming or going. As for the pub towel, it was a threadbare rag. He found a comb beside the basin, but, a garden rake with missing teeth would do the same, or better. That’s as good as it gets.

He headed back to his room, dressed, gave it the quick once-over, closed the door and took off to the motel where he’d been staying. There was a lot to attend to get this newest assignment off the ground.

* * *

The loudspeaker blared, barely intelligible. ‘Flight FW429 on time and due to touch down in ten minutes.’

That’s the one, Biff thought.

Biff sat at a table backed into a corner with a clear view of the activity in the terminal. As each passenger emerged from the walkway Biff assessed the type of person: serious, tired, smart business types, mother and two kids, two young cowboys trying to chat up two gorgeous blond backpackers. And so on. A furtive, rat-faced weasel without a bag constantly looked behind him. Biff decided that he was running away fast from the mafia or his missus. He was covering some country anyhow. For Biff people observing was an ingrained habit borne of working alone, He had been early and was on his third Bundy and Coke, the first a double. It was the Real McCoy stuff out of the square bottle with the image of a polar bear on the label, the legendary Queensland ‘square bear’, distilled in Bundaberg. Who the hell would paste pictures of polar bears on bottles of firewater brewed in the tropics, stuff that makes willie-wagtails fight emus? Biff had wondered about that. Probably the same people who branded Queensland lager as XXXX because beer was too hard for them to spell, at least according to some southern sources. Anyway, the Bundy Bear was a whole heap better than the canned rum and cola pig-piss he was used to.

Biff drained his glass and made his way to arrivals. It had been cool in the lounge, warm outside still at nine p.m.

As the sparse carousel emptied, bar one classy leather bag, Biff waited for the claimant to appear. Almost certainly it would belong to his new partner, who no doubt would be freshening up in the rest room to make a good first impression on him. Expectation was mounting. Even a slight sexual buzz ran through him. Rum does that.

Bloody hell. Shit! Don’t tell me, Biff thought, as a middle-aged business-type appeared, with what looked from a distance like vomit down his half-unhinged shirtfront. The man had staggered out of the toilets and weaved his way to the carousel. After three rounds of grabbing at his luggage, the laboured exercise was finally fruitful, with the heavy bag slung over his shoulder. Getting the bag on the shoulder had been one thing, having it stay there and not interfere with his balance another. To Biff, the traveller looked like an ill-loaded camel, and perhaps equally handsome, maybe less so.

Biff’s alarm progressed to outright terror as the drunk spotted him and, plaiting his legs, began his unsteady way towards him. This can’t be happening, Biff thought. Is there no justice in this world? Jack, you mongrel. You’ll pay.

Whirring his slurds, the drunk said, ‘G’day, mate, would you be able to tell me where the toilets are? I think I’ve shit myself and I’ve lost my briefcase.’

Breathing a sigh of guarded relief, Biff thought, for fuck’s sake, you’ve just come out of the toilet.

‘Over there, mate,’ Biff said and pointed. ‘Where are you bound for? The terminal will be closed within half an hour.’

‘Am I at Black River?’

Biff shook his head. ‘Black River is eight hundred kilometres north, mate.’ Biff said aloud, although there was no one else to hear him in the now empty terminal except the cleaner. ‘Christ knows where he’ll end up.’

Obviously Biff’s new undercover partner had missed her plane from Melbourne. Not to worry. He was feeling good anyway. When she gets here she’s in for a shock, he mused. Central Queensland heat will boil her, or bake her, or fry her or ... some bloody thing anyway. Wonder what she looks like? Haven’t been near a sheila for a while. Interesting feeling.

Exiting the terminal he lit a smoke, ‘tailor made’, examined his new runners, and waited some more, not that there were any more flights tonight but he was trying to figure how to drive back into town half-pissed or more. Sole operators don’t have sidekicks to drive them. Fuck it.

Looking about this way and that for a few moments, then deciding to risk it, eventually Biff made his way over to his battered Landcruiser wagon. He could hardly miss it. It was the only vehicle left in the dimly lit lot. Unadjusted eyes made it worse. Just as he put the key in the lock (he’d long ago lost the electronic key thingo) something hard was jammed into his back.

‘Make a habit of stealing cars, mister?’ said a low feminine voice. ‘Spread your legs and lean against the side of the vehicle, arms wide. Now!’

