Layer Cake

by J. J. Connolly

  I loved it, fuckin loved it. I went over there with a loada pills and let them go a bit at a time. The groovy crowd in Sydney almost took our hand off for them cos they couldn’t get them down there at the time. I had a couple of pals in tow as ever and everything was sweet until they started falling out over anything and everything. I got my shit together and headed up to south-east Asia and hung out there for a while. It taught me a very good lesson about doing things with pals, you can trust ’em, sometimes, maybe, but you can’t always rely on them. I had some guys doing bits and pieces, running things backwards and forwards between there and the UK so I always had money coming in. I got rumped a couple of times, nothing serious, not cos the dudes were even mischievous or anything, more cos they were so fuckin untogether, outers all the fuckin time. They’re doing too much product, it’s the fat-bloke-down-the-chip-shop-can’t-stop-eating-all-the-chips syndrome. Again it was a lesson learnt, quite cheaply as it turned out, that you should try and avoid doing anything with people who can’t control their drugs, who let the drugs control them. They don’t mean to fuck up, it just happens.

  I went from there over to the States, Califuckinfornia, and had a real good look around. I was having it, associating, with a totally different kinda people, people who were movers and groovers on the arts scene, actors and actresses, film-makers, musicians, sensible ones not the deadbeat, lowlife variety. I was in LA with people who were making moves, the real in-crowd, living near the beach, but I started to miss all those things that are so typically English like cold rain, stodgy food and good old verbal abuse. When I arrived back in jolly old monochrome England things seemed to have calmed down a bit. The ecstasy trade had become highly organised very quickly. The price had tumbled and it was run mostly by teams of bouncers and obvious heavy muscles so I gave all that a big wide. I had moneys to collect from various sources so I wasn’t in any kinda hurry to go to work but I made sure I was seen out and about the parish and waited for something to turn up. A lot of the old team I’d palled about with back in ’88, ’89, were either away doing time, away down in Goa or away with the fairies so I was well open to new suggestions and new accomplices. After a few false starts and offers of hare-brained, get-rich-quick schemes that would only get me put away for stretches, I started moving bits and pieces around town just to keep my hand in really and to top up my dwindling cashish reserve.

  Then almost five years to the day after our last meeting Morty rang me. I was sitting, on my jack, in a dusty old saloon bar deep in the backstreets of the old manor. It was midday and I was reading the early edition of the Evening Standard and drinking a bottle of Pils. This is something I very, very rarely do. I was about to cut out when the old boy came round from behind the jump to tell me I had a phone call and would I please follow him.

  ‘I think you’ve made a mistake, pal,’ I said. ‘Nobody knows I’m here.’

  ‘Oh no. It’s for you all right’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was told to just come and get you.’

  He was lying about that but it’s no big deal. How the fuck did this old geezer know who I was and who I wasn’t, he didn’t fuckin ask or anything. I followed him through the door marked private. Everyone likes to walk though a door marked private. The old fellow pointed at the receiver silently and left. It was Morty on the phone. I reckon he wanted me to be a bit freaked out and be asking him how he knew I was there. I didn’t cos I knew that’s exactly what he wanted. Mortimer loves all that dramatic fuck-about, getting your nut, so I spoke to Mister Mortimer like it was the most natural thing in the whole wide world that he should be ringing me in this out-of-the-way boozer, unarranged, like it was my business office or something. He wanted to meet me in the same hotel bar that we had the meet back in ’86, he had a proposition he wanted to run by me, wanted me to come and listen and see what I thought. This afternoon, sure, no problem, no time like the present is there, I’ll see you there, Mister Mortimer, three o’clock, wonderful, okay, I’ll see you then.

  I put the phone down and walked back into the bar and asked the guy for a five-star brandy. I was excited although you wouldn’t have guessed it. I was outwardly calm but my heart was pounding cos this was like being asked to join the Freemasons. It was like being welcomed into the big time. Morty wasn’t going to introduce me to a car-stereo-thieving syndicate. Mister Mortimer was a major player.

  The old boy wouldn’t take any money for the Andy Pandy, simply waved away my fiver and got on with his bottling-up, like any friend of Morty was a friend of his as well. It’s the little things that let you know you’ve arrived.

