The rise and fall of a boy called Rave part 15

Building something new

Hay, it has been a while.

I think it is about time I covered some of the basics about the structure of the gangs. The where six gangs on the estate the Dead Heads, the Hell Boys, the Bad Dogs, the Dammed Ones, the Burned Stars and the Flesh Eaters. I know the names are a little over the top but it is what we called ourselves. The gangs tags where the initials put together in some way, normally in the gangs colour, but each crew within the gang would change style. The gangs had somewhere between 100 to 200 members each of which about a third where girls, if the Dead heads where all fit and we stripped our corners and streets we could call on around 70 lads. The gangs had the same again in hangers on, girlfriend who hadn’t joined, kids how wanted to join, and the weak who where afraid to join but hung around the edges looking for protection, they also supported a fair number of girls who were used as sex toys, and then you had family members and old boys to take into account. These people where split into crews.

A crew was a group within the gang with its own structure and internal politics, it was ran by a chief and one or two Lts, and was a simple way to organize the larger gang. They numbered between a dozen and 20 members each, if a member earned money though crime he paid it up the chain, and the chief paid it into the gang, but it also worked the other way money came down to the chief from the gang and he paid out a wage. This was so the high cash corner crews like mine subsidised the lower earning ones, you still made more money if you worked in the higher risk parts of the gang but it kept others happy.

Lacy’s crew, now my crew, was a corner crew. We ran a drugs corner, for that you need spotters, runners, tellers, a bank to keep the count and muscle if you want to hold the corner, all in all about 10 lads working at all times you are open. An addict has to spend about £10 a day on his poison of choice a day it keep himself set, depending and quality and availability of product. With a 60/40 split up to the gang the corner make £4 per addict per day. With 10 lads working you need to get close to 100 addicts buying of your corner a day to make it worth the effort, and back then a lad was very happy to earn 40 a day for 4/5 hours work of a night. If you could push it up to around 120 addicts you really started to make money. Luckily the one thing the estate had in spades was addicts, sooner or later they ended up here.

Of course everyone that worked the corner was part of the crew but not everyone that was part of the crew worked the corner. In my case Mike was always part of my crew but you couldn’t have him work a corner or soon all the money and all the drugs would end up in his pocket. The way the gang earned money of Mike was just going to his room once a week and emptying his pockets. You didn’t get things of value all the time because to him a plastic folk given out free at a chippy held the same value as jewels so long as he got to steal them. I took anything that looked valuable, pawned it, took a cut and then gave half back to him and half to the gang. He made quite a bit of cash that way.

Our territory was big enough just to fit 3 drugs crews, with constant fighting over the boards with the Hell Boys and the Bad Dogs, but even so that left more than half the gang with nothing to do. The other crews did anything to make money selling alcohol, cigarettes, pirate CD’s and anything they could steel. The only reason they didn’t do protection, loan sharking and prostitution was the King had his own people doing that on the estate. It was the same with Ecstasy, there were plenty of people that we could sell it to, and it was easy money, but his people sold it in the clubs so we stayed well away. Even so everything we did a small cut went up to him, even if he had nothing to do with it.

No one really grieved Lacy death, to most who loved him he had died long ago when he first picked up the needle and with his finale downward spiral his family was numb.

Taking over Lacy’s crew after his death was not easy, I may have been his Lt, I may have been running it more or less by myself for months, I may have had a reputation that few people could boast of, but I was very, very young to be running a crew let alone one of the valuable corners. Really Eddy wanted to put one of his own men in over me, he didn’t oppose me himself but he had some of his lads do it, they said over the last few weeks I had been unstable, which was true, and I was too young, which was also true, and the was that nasty rumour that I had kill Lacy… not of course that they believe it… but still. I didn’t argue to loudly about that, they may have started the rumour to hurt me but I saw the look of fear in other peoples eyes now and I was happy for them to think I had kill Lacy. I didn’t try and argue the points with them, I only pointed out that it was my right and anyone that wanted to challenge that was more than welcome to try me. I was 6 foot 2 by now and strong, I was trained well, the where only four people in the whole gang I didn’t think I could take, and of them only Littler was in a place to challenge me, and he really didn’t have the brains to run anything.

Eddy had them back off, looking like he had given up was better than looking like he had lost.