Read Little Men - The E Book Online
Authors: Ronnie Yax
And Leon, with this latest venture, had an ultra-reliable way of getting ecstasy into his club and selling it, via his old and trusted friend, Simon Owen. It was only when Snake was born that Leon properly appreciated the power of Simon and the service he could provide.
Each Friday morning, Del would send out one of his men to pick up a package, and Leon knew Del would only ever use reliable people. The pickup usually took place at a motorway services or a café somewhere. The package would contain about five thousand pills or so, enough for a
Friday night. The courier would then bring the package to the club and divide the pills into bags of fifty or a hundred. Various dealers would arrive at the club before it opened to the public and collect their quota. The dealers were welcome to sample the goods if they so desired, and they usually did.
The selling price was set by Leon, usually around five pounds each, but the dealers could be flexible if they wanted, say if a punter wanted ten in one go for example. It was on a ‘sale or return’ basis, any pills not sold could be returned to the club, but this was rare.
Each dealer had his own area of the club, and Del would have one of his bouncers keep an eye on the dealer. If a bouncer caught anyone else selling, the drugs would be confiscated and the pretender promptly thrown out with the offending substances handed to a Snake dealer. Once the Snake dealer had sold all his pills, he could either get some more from Del, or cane it with everyone else. The dealer would have a free night out and make some money, although a large percentage had to be turned over to the club in exchange for the right to deal.
The money from the pills would be swallowed up with the door and bar takings, and Del would personally ensure there were no problems with that process. He had such a fearsome reputation with his staff that no-one would dare to rip him off, least of all the dealers. Most of them were bright enough to realise that working for Del was a good thing, that they were well looked after and well paid. It beat selling drugs outside the club, like some losers insisted on doing. Once Leon had the drug money he could pay his supplier.
The local police largely knew this was going on, but they also knew Leon. He was a man to be trusted. Leon met regularly with a local officer, Chief Inspector John Penrose, whose job it was to keep an eye on Snake.
One of Leon’s finest hours took place in the early days of Snake when discussing its licence-renewal with Penrose.
“You know, Leon, things have really started to look up for the area since Snake
opened. I’ve been studying the statistics for Friday nights. Violent crime is down, assaults, drunken disorderlys, complaints by the public about antisocial behaviour, even Counsellor Davies is happy. It really is a surprise.”
“It’s no surprise to me, John. It’s our… co-operation.” Penrose wasn’t clear. Up until now he’d secretly been wary about his arrangement with Leon. Leon could be trusted, sure, but was it really wise to allow a club of Snake’s magnitude to operate in his own back yard, with such little police supervision? And why exactly
had his job become so much easier since Snake
opened its doors?
“It’s simple,” Leon began to explain. “Violent, alcohol-related crime is down sharply, right?”
“Right.”
“Do you think the losers that used to cause those problems have seen the errors of their ways? Stopped the drinking and hooligan behaviour because they want to get an early night, ready for church in the morning? Of course not. The thugs are in my club, off their heads. But instead of caving people’s heads in, they’re running around hugging each other like a bunch of spaced-out loons. What would you rather? Your men can look after the community you’re paid to look after. The frightened little old ladies. The press will get hold of those stats you’ve got in your hand and it will be congratulations all round, old boy. You will be the hero of the constabulary. And the reason is because you let us do our thing in our own club every Friday.”
Leon decided even more ego-massage wouldn’t hurt.
“And John, I take it your figures for drug offences are just as healthy as they always were?”
“Yes they are…” Penrose didn’t like to admit it, but that was the thing he found most puzzling. It was fairly obvious that with a club like Snake open, alcohol related incidents would inevitably go down, but why had drugs stats stayed largely the same?
“Your men are bright enough to realise that people going out and coming into the club are bound to have drugs on them, right?”
“Right.”
