All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ONE
Jake
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Not many people end up sitting sprawled and dead drunk in the corridor outside their suite in a Vegas hotel. Waiting for the door to open and desperately wanting it not to. I guess I am what Edna O’Brien meant when she described the Irish character as ‘maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.’
In my maudlin state I contemplate a mysterious madness. If it is true that your soul alone keeps the map of your destiny, then the geography of my destiny to this expensive corridor must have been known to the highest and most hidden part of me even while I was a destitute boy. A boy who ran barefoot on grassy, sunlit meadows, visited horse fairs, and watched with hungry eyes but never touched the other traveler girls.
I have memories of digging up armfuls of carrots and potatoes, eating soda bread crusts, and dressing in rags and cast-offs even though I was the oldest. One Christmas my mother paid ten pounds for a pair of stained maroon velvet curtains in a charity shop. She cut them up and sewed all her three boys identical trousers and my sister a dress. My sister was something beautiful even then, and, of course, the dress looked gorgeous on her. I had to knock a boy down after church for staring so lustfully at her. ‘Unfortunately’ for me, one day after Christmas I caught my new curtain trousers on a nail and tore them so badly they were unusable even as a pair of shorts. Within a week both my brothers had ‘accidentally’ and irreparably ruined theirs, too.
As children we didn’t know we were dirt poor because my father was a compulsive gambler. Cards, dogs, horses, sports, fights, dice. Anything that he deemed required some form of skill he found irresistible. Once he started he didn’t know how to stop. Sometimes he took me with him and I used to sit big-eyed and watch him. He was my hero. What the fuck—maybe he still is.
Patrick Eden was special. While the rest of the world was telling me that the Irish were thick—‘they’d bring a fork if it rained soup’—my father had a totally different philosophy.
‘There are only two kinds of people in the world, my boy,’ he said often and with cheerful certainty, a proud finger raised in the air, ‘the Irish and those who wish they were.’
Obviously with such a philosophy he was absolutely convinced that he was a winner. The other gamblers were banking on luck, and he alone had found an infallible technique to beat the odds. And when he was winning it did seem that way. I can’t forget what he was like when the pile of money in front of him was growing. Cocky? Oh! You never saw anything like my dad when he was winning. A larger than life character he was. Even now the memory brings a warm glow to my heart.
So I bought the lie. I was young and I wanted to believe. Even when the inevitable ‘losing streak’ struck, his confidence remained invincible. His bets became bigger, sometimes doubling. Forget doubling—every penny ended up on the table. He borrowed money from anyone who was fool enough to lend it.
This was the time desperation ruled: nothing was sacred. Everything could go into the pot. His wife. His sons. His daughter. Anything. Because he was that cocksure that a losing streak always preceded a big win. On the other side Lady Luck was waiting with open arms. He was the big winner. All he had to do was believe in himself. So he readied for the losing streak to end by betting heavily on long shots.
And then he lost.
The shock might have stopped another man in his tracks, but not my father. At that point there was no yarn too outrageous, no lie that was beneath him. He had to recoup his losses. That was when he began to embezzle from the bosses. That period didn’t last long.
They are bosses because they are one step ahead of everyone else.
One day he was patting me on the back, looking me in the eye and boasting about a non-existent big win on the dogs, and the next day I was being held back by two of Saul’s heavies while another slit my father’s throat from ear to ear. I was so shocked I went limp. I just stood and watched the blood gushing out of his severed arteries. It squirted out so far I was covered in it.
That moment can be likened to when a great tree is felled. The air becomes barren. A shocked silence ensues. The forest knows another one of its guardians has been murdered. The savagery of the waste stuns it.
My soul, dependent upon his nurture, wizened and shrank even as my mind sharpened. I watched the radiance and the light die out of his bright eyes. How they went from wide-eyed shock to nothingness. I saw with hurtful clarity all the words unsaid, the potential lost, and the promises missed. Nothing would ever be the same again. His last whisper, a gargling, unintelligible sound, was that of someone on his way to a dark, cold space.
‘What do you want to do, tinker boy? Are you going to work the debt off or is your sister going to do it on her back?’
The question had only one right answer.
TWO
Jake
The next phase of my life has only one word to describe it. Saul. Before that afternoon when he made me watch his men slaughter my father like a farm animal, I had only seen him twice and spoken briefly only once. I had made a mental note: mean, dead eyes disguised by superficial charm. I was a big lad even then and I knew he always wanted me to work for him. It was only my father that had stood in the way.
What can I tell you about Saul Schitt?
Pay your fucking debts.
He hated unpaid debts. And I hated him.
I hated working for Crocodile Saul. I hated the ugly, unconscionable, inhumane things I was forced to do. And I hated the coldness that was slowly seeping into my heart. I cannot describe how it destroyed my soul to be his enforcer dog. For four fucking years I paid off my father’s supposed debt on an interest rate that was calculated daily. Do you get the picture of my hatred?
