‘What you got to understand is, you work for us, not some pissing pitiful lowlife, all right?’ said Beezer.
They were in a flat in Shoreditch. Two of Charlie Stone’s soldiers had a kid who didn’t look any older than eighteen pressed down on a piss-stinking mattress in the bedroom. There had been a girlfriend in the flat when they arrived, but Beezer had quickly ushered her out the front door and told her to fuck off and not to even think about telling anyone about this or next time he wouldn’t be so gentlemanly, did she understand what he meant?
She understood. She went. And that left just her boyfriend, a spotty little oik with spiky blond hair, dressed up in a hat and eyeliner, like Boy George. Ten minutes into the visit, Charlie’s boys had his fancy pants off him and were holding him down on the bed while applying his girlfriend’s steam iron to his ball sack. His screams were echoing around the room, nearly deafening the lot of them.
‘I said, do you understand?’ asked Beezer.
‘Don’t think he did,’ said Harlan, grabbing the iron off one of Beezer’s cohorts and sending a long jet of steam billowing over the boy’s private parts. The screams were dying away to little more than tired choking barks. Tears of anguish were running down the boy’s thin cheeks, ruining his prettied-up hairstyle and smearing his make-up.
‘He’s had enough,’ said one of the men.
Beezer nodded. The boy had got the message. He’d be careful about staying true to the cause, the Charlie Stone cause, in future. He wouldn’t want to risk this happening again.
‘Nah, he hasn’t,’ said Harlan, and again the steam billowed out with a loud, hungry hiss.
The boy’s eyes rolled in his head. He was passing out with the pain.
‘Want some more, pretty boy?’ said Harlan, leaning over him, grinning.
‘I said that’s enough,’ said Beezer, and snatched the iron away. He moved over to the socket and yanked the plug out and stood the thing on the dressing table among the pots of rouge, an inch of dust and half-opened packets of coke. ‘We don’t want him out of work too long.’
Harlan drew back, scowling. For a minute, Beezer thought that he was going to get a right-hander off his boss’s son. He’s enjoying this. Really getting off on it, thought Beezer with a cold shudder.
All right, sometimes you had things to do. Unpleasant things. You didn’t have to bloody well enjoy it though. You didn’t have to be a fucking monster.
Then Harlan composed himself.
‘OK,’ he said with a shrug, and went and lounged in the doorway, hands in pockets.
Beezer went to the bathroom, dipped a towel in cold water and took it back out and dropped it onto the boy’s shrivelled, scarlet manhood. The boy’s eyes flickered open and he groaned.
Beezer pointed a finger at him. ‘You remember this, all right? You work for Ch—’
‘Harlan Stone,’ said Harlan from the doorway.
All the men standing around the bed froze.
‘Dad said I was in charge up here and I am, right?’ Harlan said, looking first at Beezer and then at the two others. ‘If any of you disagree with that, there’s still plenty of water left in that steam iron,’ he added with a smile that chilled them all.
Beezer didn’t think he’d ever once heard Charlie say that Harlan should be in charge. Personally, he wouldn’t leave Harlan in charge of a dog, much less an outfit of the size and scale of Charlie’s. But what could you do? Cross Harlan and you were crossing Charlie too, and if Charlie got upset, blood was spilled. Nobody would be dishing out medals if anyone opened their stupid gobs and spoke out.
‘Fine by me,’ said Beezer.
‘That’s good,’ said Harlan, and they left the building.
Later, Harlan and Beezer were in Charlie’s luxe apartment with a Tower Bridge view. Harlan had ditched the Langham because he was sick of hearing Charlie carping on about the expense of it, but he wasn’t going to rough it just to please that tight old cunt. This place would do him nicely, for now. As they sat there, Beezer said he was going to tell Harlan the facts of life.
‘You what?’ Harlan almost laughed. He knew all that shit. He’d had his first girl, a nobody, in the art cupboard at school, dreaming of Belle whilst he was doing it. And he would have Belle too, one day. Properly. He knew it. Her fucking father could say and do what he liked. Who did Terry Barton think he was, laying down the law to him, to Harlan Stone?
Terry Barton could go fuck himself.
‘Not those facts,’ said Beezer. ‘I mean the real ones. The ones that apply to the trade.’
‘OK. Go on then.’
Beezer told him.
‘There’s basuco, they get that as a by-product in the jungle labs of South America. Looks and tastes like shit. Nobody’ll touch that except the street kids in Colombia. Turns ’em into zombies. The Medellin cartel were looking for something as strong as basuco but nicer for smell and taste, you see? Then a chemist who worked for the Cali cartel got it. Dissolved cocaine powder in ammonia, added water and bicarbonate of soda, heated it until the liquid boiled off. And there it was. Crack cocaine.’
‘OK. Go on,’ said Harlan.
‘Crack is quick. You’re on the ceiling, like, instantly,’ Beezer enthused. ‘And the best thing? It lasts forty, maybe fifty seconds. That’s all. Heroin will give you three or four hours’ worth of high. Straight cocaine will give you half an hour. Crack takes you higher, faster. It’s a high like no other and you come down from it always wanting more. You can get cocaine users hooked – maybe ten per cent of them – within two years. With crack? Eighty per cent of them are hooked within a fortnight. A fortnight! Can you believe that, boy?’
Harlan believed it. He could see the years stretching ahead of him, all the money those poor stupid bastards out there on the streets or at their fancy dining tables would fetch him, because he was the sole heir to Charlie Stone’s manor.
He was going to rule the whole fucking world.