The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (7 page)

Twenty minutes later, a light knock on the door. I opened it and a shiver went through me. Gary had brought up four friends and an aura with them.

Gary was 250 pounds, with a twenty-inch neck, bench-pressed 350 pounds and was fourth dan Goju karate. He had fifteen years’ martial arts experience, the last two spent in the world headquarters of karate in Japan. He was absolutely lethal, having been involved in the security field for over ten years.

Terry was six foot two with sixteen years working nightclub doors. He had been British karate team captain (of the only team to beat Japan), with lightning-fast kicks, deadly with everything; fifth dan black belt, Shotokan karate.

R.C. was five foot six of steel wire; ex-British Special Air Service; seventh dan ju-jitsu; third dan karate; and the All-Asia weapons champion. A living legend whose glare alone would stop you breathing.

Richie was a six foot three ex-mercenary – Congo, exploits “
classified
”; second dan. He had a shaved head, goatee beard and a big earring…We called him “Shazam”. He had the original look of so many in the security field today.

Jimmy was a five foot ten natural street-fighter/survivalist with a solid build and piercing black eyes. If you put Jimmy and a cougar in a sack and dropped it in the river, my money would be on Jimmy coming up, wearing a new fur coat – my best mate.

And of course, lil’ ol’ me.

I explained the situation and they told me what to do.

I went inside to see Mike, the manager, and got him to turn the lights on early and shut the music off. This caused a groan from the crowd. Next, the waitresses were pulled back behind the bar. The metal roller shutters then came crashing down over the serving hatches. At this sound the double-doors into the dance-floor crashed back against the walls. The six of us walked in and spread out round the dance-floor where this big team had gathered. It quickly became evident that my friends weren’t here for a drink.

You could have heard a pin drop.

Thirty pairs of eyes took on the look of lambs … as the wolves gathered.

Standing with my back to the bar I removed my watch in front of them. I always liked the psychological effect that had on people.

Terry started a walk around the dance-floor. The others were either pacing back and forth or just glaring at them. Terry walked toward me, giving me a small smile and a nod of encouragement. As he walked past me, all I saw, for a split second, was the sole of his shoe going up past my nose and the wind of the fastest, strongest
sidekick
I’ve ever been in front of. It gave a blow-wave to the front of my hair. Terry didn’t even break stride, just kept walking. I nodded and smiled. I looked at the gathered gang, all standing there gobsmacked.

Terry sauntered back over to me and quietly said, “Just go and tell them nicely to leave now, John. We’re closed.”

“Enjoy your night, lads? Time to leave now,” I said, with a friendly smile.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re goin’. Listen, who are these guys who just came in?”

While I discreetly pointed each of them out, and their credentials, the mob went pale.

“I was told to tell you that if this EVER happens again [pause for effect], then there’ll be the greatest practical demonstration of martial arts you’ll ever see. Goodnight now.”

This episode we called, “The art of fighting without fighting.”

That’s the way we worked the doors back then – interlocking, all for one.

The four men stood before the black door in the wide alleyway. The hackney cab waited at the corner, its diesel motor running.

On the other side of the door, four of us waited.

I knew something serious was going to go down by the
performance
from the night before when two large, mature strangers had rocked up on a quiet Wednesday night. The boss had been down, talking to me, and he’d let them in. The look of them and the smell of hashish off them sounded big warning bells in my head as I saw them swagger up the stairs. “I shouldn’t have let them in, should I?” says the boss.”But it’s a quiet night so it should be OK.”

I just shrugged.

About thirty minutes later the sound of screams and smashing glass had us charging up the stairs into the club itself.

One of these thugs had just KO’d a young woman because she wouldn’t dance with him.

I grabbed, spun and leg-swept him. Grabbing the back of his jacket, I dragged him through the double-doors to the top of the stairs.

As he tried to get up I jumped on top of him and tobogganed him down the stairs, banging his head as often as I could on the way down. He was out cold when we stopped at the bottom. I dragged him into the alley for some Afghani soccer with my steel toe-capped shoes. I can’t stand men who hit women – lowest of the low in my book.