I was nineteen when the debt was finally deemed paid. I went to his house.
‘The debt’s paid and I want out,’ I said.
‘You’ve been good to me. I want to do something for you in return,’ he rasped.
When Saul wanted to do something for you, you didn’t refuse. Warily, I accepted his invitation to go to Vegas with him. I had never been anywhere outside England. To me Vegas was not a destination, it was a glittering, glamorous fantasy playground that rose from the heat of the desert like a mirage. I loved it. I loved the burning heat, I loved the American accent and I fucking loved the Strip.
He checked us into the Venetian. It was amazing, I had never seen anything like it, with lofty, beautifully painted ceilings. It was my Sistine Chapel. And, shit, you should have seen the way they treated Mr. Schitt. Like he was royalty. The king of Schittland. He got the works. Nothing was too much trouble. They even had his favorite, a fucking key lime pie, waiting in the penthouse suite’s fridge. King Schitt opened a line of credit for me. Fifty thousand dollars.
‘My gift,’ he said with the smiling generosity of a godfather.
In that rarefied air of unmatched opulence I became royalty too. I was so young, so naïve, it all went to my head. That Irish saying knocked on my door—what would a cat’s son do but kill a mouse? I sat at the baccarat table. My father with his throat cut and blood gushing out invited, ‘Have a seat, my son. There are only two kinds of people, my boy, the Irish and those who wish they were.’ In a daze I sat. It turned out I was my father’s son, after all.
God! How fast I lost that fifty thousand.
As if by magic Saul was by my side, smiling his benign crocodile grin. ‘No problems. Extend his credit to two
hundred thousand.’
I looked at my father’s murderer, and you know what? At that moment, I just wanted the credit. With unutterable desperation I wanted the dirty money of that disgusting man so I could continue gambling. Like my father.
Then the strangest thing happened. I heard my mother’s voice say clearly in my head, ‘Even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.’
Luke 8: 16–18, The lesson of the lamp.
And it was like someone had flicked a switch in my head. I stood up and walked away from that table. I could feel Saul’s eyes on my back, one of his men calling me back, but I was in a rage. With my father, with myself and with Saul. He had taken me and molded me into a man with vices. A man he could control.
I walked for more than an hour, without knowing where I was going, just walking in a straight line, passing dangerous, low rent areas, hardly seeing anyone, and looking for buildings in the distance.
At some point I burst open the double doors of a bar that advertised cold beers and cocktails. It was dark and seedy inside. So grimy you didn’t want to touch anything. The locals turned to look at me. Whoa! Unfriendly. This was not the Strip. Tourists unwelcome.
But I was already in and I wanted a drink. And no one was stopping me. As Saul would say, What’s wrong with my fucking money? One drink and I’m out of here, I thought. I walked up to the bar and ordered me a whiskey.
The bartender, a surly guy with spiky hair, hesitated and then looked at the breadth of my shoulders and that foul light in my eyes and thought better of it. He went in search of a bottle while I looked around the bar. The exits were close enough. I let my eyes wander restlessly into the darkness. I had found out something ugly about myself.
From the shadows a woman of mixed descent got up from a chair. Ordinary looking. Black hair, brown eyes, skin like chocolate, and the kind of plump lips you know are going to be so soft when your teeth nip into them. I felt nothing. Not even curiosity about what she could be like in bed. The whiskey hit the bar surface. The measures are larger in America, but I swallowed it in one gulp, threw a note on the table, and turned to go. It was the wrong place, wrong time. The exit was ten steps away.
I must have taken five when she started singing, that ordinary brown girl. And fuck me, I froze in my tracks. I could not move.
She had the voice of a siren, you know, those mythical creatures from the Greek fables who lured sailors to their death. As if in slow motion I turned back and looked again at her.
She was looking right at me. She was singing to me. There was nothing I could do. I was like a rat mesmerized by a cobra. From the roots of my hair to the tips of my nails I tingled with her magic. I thought—I was only nineteen, don’t forget—that I was going to spontaneously combust. The chemistry was that strong. How could someone with her talent be singing in a joint like this? She should have been up there with Beyoncé and Madonna.
Afterwards, she came over to me. She almost had a smile on her face.
‘Buy me drink?’ she said.
The prosaic request shocked me. I had to beat down a hysterical desire to laugh. That’s it? That’s what you want from a man you have stunned to a slow faint?
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘Champagne,’ she said daringly, but her underbelly was soft.
Did a place like this even carry champagne? ‘Sure,’ I said.
It came then. Her first real smile. ‘I knew you were good for it.’
Her name was Indigo and I felt for her. Singing in that dive, for men who wouldn’t know talent if it hit them with a wet fish. I got her their best bottle, piss water as it turned out, and watched her get drunk on it. I was dizzy for her and I had a packet of condoms burning a hole in my pocket.
