JUDAS PIG

by Horace Silver

  ‘All right, Billy?’ says Delroy, looking up as I approach his table.

  ‘Need to swap round, mate,’ I tell him, motioning for him to change seats, so I can sit facing the door and keep an eye on the street outside. For in this game trouble can come from nowhere, and a man like me can’t afford to drop his guard, not even for a second. After a couple of grumbles he does as he’s told, then carries on eating.

  ‘Late night, Billy?’ he says.

  ‘Early morning,’ I snap back, while helping myself to a mouthful of his Pepsi.

  ‘You going to order anything?’

  ‘Nah, and close your fucking mouth while you’re eating. I don’t wanna watch you chewing the fucking cud.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘What’s this deal you got going?’

  ‘Sweet as a fucking nut,’ he says, like I ain’t heard it all before.

  ‘Well, keep your voice down then,’ I say. ‘You’ve only gotta tell me, not the whole fucking cafe.’

  ‘Watch this,’ he says, downing his cutlery and shuffling the condiments about on the table to illustrate some cod strategy he’s obviously been losing sleep over. ‘Lorry comes in, and we… er, you and your firm take it. Job done, piece of piss. Two to three mil.’

  ‘Yeah, well watch this you prick,’ I spit back angrily, snatching the condiments away from him and sliding them sharply back across the table. ‘That’s me and my firm being carted off to the Old Bill shop to get weighed off with twenty stretches. You know full fucking well we don’t work the pavement anymore. Only cunts do armed robberies these days. You know what, if we was to listen to mugs like you, we’d end up doing more fucking porridge than the three bears. Thanks but no thanks, and thanks for wasting my fucking time too.’

  ‘Fucking wrong again,’ he says, spitting small globules of food out of his mouth. ‘You’re jumping the gun. You’re always jumping the fucking gun where I’m concerned. Think I’m a loser, don’t you? That I only get offered shit bits of graft. Well, you’re fucking wrong. This bit of graft is pure genius. So sweet it’s untrue. I’ve already done me fucking homework. No matter what you think I always knew I’d crack it one day. Believe me, Billy, cream floats to the top.’

  ‘So do dead men if you don’t slit their stomachs,’ I tell him.

  ‘Do you wanna know about this deal or not?’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Well then, Dumbo, pay fucking attention.’

  I must admit I’m mildly intrigued. I’ve never seen Delroy so fired up, so I decide to stay and let him run through his stuff.

  ‘I got a call from Bunny Roach, remember him?’ he says.

  ‘Used to live in our block?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Call him Mutton-eye now, don’t they?’ I say. ‘He had a bit of grief with Spud Murphy, if I remember.’

  ‘You’re jumping the fucking gun, Billy. I’m telling the story.’

  ‘Well get to the fucking point.’

  ‘The point is, I got this call from Bunny… er, Mutton-eye, and he told me he wanted to meet about a bit of graft. Tops up he’s been running gear back from Spain in his lorry for Spud Murphy. Twenty five large for every drop off. Two years he was grafting for, then he got a tug from Customs and had his collar felt. Got a ten stretch and lost everything. House, the lot. Told me they even took the brass plug fittings from the walls. And while he was away his old lady run off with one of the cozzers on the case. Done his fucking nut in it did, but he’s kept schtum. Got a bit of compassionate leave to bury his old girl, and went round to see Spud Murphy for a bit of dough, to get back on his feet again for when he gets out. Spud told him to fuck off, so he gave Spud a mouthful.

  ‘Then one of Spud’s boys, Big Spud I think it was, squirted him up then stabbed the fucking granny out of him. Ended up in hospital minus one fucking lamp. And then when they opened him up they found out he’d got bowel cancer. I tell you, if this poor cunt didn’t have bad luck he wouldn’t have any fucking luck at all. On the upside he’s got an early release so he can die on the out. But the crux of the matter is, he knows all of Spud Murphy’s drug runs. Says for fifty grand he’ll tell me where and when the loads come in, and what they’re carrying. Dates, times, places, everything.’

  ‘Sounds iffy to me,’ I say.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All that grief for a poxy fifty large?’

  ‘Shitting out bits of his arsehole, ain’t he? Only got about six moon left to fucking live.’

  ‘All right, make a meet and I’ll word him.’

