“Trainspotting for the viagra generation” – Sunday Mirror
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THE CARPET KING OF TEXAS
Paul Kennedy
First published in 2010 by Empire Publications
Smashwords Edition
© Paul Kennedy 2010
ISBN: 1901746674
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Empire Publications at Smashwords
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This book is available in print at:
http://www.empire-uk.com/thecarpetkingoftexas.html
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For my Mam & Dad
although it may be for the best if you don’t read it
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Acknowledgements
Lots of people have helped me put this book together with their continued support, stories and inspiration. First of all I’d like to thank my partner, Karen, who paid most, if not all, of the bills while I wrote it!
For general piss-taking and providing me with a wealth of ideas, I’d like to thank my mates, Sogsy, Boz, Mark Dykes, Craig Cowen, Saul Dykes-Wright and Julian Riley. And also Brian Rock for helping make my research trip to Amsterdam (research, yeah right) probably the funniest three days of my life. Justine McVitie, Mike Hill Roy Wright and Christian Gould all deserve a massive thank you along with “fellow author” Karen Woods and everyone at Empire.
I’d also like to thank Paula Kennedy (no relation), a friend from Texas I’ve never met but someone who gave me invaluable local knowledge. Pete Hanson and everyone at All City Media and Paul Johnson at Bluechip were a great help and finally I’d like to thank my sister Ann and brother Kev, without whom, none of this would have ever been possible.
Cheers.
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Based on real-life characters and events, the author has drawn on his experiences as a tabloid journalist for the content of ‘The Carpet King of Texas’ - only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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1
The needle on the floor wasn’t really that dirty. And any dirt in it, belonged to Jade in the first place. It was her dirt. Without giving it much thought, she picked it up and rinsed it under the tap, not bothering to clean the dishes in the sink. Blood, her blood, washed away down the plug hole along with the remains of a Chinese take-away she couldn’t remember ordering or for that matter eating.
Jade didn’t eat much anyway. Her tiny frame was testimony to that. She had always been a slim girl but never this slim, never six stone. She was probably less, it had been a while since she last weighed herself. It was one of the drawbacks of heroin abuse, not eating, along with not remembering.
There was no tea-towel in the flat. Maybe at some point there had been one, but Jade couldn’t remember owning a tea-towel, or ever buying one. She used her tee shirt to dry the syringe before sitting back down on a scruffy red couch.
Her room was sparse, there was nothing in it of value. A television, DVD and stereo system had long been pawned, along with her collection of CDs. She didn’t really miss any of them, except maybe Take That’s Greatest Hits, the first one. Her mother bought her that when she passed six GCSEs three years before.
“You’ll go to University one day, luv,” her mum told her and anyone who would listen. “She’s a bright girl, our Jade.”
The wallpaper in the flat was tired, stained with years of cigarette smoke by previous tenants and worn out at the corners but Jade didn’t care too much for the decor, it was a place to sleep, get her head down. A place to bring punters back to.
“You going to be long in there honey?” shouted the man from behind the bedroom door.
“Not long luv,” replied Jade. “Get yourself ready, I’ll be out in a minute.”
Jade lifted her left leg up, bringing her knee to her chin. Her left leg was the better of the two. Although she only had three of her five toes on her left foot, at least she had a left foot. Her right one had been amputated after the gangrene had set in. Then she lost the bottom of her right leg below the knee. She had tried injecting into the stump, but it didn’t work.
The veins on her arms were well and truly out of bounds. Constant abuse had taken its toll, leaving Jade to resort to her legs to get the desired kick. She took off her faux-leather boot and tapped away at one of the three remaining toes.
“Where are your panties at?” The voice from behind the door asked. Jade still couldn’t quite work out his accent, maybe American or Canadian. She had never been that good with accents. Possibly even Australian.
“Top draw luv,” she replied. “Help yourself, I’ll only be a minute. Dirty ones on the floor, under the bed, or in the basket by the window.”
It had been a strange pick-up. An hour earlier she’d been hobbling on the block desperate for a punter, desperate for a fix, when a black cab pulled up. The man who got out seemed different to the usual late night punters she picked up. This guy seemed, well, cleaner. And certainly a lot more confident, probably coked up, Jade thought. Normally it was just your usual dirty mac brigade. Married men just wanting a blow-job in the back seat of their clapped out car for a tenner. Getting off on the thrill of picking up a brass rather than the sexual act itself. Or well-heeled suited and booted city-types, buying a wank on their way home to their sexless wives.
“Call me daddy,” one of the better off punters asked her earlier that evening as she fumbled in his pants trying to make him hard. “Pretend you’re my step-daughter.” It was a common request. Jade pretended. For the right money she’d pretend to be anyone they wanted. She’d nailed him for £30 and he came in less than five minutes. But tonight’s mush seemed different. He wasn’t interested in a quick wank and a feel of her small tits in the alleyway, this guy wanted the full service.
“I wanna go back to your place and have some fun,” he’d asked, not really taking notice of the fact she was on crutches. She was after all, one of only a few whores out that night. It was quiet.
