Cracking Up (12 page)

As I hid in the darkness there was a commotion. Kylie, the little bit of fluff that had text Caspar, had come out of the house, quickly followed by a top fucking sex pest, Dee-Ko: One of my targets. He was staggering about, stoned on coke, crack, booze or some combination of all that and more. I might have reeked of robbed weed, but my head was straight and my mood was ugly.

Kylie was a tasty little number with long sexy legs, cute face and tight in the waist. It looked like he’d been attempting to cop off with her, but she’d blown him out. She had hold of her fake fur coat and was hobbling down the path in too-high heels, off home for the head down.

Booze-fuelled super stud had other ideas and I watched carefully as he caught up with her and tried to coax her into a bit of slap and tickle, pestering her like a horny dog after a bitch on heat. She was having none of it and shouted at him to FUCK OFF, leave her A-FUCKIN-LONE.

He grabbed her from behind and ripped her top open, exposing a lovely pert set of tits. She staggered backward, went ballistic, screaming “DIRTY BASTARD!”

“Fucking slag!” he shouted. He lunged toward her and she lashed out in a losing battle. She raked open one side of his face with her nails, blood was running down his cheek.

A few of his mates had spilled out of the house and were hovering nearby like sly fuck-vultures waiting for the kill and their share of the pickings. For certain lads around these streets an enforced gang-bang was viewed as a normal night’s entertainment. I was about to spoil the sex show for these low-life animals.

I went in for the kill. As I walked quietly from my hiding place I was just in time to see Dee-Ko punch Kylie flush in the face. That one punch bust her eye socket and she fell backwards over the knee-high retaining wall and slammed the back of her head on the pavement, knocking her out cold. Her head made a sickening cracking noise as it hit, fracturing her skull and a pool of blood ponded straight away. The boys were on her in a flash, ripping her knickers off like the sicko rapists that they were. “Oi, you dirty little fuckers,” I shouted.

Dicks went limp, as all eyes turned in my direction. I moved confidently forward, assumed the position, standing legs apart, the nine milli clenched in two hands at arms length, pointed straight at Dee-Ko’s head. Everybody just stood there for a frozen moment until they realized my bodily mannerisms screamed DANGER. I squeezed the trigger and let one off with a loud crack, the bullet went through his cheek, blew a ragged hole through the Mug Fam tattoo on his face and smashed out his teeth, spinning him around and dumping him on the ground. His white hoodie had exploded with red as he groaned, scrambling on his hands and knees back towards the house.

The others bolted for it, jumping into a car to make a quick exit while they still had the chance. But one of their troops stood his ground, pulled a burner from his waistband and aimed at my chest. He squeezed the trigger, but the gun jammed. Quickly, he turned on his heels and ran after his mates in the motor. He wasn’t quick enough: I tracked him with the shooter and started firing. CRACK! A bullet knocked him off his feet, slamming into his back and exiting through his belly. Blood spewed out of him, all over the pavement. CRACK! Another shot rang out. Just as the car full of sworn enemies was about to start up and go, the bullet whizzed down the street, smashing straight through the back window. Broken glass shattered and sprayed the inside of the car, the bullet went through all the seats and hit one of the bastards in the arse.

Lights were flicked on and the curtains up and down the close began to twitch with all the commotion and a few brave party goers actually came out into the street, claiming to have called the bizzies into the drama. I pointed the burner at them and shouted that no fucker move, but I backed the fuck off. At this point, I’d done enough damage and had no further interest in ruining their party, especially as events were fast approaching a police intervention. I was beginning to get a little nervous about the inevitable arrival of a Matrix unit. Armed bizzies are no laughing matter, they’re trained killer crackshots and it was time to do a runner.

I sprinted back to the motor at the top of the close. Caspar saw me coming and started to pull out onto the main road with a long screech of rubber. “Serves them fucking right. That’s what you get when you go gangster on us and they won’t be fucking with the Ju$tu$ Crew anytime soon,” I said. Mission accomplished, we headed back to our end of the estate. It had been a highly-strung and blood-spattered night. We needed to turn it in and give it a rest, have a good few fat spliffs and the pussy plants were piled high in the back of the motor. We were buzzing our tits off again, the pure adrenaline rush was addictive and the anxiety levels had lowered. We couldn’t get enough of it, the stunts and the action, but needed to come back down to planet earth and calm the fuck down a bit.

