After washing my hands I stroll back into the changing rooms to find Lennie laying back on a bench, staring up at the ceiling and sucking the life out of his roll-up. One of seventy he gets through a day.
‘Here, Billy,’ he says. ‘I was thinking. You know they’re making a film of my life? Well, I’m supposed to give the script to Derry O’Dourke, ‘cos he’s interested in playing me manager. The thing is, I was supposed to fly out to Miami and meet him myself. But as you know I got shot recently, and well, the bullet holes in me arse are giving me so much stick I can’t even sit on the khazi, let alone on a plane for twelve fucking hours.’
‘We heard about that, Len,’ I say. ‘Was it anyone we know?’ Of course I’m fucking with him because I know perfectly well it was Denny Dalston that shot him.
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Couple of little toerags fired at me when I was working the door. Then they ran away, fucking cowards. You know what, Billy? In the old days people stood their ground and had an honest, old-fashioned tear-up. Now they hide behind corners and take fucking potshots.’
Poor old Lennie, I’m thinking. He can’t even face up to the fact that he’s been mugged off. But I say nothing because I don’t want to embarrass the man. Besides, he comes in handy for certain bits of graft that we don’t want to do ourselves.
‘It’d do me a favour if you could deliver it for me, Billy,’ he continues. ‘I mean, I’ll lay it all on out there. Red carpet treatment, the works. Fucking hell, I’m in pain, son. I really am.’
‘It’s not a problem, Len,’ I say. ‘But I was under the impression that Derry O’Dourke was all washed-up, blacklisted because he gave that bit of potch to the IRA and then said he supported their cause.’
‘It’s all blown over, Billy,’ says Lennie. ‘He’s back in the big time now, fucking facelift, the lot.’ So, Lennie’s going to make a phone call to Derry O’Dourke in Miami, and while I’m out there I’ll drop the script in to him. Like I say, I like Lennie, even though he’s a moaner and always feels hard done by. Makes me laugh the way he’s always going on chat shows and banging on about how he’s only a growler because he was born in Hoxton. And how, if he’d have been born in Hampstead he’d have been a brain surgeon. A fucking tree surgeon maybe, but a brain surgeon? I don’t fucking think so. I remember getting in his motor one winter and there was this fly in there buzzing about and driving him fucking nuts. As he tried to swat it, he said to me, ‘Just my fucking luck, Billy, ain’t it? All the rest of the flies in this country have flown to Africa for the winter, and the only one that gets left behind ends up in my fucking motor.’ And just looking down at him laying there under a bad light sets me to thinking, Jesus, this man’s ageing badly. Jacking up too much snide juice, that’s why. And he don’t even know what he’s putting in him. I mean the world and his friend knows that Bitch-tit is using him as a guinea pig. But then again, I don’t think that Lennie worries about what that shit’s doing to his insides, so long as it does the business on the outside. I also know for a fact that some of the gear Bitch-tit is jabbing him with at the moment is old Red Army stock from World War II, and that was used to help keep the walking dead alive after the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps.
MIAMI, ON A wing and a prayer and a snide passport. Whenever I go abroad on dodgy business I always stick up a moody moniker, just in case. And here the aim is to make sure there’s no record of me being in the US at the same time as Sunbed Terry and Heart-attack Jack. International borders are prone to make any top criminal feel jittery, but I personally find the States to be the worst. Like most nothings that you stick in a uniform and give a bit of power to, Yankee immigration officials can be very hard work. They seem to thrive on keeping you waiting like a lemon behind a white line for what seems like an eternity, and then wanting to know the ins and outs of a cat’s arse before they’ll let you into the Promised Land. As it turns out I’m bang on, and the immigration man’s the usual jumped-up jerk-off in an over-starched uniform. No matter, my passport’s a pearler, and that, combined with a bit of soft soap and discreet Cockney charm sees me breezing through with a nod and wink, straight out into a fabulous, subtropical south Florida night. There ain’t a cloud in sky, but what with me dressed to kill and the humidity running at about ninety per cent, straight away I’m sweating like a racehorse, and so, after discarding my jacket I start to getting acclimatised. What I need next is a motor.