She lived within walking distance, so we went back to her place. The building was dark. Her apartment was at the far side. Somewhere in the gloom I could hear people talking in low voices. I gripped the Beretta in my waistband, but it didn’t cross my mind to turn around and walk away. I was that wired on lust.
Her skin was smooth. She was generous. I was generous. Things got hot. Real hot. We fucked to the sound of spilling dustbins in the alley under her window. I don’t know how many times. Maybe nine, maybe ten. I couldn’t get enough of her. Inside her body I forgot about Saul. And his poison.
During the night it started to rain. Droplets drummed on the window.
‘I haven’t felt rain since I got to Vegas,’ she said.
She got out of bed and went to look at the rain. You could see the drops shine silver where the streetlight illuminated them. She placed her palms and then her forehead on the cool glass. At that moment she seemed lost and sad, as if life had cheated her. Then she opened the window and allowed the rain to come into the room. She laughed as the drops hit her naked skin. She came back to me wetter and wilder. I was wrong. Life could never cheat this woman.
In the morning I lit two cigarettes and passed one to her. She was actually younger and far more beautiful without all that gunk on her face.
‘I love your accent,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Where you from?’
‘England.’
‘Where Princess Diana came from?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what were you doing in that bar?’
I shrugged. ‘I just wandered into it by accident.’
She giggled. ‘I figured you for a guy who gets on all the best guest lists and stays in one of those fancy casino hotels with white leather sofas and purple and blue lighting.’
‘What makes you think that?’ I was curious. She glanced at the leather trousers she had peeled off me last night. ‘You’ve got ambition. It’s in your eyes. Even in the dark, I saw it. You’ll be as rich as Croesus, one day. You just wait and see.’
I felt a rush of sympathy for her. She’d never be rich or famous the way she was going. ‘Listen, you have a truly beautiful voice, way better than Beyoncé. You should record a music demo and send it to some record companies.’
‘Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, that those who come in may see the light.’
And I froze in astonishment. No fucking way. It could not be a coincidence. If I had turned left when I exited the casino. If I had gone into the bar before this one. If I had left as soon as I saw the state of the bar. If she had not at that moment stood up to sing. I would not be lying here listening to Luke 8: 16–18, The lesson of the lamp.
‘What are you talking about?’ I croaked.
‘The gates to the entertainment industry will only open for those who are willing to sell their souls in exchange for wealth and social admiration. I’m a spiritual person. I will never allow myself to be an industry puppet flashing the one-eye symbol, or making horns and pyramids and the six-six-six symbols with my hands and fingers at every photo opportunity and in every video I make. Better for my lamp to shine its light honestly in that dive you found me in last night than have it covered by the sick and the depraved.’
I looked at her and I did not see a one-night stand, a woman I had no intention of ever seeing again. She was glowing with inner beauty. I saw only the truth of the quote—All god’s angels come to us disguised.
When I got back to the hotel Saul was waiting for me. His gift had morphed into a loan. I now owed him fifty thousand dollars plus interest. What did I expect? Saul Schitt hangs a black cloth over every lamp he sees.
I went back to England and for six months I laid my plans down, carefully, meticulously. I took advantage of the fact that though Saul trusted no one, other than maybe his mother, he had made the mistake of underestimating me. He thought I was a sapling clinging to his mighty branches. He paid for his error dearly. I avenged my father’s death in the gangster’s way.
An eye for an eye. A life for a life.
For four years I had sat quietly in the background and absorbed the workings of Saul’s little empire. No one
knew it better than I. So I was confident I could take it. The sycophants never saw me coming. I behaved in the only way the power structure understood. Extreme violence. I exerted my will, established myself as top dog, and quickly took control.
But I desired a different organization.
One of the first things I did was sit down with BJ Pilkington and his father. Our families were in a generational feud, and they were not happy to be drawing up territories with me, but even they understood that I meant business. Ruthlessly I trimmed and cleaned up the organization. There would be no more dealing in class A drugs, no more human trafficking, no more prostitution, and no more loan sharking.
I reduced the rate but kept the protection racket going since abandoning it would have created a dangerous power vacuum. Besides, we would need it for the gambling dens and the clubs. I kept the contraband going too, because I’m a gypsy after all, and I have an aversion to paying taxes. Plus I’m really, really good at it.
I found myself a genius of an accountant and I started buying up properties in the most sought after areas of London through perfectly legal shell companies. And whenever possible I invested in Internet start-ups. Only two out of every twenty ventures were successful, but they were cheap to get into, they were great for washing dirty money, and when they were successful the rewards were astronomical. My best venture I sold for forty million.
Two years after that fateful trip I went back to Vegas to look for Indigo. I was the rich man she had predicted. I felt nothing for her but pure gratitude. I wanted to set her up so she could sing her songs without being a puppet of the industry. This time I didn’t walk. I was driven in a limo to that bar. The sign still proclaimed cold beers, but a different barman served me.
You Don't Know Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 37