“And you feel responsible for her.”
“Yep – and that’s why I need you to do a special pickup, for me.”
“Ordinarily, Phil – this would not be a problem,” I had replied. “But, I’ve got the wrong skin tone for Jamaica – I’d stick out like a sore dick at a eunuch’s bar mitzvah!”
“Yep, but you know Winston, though,” Phil had added, a smile coming back to his lips, as he had handed me an envelope containing two ‘open’ business class airline tickets. “And, I understand from my sources that he owes you big time.”
Yes, I had known Winston…and yes, he did owe me big time – but had he owed me enough?
***
I had met Winston through Danny Boy.
Winston had headed up the Brixton ‘Little Tivoli’ Yardie gangs, and had supplied Danny with most of the ‘muscle’ that he had needed to enforce his rule and domain so effectively, and so ruthlessly, over North London. We had met each other, infrequently, at Danny Boy’s numerous lavish barbeque parties. Infrequently, because invariably ‘Special Branch’ had been also there, in the hedgerows, snapping away with telephoto lenses, taking photographs of all the guests – and I was, and still am, very much camera shy!
The last time that I had met Winston in a social context, had been when I was having dinner one evening, in a small exclusive Italian Restaurant, off Sloan Square. He had entered with a tall leggie black girl, her short crimson red dress so tight that it could have been ‘painted’ on. The restaurant’s maître d’ had fussed busily over them, showing them to his ‘very best table’, fawning and sucking up to them. He had long since learnt to be respectful to this particular dreadlocked customer. On his very first visit to the restaurant, Winston had been refused a table, being informed by the aloof maître d’ that the half empty restaurant had been fully booked. Later that night, after closing, the maître d’ had been accosted on his sort walk back to his flat, by Winston and his men. And, in a nearby alleyway, with a long bladed butcher’s knife held tight to his throat, the maître d’ had been forced to perform felatio on firstly Winston, and then on the rest of the gang. Since that day, the Yardie gang leader has never again been refused admission to the restaurant – nor did he ever have to pay again for meal, either. On seeing me, Winston had ordered the blustering restaurant maître d’ to bring me over a bottle of his most expensive Chianti, to my table, with his compliments. The Yardie gang leader had only stayed long enough to demolish lobster bisque and a bottle of vintage champagne, before leaving. I had finished moments later – to annoyingly find that Winston had instructed the hapless maître d’ to also ‘comp’ my bill, as well as his own. Nevertheless, with the exception of the bottle of wine, I had insisted on settling my own tab…a drink I’ll take, but I always pay for my own meals – point of principle; you can’t by me for a mess of pottage!
Completely unintentionally, I had caught up with Winston a few minutes later, in the exact same passageway that, several months before, he had forced the wretched Italian maître d’ to perform oral sex on himself, and on his crew. However, on this occasion, it had been Winston who had been forced down on to his knees. The girl had gone – she had just been bait for the trap. Instead, Winston was being held securely by three members of a rival Yardie gang. The fourth member of the gang had been standing directly in front of Winston, toying with him, trying to ‘flop’ the business end of a Standard US Issue Military Machete into his mouth – a mouth forced open roughly by those who had been holding his head firm. Winston had been battered and bloody – he hadn’t been a push over, and had taken a hell of a beating.
Will I – Wont I? I had mused to myself. I’d just eaten and I was all dressed up – not really in the mood to ‘mix it’. I could have easily carried on walking past the alleyway – after all, it hadn’t been anything to do with me.
Oh – fuck it!
I had turned into the alleyway and had walked briskly over to the group, my 9mm Smith & Wesson automatic un-holstered, down at my side in my right hand – safety off.
“MOTHER FUCKER!” the Yardie with the machete had yelled at me, turning to directly face me. “MOTHER FUCKER YOU WANT SOME OF THIS!” he had threatened, shaking the blackened blade of the machete at me.
