Blood City

by Douglas Skelton

  The café door opened and Johnny Jones stepped out, closely followed by Joe. Johnny nodded once to the Tailor, who nodded back politely as he placed his Homburg carefully on his head. Jones’ sour expression suggested the meeting had not gone as he had hoped. Jones looked Davie up and down, as if sizing him up, and said, ‘You’re Danny McCall’s boy, right?’

  Davie paused for a moment. ‘Yeah.’

  Jones nodded and licked his lips, his tongue sliding out from behind yellowing teeth. ‘I knew him, your faither. He was a handy guy to have around. You a chip off the old block, son?’

  ‘I’m nothing like him.’

  Jones smiled, knowing instinctively that he’d touched a nerve and the sadist in him enjoying it. ‘That’s no what I hear. I hear you’re just like him…’

  ‘Leave the boy be,’ Joe warned.

  Jones smiled, but it was really little more than a tightening of the facial muscles. He held up both hands to placate Davie. ‘Nae offence, son.’ He turned to Joe. ‘Just sayin you’ve got a good boy here, or so I hear.’

  ‘Fine, Johnny,’ said Joe, ‘but this is something I already know. Thank you for your time.’

  Johnny’s gaze slid from Davie to the Tailor. ‘You think about my proposition, Joe. It could be good for all of us.’

  ‘Thank you, but it is not something in which I would wish to engage.’

  ‘Just think about it, okay? It’ll make us a bundle.’

  ‘Very well, Johnny – I will think about it,’ said Joe, polite, but clearly unwavering.

  Johnny nodded and with a final look at Davie and a glance at the others, he turned and walked off down the street. He had no one with him in the café, secure in the knowledge that Joe the Tailor bore him no particular ill-will aside from the fact that he loathed everything he stood for. Joe watched him swagger away and sighed. ‘Such an unpleasant man,’ he said. ‘I am so glad I need have nothing to do with him.’

  ‘Aye – he gives scumbags a bad name,’ said Bobby, making Joe smile.

  ‘Wait here, boys,’ said the old man. ‘I must have a word with Luca before I go.’

  There was talk that Luca Vizzini had once been a gunman for the Sicilian Mafia. Apparently he’d fled his homeland when an assassination attempt on a judge went badly wrong and the man’s baby daughter was killed instead. The old Dons, outraged that such a simple job had been so badly bungled, put a price on Luca’s head and he was forced to leave in a hurry, eventually fetching up in Glasgow. Here he led a quiet sort of life, running Joe’s café. Or so the story went. How Joe first met the man had never been discussed, and Davie didn’t know how much truth there was to the tale anyway. But whenever he met the little Sicilian with the ready smile, he sensed something more behind his welcoming nature.

  Davie turned his attention back to the boys across the road as they prepared to greet a bulky young man striding towards them with a small mongrel dog on a lead at his feet. The dog stopped to sniff something in the gutter and the boy jerked violently on the lead to bring him to heel again. Whatever it was the dog wanted to investigate proved too tempting though, and he hung back, trying desperately to reach it. His master yanked the lead again, hauling the animal off its feet. A plaintive yelp rose over the traffic sounds and Davie straightened up off the wall as the boy leaned over and snarled something at the creature. The dog lay on its back, looking up at him with tail tucked between its legs as if to protect its manhood. The boy lashed out with one booted foot, kicking the dog in the ribs. The animal’s yelp shrieked across the road and Davie’s body tensed.

  ‘Easy, Davie,’ Rab said, softly. With those two words, Rab was signalling that now was not the time. Jones had climbed into a Ford Escort, but it had not yet pulled away.

  ‘I know, Rab,’ said Davie, his eyes never leaving the boy with the dog on the opposite pavement. He’d joined his pals now, a wide grin on his face, as if he was proud of subjugating the dog. ‘Jones still sitting there?’

  ‘Car’s no moved. Got a coupla boys in there with him.’

  ‘That’ll be Boyle and his mate.’

  ‘Sinclair?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Davie, watching the youths opposite crowd into the off sales, the dog tied to a lamppost, where it sat, still quivering, nervously eyeing anyone who walked past. Not even the presence of Clem Boyle was enough to distract Davie. There was bad blood there, everyone knew, but no one was quite sure why the red-headed youth had such a problem with Davie McCall. Davie didn’t much care, either.