A car is a prerequisite in the States, because only nutters, the poor, and cockroaches inhabit the suburban sidewalks out here. But what I specifically need more than a set of wheels, is a Ford Mustang convertible. Hitching a ride on a courtesy bus to the car-hire depot, sees me tipping the driver ten bucks, before climbing off and strolling into the reception area and sidling up to a tiny little Hispanic hottie sitting behind the jump. Smiling at me as though I once gave her the best fuck of her life, sees me whipping out my snide driving licence with matching credit card, and handing the pair over to her to run through computer check, after which she hands me a set of twirls, pouts like a porn star and tells me to have a nice day. In less than twenty steps I’m firmly ensconced in the premium hide driver’s seat of Motor City’s finest muscle car, ignition on and with a straight V8 purring under the bonnet like a panther sitting in a tree at sunset. Clicking a switch on the dash allows the hood to roll slowly back, exposing me to the night sky. After gazing for a moment at an unending vista of twinkling stars, I flick it into gear, kick it down and roar out of the parking lot, my tyres spraying hot gravel over a sack-of-shit looking hen-pecked-Henry, standing with his fat cunt missus beside their rental people carrier.
Hitting Thunder Road towards South Beach with the roof down and the night wind blowing cool against my face, I kick it back big time and flick on the FM. As the quadraphonic speakers bring the inside of my motor to life with the heart-stopping rhythm of a Chicano radio station chunking out Cuban free-bob fusion, I smile a self-satisfied smile as in the distance looms the bastard son of Castro’s revolution.
The faded splendour of Batista’s Havana, transposed to the streets of Miami, in a drum and bass spectacular of screaming trumpets, nerve-shattering percussion and ghetto jive-talk. This ain’t no white-bread, bible-bashing, Stetson-wearing, Howdy Doody hick hop. This is through the blinds America, baby. My man Mr Sanchez, blasting out a murderous bassline from the cock-fighting jalapeño barrios, and blowing away the headfuck and bullshit of a twelve hour transatlantic flight, from the cold pissy shores of the fallen British Empire, on which once the sun never set, because God never trusted the English in the dark. I hit the causeway doing about eighty, with the salt sea air blasting up a nose already sniffing out the nearest cocaine hit, as Miami’s art deco district, a zillion flashing lights of joints jumping, cocktails pouring, marriages being mended and hearts being broken, eases into view. It’s all there, whatever you want, as long as you got the bucks to pay for it. In fact, the Yanks have got it so sown up down here that even the Kentucky Fried Chicken is forties retro.
America’s where it’s at, man, and dowdy old Blighty seems like Trumpton by comparison. You see the trouble with us English, is that our heritage is a lead weight around our necks, yet we cling to it like a drowning man will cling to a straw. We need to let go, move forward and forget about the past so-called glories and the tight-arsed toffs that want our respect just because of the beds they were born in, and who demand we kneel down in deference before them. Fuck them, and their ancestors. Think about it! Who would you rather hear singing the blues in a smoky little club, Ray Charles of Prince Charles? And where else but in the States can you get filled full of lead in a drive-by shooting, and then have your homies come pay their respect to you in a drive-in funeral parlour. Plus, you always have the feeling out here that anything could happen, anytime. Look at this for example. Two hundred yards ahead there’s this right sort of a black bird in pink pedal pushers, six-inch fuck-me shoes and legs right up to her neck, hitching a ride. And believe me this sister can swing. You don’t get
sorts like this down the Bethnal Green Road. Impelled by inbred male predatory behaviour, I slam on the brakes and swerve over with the intention of offering the young lady a lift.
‘Hi, I’m Candy,’ she purrs, sliding in beside me, and man I’m telling you, this is one tall chick. Reckon she could play front-line for the Miami Hurricanes.
‘Nice to meet you, Candy,’ I say, kicking the motor into a show-off wheel spin, whilst surreptitiously trying to check out the goods on offer.
‘You got an accent,’ she notes, fluffing her hair in the night wind.
‘London,’ I tell her.
‘Wow,’ she says, as we drive on.
