big johnny & the king of morocco (2004)

Two young men in the street. Obviously not a menace to society, but probably not the recipients of many invitations to dinner either. Students, maybe. Or people posing as students.
They were discussing the day's business, which was the same as it had been every day for weeks.
"That guy was useless," complained one. "As desperate as us. Clearly hasn't had a smoke himself for a long time, let alone sold any."
"I could see you were about to tell him as much."
"Aye."
"Lucky we left."
An uneasy silence fell between them as they continued their trudge along this Glasgow street.
The last to speak had long hair, shoulder length and scruffy. Stray strands twisted out of the main body like they were trying to defect to a better-maintained barnet. The rest of his gangly frame was all rags and bones: a dark blue shirt open over a ragged black T-shirt; strong cheekbones. His name was Paddy.
The other's hair was shorter and fairer, but the fringe still hung in his eyes. He flicked it away from his line of sight every couple of minutes, but it always flopped back to its original position. He was stockier and healthier looking than Paddy, but not because his lifestyle was any more wholesome. Just because he was built that way. He was wearing a navy blue jacket that looked like it might have been smart once upon a time and his name was Dom.
"So where next?" he asked. He had a strong Scottish accent, which sounded all Glasgow in the way the words exploded from his mouth. There was something else in there though, moments of middle class softness hinting at time spent in Edinburgh or in one of the genteel towns on the east coast.
"Mad Micky?" suggested Paddy in his deep voice. His accent was more straightforward. That country lilt obviously came from the Scottish Borders. He was the one who got away.
They mulled over the prospect of visiting Mad Micky. His flat stank of cat's piss.
"These are desperate times," Dom eventually concluded. Paddy was in silent, twitching agreement.
Mad Micky's bedsit was above a fried chicken joint on Great Western Road. He opened the door and the stench of urine immediately hit the reluctant visitors' nostrils. It was like this every time. You never saw the creature responsible in there, just its soiled litter tray, sitting untouchable in a corner like a chunk of plutonium or a leprous hag. This room was just a toilet for the cat.
"What's the story guys?" Mad Micky slurred, scratching his beard in what had be an affected manner for someone not far into his twenties sporting growth not far beyond the bum fluff stage. You could never be sure though. The guy looked as familiar with the inside of a shower as any of them were with invitations to dinner.
Dom's eyes flickered with meaning, Mad Micky understood, and they filed inside to continue the conversation. The room was dingy despite a feisty bar heater and two windows feeding in grey light from outside.
"The eternal search continues. Have you heard anything?" Paddy asked as they sank into the old maroon settee.
Mad Micky was Irish, from the north, and his angular vowels filled the small space like drinkers crowding into a pub on a cold night.
"I've heard as much as you have Pads," he said. "The King of Morocco's pissed off with Britain because we owe him money and he's cut our supply."
"That rumour's a load of shite I reckon," Dom cut in. "It's blatantly the dealers at the top of the chain trying to push up the market value. The stuff'll hit the streets again soon, except you'll suddenly find it's 20 notes a draw instead of 15."
Dom said this with some authority. Being a Law student, albeit a failing one, he had an air of knowing about mysterious forces like "market value". Paddy couldn't resist adding his ha' penny worth though.
"Wee Johnny said he'd heard the Russian mafia were involved."
Dom bristled. "I don't care if it's because the Queen herself is sitting in Buckingham Palace getting merrily high on our supply. The end result is the same: nothing to go with these." He gestured towards a pack of Marlboro Lights he'd produced from his coat, then offered Mad Micky a cigarette.
"No thanks mate," said the Irishman.
Dom lit up and they stared at the orange bars of the heater.
It was spring 1996 and Glasgow was in the tiresomely tight grip of the worst drought in living memory. Withdrawal was getting to the student population, making them irrational. A rumour circulated that the King of Morocco was somehow responsible, which was obviously paranoid gibberish to everyone but the legions moping around campus suffering withdrawal. Other stories went round about folk obtaining cars and driving south on mercy missions, only to crawl back with tales of nationwide woe.