  ‘Fuck me – Jones, Boyle and Sinclair in the one motor,’ said Bobby. ‘Where’s the RAF when you need some precision bombing, eh?’

  ‘We cannae leave Joe, Davie,’ Rab interjected, knowing full well where Davie’s attention was focused.

  ‘I know.’

  Rab’s gaze flicked across to the dog, and even he felt a bit sorry for it. ‘No matter what, Davie.’

  ‘I know.’

  The dog kicker and his pals surged out of the shop doorway, carrying a plastic bag filled with bottles. Dog kicker jerked the lead from the pole and together they all walked up the street. The dog clung unhappily to his master’s heels, occasionally glancing up at the others as if hoping for a kind word or glance. None of them paid any heed.

  ‘Bobby,’ said Rab, nodding in their direction. Bobby knew immediately what was needed and set off in their wake at a swift pace, dodging between the cars as they slowed for traffic lights further along. Rab didn’t think Jones would be brazen enough to try anything here, but right now it was their job to watch Joe’s back. Bobby would find out where those lads were going and he and Davie would catch up with them later. He glanced at his pal, who was watching the guy with the dog intently.

  God help him, Rab thought.

  4

  LUCA STIRRED HIS COFFEE, his round, pock-marked face thoughtful as he considered what his old friend had told him. ‘And how much does he want for this caper?’

  ‘£100,000 from each of us,’ said Joe. ‘A total of £1 million.’

  Luca nodded and continued to slowly rotate the spoon, though the sugar he had dropped in earlier was well integrated with the liquid. Joe watched the brown coffee swirl in the cup and waited. It was a fine roast, kept especially for Joe’s visits, and its pleasant aroma filled the café.

  ‘A hundred grand ain’t much,’ said Luca. ‘The profits would be much greater.’

  ‘True, but there is the moral question.’

  Luca shrugged. ‘Morals are for other people, not for the likes of you or me, Joe. We put aside morals when we killed our first man.’

  Joe nodded to acknowledge the truth of the words, experiencing an involuntary flash to a winter day in Poland. It was 1940, the day he killed his first man; a German soldier. The soldier had slaughtered Joe’s family – mother, father, little sister – and Joe had shot him with his own rifle, the bullet lifting off the top of the man’s head. That single act had set the then Josep Wolfowitz on a journey which took him from fighting with Polish partisans who were unaware that he was a Jew, to post-war Warsaw, to a spell with relatives in Ayrshire and then, ultimately, to Glasgow. Along the way he changed his name, first to Joseph Adamski, and then to Joe Klein. Joe had killed many men over the years, but even now, 40 years later, he still returned to that first one. Forcing the image from his mind, he said, ‘I do not like drugs, though.’

  ‘It is a commodity, like any other,’ said Luca, ever the pragmatist. ‘And Glasgow is wide open for the market.’

  That had been Jones’ proposition. Each of the city’s top criminals would put £100,000 towards a joint venture to bring large quantities of heroin to the city. Jones claimed to have established contacts in Turkey, where the poppy was grown and there was a flourishing legitimate trade in opium – but many growers were willing to sell to less savoury buyers. He had found a lab in France where the raw opium would be transformed first into morphine, then heroin. From there, thanks to links with criminal organisations in London and Manchester, it was brought into the UK. Gl
asgow was ripe for the trade. Margaret Thatcher had been in office just one year and her government was intent on cutting public spending as the country headed into recession. Opportunities were limited. Bitterness was rising, and young people out there were searching for a means of escape from the sheer hopelessness of their lives. Johnny had told him, ‘It’s gonnae be massive, Joe, and if we all work together, it’ll make us a bundle.’

  Luca knew first-hand that there were riches to be found in the narcotic trade. He hadn’t left Sicily under a cloud – he knew of the rumours and he enjoyed promoting them – but under his own steam. Young Luca wanted to see the world. That desire had taken him to New York, where a second cousin had introduced him into the Genovese family. It was 1956 and he was, at 21 years of age, a foot soldier for the most powerful crime family in the Five Boroughs. Small and stocky even then but with a confidence that belied his youth, he swiftly learned not just English, losing much of his native accent, but also the way of La Cosa Nostra.

