6 Black Satire Novels

An homage to raw unadulterated power

The Story of Dangerfield's Dad

By Mack McColl

Copyright 2026

Prologue

Harney Codliverchuk was raised by an old‑country eastern European (Ukrainian) businessman who owned a pool hall in a small prairie town in western Canada, and this afforded Harney a beginning in life. It was a comfortable beginning, surrounded by the criminals who inhabited the pool hall in the 1940s. Harney had no grandiose ideas about who he was or what he was capable of, except that he could beat anybody at a game of billiards.

From this vantage point he learned early that power didn’t come from noise or spectacle, but from watching. A Watcher begins as an observer, not a force — a patient reader of fracture lines in other people’s lives. Harney chose the law as his perch, a place from which he could direct the traffic of his life.

He came to believe he saw the world more clearly than the world saw itself, and this certainty became his private cosmology. Over time, observation turned to interference, interference to manipulation, and manipulation hardened into a doctrine in which he alone understood the pattern.

He didn’t see any fatal flaws in himself: a Watcher cannot imagine a target who survives, outlasts, or walks through the wreckage untouched by unauthorized designs. In the end, he believes he will overcome resistance. He has no vision for things he never accounted for. There is no life, in his mind, that refuses to break where he expects it to.

Harney noticed the sister first.

Not because she was remarkable (she wasn’t, except perhaps for her figure) but because greed had a particular shine to it, a hairline fracture in the world that only Harney seemed able to see. She carried that crack openly, like a badge. Most mortals tried to hide their appetites. She wore hers like perfume.

He knew she would be useful before she even opened her mouth. People like her always are. Greed was the simplest force in any dimension. It didn’t require interpretation or finesse. You gave it something to want, and it walked itself into the trap. Harney had never needed to work hard with the greedy. They did the work for him.

When he encountered her brother, Dale MacAdam, it barely registered. A boy like that didn’t draw the eye. No shine, no fracture, no appetite worth exploiting. A background figure everywhere but a hockey rink. A formality, inelegant, someone shaped by small loyalties and smaller expectations. Harney assumed he was as flawed as his sister. Most siblings were.

When Harney made his first move, it was because she was a runaway at age fourteen. He was assigned custody of her by the court when they dragged her back to the city of Edmonton, and Harney wasn’t thinking about Dale at all. He was thinking about the sister, about the leverage she represented, about the clean geometry of greed. Dale was incidental, more of an obnoxious intrusion.

He wasn't raising alarms. He was no threat. Just annoyance, the kind you feel when a door you’ve opened a thousand times suddenly sticks. It wasn’t supposed to stick. It had no reason to. It was a door. It should have opened. This was the level of flaw in Dale, and Harney decided it should not exist, and Harney had the power to deny existence.

The only question became how to deny Dale MacAdam his own existence. Would the obnoxious kid cling to a purpose with a stubborn, graceless persistence that made no sense? He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t courageous. But perhaps he had a refusal so quiet and so absolute it felt like mockery. Harney stared at him and wanted him broken, bleeding, unconscious. A pool cue would do the job.

The sister’s face told a different story. She was perfectly poised to be an asset, bleeding with envy. Harney knew she hated Dale for surviving her hate of him coagulating in pools to make her look small. Hated him for possessing an existence. Harney could fix it for her.

Harney didn’t pay much attention to her needs other than that. Dale MacAdam was an anomaly demanding her to fracture, smash, call for extermination. She was 14. She had Harley by the balls. The Sisters counted on it and he knew it.

Harney was sure he needed no support for the task of removing this boy from this mortal coil. But he was prepared to learn, and not out of fear. He would learn out of irritation for surprises. Any second-in-command in Harney's mission would never need to question or interpret.

Harney applied pressure until the world fractured the way it was supposed to. The sister bent exactly as expected. Dale did not in fact crumble and might turn out to be a persistent irritation. All Harney knew is, the promise of giving her whatever she wants cost the brother his life. This was the beginning of a fracture Harney would fret about, covet and vex over until the day he succeeded.

He captured the sister easily enough. Watched the way she leaned into every conversation, hungry for advantage. Watched the way she measured people by what they could give her. Watched the way she resented being denied her wish.