  Same bar five years on, same camp guy behind the ramp, same glitzy wallpaper, same high-class hookers hanging out, five years older. Morty’s already sitting down facing the door as I arrive. He don’t fuck about, straight down to business. He tells me that he can lay his hands on as much exceptional quality cocaine as we can shift, the very, very best gear and from a very safe, very secure source, Mister Price I know now. He’s also got people who are up for buying the product offa him but Morty really don’t know that much about dealing. He looks on it as a trade or a craft like any other, which it is I suppose. Morty wants into the business cos otherwise he’s gonna be left behind in the age of the dinosaurs and he’s already a late starter cos he’s about four zero so he’s leaving it late. What he does have going for him is the connections he’s built up over the years, in the boob and out, and a very solid reputation as a merciless cunt with charm. A straight question needs a straight answer, no Jack and Danny, are you willing to come on board as a partner? Equal shares, carved straight down the middle? Yes or no? I need an answer today, right now in fact. He talked about prices and availability like he already knew the job. Why me? I asked and he replied Cos you think like a guy who don’t wanna get captured and spend years locked away. I’ve done too much bird already. You think like a criminal not like a convict. I don’t know you but I know of you and people tell me that you’re the best man for the job at this moment in time. You ain’t no loud-mouth and you go about things with a minimum of fuss but for you to go up a gear in the business you need to start making a few sensible allies. Do you wanna start moving right away from the shopfloor? I need a partner cos some things are always done best with a partner. Do you wanna be a face or do you sincerely wanna be rich? I promise you I don’t wanna shag you or anything, son, I just want us to do the business. Okay, I said, but one thing, don’t ever call me son again cos I fuckin hate it, I don’t even like my old man calling me son. Okay, he said, never again. We shook hands.

  We both pulled up ten grand each, put it in the middle. In a matter of weeks we had our money tripled and we were running kit all over London, making meets to sort things out, let certain people know what we were up to, and the rest as they say is history. I was serving the troops up in Highgate now cos we could give them a better price and product than they were getting. It was another two years before Clarkie and Terry arrived and brought with them a whole lot more work. Doors opened to me that would otherwise have been shut or slammed in my face. I talked as an equal to geezers who really just wanted to reach over the table and squeeze my head till my eyes popped out or strangle me and kick my body round the yard for fun, but having Morty at my right shoulder prevented this. I soon learnt that in the Premier League the only thing people understand is power expressed through violence or more accurately the threat of violence. I thought the higher up you went the more civilised things would become, but the reality is that the threat just becomes subtler. Guns hover in the background, you hear stories of disappearances, people simply going missing, going out to collect their dry cleaning and never coming home again. Shit like that starts entering the equation because the stakes are so much higher. Everyone’s a lot more paranoid and edgy cos it’s such a long way down.

  Because Morty wasn’t performing on a daily or weekly basis his legend grew through Chinese whispers and I felt we could do anything. We worked together well.
We had an understanding. If I didn’t think something or someone was kosher we dropped it out. He took the piss for a while about me being so fuckin over-cautious that I suspected everyone and everything, but if something didn’t smell right we didn’t do it. Soon all the pukka business wanted to come to us cos they heard we only did business with seriously conscientious professionals. If we had started out with a long-term strategy to only deal with sensible guys to lure in other sensible guys then the strategy worked beautifully and I took the kudos. Some sloppy little teams got the zig cos we wouldn’t trade with them and then confirmed our suspicions by creating a fuss and slagging us off all over the gaff. In a way it was a compliment.