Now one thing I’ve learnt over the years, is that if something seems too good to be true, it normally is. Like, no matter how much you spend on Christmas crackers, after the initial expectation of the bang, all you ever seem get inside is a silly hat, a hundred-year-old joke and a poxy plastic toy. And this situation is no exception. It’s not the lack of Adam’s apple that’s sets me to worrying, for with the skills of today’s plastic surgeons, that could have been shaved down. And the hair’s real from what I can make out, otherwise she’d be holding onto it instead of teasing it in the wind. The feet? They don’t seem overlarge. Got it. It’s the hands. They look a little like gardening gloves, perfect for a rebound shot or pruning rosebushes I imagine, but I wouldn’t fancy them giving me a five-knuckle shuffle. Not that I’m quibbling, mind, it ain’t a perfect world. And besides, in this case, a close second don’t appear to be too far behind first place.
Without appearing too obvious I next allow myself a closer slippery shufti down by the rabbit hutch, but for the life of me I can’t see a pecker in the panties. It’s either strapped up well-tight or been cut and tucked. Aw, what the fuck! I’m a million miles from home, and this is the nearest I’m ever gonna get to Beyoncé.
‘Candy Darling,’ I say. ‘You got that name from Lou Reed, Transformer, right?’
‘Pardon me, honey?’
‘Transformer. Walk on the Wild Side.’
‘Oh, I ain’t been transformed yet, baby, still saving up the dough. But I been walking on the wild side since I was a little itty bitty young thang.’ So that answers my question. But I have to say, sterling job of stashing the meat and two veg.
‘Besides, honey,’ she continues. ‘What’s a little piece of gristle between friends?’ And I’m thinking, my sentiments exactly. And then get this. He then, er, I mean, she then, whatever, reaches across and puts one of her gardening glove mitts right in between my legs and starts to give the skinhead in the polo-neck some ready rub, telling me, ‘Mmmmm… now that’s a two hander if ever I felt one.’ And she’s bang on with her assessment. ‘Now, you come and see me if you want the real thang, and thanks for the lift, honey.’ And with that she sashays into the night, and ten minutes later I’m standing in the lobby of my favourite hotel in South Beach, the Alfonse, trying discreetly to stash a still bulging semi-lob.
The Alfonse is the coolest place in town and naturally, extremely expensive. Each room is designed around a different theme. I’m booked into my usual suite, the voodoo room, whose walls boast a disconcerting mix of Haitian juju masks and Creole voodoo dolls (with pins). Strategically placed on the top of various sideboards and cabinets are pint-sized, see-through pickle jars containing such hoodoo staples as black cat bone, John the Conquer root and mojo hand, all used by voodoo priests in their magical rituals. In the centre of the room, draped in Mosquito muslin and rigged up to look like a giant cobweb, sits the pièce de résistance, the broken heart bed. It’s a killer king-sized number that actually splits into two crooked single beds down the middle in the shape of a broken heart. And when you turn off the main lounge light, the suite automatically becomes bathed in an eerie turquoise glow. Not only does it match my extreme mood swings and nasty propensities, but it also scares birds shitless when you bring them back here to fuck them. On the ground floor sits the Badass bar, where a righteous dreadlocks serves up Killer Zombies, as well as providing a nifty under-the-counter service of the finest Colombian collie-weed. In the basement there’s a full-sized recording studio that’s used by top musos from all over the world, and as if that ain’t enough, a premier New York modelling agency has a permanent suite on the second floor. So, if you’re into stunning airheads and you’ve got dough to burn, you can take your pick.
After checking in and showering and taking some time to suck in the ambience of my suite, I bell my Cuban connection, Henri, and later that evening we hook up at a down-home Cuban restaurant on Ocean Drive. He introduces me to his powder-man and brother in blood and business, Paulie, a heavy-looking dude, relaxed but intense behind a neatly clipped Van Dyke beard and a bulldog frame settled snug inside an immaculate, ice-white, almost knee-length zoot suit. The three of us proceed to get hammered over tequila slammers and old times. It’s been two years since I last saw Henri and I’m pleased to find that things are going great for him. Only one downside he tells me. Their older brother arrived by inner tube across the shark-infested straits that separate Cuba from America, only three weeks ago. He was twenty pounds underweight and near to death when the US Navy picked him up a couple of miles offshore. I blamed the Yanks for the inhumane sanctions imposed since Kennedy got his arse kicked in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Henri blamed Castro for being a ‘cocksucking, communist son of a fucking bitch whore’, which, seeing as both him and his brother were packing ironware, left us all square on the argument, I felt. I’m ashamed to say that the combination of jet lag and Mexican firewater fucked me big time, and I crawled off to my pit, pale-faced and pathetically early. But I’m up less than five hours later, just in time to catch the tail end of a stunning sunrise, and attempting to blow away my hangover with a slow, booze-hazed jog along the wooden boardwalk that runs about two miles along the bestest beach you’ve ever seen. Miles and miles of nothing but clean as a whistle sand and bright blue briny. And to add to the craziness of the gaff, I’ve just seen a Rip Van Winkle lookalike, leash-walking his three-feet-long pet monitor lizard and heading for their usual morning dip in the ocean.