Side stepping slightly to my left, I had dropped down low, an inward block of my left hand sweeping aside the machete, my other hand bringing the barrel of the Smith & Wesson hard up into the Yardie’s crutch. With a gasp, his grip on the machete had relaxed and I had caught hold of its handle as it had dropped free from his hand. Stepping by the stricken man, I had then elbowed him hard in the kidney area with my right elbow, causing him to drop to his knees.
I had turned to face the three other gang members, pointing the Smith & Wesson directly at them. They had not argued with that. As one, they had turned and had fled off down the alleyway, leaving their stricken colleague writhing on the cobblestones.
“MOTHER FUCKERS!” Winston had cursed as I had helped him to his feet. “MOTHER FUCKING COCK SUCKERS!”
I don’t think that he had been too happy, by the sound of it.
Staggering over to the remaining Yardie, he had kicked out at the helpless man. In his ribs…in his side – everywhere. Finally tiring, Winston had held out a hand for the machete, which I had given him.
“YOU MOTHER FUCKING COCK SUCKER,” he had spat down at the defenceless man. “LOOK WHAT YOU AND YOUR MOTHER FUCKING CUNT LICKING NIGGERS HAVE DONE TO ME – YOU WORTHLESS BLACK PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!”
Winston had paused in his tirade; blood had been dripping down from his nose on to the upturned face of the man, at his feet. With his free hand, Winston had taken hold of his bleeding nose, gently moving it from side to side, causing it to make a slight cracking noise.
“YOU MOTHER FUCKING COCK SUCKER – YOU’VE BROKEN MY FUCKING NOSE!” he had exploded again, screaming out at the top of his voice.
With a slicing action of his right arm, Winston had brought the blade of the machete directly down and across the bridge of the man’s nose, cleaving the protuberance of gristle and tissue clean from man’s face. The man’s screams had reverberated and echoed off the walls of the narrow passage way…but they were to increase in intensity – Winston had not finished yet! Tearing open the man’s bloodied vest, Winton had brought the blade of the machete in a straight line down across the man’s chest, from his right clavicle – stopping just right of his navel. Winston had then repeated this on the other side of the man’s chest, slicing down from left clavicle to just level with the navel. Then, starting from the man’s sternum, Winston had cut in two more lines, deep into the man’s chest, each one intersecting with one of the others that he had cut down from the collar bones, forming two inverted ‘V’s, which had crossed over each other – the bloody gushing cuts conjoined to form the initial ‘W’, on the man’s chest.
“There you go, Martin,” Winston had addressed me, smiling down at his handy work. “If anyone asks this nigger what happened to his mother fucking nose – all he’s got to do is take of his fucking shirt and show them my tag!”
We had walked the short distance back to the London House, where I had helped him get cleaned up before Tina had driven him back to Brixton. I didn’t see Winston again after that. Two weeks later, and he had had flown out to Kingston, Jamaica, to take over his uncle’s gang…his uncle having unfortunately walked into a 30-06 round, fired by a rival Yardie gang – such is life.
Winston’s last words to me that eventful evening had been: ‘I owe you fucking big time.’
But, had he owed me enough?
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Before setting out to Gatwick airport, and the scheduled lunchtime flight to Jamaica, I had called Winston to tell him that I was coming. He’d initially not been too pleased, mainly because of the time difference, it had only been four in the A.M., over there…and he had only just crashed out for the night – or had that been for the day? But he had agreed to see me, though.
