Die Tryin' (8 page)

Malaka
was taking ’
em for a ride and they all bought it!

Still, could turn out to be a good laugh, opening up a tomb, seeing what’s inside. Keep his mind preoccupied instead of thinking about pussy all the time.

The wrench he was using slipped, and smashed him on the thumb. Pain jolted up his hand.

‘FUCK!’ he shouted and threw the wrench across the work floor.

He sucked his hurt thumb. Vernon saw what happened from the car he was working on and began to chuckle.

‘What the fuck you laughing at, half breed?’ Tony shouted at him.

‘What’s up with you?’ Vernon asked. ‘No pussy at the weekend?’

Tony flipped him the bird, then looked the other way, out of the garage, and onto the street. It wasn’t just his lack of girl action that was pissing him off, it was Maria too.
What did she think she was doing embarrassing him like that the other night?
Who the fuck was that prick she was with? Mario? Fuck off! He thought of his greasy hands all over her body, dribble flying out of his gob while he sucked on her titties, and the rage built inside him. That
malaka
couldn’t fucking do that to him. If that prick fucked her, then Tony might as well bend over and grease himself up for him too.

If anyone, anyone fucks her, they fuck me too!

He couldn’t have these blokes coming along and boning his sister whenever they felt like it. No way, man. No way.

He would see the bastard off, and that would be the end of it.

The pain in his hand finally subsided to a dull throb and so he turned back to his cousin’s Beemer. It was an M3, a nice motor. Stupid prick crashed it on the North Circ doing about ninety, skidded off the road and hit a barrier. Fucked the whole right hand side. No problem though, just bring it to cousin Tony, and tell him to fix her up. Money don’t matter. Not when you are rolling in it. And Christo and his family were. Rich bastards, living in a big house in Cock-fucking-fosters. Like Nick Theodorou. Rich boys and their cars. Christo with his Beemer, Niko with his fucking XR2. Flash bastards with more money than sense. And the people in society who they looked down on, like Tony, had to clean up their
skata
. Yeah, he had repaired Nick’s XR2 a few times as well after he had been driving like a prick. Probably drunk. These geezers had no fucking decency. Tony was always saying that only complete
malakes
drink and drive. It was the scourge of humanity. You either drink and don’t drive, or you drive and don’t drink. The choice was up to you. But, if you drive while half cut, then you deserved to die.

You could fucking kill someone… or yourself, whichever comes first,
he constantly repeated to people, especially Christo.
But did they fucking listen?
Like fuck they did. And as always in these situations, it was down to the people like Tony to pick up the pieces.

It would be good one day to have a car like this for myself,
he thought.
And if I have an accident, I’ll pay some other prick to fix it!

He looked over at Vernon, realising how much he hated that prick and wished he could have his own garage to boot, instead of working for someone else.

And then, like a blast of hot air, his blood boiled, and his mind began shrieking.

Yeah, I’m gonna go rob that tomb with that weirdo from the fair, just for the fuck of it, but also because just maybe the prick
is
telling the truth and it
is
full of gold and if it
is
, then I’m gonna go spend it on all the shit I’ve ever wanted, booze, women, and cars. Yeah, I’m gonna live it up to the fucking max. Live it up and die young, spend every last penny on my-fucking-self, ’
cos they don’t appreciate what I do for ’
em, none of ’
em, when I fix their cars after they mash ’
em up speeding down the motorway, make ’
em look like they just came out the fucking showroom, cleaning up their fucking mess! Nor that bitch of a sister! I look out for her, put my neck on the line for her, protect her from arseholes and what do I get? Blanked! Fucking blanked. Well, it ain’t fucking happening no more! I’m gonna rob that fucking old hag of all her gold, greedy bitch tucking it away like that with her when she’s brown fucking bread. Putana! All putanes! Every fucking woman on God’s Earth is a fucking putana! They’re all the same. Yeah, well they’ll see when I get my gold and I jack this shitty job in. Who’s gonna fix their fucking cars then? Huh? Bitches will be crying after me like babies and I ain’t gonna hear ’
em ’
cos I’ll be too busy rolling down the street, sipping on gin ’
n juice. Yeah, that Marco prick could be onto something here. But, I’ll have to watch him, I don’t trust the malaka. He’s probably up to something, the sly half breed fuck. Never trust a half breed—or, in his case, a full on cross breed mongrel! Like fuck he’s gonna just let us walk away with half the gold. He’ll be planning some dark skata to pull on us.