Her first quote of £100 was, in her mind, ambitious. But when he accepted without batting an eyelid, she’d wished she’d asked for more... she’d get more as the hour went on. As they climbed into a taxi, the mush, Dirk he’d said his name was, outlined his request.
“Under my suit I’m wearing stockings and suspenders.” Dirk told her. She found it hard not to laugh. “And I’d like you to wear this strap-on cock and fuck me up the ass.” He explained matter-of-factly before producing a large plastic dildo from out of his brief case and a tube of KY jelly.
He’d still not mentioned the crutches but Jade thought it necessary to lie to him, claiming she had fractured her right foot in a fall the week before. Truth of the matter was there was no right foot and most of her right leg was missing. Her prosthetic one was hidden by the thigh high boots she wore every time she went out on the block. Most of the time she got away with it. No one really noticed that she was an amputee when she was sucking them off and calling them “daddy”.
There was one guy, Keith, a regular who she hadn’t seen for a while but who knew about it and liked it. Keith even visited her in hospital. He liked the nurses. He would rub himself against her stump before ejaculating in his pants and paying her twenty pounds. Keith always brought her flowers. She had a phone number for him but it was dead last time she’d tried it and the phone containing his number was now on a shelf in a pawn shop for three times the price, the fat bastard in the shop had paid her for it.
“Eight quid? Not even enough for a bag of brown.” she’d informed him. Instead she’d bought three rocks of crack cocaine with the money and ticked the rest. Her credit was good with Shane that week - but only for that week.
Eventually after what seemed like an eternity of toe tapping she injected in one of the remaining three. It wasn’t good smack. Either that or she was just far too used to it. But the effects didn’t seem as good as before, they never did. All the times she’d injected or smoked heroin it never felt the same as the first time. But that first time she tried it everything was right - who she was with, where she was, what she was doing. It just seemed perfect. This wasn’t perfect, tonight wasn’t perfect, and neither was the smack. She lay on the sofa drifting off when she heard the knocking on the door.
“Come on honey, I’m ready in here.” Dirk shouted. For a minute or however long it was that had passed, she’d forgotten about him and slipped away to a warmer, more comfortable place.
“Want some coke honey?”
Jade stood up. She didn’t need asking twice. The plastic cock he’d given her on arrival was around her waist supported by a few adjustable straps. She smiled and thought to herself. “So this is what it’s like to have a cock,” then opened the door to find Dirk wearing fishnet stockings and suspenders lying on her bed masturbating himself and sniffing her worn panties.
“You ready for a fucking?” she asked.
He was.
2
“I’m Dirk McVee, if you want carpets in Texas, you come to me.” said the well-built man on horseback riding through a dusty ranch. His chaps and Stetson looked too new and a little out-of-place for the Marlboro Man image Dirk was attempting to portray on the advert for Channel 8 Television. The commercial on the large projection screen in the Botanic Suite at Liverpool’s Premier Hotel promised viewers, “Gilmer’s fairest prices,” as Dirk dismounted and approached the camera.
“Here in Gilmer we like our carpets tough and hard-wearing, just like the good folk of our fair town. We like our carpets rugged. So rugged that after a hard day on the ranch, you know they won’t wear out when you set foot in home, sweet home.”
The camera then panned away from Dirk and across the ranch to the store front of Dirk McVee’s. A huge image of his face, wearing the Stetson, adorned the roof of the building, while a smiling all-American family emerged from the front door and approached Dirk, who had since gotten back on the horse and cantered towards them. Looking down at them in a God-like pose with the sunlight directly behind his head, Dirk dismounted the beast, shook hands with dad, put his arm around Mom, and ruffled the hair of the two children before turning to the camera.
“At Dirk McVee’s we understand family values. We understand the importance of putting the customer first. No matter what your budget, Dirk McVee will guarantee, we have a carpet for you.”
The film ended to a polite round of applause from the audience in the Botanic Suite and Dirk got up to address the crowd. Sat in front of him were the great and the good of the Carpet Sellers Federation (North West). Dirk was the special guest speaker.
“That was the best three thousand bucks I’ve ever spent,” said Dirk, as he sipped from the complimentary bottled water on the table in front of him. “Now, while I fully accept the customer in the UK is not the same as the average American, and I understand that you guys may not be as comfortable on horseback as me,” he paused for laughter that didn’t really materialise, “I cannot stress the importance of advertising enough.”
Dirk went on: “The figures speak for themselves. My profit increased 32% as a direct result of that advert. The commercial runs Friday and Saturday early evenings and mark my words, they are banging my door down all weekend. It paid for itself in the first ten days. Dirk McVee is a name Texans trust and so should you. Any questions?” Dirk asked, hoping there wouldn’t be any. A hand shot-up at the back.
“What percentage of your sales are carpet compared with laminate flooring?” asked a balding, bespectacled, sweaty man. His name tag introduced him as Bert, from Burnley Rugs and Floor Coverings.
“That’s an interesting question Bert,” Dirk bullshitted, “in the past 12 months sales of wood flooring has slowed. I put this down to a number of important factors. Unlike you guys over here, our houses are relatively new. Unlike yours, most don’t come with the original floorboards that are so easy to buff up. As a result, our houses don’t offer the same character as yours do. Laminate flooring is something most US houses are fitted with at birth, so to speak, because we just don’t have the same old Victorian houses as you guys. The positives from this are that people get sick of the laminated flooring fairly quickly and they want carpets, and Dirk McVee is ready to sell them.”
