by Anton Marks
“One day at a time, Ms Wong?”
Suzy nodded and smiled.
Betsure Turf Office
12.55am
The cherry red Aston Martin Virage had a gleam on it that could only be matched by the gold tooth grin of equal brilliance in the driver’s mouth. If there was ever a man who enjoyed his wealth it was Spokes. He was in his late fifties – not that you could tell – well maintained from the luck of the genetic draw and his strenuous efforts to keep the temple of his body free from the rigors of modern living - he sported distinguished streaks of grey in his hair and neatly trimmed beard. He had a good sense of dress too and the ability to hold his own in any conversation with ambitions above the virtues of pussy, drugs and music.
Now add that to the natural attraction afforded to you when money was no object. How respect was given - although in many cases it was false and more akin to fear - and the perceived mystery he exuded that women especially found irresistible and which was merely an unhealthy respect for his achievements.
Spokes pulled into one of the three car park spaces and briefly lost his oral sparkle. The forecourt was busy with the listless regulars who conducted a daily pilgrimage to the gods of gambling and who had spotted his arrival. Loud, lewd and opportunistic like hyenas, they hung outside and in, their meager offerings to Mammon already spent. Spokes’ high performance car would provide another welcome distraction for them.
“Pussyclaat!” Spokes spat.
The leader of the pack – a man he knew as Goose – raised up an extra few inches like a meerkat – long neck, furtive eyes and scraggly hair in the twilight zone of not quite dread, not quite afro. The others in his mob responded in that animated mirroring fashion forged from too much time together, curious but wary as if they were waiting for Goose to deem the encounter safe. Goose nodded admiringly and his crew surrounded the car like it had the promise of insect larvae.
So why not the gambling establishments of Westminster, Chelsea or Knightsbridge, for a more refined gambling experience?
The Devil you know, dem seh.
He knew what to expect from some of the most idle, callous, desperate, money grabbing, vile and wanton dutty bungle, the Caribbean and the UK had shat out. The corrupted intentions that sat behind their eyes might as well be emblazoned on their foreheads.
Envy.
Hatred.
Contempt.
He understood, he just didn’t condone it.
Spokes slid out of the car nimbly and closed the door with a satisfying thunk of class engineering.
“Raw George! Dem nuh call yuh Spokes for nothing, big man. You love yuh fast cars, star!”
A middle aged Rasta man approached him with his hands out-stretched, made the promoter smile. Spokes grasped it, a friendly and genuine face amidst the predators.
“Ras Michael, how tings champion?”
“Flat foot hustling same way, pardy. Flat foot hustling.”
Ras Michael could turn up anywhere selling some of the best Sensi in London. A roving entrepreneur who by the blessings of the Father - the Rastaman’s words not his - had never had a single run in with the police. Always smiling, always optimistic he was a constant breath of fresh air amidst the rough necks he seemed to gravitate to.
“Yuh fancy a horse, today?” The Rasta man asked.
“Yeah, yeah. I feel lucky. You have a tip for me?”
“Mi always have a tip breddrin’ but not deh kind you would appreciate.”
Spokes laughed and started making his way to the interior of the bookmakers, watching himself approach in the glass frontage. He also saw Goose stretching over his car, as if he wanted to pop the bonnet, his mob in rapt attention.
Spokes shot back without missing a stride.
“Touch mi rassclaat car and yuh dead!”
“Fucking cunt!”
A downpour of white paper flung into the air with such disgust that it fluttered to Spokes’ feet like an artificial snow storm in a bottle just as the fourteen forty from Cheltenham came to an end and he was ten thousand pounds up. Lady luck and providence all rolled into one.
Damn, he was good. Unfortunately the man standing beside him – the one who inadvertently wanted to create a winter wonderland theme with his stubs, wasn’t so lucky.
Ras Michael popped his head through the door patting his breast pocket and smiled.
“Collect yuh money and you can taste some of my Clarendon Sensi star. What yuh say?”