Due, in main, to th
e greatly reduced head winds of the jet stream, the Boeing 777 had touched down at Norman Manley International Airport, Jamaica, a good thirty minutes ahead of schedule – just as well really; as I had only a two hour stopover before the return flight. I had been met at the gate by a smartly dressed Jamaican official, who had ushered me quickly and unchecked through immigration, customs and out to a waiting ’72 Cadillac, four door Sedan de Ville, finished in gleaming white, with a matching white hard top, white leather interior, complete with white walled tyres – any colour you like, as long as it’s white! Neither the white shirted driver, nor his similarly attired passenger, had spoken during our rapid dash along the highway out of Norman Manley International. Just as well, I had not been in conversational mood and I had much preferred to sit back and listen to the sounds of that glorious 472 cubic inch V8, throbbing, snarling and making its presence heard and felt directly out through its high performance sports mufflers – truly gloriously delicious. The highway out of Norman Manley International had run along the Palisadoes, a long sand spit that connects the town of Port Royal and the Airport, to the main land – with the harbour on one side and the blue of Bull Bay and the Caribbean on the other. Skirting through the western suburbs of Kingston, it had been just a little after 5:00 P.M., some ten hours after I had left London, when we had turned into Winston’s gated residence out on ‘Russell Heights’. The tall gates had been opened by two very large men, both also in white sports shirts, their dreadlocks tied back from their faces with black, yellow and green head bands. Each had held the lead to a snarling Rottweiler and, like oversized medallions, each had a TEC-9 sub-machinegun hanging, dangling from their necks. The gates had opened up into a high walled courtyard that had stood in front of a large, palatial, white clad single storey house. I had been greeted by a polite young man, also dressed in white, who I had presumed to have been a servant by his pleasant, but subservient manner. He had taken me directly through the cool white marbled floored interior of the house, out to a large pool at the rear of the sprawling property – and there, Winston had been waiting for me.
Getting up from the white lounger that he had been lying on, Winston had come over to greet me, his ivory colourer silk robe open wide, exposing ivory colourer silk boxer shorts and a very well cut and defined body, underneath. Barely five-ten, unlike his minions, Winston had a the body of an athlete, or a dancer, each muscle and sinew clearly visible under the dark glistening skin of his oiled frame, each moving in perfect harmony and unison. His face, outlined by his shoulder length dreadlocks, had also not been typically Jamaican in appearance; more ethnic Ethiopian – like his body, taunt and gaunt. Nearing me, he had wiped the coconut sun oil from his hands with a white towel, before haphazardly discarding it on to the floor as he had extended his right hand out towards me.
“With your skin tone, I would have thought that the last thing that you needed was a tan,” I had joked, as I had taken hold of his thin delicate hand.
“Nah – I burn fucking easy,” he had replied, joking back. “Drink?” he had added, pointing over to a white wooden table and chairs, nestling under the shade of a large white canopy. However, its shade had done little to take the edge of the late afternoon temperature, which had still been in the mid-eighties.
“What you having to drink?” my host had offered, as the polite young servant had approached the table.
“Just water, please,” I had replied. Without saying a word, the young man had left us both and returned into the interior of the house. “Quiet – isn’t he?” I had remarked.
“Deaf-mute,” Winston had replied. “Just perfect if you want a hear no evil – speak no evil, monkey. Any way – how are things back home?” he had added.
“Not so good for your old friends, I’m afraid – the Russians are massacring them.”
“Yea, so I heard.”
While Danny Boy had been alive, he had been able to act as a calming influence on the ever growing diversity of ethnic gangs that had started to make up the London underworld. But Danny had not done this through any altruistic reason…his motive had been solely business and money – and gang warfare had been bad for both. With the Russians moving into the capital, in the late eighties, Danny had established business links with them. He had supplied the Russians with the safe accommodation, forged documentation and the transportation links that they had needed. They, in return, had supplied him with peace. However, on Danny’s death, instead of respecting the truce that he had made, the Yardie gangs and crews had tried to encroach into Russian territory – and had got massacred in the process. The man, who Winston had set up as his successor to take over the Brixton gang, had been one of the first to be killed, when the Russians had burst into his drinking club and had machine gunned to death everyone in it.
The young servant had returned with a large carafe of iced water, thin slices of lemon and limes intermingled with the ice. Placing two tall glasses in front of us, he had poured out a measure of the water, starting with Winston. Having poured the water, and having set the half full carafe down on to the table, the servant had left us again.
“You didn’t come all the fucking way out here to bring me news of home,” Winston had suddenly stated, taking a sip of water from his glass.