  I FEEL LOWER than a snake’s belly doing what I’m doing. Namely, seeing Delroy’s sister Andrea behind his back. I know he wouldn’t say anything, or at least, not to my face, but that ain’t the point. He’d be gutted to think that his sister, who’s already achieved the impossible by climbing out of the cesspit of our existence and taking the straight and narrow as a legal beagle, is being dragged back towards the filth by a man that sticks himself up as his best pal. But I can’t help it, I just find the girl a breath of fresh air amongst this fucking Chernobyl I breathe in every day. Plus, she’s a smart cookie whilst in the same breath, beautifully naive. A bewitching combination. She’s also a rarity where I come from, in that she sees the best in everyone, whereas me and my people are always looking for the worst, because when we find it, it validates our twisted philosophy of being the nastiest horrible cunts on the block. And she’s never on the earhole for dough or presents. Quite unlike the grasping harpies I normally have wrapped around me. Flash them a loving smile and they’ll be plotting to pull the gold from your teeth while you’re asleep. Andrea’s too good for me really. I’m far more at home amongst the dregs, much as I despise them.

  We’ve pencilled in lunch at the pavilion in Regent’s Park. They serve up a nice hit of kosher nosh in the afternoons, but what with watching Delroy chewing the cud in the pie and mash shop and the death of Danny’s dog still preying on my mind, I can’t for the life of me summon up an appetite. I’m also twenty minutes early so I decide to slip into London zoo. Not that I particularly want to visit an inner-city concrete jungle, but I ain’t been able to find any hidey-holes around here, and I desperately need to knock up a couple of lines of charlie, so decide I’ll use the toilets in there. After bolting the cubicle door of the toilet and carving up the requisite lines, I pop a pill, sniff up the powder and plonk myself down on the toilet seat to read the graffiti. There’s a couple of funny bits amongst the filth: PRINCE, PROOF THAT LIBERACE FUCKED LITTLE RICHARD! And on the door in front of me, which is cut a good nine inches from the ground, some other wag has scrawled: BEWARE FAGGOT LIMBO DANCERS!

  I love the sanctity of toilet cubicles. Once the door’s bolted you’re encased in your very own little pungent womb, safe from the prying eyes of the outside world. I have a recurring problem with these places though, they give me hard-ons and it drives me fucking mad, because it means I normally have to knock out a slippery one before I can get my brain back into gear. It’s a bastard because there ain’t much in the world sadder than a loner with a boner. But ain’t a man on the planet can hold sway over his stiff prick. I bet even the Pope bashes the occasional bishop. I put my recurring problem down to the fact that I had my first ever sexual encounter in one of these gaffs. As a chavvie I was always running errands. My mum and dad never sent my brother because he couldn’t be trusted with the dough. Not that he’d steal it, but he’d get to the shops and just spend it on comics and sweets or other shit like that. So I used to go, just to get out of the house really. Even though the telly was only black and white back then, them indoors would still be glued to it all the time. Besides, all the good programmes came on when us chavvies had to be tucked up in bed.

  The only shop round our way was right over by Aldgate Church, so I’d cut through the local park to get to it. I’d never exactly hurry back, so I’d get sent early to get stuff because they knew I’d be pissing about in the park on the way home. Sometimes I’d take so long I’d get a b
eating from the old man. A black rubber plimsoll right across the arse, fucking hurt it did. And what pissed me off the most was I that never ever saw him hit my brother, although sometimes he would hold me down for my brother to whack me if we had a fight. I grew up hating my old man. But there I was one evening, dawdling as usual on my way back home with some fags for the old girl. I’d just passed the sand pit, which we kids called the shit pit because that’s what people used to let their dogs do in it, when I noticed this old geezer sitting on a wooden bench.

  ‘Running an errand are you, son?’ he said to me.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, just being polite like I’d been taught, but thinking. Talk about stating the bleeding obvious. I mean what else would I be doing carrying a lady’s tartan shopping bag? Of course, I’d been told not to talk to strange men. But this geezer didn’t look strange, he looked like my old granddad.

  He asked me if I wanted to see some magic. I figured, why not? Ain’t nothing happening indoors, so I nodded. Then he pulled out this coin, made it disappear, then pulled it out of his left ear. I must say it was pretty good. Didn’t know if was magic or not but I couldn’t work out how he did it.

  ‘I hope your mum is going to give you some pocket money for running her errand, son,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t normally,’ I replied. ‘Whenever I want dough I nick it out of her purse or my dad’s pockets.’

