I’M STILL FLYING high as a kite and trying to hold it down as I pull away from my Brighton flat to take the coast road leading to the nearby Seaford Cliffs, having just loaded three holdalls containing nearly four hundred grand onto the back seat of my motor. It’s all the readies I have in the world at the moment, and it’s true what my uncle Deaffy told me, it chucks up real bad. It goes without saying that every bit of dough that passes through anyone’s fingers has its own story to tell, but I doubt if any of it will have as bloody a history as any of this stuff on my back seat. It makes me laugh to think I used to get a serious stork on over the smell of this shit. And thinking about it further, there’s one other thing that really cracks me up, and that’s when you get those pony British gangster films that the poncey upper middle classes knock out every now and then. You know the ones, where after a bit of graft the mockney, RADA-taught gunman, or whatever, gets weighed off and the dough comes up all in fifties, wrapped nice and stashed in little black briefcases. Total fucking bollocks! Crooked dough comes as it comes, sometime big notes, sometimes little notes, but nearly always in supermarket carrier bags, and always chucking up to high heaven. You take it as you can get it. The wind outside is beating what must be near gale-force as I pull in adjacent to the cliffs and park up in a small man-made clearing. A quick shufti about the gaff lets me know it’s deserted. Well, only a lunatic would think of walking them on a day like today. After unzipping the holdalls and pouring lighter fuel over the dough, I wind down a couple of windows halfway to allow combustion, get out of the motor then set the whole caboodle alight, before closing the door behind me and walking off to meet my destiny, with my head down and shoulders hunched against the elements.
I ain’t got far when the sound of the car’s windscreen cracking under the intense heat causes me to stop and peer back over my shoulder, to see my dough, now enveloped in a fierce crackling inferno of blue and yellow flame, shooting the last ten years of my life heavenward in a swirling, snaking column of acrid black smoke. And you know what? I don’t give two fucks. Instead, I simply turn back to face front and carry on walking, when for no reason I can fathom, I let rip with a large burst of manic laugher, while by force of habit pulling out my revolver to check it for bullets. But then more madness, as I find myself becoming extremely distressed to find there’s one missing from the chamber. A panic ensues as I rack my brains violently, cranking my cells and wondering where the fuck it is. But sanity prevails once more, with the sudden realisation I left it buried in Big Spud’s skull. A long winding path leads me down to some fifty feet or so from the cliff’s edge, where I’m stopped dead in my tracks by an oncoming wind, howling like a banshee as it belts in over the top of the English Channel, and seemingly mustering all its might in its endeavour to push me back inland, as if trying to dissuade me from meeting my maker. But it’s going to take a lot more than a little bit of inclement English weather to stop this muchacho from completing his mission. So I drop to my hands and knees and start to crawl over the damp grass, thinking, oh the fucking ignominy of it. Because I had a grand vision of myself bowling straight over the edge like a lovelorn matinee idol. Instead, here I am creeping along on all fours and heading to my doom like a lemming.
But today ain’t a day to worry about what’s made up most of my existence, that of style over substance. Because I’ve now only got twenty more feet or so to go, after which, the war with myself will be over, and my entire life will have been no more than a horrible fucking nightmare, worthy of nothing more than a few cobbled together lines in the local rag. Today’s news, tomorrow some tramp’s bog roll. Then just when I think the wind’s getting up even stronger, by grace or good fortune, or maybe just the fact that somebody up there really does love me, it drops to a gentle breeze, just like that. And so, I climb to my feet, tidy up my barnet and move almost to the cliff edge and prepare myself to jump, when a chorus of ear-shattering squawks above me distracts me from my task, occasioning me to look up to see a small flock of nose-ointment seagulls, that have come down to watch this sorry-arse end-of-the-pier show. And what’s more, one of the cheeky little feathered cunts has dropped twenty feet from its flock to get right in my face and is just hanging there in the wind laughing its head off at me. Now, I know I’m in a bad way, but I ain’t in such a bad way that I’m having a seagull take the piss out me. So, quickly pulling my gun back out, I cock back the hammer and blow it to smithereens, watching with no small amount of satisfaction as it drops like ball of hot snot before disappearing under the precipice below me in a tangled mass of blood, guts and fluttering feathers. With the rest of the seagulls taking the hint and flapping frantically back off across the channel, I now steady myself, take one last look along the coast, before glancing tentatively down at the waves crashing into a foaming froth onto the rocks below. Then it hits me. I’m scared of fucking heights. That’s right. Ever since I fell of a garage roof when I was a kid and broke my arm, I ain’t never ever been able to climb even five steps up a ladder before suffering terrible attacks of vertigo. So why the fuck did I choose jumping off a cliff as a way to commit suicide? Must be the fucking drugs, they’re not letting me think straight!