“No,” I had admitted straight away.
“You’ve come to collect.”
“No, I’ve come to ask you a favour.”
“You’ve come to fucking collect,” he had repeated. “You’ve come to fucking collect for saving my sorry black ass!”
I had paused. Dealing with someone as potentially volatile as Winston was going to take a great deal of tact and diplomacy. But I had leant a lot from my dealings with the American Mafia, especially from Sal, who had been my mentor with regards to the etiquette of negotiating with the volatile. ‘Remember just two little things,’ he had advised me. ‘Courtesy and respect – and, if that all fails, kill the bum.’
“I didn’t save your black sorry ass just to collect,” I had corrected him. “I saved it because you were a friend of a friend…no more – no less.”
“You want something of me?”
“No – but someone else does.”
“I fucking knew it,” he had suddenly exploded, his eyes wide with anger. “The cock sucking DEA have sent you to collect their mother fucking bitch, Judy!”
“No – not the DEA,” I had quietly replied.
“THEN – WHO THE FUCK!” he had screamed, his face contorted in rage.
I had leaned forward towards him and removed my aviator sun glasses, and had stared straight back at him…he had the eyes of the psychotic – but I possessed the eyes of the killer. Winston had suddenly sat back, his jaw dropping slightly as the muscles in his face relaxed from their contorted rage – he had just gazed into the eyes of death, as so many others had before.
“Shit, Martin – you and me are cool – aren’t we man?” the Yardie gang leader had suddenly gasped.
“Yes – we’re cool,” I had replied, replacing my aviators on to the bridge of my nose as I had sat back into the chair.
“If it’s not the DEA, who wants Judy back – who the fu…,” Winston had quickly controlled his emotions. “Who does want her back?”
“The C I A,” I had slowly spelled out each letter of the acronym to him.
“Fuck, I thought that the bitch was DEA.”
“She was,” I had confirmed. “But the CIA have a vested interest in her – and also in her prolonged well being, too.”
“The bitch is CIA, as well?”
I had not been about to tell Winston the Judy had been ex-CIA. “Yes, CIA,” I had corroborated his misconception. “And they would consider it to be a great courtesy if you would consider releasing her into my charge.”
“Shit they would.”
“Yes – shit they would.”
“But the bitch betrayed me, man. She’s dead meat, man.”
“So, why haven’t you killed her already?”
No reply.
Still no reply.
“And you got the hots for the baby that she’s carrying.”
Winston had nodded: “Sure, I got the hots for her – and my sprog she’s carrying.” he had paused, his chest rising up and down as he breathed. “But she betrayed me man and she’s got to go – I owe it to my niggers to fry her ass.”
“She didn’t betray you – you’re still here.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that you’re not already dead – meaning that she didn’t already kill your sorry ass.”
“Shit!”
“Yes – shit. Judy didn’t come out here to stitch you up with the DEA – she came out here to kill you.”
“Shit – you’re fucking joshing me, man.” he had gasped.
“No joke – she didn’t kill you because she fell for you,” I had put it succinctly to him. “She has made no contact with the DEA since you guys became an item.”
“But, Martin – I can’t just let her walk – I have to kill her ass, man.”
“Why?”
“Cause she disrespected me, man.”
“The CIA would consider it a great courtesy if you released her into my charge,” I had repeated my opening gambit, again. “And you really don’t want to piss off the CIA, do you? They can make governments…and they can bring governments down – so, unless you fancy a Hellfire missile shot up your sorry black ass, I suggest you agree to release Judy.”
“And if I agree?”
“You got yourself one powerful mother fucking friend – who can out fuck anything and everyone.”
For a few moments, Winston had pondered over what I had said, balancing sensibility over emotion. “They’ll protect my ass?”
“Yes,” I had replied – Phil had given me a deal to offer to the Yardie gang leader. “You extend this courtesy towards them, and give up Judy, and they’ll become your very best buddy pals and extend courtesies towards you.”
Autobiography of an Assassin:: The Family Page 34