Billy Rags by Ted Lewis Read Free Book Online

the only thing special about that particular feature was that it hardly ever moved, not even when he spoke. It was hard and small and straight and it told you everything you needed to know about Ray. It was the mouth of a man who could wait for revenge on an unfaithful wife. Which was what Ray had done. He’d had a firm in Birmingham that had been doing very nicely until his number two, a man called Jackie Smails, had started pumping up Ray’s wife every Wednesday afternoon. Ray’s wife had been the usual, but Ray apparently had never seen it. They never do. To Ray she’d been the perfection every man always wanted; perfect except to everyone else who didn’t have to use bifocals. It’d taken Ray even longer than usual to find out what was going on under his nose. When he did of course he had Jackie Smails reduced to little bits, but left just alive enough to remember the pain for the rest of his invalid life. Of course this threw the shits into Audrey, Ray’s wife, and she must have started packing her cases the minute she heard about Jackie. But Ray had got to her before she could clear off. And to everybody’s surprise, not the least Audrey’s, he’d done absolutely nothing about it. Never even mentioned it. Come home, had his dinner, watched TV, taken Audrey upstairs and given her the usual pumping up. Got up the next day, had his breakfast, went out, back in the evening. The same thing for a month. Audrey couldn’t believe her luck. So naturally she’d turned it on all the more, given him the ever-loving bit twenty-four hours a day, and according to Ray she’d been even better than ever in the pit. So after about a month or so Ray had suggested a weekend in London, a kind of second honeymoon, taking a couple of open cheques instead of luggage so that Audrey could do a bit of kitting out. The Saturday, he took her round all the shops and let her have whatever she fancied. One item he’d chosen for her himself, and that had been a French lace negligée. In the evening he’d taken her to dinner at Quaglino’s and then they’d gone back to the hotel and she’d put on her new negligée and they’d got into bed and Ray had taken this razor out of his pyjama pocket and cut her face so that she was all one gaping mouth. Then he’d taken her over to the mirror and made her look at what he’d done and then he had put the razor to her throat and still forcing her to look he’d drawn it across her flesh until there wore two new mouths instead of one. Then he’d sat down on the edge of the bed and smoked a cigarette and watched her until she was dead. That was the kind of man Ray Crompton was.
    I used to go through this kind of mind-exercising with all the cons. I’d done it in every nick I’d ever been in. It helped to pass the night away. And recently, since my last caper, it had become more and more necessary.
    It helped keep away the thoughts of Sheila. And the kid.
    The shop is warm with morning sun. Dad sits at the counter, the paper spread out in front of him. Next to him, discarded, waiting for me, is the crisp new copy of the Hotspur. I take it from the counter and go and sit down on the stairs. Today is the final episode of Montana Mike, the boy with a past. It’s the most fantastic story I’ve ever read. Mike is being hunted for a murder he committed under extremely extenuating circumstances, but in spite of this he lives by his own code of great fairness and integrity.
    I read the final episode. Mike is killed, sacrificing his own life to save that of Marshall Ned Rutter, the man who has been hunting him, although each respected the other. I read the episode again, unable to accept Mike’s death, unwilling to give up the world set out on the sweet smelling newsprint. I feel depressed. A sense of loss and anger at returning to the real world of my parents clouds my mind. Mike is dead. I wish I was. Dead that