In some places, do your job wrong and you might get written up, even fired. In the Gutter? The punishment suits the crime.
Sloppy Operator by Tom Leins
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Her real name is Carol Cummings, but she prefers to be called
Khandi Kane.
She likes to tell people she works as a glamour model, but as
far as I know she only ever made one topless calendar—for a local petrol
station.
She is better known as ‘Snow White,’ after she fucked a
couple of midgets while shooting a video for a smut-freak called Caruso back in
the ‘90s. She was supposed to fuck all seven but the others were too drunk and sat
around in the background, wanking and smoking noxious-looking cigarettes.
‘Snow White and the Seven Dicks’ was filmed in the cellar of
the Kirkham Social Club, and what it lacked in production values, it made up
for with its plot—which had a couple of well-judged twists. I know—I’ve watched
it.
*
When
I arrive at Hakan’s office, Khandi is sat on a patched-up sofa, painting her
toenails a disturbing shade of stomach lining pink. She’s not his wife, she’s
his mistress. Her flat stomach is heavily scarred, and a rusty-looking piercing
dangles from her belly button.
She
looks up at me, cigarette smouldering between her glossy lips.
“He’s
in a bad mood, Joe. A rotten fuckin’ mood…”
I
shrug.
Fuck
it.
Bad
news coming out of a pretty mouth is still bad news.
*
Hakan
looks unwell. His skin has a sickly sheen, and his greeting comes out as a
ragged bark. I heard that he got smashed in the throat with a baseball bat last
week, during an altercation with a group of Aryans.
He
is wearing a khaki jacket over a white turtleneck. He probably thinks it looks
sophisticated, but frankly it looks fucking ridiculous.
He
is a low-level guy but he’s running things for his cousin, Suleiman, while he
is back in Turkey visiting his sick mother.
No
one in Paignton stays powerful for long. They are either wondering how to keep
hold of it, or wondering how they lost it. He is no different.
“What
can I do for you, Hakan?”
He
tries to clear his throat, and it sounds like cheap underwear ripping.
“You
know my nephew, Kazim?”
I
shake my head.
“You’re
lucky. Kid is a fucking punk. He was getting his dick sucked in some boy
brothel last week, and got loose-lipped with another customer. Some old Nazi
bastard named Garrity. Fuckers raided one of my stash houses later that night.
Shot two of my men through the kneecaps. Robbed my—Suleiman’s—smack.”
He
rolls down the neck of his sweater, shows me the black and yellow bruising.
“And
did this. Now he’s missing.”
“You
want me to find him, right?”
He
nods.
“What
are you going to do with him?”
He
pauses, lights a cigarette.
“Did
your father teach you much, Joe?”
I
shake my head. I never met him.
“Mine
did. Before I left home. He taught me how to shoot cattle in the head when the
animals were too far gone to save.”
He
stubs out the cigarette without smoking it, a pained expression etched across
his ravaged face.
*
When
I arrive at the North Atlantic Motor Inn a pair of elderly cops called Benson
and Hedges are dragging a floater out of the pool with a big fucking net. That’s
certainly one way to check out.
It’s
a typical no-tell motel—unless you grease the right palms, that is.
The
cocktail lounge is surprisingly busy for a week-night. When this place first
opened, the only hookers were he-shes and girls with visible deformities.
Today, there are even a couple of high-class working girls further down the
bar. Keeping their distance from Wet-Look.
Hunched
on a barstool, he cuts a shambolic figure, hair slicked back with its own
grease. He is a degenerate ex-cop with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the local
skin trade.
I
pat him on the shoulder. His hound’s-tooth jacket is greasy to the touch.
“Fancy
a drink, sunbeam?”
I
shake my head. “I’m not staying.”
He
shrugs.
“How
did you find him so quickly?”
“In
this town, it’s not who you know, it’s who you blow…”
He
grins queasily at me, and wipes his lips on his Devon & Cornwall
Constabulary tie.
“Is
he still here?”
“Room
13.”
I
start to pat him on the back again but think better of it and wipe my hand on
my jeans.
*
Hakan
is lurking in the lobby, still wearing his white turtleneck. It seems to glow
next to the shit-brown décor. He is clutching a Slazenger kitbag. “This way.”
The
thick carpet in the corridor deadens our footsteps.
Outside
Room 13 Hakan unzips the hold-all and takes out a pump-action shotgun. Fuck me —it
looks military-issue.
“Mossberg
590A1. You like it? Heavy barrel, metal trigger guard, collapsible stock.”
As
long as it puts a fucking hole in someone, who gives a shit?
I
bang on the door with my fist, while Hakan delicately cradles the shotgun like
a new-born.
I
press my ear up against the door. I can hear voices, but it doesn’t sound like
anyone is going to let us in anytime soon.
I
take a step back and kick the cheap door off its hinges. Hakan edges inside,
gun raised.
There
is a naked, stretched-out looking rent boy face down on the chenille bedspread.
He is whining—like stray livestock that has wandered into an electric fence.
A
stocky man covered in prison ink retrieves a bloodied baseball bat from the
bedside table. Gordon Garrity.
“Fuck
you, Nazi.”
Hakan
blows a hole through the scratchy Hitler likeness tattooed on his stomach.
Garrity is still twitching, leaking fluid, as he hits the wall.
Kazim is slumped, passed out in an armchair.
Hakan stands over his nephew, eyes bulging.
“You don’t have to kill him, you know.”
Hakan grunts, but places the shotgun on the
bed. “He needs to be punished.”
Hakan moves closer, cracking his knuckles,
breathing heavily.
“What are you doing?”
“Deciding which bones to break in which order...”