  I was then faced with another kinda problem. I had bundles of cash wrapped round me and there’s only so much you can do with cash without people getting suspicious or jealous. I was sent to see an accountant an hour’s drive outta London. My card had been marked, I could be completely straight with him. He, Mister Lonsdale, told me that I had better start paying taxes on my drug profits, obviously not declaring that I was a dealer but start opening and investing in as many cash businesses as possible. Start flushing as much cash through these seemingly legit fronts as would look feasible. Go to people you know and trust and tell them you’ll put them in the swindle if you can fire some money through the books and get paid a partner’s dividend at the end of the year. Start looking to open clothes shops, snack bars, flower stalls, car washes, ice-cream vans, gyms, hot-dog stands, driving schools, recording studios. If any of your pals come to you with a business plan that’s half-way sensible, stick your money in, so long as it’s a cash-heavy business, don’t matter if it don’t make money in reality cos on paper it’s fuckin thriving. Don’t worry if you got lock-ups full of rotting flowers and burgers or you’re knee-deep in a river of melting ice cream or the hot-dog stands are spending all day padlocked up in a garage, cos on paper you’re selling every single bit of stock you buy at top fuckin dollar. You’re fuckin golden bollocks, the Chamber of Commerce young businessman of the year, you’ve got the fuckin Midas touch. Avoid night-clubs, bars, restaurants and mini-cab firms because they’re a total headfuck, his words not mine, and a favourite target of the Inland Revenue and VAT Mafioso. It’s the exact opposite of what someone trying to run a cash-heavy business would be doing.

  At the end of the tax year I got a tax bill, which I paid by cheque, and Mister Lonsdale sent me a bill to keep the books straight. I gave him a good few grand cashish in an envelope and an ounce of flake-coke at Christmas. The important thing was we’d both got the other guy firmly by the bollocks.

  A year or so later Mister El has advised me to start getting into property, introduced me to solicitors and mortgage brokers who could be bent and it starts to become apparent that once you’ve got your money into the system, skull money goes to straight money. I live in a rented flat, in spite of the fact that I own a few, and work the rents through the lettings agency. I keep readies plugged up in cash and in banks dotted around the place. I’ve got accounts in Jersey and the Caymans. Having accounts out there’s not as flash as it sounds cos anyone can walk into their London offices, plonk their readies on the counter, those cunts’ll suck your dick and it don’t matter where the paper comes from.

  Jeremy shows bang on the dot of half-four with much profuse apologising. We buzz him up. He’s dressed like a barrister with black jacket, pinstripe strides and a fawn coat with a crimson velvet collar, totally convincing. He’s saying he’s terribly, terribly sorry, he’s been stuck in traffic due to an accident on Battersea Bridge. We’re saying ‘no fuckin problem, Jeremy’ in spite of the fact that a couple of minutes earlier we were going to abort the mission and scarpa. We lock ourselves in and let him test the gear but he knows it’s gonna be good cos it always is. I get some jewellery scales outta a filing cabinet and we check the weight together. Jeremy is pure public school so he don’t trust any cunt. He always checks the quality of the powder with his little chemistry set and always weighs the parcel and we always check the money even though we’ve been doing the business for years. It’s good business practice, good manners and keeps standards up. He’s happy with his goods and brings out the money from his briefcase and Morty starts running it through a counting machine.

  For a counting machine to work properly all the notes need to be facing the one direction, all the Queen’s heads are the right way up. Some of Jeremy’s notes ain’t so the counting keeps stopping. I get a little pissed off at this and start to think that maybe he should sort this kinda shit out before he comes fuckin over here, but in reality it’s a sure sign that you’ve been in the game too long, when a guy turns up to give you twenty large and you’re getting the hump cos it ain’t all facing the right way. Maybe I’ve grown blasé and take things for granted, maybe I’m just spoilt rotten.

  The money tops up to exactly twenty grand. We’re happy and so is Jeremy and he cuts out. He’ll have the half-key broken down into smaller deals in a couple of hours and it’ll all be shifted again by tonight. It’s all on order anyway. Morty is rubbing the wedge up against his bollocks. Twenty grand in fifties is about the size of a house brick. Morty chops it into thousand-pound lumps and then puts four elastic bands around the notes, three width-ways and one long-ways. It’s a beautiful, compact, taut, sexy little brick. I laugh. Morty finds the actual cash sexy, not what it can buy or the freedom it brings but the existence, the sight, the smell, the feel, of a large amount in the one place, preferably his hand, a fuckin big turn-on, like it’s a heart-warming thing in itself, a thing of great aesthetic beauty, a work of art. I can see his point cos to see a fuckin great pile of loot and know some or all of it’s yours gives you some kinda thrill, a tingle in the testicles, like spotting a real stunning woman on a real sunny day, it’s a mixture of lust and the appreciation of a beautiful thing. Morty laughs and throws the wedge over to me.

  ‘I don’t want it, not after it’s been where it’s been.’ I throw it back and he catches it.

