by Jay Stringer
They were all there. Both Mann brothers, Gav and Channy. They had to be there to give their approval. Teek and Marvin, the guy’s who called the shots on the streets. Pepsi and Latisha, the two team leaders who had recommended Bauser. They all greeted him with smiles when he walked in, hand shakes and backslaps, a hug from Latisha. The talking seemed to have already been done.
“So you ready to step up?” Channy Mann looked Bauser up and down as he spoke. “You think you’re ready to run a team?”
“Hell yeah.”
His confidence was only about fifty percent bravado. The rest was naivety. But the Mann brothers seemed to like his answer. Channy continued.
“How long have you been with us now?”
“Four years.”
“Started young.”
“He aye never missed a count.” Marv spoke up. “Never called in sick. Kept his mouth shut when the police pulled him.”
“Yeah.” Gav smiled and looked Bauser up and down as if he was sizing up a pit-bull. “I think you are. You’re bursting for it.”
Bauser nodded, hoping he looked cool and relaxed but his heart was breaking out of his chest.
“This means, you get arrested? We’ll get you bail and a good lawyer. You don’t have to carry that on your own. You need to go anywhere? You get a man to drive you. You need anything? They can fetch it for you.”
Bauser was liking this. It sounded like being a king.
“But, and we tell you this now, you’re the man we come to. One of your boys fucks up? You carry that. You put your fingers in the till? Marv and Teek here will fuck you up.”
“Totally, man. I’d never do you guys like that.”
Channy nodded his head toward the door at the back of the room. Letisha tapped Bauser on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow and she and Pepsi headed over to the door. It led to the kitchen at the back of the building. It was spotless and smelled of cleaning fluids. Aside from a ratty old sofa against the wall, it was the very model of a well run kitchen. Letisha and Pepsi slouched down into the sofa, but Bauser stayed on his feet.
“They’re talking about me, right?”
“Yup.”
“They like me though, right? I mean, they wouldn’t have me here if they wasn’t going to give me the job, right?”
Letisha shrugged and Pepsi started replying to a text message on his phone.
“What if they change their minds?”
Pepsi didn’t take his eyes off the phone, “probably kill you.”
They let Bauser hang there for a moment feeling his heart stop until they started laughing. Letisha stuck out her hand and Pepsi slapped it. Bauser kicked them both in the shins.
The laughter stopped when Marv stepped into the kitchen and shut the door again after him. He was a quiet man and stillness seemed to settle in around him wherever he was.
“There’s a problem.” He said it in a low voice, and the room seemed to suck in around his words and drain the air away.
“Wha-?”
He pulled a gun out from the folds of his hoodie. It was Bauser’s gun, the one that had been taken off him at the door.
“Did you get this from Sukhi?”
“Nah, some guy in West Brom.”
“Let me tell you, it worries us. Kids come into this wanting to play gangsta? They don’t last very long. What made you get a gun?”
“I thought that was how it worked. I seen Pepsi carries a gun and, you know, I thought that all you team leaders did?”
Marv stared off into space for a moment, lining things up in his mind. Then he nodded and smiled down at the gun.
“I trust you, son. That’s why we’re promoting you.” Bauser’s face lit up and he was about to speak but Marv continued. “But a gun? That’s something else. This aye Birmingham. Bullets are expensive, man. You only carry if we say so, and you’re not there yet.”
He turned the gun over in his hand.
“Nice. Sweaty though. You nervous today, huh?”
Bauser shrugged.
“Its okay, you can admit it. We’re all nervous the first time. To be honest, it’s always there, just a little bit. You put it behind your back, right? Don’t do that. You got a hoodie?”
Bauser nodded. He had lots of hoodies. He’d always liked them, and when the men on TV started saying hoodies were evil, he’d liked them even more.
“Cool. Wear ones with big pockets, like mine. You can carry a gun in front of you and it don’t have to get wet. Or in your hood, unless there’s police around. A good trick? Carry it in your sleeve a couple of times, let people see it. Then always keep your right hand covered by your sleeve and people will think you’ve always got it.” He held up a bullet and slipped it into the cartridge. “I want you to prove yourself before you carry, and that’s going to take time. But lets see if you’ve got what it takes.”
He turned in the direction of the kitchen door and pushed through. Bauser followed. The Mann brothers had left, and in the centre of the room was a man tied to a chair. He was doing his best to shout, but the sock that they’d forced down his throat meant it was coming out as a choking sound.
He was old and tired, and his face was swollen from a beating. Through the swelling though, Bauser could still recognise him.
He was the face from pictures on his mum’s dressing table, and half remembered trips to the cinema and McDonalds. He was a name on a birthday card every few years. His name was Eric, and he was Bauser’s father. Marv handed him the gun.
“Your old man here’s been running up a tab that he never intended to pay. We was going to let you talk him round, but this is a better way. All yours.”
Marv went and stood by the kitchen door. Bauser felt his gut turn and try to climb its way out through his ass. His feet were made of lead. The gun in his hand felt real now, it was a serious fucking cannon. He looked down at it, at the way it shined in the dim light, and at how the outside world fell away when he stared at the metal.