Bert’s hand shot up again. “That’s all well and good Mr McVee but how are you in America coping with the credit crunch? Here in the UK we have seen a dramatic rise in the numbers of small carpet businesses going under because people are just not spending any money. While your advert gives the impression of a cowboy riding into town to save the day, I cannot share your undoubted optimism.”
Dirk looked at his Breitling. It read 9.30am, still set on Texan time. That meant he had another 30 minutes of this to do. He’d been in the UK for two days and had so far only had one fuck, the night before...
It had been a simple phone box whore he’d met in London. Dirk’s flight from Dallas gave him a night in the capital before catching the early morning plane to Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport. She was no great shakes. He’d been conned before by visiting a brass from a call box flyer but, with limited options and only a few hours spare in London, he’d thought he’d give it a whirl. He had contemplated the calling card that offered “Convincing young looking pre-op TV” but without the aid of cocaine Dirk gave it a miss. He had enjoyed the experience of a transsexual in Amsterdam but he’d snorted a lot of marching powder before, during and after the session.
Tonight’s offering was nothing to write home about. £90 for 40 minutes with a hooker whose ad had promised him a Japanese schoolgirl but in actually fact was some Korean hag in her 30s. He’d called her from a payphone outside Marylebone Station and arrived at the basement flat ten minutes later.
“Is she a college girl or is she the teacher?” He had asked the elderly maid after “Lin” was paraded in front of him. His gag was lost on her, she’d heard and seen it all before.
“Whatever you want her to be darlin’, you’re the one paying.”
The agreed fee of fifty pounds on the phone quickly doubled when he told her he wanted her to wear a school uniform and fuck her in the ass. They settled on £90.
To make matters worse she had good teeth. Dirk had a tried and tested theory that women with slightly irregular teeth were good in bed.
‘If she’s got a gap, she’s a goer’.
It was an adage he was proud of. When explaining his golden rule to a smarmy Brit at a conference in Canada back in 2005, the guy took great pleasure in pointing out that his theory was in fact discovered a long time before by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, a book Dirk hadn’t read. The only book he had read in the past God knows how many years was The Da Vinci Code while on holiday with the wife in the Caribbean.
Forty minutes later he was walking out of the basement apartment feeling slightly satisfied and heading back to the hotel, lighting up a Marlboro as he strolled across Baker Street in the surprisingly warm Spring evening looking for a cab. It did cross his mind to go online back at the Holiday Inn and see if he could get an escort but he knew it would be a few hours before anyone decent came knocking at his door and he had an early plane to catch.
No matter, he thought, he had plans for Liverpool. A similar trip to the former Capital of Culture two years before had proved very fruitful and Dirk wanted more. First he had a few things to sort out: cocaine, viagra and Bert, from Burnley.
“Well Bert, its like this....”
3
“Dad! I’m fuckin stuck.” The boy shouted, half in and half out of the window at the back of the off-licence.
“You’ll be alright son, you’ve fitted in places much smaller, stop ye fuckin whinging,” his father reassured him. “You know the drill by now. Get through this window and let me in. Push ye little shit.”
There was a loud thud followed by a child-like yelp. The type of noise a small boy would make when he fell from his bike grazing his knee. Only this small boy had never been taught to ride a bike although he’d stolen plenty and his dad had never ran behind him shouting words of encouragement as he wobbled on the stabilisers like so many others have done.
John’s childhood was non-existent. With a crack-whore of a mother and a heroin addicted dad, he didn’t stand much chance. It was an early age when John was first exposed to smack. His dad, also called John, would smoke it in the house most nights. The sickly aroma of the stale second-hand heroin smoke filled the tiny lungs of baby John as he slept in the corner while his parents chased the dragon.
He had been a good baby, rarely cried and slept right through the night. It was a good job really, the amount of time he’d been left home alone. His mother, Sharon, had died before he ever really got to know her. He was told he was about four at the time she’d passed away, ten years ago.
At that point, life could have been so much different for John but he wasn’t to know. Left alone with his father, John could have been given up for adoption but somehow, inexplicably, he had slipped through the social services net. Instead of being handed over to a loving family who would have nurtured, treasured and taught him to read or bought him a train set, John was left alone with his father, and no train set.
When he cried or complained, dad would make him sip some ‘medicine’, a thick, green liquid that sent him off to sleep. He didn’t know at the time but from the age of three the ‘medicine’ he sipped was methadone. A few years later, when John should have been starting school, his dad injected him for the first time with heroin.
“Only a little bit son,” he’d told him, “it will make you grow strong like Superman.”
John liked Superman. He had DVDs of the movies and cartoon pictures on the wall of his bedroom. He dreamed he could fly like the man in the red cape as he lay staring at the ceiling. He would have loved to have been able to fly. He once went to the airport on the bus with his dad to look at the aeroplanes. His dad promised him one day he’d take him on one, fly away to a different country but that had never happened.
