JUDAS PIG

by Horace Silver

  I stroll into the ground-floor sex shop and nod, without the slightest respect, to Greebo who works there. The man’s as rotten as a fucking pear and has always got his greasy, duck-tailed quiff buried in the latest American muscle car mag. Total fucking waste of space! One of those sad bastards that ain’t never been further than Eastbourne, but strolls about in Stetsons and rides about in two-bob’s worth of snide Americana. As long as he’s got a hole in his arse he’ll never be able to afford the real deal, because he’s under the cosh of a four-eyed bulldyke who batters him senseless, takes all his dough then blows it on fruit machines. And even if he ever does get a windfall, somebody should tell the prick, you can’t live the American dream under the grim, dowdy skies of England. Whenever you see a man like Greebo driving around in a battered old motor with furry dice hanging in the window, you can bet your bottom dollar he’s also got a battered old bird with furry teeth sitting next to him in the passenger seat. As I slip past Greebo’s desk he pushes down a button on the floor with one of his (made in Korea) cowboy boots, and it clicks open to reveal a secret door hidden behind a shelf full of sex-aids. After negotiating the door I close it behind me and make my way up the first flight of stairs, passing the brass’s flat on the first floor. Pinned outside the flat is a piece of paper, across which the words ‘Brazilian model’ are written in spidery, infant scrawl. I allow myself a little chuckle, wondering how many sad-fuck punters have climbed these very same, tired-out old stairs, their balls hanging heavy with unrequited love, and under the impression they’re going to be emptying their frustrated sacs inside the Girl From Ipanema, only to find on their arrival that it’s a sweaty old skag-head from Scunthorpe with more track marks up her arm than there are train-lines at Clapham Junction station.

  On reaching the second floor I look out of an adjacent window to see a barely-alive pigeon with half its head smashed in, huddled up in a shivering ball on a ledge. A crying fucking shame, but not my problem so I carry on, chuck a left and head towards the room where I guess Fat Ray will be hiding out. He is, and believe me this room is straight from hell. Every window in the gaff has been boarded up from the inside by nailed planks of wood, allowing only tiny slithers of occasional light to penetrate its darkness. The carpet’s as bald as Gail Porter’s bonce and dotted with all manner of dubious stains, as well as being alive with legions of bugs and lice. What’s more, it stinks like the inside of a fucking slave ship. Littered about like landmines are boxes of half-eaten takeaways and crushed beer cans full of stubbed-out fags. Plus, there’s an extra bad, bad hum, smelling like twenty pissy old ladies lying dead for a week in an Oxfam shop, emanating from an unplugged and decrepit fridge in one corner. As I enter the room I catch Fat Ray crashed out on a battered old Dralon sofa that has sucked him in at its middle until he’s almost touching the floor. He’s stark bollock naked, save for a smeggy, once-white bath towel, wrapped vainly around acres and acres of blue-veined blubber. On an empty banana box three feet in front him sits a state of the art TV, while beside him on the sofa on a tin plate is a mound of about twenty steaming hot dogs, all smothered in lashings of economy tomato ketchup.

  On seeing me enter he toasts my arrival with a large torpedo-shaped bottle of Diet Coke, of which he takes a swig, gives out a sloppy wet burp followed by a sloppy wet fart, before cramming a hot dog whole into his mouth and instructing me to ‘Take a pew, Billy, my son.’ And as he’s speaking, chewed up food is spilling from his mouth and falling down onto his front. Flopping down into an adjacent chair I find myself unable to resist the temptation of glancing down at his feet, the toenails of which are yellow and discoloured, and curling like eagle’s talons over the tops of his toes. The whole scene fills me with such unbridled revulsion that I’m sitting there with a face like a shoplifting skank crutching a frozen chicken.

  ‘Watch this, Billy,’ he adds, picking up a remote control, which he points at the TV and thus reactivating a porn movie that’s been previously freeze-framed. ‘This louvney’s got five black dudes pulling a fucking soul train on her. That’s one for every fucking hole.’

  ‘That’s two left over surely, Ray?’ I say, turning my attention to the action on the screen. ‘You’re forgetting about her ear-holes, or even her nose-holes, eh?’