His father’s eyes were wide as golf balls, bloodshot and terrified. He was shaking his head and the chocking sounds now sounded pleading rather than angry. As the gun came into view, he twisted and toppled the chair, and began trying to wriggle his way to the front door. It was a pathetic sight, and he didn’t have the energy to move too far. Bauser just stood and watched for a moment, waiting until the old man gave up before he knelt and pressed the gun against his temple. The smell of warm piss filled the room, followed by one last whimper.
This felt fucking amazing.
Bauser’s finger tightened against the trigger and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them and looked back down, he noticed just how much his father resembled Marcus.
“Fuck you.” He said into the old mans ear.
He got to his feet and walked over to stand with his boss.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” Marvin said.
“Like you said, bullets are expensive.”
Lost Profits
Tony was watching his hand move. No kidding, he’d been doing it for twenty minutes. Ever since Fuller had arrived. Word was he’d been drinking the punch, which Bobby Buddha had said was safe. Bobby’s a cunt like that. The only time Tony paused was to cock his head to one side to say, hey, “what’s that noise?” But nobody was listening to him.
Adele Wright had been taken home an hour before, she’d been found in the kitchen, pale white with a bloody needle in her hands and cling film tied around her forearm. Nobody had ever seen the cling film thing before, what was it, a celebrity diet? Someone, maybe it was Toast, bundled her into a car and drove her home, and Bobby handed out a few more drinks to get the party going again.
Most people were crowded into the front room, the one Alex had turned into a games room. A crate of lager and a stolen air hockey table made for the best games room in the street. Alex said, “I’ll always have the coolest flat in the street, even if I have to move.” It was one of those parties.
Fuller wasn’t really there to listen to Alex, or to
watch Tony’s hand move. He was there for Lee Owen. Owen had turned up at the start of the evening and set up camp in the bathroom, calling it his office. Then, except for some thoughtless idiots who needed to piss, he spent the night selling to everyone who walked in. Tens and twenties, black bulls and stingers. He promised it was the good shit, that your belly would melt after taking it, and nobody came back to complain. Bobby Buddha backed him up, said, look what the bull did to the punch. Fuller was usually the guy who turned up and sold at these parties, but he was low key, he’d sell a few bags out of his coat pocket then party. Owen’s business style just messed things up, attracted attention. Fuller stepped into the bathroom and shut the door before saying, “Hey, what the fuck?”
Owen looked around the room, making a show of it, then, “I dow see your name anywhere?”
“So that’s how you’re going to be?”
Owen shrugged, “No choice.”
“Oh, aliens controlling your brain again?”
Owen softened, handed Fuller a bag and said, here, on the house. Then he opened up a little more, “I’m in a corner here, I owe Claire Gaines seven grand.”
“Seven grand?”
“And If I dow have it by the end of the week, she’s gonna rip my dick off, she says.”
“Seven grand?”
“Did you hear the part about my dick?”
“Yeah but I’m ignoring that, it’s a mental image I don’t want. Shit, seven grand? Why’d you borrow that?”
“I didn’t. Remember the thing I used to run at college? You give me a fiver at the weekend and I’ll bring you back 30 from the bookies?”
“Sure, I used to like that.”
“Way it worked, there was this guy I followed, good tipster. I’d win 50, keep twenty and give you thirty.”
“Sure.”
“Well I been working on that, only then it was, you give me 100 and I’ll bring you 400, like, or you give me 500 and-” He shrugged, “I’ve been pretty good at it.”
“So what happed?”
“Gaines came to me, said she wanted to raise some money quick, wanted to invest in something without her family knowing, to prove she was better than her sister or something.”
“She has a sister?”
“Yeah, older. Anyway, she gave me a grand, said she wanted to see four back, I said that was cool. I been following this tipster on twitter, see? And he’s better than the old guy, never fails. So I laid all the money out, but not one of the fucking bets came in.”
“So that covers one grand.”
“No, see, she said I’d guaranteed her four, so she expected that back. Then she said, if I was making her four then I was making myself at least two, so she added that in because she says I must’ve ripped her off, and that if I don’t stump up she’ll do some ripping off of her own.”
Fuller laughed, “Oh shit, you’re in it. Look, you sell, Ill go chill with Alex.” Then he left Owen to it in the bathroom, saying under his breath, “It’s just one of those parties.”
The kind where they played MC Hammer remixes all night to sound hip and ironic, but really just ended up enjoying the music and dancing.
Fuller nodded at Tony on his way past, before he got to the games room. Tony looked spaced, he wasn’t going to respond, but then he grabbed Fuller by the arm and said, “Serious, what’s that noise?”
Fuller cocked his head and listed, humoring the space cadet, but then he heard it. Radio squawk, chatter through static. For the first time he noticed the strobing blue light coming in above he front door, through the pane of frosted glass.
Cops.
Looks like Adele Wright may have been a little more trouble than everyone thought. Fuller handed Owen’s free sample to Tony, then emptied his stash out of his pockets and into the coats that were hung up in the hallway. He zipped up his coat and quietly let himself out the front door, nodding to all the officers that were lined up outside, ready to bust in. They stared at him for a second, caught off guard, then rugby tackled him to the ground while the rest of them ran on into the house shouting, “police.” From inside, Fuller could hear the cops banging on the bathroom door, and heard the toilet flushing.