  ‘Would you like to earn some pocket money now?’ he asked. Another stupid question. Of course I’d like to earn some pocket money. Show me a kid who wouldn’t. So he took me by my hand and we headed off into the toilets behind the swings. They were always empty. Nobody ever used them because they were always being vandalised.

  He led me into a cubicle and shut the door behind us both, then locked it. I did think to myself that it probably wasn’t right, but I was trapped now. Besides I wanted some dough. I can remember starting to feel sick though, what with the stink of unflushed toilets and the flies crawling all over the dried shit that caked the walls. Then there were the drawings. Black felt-tip scribblings of all manner of strange looking cocks and cunts.

  ‘Relax, pretty boy,’ he said to me. But I couldn’t relax, I was shitting hot bricks thinking I was going to be strangled, but the danger I was in also made me feel strangely excited. He bent slowly down drawing himself level with me, and the closer he got, the older he looked. He stuck a bony middle finger in his mouth and wet it and I remember his false teeth slipped a little. After sucking them noisily back up, he then slid his hand slowly up past my knobbly knees, right up the back of my shorts and into my underpants. Then he eased his wet finger up my arse and waggled it about until it was deep inside me. It hurt so much I started to cry and tried to pull away, but he’d got me held tight. Then he tried to kiss me but I weren’t having it because I knew men don’t kiss men, and besides, his breath stank of tobacco and shit.

  ‘You’ve got a beautiful little virgin arse, pretty boy,’ he whispered in my ear before standing up and pulling out his dick. I’d never seen a grown-up one before, apart from my old man’s when he was having a piss. But this one weren’t pointing down, it was sticking straight up and looking me in the eye. He grabbed hold of my hair and shoved his cock into my mouth. A horrid, purply, veined old thing it was, that tasted of stale cheese, so I spat it out.

  ‘Suck it, you little prick-teaser,’ he growled, grabbing my hair again and forcing his dick back into my mouth. Then he came his load all over my face and my jumper, which my nan had just knitted me for my birthday.

  Afterwards he wiped me clean and gave me half a crown, as promised. But then he started to get violent.

  ‘You take this dough and don’t breathe a word, you hear?’ he said. ‘If you open your trap, I’ll find out and hunt you down and kill you. Believe me, I’m the fucking Devil.’

  ‘Well I didn’t want no grief, not off a big man. Not off the Devil. I knew the score. I’d been paid so I’d keep my mouth shut. Besides, I weren’t brought up to be no snitch. He said he wanted to see me again and I nodded because I was too scared to say no. And looking on the bright side I’d earned myself half a crown, just for that. Weren’t that bad really I supposed. Better than being a paper boy. Especially since I hated getting up early in the mornings. And none of the mates I knew had ever had half a crown before in their lives.

  When I eventually did get hack home my old man gave me a right bollocking and a beating with the dreaded black plimsoll for being late. I didn’t say anything, just flew into the bedroom that I shared with my brother, climbed into the cupboard and sat there in the dark crying my eyes out and holding onto my half crown. Later on my mum found me and told everyone indoors where I was. They all came in to laugh at me. Fucking bastards! I said to myself. You just wait and see. I’m going to end up rich and get the hell out of here. Later I asked my mum if the Devil was everywhere. She said he is, just like God. I knew then that it was best to keep quiet. And to this day I’ve never ever told anyone that I cut my milk teeth sucking Old Nick off for sweetie money.

  To keep things sweet with Andrea I had to make out I was hungry, but after force-feeding myself like a foie gras goose, I slipped out to the khazi and spewed my ringpiece up, before sniffing up a couple of lines, leading me to thinking I need to get the fuck away from these shores for some breathing space. To that end I’m turning the corner out of Tisbury Court, Soho, on my way to pick up twenty grand spending money from a moody bank in Chinatown, where I keep a substantial amount of emergency readies.

  ‘Watch where you’re fucking going, you cunt!’ I scream, as some in-a-hurry prick comes running around the corner bumping right into me and knocking me flying.

  ‘Sorry, mate!’ says the prick, adding, ‘Er… hello, Billy.’

  ‘Fuck me, Scouse, slow down!’ I say, relaxing, as soon as I recognise that the kipper belongs to a bloke that works in one of me and Danny’s sex shops.

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem, Billy.’

  ‘Late for signing on?’