All you could do was stumble between contacts looking for leads. It had become a routine. Hope and disappointment.
"Any ideas about who else we could try man?" asked Paddy
For all Dom's blustering veneer, Paddy was better at getting down to the business of picking up information.
"You could try those socialist muppets who run the union," Mad Micky said. "They never seem short of something to smoke."
"Or women to screw," Paddy chipped in.
"Or shite to talk," said Dom, with an air of conclusion.
Mad Micky saw them to the door. Neither of his guests had ever seen him venture into the outside world. He seemed to do everything from the confines of his single room.
"Good luck with the political types," he called in his Belfast clatter as they descended the stairs. "Tell 'em skunk's the opiate of the people!"
His throaty laugh followed them to the pavement, along with his bedsit's terrible feline reek.
They ducked off Great Western Road and wove along the leafy byways leading to the union. Soon the towers and flying buttresses of the main university building pulled into view. But something was slowing their steps.
"I hate those union dicks," Dom said eventually.
"Aye, they really do your head in. Politics is such a cosmetic thing for them. Such a pick up line. Mad Micky unintentionally hit the nail on the head with his Marx joke there. It's like the union's a temple to their feebly constructed value systems and their flawed personalities."
"That's right sunshine. Let's try Big Johnny instead."
It was a flash of inspiration, Paddy had to admit. Even Big Johnny and the Hyndland crew were preferable to the false politicians lurking in the concrete union building, and they did occasionally come up trumps. Being this close to the university was making them both uncomfortable anyway.
They dropped down the hill on University Avenue and made across Byres Road for the beginning of Hyndland Road. This busy intersection was the epicentre of the West End, a gentrified enclave amid the city's housing estates. Besides Glasgow's main seat of learning, the area boasted a string of bistros with pretentious names that would quickly be scorned and spray-painted anywhere else in town, BBC Scotland and most of the English accents found this side of Edinburgh. The Victorian Gothic university building stared severely down on it all from its hilltop throne, across the park from the equally ornate Kelvingrove Art Gallery.
As he shuffled across the pedestrian crossing, Dom gazed along Byres Road. In the grey distance, the motionless cranes on the Clyde were the last skeletal remains of the city's proud shipbuilding past. But Dom was more interested in what was afoot in his own neighbourhood. The gentrification here was rife. It was beyond a joke. They came during the night and turned his favourite boozers and chippies into cappuccino bars and homeopathic clinics.
"Did you hear the latest? They're turning John Smith's books into a Starbucks," he said, turning to Paddy.
Paddy wasn't there. Dom sighed, raised his eyes and kept walking. Paddy was undeniably a good friend, the kind you could depend on. Unfortunately, one of the things you could depend on him doing was disappearing at any given moment. He'd turn up hours or days later saying he'd needed time to think. It normally looked from the state of his beer-stained clothes like thinking was the last thing he'd done. Sensitive, some people called him. The rough diamond of the Philosophy faculty, others said. A vintage nutter, Dom reckoned.
Dom trudged on up Hyndland Road, which quietened as he left the lunchtime hustle bustle of Byres Road behind. The only place he cared for up here was Cottiers', a former church now serving as a pub with a beer garden where you could smoke spliffs. He passed the beer garden, which looked empty and forlorn in the weekday, the wooden tables and benches stacked in preparation for good times to come.
After ten minutes or so he came to Big Johnny's building. He squinted up at the sandstone façade. Who knew what those walls could hold? He pressed the metal button on the buzzer and waited.
Nothing. He looked around and pressed again.
The buzzer suddenly crackled to life.
"Hello?" questioned a suspicious voice.
"Alright Barry it's Dom. Is Johnny in?"
"Alright Dom! Come on up!"
The door was swinging shut behind Dom when a bony hand caught it.
"Dom," called the hand's owner in his deep Borders voice.
Dom had reached the bottom of the stairs. He looked back and saw who it was and his face was a mask of long-suffering patience.
Paddy laughed nervously.
"Come on, we better present a united front to these freaks," said Dom as he stuck a foot on the first stone step.