The heroin didn’t make him grow strong, just the opposite, which was why his dad gave it to him. The small amounts he was taking had stunted his growth. Although he was now nearly 15 years old, he looked much smaller. Not younger, just smaller. He had a well-worn face and wrinkles on his forehead. His head was shaved, his dad did it with a pair of clippers every few months.
John rubbed his sore knee as he got up in the back room of the shop he’d just broken into. He looked around for a way out and in front of him saw a large iron door with bolts on the top and bottom. He unlocked the bottom but couldn’t reach the top. They’d had this problem before. The smack kept him small and able to squeeze through the tightest of gaps for his dad but it had other drawbacks. John looked around the room and spotted a table and chair up against the wall with a lap-top computer on it. A lap-top, that would please his father.
He pushed the table over towards the door. Then put the chair on top and climbed up to undo the lock he couldn’t reach earlier. He’d hardly had chance to move the table out of the way when his dad was in with him. Less than ten minutes later they were back in the car and driving away. The haul from the shop had been fairly poor: a couple of hundred cigarettes, six bottles of vodka and a box of cheap wine. The lap-top was a bonus but it was a fairly old model. The majority of the spirits they had came for were locked away in a storeroom and dad thought he had heard a noise so they left sharpish.
The booze and spirits were shifted quickly. Shane swapped the lot for three £15 bags of smack and the rest paid off part of his dad’s debt. John just sat quietly in the corner stroking Shane’s pit bull as his dad argued with the dealer over money.
“He a robbin bastard that Shane,” his dad told him back in the car. “Cheeky cunt. He’ll flog that booze for twice what he gave me for it.” Shane didn’t want the lap-top but his dad would sell it to someone in a pub the next day for ‘a nifty’, he said.
Back at the house his dad was straight in the kitchen to cook-up. John ran upstairs to look out of the window for next door’s cat. It was a black moggy with white legs. A tough looking cat with half an ear missing and a scar under his left eye. John loved it. He would open his bedroom window and stroke it for hours as it purred and rubbed his head against him. But the cat was nowhere to be seen. It was probably curled-up on Mavis’s knee in front of the fire.
“You can fuck right off if you think we’re getting a fuckin cat.” was his dad’s response when John had asked him for a kitten the year before. “I’ll get you a pit bull son when Shane’s has puppies.”
John didn’t really want a dog but it never materialised anyway, even after Shane’s dog had her litter.
“It’s ready lad,” his dad shouted as John shut the bedroom window. Downstairs he tied the leather belt around the top of his arm as his dad tapped a vein. The pin-prick of the needle as his dad injected him hurt but the pain was quickly over-taken by the rush as the heroin filled his blood system.
“Just a little one lad,” he remembered his dad saying as John lay back in the chair and drifted off to a different place. He vaguely remembered seeing his father with the belt around his arm and gripped in his mouth, tapping away at a vein. John lay back and thought about Superman.
4
Jade was just 18 the first time she went out grafting. Her and her older friend sat in the bedroom of her mother’s house stapling thick tin-foil to the inside of a Next carrier bag. The foil would, her friend told her, block out any alarms in the shop but they had to make sure the bag was completely lined, otherwise the alarms would go off as they left the store.
Jade wasn’t really nervous the first time, more excited. She never really got nervous, which was a good job considering some of the scrapes she would get herself into in later life. At first they would steal for themselves. Jade got some really expensive lingerie - Agent Provocateur, just like Kylie Minogue. All robbed from department stores where £2.50 an hour shop staff didn’t give a shit about their jobs and were just gabbing to each other at the till while Jade and her friend, Jayne, helped themselves.
Jayne was five years older than Jade. They were not friends at school but lived near each other in the Anfield district of the city, in the shadows of Liverpool Football Club. That afternoon they got the number 26 bus into town armed with their foil-lined carrier bags. In each one they’d both placed some old clothes to pad them out and give the impression the bags were full before they entered the shops.
That first time, grafting was trouble free. Jade stole four different sets of underwear, all Agent Provocateur, and all her size. Jayne even managed to lift an iPod from right under the nose of a spotty shop assistant who was more interested in looking down Jayne’s top at her big tits that were not supported by a bra. They were big (34DD) and expensive. They’d cost Jayne £2,000 the previous year at a private clinic in Cheshire. Her boyfriend at the time sold coke and paid for them. They’d split up after he got an eight for possession with intent to supply. He had a kilo on him but was only doing the delivery. She’d been to visit him twice in prison but their relationship soon fizzled out.
Back at the neat terrace house she shared with her mum and kid brother, no one was home. Her mother, Marie, thought Jade was at college. She really wanted her daughter to stay on a school and do her ‘A’ levels but Jade persuaded her that a course in Beauty Therapy at the local Community College was a better option. Since her dad died Jade really had the edge over her mother. Most of her time Marie was looking after Kyle, her baby brother, who had learning difficulties. As a result, Jade was left pretty much to fend for herself and her mother rarely interfered with her business. Jade liked it that way. In her bedroom her and Jayne tried on their haul.
“You should get your tits done.” Jayne told her as Jade stood in-front of the mirror squeezing her small breasts. “And for fucks sake, will you please shave your muff. It’s like a fucking jungle down there.” Jayne had been nagging her to get the razor blade and Veet out since the first time she saw her naked. Jayne worked in a lap dancing bar where she made good money, mainly because of her tits and the fact she was a dirty bitch.