Harney knew envy is a corrosive form of greed. A quieter one. A poisonous one. She said she hated the boy. Harney believed she envied Dale’s life, though she would never have named it. Perhaps she hated his manhood. Hated his durability. Hated the way he refused to collapse under a weight of expectations that would crush her.

But she made a convincing case for his weakness. She thought he was simple. She thought he was beneath her. And Harney agreed. It was because of her that he decided to strike. He resolved to strike Dale as many times as it took. And he wasn't about to wait. A pattern would assert itself. Mortals broke cleanly when you hit them in the right place. They didn’t linger or resist. They didn’t cling or persist. They broke and died.

Would Dale cling? It wouldn’t be dramatic or heroic. Perhaps he would resist, just, persistently. Like a weed that refused to die no matter how many times you tore it out. There was nothing noble about weeds. They don’t fight. They don’t resist. They continue. And continuation, Harney believed, was its own kind of belligerence.

Still, he wasn’t concerned. Survival was not victory. Survival was delay. And delays can be corrected. He had time. He had leverage. He had the prize. The sister was worthy of use. Harney held to patterns, since those are informative.

He had the world exactly where he wanted it. The kid was a footnote. A complication. A child who didn’t know enough to die when he was supposed to. A child whose survival felt like an insult standing in the way of a petite corsage blooming on his dick.

Harney told himself it didn’t matter. Survival was not strength. Endurance was not will. This anomaly would resolve to Harney’s satisfaction. He told himself he understands the world. He told himself he understands problems. He told himself any vendetta would be short and sweet.

To begin with, Harney was certain of a few facts. He was first amongst worldly authorities. Breaker of patterns. A reader of fractures. A hunter of mortals. And Dale McAdam was nothing but a monster whose mother and sister felt he should have died. Under Harney's close watch, it was a child who would die. A child whose survival was malfunction could never be a encouraged. Required full time surveillance. Watching.

Harney would correct the malfunction and would finish what he began. He always did. The main goal of a watcher is to be a finisher.

Chapter one: The World's Greatest Fishing Knife

Is that an illusion? Was he seeing things? It looks exactly like Keith, the guy he spent a month tearing up weeds with in June (and part of July) in the backyard of Mister Sissons property in West Meadowlark. But how could this be? It was 700 miles away and more than a month ago. The motorcycle was a Honda 75 and the guy was wearing a helmet but it was clearly Keith when he turned toward Dale and drove over to stop on the road beside him.

"Dale! What are you doing here? Where are you staying?"

"Nowhere. I was down at Peachland. I left this morning and I am going to camp beside the lake."

"That's not possible. The cops will roust you for sure. You can stay with me. I am at my brother's house for the summer. He will let you crash for a couple nights."

This was a spot of unexpected good luck, which took a moment to process. He didn't hesitate to accept, almost without any thought whatsoever.

Overall, 1969 had been unkind so far. Suddenly this wasn't the case. Dale was experiencing a change of fortune, which began mere days ago, while he was riding his ten speed from Kelowna to Peachland. He found a wallet on the side of the highway. A $20 bill was sticking out of the bill fold. He felt overdue for a run of good luck, so allowed it to begin. There was another $6 tucked neatly in the wallet.

The traffic was raising dust beside the shopping centre in South Kelowna where this peculiar rendezvous was taking place, and moments later he rolled his ten speed up the sidewalk and unloaded his gear into the house where Keith's older brother was starting a young family.

For the first time this summer, he could stop and smell the roses. And the breeze, and the rich Okanagan air with orchards under irrigation and radiant sunshine with never a cloud in the sky.

They climbed to the attic, "I thought your big plan for the rest of summer was to ride your bike to Jasper with your friends."

"Yah, that plan fell apart." Nothing had gone as planned. Yet somehow life worked itself out, didn't it? He found $26 in the wallet laying on the shoulder, a princely sum t0 go into his pocket. Returning the ID and other contents was still a matter of debate. He had to discuss it.

"So I shipped my bike to Vernon and rode to Peachland to meet Tim Collins. His mom and dad said I could stay at their rented cabin for a few days," which Dale reduced to three days because they made him feel as welcome as bubonic plague. There was a load of bad blood going on. The trip was a wash.

Yes, he was a mere 14, but he had the bike and the gear so he felt liberated, with 26 extra dollars, he felt rich when he rode away from the Peachland beach front cabin this morning.

