“Who d’ya think ya are?” said the hapless Cockney sailor stood by the bar of Wheelers favourite speakeasy. A real little diamond nestled away at the back of a warehouse in Seattle’s waterfront district. Despite the war on prohibition being waged from run down dives peddling moonshine and cat piss in the rest of America, this particular speakeasy looked like the ritz once you got inside. Not to mention, it managed to pick up a selection of the best booze the world had to offer, some real, Grade A, top shelf shit, aided in no small part by the crew Wheeler was a part of, The Dock Workers, running both it and the docks.

I mean, customs officers aren’t exactly keen to get in the way of a good business deal like this, especially when given the silver or lead ultimatum. Fuck. Most of the officers (customs, police and FBN) drank there ‘emselves once they’d finished their shift. Corrupt fucks they are. And the sailors? Well i dunno about you, but I never met a sailor who didn’t drink like a fish. The majority of the stuff customs did seize ended up landing in The Dock Workers laps anyway. Only the stuff the Dock Workers weren’t interested in got sent away to prove to the powers that be that they were doing their jobs. Everyone got some food in their mouth down at the waterfront. How’s the saying go? Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, fleece the poor bastard for everything he’s got and you eat instead. That’s how it goes down at the Seattle docks anyway...

I digress.

“Who d’ya think ya are? Poncey bastard. Calling yourself British, but you’re out here in this shithole city, dressed like you think you’re a fucking Italian gangster! What a fucking joke.” Said the sailor. He was younger than wheeler by a few years, but a big fella with it. The type of guy you wouldn’t want to run into down a dark alley. Someone who Wheeler would usually have some work for. But, clearly, the guy had no idea who he was talking to. He was either drunk, or just plain thick. Wheeler, having been in a particularly good mood today, and not wanting to spoil the night quite yet, decided to pacify the guy.
 

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry, lemme get you a drink.” He offered. “How’d you like a brandy? Yeah?" Turning to the bartender, Wheeler beckoned him over before ordering “Hey Jimmy, gimme a bottle of that Fortnum and Mason cognac, put it on my tab.”
 

Now, the sailor, being the uncultured swine he was, didn’t fully appreciate the magnitude of what Wheeler had just ordered. Fortnum and Mason were purveyors to royalty and soldiers alike. During the war, they’d provided British soldiers only the finest tuck, which is where Wheelers own love of their brand had came from. Not to mention, they’d invented the bloody scotch egg. When the bartender, Jimmy returned holding the 35 year aged cognac, wheeler thanked him and took it, along with two tumbler glasses. He nodded at the gobby sailor to follow him over to one of the vip booths and poured them both a generous helping, placing the sailor’s glass by him.
 

“Now look. You asked who I thought I was. Now I like telling a good story as much as the next guy, so im’a humour you. In exchange, you get to drink for free. Win win ey?

I was born in 1901, the eldest son of a gamekeeper and his wife, a schoolteacher up in the Yorkshire dales. My first name? That doesn’t matter. Everyone calls me by my surname, Wheeler.

I had a good childhood. Never wanted for much, my mother taught me my letters and my numbers, which is more than can be said for most folk back then. Pops taught me to stalk deer, set traps, all the stuff a young lad dreams of doing. He was dead set that I was going to be a gamekeeper too, and god knows, I probably would have been.

Then came 1914, some numpty over in a godforsaken hellhole in the Baltic’s decided to top a duke or count or some other fancy ass bastard. The next thing you know? Boom. We’re at war with Germany.”

Wheeler takes a sip of his brandy, savouring the fire as it goes down. He begins absent mindedly rolling a cigarette as he continues.

“Now I wasn’t old enough to enlist, had to be eighteen see? I was only thirteen at the time. But I was a big bastard for my age. Never grew much since, but I was a good six foot even back then. So what did thirteen year old me do? Nothing, not at first. Then one day in 1915, some bitch came upto me while I was in town, and put a goddamn white feather in my hand. You know what that does to a boy? It makes him fucking enlist is what it does. I ain’t having some snot nosed cow calling me a coward.”

Wheeler licks the rolling paper, before finishing the roll-up. Placing it between his lips he strikes a match and offers the flame up. The act is soothing. That first hit of the smoke in his lungs feeling almost like heaven. Wordlessly, he offers the sailor the tobacco, which he refuses, so wheeler places in back in his pocket before continuing..

“So enlist I did, and off to the trenches I went. My poor pops, he’d already gone over. Back when the war first started. Went over the top too, and never came back. My poor mother, she took to the demon drink. Ruined her it did. She probably didn’t even notice I’d gone. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame her. Shit happens. Never saw her again though mind.

Where was I? Yeah i enlisted. Bullshitted the recruiter about my age, it wasn’t hard, as I said, I was a big lad. Took the kings shilling and that was it, I was packed off to go to war at the grand old age of fourteen. Now, I won’t lie. My childhood stood me in good stead, I knew my way around a gun. Shit, I still do. Was pretty handy with a blade too. Hell, you had to be in those trenches. Once you’d sprinted through the machine gun fire, there was nothing for it but sticking the krauts dead. Still got my old trench knife back at home. Lots of memories there.

Anyway I ended up getting there mid way through the Gallipoli Campaign. Boy, those ANZAC boys could fight. The French were shit. The French were always shit. Might aswell have just left us, the Aussies and the Kiwis to it. No, I’m probably being unfair. Gallipoli went on for months before we finally accepted defeat. Half the lads I started with were dead by the end of it, most of the others were too fucked to keep going. The Germans? No, no, we were fighting the Turks over in Gallipoli. Shit, for a sailor you don’t know much about the world do you?”