‘Get real. If I was going to steal a car, it wouldn’t be this one. I’d have to be hard up. G’day,’ Biff said as he turned and relaxed. The bit about spreading somebody’s legs still had connotations. ‘Are you who I think you are? Where were you hiding? ’

‘Could be. You’re a bit too casual for my liking. I’m Anika. You stink of rum.’

‘I should, because that’s what I’ve been drinking. I was hoping you’d drive. I’m Biff.’

She didn’t answer but pushed two soft cases into the gloom of the back seat and climbed up into the driver’s seat. Seatbelt on. Then she tried to slide the seat forward. It freed after a couple of attempts, back and forward, then successfully bulldozed up a blade full of rubbish from underneath. Biff wasn’t creating a good first impression.

‘This thing sounds like an F-111,’ she declared as she turned the key. ‘And it’s a tip.’

Biff knew that. Chocolate milk cartons, Macca’s boxes, coffee cups, various packets, Four’n Twenty pies a favourite, Mars bars too. He’d been meaning to clean it out himself for a long time.

With the engine running, Anika hopped out again and scraped the armful of rubbish from the floor, scattering it onto the ground like a scrub turkey that had just hit the jackpot. She cleared around the foot pedals as well. Leaving the mess on the ground, assuming Biff would pick it up, which he did in a fashion using a rum carton, she re-boarded, seat-belted again, and adjusted the rear-vision mirror. Matter of fact, Biff thought. She was little and blonde and that was all he could see of her yet. Well, little beside his six plus frame anyway. She was as fair as he was the other way.

‘Happy now?’ he said as he climbed back in the passenger seat and took in her shoulder length hair framing a very attractive face and then, as she turned, got a line on her profile and features in the dim light. Straight nose. Nice. ‘How did you get past me? I pride myself on observation. Eye of an eagle.’

‘Try a budgie in a cage. You should never let your guard down. You were too busy buying grog, that’s how.’

Southern smartarse, he thought. Fuck Melbourne and jam your old Yarra up your arse too. Jump halfway across it if I was pissed and jump right over it if I was sober.

‘I only had a couple.’

‘I reckon you had a double and two standard rums.’

She eyed him in the dim light. ‘I came in on an earlier flight an hour ago. I wanted to get the feel of this place and have a look at you too. That’s my MO. I do my homework.’

Fuckin’ hell, Biff thought. Bloody kids with their handbooks and guidelines. You only need a bit of commonsense mixed with a bit of biff. Old style. Biff had nearly five years with a rough old sergeant with a heart of gold. Talk about results. And respect that had been earned, not demanded.

He leaned forward and turned full towards to her. ‘That’s an invasion of privacy. Maybe my modus operandi is different, a lot different. Come on. Loosen up. This is Queensland. You’ll soon love this place. Even the crims take a couple of hours off in the middle of the day and the same during the night to have a bit of a siesta.’

‘It’s been a long day. Where are we headed?’ Anika replied tersely.

As they turned onto the main road leading into the township of Duffield, she exclaimed, ‘Oh my God. This car stinks of dog. Yeettch! Why don’t you clean it up properly?’

Biff sniffed the air. ‘I can’t smell anything. And I’ll have you know, Bozo’s a tracker, both people and drugs, and he doesn’t need insults or baths. Imagine if I shampooed him. The only thing he would be able to track would be a can of deodorant or a French Poodle. Most girl dogs would want to hug him and nearly all boy dogs would want to piss on him. Either way throw him off his job.’

Biff thought that might cut the ice. Nope.

‘Where is he now?’

Biff jerked his thumb behind him and said, ‘Right behind you sitting on one of your bags about six inches from your ear. He’s a quiet bugger, eh? Years of intensive training.’

She spun around.

He laughed then yelled, ‘Shit.  Look out.’ Then he wound down the window and gave a little bit of endearing advice to the arse end of the car that had cut them off at speed. ‘No, Bozo’s at the kennels in town. He stays there mostly, seeing I’m never around much. The manager treats him like a Royal Corgi except he’s a lot better looking. Track the Holy Ghost through a storm cloud if I ask him nicely. On the other hand, if I ask him nicely again, he’ll bite you on the arse just as happily, once on each cheek.’

She ignored the last bit.

‘What breed is he?’