  At 22 he killed his first man, a two-bit hustler from upstate New York who had conned the wrong old lady. She was the aunt of Luca’s capo regime, his immediate boss, and Luca and another young blood called Sal Bonaventure were ordered to ensure the grifter grifted no more. Luca and Sal picked him up at his fleabag hotel on the lower west side and drove him to Jersey, where they put a bullet in his skull and then cut out the lying tongue that had smooth-talked the old lady into parting with her savings. They took two grand from his pockets, to be returned to the conman’s mark, and left his corpse in a field for a farmer to find.

  That luckless little con artist, whose name Luca could not now even recall, was not the last man he killed. Over the next ten years, he took out twelve more men under orders. He never questioned why. One of them was his former accomplice, Sal Bonaventure, who, in 1965, turned rat. Luca lured him out with the promise of hooking up with two girls and put one in the back of his head then cut out his tongue and left it lying on his chest. The irony of their first kill together was not lost on Luca.

  But in 1966, Luca made a mistake. He didn’t kill the wrong man, as the Glasgow rumours would have it, but instead got the wrong girl pregnant; the red-headed wife of a prominent Brooklyn boss, to be exact. When the inevitable happened and she announced that she wanted to keep the child, her husband was bound to find out. It didn’t matter that he had been somewhat lax in his marital duties for over a year because his pecker was being seen to regularly by a cocktail waitress from Alabama, variety being the spice of life. Luca knew there would be no reasoning with the man, and so he hopped the first steamer out of New York harbour and escaped to Scotland, where he had another cousin in Glasgow.

  He met Joe the Tailor in 1968, when he’d been in Glasgow for just under two years. Joe owned a string of bookie shops and a couple of illegal gambling houses in the city centre. Rumour had it that he was the principal banker behind any major heist in Central Scotland, but no one had either been able to prove it or had wanted to. He also had a lucrative line in extortion, prostitution and many other means of making an illicit fortune. Fond of roulette, Luca had visited Joe’s club one night. He liked him immediately. Joe was ten years older, but a friendship formed, cemented by Luca’s swift action one night in 1969, when a hard man in the employ of Norrie Kennedy, Joe’s old enemy from Blackhill, tried to muscle in on the gambling house. Luca took off his boot and beat the man senseless – God bless Cuban heels – then dragged him to the door and threw him down the 38 stairs that led from the second floor to street level. Luca couldn’t be certain, but he thought the guy hit every single one.

  They became friends, the Polish refugee and the Sicilian émigré. They shared mutual interests in music and chess, although they were so well-matched in the strategies and bluffs of the game that their encounters more often than not ended in stalemate. A few months after they first met, Joe bought the café on Duke Street and asked Luca to run it as a full partner. The Sicilian accepted the offer. He felt safe in this backwater city and he needed to put the sins of his past behind him. He was then 34 years of age and he wanted to settle, maybe find a nice woman, set up a home, raise children. He eventually found the nice woman, an Irish girl named Beatrice, and in 1972 they were married. They bought a house, thanks to Joe, and tried for children. But none came. Luca thought God was punishing him for his transgression in New York – not only had he got a married woman pregnant, but he’d run out on her, leaving her to face her husband alone. He never found out what happened to the kid and sometimes at night he thought about going back or at least contacting some of his old buddies. But he never did. That was his past life, and this was his new one. If he was to live that life without children then so be it. So Luca Vizzini settled down to his new life and he never, ever, looked at another woman. The café turned a healthy profit on its coffees, teas, filled rolls and fried foods. The brisk takeaway business was popular and Luca began to introduce more and more Sicilian dishes to the menu, although he knew they would never replace the city’s fondness for hot pies, sausage rolls and chips. He looked on Glasgow as his home, and as time passed, he felt it safe to take the occasional trip back home to Sicily.

  So Luca was wise to the ways of the criminal world and he knew that, despite the old adage, crime did pay, and drugs paid the most. Glasgow really was ripe for the picking, but he knew his old friend wouldn’t take to the new business readily. So he wasn’t surprised when he saw Joe shake his head and sigh with finality.

  ‘No, my friend, it is not an enterprise in which I wish to take part. I am not a greedy man. I have enough with my other endeavours. Even my legitimate operations show a profit. I am satisfied.’