"And Mister and Missus Collins just let ya go?"

Dale laughed. "What?" He was taken aback. "Of course. What are they going to do?"

"Well, Dale," said Keith, "my fuckin brother and sister in law do not want to let you go. They're for calling the cops to get you home."

"What? I am set. I know exactly what I am doing. Here. Look at this," and Dale handed the baby blue colored wallet to Keith upstairs in the attic room with a couple of cots. Dale spent summers in the company of dragonflies and mosquitos and cadis flies in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, buried in the wilderness of the Canadian Shield with his father a few hundred yards gone in either direction searching for the elusive 2lb rainbow trout, leaving Dale to cope with nature by puffing on a cigar and occasionally dipping his line in the water. He didn't actually take up the cigars until he was age 9. These were the headwaters to the Athabasca, the North Saskatchewan, and the watershed of the Canadian prairies, home to grizzly bears, black bears, wolverines, badgers, and other big feral creatures such as the moose, and deer. Never once did any of these animals cross his path. And he was in it from age 7.

"This is what you found? Geez. Seems kind of heavy."

"You think so? I kept the $26. I want to turn the wallet in to the RCMP."

"Yah you should. And put the money back. This poor Indian lady from Washington probably needs it more than you."

He looked at the straw-haired yokel, same age as him, 14, probably riding the motorcycle illegally, who was a hard worker a few weeks ago in Sissons' demon weed patch, "I know. I feel guilty. But I'm keeping it. Don't tell your brother. You got a driver's license?"

"Fuck you. It's too heavy," Keith kept assessing the wallet, putting it down on his cot, then returning to it, weighing it, something neither of the Collins boys had done a few days ago. When Dale arrived at the Collins' little cabin beside Okanagan Lake bearing this fresh reward for his travails, the boys said keep the money, toss the wallet, and kept it hush hush from the Collins parents, JJ and Freda. JJ drove the boat and challenged Dale to waterski on Lake Okanagan. Challenge accepted.

Dale kept the money, and hid the wallet deep inside his saddlebag. He was living on instinct at 14 years of age when he decided upon an early departure from the Collins tribe. It was the end of his friendship with Tim, and it was a jagged end to a few disturbing events.

"Hey!" Keith yelled, and held the wallet open, suddenly bulging with cash. The secret pocket held a large number of $20 bills. They were Canadian bills, even though the wallet belonged to an American Nez Pierce Tribal Member, and Keith started pulling the money out but handed the wallet to Dale.

"Let's count it." It was $420. Dale put another $40 in his pocket, gave the wallet and $380 to his friend Keith, and they went downstairs to report this to the big brother. The police were called, and now Dale was $66 dollars richer than he was when he arrived in the Okanagan.

In every way you can imagine, Dale felt robbed by Tim Collins, and by extension, the entire Collins family, until now. In a desperately real way, Dale felt betrayed by Tim Collins. Last spring, Dale let Tim in on a secret, he had a key to his Dad's pearl white '65 VW Beetle, a four year old car in pristine condition. One weekend he invited Tim to go joyriding while the folks were away. Tim smashed the VW engine-first into the back bumper on a welders truck parked on 149 street.

Dale was savvy to Tim's cavalier commitment to the debt from popping the clutch. Tim owed $200 of the $400 repair bill. Dale shouldered his half, then some, for being the instigating car thief. All this had been worked out judiciously by the lawyer, Codliverchuk, on the day of the incident. Or so Dale had been led to believe. This trip from Edmonton to Peachland was about the cash. They didn't speak a word of it in the confines of the lake-side cabin. Dale left, twenty-six whole dollars richer, thanks to the Collins, in some backhanded fashion no one could fathom.

Dale sat on his cot pondering the difference between Keith and Tim. Tim advised keeping the $26. So had Tim's older brother, the one who used to drive a Valiant 3 speed on the floor, a long gear lever looked comical but proved functional, as Dale recollected from the one or two occasions he rode in the car, back before hell proper had descended. (It seemed so long ago. It was 5 months.) What would those two goofs say about the $440?

As a way to placate his hosts, Dale was prepared to talk to Keith's brother, but Dale had to mosey along, and this he did once the dust cleared with the wallet and the cops. What could they say? Now is the time for all good fly fishermen to buy the fish-gutting knife of their dreams.