The snake head ring that encircled Spokes right index finger tingled. The fringes of his perception shrank and colored to a warm mauve. A pleasant warmness engulfed him completely and his taste buds exploded with the flavor of peaches and cream. Ras Michael was a kind, hard working man with good intentions and Spokes knew it would be a pleasure to share a spliff with him. Evaluating people using magic was so far removed from what he had known four years ago it felt almost like another life. A life his spar had forced him to immerse himself in and one that for a boy from Trelawney had strangely become second nature. Who would have thought his calling would be this?
Spokes licked his lips and smiled at Ras Michael.
“That sounds good to me, pardy.”
Spokes held on to his receipt firmly in his fist and approached the payout booth. The memory of his mortally wounded friend forcing the ring on his finger knowing the Mesopotamian artifact would keep him safe but unable to articulate it.
The cashiers booth was empty, he rapped on the thick glass that reminded him of a reinforced chicken coup that was designed to keep some mutant strain of fowl in. The managers of this branch were cynical enough by nature or from experience to realize that priorities lay in security not decor. There was a conspicuous prevalence of CCTV cameras, sprouting up like fungus. A twenty four hour tape of the operations of this place would be the wet dream of any officer on the drugs squad, Operation Trident or a plain old Community Support Officer.
He imagined a police raid in here.
Shit.
The thought of a possible stampede of innocent and felon alike made him chuckle to himself. He pressed the buzzer beside his elbow and waited. Quick to take your money but not so forthcoming when it came to paying out the winnings, he thought.
Seeing no sight of the cashier he unslung the Vertu mobile from around his neck and turned away from the counter before he started to key in a number.
Ras Michael was impatiently gesticulating that he was taking too long. Spokes raised his five fingers to him, punched a number and placed the receiver to his ear.
A conversation drifted over.
“I’m telling you man, ah him.”
Spokes felt a chill erupt across the back of his neck without warning. His backbone twisted almost of its own volition for a better vantage point. And with sharp eyes he locked onto two men talking, his ears seemed like they were standing to attention as he concentrated on what they were saying. Spokes realised he was staring just before the men knew too.
Slowly, he adjusted the phone to his ear, deftly cut the connection with his little finger and gave them his back to reinforce the pretence.
The men continued their tone lowered.
“I talked to him three days ago. Him was on top form.” The voice sounded incredulous
“Dem fuck him up, bro.”
“Mi hear, the swimming pool dem find him in was a scarlet soup of him bones and flesh. Chunks Super, yuh understand me?”
“If a man like Maaga Tin can get reach, nobody safe star, nobody.”
“True..true. But even him nevah deserve that...”
They lowered their voices and shuffled uneasily away from earshot.
The two men, partially hidden away in a cubicle to his left had done enough to ruin a care-free day, etching worry grooves into Spokes’ forehead. The area the men stood in, was a low tech alternative to a secure room that was used by punters with winnings that they needed to count in some degree of privacy. The conversation almost achieved its goal of being private in an environment of
foam ceiling tiles and Perspex partitions keeping the participants’ words satisfyingly low.
Secret agents these hustlers were not.
If they hadn’t made so much out of it, he may not have paid them much attention. But it was just the way they had isolated themselves, invading each others’ space to preserve the secrecy of what they were sharing as if it could seep past them without the closeness.
The coarse monotones of the main speaker could not be modulated below a whisper if his life depended on it. And Spokes decided this was a good thing. Without making his intentions obvious, he stood still peering in front of him, a fading but majestic photograph of Lester Piggott in full stride and concentrated on the sounds. A few slight re-adjustments of his head from time to time and he heard the almost one sided conversation and allowed his mind to fill in the gaps.
The men had obviously been privy to some facts – Maaga Tin’s murder - but the details he guessed from experience were eighty percent street embellishments and twenty percent reality. And that said it did nothing to improve his frame of mind, a sudden sinking feeling in his gut.