The locals call this place God’s waiting room because it full of ancient New York Jews who come down here to retire, then die. And as I move slowly along, peering out of piss-hole-in-the-snow eyes, weaving in and out of hobbling coffin-dodgers, I swear I’ve never seen people as old as this. Crinkled up old dudes in snap-caps and chest high, stay-pressed trousers that barely skirt the tops of pristine white pumps, walking hand in hand with loving wives, their faces caked in pan-stick make-up, and all bearing the faded remnants of concentration camp tattoos on withered arms. In pairs they shuffle gamely, on their way to two-for-one breakfasts at the beach front McDonald’s. And as I’m running I’m thinking, that these long-suffering people cannot be aware of the fact, as they’re sitting down to their bargain McBreakfasts around plastic tables full of fag burns, that McDonald’s has recently opened a branch in Germany, that sits only one third of a mile from the infamous Dachau concentration camp, where thousand upon thousand of their fellow compatriots and other innocents besides were exterminated industrially and wholesale by the Nazis. And what’s more the Nazis shipped their victims to Dachau in cattle trucks. I sincerely fucking hope that McDonald’s don’t use the same method to ship in its beef.
After a couple of hours of shopping and sightseeing I then spend a fantastic afternoon with Henri on his charter plane, island hopping for a happy crowd of out-of-town tourists. What a great front for a charlie business! Halfway through the flight and just for the hell of it, Henri dropped altitude and we ended up buzzing the Florida Keys, a dotted mass of breathtakingly beautiful atolls, which rightfully claim their place as the jewels in America’s crown. Ernest Hemingway drank himself to death on Key West, and on another, Jimmy Buffet wasted away in Margueritaville. Being surrounded by such beauty has already got me dreading going back home to grey, poxy old Heathrow, to negotiate the waiting throngs of dullard customs cunts with their ferret heads s
ticking out of their greasy shirt collars. Straight after touching down at the local airstrip I slip off for some peace and afternoon’s quiet reflection, and end up watching a posse of elderly Cuban men fishing for Barracuda off of the nearby pier, after which I stroll two blocks inland through the city’s buzzing gay district to a Cuban cafe where I’ve laid on a meet with Sunbed Terry and Heart-attack Jack.
‘Fucking beautiful here,’ says Sunbed to me, as the three of us sit hunched round a rickety wooden table and sip gingerly on thunderbolt-strong, red-hot espressos. ‘I’ll be going home with a great tan.’
‘You already got a great tan,’ says Heart-attack, chomping down on a Romeo y Julieta.
‘But it’s out of a fucking tube, bruv! You can’t beat the real McCoy. And don’t worry about my tan. You’re not supposed to be drinking coffee, or for that matter smoking, especially a Cuban cigar. They’re fucking illegal here. But I got to admit you do look like a film star with that lah-de-dah stuck in your north and south.’
‘Clint Eastwood?’ says Heart-attack, puffing out his chest while puffing on his cigar.
‘Nah, Lassie having a shit.’
‘You fucking wanker,’ says Heart-attack. ‘Anyway, it’s a special occasion. Must say, Billy. It’s fucking lovely down here. And look at this coffee bar, right old-fashioned. Fucking class.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘This is the gaff where Meyer Lansky used to come to when he was living down here.’
‘Meyer Lansky!’ says Sunbed. ‘What, the Meyer Lansky what was partners with Lucky Luciano?’
‘That’s him,’ I say. ‘He went on his toes to Israel but they knocked him back as a bad Jew, so he settled down here for his final days. In fact he used to sit at this very table that we’re sitting at now, and use that pay phone right by your canister.’
‘Fuck me,’ says Heart-attack. ‘Just think, he probably had people mullered by just putting in a coin and dialling a fucking number.’
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