Little Criminals Read Online Free Page A

going. There wasn’t the chance that one day you’d come out of a bank or a jeweller’s with a shotgun in your hands and find half a dozen trigger-happy cops waiting to blow you away. You weren’t taking a chance you’d spend a few years in a small room with bars on the window and some bonehead wanking and farting his way through what passed for a life.
    Other hand, though, you knew things would never get much better than they were. There’d always be some rich asshole looking down his nose while he short-changed you, and the money you took home would never amount to more than it took to keep you exactly where you were.
    Was a time the risk was worth it, so that’s the way he went. Lately, life was comfortable, and the downside of stroking wasn’t worth the kind of money you got to take home.
    ‘You’re talking about real money.’
    The kind of take Frankie was talking about could shift life to a different level. One big jump. Then the security work would keep things motoring along. Have to give Frankie credit. Comes a time when you either get out of this business or you make something of yourself. Brendan Sweetman was out of the business, living cool. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t see the benefits of a one-off that makes a difference.
    Frankie said, ‘This isn’t just another job. Know what I mean? Kind of money we’re talking about, we don’t get that for standing around looking menacing. I’m just making sure you know what might be involved.’
    Brendan thought about that for a moment, then he said, ‘I know what you’re talking about.’
    Frankie nodded. Brendan hadn’t gone soft. Give him time to think and he’d make the right decision. A job like this, you need people around that don’t have to be told how the world works. Frankie finally took a sip of his pint.
    Three days later, early evening, Frankie Crowe was across the river in Temple Bar, sitting at the counter in Top Nosh, a cup of coffee in front of him. The place wasn’t busy. A couple of stools to Frankie’s left, a fat-faced priest was finishing a sandwich. At the sole window seat, a colour-coordinated couple in their twenties were having a quiet but fierce argument. There were three other people in the coffee shop, all sitting separately. Frankie sipped his coffee and opened the leather-bound notebook that served as organiser, diary and memo pad. Over the two months since the Harte’s Cross mess, he had put together the guts of a promising project. The three Ts – target, timetable, team. Surveillance information, lists of things to do, phone numbers, sources of supplies and support. He leafed through pages that had nothing to do with the snatch, and came to a page on which was written FC, MP, BS, DF, Mky, TS .
    He had already check-marked his own initials, Martin Paxton’s and Brendan Sweetman’s.
    Another – what? – a month, maybe. Even less. No point screwing around. This one works, he told himself, everything changes. This one doesn’t work, everything changes.
    ‘An organised man.’
    Frankie looked at the priest, who was smiling with proud modesty, like he’d just said something that let slip his cleverness. His face was shiny, soft, his accumulated chins quivering. He nodded towards the notebook. ‘An organised man. Everything in its place. A sure sign of an ordered life.’ His voice was Kerry or thereabouts.
    If he was cruising he’d have ditched the collar. Just a moocher in need of conversation.
    Frankie said, ‘What’s it to you?’ He closed his notebook.
    The priest blushed. It took him another couple of minutes to pay his bill, carefully ignoring Frankie, then he gathered his leather shoulder bag and his fold-up umbrella and shuffled off without glancing back. Frankie looked at his watch. Dolly was late. He picked up the Irish Independent the priest had left behind. The paper was open to a page on which a politician deplored anti-American tendencies in modern Ireland. Such attitudes, he wrote, lead to a