His mate came bowling down the stairs, looking worse for wear, thanks to several of the locals. He was screaming that we were all dead and that they were going to trash the place, mentioning the name of my playmate as though we should all know it. He came back with his car and loaded his pal in. They took off, screaming and cursing. “I think we’d better take this one seriously,” says the boss.

So here we were, the four of us; Gary, Jimmy, Rolo (another mate) and me. Stand by, stand by …

My earliest memories were of sexy Auntie Fran, Mum’s other sister, who also lived with us for a while until she got married. She was a big-busted, hip-swinging, red lipstick, suspender belt and nylons with black lines running up the back kind of woman. And I loved her for it … I was three at the time!

I used to sit under the table while she had her breakfast, sucking my thumb, with my hand up her skirt, playing with her suspender nylon fastener! At first, of course, she tried to stop me. But looking under the table into my big, brown, loving eyes, she couldn’t say “No”.

It became a ritual, sitting down for breakfast, not looking under the table.

“Morning, Johnny.”

“Morning, Auntie Fran.”

“Happy down there, Johnny?”

“Ummm.”

“That’s good.”

Things started to get out of control, though, when she wasn’t around. I was standing at a bus stop with Mum. Another young lady came and stood next to me. She looked down and smiled. I smiled back and put my thumb in my mouth. As she looked away my hand just went naturally up her skirt, looking for the “sussi” belt. The scream nearly turned my hair grey. It took a week to get my eyes back in my head.

I can still remember the look of shock/horror on Mum’s face. Profuse apologies followed from Mum, with sideways glares at me. The young woman had an amused look on her face. It seemed like I’d won another lady over with an innocent look and a soft touch.

My happy habit was brought to an abrupt end, however, when I got separated from Mum while shopping in a big department store in the city centre. I thought I’d just wait for her in the shop window, with one of the mannequins. They found me in the usual pose of thumb in mouth, hand up skirt, all in front of an amused crowd of onlookers. Poor Mum went home in shame again and tied a pair of gloves on me, and that was the end of that little avenue of pleasure.

The bangs on the door weren’t the usual polite knocks. I looked back at the others. “This might be it, all ready?” I opened the door enough to see out.

I’d made three phone calls after the visit by the two thugs. The first call was to Gary, at work. He was a New Zealand Maori, winner of literally hundreds of bloody episodes, who told me once that his introduction to white people was his grandfather giving him an ankle bone to chew on! He was cool, calm and deadly in violent events. He also had a wicked sense of humour. One night a huge black guy, who was a known troublemaker, came to the door that Gary was working. Gary refused him entry.

“You’re only not letting me in ’cause I’m black.”

“Look mate, I’m not racially prejudiced, I like Al Jolson!” Gary replied.

This huge man blinked, mouth opened, shut, turned and left, nowhere to go but home.

Second call was to Jimmy. My best mate. Gary had introduced us and got Jimmy a job on my door, back-stopping me on the weekends, though sometimes it seemed the other way round.

On the first night we worked together alone after the “gang of thirty” night, I was politely explaining to four inebriated young fellas why I wasn’t letting them in. Jimmy was on the next stair up from me, against the wall. As they were arguing/pleading/ threatening, Jimmy leaned over the top of me and, wild-eyed, screamed “FUCK OFF!” at them and slammed the door. Just before it slammed I witnessed four gobsmacked guys who’d died in the arse.

I was rolling around inside for ten minutes trying not to laugh out loud. He looked like Charles Manson, or the other way round, bigger and scarier to look at, with a wicked sense of humour. “You gorra have a laff in this game, lah, or you’ll go rats!” says Jimmy, with a grin.

Gary told me that legends abounded about him. He was a seaman when he was younger. Whilst in a bar in South America he’d stabbed seven locals who weren’t keen on seeing him leave the place alive. He was jailed for mutiny in Spain and when in New York he’d had a T-shirt made: “Mug me I dare you.”

Nobody touched him.