  ‘Never thought about them, yeah, the more the fucking merrier! Go on my sons, fill that fucking shitcunt up to its fucking gills. That’s it, ooooh, look at that, Billy. A great big chocolate jawbreaker right up the fucking dirt-box!’

  ‘How the fuck can you watch that shit, eating that shit, Ray?’ I ask him.

  ‘‘Cos I’m a connoisseur of cunt and cuisine, Billy-Boy. Want a hot dog? They’re freshly made.’

  ‘Yeah, about ten fucking years ago.’

  ‘You’re too fucking fussy, son,’ he then says, stuffing the third dog deep into his mouth and washing it down with long, noisy glugs of Diet Coke.

  ‘Fussy, do you know what you’re fucking eating?’ I spit back at him. ‘Earholes, arseholes and lips. All the skanky shit they can’t do fuck all else with, they grind down and sell to the likes of you.’

  But while I’m giving Fat Ray a bollocking about his dietary habits, all he’s doing is carrying on stuffing regardless. It’s then that I suss out that there’s something here that’s not quite right. It takes me a few seconds to ascertain what it is, but I’m fucked if there ain’t something shuffling about underneath his towel. Not a big movement mind, but something nonetheless.

  ‘What the fuck you got going on under that towel, Ray?’ I say. Fat Ray laughs again, he’s always laughing. After wiping a large dollop of tomato ketchup from his mouth with his hand and cleaning it on his chest hair, he reaches underneath his towel, and like a magician pulling a rabbit from a top hat, pulls out a miniature Yorkshire terrier not much bigger than a pint mug, panting happily behind an almost toothless grin.

  ‘This is Bollocky Bill,’ he tells me, holding the dog up to his face. ‘Loves licking my fucking ball-bag, don’t you, son? Reckon it’s got something to do with the salt.’ Ray then tilts his head forward, allowing the dog to eagerly lick his lips. After returning the gesture, Fat Ray puts the dog back to work under his towel before leaning back into the sofa with a look of pure pleasure spreading across his face.

  ‘You should try it sometime, Billy. Fucking lovely it is, especially first thing in the morning. And it never asks for nothing. Not like the old woman. Any time she goes down under the blanket and throws a lip over it, you can bet your life that when she surfaces she’ll be holding her hand out for a few quid.’

  ‘You are one fucking debauched being, Ray. And that’s a boy dog, ain’t it?’

  ‘Wassamatter, Billy?! You got something against gay dogs? So anyway, what you got for me?’

  ‘We need a driver. Someone we can trust to keep their mouth shut.’

  ‘Tight as a camel’s arse in a sandstorm, you know me.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Twenty mile journey, twenty-five large.’

  ‘Fucking hell! What is it, gold?’

  ‘The three Ps!’

  ‘Pills, puff and powder, sweet. Who’ll I be grafting with?’

  ‘Me, the Longshanks and Frankie.’

  ‘Count me in, son.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘The fucking best, Billy,’ chuckles Fat Ray, spitting into the palm of his right hand and then leaning forward for us to shake and seal the deal. Now as I say, I love the man to death but there’s no way I’m shaking hands with the cunt after what I’ve just witnessed, and so, instead I make a fist and we bump knuckles. He winces and I can see that the outsides of his hands are cut and badly bruised.

  ‘You been fighting again?’ I tut disapprovingly.

  ‘You won’t believe this one, Billy,’ he says.

  ‘I probably will, Ray.’

  As Fat Ray stretches himself back into the sofa once more, it protests loudly, and I would too if I had a fat cunt like him sitting on me,
day in day out. After letting out another fart, this one of the silent but violent strain, he burps again, stuffs another hot dog into his mouth, then starts his story.