“So, all they need to do is drive around until they see a car full of kids, pull them over, use the stop and search powers, then voila! You’re gonna get ‘em on intent to supply or at least possession. Stats stay healthy, you tell the press, give them the zero tolerance angle. The press leave us alone, because they think we’re drug-free. The kids get the message that it’s not worth trying to bring anything in to Snake, and we can… do our thing.”
John Penrose nodded slowly. He was a man who appreciated straight talking, but Leon also understood it would be a mistake to actually
say out loud
that drugs were being sold in Snake
.
It was approaching 7 a.m. and the night was finally winding down. The music still pumped at a ferocious volume, but the cleaners had moved onto the dance floor. Daylight was streaming in through the doors. The floor surface was a sea of discarded plastic water and beer bottles and a film of black sludge covered the surface.
Two members of Sam’s group had left about an hour ago when the first trains started. Only Sam, Ian and Amanda remained. The debate now was whether or not to find another party, or call it a day and head home for a smoke and a few drinks.
Sam was flying.
“Come on, let’s go somewhere else! The night’s still young!”
“It’s morning, Sam,” Amanda pointed out.
“I know, but I’m still caned. I’ve got a few cheekies left. What you saying, Ian?”
“Yeah, fuck it. Let’s go.”
“Oh… alright then,” Amanda capitulated.
“By the way, how did you get on with that girl?”
Amanda and Ian had seen Sam chatting to a girl about half an hour ago. Her body language told them she looked interested.
“Got her number and a little snog!” he said.
“Well done!”
Amanda was pleased. It was about time Sam got a girlfriend.
Chapter Two
“So, how many have we got so far?” Carl Johnson glanced down at his notepaper. He was keen to keep this production meeting on track. It had been going for most of the morning and he knew there was plenty more to get through. Several times now the discussion had broken down into small irrelevant conversations amongst those in attendance. At first Carl didn’t mind, but he was starting to get irritable. He had an afternoon of engagements he couldn’t be late for.
“I make it seven,” Carl said firmly, before anyone had the chance to answer. He was chairing the meeting and his authoritative tone at least made everyone shut up, even if they didn’t have an immediate answer to his question.
“Seven it is.” Jeff Stein was the first to respond directly. He considered himself to be an equal of Carl, and they were around the same age. Jeff was CEO of Push,
a large, mainstream record label. Having been with the company all his working life, he was about to embark on a second career he hoped, as a television personality.
Carl worked as a producer for Slam!
Television and came from similarly humble beginnings. His many credits included the first two, highly successful, series of
Sleeping With The Enemy.
This was one of the final meetings for the team making the third series. Carl and Jeff were all too aware of how important they were to each other and the rest of the people in the room, so when one or other of them started talking, people tended to shut up and listen.
“Can we hurry things up, please? I want to be done by lunchtime.” The tone of Carl’s voice made everyone in the room simultaneously look downwards and study their notes intently. Jeff had already sensed, and indeed shared, Carl’s impatience. He was also a busy man. It would do no harm at all, he felt, to do his bit in quickening the proceedings up somewhat.
“I think we should go for Kyla as number eight,” he said boldly. The others at the table sensed the urgency and scrabbled through their paperwork to find the pictures and notes on Kyla which they had all been given.
Sleeping With The Enemy
was the reality TV show of the moment. The first two series had pulled in well over ten million viewers and the format had been sold around the world. It had all the ingredients of what Carl Johnson called ‘great telly’. The format was fairly simple. Ten highly ambitious young people had to live together in a giant mansion for the period of one month. They were watched 24-7 by 230 hidden cameras positioned all over the interior of the building.
The idea was to find the ‘next big star’ of various professions. The first series was female models, the second was male actors, and this, the third offering, was concerned with finding a new female pop-singer, and it promised to be the best yet.
The recorded footage of the house would be viewed by the ‘judges’. Three experts in the field. In this series, music. The viewing public would see edited highlights of goings-on in the house and the judges, watching it all, passing comment. The contestants would also be set challenges that were either directly or indirectly involved with the profession they were aspiring to. This would help the judges determine the strongest and weakest candidates, as well as being highly entertaining for the viewers.
