When it’s done, I leave the lecture theatre screwfacing anyone who tries watching me and they look away quicktime and no one says nothing. I phone Gotti and tell him what happened and he says swear down? You’re too rago Snoopz, and he laughs and I say I swear down I wasn’t even talking fam, and then he says I got a serious move for us tonight brudda, make sure you come link me soon as you’re done, and I say course fam, and then I go to the seminar.
In the seminar I can tell bare people haven’t really read The Birth of Tragedy or Beyond Good and Evil or any of the extra Nietzsche shit they gave us to read, because no one’s really saying shit, or whoever has read it is keeping quiet like they don’t wanna share. I love seminars. You can really get into the meat of an idea, pull it apart and crunch it all up. Then again, The Birth of Tragedy is some heavy shit, a swamp of words and ideas, I had to read it using a raasclart dictionary I say to the teacher and some of the girls in the class laugh and look at my mouth coz I’ve got my iced-out grillz in. Still, I’m looking forward to the end of this seminar because I’m itching to go and link Gotti. The professor talks about human suffering being a confirmation of our existence and I start rubbing my finger over the sharpness of the diamonds in one of my teeth, looking at faces in the room, attentive, uninterested, thinking you don’t know what I know about myself and then I raise my arm. The professor says Gabriel. I say one of the points that Nietzsche makes is that morality is just a rule of behaviour relative to the level of danger in which individuals live. If you’re living in dangerous times, you can’t afford to live according to moral structures the way someone who lives in safety and peace can. So it’s not actually some universal natural ting, you get me, and the professor says did everyone just get that?
After the seminar is done, I grab a munch and eat it as I walk to Mile End tube station beneath a metal November sky. Wind cannibalises the air around me. I take my grillz out to eat. Fried chicken wings turning my fingers shiny and chips slathered in orange burger sauce. I close the chicken box, now full of greasy bones, catch sight of a smiling cartoon rooster on the front of the box next to the words Delicious Favourite Chicken and beneath it Tasting is Believing, the rooster radiating sunbeams from behind him, looking all excited at the prospect of people eating his relatives. I dash it away and enter the tube station.
When I come out of Kilburn Park station I phone Gotti and say I’m going to Bimz’s to drop my bag off and he says where are you brudda? I say I just got to Kilburn. Have you got dro? Gotti says nah not even, I just bunned my last zoot but Jermaine’s got blue cheese. Cool, I’m gonna get a draw from Jermaine and he says phone me when you’re there and I’ll come link you in Precinct.
Later, Gotti takes me to the flats behind the shops in Precinct to meet Little Man. Dirty cream blocks, balconies piled up with bikes and clothing lines and all sorts of shit and everywhere the same white-framed windows repeating themselves, too small to look into, too small to look out of.
Little Man is bunning a big zoot, bloody half-moon eyes, when we spud each other outside his block and Gotti goes this is Snoopz and Little Man says Snoopz yeah? I hear you’re on this moves ting and I say dun know. We go into his block and sit on the stairs in the half-light and I spark my zoot and draw Gotti on it. Gotti says we’re gonna do a proper move tonight but we need to wait for Big D who’s gonna break it down for man.
Little Man is short, Haribo cola-bottle skin and his earlobes are weighed down by white gold studs crammed with canary yellow diamonds. He’s kinda typical of SK mandem. Dropped out of school at thirteen, started trapping, first hitting sells as a worker for one of the olders, eventually saving enough p’s to start his own line shotting work and buj. Living in some cruddy block, stacking paper, spending it on ice and designer garms, just doing his ting without stopping to work out where he’s tryna get to. His whole family is deep in it anyway. Uncles, cousins, nephews, even his mother. Nothing to hide, just don’t chop up crack on the kitchen table because people eat there or whatever.