The dread of the long drop down sends me staggering back about fifteen feet, where I collapse onto my back and violently spew up a mouthful of green milky bile all down the front of my designer duds, and I don’t even have a hankie to wipe myself clean. Instead, I roll over onto my stomach and rub myself off as best I can on the grass. So now things are getting sadder, because not only is my clobber covered with the stench and stain of drying vomit, but my mouth is tingling with that terrible taste of leftover sick. And I forget to pack the Wrigleys! But then I reason, what the fuck, for in a few minutes I’ll be an unrecognisable mess, splattered like Humpty Dumpty on the rocks below with probably not enough of me left for a burial, after the crabs and the fishes have had their go. Fuck all that burial shit anyway. As far as I’m concerned they can scrape up what’s left, lob me straight in the back of a dustcart and ferry me off to the local tip and toss me in alongside the rest of the garbage. It’d be a fitting end to my lifetime’s achievement.
After a quick breather to gather my senses, I spin round on my stomach and crawl back to the cliff’s edge like a lizard, to peer back over and watch as the waves crash and pound the rocks, spraying swell twenty feet into the air. And I can’t even see the seagull I shot. Nothing, not a feather or single spot of blood. Every inch of it has been devoured by the incoming tide and sucked down to a watery grave. But it’s got me to thinking that maybe, just maybe, jumping off a cliff to end it all ain’t such a good idea. Seems like a pretty painful way to go, in the scheme of things. Worse than jumping in front of train. And least with that you get the satisfaction of fucking up the day up for Joe Cunt commuter. And how about if, after having jumped, I don’t die straight away. I’m shit-scared of drowning as well. Standing back up I take a moment to deliberate, and decide to shoot myself in the head as I make the leap. That way I’ll make sure I’m brown bread before I hit the rocks. And so, with my mind now made up, I put my gun to the side of my head and click back the hammer. Just one small squeeze, then it’ll all be over. I close my eyes and here I go. Silence. The calm before the storm.
My phone rings. Can you fucking believe it? I forgot I even had the cunt-eyed thing on me. Surely I can’t answer it now, not when I’m just about to top myself. I always said these things were a fucking menace. No privacy. But this is one cat that curiosity can’t kill because I’m nearly already dead. But you know what it’s like with a ringing phone, you just have to answer it. And so I do. And now picture the absurdity of this. I’m standing on the edge of a cliff tripping my fucking nut off. I’ve got a gun in my right ear, a phone in my left ear, and parked up a few yards behind me is an ex-Old Bill motor on fire with nearly four hundred grand in it. Not what you’d call a conventional lifestyle, is it?
‘Hello?’ I shout into the phone.
‘It’s me, Delroy,’ comes back
the reply.
‘You fucking cunt!’ I scream back at him. ‘What did I tell you about ringing me?’
‘Sorry, mate, it’s important. Where are you?’
‘Standing on the edge of a cliff just about to blow my fucking brains out.’
‘Don’t fuck about, man, this is serious.’
‘I ain’t fucking about. What’s the matter then?’
‘The Spud Murphy dough’s here, we gotta pick it up in the morning.’
‘I don’t need it where I’m going, son. You can have my share, how about that?’
‘Don’t be silly, man, for fuck’s sake. I mean if you don’t show, your firm ain’t gonna weigh me on are they? They’ll tell me to fuck off and then that’s it, back to sucking on sherbet dips. Oh man, you can’t do this to me.’
‘For fuck’s sake, every time I try and get out, something or some cunt drags me back in. You are one mongrel-eyed fucking string vest, do you know that? And by the way, anything been said about anyone getting topped?’