At the end of each week the judges would pick who they felt were the weakest two candidates after watching their behaviour while performing tasks, although the criteria on which the contestants were to be judged were a little vague to say the least.
The two candidates would then face the ‘public vote’. The viewers had the opportunity to call in and nominate which of the pair they felt was not worthy of staying in the house, the evicted contestant would then be eliminated from the game.
The viewing public would also ultimately decide the winner of the show. In this series the prize on offer was a record deal with the highly-regarded Push
label, one of the biggest in the country. The winner could look forward to releasing a song backed by some of the most respected names in the industry, and it would almost certainly become a number-one hit. The singer would become a star overnight. ‘The sky’s the limit’ as the trailers for the show constantly screamed. And the viewing public would have the satisfaction of knowing they contributed something to an industry that was constantly in their face but ordinarily they had little input into. Revolutionary.
“Does anyone have any objections to using Kyla as contestant number eight?” Carl asked.
“I think we should at least watch her audition tape before we make our final decision,” Kelly replied. Kelly Rome was to be one of the judges on the show. She had been picked largely because she was loud and opinionated, but well-respected. In her capacity as one of the youngest editors of a national pop-music magazine, she was used to dealing with pushy, impatient men and was more than capable of standing up to them if the situation arose.
Carl cursed silently. He was not in the mood to argue and he knew, really, that it would be a good idea to watch Kyla’s tape again.
“Kirsty, could you do the honours, please?” Carl addressed the young runner Slam! had employed to help with mundane duties such as retrieving a video tape, loading it, then playing it to the assembled gathering. While Kirsty fumbled at one end of the room, Kelly voiced her thoughts on the subject of Kyla.
“We’ve had a few dealings with Kyla Andretti at IFP,” she began. Those in the room turned to look at her. She continued: “The newsdesk often gets sent pictures of her on the arm of various celebs. You know the type, desperate for their fifteen minutes. She sniffs round footballers and film stars.”
Kelly was going to stop there, but she sensed her colleagues wanted her to go on. They loved gossip as much as anyone.
“As celeb shaggers go, she’s done alright. There were rumours of a fling with Jaik Marlon, and she was seen with him a few times at LA nightclubs. Not bad for some little floozy from Kent.” The others laughed. Jaik Marlon was an A-list American movie star.
“Come to think of it, I’ve seen her before,” Jeff said slowly as he thought. “Yes… she sent pictures to us. She’s desperate for anything. A true wannabe.”
“She’s stunning,” Carl voiced what he’d been thinking for the last few minutes. “Why didn’t she make it?”
“I can’t remember now. I’m sure there was a good reason.” Jeff desperately tried to remember more, but he dealt with so many beautiful young people on a daily basis it was difficult recall individuals. The conversation firmly made Carl’s mind up. They would use Kyla as contestant number eight. From a ratings-grabbing point of view she was perfect. Imagine the headlines when the papers found out that the ex-girlfriend of a film star was going to be on the programme. And she
was
absolutely stunning. She was bound to upset the other contestants. A beautiful, desperate, fame-hungry wannabe with a past looking for the chance to show off on national television. Isn’t that what
Sleeping With The Enemy
was all about? Those present in the meeting put up no resistance to Carl’s suggestion of using Kyla. They too could already see the potential of featuring her in the show. This was, after all, an exercise in making fairly trashy television.
If anyone
was
wavering slightly in their decision to put Kyla on the programme, they certainly were not after seeing her audition tape. Kyla addressed the camera directly throughout the fifteen minutes. Her deep brown eyes were utterly mesmerising. She constantly reminded the viewers that she was ‘ruthlessly ambitious’ and ‘hard as nails’ and would ‘stop at nothing to win at all costs.’
Slam! had its pantomime villain for the third series of
Sleeping With The Enemy.