Later, Little Man tells me how he had this peng lighty, mad pretty forreal, every man was feeling her on a different tip he says, and she loved off Little Man. Little Man got her to smoke the hard food and once she was hooked, he pimped her out to the mandem. Pimped her out so she never had to buy any work and occasionally he’d fuck her too, which is what she’d really wanted in the first place. Like all nittys though, eventually she started looking all fucked up and dead-eyed, bones sticking out at sharp angles like her hips could cut you and no one wanted to hit it any more so she had to start buying the white off Little Man, although sometimes he’d give her couple rocks in exchange for some neckback.
While Little Man is on the phone I clock the Rolex on his wrist. Soon as he ends the call and says Big D’s on his way, I’m like yo g that watch is hard. Gotti says ah lie? Little Man holds out his arm to me so I can look at it. It’s an 18-carat yellow gold women’s Rolex, the face completely flooded with white diamonds and instead of numbers there are twelve pink rubies like drops of frozen blood. Where did you cop dat I say and he says one of the mandem yakked it on some move, only cost me six bags n dat, and I’m like I need to yak myself some shit like dat forreal.
We leave the block. A grey Porsche pulls up and one brer in a leather jacket jumps out and says wagwan mandem and Gotti says that’s Ghost and passes me the zoot. Little Man goes over to Ghost while Gotti and I carry on bunning, getting closer and closer to the roach. Gotti says he’s a dickhead really, he’s not on moves or nuttin, just wants to feel like he’s a part of it – it’s as if his image collapses under the weight of Gotti’s eyes – and I say seen, staring at Ghost’s Porsche, blue snake of smoke sliding out of my mouth into the air.
Ghost comes over to us and Gotti says this is Snoopz. Ghost says so you’re gonna be doing the lick today yeah? Where d’you get your grillz from? I say Hattons innit. He has one white gold tooth with a single big diamond set in it but it looks kinda stupid still. He turns to Gotti and says Big D should be here in a minute, I jus dropped him off at the shop to get a lickle juice.
I end up in the back of the Porsche. It’s a two-seater so I’m squashed up with my knees almost touching my chest and Big D and Ghost are in the front. Big D is late thirties, pushing forty, little lightning bolts of grey running through the evening of his hair. A couple small scars on his cheek and forehead are the only things that tell the story of some kind of life, the rest of his face like dead and cold, eyes with nothing behind them. He turns round slightly and says, for the second time, you don’t have to do it if you’re not on it. Real talk, no fronting ting, just say if you’re not on it.
I wouldn’t be sitting here chatting to you if I wasn’t on it, I say.
Ghost looks straight ahead and says it’s cool if you’re not though, just say and we’ll find someone else innit.
I go I don’t do this talking ting. I let my actions speak for themselves, looking at D as he cranes his neck round to watch me.
Big D laughs and says nah he’s on it, he’s on it to rahtid.
Now that I’ve committed to it there’s no backing out. Better to take risks, better to plunge into the fire and feel alive, if only for a moment, than not to have really lived at all. Some people spend their lives dying. Fuck dat. Anyway, no way am I letting these man think I’m a pussy, that I’m not on it, that I don’t back my talk. Then I’d lose my name before I even make it.
Big D says look, this is the move: we’re going to Central, to Knightsbridge or Chelsea or one ah dem rich areas. I’m gonna roll with you man, you’re gonna have your driver in a separate whip and I’m gonna scope the belly. More times it’ll be a diamond ring or a kettle, but sometimes them rich women rock diamond ear-studs or a necklace. If it’s a man, more times it’ll be a big kettle like a Rolex or a Cartier. Once I’ve clocked it, I’m gonna phone you man and tell you who to jump out on. It’s a clamping ting you get me.
Yeah so how do I do it? I ask.
So you’re gonna run up on the eat, ma
ke sure they don’t notice you creeping up behind them, clamp them, don’t do it too tight, but you wanna hold them tight enough so they know what time it is and then Gotti’s gonna rip off the belly. He knows exactly how to pop kettles coz he’s done this shit before. All you have to do is hold them until Gotti gets it. If they try a ting, just clamp them tighter and truss me, dem fi know what time it is.
He stares at me and goes so what, you still on it yeah?
Yeah big man, I’m on it.