I’ll have to keep an eye on him, ’
cos the others are too weak.

It’s down to me.

I’m the motherfucking man!

He gazed at the toil and the sweat surrounding him, the harsh scrape of metal on metal screeching against his ears. Fat dirty blokes in overalls covered in grease, sweating and panting, while the
Page 3 Calendar
girl for August was wiggling her titties at them all from the wall. He wanted out of this
skata
.
Why should he bust his fucking bollocks, while everyone else got the cream?
I want my own place. I wanna be the boss, come and go as I please, get other people to work for ME!

Nah, like the Mavro said the other night. Work is for people who didn’t know how to fish.
Well, it’s about time I learnt how to fish ain’t it, re Niko?

He wiped his greasy hands on a rag, took out his mobile phone from the pocket of his overalls, and dialled Nick XR2 to be updated on the Marco and the jewel front.

*****

Nick XR2 walked into his house and glanced in the front room, just as he did every time he arrived back home. His dad was sitting in his armchair (as he always did), watching the telly, a cup of Turkish coffee in hand, his thick-rimmed glasses perched wonkily on his nose. Nick often wondered if he would one day develop the same deep OCD traits of his dad, sitting in the
same
seat every day, drinking coffee from the
same
cup, saying the
same
things whenever he saw his son. Nick put it down to the fact that his unknown older brother, Nick one, had died at the age of three. It had permanently damaged his dad, it seemed. It took years for his mum to get over it, before he’d come along, Nick number two.

‘Hello,
re
Niko,’ Dad said and sipped on his coffee (just like he always did).

‘All right, Dad?’ Nick replied (like he always did) and joined him in the living room.

Dad was watching
Masterchef
, and the Greek newspaper was on the table in front of him, open at the obituary section. Another of his dad’s OCD traits—reading the obituary to see who in the Greek community had died that week, and more importantly, if he knew them.

‘Someone from my village died,’ Dad then said on cue, pointing with his coffee cup at the open newspaper.

‘Really?’ Nick replied, feigning interest.

‘Hmm. Cancer.’

It’s always cancer,
Nick thought to himself.
Maybe they should try laying off the fags…

‘He used to make olive oil. The best.’

‘Did he?’ Nick squatted down beside his dad’s armchair. ‘Listen, Dad. What we talked about last week…’

Dad put his coffee down into the small saucer in his free hand and turned to face his son. ‘About the factory you mean?’

‘Yeah. Exactly how serious is it?’

‘Very serious,’ Dad replied, placing his coffee down on the table next to his newspaper. ‘I told you
re
, the market is dying, and it’s costing too much to run. We hardly make profit now.’

‘Yeah, but will it get better again?’

Dad gave him a grave stare and slowly shook his head. ‘These fucking Eastern Europeans are taking over,
re
. They work cheap, and sell even cheaper.
Bastards!’

Nick puffed his cheeks, and then stared solemnly at Dad. ‘All right, Dad,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to think of a different thing to do.’

‘Yes, Niko. There’s no future in this, and I’m old now… I don’t want to see you struggle. I’ll help you as much as I can, you know that…’

‘Yeah. I do.’ He patted Dad on the knee and got to his feet.

He knew he needed a quick sting, a sudden major inflow of cash, just to reassure his mind as well as maintain a lifestyle that he had gotten used to—cash on hip, jewellery, gadgets, nice car. And somehow, like divine intervention, this Marco bloke had come out of nowhere and given him a remedy to his headache, offered a way of making a quick buck to tide him over once the shit did hit the fan with the factory. He could invest that money into a new business, a more modern and profitable one, get into the property game, or even move abroad. Whatever the future held, he would have options, and that was the most important thing.