First time I saw him in action we’d finished for the night and gone to where Gary was working. As we entered, Gary asked if we’d stay loose in the foyer – trouble brewing inside – no problem. A few minutes later Gary and Terry go through the double-doors into the disco. The next thing – BANG – this guy comes flying through the doors, like Clark Kent who hadn’t had time to put his Superman costume on.

I straightaway side-stepped, dropped into a good strong stance, guard up, good to go, while Jimmy side-stepped the other way, with his coat still over his left arm. His right hand caught the back of this guy’s head and, while still in the air, ran it straight into a poker machine behind him. The guy was unconscious before he hit the ground and Jimmy’s heart rate wouldn’t have increased one beat. That’s a natural. I learnt many things from ol’ Jimmy.

My third phone call was to Rolo. Ultra dependable Rolo. Gary had introduced us a year before and he’d become a firm friend. We’d shared a real bloody night on his nightclub that really bonded us. Back-to-back, we’d come through a nine-on-two encounter with some visiting soccer supporters from Manchester. Two minutes full-on action – bodies dropping at our feet, till we were rescued by a police riot squad, who fortunately were nearby.

“Yeah, John, I’ll be there for you mate.”

The most beautiful girl in the world came into my life when I was four. She lived on the next block to me and her name was Gillian. She was two months older than me, so she was always more mature. She had short black curly hair; round thick clinical glasses; and big teeth that she always tried to hide by not smiling. And she had a mum and dad from Dublin, just like my mum. For me, it was love at first sight. Our destinies were sealed.

Real manly things were performed by Yours Truly to get her attention, like leaping off park benches and breaking my arm and stuff – she was real impressed, although she just never showed it. Oh yeah! There was that one time when we were playing “footy” in the park and she got me down and bashed me with a big rock that doubled as a goalpost. What-a-gal!

Every year I’d send her an anonymous Valentine’s card. Her mum and my mum worked in the same shop that sold the cards. They’d make that little shoulders-up smile to each other; “Yeah, they’ll be together.”

We’d spend Sunday afternoons listening to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and she’d show me these wonderful drawings of clothes designs and things she’d done. She was the one for me all right. I just knew it.

A fair bit of preparation went into this coming encounter. It had a heavy feel to it.

I went down in the afternoon and got a real short haircut so there was nothing to grab on to, did about an hour’s loose training … loosening up … loosening up … had a sauna, went home and got my gear ready.

The  nunchaku  is  an  Asian  lethal  weapon. Made of hexagonal-shaped hardwood, it has two pieces about a forearm’s length and joined at one end intricately by a strong, thin nylon cord or chain. It can kill or maim an opponent with short-term practice. I had been training with them for two years.

I cut a horizontal slash across the inside lining of my jacket, about twelve inches above the bottom on the left-hand side. It was about six inches wide and I sewed both sides of the cut to strengthen it. I then snugly fitted a set of Japanese oak nunchaku into this holster. They were joined by nylon cord, much quieter than the set that Bruce Lee demonstrated with the chain. You don’t want people saying later that they “heard a chain noise clanking around the head of the victim, Your Honour”. I wrapped them carefully with black electric tape.

In America in the 1970s, when this weapon came to the public’s attention and everybody started making their own, police officers were authorized to use lethal force if confronted by them. They’d been around since the sixteenth century, being used by the Okinawan farmers to flail rice in the paddies. Someone then had the great idea of using them on people.

I cut up pieces of an old tyre and softened them to give my kidneys some protection and wrapped all my middle with bandage. If I got slashed by a knife or Stanley knife – also called “a Liverpool credit card” – then I might be able to get to a hospital without my guts hanging out for all to see. I put on my groin protector box and belt, bandaged my wrists for support and protection, put a square piece of steel in both my top and inside pocket against knife-thrusts and polished up my steel toe-capped dress shoes. Lastly, I taped a switch-blade to my ankle.

Checking myself in the mirror: black suit, white shirt, bow tie … polished dress-shoes.

“Good evening, sir… ladies… Have a nice night.”

Losing is not an option when you work a nightclub door.

“Stand by…stand by… Here we go …”