We get out of the Porsche. Dusk drains the day away. I’m in the wilderness.
Big D bends down to brush something that only he can see off his Louis V monogram trainers, then pulls a copy of Loot out of his jacket and starts flicking through the car section, looking for a getaway whip. Ghost is on the phone to our getaway driver, Little Man is bunning another zoot and Gotti is showing me how to clamp people properly.
I practise a few times on Gotti and he laughs as I pull him back against me with my left forearm tight across his throat – left hand gripping my right bicep so the hold can’t get broken – and says yeah brudda you’ve got it on point.
A boy and girl in school uniform walk up to the block and stare at us and Little Man says spud me my lickle g and the boy bumps fists with Little Man without any expression itching his face. The boy opens the block door with his electric key fob and goes in with the girl, followed by a cloud of dank that Little Man blows after them.
D walks over and says it’s on, I got a whip for you man waiting for us right now in Maida Vale. Where’s Quincy?
He’s on his way now, says Ghost.
I know he’s still smoking hard food so man won’t even need to give him more than a few bills, says D.
The brer who’s gonna be our driver is a nitty. One of those half-functioning nittys who isn’t totally fucked but is also possessed by that constant hunger for the light and dark, which means he’ll move reckless and do anything to get us away if the move turns into a police chase. At the end of the day a nitty is still a nitty – you can’t trust the way they think – but like Big D says, he’ll be happy with a few hundred pounds just to feed his habit. More p’s for us that way.
I turn to Gotti and tell him about Nietzsche and how we’re following our purest instincts, and Gotti says forreal, that’s sick you know Snoopz, you’re different fam, I swear you’re one of the realest people I know. Something bright flickers for a moment in his eyes and goes out; a star swallowed up by a black hole. I say morality is a luxury that man can’t afford, you get me. And if you live dangerously then it’s just a restriction, it don’t count for shit ah lie? And I can see that Gotti fully gets it. He’s not afraid of his own downfall. Like right here, on the edge, is where he’d already found that truth. Except it’s more than that. It’s like revealing a vital ingredient of the cement holding our world together.
I go and drop off my Avirex jacket at Bimz’s since I don’t want the heavy leather restricting my movements. I get my bally and surgical gloves out of my backpack. Gotti’s already got his tucked into the front pocket of his hoodie. Quincy, our driver, shows up at Little Man’s block. Tall, walking skeleton, shrinking into oversized clothes that once coulda fit, front teeth dying in yellow and black from piping all that hard food, and Big D says come you man, we’re gonna get the whip.
We drive to Maida Vale where Big D buys our car from some white man, cash in hand, no need to sign any papers, nothing traceable. The plan is to dump it after the move anyway, so no need to bother with documents and all that shit. We drive back to South Kilburn and park up in front of Little Man’s block. The team is ready.
Six in the evening and a chill November night spreads itself all over South Kilburn, concrete turning blue as darkness glazes everything in shadow. Lights turn on in windows. Stars drown. Gotti and I jump into the getaway whip and head off to Central.
I’m sitting in the back listening to Gotti talking to our driver. Quincy tells Gotti how on the last move he did, they didn’t have a two-man team. It was just one crazy brer called Icer, with Quincy as the getaway driver. Icer clamped up this woman but he couldn’t get her ring off, says Quincy. Her finger was too fat. She started screaming, so Icer tried to bite the big diamond out of her ring and his front teeth snapped clean off. Came running back to the whip, screaming, and all the blood he left on her ring, pure DNA. Wasn’t long before they nicked him for it. Got a straight six for it. Six years in the bin, two broken front teeth, no diamonds.
Oh my days, I say and Gotti says nah that’s fucked still.
Gotti looks out of the window, waiting for the call from Big D and I notice how detached this whole moment is from ordinary life, as if time don’t exist for us right now, cars full of ordinary people leading ordinary lives passing us, oblivious to the fact that we’re about to change the rhythm of someone’s existence. We’re in a computer game. Fuck it, we’re in GTA. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
Gotti’s phone rings.