Chapter Two: Let The Vendetta Begin

Harney Codliverchuk, L.L.B., Q.C., had been satisfied with the direction things were taking, after all, it was his planning to perfection, it was the consummation of multiple agenda points in a large play for total control, plus, it was the severe destruction of a dirty little fucker who deserved to be snuffed before he starts on a path to further deviation.

Personal empire building would not be interrupted, colored or flavored in any way by this tangential interlocutor, a thorn in his side from the instant he encountered him, someone who represents foul play, contributory negligence personified. If he could go back in history and prevent the birth of Hitler, go back in history and prevent the birth of Genghis Khan who inflicted so much terror upon Harney's Ukrainian ancestors, or go back in history and prevent the birth of Dale MacAdam, he would choose the latter. According to Dale MacAdam's mother, and his sister, the kid was the devil, and both of those cunts were evil enough to know. Even so, Harney was stunned when the mother said, "Yes," to the proposal to put a life insurance policy on her kid.

It began because Harney does not resist the temptation of young, fresh, delinquent school girls, the promiscuous ones are extraordinary in two ways. Irresistible to his rock hard libido stick, and incredibly fecund sources of huge bonus income, legitimately derived from the most illegitimate of resources. Baby making, out of wedlock, with unnamed fathers.

He doesn't brag about it. He lives on the trading of human skin. One of his trading floors is the arena of justice. Harney Codliverchuk is working his way to a position of supreme power, the kind of power any, any man envies. Harney is politically aligned enough with the trough-addicted Liberals to appoint judges to the bench.

People kill for advantage like this. You would not believe the level of scumbag Harney has squeezed into a chair on 'the bench' in the courts of the Province of Alberta. He likes to joke about the truth about where he finds his best candidates for judge: Alcoholics Anonymous or the other 12 step recovery program, even Weight Watchers. He recommends the 'slipper.' This makes for extremely malleable judges in Harney's arena. He is passing this knowledge on to an acolyte. There won't be an honest judge in Edmonton for the next 50 fucking years.

Harney encounters legal opportunities in a steady stream. He is in the perfect position to dip into lawlessness at his convenience, and engage on demand sexual intercourse with a non stop flow of young, willing or compliant pussy. He is a warden, court appointed guardian, of the court of family justice, and he specializes in rounding up runaways. Here in the middle of the sexual revolution on waves of a baby boom, he was in the business of containing errant pussy, by law, and leading it to the Pineview Home for Unwed Mothers, and business was fucking booming, because there's no such thing as containing errant pussy.

One of those fetching ones he encountered in a previous spring had been an extended probation leading to recurring sexual frenzy for the past year of her incarceration. Until she shoved her stupid, self-centered and self-indulgent little brother into the picture. And this little prick figured he was some kind of gift to humanity. He also believed himself entitled to free legal advice from Harney. This was Dale's most objectionable trait. Attempting to out criminal the chief criminal, wickedly obnoxious fucking kid.

The kid was what this frantic long distance phone call was about from brother Boss Bob who was supposed to keep it simple but always made it complicated, and a bit of a mess, which is to say, unpleasant and unexpected surprises. Boss Bob gave a hearsay account because Boss Bob didn't do the job himself, he hired another guy on the job, and this guy came back pretty shook up over his encounter with the 14 year old kid. Imagine. Turns out the kid is dangerous-as-fuck, and guess what? Boss Bob is somebody who knows danger, after a full stint in World War Two, in the Canadian Navy, and in the thick of it.

Harney listens to Boss Bob give his report. Boss Bob goes into details of a frightful event, but it wasn't the trauma Harney was expecting. Boss Bob gives the details received from his operative. Boss Bob often repeats things twice. If you don't have it by then, you aren't getting it from Boss Bob.

"My guy got the fright of his fucking life, Harney. My guy got the fright of his fucking life, And he is totally pissed at me about the lack of warning. Totally pissed about the lack of warning."

Harney's target had competed for a couple of city championships in hockey, his dad bragged about the kid's scoring prowess. "I told you he is competitive." Harney knew hockey players who did the scoring didn't do the fighting, so this was unexpected news about a surprise attack.

From the report of the guy's surveillance, he started off saying it had been a boring fucking morning, last he heard the kid was riding his bike from Kelowna to Vernon. "He rode his bike like you said he would."