He leaned back on the counter, his heart pounding in his chest, his head screaming for him to get out of there, lock himself away and stay there.
Hell an powder house!
Who was next?
Spokes was having a whole new respect for these dudes reporting skills. His Snakes Head ring had discerned the truth of what was being said and its accuracy he could feel by the emotional snapshots smearing his mind’s eye like a Dakar Rally car flinging up mud onto its windshields. He could taste that astringent copper tang on his tongue and the splashes of crimson behind his eyes.
Spokes swallowed, to keep the contents of his stomach calm.
The abattoir smell of a slaughter house wrinkled his nostrils and for a moment he was almost there amidst the carnage.
He spun away to sever the connection only just interrupting his contracting abdominal muscles and the embarrassment of hurling on the betting shop floor.
Jesas!
The why, was simple really. The players in this Danse Macabre where being brought to book for what they had done four years ago.
The how, was something else entirely.
Could you really hold a force of nature behind bars indefinitely? Wasn’t it just a matter of time before he found the means to escape? And how long did he have?
He kissed the snake head ring on his finger.
This had kept him invisible from any and all metaphysical snoopers wanting to know his whereabouts and would continue to do so, as long as he had a heart beat. And there lay the rub and the subject of his galloping pulse. Spokes was not invulnerable and nothing in Darkman’s stolen and acquired trinkets and oddities that he had researched over the four years could endow you with that gift. Any day under God’s hot sun, Darkman and his eyes ever made four – if they ever met each other in the flesh - he knew he would draw his last breath.
But how can you kill what you can’t find.
Jimmy was the only link to him and it was unlikely he could be questioned about it. Even if he was a necroscope he needed a corpse to interrogate and the whereabouts of Jimmy’s mortal remains would remain hidden.
Calm down, old man.
Just cool.
Somehow that did nothing to console him.
What did was the thought of leaving all this behind and starting a new life.
Just this one dance at his night club, The Crypt, and his worries would be over.
Just one dance.
With that thought, he strode out, placing the winning receipt firmly in Ras Michael’s hands, ignoring his questions with a wave, jumping into his Virage and disappearing in a haze of burning rubber and exhaust.
7.
Limelight Nightclub
MOBO Awards after Party
Friday, July 12th
22.35
Suzy took the glass of water from the bartender and smiled, a smile that came from that peaceful place she had struggled to find after two days of chaos and miracles but finally she felt, she was there. When you had so many adoring males fawning over your every move – her boyfriend’s compliments were important - but soaking up the sweet reinforcement from strange men with no good on their minds put an extra shine on her good mood.
Suzy thought of Y.
She imagined being able to take Y emotionally by the hand and dragging her to where she was feeling good. Tonight would go some way in achieving that but, more importantly; it would do Patra and Y some good and all thanks to Mr Patel and his kindness. Her sisters stood around her, Patra rubber necking the male talent who were reciprocating in spades and Y, trying too hard to be unimpressed with the stars of screen and song, looking completely relaxed as they danced, socialized and drank around them.
Her excitement was slowly oozing through although she was trying to remain aloof.
“I didn’t know Stylus was so short,” Y said. “Seeing him in the videos he looks so, so...
“Fit,” Suzy completed the thought for her.“Short ass bwoy tink him hot but him batty flat like a bun pan. Him have a good voice though, you have to give him dat.”
Y laughed, swaying gently to the music.
“Why so hostile Suzy, you’re usually the one with the good word to say about everyone.”
“Normally I do babe but him brush past me earlier and I don’t know why but something of his essence rub off.” Her eyes clouded as she recalled. “Him have some mommy issues, beat him last girlfriend badly. Mi nuh appreciate dat.”
“Motherfucker!” Patra said.
An uncomfortable silence punctuated her comment and Suzy was beginning to regret having voiced her opinion but Y didn’t allow it to outwardly phase her.
“It’s our make-up as women, I guess. Being able to deal with it I mean but never accepting it.”