Barry was at the entrance to the second floor flat. He was the shortest housemate. The friendliest too. Greetings were exchanged and he ushered them inside to the hall.
"Johnny's in his room guys," he said, heading towards the sitting room. A TV with a frozen image of Sylvester Stallone in a bandanna could be seen. "I'm halfway through Rambo. Come and watch it if you want. The next round of killing's about to begin, big time."
"Oh aye, a grand smokin' movie," Dom replied, testing the water.
"You'd be lucky," laughed Barry as he closed the door and hit play on the remote.
"THIS IS WAR," said John Rambo as the door clicked into the frame.
Big Johnny's room was straight ahead. To their left, a guy stood in the bathroom in front of the mirror dragging some kind of wax through his hair. He was six foot something and clad only in a towel.
"Alright guys," he mumbled tokenistically.
Paddy knocked on Big Johnny's door, which was decorated with a picture cut from the paper of the Rangers squad. Big Johnny's visitors both supported Celtic. Dom mimed tearing the picture down and stamping on it, receiving conspiratorial chuckles from Paddy. The man in the bathroom clocked this and narrowed his eyes. A voice came through the door inviting them in and they hastily went inside.
Big Johnny's room was obsessively clean and tidy. His bright engineering textbooks were square on the shelves. A half-read copy of The Celestine Prophecy lay under the lamp on the bedside table like it'd been placed there for a photo shot. Even the plants on the windowsill seemed to grow symmetrically.
Paddy thought back to Mad Micky's place. Stoners generally went one of two ways in their maintenance of their living space.
Big Johnny fitted in perfectly with his surroundings. His carefully spiked hair elongated his already sizeable form, as did the chunky soles of his Nike trainers. He was sitting at an IKEA table flicking through a copy of Loaded. His Adidas tracksuit top straightened and shone as he leant back in his seat to see who was entering his chamber.
That shine was the Hyndland possé all over. They would occasionally be spotted in a trendy club in town by Dom and Paddy's few friends who could be bothered going to those places. There'd be insistent chewing and uninspired conversation all round. Big Johnny and that bathroom guy would have Amazonian wenches on their arms like designer accessories, while Barry would have settled for the unmarried sister. Poor Barry, but even he wore too much hair gel for his own good.
"Look what the filthy Fenian cat's dragged in!" Big Johnny exclaimed, referring to his guests' football loyalties.
His voice was deeper than Paddy's and seemed to reverberate from the very depths of his hulking body. The accent was harsh, pure Central Belt, bred in one of those new towns trapped on the M8 between the country's two principal cities. He was jovial without being particularly likeable.
"What do I owe this pleasure to?" he asked, all obvious sarcasm.
"We're having a wander round the West End, seeing if we can sniff out any weed," said Paddy. "We've just been to see Micky."
"Oh aye, that guy's insane man!"
Paddy had never been able to establish exactly how Mad Micky had earned his screwball reputation. The guy just sat at home all day. Maybe in the armchair-bound world of dealers and potheads his Irish tone and wild appearance were enough to mark him out.
The Hyndland crew were no exception to this general lethargy. Apart from their appearances on the club scene they stayed indoors, tending to plants and hair or "just studyin' man".
Dom piped up, trying to sound nonchalant. "So, any chance of getting made, or is Mohammed of Morocco still playing hard to get?"
Big Johnny shook his huge head. "Nah man. I dunno about this King of Morocco business either. D'ye ken that guy Douggie who does Psychology? He was on holiday on the Costa Del Sol and he reckons the Spanish polis are cracking down big time on the Moroccan smugglers."
The would-be dealer stared reflectively at the centre page blonde in Loaded.
Paddy filled the silence, speaking almost to himself. "Apparently people have started disappearing off in cars, driving south in search of a score."
The casual comment would later strike Dom and Paddy as the king skin the rest of the day was rolled in.
Big Johnny suddenly looked up from the glossy temptress lying on the balsa wood table below him. "That reminds me man! My cousin Alan went off to try some contacts in Manchester. He left before the weekend so he should be back by now. Why don't you give him a shot? He lives in Maryhill."