  ‘Nah, got a fucking nonce-case in the shop, wants kiddie porn. I want to fucking lump him up, man, but I remember Bernie Silver saying we’ve got to call Old Bill whenever one comes in. Trouble is, y’know, I’ve got a fucking outstanding warrant from up the frog and toad, like.’

  ‘Leave it to me, Scouse,’ I tell him, while bottling him off back into the sex shop where our man is waiting.

  He’s nondescript, nonces are always nondescript. It’s part of the deception. But how I know that beneath the blandness lies a gurgling cauldron of repressed filth. It’s the likes of this creature that have fucked my life up. For all I know, if I hadn’t been soiled when I was a chavvie, I could’ve been married now. Living happily with a couple of chavvies myself, instead of prowling the streets in pain looking for people to hurt. Like the other day I was in a doctor’s waiting room and there was a magazine with a quiz in it. ‘How would you describe yourself?’ it asked. I wrote in the space: ‘Nasty, horrible, vindictive little bastard.’ And I reckon that’s about right. So to keep things sweet I approach the nonce in the greasy manner of a mobile phone salesman. ‘How are you doing?’ I ask politely, but wanting want to batter the piece of dog-shit senseless.

  ‘Er… er… fine thanks,’ he stutters, while staring down at the floor and with the slight twitch in his left eye letting me know he’s shitting bricks. This is a fish that needs to be played carefully.

  ‘My colleague has told me the sort of stuff you’re looking for,’ I say. ‘Thing is, how do I know you’re not a copper?’

  ‘I’m definitely not a policeman,’ he says. Leaving me thinking, good answer, because if you ask a pig, if he’s a pig, he’s got to say yes, even when he’s undercover. Otherwise his nicking ain’t worth jack shit.

  ‘How young you looking for, sir?’ I say.

  ‘Very young.’

  ‘Ten, eleven?’

  ‘Five, six,’ he says. So now I know I’m dealing with a dirty, no-good bottom-of-the-barrel cunt.

  ‘Boy
s or girls?’

  ‘Boys.’ This latest answer sets me on fire but I carry on playing it cool by clenching down hard on my film star porcelains.

  ‘I can do it,’ I say. ‘But it’ll cost you.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Monkey.’

  ‘Wow, seems rather expensive.’

  ‘Listen,’ I spit out, feigning annoyance at his tightness. ‘This video’s got prime chicken. Too young to fry, if you get my drift. I get caught with this it’s big bird on the nonce wing in Wandsworth… You want the real deal, you gotta spend the real readies.’

  ‘Er… OK,’ he says, blinking nervously and drawing out a wodge of crumpled, greasy notes from a plastic purse strapped up with duct tape.

  ‘Now listen,’ I tell him, as he hands over the dough. ‘There’s an underground car park just across the road. Meet me there in ten minutes and I’ll have your gear, OK?’ The nonce nods and disappears.

  ‘Keep that for yourself, Scouse.’ I say, handing him the nonce’s dough. ‘And don’t forget to treat your chavvies.’

  The basement car park’s an ideal place, always quiet apart from the occasional cottager. I stroll in to find the nonce-case already waiting, probably spunking in his pants, the slag. Without saying a word I squirt him full in the face with a lemon Jif full of ammonia before proceeding to beat seven bells of shit out of him. He manages to squeal, once. Only it ain’t loud enough. I’m all over him, stomping, kicking and punching. Steaming into his jelly body with a non-stop barrage of sickening thuds. The slag offers no resistance whatsoever, simply melts like butter under a hot tap. Stands to reason that nonces can’t fight. They can only fuck little chavvies. As he crumples to the floor like a sack of wet shit, one stamp follows another. Sharp, Blakey’d heels slicing down into his noncey cocksucking face, and all the while I’m begging for brain damage with every strike. ‘Take that you cunt!’ I scream. ‘And that! And that!’ Now I’m sweating like a racehorse while the slag’s blood is pumping. And I feel good. At peace with myself once more. Unexpected bloodlettings are always the best. Who needs leeches when you’ve got size ten feet? Not only is it revenge for me, it’s revenge for Danny’s dog, and revenge for all the chavvies the nonce-case is going to fuck, if he ever gets better. Which I very much doubt after that fucking beating. After a couple of farewell kicks to what’s left of his head I stroll back out into the sunshine. The warmth feels good against my face. Ain’t much better feeling in the world than the heat of the sun’s rays on a man’s back after he’s just put a nonce-case in a coma.