“Yuh sound like Miss P,” she mimicked Patra’s catch phrases. “We can take it bitch, and we will hand it out again too. Built to last baby!”
“You wearing out my name again, biaatch?” Patra asked with a straight face.
“Wi just using your pearls of wisdom to make a point babe.”
Patra looked at Y with a mischievous smirk on her face.
“She playin with me, right?”
“Yeah,” Y said, laughing. “She playin with you.”
Patra gave Suzy the fuck you finger.
“So, any other celebrities in your bad books Suzy?”
Ms Wong looked around to make sure but the star power surrounding her was dazzling.
“I know that nigga is gonna get some love, tonight.” Patra held up a glass of Southern Comfort and pointed her pinky finger in the direction of US Southern rapper Rox1.
“Now he is what you see on MTV, the real McCoy baby, accept no substitutes. Damn he’s packing upfront too.”
Rox1 was surrounded with his entourage who looked like they took the job of his personal protection too seriously. He was amongst friends but still they maintained the human cordon of menace and exaggerated importance that comes with manufactured fame.
“Him look good but a pity ‘bout the baby sitters, though. You think they tuck him in at night?”
“I damn sure hope that’s all they do.”
Patra smiled at the picture forming in her head and cast an appraising eye over the clubbers. Her gaze fell on a group of young women adjusting themselves vigorously and giggling. Immediately the game began. It was a habit she had of categorizing groups of women in less than flattering terms and using herself as the empirical standard of ghetto chic to make her judgments. It was more fun with the girls participation but what the hell. The fidgeting group was annoying the shit out of her.
Why didn’t these bitches wear their size. Wiggling their booty’s into designer jeans showing ass crack, smoothing down tight fitting tops showing titty or pulling down skirts that have been riding up and showing coochie. Why can’t you just compliment the shape God gave you, sugahhh or use the goddamn gym.
Her mental rant over, her eyes were elsewhere.
The DJ, J A Katana, was flipping the discs with practiced ease. The mixes flowed smoothly as would be expected from a man at the top of his game and it was a matter of time before Patra squealed at a track that delighted her and required her presence on the dance floor.
“I’ve got to dance to this Young Jeezy joint, sugahh. You coming?”
Suzy shrugged and unfurled an aberrant hem of her short black and silver dress – a knock off of a Karl Lagerfeld creation – and stroked it back to perfection. She had dressed hurriedly at Patra’s place, knowing her boyfriend would be screwing at the dress’s suggestive cut so Suzy didn’t attempt getting ready from home. Sweet of him being jealous of the attention of other men but this was her, confident and not afraid of how she looked.
Wha’ eye nuh si, heart nuh leap.
Y looked just as comfortable in her sparse Spartan themed shimmery gold outfit as could be expected. She moved with self assurance, unconcerned what anyone thought of her even after all she had gone through Patra was not to be out done in the sexiness stakes. Miss P’s slinky Yves St. Laurent dress that was almost backless and plunged just a delectable whisper from her coccyx defied gravity with the material exhibiting unusual characteristics of adhesion to her skin. The outfit’s front was hell bent on showing you enough but not too much for your imagination to have no need for sensual spec. Suzy was wondering how she kept it in place with only a strap around her neck.
“You two can go.” She said.
Patra grabbed Y’s hand and pulled her onto the dance floor. A multitude of hungry male eyes followed them into the swelling ranks of dancers. A smile broke on Suzy’s calm demeanor and she settled into supping her sparkling water with a twist of lemon.
The music thumped through the THX powered speakers, Young Jeezy’s swagger on point. The smells of expensive perfume broken up by revelers wading through it like an aromatic brook. Suzy remembered how years ago partying could mean coming home smelling like a damp ashtray. It had always left a feeling of uncleanness at the nights end a niggling anticlimax at the culmination of an otherwise exciting night. Regular smokers Suzy could abide in small doses – she called Patra a joker smoker, as her cigar habit was of little consequence, one stogie every two weeks or so.