Dom and Paddy exchanged a glance: Maryhill. Oh well, desperate times and all that.
The Goliath in Adidas wrote his cousin's address on a scrap of paper, his biro scrawl looping across the page like its scribe loping around a nightclub.
The visitors thanked Big Johnny and really meant it this time. As they returned to the hall, Big Johnny called after them: "Tell him I sent you and tell him we're gagging for a smoke over here as well."
His door shut behind them. The sound of machine gun fire came from the sitting room. They made for the stairwell.
Outside, the sky was overcast. The ominous morning had turned into a downright threatening afternoon. You could see why these characters never bothered with the outside world. If they lived in Honolulu they'd probably do the conga on the beach all day long.
Paddy's wanderings had given him a detailed knowledge of Glasgow's geography and he led them out of Hyndland by a series of back lanes. At one point they even cut straight through a random close and the overgrown garden out the back. "Ginger James used to live here," explained the gangly guide.
"Just get a move on," said Dom. He rubbed his hands in glee. "I can smell that sweet Sensimilla from here."
Having walked away from Byres Road and their normal territory for another twenty minutes, they came to the edge of Maryhill. Already you could see the restored tenements with habitually mown lawns giving way to squat new blocks of flats. More litter appeared on the pavements. A burnt out car sat among the weeds on a patch of wasteland.
As with everything in this city, irony lurked beneath it all. The guy in the 24-hour garage round the corner, a regular local oracle, had once pointed it out to Dom.
"A rich woman called Mary Hill donated this land to the people of Glasgow," he'd explained in his heavy drawl, almost speaking through his nose in the classic fashion. "Her one condition was that the area be named after her."
His eyes drifted to the black, rain-streaked windows. "Now Mary Hill is associated with all this."
Dom grinned ruefully to himself. Paddy, meanwhile, had managed to dredge more positive thoughts from the quagmire of his interior world. He'd returned to a theme that had obsessed him a few terms ago: the words people used to describe things. Looking at this slap-dash suburb, the Tory voters in the West End would probably cringe and call it "careless". He preferred the term "carefree".
They were both still wrapped in this blanket of silent contemplation when they reached the top of the high street. Dom's thoughts had inevitably turned back to the combustible treats that were hopefully lying in wait. But, whether preoccupied by semantics or Sensie, they both quickly snapped out of it when voices called their names. The last time someone had yelled at them in this part of town, Dom had ended up fending off eight jellied up neds with a smashed Liebfraumilch bottle.
They looked in the direction of the hollers to see two acquaintances from the union bar hurrying across the road. This first year pair was from Inverness and everything about them said first year and Inverness. They bounded up, all floppy bum heads hung over from the Baggy era and clumsy skater clobber.
"Alright Dom!" exclaimed the one with the Yin Yang ear stud.
"Alright Paddy!" said the other, with equal enthusiasm.
"Alright guys," the older two chorused. They were pretty sure these characters were called Sean and Kev but, despite the distinction provided by the earring, they could never remember which was which.
"What brings you to this neighbourhood?" asked Yin Yang with a cod raised eyebrow.
"Just out for a walk," shrugged Dom.
"What, in Maryhill?" queried the other half of Kev/Sean, quite reasonably.
These guys seemed even hungrier than Dom and Paddy - fervent new recruits to l'erb making an appeal to distant acquaintances - but Dom wasn't about to sling them any scraps. He was intent on guarding his meagre lead.
"Aye," he said.
Kev/Sean looked up and down the street. Obviously this was one conversation that wasn't going to be about the Celts' recent performance on the field.
"We're trying to score guys. You know of anyone who's selling at the minute?" Kev/Sean asked in the Invernetian accent, which was equal parts warm embrace and half-Napoleon.
Like two cottagers he'd once walked past in Kelvingrove Park at midnight, Dom didn't miss a beat.
"You tried the love-in at the union?" he suggested. "I've heard they're turning tricks. And you'll probably get to smoke up with some Marxist minger who gives it up if you know that Che Guevara's Cuban."
