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starts. Where do I figure in all this? Nowhere. Absolutely bloody nowhere. I’ve had these Arabs coming up to me, looking like something out of a fashion show, with more gold hanging off them than Lola Flores, and they threaten me: “You just clean your shoes and mind your own business.” If anyone had said that to me four or five years ago, he’d have got my box on his head, brushes and all, and I’d have taken my shirt off and shown him my chest with the tattoos from the Legion and the Blue Division: “There, cocksucker, read that, and remember who you’re dealing with — a gentleman and a legionnaire.” But if you do that with this lot, they just laugh in your face. Even the police laugh at me. Before they used to treat me with respect, because even if you’d only been in the infantry, if you were one of Franco’s soldiers, it meant something. But nowadays the gangsters and the police don’t know or care what happened in the old days. They have no memory, Pepe — they’ve stuck their memories up their arses. And that’s why we’re fucked. So that was what put the wind up me, when you asked me what I know, Pepiño. You know I’d love to help, and I know you’d begenerous in return. But I can’t, because I don’t
know
anything.’
    ‘But surely you know someone who
might
know something.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, lead me to them.’
    ‘I don’t dare, Pepe. They leave me alone because I pretend to be crazy, but if I go up to one of the Arabs and say: “Listen, I’ve got a friend who wants to talk to you,” they’ll just tell me to mind my own business. And I might get a kicking too. I tell you, we’ve been colonized, Pepe. It’s terrible that we’ve just got to swallow it in silence. Instead of jetting off round the world all the time, Felipe Gonzales should at least see to it that when people rob us or knife us, it’s Spaniards who do it. I’ve always been a good patriot, and it infuriates me when I see how they’re selling Spain out. The other day there was an expert on the TV — one of those eggheads who talk out of their arses — and he was going blah-blah-blah, all about how Spain was up for sale, and how anyone with any sense would come and invest here, because they’d make a mint. Of course they would. Even the criminals’ hang-outs are up for grabs. There are people who have a seat in Plaza Real, and they wouldn’t give it up for two million pesetas, because all they have to do is sit there all day, and they make a fortune. Cocaine, I’m talking about, cocaine … So what can I say? If a prostitute’s even halfway good-looking, she goes with an Asian. We’re getting to the point where there won’t be any Spanish pimps left. Sure, your average-looking prostitutes end up with Spanish pimps. But the minute you start talking above-average looks, ten thousand a screw and upwards, they all end up with the foreigners. We need another Franco, that’s what we need. I’d like to see Franco back on the scene, waving his sword around. You wouldn’t see these foreigners for dust. If people feel they need to go thieving, fair enough, go ahead. But they can stay at home and do it in their own countries, because Spaniards take lessons from nobody when it comes to crime. But it’s the same old story. Who invented the helicopter? And the submarine? Spaniards. But who made theprofits? The Yanks. Well now the same thing’s happening with crime. You’ve always had Spaniards stealing and killing, but we did it in our own Spanish way. And now we’ve got these foreigners coming in and running off with the loot, and even the blacks are taking liberties now. Even the blacks, Pepe! I don’t understand anything any more. I’ve said it before, and I say it again — there are two kinds of people in this world: the mafiosos who control everything, and the junkies who go their own way and don’t control anything. And poor old Bromide’s stuck in the middle, and they treat him like a dog. And I’m