Read The Damage (David Blake 2) for Free Online Page B

he could even get you a bit of ‘H’, just don’t tell Bobby, who had a big time downer on heroin. Bobby thought heroin would damage the community. Ha, as if there was such a thing as ‘community’.
    Like everyone in Bobby’s crew, Billy Warren had a few things going on the side. It was known, accepted even and everybody did it, they just didn’t talk about it, especially in front of the boss.
    ‘The secret is not to be too greedy,’ Geordie Cartwright told him, ‘you can rip off the big man just a little bit and he’ll let you get away with it, as long as the major part gets kicked upstairs to him.’ That was the one big, unwritten rule. But Billy had started to think about the future and things didn’t look quite as rosy as he would have liked. Sure, he had money, but not big money, and certainly not the wedge required to live like a ‘face’ in this city – but it wasn’t just that. There was one other thing Billy lacked, something that had been eating away at him for months. Nobody respected Billy Warren. The guys in Bobby’s crew took the piss out of him constantly. Billy knew he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree but, nonetheless, he did know what he was doing.
    If you wanted someone to persuade a young, flash business type to part with way too much of his salary on far too much cocaine, then Billy was definitely your man. But despite the money coming in to him, Bobby Mahoney treated Billy like he was some sort of court jester. As soon as Billy walked into a room the jokes and the sledging would start. They’d question his short stature and slim build, call him ‘Shortarse’ and ‘Sammy Shrink’; they’d take the piss out of his low-slung jeans and hooded tops, labelling him ‘Gangsta’; they’d ask him when he last got laid, knowing it was likely to have been a while back, because Billy wasn’t that great with the ladies, unless he paid them, so they’d call him ‘Virge’, short for Virgin.
    Worst of them all was Jerry Lemon, a tattooed armed robber turned Mahoney lieutenant who tormented Billy in a way that thoroughly disturbed him. Lemon would call him ‘the little queer boy’, even though Billy wasn’t a homo, or he’d insist on naming him ‘Bunny’ Warren, which made Billy sound like a total queen. Lemon would blow kisses at him in front of the rest of the crew and, when he looked freaked out by this, would ask ‘what’s a matter Bunny, gone off me, have you? Don’t you like a bit of boy no more? That’s not what I’ve heard. They say you was everybody’s best bitch in Durham.’ And the whole crew would laugh at him then and the shame would burn into Billy’s face.
    He was pretty sure that it was actually Jerry who ‘liked a bit of boy’ as there was something bordering on the sexual in the way he taunted the younger man, but Billy would never dare say anything back to him. Jerry was an out-and-out hard case who would have killed Billy for fun, then shrugged an apology at Bobby, merely for inconveniencing him.
    There was another reason why Billy wouldn’t dare challenge what was said; because he was worried that Jerry really did know something. Billy was no queer but he had been forced into doing some stuff by a cellmate in Durham that he definitely did not want to do, or be reminded of, ever again. The shame of that memory had led him to snort a good deal of his own product. But what could Billy do? Refusal was not an option at that point and the alternatives would have been far worse, so Billy had done what he had always done; he’d survived.
    Did Jerry know about this or did he just guess it had happened? Could he read it in Billy’s eyes? If Jerry did know there were two worrying possibilities. One; he would tell everybody in Mahoney’s crew what had happened and Billy would be even more of a laughing stock for blowing a murderer in Durham jail. Two; Jerry was keeping the information to himself, so he could use it against Billy, most likely by