"Bunch a muppets," observed Yin Yang.
The wisdom of the character judgement brought out wry smiles all round. But Paddy looked at Dom and he could see it wasn't going to help the lads from Loch Ness any. Dom's facial expression was as impenetrable as another famous east coast landmark, Peterhead prison.
"Well, good luck with the heroes of the people," Dom concluded.
Paddy found himself feeling guilty about this brazen denial of their young friends' cry in the darkness of abstinence. He extracted a pouch of Golden Virginia from the folds of the vertical washing line he called home and offered it around.
The rolling ritual over, it was time to return to the job in hand.
"Enjoy taking the Maryhill air," said Kev/Sean, his voice wavering with a mixture of sarcasm and outright confusion.
The student gathering dispersed into the stream of folk going about their business on the high street. Teenage girls shoved prams, their brothers swaggered in caps and Kappa, their grandparents hunched down the shops for The Daily Record, and the two sets of dishevelled young men headed in opposite directions with rollies smoking between fingers and lips.
Dom and Paddy crossed the road in front of one of the gaudy orange double-deckers that bounced around the city. Glasgow Smiles Better was the message of hope on the bus's bright sides. Yeah, the gangsters only took one finger nowadays.
They continued along the high street, past Co-Op's utilitarian blue and white sign. Dom had resorted to that place during a period of mythic skint-ness at the end of first year. He turned to Paddy, thinking he'd appreciate this anecdote from the wild side of grocery shopping; he'd probably call it a "culinary purgatory" or some such shite.
But Paddy had something on his mind too.
"That was kinda tight on Kev and Sean," he said. "We could've maybe sorted them out… I mean, leaving them at the mercy of the union dicks was a bit heavy…"
"Kev and Sean, Sean and Kev, fuck 'em!" exploded Dom. "We can't afford to take losers like that along for the ride. In happier times I would've personally rolled them a number right there and then, but it's every man for himself these days."
Paddy could see Dom was taking no prisoners. His eyes rolled away like marbles in a tube as his companion ranted.
Dom boiled to a conclusion, his frustration exorcised for the time being. "They might get lucky at the union - we don't know. And besides, if you're such a fuckin' Mother Teresa why didn't you say anything?"
It was true, Paddy realised. He had colluded against the hapless skaters with his silence.
They carried on. Few words passed between them for some minutes. The comfortable silence between good friends was laced with the unspoken thoughts of two characters with a love-hate relationship.
They left the main drag and skimmed furtively along the cracked pavements on the network of side streets. They seemed vaguely on the right track from Big Johnny's tediously detailed directions, which they'd quickly lost interest in and only half listened to. Unfortunately there was no one around to ask; at least no one who wasn't sweating pints and twitching like they were practising for rigor mortis.
Turning another corner, they spotted a narrow street that just had to be Alan's from the intricate mental picture his cousin had painted. Sure enough, the sign on the blackened brick wall at the mouth of the street matched the address on the scrap of paper Dom gripped like the key to a bottomless treasure trove.
Paddy looked down the thin, gloomy avenue. It could not have been described as welcoming. In fact, it filled him with cold, creeping fear. The austere slate roofs of the terraced two-up-two-downs blocked out the sun and threw the curtained windows into eternal shadow. Cars on both sides of the road were parked half on the pavement, making it a mission for both motorists and pedestrians to squeeze past without scraping paint-work and drawing an irate vest-wearer out of the forest of front doors.
Dom could see this place was worming its way into Paddy's head.
"Come on man, there's a draw of the good stuff and happy days at the end of this rainbow," he encouraged.
He clapped Paddy on the back and led him into the beginning of the shadow. They started down the middle of the road, between fat wheels, spoilers, smoked windows and obscenely long aerials.
Paddy had heard of a street in this part of town that was inhabited only by dealers. According to the story, the suppliers sat in second floor windows hawking offers down at the punters cruising past in cars.
"Ecstasy! Trips! Speeed! Haash!"
Deal reached, a ball of bills would be flung up and product dropped.