  ‘Two days ago I was out on the stall, and one of the chavvies working downstairs came running out saying that this bird and a geezer wanted to buy a dildo. Only thing is, she wanted to try it out for size first. Now, the two chavvies were fucking shitting themselves, so there was only one man for the job, right. Me! So I told Hoover-mouth to keep dog-eye on me fruit and veg, and off I strolled into the shop. And believe me, Billy, this bird was fucking gorgeous. Total fucking sort, honestly. Full-length mink fur coat, seamed silk stockings, suspenders, the fucking lot. And to top it all, she was wearing a pair of them six-inch high fuck-me shoes with these dainty little painted toes peeping out the front. Gave me a fucking boner straight away it did. Not only that but she’d picked out the biggest plastic fucking chopper in the shop. The Loch Ness Monster! It’s like a baby’s arm holding a fucking orange. So, I dropped me toffees and went in like Flynn, and next thing you know I had her on top of the Betty Grable on her rickety-rack, both legs akimbo and with a carrot stuck up her arse, while plunging her up to her gills with Nessie. The two chavvies couldn’t believe it. They were bolted to the floor, gawping like fucking goldfish. And by this time her old man had his prick out and was beating it like he was going down to Margate on the fucking happy bus for the day. Then she started begging me to fuck her. Well she’s only fucking human, ain’t she? So, I didn’t need no second invite did I. I jumped on top of her and started to give her the old fat-boy special. Three hundred pounds of muscle and man, baby. Pumpity, pump pump pump, and then she started hollering and hooting and calling out to her old man. “Oh, I’m coming, darling, I’m coming.” All posh like. Then the old man screamed back. “So am I, darling, so am I.”

  ‘Next thing I know, the cunt had jumped me from behind and tried to stick his cock up me fucking arse. Shot his fucking bolt all over me, the slag. Of course, I went fucking garrity didn’t I. Started to smash the cunt to bits. I mean fucking hell, Billy, it’s a fucking liberty, ain’t it? An Englishman’s ringpiece is his fucking castle! And not only that, I suffer bad with piles, mate. I mean even on a good day me arsehole’s like the Hanging Gardens of fucking Babylon. So anyway, I started giving this cunt a right larruping, but the thing is the cunt was loving it, begging me for more. Then his old lady started to jump all over him with her fucking stilettos. Fucking masochist weren’t he. Now even I know there’s no point in giving a fucking good hiding to a masochist. So, I just pulled me strides up and fucked off. But that weren’t the end of it, ‘cos about ten minutes later one of the chavvies from the shop came over to see me and handed me two hundred quid. It was from the couple. Reckoned it was the best time they’d ever had.’

  ‘That’s fucking sick, Ray. What did you do with the dough?’

  ‘Took the missus out for a nice curry and a couple of bottles of Moey.’

  ‘You’re a good husband, Ray.’

  ‘Think so, Billy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Wish you’d tell my missus that. She reckons I’m a fat disgusting bastard.’

  And that’s what I say about Fat Ray. The man’s an absolute scream, but at least the driving department for the Spud Murphy coup’s sorted out now. And I feel a whole lot better that we’ve got someone we can trust. It’s always hard when you have to reach outside your circles and bring in semi-straight-goers like Fat Ray, because that’s normally where you find the weakest links. And they’re always the ones that snap first if any bad shit goes down. But I’ll worry about that another day.

  Slipping down the stairs back into the shop, I’m just about ready to leave when this old boy comes hobbling out from the inside of the cinema. You know the sort. Sir Bufton Tufton type, straight outta the shires. Handlebar moustache, rolled up umbrella, highly polished brogues and gout. Not only is the old cunt as red as a beetroot, but he’s huffing and puffing and blowing smoke rings out of his ears. Obviously not a happy bunny.

  ‘You!’ he shouts at me, waving his brolly in my face. ‘In th… th… there. Those fer… fer… fucking… Je… Je… Jezebels on that screen, swallowing all that spunk. What a God-awful waste. Should be in my mouth, do you hear?!’

  You know what? Some things there just ain’t no answer to. I look at Greebo, he looks at me and we both shrug. And so, with the stench of stale spunk and cheap disinfectant still clogging my throat, I hurry straight through the door and out into the afternoon air. Only it ain’t much fresher.

  A two minute stroll down Wardour Street sees me hitting Chinatown and having to negotiate the hustle and bustle of industrious Chinese workers, heaving boxes and containers full of exotic goods and food produce and maybe even the sweet, sticky resin of the black poppy plant. After all, it weren’t that long ago in Limehouse, east London, home to the original Chinatown, that opium dens vied for business with those architects of mother’s ruin, the gin palaces, and where toffs slummed it with tarts and frittered away their time and unearned dough.