“The secret is to get them going,” she had told her, “you’re not meant to touch but if you rub your arse against their cock and they get hard, you’ve got them, They’ll be giving you money all night long, especially the older ones. But if you’re going to come and work with me at Tit Tops, you’ve gotta shave your pussy. The lads will run a mile when they fuckin see those dreadlocks girl,” Jayne told her as she chopped two fat lines of coke on the back of a Take That CD.
“OK then,” Jade said rolling up a twenty pound note and bending over to snort a line of beak off Gary Barlow’s head. “But you’ll have to do it, and you’ll have to promise it won’t sting.”
The two girls spent the rest of the evening snorting coke and playing around. Jade wouldn’t really call herself a lesbian but she enjoyed her coke-fuelled romps with Jayne in the bedroom and it became a regular thing. Eventually, when Jade started working at Tit Tops, the pair would perform a lesbian dance, kissing and touching each other in front of eager punters. The lap dancing and the shop-lifting brought in great money for the pair. Enough for Jayne to go to a private dentist and get her crooked tooth fixed. That cost almost as much as her tits.
Even when the pair were arrested at La Senza in Liverpool One they weren’t really too concerned. Jade got a caution at the police station and, as it was Jayne’s third offence, she ended up in court but was only fined. Her lawyer, Joe Jackson, argued how it was “just a phase” and that she was “thoroughly ashamed and sorry” for her behaviour. He assured the Magistrates that this would be the last time she appeared before the bench. But it wasn’t the last time for Jayne while Jade, over the next year, also became a regular visitor to the ageing court house on Dale Street. She would quickly amass convictions for shop-lifting and theft, for soliciting, prostitution and possession of Class A drugs. She became a regular client of Mr Jackson in more ways than one.
After he first represented her for prostitution charges he made her an offer right there in his office. He pulled out a small fold away mirror from the top draw of his ancient desk that in a previous life would have looked quite grand. She knew what was coming. Other brass on the block had warned her that he was a dirty bastard but at the end of the day a good lawyer. Bent, but a good lawyer. 99% of his clients were legally aided and 99% of them were heroin addicts. Mr Jackson had a thing for whores and a thing for coke.
“You’ll get the best service in Liverpool from me,” Mr Jackson told her, as he chopped a couple of lines out on his mirror. “But I expect a good service from you too. I’ll pay you the going rate you whores charge, what is it these day? Ten pounds?” He threw a rolled up ten pound note across the desk before producing a silver tube from his top draw for himself to use.
“Agnes, hold my calls,” he told an ageing intercom system on the corner of his desk as he stood up and undid the red braces that held up the trousers to a pin-striped suit that had seen better days.
Jade left the office after less than fifteen minutes. The reception was grubby. When she asked why at a later appointment, Mr Jackson would justify this by telling her the class of clientele he attracted wouldn’t appreciate yucca plants and copies of GQ in the waiting room. But she wouldn’t remember that visit because of Mr Jackson’s unimpressive cock, instead it was the odd looking boy sat outside swinging his legs underneath his chair. He looked young, like a small child, but had the face of an old man. The receptionist gave him a glass of water and called him John.
5
“I thought Bert would never shut the fuck up,” Jimmy told Dirk in the bar of the Premier Hotel.
“Fuck Bert,” Dirk said, dismissing the afternoon from his mind as he knocked back a Tequila. “What’s the plan for tonight?”
Dirk had first met Jimmy in Holland three years before. They became good friends and Jimmy even came out to Gilmer for a week with his wife and three children. But it was in Amsterdam they both realised they shared a common interest - drugs and whores. After a fairly boozy session following a tour of a carpet manufacturers in Breda, the pair headed back to Amsterdam and more particularly its famed Red Light district. They bought some appalling, over-priced cocaine from an African immigrant on a bridge over a canal and set off on the prowl.
Back and forwards to the toilet snorting lines off a dirty cistern in pubs where they drank strong Dutch beer, Dirk lost count of the number of prostitutes he visited on that trip. His credit card bill the following month confirmed his worst fears. He’d spent more than $6,000 in two days and that didn’t include the trip to the casino in Leidseplien. Thankfully business had been booming then, shame he couldn’t say the same today. He hadn’t been lying when he told the Carpet Sellers Federation (North West) that his corny cowboy commercial had seen a 32% increase in business, what he’d failed to mention was how poor things had been before the ad. But he wasn’t interested in talking shop. He wanted to go out and party.
“Peruvian Flake,” Jimmy told him, “it’s not cheap and we’re gonna have to go and get it from me mate in some dodgy pub tonight but mark my words, when you put it up your nose, you’ll notice the difference.”
“And brass?” Dirk asked, more than satisfied with the answer to his first question. ‘Brass’ was an expression Dirk hadn’t heard before he’d met Jimmy. The origins of it, Jimmy explained, comes from Cockney rhyming slang. Brass, brass nail, tail, meaning a woman’s backside.