"Here y'go big man. Can ye catch?"
"Fuckin' right I can biggie, when it's a fifty spot being tossed!"
Admittedly, the tale had the implausible ring of urban myth when heard from some third year History student in the union trying to up his street credentials. There was also a notable lack of accommodating pushers queuing up to flog them a cube of black, but all these souped-up boy racer mobiles and satellite dishes did make Paddy wonder if this might be the mythical alley.
On the grey roofs, a jumble of TV aerials reached for the sky like barren branches in a winter forest. The occasional rubbish bin sat between the fenders spewing its contents into the gutter. Half way down the road was a rusty yellow skip that looked like it had been overflowing forever. The bulky black bin liners rising above its steel sides could have contained anything, or anyone.
This was a canyon of the damned.
On the other side of a grimy kitchen window, a slumped man looked up from his plate of something processed on toast.
It was the valley of the shadow of unhealth.
The prospect of a few pints followed by an early bed was beginning to appeal to even Dom by the time they reached the right doorbell. Paddy pressed the plastic button briefly, then looked flustered and pressed again for a longer time. As the electronic bleep echoed in their ears they glanced up and down the street with hands in pockets and hearts sounding like the guy in the kitchen's probably did.
A hoarse voice came from behind the door. "Alright, Ahm there Ahm there."
They heard a body pause on the far side of the wood, presumably checking on its visitors through the spy hole. Obviously perceiving no threat in Dom and Paddy's half-baked appearance, it opened the door.
"Alright guys, how you doing?" said the man.
"Sound cheers, we're looking for Alan," replied Dom, pleasantly businesslike.
Alan nodded, thick hair swinging on either side of a ruddy face, and his eyes filled with recognition. Paddy could see this look was prompted by more than the familiar name, but sensed that Alan was still going to make them sweat here.
"We're mates of your cousin Johnny… over in Hyndland? He sent us over," Paddy said.
"Hyndland, Johnny? That lanky bastard's about as Hyndland as the cunts round here," observed Alan.
The two doorsteppers laughed ingratiatingly.
Alan looked them up and down. "So how can I help you lads?"
Dom frowned, his smooth drug-buying manner flummoxed by the unprecedentedly direct question.
"Ehhh Johnny thought you might be able to sort us out like," he managed.
Now it was Alan's turn to frown. "That cheeky cunt," he exclaimed, but soon broke into a smile that spread relief through the visitors like smoke into a bong.
"On ye go." He ushered them inside and turned to lead the way down the corridor into the house's dingy innards.
Paddy caught Dom's eye and raised eyebrow as he closed the door on the daylight outside.
Through in the living room, past a kitchen and a staircase, they were confronted by an eight-bar sitting on a low table amid scattered paraphernalia.
This brazenness marked Alan as a more serious player than the characters Paddy and Dom normally scored from, half-arsed student dealers who indulged their gangster fantasies by hiding eighths under floorboards and 'teenths in teapots. Once you reached a certain level you had bigger things to get paranoid about, Paddy figured.
Dom eyed the cracked brown block and let rip with the surprised and delighted laugh of someone's fat aunt who's just been offered a slice of cream cake at the church fete.
"This stuff up from Manchester aye?" he asked.
"Aye. It's pretty grim down there at the minute, King o' Morocco playin' havoc everywhere man. Not as bad as up here mind," said Alan.
He indicated for them to park themselves and slumped into an armchair next to a TV playing Reservoir Dogs with the sound down. Mr. Blonde was dancing around with a razor blade in front of a cop tied to a chair.
Paddy got a decent look at their host in the flickering glow of the TV set and the dim light of the room's two or three table-lamps. You could tell Alan was related to Big Johnny. Alan was tall, obviously not to the same degree as his oversized cousin but he would be able to look Paddy in the eye without standing on tiptoes. The family likeness wasn't physical though, it was more in a certain harshness hovering around the eyes and the tight mouth. You just knew it would be found throughout the room at a gathering of the clan in some west of Scotland bungalow. Toddlers on the rug, brothers sipping whisky at the mantelpiece and the widowed grandmother in the best seat would all exude that joyless demeanour.