He went straight upstairs to his room, and made the call to Marco. Let him know that they were all in: Tony, Nick Black, Taki, even Charlie. Nick was more than a little surprised when Charlie rang him earlier to tell him he was in. He was expecting to have to go round there and convince him, no,
bullshit
him into coming. The fact that he volunteered was unexpected, but it saved him a lot of time and energy. When Charlie had his mind set, it was a very difficult thing to change. The paranoia had him the same way the cancer had the olive oil man from Dad’s obituary, and once someone had
that
, it was virtually impossible to convince them they were wrong.

He was intrigued to know what it was that made him go 180 so quickly, then realised it was best not to question it, be thankful for it, and just go along with it instead. Nick reasoned that the thing that had convinced Charlie that it was a bad idea the previous night was most probably what was now convincing him that it was a good idea. That was Charlie’s logic in a nutshell. Charlie added that he only wanted to keep lookout, which was fine by Nick, and that he didn’t want any of the jewels, which was also fine by Nick, and that was that.

Tony sounded like he couldn’t wait to get on with it. He was going on about how great Marco was, and how this was the opportunity they had all been waiting for, and how he was going to ditch his job, and blah blah blah. It was weird. This was the same bloke who wanted to kick off with Marco the other night, now he was talking like he was his new best friend.
Another fucking loon!

Nick Black was calmer in his tone, but Nick could tell he was just as excited as Tony. Going on about travelling the globe and paying back uni debts. Nick wondered why anyone would waste their time at uni. It was a debt trap, and life just ended up passing you by in the meantime. And when life passes you by, so do its opportunities. And you didn’t get many of
them
. On that score, he could understand Nick’s excitement. Maybe the prick was finally realising this, and had been praying for someone like Marco to come along and hand him a pot of gold.

Maybe they all were…

He dialled Marco’s number, and it rang for a long time. And for a while, Nick had a horrible thought that maybe Marco had been playing them all along, and it was all some joke, and the number was fake, and the dream was dead, it hadn’t even got started and they all looked like mugs, especially him, and this twat Marco was hiding somewhere laughing at them, and thinking what a bunch of—

‘Yeah?’
came a voice on the other end of the line, chopping those negative thoughts down like a scythe through a field of wheat.

‘Marco?’

‘Yeah.’

Nick felt relief wash over him. ‘I thought you weren’t gonna pick up!’

‘Oh, Nick with the XR2.’

‘Yeah, it’s me.
About that thing…’

‘You sorted it all out?’

‘Totally. All of us from the other night are in.’

‘Including your man who was a bit flaky?’

‘You mean Charlie.’

‘Yeah, Charlie…’

‘Including Charlie. And I got us an extra man as well.’

‘Cool. Has he got a motor?’

‘Taki? Yeah, he drives a Mini.’

‘Good. We’ll need him to create a diversion for us. Anyway, I don’t like to talk too much on the phone about this kind of stuff.’

‘Nah, me neither.’

‘So, get your boys ready, ’
cos we’re doing this tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Nick exclaimed.

‘Yeah. Problem?’

‘It’s a bit short…’

‘Like I said, I wanna get this done and dusted. It’s a Wednesday tomorrow. I’m guessing generally a pretty quiet day for visiting the dead.’

‘Won’t we need time to prepare?’

‘We can do that when we meet up tomorrow. Get your boys together in two cars and I’ll meet you at midday. We’ll sort out the plan then.’

Nick shrugged to himself. ‘Okay,’ he said, hoping Marco knew what he was doing.

‘You got a torch?’

‘Torch?’

‘Yeah, you know one of those things that shines light.’

‘Yeah, I can get one.’

‘Good. The bigger and brighter the better, ’cos that mausoleum’s got no windows, so it’s gonna be dark as fuck inside.’

‘I get you.’

‘And a bag. Quite a big one. One of those holdalls would be perfect.’

‘No problem.’ Then Nick remembered something. ‘Hey, how about clothes?’

‘Yeah, you’ll need clothes, it might be a bit cold.’

‘Ha ha. I meant masks and shit.’

Marco chuckled.
‘We’re tomb raiding, mate, not sticking up Nat West.’

‘Heh. Good point.’

‘Nah. Just come in plain clothes, the more inconspicuous the better. Just bring yourselves, two cars, and we’re cool. I’ll call you at midday to meet up and go over the plan. Don’t worry, it’ll be a piece of cake, mate. In, out, creamed.’