17.

We’d started cracking up again, the drug dealing venture was back on with a vengeance. The days followed the same pattern of rising early in the afternoon, having a cup of brew and a weed. Then out the door and off to work in the crack close, which was virtually within spitting distance of the home.

Dog Sick had organized a stash house, which suited us lot down to the ground because we were sick to our back teeth braving the elements, flogging gear out on the streets in the cold and wet. He had secured a house in Gravesend Close on our end of the estate. The property was ideal for our criminally bent purposes, Dog Sick reckoned. Most of the tenants had moved out of the Godforsaken hole, which meant no nosey twats to notify the bizzies of the goings on.

He had a quiet word with Leslie, the occupant of the house and a deal was struck and the next day we installed ourselves double quick in to her gaff.

Lez was a big-boned bitch, six-feet tall in her clown’s feet, which happened to be a whopping size twelve. Big fuck-off hands like toilet seats, she was no damsel in distress, let’s put it that way; she could hold her own. She’d gone clubbing one night, got shit-faced and pissed herself on the dancefloor. When security dragged her arse off, she’d punched one of the bouncers in the face, broke his tooth and got barred. Even though she was a bit past it at thirty, she would take some fucking, that much was for sure: A horny, willing lass all right but, I mean, a fat cow and a visit to Weight Watchers wouldn’t have hurt. She was always flirting, making overt sexual suggestions because I suppose big, ugly girls like a bit of cock too. That’s what beer’s for - innit? But I weren’t no chubby chaser, wished she’d keep her sweaty mitts off my arse cheeks and let me study how she cooked the rocks up, the BIG FAT FREAK!

She proved to be a valuable asset around the house though, being pretty well-gifted in the art of cooking. I’d never found much time for that sissy shit, it was all done for me at home by my mam. None of the other lads were equipped with the knowledge or necessary expertise to get to grips with the chip pan. Lez kept the food appearing at regular intervals, keeping our bellys full up and our spirits high. Like they say: You have to feed your soldiers or they can’t fight the battle. It was a good decision to let her get involved, I thought, especially as she not only served us the fry ups, pies and chips, but had also mastered the urban criminal art of cooking the rocks.

Pregnant when she was convicted of multiple benefit frauds, she had just emerged from a lengthy sentence because she was a repeat offender. Once on license, she’d been full of optimism but the bailiffs had been hounding her over unpaid bills, she had pains in her chest because she didn’t have any money and no means of earning an honest wage, especially with a criminal record and the little black cloud of a sentence still hanging over her character. She wasn’t making very good progress down the job centre and Dog Sick had taken her to one side and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse as it were, which she willingly accepted in her desperation. Upon incarceration, she’d given birth and the nipper had been taken into the care of social services. She was wild with the need to get some dough behind her and claim the shit critter back. Which was fair enough, I suppose.

It was a graft late afternoon and into the night set-up, and it worked pretty fucking well. It was amazingly easy to do the bizzo: there were fifteen joeys putting the work in around the marketplace. Punters would pull up in cars at the top of the close by the telephone kiosk and the lads would serve up in seconds. Whey hey, the motors were off down the road, no looking back. Herds of bagheads and crack fiends would come skulking around the close in their tattie trackies and smelly cheap trainers with that desperate glare in their eyes of fiends in dire need of a quick score, then disappear into the surrounding walkways of the estate like a puff of dragon smoke.

The lads on the frontline kept their heads up, constantly keeping a sharp, lookout for the drugs squad who would have the marketplace under covert surveillance and would often send undercover bummers in to make buys. The lads were on edge, wearing body armour and balaclavas, and would often challenge new faces. One time they were approached by a geezer with designer stubble, wearing squeaky clean jeans and a brand new Berghaus Vorlich Gore-Tex waterproof jacket. “I want to score some nasty,” he said, in an exaggerated conspiratorial tone of voice.