“Lap-dancing bar first,” Jimmy told him, “then I’ve arranged for three escorts to meet up with us. Don’t worry, it’ll be great, I know one of them and she’s promised me the three of them are into all sorts.”
“What are her teeth like?” Dirk asked.
“I don’t fucking know,” Jimmy replied, slightly bemused by his question, “but she’s proper filthy.”
Dirk got changed in his suite. Hotel suites in England were never quite as lush as their American counterparts, he thought, but this one wasn’t too bad. Lush was another word he’d picked up over here, in Newcastle two years before when Jimmy dragged him four hours up north to watch a soccer game between Everton and Newcastle United. It was nil-nil but Jimmy assured him that it was a good result and a good game. An expensive and classy escort called Colleen that cost him a lot of money, said his hotel room in the centre of the city was “lush”. He liked the phrase and used it in a radio advert to describe his shag-pile range for his advert on KFRO 95.3FM.
This suite wasn’t quite as lush. It was on two floors and had a balcony over looking the River Mersey. He’d do one brass on the balcony later while the other rimmed him, he thought to himself as he chopped up a couple of lines using a credit card, the limit of which he’d extended before boarding his flight at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. It was now up to $25,000, the company card had a similar limit but Dirk was reluctant to use that on this trip. Times were hard in the carpet business and Bert from Burnley Rugs and Floor Coverings was right with his line of questioning but Dirk had faced tough times before and had always bounced back. He was that kind of guy.
He wasn’t born Dirk McVee. A PR consultant had charged him $2,000 for the advice that he change his name when he opened his new megastore on the outskirts of Gilmer 12 years previously. His birth name was Malcolm Podowski.
“Not really catchy enough,” the PR told him, “you need to re-invent yourself.”
Soon after that Dirk McVee was born. His late mother called him Malcolm but she was the only one to do so. His grandfather, Igor Podowski, was a Ukrainian immigrant that came to the US after the Second World War. He’d run a mill back in Kharkiv, so a move into the carpet industry seemed a natural progression after the family settled in East Texas. When he died, his father, Al, took over the business. A young Malcolm drifted from job to job after leaving the Military Academy, always safe in the knowledge that being an only child he would one day take over the company. When he eventually did start working for Podowski’s he was keen to expand.
“We should think bigger,” he’d tell his dad on an almost daily basis, but Al wasn’t having any of it.
“When I’ve retired from this place son you can do what the fuck you want with it. But as long as my name’s above the door I’m the boss.”
After Al retired Dirk, as he had now become, started to think big. He moved from the pokey two storey building in the centre of town to a spacious warehouse on an industrial estate and business boomed. Deep down his dad was proud, albeit a little disappointed that he had changed his name to McVee. Dirk kept his dad happy when he named his first born son Al, and kept the name Podowski for his child. Dirk started to import directly from South America, the Far East and India where materials where dirt cheap. And he loved the regular visits to his suppliers in Mexico, Bangkok and Agra for more reasons than one.
His first two wives had divorced him. Married too young he would say to justify it to himself. Wife number three was happy to stay at home and spend his money. She drank as well. However she fitted the “family values” look the PR told him he needed “to appeal to middle Americans” and she rarely questioned his regular foreign trips, just as long as she had enough allowance to shop, drive a convertible Jeep and drink gin from 11am most days, she was happy. It was a perfect relationship, he fucked her once every blue moon and got his kicks elsewhere.
“You don’t have to dress up Dirk,” Jimmy shouted from downstairs. “Hurry up, will ye. You’re gonna get you cock sucked no matter what you fuckin look like.” Dirk snorted the lines and headed down the staircase that separated the two floors in his split-level suite.
“Let’s rock and roll!” Jimmy was snorting from the glass coffee table in the centre of the room. “I hope this Peruvian shit you’re getting us is better than the lame gear I’ve just had.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Jimmy reassured him as he dabbed his nostrils clean before licking the back of his hand. “It’s fuckin rocket fuel.”
The phone conversation between Jimmy and the dealer in the back of the black cab may well have been in a different language. Jimmy kept calling the dealer ‘lad’. “Is right lad, sound lad, no problem lad, be there in twenty lad, is right, nice one lad.” The journey to the Kensington area of the city only took ten minutes. The instructions were to get to The Alex, have a beer and ring the ‘lad’. They were going halves on half of an ounce of Peruvian Flake. £350 each. But according to Jimmy it would last him all week. Dirk doubted that seven grams would be enough for himself but still handed him his half of the cash.
The Alexander was once, a long time ago, a very nice pub. Sadly that wasn’t the case today. Jimmy knew one or two of the regulars sat at the bar and chatted while Dirk got the drinks in. They didn’t having any of the usual bottled beers Dirk preferred, so he opted for Stella, or ‘wife-beater’ as Jimmy called it. Two bottles for three quid. He could never understand why drinks were so cheap up north, yet cost the earth in London. The pair sat down at a table out of the way. Jimmy sent a text and stared at his Blackberry for a few seconds waiting for a reply that came almost in an instant.
“That was Bucket, he wont be long with the gear.” Jimmy told him.
“Why is he called Bucket?” Dirk asked.
“Bucket’s a smashin fella, but every time he has a fight someone has to go and get a bucket to mop all the blood. He’s a tough lad who can really dance.”