‘Ain’t heard fuck all, Billy.’
‘I tell you one thing, this is the last fucking time any of you lot do this to me. Pick me up at my London gaff in the morning.’
‘Sweet, nice one, Billy.’ And with that I cut the prick off and take a few steps backwards to sanity, stashing both my gun and phone back inside my respective jacket pockets as I do so, while at the same time taking a final look out to sea, before turning and strolling slowly back inland, only this time with the added burden of yet another failed suicide tucked under my Cartier belt. Jesus Christ, I mean I only set fire to my past in the belief I had no future, but now I’ve been dragged back into the fray once more, and all to bail out Delroy because he ain’t got the bollocks to stand up for himself. It’s a fucking failure of mine, that matter how much of a slag I think I am, or how precarious my own situation, I just can’t say no to a friend that needs a leg up.
Smoke’s still billowing from my motor as I make my way back, and in the distance the wailing siren of an approaching fire engine fills my ears. So to avoid any further complications, I decide to make my way back onto the Brighton road using an alternative path. After fighting my way back to the main drag through sprawling nests of bramble bushes that spitefully tear at my clothes and exposed flesh, I stop to have a quick rifle through my pockets, gutted to find the cupboard bare. In fact, I’m so fucking boracic I don’t even have enough shrapnel to slum it back home on a bus, which means it’s going to a long lonely walk back to my pad and my life once more. But looking at the bright side, at least the stress of the attempted suicide has knocked the bollocks out of my acid trip. The weather’s starting to clear up, and what’s left of the day’s beginning to look really beautiful. There’s even a rainbow forming. And I’ve just remembered that Once Upon A Time In America, the director’s cut, is on at the Odeon Leicester Square tonight. Think I’ll lose myself in that for a few hours. It’s one of the greatest movies ever made. Very evocative watching the birth of a new nation, when anything was possible. Plus, it’s one of the few times on celluloid where you actually get to see tough Jews sticking it big-time to the goyim, instead of the usual platter where us mob is seen being shoved into cattle trucks and then led like pacified sheep to be gassed and melted down for soap in concentration camp crematoriums. If more Yiddisher mushes were bad to the bone like Bugsy Siegel and Louis Lepke, those Nazi slags would have been fought to a standstill.
But besides the film, the Odeon Leicester Square is such a great theatre. Massive art deco auditorium, like cinemas used to be before they carved them up into pony little shoebox multiplexes full of popcorn crunching Cro-Magnons. And because it’s such an anonymous gaff, it’s fantastic for causing a bit of mischief. You see what I just love to do is buy one of those large packets of chocolate peanuts and then find a nice quiet little plot somewhere near the back. I then place the chocolate peanuts one at time on the nail of my right thumb, and start flicking the little fuckers at heads way down in front of me. In fact, I’ve got it down to such a fine art that from the back row I can hit right up near the front with virtually hardly any arm movement. I’ve started loads of brilliant fights like that, because when the peanuts hit some mug on the back of their canister, they’ll gander round and blame someone sitting nearby, and not little old me plotted all on his lonesome right at the back. It’s the little things in life like that, that keeps me from going over the edge, literally sometimes. The four hundred grand? Fuck it, there’s plenty more where that come from, and let me put it this way, on reflection I consider that burning to be sort of sacrificial. Which means that by doing it, I’ve just liberated myself from all the death and destruction it took to earn it. And it’s only dough. Dough ain’t my guv’nor; never has been, never will be. Besides, I’ve still a large fucking parcel to pick up tomorrow, which is more than enough to get me into the charlie game with my Cuban pals down in Miami.