Which one? he says and looks out the window.
I can see Little Man’s whip two cars ahead of us. I pull on my gloves and put my bally on my head, ready to pull it down.
I see her, I see her, says Gotti staring out of the side window and then he puts the phone on the dashboard and tells Quincy to slow down. I feel my heart in my belly, my chest hollow and empty now, feeling almost like I wanna be somewhere else as I watch Gotti pull on the surgical gloves snap snap and then he puts his bally on and the blackness becomes one with his eyes and I roll mine down over my face and he says come Snoopz and opens his door as the car pulls to a stop in the middle of the road.
Across the road is a mews, the entrance through a high stone archway, white stone now muted by the evening, and walking up to the archway a woman: long blonde hair, a bit fat under a green padded jacket with fur round the collar – you know them ones that rich people wear, like they just stepped out of the countryside from hunting foxes or some shit – and I’m out of the whip and the road and passing cars and teardrops of light merge into a blur around me and now there’s just this moment. Every moment devours the previous one. Every birth is a death. Right now someone is being born and someone is dying. Fucking, living and dying are all one and yet none of it lasts, because it all gets erased by the next moment, never to exist again.
The moon sinks into a pit of clouds and we are running – black bally tight on my face – running across the street as the eat walks into the mews. And now we’re in the mews and I feel like I’m ready to rob the night itself. As we get closer we slow down, creep low like shadows and the bally feels like it’s become a part of my face and I don’t think I’ve breathed once since I started running, but before I can think any more I am behind the eat and time stops.
Everything behind us has turned invisible. I notice the red painted wooden door with a brass 35 nailed to it and the windows next to the door glowing orange behind a thin white blind and it looks warm inside and there are flowerpots on the window ledge with pink flowers, green leaves looking blue in the dim light and all this in a split second before I realise the eat is about to enter her house. The automatic light outside the door blinks on and everything is bright and I know she’s gonna turn around coz she can feel our energy dimming the light, even as her hand rises with a bunch of keys to the door and I straighten up and then I’m a shadow wrapping myself around her.
At the moment of clamping her I feel immortal. I can feel her chin tuck over my arm, I know I’ve got it right – just how Gotti showed me – and I pull my right hand over her mouth and shutdafuckup and you won’t get hurt comes out of my mouth and her scream crawls back down her throat and I wonder what her face looks like as I pull her tight against me and I hope she won’t try biting my hand so I press against her mouth hard like I want to crush it. Gotti pops the watch off her wrist and I hear the metal snap. Gotti is a spirit, a ghost, his instincts can’t hide themselves any more, and the eat’s arms stretch towards him as if she wants to grab the air around her, fingers glittering,
arms flapping slightly and I pull her back again and feel her lean heavy against me. Gotti rips a gold chain from her neck and twists a diamond ring off one of her fingers, but he can’t twist the ring with the biggest belly off her finger, it’s stuck or suttin, and he looks at me and starts dussing, leaving the moment, reality rushing back in a flood of sounds and colours pouring in and the eat slumps to the ground as I let go of her. I realise I musta clamped her too tight and I’ve put her to sleep, she’s actually snoring in front of her door and I’m no longer high on my own blood and heartbeat and I can hear and see properly and I lean over her and carefully twist the sparkling belly from her middle finger but I still don’t see her face – even though I look right at it – and then I turn and follow Gotti out of the mews.
Jammed right into the entrance of the mews, so there’s no space for me and Gotti to run through, is a car. At first it’s like someone’s parked it there, but as we get close we clock it’s some man who’s seen what happened and is trying to block our escape. No long ting. Gotti jumps onto the bonnet, I follow him and we duss right over the front windscreen, catching sight of the man at the wheel on his phone – probably on a 999 call that very second – run onto the roof of the car and I look up and for the first time that night I can see stars stinging the petrol black sky and then we jump off the roof and back to the getaway whip which is waiting for us in the middle of the road, engine running, open the doors and throw ourselves in. The whip speeds away.
Who They Was Page 11