“He’s a dancer?” Dirk asked, puzzled.
“No soft lad,” Jimmy said, standing up, “you know, dance, fight like. He’s really hard.”
Jimmy went to the toilet for a line of the little cocaine he had left, reassuring Dirk he’d leave one out for him in the cubicle of the gents.
While he was gone a man came into the pub selling Lacoste tracksuits, offering a number of different sizes and colours. Dirk politely declined. Minutes later a woman came in selling Mac3 Fusion razor blades, again he said no. Before Jimmy had come back to the table, another guy came in selling cheese. Dirk passed.
“There’s a line out for you.” Jimmy told him as he sat down.
“Some guy’s just tried to sell me a block of cheddar cheese for three pound, Jim,” Dirk told him. Jimmy looked unfazed.
“It’s that kind of pub. I was in here last week and a kid came in selling a salmon. Another guy bought a kitchen.” Dirk went to the toilets to snort his beak.
When he got back a Chinese woman was sat in his seat with a bag jam-packed with DVDs, Jimmy was flicking through them. They were the latest films, some of which hadn’t even come out in the States. Dirk was impressed.
“You like porno?” The oriental woman asked, Dirk nodded and bought six films for a tenner. Two of them, Piss Pool Party and Drink My Squirt promised water sports, another She-male Surprise - What’s That Rocket, In My Pocket? offered something a little different, Dirk kept that one hidden from Jimmy. The other three, The Ring, Ski-bunnies and Suck it like a Lollipop were a little bit more conventional. Jimmy’s Blackberry made a noise and he stood up reading the screen.
“Two minutes mate” he said and walked outside.
“You like lady with cock?” the over-weight DVD woman asked with a smile on her face.
“Why, you got one?” Dirk replied. She left chuckling.
“Right, drink up,” said Jimmy, tapping the inside of his pocket indicating the deal had been done.
“Don’t I get to meet Bucket?” Dirk said, disappointed.
“He’s a little shy,” said Jimmy.
The two men stood up and left The Alex, just as a row was starting at the bar between two women wearing pyjamas.
6
The small boy with the grown-up face wore a red cape as he swooped from the top of Liverpool’s famous Liver Building and dive-bombed towards the River Mersey, pulling up just before he reached the water, speed-bombing along kicking up spray high in the air behind him. The small boy with the grown-up face was so quick none of the passengers on board the ferry spotted what it was that had soaked them. There was no crime to fight today, all was well in the world. The small boy with the grown-up face could finally relax and enjoy flying as fast as his small arms and small legs would carry him.
“Fuckin wake up, lad!” his dad told John, shaking him violently. “Have you seen what time it is?”
John hadn’t seen the time. Even if he had, no one had ever bothered to teach him how to tell it. Or how to read. His dad was never a role-model, that job was left to the man with the large “S” on his chest.
“Shit to do lad, come on will ye,” his dad told him, slapping him around the head to wake him from his slumber.
John got off the couch, his mind was cloudy after the heroin but for all his 14 and a bit years on this earth, he’d never known anything else. Stealing, sleeping and smack. Christmas and birthdays were non-existent. Vague memories of other people’s houses with lights and decorations outside usually coincided with heavier, if that was possible, drinking and drug-use by his father. Christmas was also a time for grafting. Rummaging through people’s homes stealing unopened presents from under trees while the residents were out toasting the festive season with friends and family.
His father, John Jones senior, was known as JJ to his friends. Problem was, there weren’t any. JJ was a shit of a man. The type of guy people would cross the road to avoid or quickly down their pints if he headed towards them in a pub. When John junior was born, his dad took him home and instructed his mother to get back out on the block and earn some money. Within the first few hours of the premature baby’s life, he wasn’t bonding with the woman who had carried him in her womb for seven months and two weeks, she was out bonding with dirty old men in dirty alley-ways and dirty parks surround by dirty old needles.
When she did eventually come home to her new born baby, her first priority was to cook-up. Cooking-up was always top of the list in the Jones household. After six hours in labour and two hours on the block, Sharon and JJ injected themselves with heroin while John slept in a crib stolen from Mothercare the week before.
The air outside their house was warm as John lit half a joint he had found in the ashtray using a clipper lighter with a picture on it of a Matador dodging a bull. Next door’s cat was staring at him from behind Mavis’s window, in front of her deep red drapes. John motioned his finger over the glass and smiled when the black and white mog rubbed his head against where his hand was on the other side of the window. John didn’t know the cat’s name. There was something written on a tag that hung from his black studded collar but John couldn’t make out the letters. He called him Clarke.
“Leave that fuckin cat alone will ye lad,” his dad shouted as he came jogging out of their terrace house. “Busy day today.”
The pair were off to the seaside but not for the usual reasons a father and son would visit Southport on a warm, sunny day. There would be no sandcastles, no rides on the dodgems, no ice-creams. This dad and lad duo were off grafting, or more specifically bag-snatching. Unsuspecting old folk enjoying a day out at the beach were the ideal prey. Dad would pick out the mark, one of them would distract, then the other snatch. Before they went in for the kill, they would sort a meeting place out as they both ran away in different directions.