  My senses, only having just purged themselves of Soho’s sex-for-sale stench, now find themselves being harangued by a bewildering array of oriental smells, emanating out of the back of restaurant kitchens down dead-end alleys. Me and Danny own two freehold properties in this neck of the woods, both of which stick out like sore thumbs amidst the workaday honesty of the rest of the area, what with them being the usual uninhabitable slums operating without shame in the finest Soho porn baron tradition. Both house ropey brasses on the first and second floors respectively, hardcore porno cinemas on the ground floor, and both basements are deathtrap dinge-holes with no fire escapes, that we currently rent to a heavy-duty yellow peril for use as illegal, round the clock mah-jong dens. Mah-jong being a sort of Chinese backgammon, and on which the Chinese will gamble everything from a poxy Yul Brynner to entire restaurants, and it has been known for them even to wager a daughter’s hand in marriage.

  Not being a betting man myself I’ve never set foot in the gaffs, but I’ve been told that the cigarette smoke’s so thick you can cut it with a butterfly knife, and besides, if your eyes ain’t slanted you ain’t welcome anyway. For the Chinese are suspicious of outsiders. But that’s by the by, because for a damp basement with absolutely no facilities to speak of, they bring in great dough, and the mush we rent them to pays on the button with never a complaint.

  I’m the only ‘round eye’ that they’ll do business with in the West End, which I consider a dubious honour, plus you don’t normally get any grief from the yellow mob, because any trouble that surfaces they sort out internally, meat cleavers being their tools of choice. Although saying that, we very nearly came unstuck a couple of years ago, when a little firm of ex-Vietcong soldiers claimed asylum over here, moved into Chinatown and started to draw protection off of the Chinese, who found them a little bit too wild and woolly for their own taste.

  Charlie may not surf, but he can have a fucking tear-up! I mean he kicked Uncle Sam’s arse back stateside. And best believe, these little fuckers walked tall and even had the fucking audacity to start strolling into our gambling holes and passing round compulsory collection plates. We had no choice but to stand strong and tell them to fuck off, even though we knew we would be no match for battle hardened idealists with the ability to subsist on a handful each of rice a day. Things came to a head when a couple of games got turned over and a few Chinese were chopped up into suey by the Vietcong mob using butterfly knives. So me and Danny flopped on the leader of their firm, a former general and all round current psychopath, as he left an all-night kung fu flick in Gerrard Street during the early hours of one morning. And although he never spoke a word of English, it didn’t matter because after I copped for him and slammed him up against the car park wall, Danny shoved a revolver between his gold-capped teeth, the two us reasoning that a Colt Peacemaker with its hammer cocked back says the same thing in any language. And the message seemed to get through, because this
knee high to a grasshopper nuisance with flaring nostrils turned white on the spot and slunk away into the night in silence. But we’d severely underestimated the man and his ambition to carve out a new life in the west, and two weeks later him and his firm petrol-bombed one of our mah-jong dens in the early hours of a Saturday morning when the place was in full swing. And seeing as there was no fire escape, it meant that there was no way out for the poor bastards inside.

  A gallon of gasoline thrown into the room ignited into a hellish fireball that set the whole place ablaze. The terrible screams could be heard for blocks, as men came bursting out of the basement and onto the street, engulfed in flames from head to toe and staggering no more than a few yards like demented wickermen before falling dead in blackened and burning heaps. Seven Chinese men died that morning, their bodies still smouldering when the emergency services arrived. And another fourteen were so badly burnt as to be unrecognisable, their yellow skins scorched to the dark crinkly brown of crispy aromatic ducks. We prepared for war, a prospect we were dreading, thinking back to Uncle Sam’s unsuccessful foray, but luckily for us they got their collars felt and ended up getting recommended twenty-fives. It’s probably the only time Old Bill’s done us a favour, even though it was without them knowing it. After reaching the front entrance of Chen Chen Ku, my favourite dim sum house, a Chinese honey in a silk kimono bows to me, takes my jacket and then escorts me to our firm’s usual table, a King Arthur number seated in the rear of the restaurant, that not only affords us privacy from nose ointments, but is positioned so that we can keep one eye peeled on the front door. Seated around it when I arrive is my partner Danny and Johnny Peacock the tailor, both of whom are already tucking into a variety of steam-cooked dishes.