Harney expected him to be camping in the town of Vernon beside Lake Kalamalka. The intel said the kid was a camper. Instead he went to the bus depot and put his bike on a Greyhound. An hour later he stood out to the highway hitchhiking. Boss Bob's operative said the kid was hard to miss because you don't see a lot of skinny 14 year old kids hitchhiking alone on a highway at night.

The operative picked the kid up on the outskirts of the town of Vernon. The kid told the operative he was going to Salmon Arm. "It was evening, and a warm August night. The kid said he wouldn't get in the truck unless my guy was going non stop to Salmon Arm. My guy reassured him this was the plan. And away they went."

And this is when it gets interesting. Apparently the operative intends to have a little fun with the kid before he finishes the job. "So he drives him north toward the town of Salmon Arm, and this is Wednesday evening, so the highway is deserted. About twenty miles up this lonely stretch of highway, the operative pulls over to the left and parks the camper beside the highway. He decides it's the place to do it. But the kid doesn't go along initially. He gets out of the pickup and crosses the highway to stick out his thumb. He was disgusted but didn't express any disappointment. "My guy thinks the kid got away. An hour passes. No cars go by along the highway, and it's approaching midnight." The operative hears a knock on his camper door.

Boss Bob says the kid comes in, they have coffee, kid asks about his tattoos, "Navy," he told him.

The kid said they look familiar because his dad has the same tattoos on his forearm.

"My guy puts him on the bunk above the cab, lays down beside him, has his dick up stiff as a board, and, Snap."

"What?" Harney asked, "Snap?"

"it's the noise an eight-inch razor-sharp stiletto made flashing toward my guy's hard-on, so my guy jumped down and threw the kid's gear out the door and backed away while the smirky shit went to the exit. He said he managed to give the little fucker a shove out the door. But it wasn't a toy knife. He said the kid laughed after landing on his feet in the dark like a fucking black cat and asked him if he wanted more. It scared him. "Same tattoos, buddy, excapt my old man ain't a queer, aasshole. And neither am I!"

The knife was gone. The kid had gathered his gear and sprinted across the highway in a matter of seconds, cussing as he went, and whooping with joy because it was just in time to flag a pickup truck with a crowd of rowdy travelers in the open truck box. My guy said Indians stopped and the kid disappeared into the darkest night my guy has seen in his life.

"He ended pursuit or interest in your target, Harv. He said he isn't about to lose his dick for ten grand. He wants to be paid in full. Or he said you're the one who's gonna lose your dick. He did say, the kid shipped his bike to Jasper and is riding to Hinton to meet up with his dad, and go fishing."

Uh shit. This is unexpected. It was also a real costly. Life insurance policies don't pay for living expenses, and don't come cheap either, and the trollop mother won't be picking up the tab for $10,000. She said, it's not her fault if it doesn't work out.

The sister, that's another story. She has Harney's kid on the way, which covers expenses in this fuck up. She told people it was parthenogenesis from her brother raping her a few months ago. Harney gave her the crazy story from a crazy Nun he knew in Mundare.

Maybe she said it was her father and possibly the neighborhood dogs and cats. Harney didn't care. Harney sold the kid to the Sisters of Multiple Broken Covenants and Hymens, including the child trafficking when something arrives. This side game amounted to fuck around money. And this fuck around money went down the drain. How fucking hard can it be to kill one wimpy looking 14 year old delinquent?

Meanwhile the psychopath little broad is turning 16 soon, and says she never sleeps, because she craves Harney's dick, she says, but he knows it's because sleeping interrupts her from making up malicious excuses for her shitty attitude, about anybody who crossed her path, except Harney, because he is the law.

Now it was personal, combined with the impersonal. In the months after the events of the highway to Salmon Arm, Harney had staged the entire proceeding with a small investment in life insurance on the minor, a policy he had in place by April, about a week after the MacAdam's returned and Harney convinced the mother to co-sign, which was four months prior to the trip in summer. It was supposed to be a payout of half a million dollars, payable upon a death anytime after the first three months.

Ironclad legal framework was in place for the payout, one of those paydays you live for, the only expenses being the policy, and the $10,000 bill for the child rapist/murderer friend of his brother. The bills had mounted, the mission flagged, and now it turned from payday into a vengeful resentment.