"Where are you from Alan? You don't sound like you're from the same part of the world as Johnny," Paddy inquired. Compared with Johnny's Central Belt rumble, Alan's curried vowels and biting consonants were as West Coast as a deep fried Mars bar.
"Ayrshire man. Johnny's side of the family are from Livingstone way, but my Dad's side are all from Ayr," he said firmly.
A tokenistic conversation ensued, Paddy and Dom doing their best not to stare with lolling tongues at the lump on the table in the middle of the room. They began with the Tarantino film playing at Alan's shoulder before making the inevitable move to the subject of football. Alan supported Rangers and preferred Reservoir Dogs to Pulp Fiction, both of which suggested a brutal personality. As he often did when he found himself in the living room of a vaguely threatening dealer, Dom told himself to keep his wits about him and in no time he'd be out of there with a grin on his face and a packet in his pocket.
Alan was just finishing on Maryhill, prompted by some observation about the area from Dom. "It probably looks like the Wild West to you University types, but people here are the same as anywhere else, just getting on with their lives man."
This was the first of Alan's mostly monosyllabic comments that had interested Paddy. It tied in with his earlier thoughts about "careless" and "carefree". Then Alan ruined it by adding: "Mind you, go over the hill into Possil and they are fuckin' animals. They'll happily haul breeze blocks over the balcony onto ya heid."
Paddy's attention drifted back to the brown on the table and the horrors on the screen. He was happy to hear Alan and Dom get down to business.
"So how much are you boys after?"
"Ehh probably a quarter - we can only scrape together a 30 spot between us at the minute. Waiting for a cheque to clear."
Alan grunted in acknowledgement and his eyes played over them like flames licking out of a burning building.
"You after anything else?"
"Ehh nah… nah not really, we've only got the 30 spot."
Alan considered them for a moment, seeming to weigh something up. "Only normally people buy at least an ounce from us," he explained. "I don't usually sell small draws because it's not worth it. You're mates of Johnny's so I'll do it for you no bother… but it'll have to be 35, given the current situation."
The cards were down and this guy wasn't playing for matchsticks. It was a case of like it or get tae fuck.
Dom gave a businesslike nod, desperately trying to retain some control of the situation, and Alan crossed to the table and picked up the block.
"I better get this under a hot blade. Won't be a minute lads." He disappeared into the kitchen pursued by Dom's excuses for their poverty, which tried to cover up the fact that their only source income was by application to their parents.
They heard Alan shuffle around the kitchen and turn on a gas ring. Dom watched Reservoir Dogs without concentrating and Paddy stared into space.
Soon Alan reappeared and threw a dark lump wrapped in clingfilm into Dom's lap.
"There y'go boys. I've gotta go out myself so… on ye go."
They parted company at the end of the shady street. Alan, now clad in a donkey jacket, appeared to be heading in the direction of Possil. Dom was still trying to make conversation and had even returned to the thorny topic of the football, but it didn't seem appropriate to ask where Alan was going.
The dealer was telling them they were welcome to pay him another visit, if they wanted more than a quarter, when Paddy remembered Big Johnny. "Oh aye, Johnny told us to tell you to get round his with some smoke," he cut in.
"Did he now?" Alan replied, his face exploding with mock rage. "That cheeky cunt."
He turned and paced away into the grey landscape.
Dom maintained the macho solemnity of the encounter until they were round the corner, then whipped their piece of fortune from his jacket pocket and waved it in front of Paddy's nose.
"Fuckin' made! Have it! All aboard the highness express," he sang out, dancing a clumsy jig. The last time Paddy had seen Dom this happy was when he'd pulled Jenny with the jugs who did Law. They'd gone out for a term before Dom had got bored.
They headed back the way they'd come: along the cracked pavements, past Co-Op, between the pram-pushers and pensioners on the high street, and on to Queen Margaret Drive. The unspoken agreement was that they were making for Dom's flat, which was closer than Paddy's, to smoke as much as their long-suffering lungs could handle. Their pace gradually quickened, Dom leading the way.