John didn’t know how to read a book or the label on one of his Superman DVDs, yet he knew the streets of all the strange towns he visited to rob like the back of his hand. He couldn’t recite the alphabet or read the dials on the gas oven but knew how to cook-up heroin. He didn’t know his times tables but knew the prices of a gram of speed, eighth of weed, or three rocks of crack. He’d never built a house out of Lego but could build a joint on a windy night with just two skins and a couple of matches. He was street educated but at the same time as thick as pig-shit.
The pair had been lucky, especially JJ. Other than a spell behind bars before John was born, JJ had never been inside since. If he had been caught after his mother had died, John would have been taken into care, and given an education, given a chance. He had neither.
“Is he really a minor?” The train guard enquired at Liverpool’s Central Station when JJ asked for Adult and Child returns to Southport. “He looks about 30. You sure he’s not a dwarf? Dwarves have to pay full fare, not half.”
“He’s 14,” JJ argued, “he’s my son.”
The ageing rail worker couldn’t be bothered with a row so just handed over the tickets. In the station they dodged the Transport Police. JJ had history with them and didn’t want any unnecessary hassle as they made the journey 20 miles up the coast from Liverpool to Southport. He had previous with them and an Anti-Social Behaviour Order prevented him from travelling on trains unless he could specifically prove he was attending Court, a job interview, or visiting a family member but ASBOs meant fuck all, JJ told his son.
The journey took half an hour and the pair sat virtually in silence throughout. John stared out of the window at the houses that seemed to have bigger gardens the longer the journey went on. It was a trip they had made many times before. Southport, New Brighton, Chester and even out to North Wales, always for the same thing, snatching bags. Never once in all these tourism hot-spots popular with the elderly had they ever done anything fun. Always grafting.
As the train passed Freshfield, where the houses got really big, JJ said the same thing he said every time they reached this point.
“Stevie Gerrard lives round ‘ere lad. All the footy players do. Proper nice round here son.” John wasn’t that bothered about football. He knew who the players were and liked watching the odd match but he’d never been to the park for a kick-about with his dad. He’d booted a ball against the wall on his own in the back yard from time to time but wasn’t passionate about it.
An hour later they clocked their mark and checked the lamp-posts nearby for CCTV cameras, there where none. There was an elderly couple, walking on the promenade arm in arm. She had a hand-bag over the arm that wasn’t attached to her husband, who was a short, tubby man walking with the aid of a stick. The woman, even though it was warm, still wore the kind of blue coloured mac that only people over the age of 70 ever bought. John was the distraction this time and he made the approach.
“’Scuse me luv,” he said to her, “I’m lost. Do you know where the train station is?”
“Oh, let me see dear,” she thought for a minute. “What’s the best way from here do you think Fred?” she asked her husband. But before Fred had chance to answer JJ steamed in from out of nowhere and grabbed her bag. The woman at first refused to let go and yanked it back, shocking JJ and causing him to jolt, proving how weak he actually was.
“Sort it lad, fuckin sort it!” JJ screamed to his prodigy. John, without thinking, leapt forward and punched the pensioner on the nose. She fell to the floor as he kicked her in the stomach, twice. Fred lashed out with his walking stick but as he raised it, he was unsteady on his feet and staggered at the precise moment JJ butted him on the chin. The elderly couple were both on the floor. John grabbed the bag and JJ rifled through Fred’s pockets in record time, pulling his watch off.
“Ring, lad, fuckin ring.” John tugged the wedding band from the old dear’s finger, snapping the brittle bone as his did so. Then the pair fled in separate directions.
“What have I told you about grabbing the rings, son,” JJ said on the train back to Liverpool. “Can’t go wrong with gold. Get a load for that.” He ruffled his son’s hair. “Getting long that is lad. Clippers out when we get home, after we’ve been to Shane’s. You did well today son, I’m proud of you helping your old dad out like that.” John forced a slight smile and turned his face to look back out of the window, watching the houses and their gardens getting smaller as they approached Liverpool.
7
Jade and Jayne were both wearing “Hello Kitty” panties and tight vest tops. The effect they were going for was the ‘sleep-over’ look. Jayne’s 34DDs were bouncing all over the place as they jumped up and down on the massive bed like excited schoolgirls. Jayne slipped and landed on her back, legs in the air as her left breast fell out of a top adorned with a picture of Snoopy. Earlier they had played Patter Cake, sat legs crossed in front of each other, slapping hands and giggling away. Max sat on a chair in the corner of the hotel room, masturbating and groaning, not taking his eyes off the pair of them for a split second.
“Can we take a break now Max?” Jayne asked. They’d been bouncing on the bed for at least 20 minutes and her head was spinning. “Let us just go to the little girls’ room,” she told him, reaching over, giving him a peck on the cheek, as the two girls headed into the bathroom.
“I can’t believe this is all we have to do,” Jade said as she chopped up four fat lines on the cistern.
“I know, that’s his bag. He just likes to watch us playing and have you seen the size of his fucking cock?” Jayne asked knowing Jade couldn’t have missed it. “It’s massive! I don’t care if he’s 66, I wish he’d just fuck me instead of all this jumping around.”