If someone’s lingo or look was wrong, the lads would know because fifty-five percent of communication is body language. They fronted him. “Are you a fucking copper or what?”

“No fucking way!” he replied.

“You reckon?”

He denied he was a copper again and kept banging on about the drugs. “Look, lads: Do you want to do the bizzo or what?”

His line of patter sounded suspicious and they eye-fucked him up and down, then told him straight. “Nah! You’re a fucking bizzie!”

“Am I fuck?” he said, further denying the accusation flat.

The boys weren’t having it. “You can fuck right off, mate!”

The copper was subjected to a barrage of abuse, as he slopped off. He’d been sussed and the best thing for it now was a quick, non-violent exit with a chorus ringing in his ears. “Fuck off out of it, you bizzie cunt!” “Yeh, piss off, fucking filth!” “Beast! Beast! Beast!”.

The troops were all young uns, prospects keeping dixie on mountain bikes, or on foot leashed up with pitbulls, serving as spotters, lookouts for the bizzies and acting as dogs bodies doing the joey jobs. Older foot soldiers served up and took the dough. This was a likkle dangerous, they were exposed on the frontline and had to be careful of the police and rip-offs because they were out in the open.

I was now the top lad in charge of the operation and swaggered it over the entire crew. Other lads acted as the muscle that protected the crew and the money-spinning bizzo. We were tooled up to the eyeballs, had all kinds of weapons on hand and weren’t shy about using them. Our menacing presence on the close ensured a fear-filled respect from the envious eyes of the opposition, or so we thought. We were making TOP TILL, and our crew’s reputation for bad intentions was intimidating. When we flexed, we went to the extreme because we were addicted to currency and buzzed off the adrenalised action like Scarface Tony Montana.

A typical day in the life of the crew at the drugs mission went something like this: I would be buzzing around between the stashhouse and the close, giving loads of orders out to the muscle, pestering the joeys and threatening to DO the poor kids if they didn’t GET ON WITH IT! The kids would have just received their snap bags of goodies and, wasting no time, were instantly doing the bizzo. It wouldn’t take long for the druggies to come along and have the lot off us, boosting gang funds nicely.

Lez would be in the kitchen, singing along to the latest crap pop tunes on the radio and engrossed in the method of sorting the crack out, filling a pan with water then placing it on the gas cooker. While the water was coming to the boil, she’d reach into the fridge and pull out the baking soda. She’d pour ounces of the baking soda into the pan, watching it swirl in the rapidly heating pan, then with both hands, adding the ounces of coke and keeping a close eye on the dangerous cocktail that threatened to bubble over and explode until the rocks formed. She was like a narcotic Gordon Ramsey and the crack coming out of that council house kitchen was ridiculously intoxicating and being tossed in the direction of the punters double quick.

Some of the lads would be at the kitchen table, chopping and cutting up the wholesale smack. Unfortunately, the nasty gear lost some of its potency by the time the punters got their grubby paws on it, which meant that they would have to go straight back out on the rob again to pay for more. The boys were hard at it, weighing it out on the triple beam scales and bagging it up along with speed, weed and ecstasy - whatever the punters needed. It was fucking hard work but the graft was peppered with breaks to indulge in the crew’s favourite pastime of inhaling the pussy skunk.

This was the crew. We grafted, battled and stuck it out together. We were double confident on our patch, being mob-handed and armed to the teeth, the only bunch of twats in town that mattered. The camaraderie was strong within the crew, which made the process of flogging drugs an easier task than if we were a fractured outfit with little in the way of team spirit, but we were still having to slog it out like the rest of the other crews to earn a crust. It was fucking hard keeping the money earning side of the venture turning over because the lads were, by nature, lazy fuckers and I had to kick a few cunts in to set an example. But for the most part, happily surrounded by the rest of the crew, the lads were grafting and raking it in.

The dough was certainly rolling in but we weren’t getting rich, far from it, as most of the money that came from the streets went straight back to Dog Sick. The wages we were receiving were actually pitiful, but Dog Sick kept telling us the overheads of the operation, the drugs, the logistics, were costing him mega money and re-assurring us that it would only be a matter of time and patience before we could begin to reap the rewards.