  Luca shrugged. ‘Then if you’re satisfied, that’s enough. I only hope that Jones sees it the same way.’

  ‘Why should he not? I am no danger to his business.’

  ‘You’re known for your… eh…’ Luca looked for the right word, ‘… your altruistic tendencies. Your dislike of narcotics is well known and, I don’t know, they may get the idea you’ll stand in their way somehow.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Joe said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I have moved against monsters in the past – rapists, pederasts, killers of women – but not this kind of thing. I may not like drugs, but if someone wishes to involve themselves it is no business of mine. As long as they do not interfere with me, I will not interfere with them.’

  Luca smiled. ‘Joe, you know that and I know that, but these guys? They believe the legend of Joe the Tailor. The way they see it, if you’re not with them, you’re against them. And they need you on board, Joe. They need your contacts – cops, local politicians, and the like. You’ve even got a judge or two up your sleeve, or so the legend says.’

  Joe shrugged. ‘Rumours. Conjecture.’

  ‘Sure, but guys like Johnny Jones? They believe all this. And they’re gonna need all the muscle they can get if this scheme is going to work.’

  ‘Then they can build their own contacts list. There are many greedy men out there. All they need to do is look for them.’

  Luca sat back and stared at Joe. ‘Your mind is set?’

  Joe thought about this for a second before nodding. ‘Then that,’ said Luca, ‘is that.’

  * * *

  They stood or lounged on the piece of waste ground, passing the bottles of cider among them. Cider was good because it was cheap. The dog’s lead was tied to the wooden arm of an old easy chair that someone had dumped there months before. His owner sat in the chair, one fist wrapped round a bottle that he wouldn’t share with his pals. He’d bought the stuff, after all, and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t have one to himself. A good looking lad, but there was a mean glint in his eye and a nasty set to his mouth that rendered him rather ugly. He was the leader of this bunch because he was a bad bastard, pure and simple. Indeed, the dog was not the only creature to suffer at his hands that day, for there was a young girl back in his flat with a black eye and a bruised spirit.

  Davie didn’t know a
bout the girl, of course, but if he had it would have made what he was about to do even easier. Rab didn’t know about the girl either, but even if he had it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to him. He didn’t particularly give a stuff about the dog. This was Davie’s show, and he was there to back up his pal, pure and simple.

  Bobby Newman had told them where the youths had settled and after Joe the Tailor was safely in his house in Riddrie, Davie and Rab made their way to the waste ground. Davie didn’t say a word as he strode into the thick of the youths and began to untie the lead from the arm of the chair. The dog’s owner was speechless for a moment, but quickly found his voice. ‘What the fuck you doing, ya bastard?’

  Davie ignored him and continued to unravel the lead. The youth made the mistake of putting a hand on Davie’s arm in a futile attempt to push him away. Davie said nothing, he seldom did when in this mood. He merely lashed out with his right hand, palm upwards, fingers slightly bent inwards, and slammed the heel of his hand into the boy’s nose. Then he did it again. And again. Three sharp jabs in swift succession. Rab was not close by – he had positioned himself at the fringe of the group, his watchful eyes alert for any movement from any of the other lads – but he heard the crunch of gristle shattering under the force of the blows and saw blood spurt from the boy’s nostrils. One or two of the other drinkers began to move forward, but Rab merely said, ‘Now, now, boys, let’s not get frisky, eh?’ They looked back at him, saw that he was a big fella, then watched as their erstwhile leader writhed on the armchair, both hands trying to stem the blood from his shattered nose, and thought better of taking any action.

  Davie finally slipped the lead from the chair and began to walk away with the dog, which went willingly, as if he knew this was his one chance of freedom. But the dog kicker wasn’t done yet, and Rab had to admire him for that. Those three vicious blows to the face would have been enough to stop most guys, but he was up and lunging at Davie. Rab opened his mouth to shout a warning, but he needn’t have bothered. Davie spun to his right and swung his left foot round and up, catching the boy neatly in the balls. He stopped as if he’d been pole-axed and his hands darted reflexively to his crotch as his knees buckled and he slumped down. Rab smiled at his bug-eyed expression of pain. Sometimes watching Davie work was better than the telly.