Lee Owen was going to have to find another way to come up with seven grand.
The Hard Sell
They’d been bought together by Ed Baker, the only real long-con player in the Midlands. People said he never got involved in anything that had less than ten moves.
There were five of them at the meeting:
Jake Nichol, former pro wrestler. He’d gotten as far as the big two in America before dropping out. He never quite made it, but he did get pinned by Hulk Hogan. Returning to England, Jake got put away for holding up a petrol station without a gun. The cops eventually found him with a mashed up banana in his pocket. He went in a failure but came out a minor legend.
Tom Mcinnes. Young and green, he was making a name at short con. Nobody liked him because he had the charm of a dead rat, but he was willing to learn. He had some nervous disorder and was always moving or twitching.
Jamie Prescott. He talked a lot. He did it well. Put him in a suit, he was the smoothest lawyer you’d never seen. Put him in overalls, he could convince you he could turn your car into a spaceship.
The strangest member of the group, the one everyone’s eyes kept drifting to, was Claire Gaines. She was the youngest daughter of Ransford Gaines. Everybody in the room was scared of Ransford Gaines and they all decided to be scared of his daughter, too.
They sat around a pool table in the back room of Ed’s favourite pub and waited until he arrived. Jake leaned back and swigged from his bottled beer.
“You know the problem with modern wrestling?”
“No, go on,” Tom took the bait.
“It’s the endings. Everybody knows how it’s going to happen.”
“Yeah, well, its all fake, innit?”
“Of course it is, but that’s like saying a movie is fake. You get someone good in that ring and it’s like a great film, or a great song, it’s telling you a story. It’s making you feel something, or that’s what it should do. It doesn’t, not anymore.”
Jake’s speech was interrupted when Ed finally arrived. He was wearing a suit and carried a laptop. He looked like he was about to do a presentation at a board meeting. He set the laptop on the pool table.
“Have you all heard of the safety deposit con?”
Two heads nodded, one shook.
Claire didn’t seem interested.
“Okay. It’s been around forever. Until a couple of years ago, I thought it was a myth.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I tried it, up in Glasgow.”
“Wow,” said Jake, impressed.
“So, you get two guys dressed as security guards. You take your two guys to a bank, on a busy street, and you cover up the deposit box with a metal sheet. Hold it in place with whatever cheap glue you can find, but it needs to look real.”
“You did it with a metal sheet?”
“No, actually, I did it with hazard tape. Covered the deposit box and crossed over it with the tape, like a big X. But I think metal looks better.”
“Okay.”
“So, you’ve got your two security guards, you’ve got the safety deposit box sealed, and you’ve got a sign put up saying the deposit box is out of order.”
“You never mentioned the sign,” said Claire.
“I’m mentioning it now. The trick is, see, that you get all sorts of people coming to deposit their money. It depends on the timing, but if you do it on a Friday, just before five o’clock, you’d get a lot of impatient shop workers. They want to drop their cash and be done with their day. If you do it at the right bank, you can do it on a weekend, and get people who are in a hurry to be done with their week.”
“And they just give it to you?”
“That’s the job, you have to make them believe you’re a security firm acting on behalf of the bank. They put their cash into whatever you’
re using –a metal briefcase, maybe, or a security van—and you give them an official looking receipt. They go on their way, and so do you.”
“Its one of the first scams I ever heard of,” said Jamie, “No way does this work.”
“I swear, I thought the same thing. But I tried it.”
“And you made good?”
“Five grand.”
“I want another drink,” said Claire.
After another round of drinks, Ed tapped the laptop again.
“You want us all to work the security con?” said Jake.
Jamie didn’t like the idea, “Where’s the money in it? I mean, five grand is good, and would pay for that nice shiny laptop of yours and maybe a Chelsea season ticket, but it won’t pay for five of us to be involved.”
“You talk as if five grand is nothing,” said Jake. “You’re young.”
Ed raised his hand and nodded at both Jake and Jamie in turn.
“Okay. Jake, Jamie, you’re both right. But what if I told you I have an idea to make a hundred grand out of it?”
He had everyone’s attention at this point.
“Jamie is right, basically. It’s a short con, and there’s no fortune in it. I wanted to find a better angle. Do you know the trick to the long game? It’s finding the human interest. In this case, everyone always looks at the trick itself. I bet, even as I told you about it, you were thinking about the job. About which bank to hit, who to put in uniform, and how much money you’d get in your case when you walked away.”
Jake nodded,
Jamie shrugged.
Tom twitched.
Claire drank.
“You know what I thought the first time I heard of it? I wanted to know what happened to all those people.”
“The people you stole from?” Claire said in between her drink and a raised eyebrow.
“Exactly. What happens to them? All these people putting their hard earned cash into my briefcase. It’s their money and I got to keep it. So what happened to them?”
“Banks cover it, don’t they?” said Jamie, “I mean, like if a bank vault is robbed, or if someone uses your identity to scam money, the bank’s insurance covers it, right?”