They were barely past the all-night garage when Dom cracked.
"These butterflies are having a friggin' gang bang in my stomach Pads! Let's get into that park and skin one up for the road."
"Best idea you've had all day."
"Cheeky cunt," snapped Dom, imitating the rough tones of the character they'd had just had an audience with.
They crossed the road and went into a children's park, where they took a seat on one of the benches overlooking a climbing frame, a slide and a dented metal litter bin. Dom quickly set about assembling the apparatus on a plane he'd smoothed in the front of his jacket, ripping the papers, baccy and blow from his pockets with the eagerness of a child lifting his greedy hands from the lucky dip. A woman stared disapprovingly down from the second floor of one of the grey blocks bordering the park, and it crossed Paddy's mind that Dom could have been subtler. Then Dom glanced up and caught her eye.
"What's wrong with that witch?" he muttered. "The kids won't be off school for at least another hour."
As if corrected, the woman faded from the window. They returned their attention to the important job in hand and lap. With two Rizlas stuck together, Dom unwrapped the clingfilm from the brown block and lifted his Bic lighter to it.
He flicked the cog on the Bic and they both waited for the first sweet hash aroma as the flame ate into the lump. But none came. A few wisps of smoke drifted up, but it smelt more like a burnt nut.
"Wha…" splutted Dom.
It didn't look right either. It wasn't crumbling at all, merely smearing flaky burnt matter and black char on Dom's fingertips.
"Wait a fuckin…" Dom's usual easy flow of words had been momentarily gagged by confusion, but Paddy could hear the anger growing in his friend's voice.
Dom suddenly snapped the block in half and, holding it in front of them, revealed a white centre.
"It's a fuckin' nut!" Dom exclaimed, leaping from the bench like he'd been electrocuted.
Paddy almost expected balls of fire to hail from the sky in sympathy with the rage shaking Dom's stocky frame and erupting from his eyes.
He picked up one half of the contentious object, which Dom had flung to the ground.
"Aye," he said after a brief examination, "it is a nut."
"Fuckin' help Sherlock Holmes here is! We've been had by fuckin' Big Johnny Holmes and his dodgy cousin. Right, let's get back there and…" Then a realisation hit Dom and he struck his forehead with equal force. "But Alan's done one into Possil now. That's the last we'll see of that scheming schemie, with our 30 spot he'll be able to live like a king for days in that neighbourhood."
The hapless scam victims stared at each other.
As Dom stormed back on to Queen Margaret Drive, the low park gate clanged shut behind him with an unnerving metallic ring. The glaring wifey had returned to the window. He momentarily considered heaving a breezeblock at her, before returning his fury to its rightful recipient. That Ayrshire gyppo.
It was tempting to head round to Big Johnny's and rearrange his Engineering textbooks, which would constitute severe mental cruelty for that streak of scented piss, but Dom realised this would be futile. Johnny hadn't knowingly colluded with his wrong-headed cousin's wrongdoing. Alan seemed to have about as much time for Johnny as Dom and Paddy had and would probably rip off his cousin as guiltlessly as he would any other gullible nut smoker.
Dom had one more idea up his increasingly ragged sleeve. After that all doors would be closed and the only way out of this mess would lie in the union bar, McEwans lager and oblivion.
They could try the political wannabes in the union. After all, they were pretty much the only source Dom and Paddy hadn't tapped that day. Then he cringed as he remembered he'd sent Sean and Kev down there. If there was any smoke to be had inside that concrete building, having put up with some muppet's torrid spiel about Fidel Castro's influence on student politics, the Invernetain freshers would've surely got there already.
Nonetheless, anything was worth a crack at this stage in the game.
"It's a long shot, but, hey, losers can't be choosers…" Dom began, before realising Paddy had disappeared.
The would-be hash philosopher was nowhere to be seen. Just like that flake to pull one of his vanishing acts at a time like this.
Dom sighed as the beginning of Byres Road and the West End pulled into view, and he carried on towards the union to try his luck with the socialist muppets.