He stubs the cigarette out in the tables ashtray.

“After that, I was shipped off to the western front, now that. That was hell on Earth. Half of the time you were bored shitless, the other half you were waiting to die. Ever heard of mustard gas? That goddamn stuff was lethal. Huge blisters would spring up all over you, and if you got hit with it real bad, you were a goner. Well the Germans only started handing the stuff out like sweets. They were ‘Mass producing’ it. And boy did we know about it.

In the end, I was sent to a hellhole called Cambrai. Our tanks won us the day at first, but then the Krauts fought back hard. They didn’t like that we were on their doorstep and hit us with everything. I ended up getting taken prisoner. Now this was around about the time that the Germans had the bright idea to ship their prisoners of war off to their Eastern front. And fuck me if it wasn’t cold. No, I’m not going to talk about what happened after that. Let’s just say, the next year or so, was torture. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. Working like dogs for the enemy in the bitter cold, lads would keel over and die from the shame of it.”

Having finished his glass, he refills his own before topping up the sailors.

“But I got through it. Shit, I wouldn’t be here telling you about it if I hadn’t now would I? Eventually, the war ended, just like that. Fucking Hundreds of thousands dead, and for what? Germany and its dreams of an empire? Some dickhead duke killed as though that would change anything? They just fucked us all.”

Wheeler shakes his head at the memory of it. It still left a sour taste in his mouth. The amount of death started by some no name bum with a happy trigger finger half a world away.

“Eventually us prisoners of war, we got to go home. So I goes home. And guess what? My old mother had only gone and died of TB while i was out there fighting for king and country. Now TB, that’s a real bastard of a way to go. But nothing compared to getting blown apart or having your feet rot away from the trench foot. So I suppose I should be thankful for her.

There was nothing left for me back home then. I could have gone and became a gamekeeper like my old da was, but I’d seen too much yanno? Those quiet, rolling Yorkshire dales just weren’t cutting it anymore. I wasn’t the same boy who left them three years earlier. So at seventeen years old and already a hardened killer, I signed on with the merchant navy. Ended up jumping ship one day while we were docked in Canada. Reckoned it was either the America’s or Australia for me. But Australia was too damn hot. No northern lad like me is gunna fancy that heat. But Canada? With its snow and vast expanse of nothingness between civilisation? That I could hack.

Started off keeping myself alive in Canada by poaching, based out of an abandoned old log cabin, thanks again to my old man, for teaching me how to hunt. There was decent money in fur, so the trapping came in handy too. Then comes along prohibition. Now, what sorta muppet is gunna pass up the chance to make money from running booze across the Canadian border? Not me, that’s for sure. The thing is bloody massive, there’s no real policing it. The Closest city worth a damn south of the border? You’re stood in it. Seattle was the way forward. Eventually I made a few contacts down here, and I saw how much money was being made, and how much more there was to be made, and decided to come down here on a more permanent basis.”

Wheeler finishes his second glass of the brandy, knocking it back and slamming it down onto the table.

“Not long after, I clocked on to how much stuff was floating around down here at the docks. Not to mention, your typical dock workers, no, no, not The Dock Workers, just your typical fellas, were a hard bunch, of a pretty honest sort. They weren’t making the most of their opportunities down here. I was late to the party though. Good Old Ragnarok had already jumped on it just before I did. Nothing to do but offer him my services once I saw he’d already claimed the Waterfront as his own. Turns out, he saw something in me as well, because I quickly ended up as one of his most trusted guys. Shit what do you know, I’m empty.”

Wheeler stands to fill his glass one last time, a healthy double measure of the expensive liquor, just to be safe. Hating waste. Placing the bottle back on the table, he remains standing.

“Now? Well here we are. Drinking in Seattle’s answer to the Ritz. Ran by us. Based in the docks, which are also ran by us. We’ve done well for ourselves. And you?”

Wheeler picks the bottle back up, studying it and its contents, before finishing.

“You come in here, disrespecting me? Disrespecting us and our city?!”

Before the sailor can react, Wheeler smashes the half full bottle of brandy over the sailors head and rams the jagged, razor sharp neck of the bottle into his new drinking companions throat, watching as the blood from his severed artery pumps onto the table in spurts.

“THATS WHO I THINK I AM YOU FUCKING CLOWN!”

Wheeler raves, as the sailors stupid eyes stare at him dumbly. Struggling to process what had just happened, a process made all the more impossible by the sudden diversion of blood from his brain to the table.

The punters, shit, even the cops all avert their eyes, not wanting to be involved, nor wanting to incur the wrath of the furious mobster before them.
 

Breathing heavily, Wheeler takes his tumbler and downs it, before walking to Jimmy at the bar, leaving the sailor to thrash his death throes out alone. He calmly places the glass on the bar, before taking out his rolling tobacco and the associated paraphernalia.

“That’ll need cleaning up Jimmy. Have some of the new guys deal with him. It’s about time they made themselves useful.”

He rolls himself a cigarette, taking one of the complimentary matchbooks from the bar, strikes one, and lights his cigarette as he turns to leave. Wisely, none of the patrons of the speakeasy make eye contact with him as he makes his way out of the door into the cold night beyond.

Foamy tries to read but finds it too much for his poor, squirrelly eyes

can you like, just bullet point for me?  I'm fucking lazy.

Foamy stands and applauds

Kudos old friend, that really is a tale for the ages!