  ‘This is money for jam,’ he says, slinging it on the desktop and rubbing his hands together. ‘And now,’ he declares, ‘it’s time to go off-duty for the weekend.’

  ‘Shall we crave that bitta cash first?’

  ‘Will you indulge, Young Sir?’ he says, getting his little bitta personal out and starting to chop himself a line.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Won’t have something for the weekend, Young Sir?’

  ‘No. I’m okay, Mort, but you go ahead, have one for me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says, a little bit sarcy.

  ‘Moderation in all things, I say.’

  ‘I’m only having a fuckin livener,’ Mort says a bit defensively.

  ‘I know you are, Mort, I’m only saying . . .’

  But Morty ain’t listening. He’s got his nose down to the tabletop and he’s snorting up his line, quite a small one really, hardly worth bothering with some people would say. Morty ain’t no cokehead. Although he does have his moments, he don’t lose the plot like some guys, he’s got respect for the gear, he don’t surrender to it like some users.

  ‘Now you’ve powdered your nose, my bitta cash outta that comes to all the sixes – six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six quid.’

  ‘Right, you and me take a third each and Terry and Clarkie split a third, yeah?’ He’s counting money onto the desktop.

  ‘That’s what we agreed.’

  ‘And how much did you say it was again?’

  ‘Six, six, six, six.’

  ‘Here’s six, six-fifty.’ He’s grinning.

  ‘Morty, you fuckin do this to me every fuckin time.’

  ‘Well, do you have some change?’ he says in innocence.

  ‘I’ll tell you what. You give me six, seven hundred and I’ll owe you the change.’

  ‘Anyone would think that you was starvin the way you go on –’

  ‘This ain’t about money, Mort.’

  ‘– living in the bunhouse.’ He’s tutting now.r />
  ‘This ain’t about the sixteen quid.’

  ‘So why are you makin such a big fuss about a few pennies?’ he shrugs, his face a picture of innocence.

  ‘Okay, Mort, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You keep the money, cos you so obviously need it, but you gotta wash up the scales and that. Okay?’

  And as I turn to point at the scales he’s up, out the door and down the stairs, laughing, going down three and four at a time like a big kid, howling like a wolf, leaving me to do the fuckin washing up, again.

  Saturday To Be in Loveland

  Saturday morning, quarter to ten, the phone’s rang and it’s Morty with his business head on. I’m half asleep and half awake.

  ‘You still in bed?’ says Mort.

  ‘It’s Saturday mornin. I’m havin a lie-in.’

  Like a lot of guys who have done a bit of bird he’s up every fuckin morning about seven, wide awake, and thinks everyone else should be as well.

  ‘Listen, something’s come up, nothin bad, someone wants to meet you.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Be serious. It’s business.’

  I know better than to ask Morty over the phone just who it is.

  ‘Okay. Where?’

  ‘He wants us to have a spot of lunch with him. You up for that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Meet me at Loveland at about twelve-thirty, okay?’

  ‘I’ll see you there.’

  Morty had an interest in a string of sex shops called Loveland, one quite large one that operated as a clearing house and store plus four or five satellite ones dotted about near the mainline railway stations. About a year after coming out of the boob having done his five and a bit he was approached by the owners who were having all sorts of problems with hounds turning them over, not unlike the kamikaze firm that Morty had been an associate member of, much to his cost. The owners, who always preferred to keep well in the shadows, thought that Morty could turn from poacher to gamekeeper if they offered him a chunky slice of the profits. The word would get about that Mister Mortimer was on the firm and they would get less aggravation. I don’t think it had occurred to him to go robbing sex shops or asking them for protection but when the offer came he accepted with a wink and a handshake, like he had been waiting to be asked all along. So now Morty was like one of those crafty ex-MPs or brigadier generals who sit on the board of directors of major corporations, sign their name to the annual accounts, turn a blind eye to any skulduggery and claim their hefty remuneration. He, like them, only had to show up two days a month to collect his readies, and whereas their names looked good on the letterheads Morty’s moniker brought with it a certain respectability in dubious circles. When there was a big football game in town or a full moon Morty stuck a couple of bashers in the lolly pops but apart from that they never gave him a moment’s worry.