TEN THE NEXT morning and I’ve been up since six, fresh as a daisy, straight and stone-cold sober, and pacing my living room floor biting my nails to the quick. My firm’s just pulled up outside and belled me through the intercom system, so I guess it’s time to go. But now that I am totally straight, to say that I’m more than a little gutted about burning all my dough yesterday is the understatement of the fucking year. I’m as sick as a pig on a spit-roast. That’ll teach me not to fuck with acid. Probably not. Of course, I’d love to think that I can jack in all the other shit I poison myself with as well. But alas, when you’re a compulsive, as I am, abstinence merely makes the heart grow fonder. That don’t mean I’ve changed my mind about slipping out the back door, which means that once we’ve got hold of the Spud Murphy dough and carved it up, I’ll be off with a suitcase full of dough, a snide passport and a shitload of useless memories. I’m fucked if I’m going to spend any more of my life sitting round Formica tables talking bollocks and dodging bullets. Yeah, I got in too deep, but now I’m just counting my lucky stars I’ve still got the wherewithal to cut my losses and make a break for the border, with my faculties still reasonably intact. After steeling myself with a couple of quick charlie hits and bidding a fond farewell to in the inside of my flat, I slam the front door behind me, lodge my keys down the rubbish chute and stroll towards the lift, with the noise of their clinking echoing inside my skull as they tumble down into the basement bins.
Eventually the lift arrives and I walk in, hit the ground floor button and descend. After a toe-tapping eternity, the doors open and I step out into the plush and soothing aura of the reception, tipping a final wink to the day and night porter, before strolling out onto the street outside through a set of automatic revolving doors, their smoked-glass windows masking a deceptively bright morning that sends spiteful shards of piercing sunlight into my eyes, stopping me momentarily in my tracks. After slinging on the obligatory wrap-arounds to ease the pain, I walk the couple of yards to our firm’s Mercedes, open the back door and slide into the seat next to Frankie, with Stevie sitting to his right. As soon as I slam the door shut behind me, the bad atmosphere hits me in the face like a wet packet of shit. Ain’t none of the soreheads saying a word, not even Delroy, who’s fuck-all part of the equation anyway, but who’s nevertheless sitting upfront in the passenger seat next to Danny, and staring straight ahead with a face like a Catholic catamite on his way to hell. And besides, what a stinking fucking liberty it is to be blackballed by these barbarians, just because they consider me to be a naughty boy for killing without their consent. Fuck ‘em, they don’t have any credentials whatsoever to send me to Coventry. Sometimes I reckon they forget that like me they ain’t no more than parasites, growing fat and ugly while gorging on the rotting underbelly of society, and who won’t be happy till they’ve sucked every last drop of its lifeblood dry, leaving nothing left but a soulless skeleton. With all of us sitting here in tetchy stone-cold silence, Danny finally hits the gas and we glide away from the front of my apartment block, and I just can’t help but take one last peek back, remembering bo
th the good times and the bad times it’s seen me through. But it’s then that the uncertainty of my new future kicks me hard in the guts, causing a feeling of sickness to wash over me like a damp dirty flannel. And it’s all I can do to grit my teeth, face back front and scream silently at myself to hold it down. Because I’m on my own now and have to stay strong, or else I’ll crumble like a cookie dipped in coffee.
As we hit Jamaica Road I peer out through the side window, swallowing the passing sights wholesale and for what may be the last time. And it strikes me as somewhat ironic that as much as I’m always griping about London being a piss-hole, I start getting this strange feeling I am going to miss it. Perhaps Delroy’s right about it being in the blood. But one thing I do know at least and that is that if I do venture back to the shores of this septic isle once more, I’ll be a better man than I am now. A more humane being. Not like this fucking mob. They’ll still be stewing in their own little cauldrons of petty hatreds and jealousies, while the rest of the world moves on. It’s called progress. Look what it done to the dinosaurs! But just take a look at this fucking gaff. It’s one blurred mass of cranes, skyscrapers and construction sites. Everything’s changing so fast round here that it bears no resemblance to the city I cut my teeth on as a kid. This, the bottom end of Bermondsey for instance is one of my old, old stomping grounds. And that gaff over there that’s now a tonced-up Thai restaurant, catering for the recently-arrived hoards of yuppie cunts, used to be a khazi of a boozer for locals called the William the Fourth. It was in there one night that a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads came in and dug out one of my pals, Jimmy Whisky, solely because he was drinking with a black bird. It went off big-time, and we smashed the granny out of their pig-ignorant skulls. Left them bleeding and bewildered and rolling in the gutters, crying for their mummies. We even mullered one with a fire extinguisher. And when the ambulance crew finally arrived and took one look at him laying there with his half his head caved in and his body smashed to a pulp, they were convinced he’d been hit by a car.
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