‘Bitser.’ Biff was going to add ‘like myself’ but gave himself a compliment and didn’t. ‘No, we don’t like purebreds where I come from ... need a bit of mongrel about them, and stamina, and they don’t ever get crook. Cross a beagle with a kelpie, cross it back over a corgi and add a quarter spaniel, cross that over an eighth Jack Russell ... then shoot the bastard and go and get something from the pound. All you have to do is get on their wavelength. Bozo looks like a cross between Arnie Schwarzenegger and Prince Charles, but brindle. Quite handsome really. Actually he’s bloody ugly but he’s got a kind heart.’ 

For the moment Biff sat remembering his sequence of dogs. Stumpy, blue cattle dog – bite your leg off but could think for himself. Boxhead, bully cross – kept so good a guard that he wouldn’t let Biff back into his own house and he had to sleep in his car. Jackson, kelpie–foxie tore into a bag of biscuits before Biff realised they were hash cookies. Biff smiled at that one. He’d had to sample a couple of them himself to see if they were the real thing. They had kept Jackson in bed for a day. The vets couldn’t figure what was wrong with him and Biff couldn’t very well tell them. Cindy, beautiful smart little spaniel that copped a bullet. The bastard who pulled that trigger got one back when Biff grazed his cock and nearly blew out one ball. $1.8M street value haul. Very satisfying.

Biff went on. ‘Some dogs are bloody smart. Never usually had a chance in backyards before. But for one reason or another they don’t last long. Don’t like shepherds but. Go down in the hips just when you need them.’

‘Found your niche, then,’ she said. ‘Obviously you like dogs. I’d have a cat any day myself.’

‘What? For sniffing out drugs? That’d be really something. I must be behind the times.’

She smiled. ‘Left myself wide open there, didn’t I?’ 

‘Bozo and I have been together for two years. He’s an absolute bloody clown but he knows the street scene. Don’t know how old he is. Probably five or six.’

‘I’m impressed, seeing the dreadful conditions he has to put up with ... rum fumes, overflowing ashtray, twenty pizza boxes and undoubtedly wall to wall cockroaches. Choice.’

‘Like I said, we don’t deal with purebreds.’

He let that ride for a moment before continuing. ‘Bozo just likes it the way it is. You won’t be in the wagon here much anyway. I’ve got an arrangement. I’ll borrow a mate’s Corolla for you. It’s only sitting in his shed. It’s a long way from new but it has been done up mechanically. Goes like a shower of hippo shit. Scares the bejesus out of the hoons. We’ll be at Gordo’s soon.’

‘I can’t wait. Actually this old crate runs fairly well. Why don’t you look after it?’

‘Fuckin’ gutless if you ask me. Has been for a long time.’

‘Mmm. I bet all that crap under the accelerator was starving it for fuel. Fuel filter clogged too, I bet, if the rest of it is any indication.’

‘You a petrol head?’ he asked, not expecting an answer but getting one.

‘In this case a diesel head. I wanted to be a mechanic.’

Biff filed that for further reference. Might come in handy.

From the airport it was a straight eight kilometre drive to town but at the six kilometre mark at a Mobil servo Biff directed Anika to turn west off the main road and travel through a couple of suburbs varying from modest to down-at-heel and finally into an industrial estate.

‘You’ll come to a set of lights in about three kilometres,’ he said. ‘Then take the second street on the right. Moonbi Crescent, number 69, on the right side again. Interesting address, don’t you reckon?’

No response. Maybe she didn’t know the terminology or didn’t want to know the implication.

‘Dangerous neighbourhood around here, by the looks,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.

‘Not for the old Gordo it’s not. He’s a bit of a wheel about town. You know, big fella when he’s out—like a horse’s cock.’

She didn’t comment but Biff could see one dimple flex. She’s pretty. That wasn’t all he saw. As a matter of routine caution he’d leant forward and checked the passenger-side mirror.

‘Fuckin’ cop car following. Jesus Christ. That’s all we need.’

The car drew up behind and followed them for a minute then pulled alongside. The copper on the passenger side held a lighted sign, ‘Police’, and indicated to pull over.

‘Don’t they have sirens in this backward state?’ Anika said as she braked to the kerb as directed and started to fish in her purse for her licence.

‘Yeah, but we don’t want to wake every other poor bugger up six times a night, like in New York or Melbourne,’ he retorted.

The coppers got out, checked