Harney had a backdrop system of support that held none of the bitterness he was tasting about this kid. They would not be the tail wagging the dog anyway. They're potential tangential witnesses, people who fall in line in the syndicate. A closed secret finds practically zero escapes except by sheer accident or a strange turn of the screw, which wasn't happening anywhere near this. No one is going to spill the beans to Dale MacAdam.

This is one of those spooky arrangements, however, where the target won't die on command. This alters the logistics, and this is creates unforeseen larger than life consequences for what amounts to sweet fuck all. You have to make it a little personal, otherwise there's practically no motive, if the money isn't going to flow. The only damned conspiracy is Harney footing the bill on a guaranteed investment, and in the august circles in which Harney the Bohunk travels those are tight lipped about anything smacking of means, motive and opportunity. It happens to be somebody else's and nobody knows who or why that is. Harney cannot stop himself from bursting out laughing over a couple of scotch whisky at the Switchboard Lounge located beneath the AGT Tower a block from the McLeod Building where the Jews had set up shop for him to do business. This would include money laundering, bribery, murder, and whole suite.

Make no mistake, Harney was vary Jewish about his money but in addition to pecuniary considerations he is happy to have people close for him to lay the blame, and there's one thing his Dad had been rock solid about, keep your enemies close and when the shit hits the fan blame the Jews. His father had intended for Harney to achieve great things.. Harney liked to believe his murderous impulses had external origins and it surely wasn't his sainted mother. External in that he wasn't a dyed in the wool wanton killer.

People are pieces of shit, it's so easy to spin them for a payday. It takes training. The idiot in the camper will get his lesson. A shot in the back of the head from Boss Bob. And the dangerous person disguised as a kid appears to have made a career for himself of surviving Harney Codliverchuk.

Chapter Three: Harney grows a beard

Dale was intuitive enough to realize quickly he made a mistake consulting this guy. Dale had found it awkward to explain things to the lawyer who showed up out of thin air, Harney Codliverchuk.

Why had Dale cut a key and stolen the VW? That was the lawyer's main concern. In fact, Mr. Codliverchuk, 'Harney' was quite torn up about the boys leaving the scene and taking the car from the accident, because Dale and Brian Collins pushed the smashed '65 Pearl White VW Beetle through a corridor of neighborhood back alleys to park it in the MacAdam garage, where they met the lawyer.

Well it was simple. The cast iron metal back bumper of the gigantic welder's truck which Brian here smashed didn't happen to have a scratch. Dale had brushed off a few flecks of paint. They pushed the car into the immediate convenience of a downhill alley and up the lane for a block, across one street, into another alley, a basic police report of activities. For some fucking reason, Codliverchuk wasn't having any of it. He seemed unwilling to accept that Brian Collins was being made responsible for smashing the car while Dale was in Tooke's Grocery.

"I'm not worried about the police. There was no damage to the other vehicle. I want Brian here to pay for half the damage. He wasn't a passenger. He smashed the car.

"Yes. It was lawless, but I am not a delinquent."

Dale opted to inform Mr. Codliverchuk that when his Dad catches him red-handed, it will be a week of the silent treatment, then a resumption of normal life, because Dale isn't guilty. Dale would soon be handed the keys, grudgingly, "Straight to the store," Sure, "No fuck around stopping to cut keys, for this car, or that house, or the other car."

Dale explained to this lawyer who showed up at his sister's insistence because their parents were out of town, that he had his learner's permit, "Had it the day after my birthday last November." He got the key cut one afternoon where he works part-time at a hardware store. It seemed convenient to have one.

"It was criminal."

Dale agreed to listen to the dressing down he was receiving from Mr. Codliverchuk because he wanted a legal position on the damages, and he continued to defend it by stating he logged at least 5,000 miles behind the wheel of various types of cars and trucks since the age of 10.

Dale told Mr. Codliverchuk the only thing preventing him from driving without supervision was his jealous older sister, and his cranky mother. He said his old man trusted him with the wheel of a car and the handle of a loaded gun. "I've been gutting fish since I was a toddler."

Mr. Codliverchuk seemed entirely unable and unwilling to listen. Dale was equally sure other 14 year old kids were unable to relate. He felt squeezed between childhood and adulthood.