45. SUSPECT 8: Organised Crime

Organised being a relative term.

Organised crime… organised crime…

Shouldn’t call it that. Makes it sound like much more than it is. Or at least much more than we know it to be. Who knows what it is beyond that. Maybe even the players themselves don’t understand what it is they are, as opposed to what it is they play at being, or what they tell themselves they are at night when they kiss their kids goodnight. There were no Sopranos, or maybe they could have been had the systems been in place to allow them to flourish like that. Conglomerates were discouraged unlike in American where all these things seemed to be a family business. Here, the problem with identifying organised crime was that so many who you might think claimed to be involved actually added up to a loose network of freelancers, working rebels earning a bit of extra cash and caché by indulging in illegal schemes. They knew each other, but did that count as organised? But still you had the wink and a nudge guys, they were really into something, the guys who let others spread their reputations for them, those who sat back, did it all for the right reasons - ie. the money and what it bought them - not for the kudos or street cred. Then there were the loudmouths who people rolled eyes at, they borrowed money at the bar, cadged fags, and acted as if they knew everyone up high and down low. These were about the status and its superficial glow, the glory of Mano-a-Mano. That’s not who Moses was pointing toward. He was fingering a few guys he was actually very fond of. There’s Doc Wigley, the one he mentioned by name to Waingard, is a super fit fifty-something who always chewed gum and had a Tupperware of resin in the sink hatch of his BMW. The only time Moses ever heard Doc mention anything to do with drugs was when he asked Moses if he wanted the resin as he can’t get rid of it and there’s just no market for it at the moment. Can’t even give the stuff away. Evidenced when Moses declined the offer. Doc taught business at the local tertiary college at some point, probably quite recently, and between cigarettes he always twirled an unlit one across the tips of his fingers. He would go unseen for long stretches, pun quite possibly intended. But he kept his teaching job, if he was going inside for anything, so it seems unlikely he was getting caught. Rumours are one thing, but nothing was ever said out loud about Doc, yet Moses knew that he had something going on that had something to do with a diamond mine in Guinea but could never remember where he’d heard this. Had it been psychically implanted in his brain? And he was always going to Vietnam. He could have been going for fun. Doc had a grown son who lived in Manchester, but other than that there was never any talk of women or girlfriends, and maybe these frequent trips to the far east were to satiate some hunger. Moses had an uncle that nobody ever spoke to who did the very same thing, go to Vietnam for a month of ladyboys before coming back to his bigoted pub rants for the other fifty weeks of the year. Doc had more class. Yes, it had to be said, Moses admired him. He liked him and admired him. They’d sit at the bar and discuss life, ambition, Talking Heads, travel writing, Indian food, politics, comedians, Doc’s bad memory, Moses’s asthma. Doc would twirl the unlit cigarette, and when he did light it, he would smoke it without removing his gum. And Doc would say things to Moses like, Stick with what you know to be your strengths and talents and don’t let anybody squeeze them out of you because they’re yours and yours alone, my friend. You will become whoever you want to be, I can see that in you, Mo, but you must be sure to never let go no matter how long you have to hold on for. You won’t be here forever. Your heart might be, but you’ll get to the stage where you’ll do whatever it is you need to do. And he’d grin with it, a wide, warm, sumptuous grin, like a character from an old American soap who turn to face the camera as if it’s crept up on them in the opening credit sequence. Yes, Doc Wigley was a beautiful man, but there was no way Moses could not have him on the list and when Waingard asked, Moses couldn’t keep Doc’s name out of his mouth. If there was one give away with the Doc it was the company he kept. Demi O’Bannon was a six-five black guy who would enter a room like Caligula at a stag party. He wore dark glasses indoors, referred to everyone by their initial not their name, and was always in shot whenever there was a big arrest. He would have known Aaron but Moses had never seen them exchange so much as a glance. But that’s how the operations worked at that level you have to assume. Whatever the schemes going on, they were far back away from the bar of the Pips. Demi had made his name in the nineties as the righthand man of Christian Boswell, the club owner who was sent down for setting up a porn studio on the dance floor of his nightclub, The Pit. The porn is still available to watch if you know where to find it, and the dancefloor railings and backdrop are clearly identifiable. Boswell was also known for being sectioned - he made his way halfway down a deserted Sunday afternoon High Street naked brandishing and unloaded shot gun. Looked like he was headed for the train station, so that story might have ended differently. These are the legends of the town, and you can take them or leave them. So, yeah, that’s where Demi started out. Who knows what he’s up to nowadays, but he had a hand in this Vietnam thing with Doc and he certainly never had a job. Signed on, to keep the books ticking over. And he would sit with Doc at the bar in the Pips sometimes, but he never had more than one pint. Hey P, he would say when Moses came in, and It’s the Vardamanman, whenever Vardaman came in, and they’d high five, half-ironically, but they’d all perch together, these three generations of New Port life talking about those things they’d talk about. Moses liked that these were personable men with dangerous sides. That fact that Demi always deferred to Doc carried a great deal of weight. Then there was the three Jo(e)s - Joe Smart, Joe Hernandez, and Jo Ford. They were always together, talked mainly about food and rock music, the criteria of excellence for both was volume. Joe Smart had once said the best gig he ever saw was ZZ Top at Wembley. You could have landed a Harrier Jump Jet on that stage next to them and you wouldn’t have fucking heard it, he said. The three of them were scruffy but had poise, they had jobs, the manual shift jobs of the invisible, porter, production line, plasterer. They were a different breed to the likes of Doc Wigley. Jo Ford was the plasterer, butch lesbian with a rock hard handshake and legendary libido. Hernandez (known as Hern) was grizzled looking, slurred when sober and his head rocked like a Bing Crosby do-be-do-be-do when he spoke. When hammered he would talk at you with his eyes closed, but his voice had grown more lucid. Joe Smart was the killer if there was one among them, the dead eyed sort, you were never sure if he was about to laugh at a joke or wring the neck of the joke-teller. Doc used to wind him up for it, which always seemed to diffuse tension. Come on, Smartie, fucking laugh, will you? You’re ruining my mojo. People would fall about at this, firmly aligning themselves with Doc, and Joe Smart would smile as if he hadn’t understood but needed to look as though he had. Again, organised crime? Not if you’re looking for the Sopranos, but Joe Smart wasn’t mopping floors at the county courts for shits and giggles. He wore a Tag and drove a Merc and apparently owned his house outright. And for all that the three Jo(e)s were consistently high on their own supply and Moses would bet his life none of them had a Scarface or Enter the Dragon poster in their homes. There was something grown up about them, now Moses was thinking about it, and something so childlike about Aaron. If they’d clashed, Aaron hadn’t stood a chance. But what was all this? Supposition about some kind of professional transgression, a turf war, a deal gone wrong. Moses was thinking way too far ahead on this. He'd given Doc’s name and that was a mistake. It was all a mistake. When he wakes up, he’s going to feel quite uneasy about this whole state of affairs.