Jessie Keane - The Make

‘You’re not sayin’ much, Lefty old son.’

Now Deano stood up. Lefty took a step back. Deano was so big that he seemed to fill up the entire low-ceilinged room with his bulk. Deano could intimidate without even trying. He was solid as a brick wall and his eyes showed about the same level of feeling. He had a shaven head as big and round as a bowling-ball and a ridiculously neat little goatee beard. Deano was a vicious bender, everyone knew that; he’d been worked over good and proper by his father at an early age, everyone knew that too. Everyone also knew that Deano had offed his own father as soon as he’d had the size and strength to do it. Whether or not being shafted by his own dear old dad had turned him, no one knew – and no one was going to ask either, that was for sure. Certainly not Lefty, anyway. Live and let live, that was Lefty’s motto. Just so long as the big creep wasn’t trying to stuff it up his arse, he didn’t give a shit.

‘I told you what happened, Deano. It’s the God’s honest truth,’ said Lefty. He could hear the pathetic whine in his own voice, but he couldn’t help it.

‘But you were meant to be keeping an eye on my boy,’ said Deano mildly, drawing closer.

Jesus, thought Lefty in a spasm of terror. His guts were going up and down like Tower Bridge.

‘I know that.’ Lefty held his hands out, palms down, in a gesture of suppression, saying, Hey let’s calm this down, shall we? And Deano looked calm, but then, he always did. Even when he was getting ready to rip someone’s throat out. ‘Listen, Deano. It’s not a big deal because I’ll find him, okay? I got the boys out looking already, and he can’t have gone far. We’ll get your boy back. No sweat.’

‘Oh, you’d better sweat, my friend,’ said Deano, looming ever closer. Now he was standing right in front of Lefty.

Lefty was sweating, he was sweating buckets. He could feel nervous perspiration popping out all over his body. Could feel his face wreathed in a shit-eating sort of grin, like a junior ape trying to placate a silverback. His heart was beating very fast. His wounded head was throbbing with every single beat.

‘Tell me again, Lefty.’

‘Nothing to tell, Deano. This bastard hit me with a pole. When I came round, Alfie was gone.’

‘This bastard, what was he like then?’

Lefty shrugged hopelessly. ‘Big. Thickset. Darkish hair. I don’t know.’

‘Only, you know those Bond films, the bit where Blofeld sits there stroking his cat?’ asked Deano.

‘I . . .’

‘And you know what he says, that bald, ugly, scar-faced bastard, you know what he’s telling his troops?’

‘I don’t . . .’

‘You don’t? Well I’ll tell you. It’s a gas, Lefty. One of the boys has fucked up some vital thing, and what Blofeld is saying is, This organisation does not tolerate failure,’ Deano grinned, displaying perfect white veneers. ‘Well, guess what, Lefty? This one don’t either.’

Deano reached out a casual hand, grasped Lefty’s testicles, and squeezed.

Lefty shrieked and went up on tiptoe. ‘Holy shit, Deano,’ he cried out.

‘That hurt?’ asked Deano, close in to Lefty and inflicting terrible, sick-making pain.

Lefty could only nod, his face twisted in anguish now.

‘Try this.’ Deano squeezed tighter. Lefty thought he was going to pass out from the agony of it. ‘Hurt?’ enquired Deano.

Lefty nodded.

‘Good.’ Deano released his grip and Lefty collapsed in a blubbering heap to his knees. Deano stared at the crumpled man for a long moment and then he casually drew back an elegantly shod foot and kicked him hard in the stomach.

Lefty sprawled back, gibbering no Deano, don’t, please don’t, no more and curling himself into a tight ball.

Deano shoved him hard with his toe. ‘Now you listen up, cunt. I want my boy Alfie back, you got that?’

Lefty was nodding frantically.

‘Or else I’m going to cut your freakin’ balls right off, you got me?’ Deano said. ‘And then I’m gonna stuff ’em down your stupid throat.’

Alfie was his, and some fucker had dared to snatch him away. When Deano caught up with this arsehole – and he would – he promised himself that this cunt and anyone associated with him was going to suffer. His family, his friends, anyone.

‘Now get your useless arse outta my house, you tosser,’ he told Lefty.

Lefty crawled to his feet and, limping, left the room. Everything hurt. And what hurt even worse was the panicky knowledge that he didn’t have a clue where to start looking for the boy. Not a fucking clue.

Chapter 9

‘Shall I tell you what I’d do, Lefty?’

Gordon was built like a tank and he was sitting, over-spilling his cheap plastic seat, in a café in the Mile End Road with his colleague Lefty Umbabwe. Lefty looked like death; his dark skin was greyish with strain, his head stapled up like Frankenstein’s monster. He’d come in limping, and Gordon had said, hey, wassup? Trying not to laugh, and failing. He’d never seen such a mess as Lefty in his entire life.

‘What would you do?’ asked Lefty, drinking tea and wishing it was whisky. His bollocks ached. His head ached. His mind whirled with desperation. He needed another whiff from his butane can, but he couldn’t do that here in the café; he’d get them both chucked out. ‘Come on man. Really. I’d like some help here.’

Lefty had poured out the whole tale of woe to Gordon. How he’d lost track of Deano’s boy, during the honeymoon period. Deano wasn’t sick of the sight of the kid yet, which was what always happened in the end with Deano and his grand amours.

What always happened was this: Deano’s people picked the kids off the streets, because the streets of London were paved with gold, everyone knew that, and they all headed here. The stupid kids thought they were going to make their fortune, join a band, become a star; it was all going to happen for them in London town.

Sadly, it didn’t work like that. It worked like this: the kids found themselves cold and hungry on the streets and, if they were lucky, they went back home with their tails between their legs. If they were unlucky, they fell prey to loitering paedos like Deano, who drugged them up and used them for their own amusement for a few weeks; then, when the nonces grew weary of their charms, they farmed the kids out at a handsome profit to their fancy bender friends.

‘I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d throw myself in the bleeding river,’ said Gordon, and burst into peals of laughter.

Lefty stared at Gordon. ‘Hey, you think this is funny?’ He jumped to his feet. It hurt. He winced. Gordon caught the wince and that made him laugh even more.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Gordon, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. ‘But Christ, Lefty, what a fucking to-do. What the hell happened? You’ve played babysitter lots of times before, why’d you balls it up now?’

Lefty slumped back into his seat. ‘I got the dose wrong. Thought the boy was well under, but he gave me the slip. Ran out of the club, legged it. It was night-time, black as your frigging hat too. I had a bad time tracking the little cunt down, then this bastard butts in – and before I knew it he whacks me and then Alfie’s gone.’

‘Well, my friend, now it’s official: you’re in the shit.’ Gordon worked for Deano too, as a bouncer on the door of Deano’s fetish club Shakers. He knew Deano from way back. Knew what a twisted git he was, and he knew Deano would make Lefty pay hard for this.

‘I know that.’ Lefty stared at Gordon, who was tucking into a big fry-up.

‘You should have used your loaf in the first place, checked the dose, and you wouldn’t be in this bind.’

‘Yeah. I know.’

‘Fact is, Lefty, you’re lucky you can find your dick to take a piss these days, the amount of stuff you keep sniffing. Something like this was just bound to happen.’