Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan Read Free Book Online Page A

finished chewing, then leaned down and blew the salt figure away.
     
     
Jem went on, "That's minus a chunk I dropped into the kitty for the next one, replace the tools I dumped. And some short bundles of new consecutives, I incinerated, not worth worrying over. And then ten percent off the top for the Florist. Overall, a fucking dynamite haul. Oh-- yeah." He reached into his back pocket. "From the ATM. Stamps for all."
     
     
Doug said, "What's this with the Florist?"
     
     
Jem passed out the stamp sheets. "His tribute."
     
     
"And why you involving him?"
     
     
"It's not like he doesn't already know about it. It's the right thing to do."
     
     
"How'd he know?" Doug let his sandwich drop back onto the wrapper on the bench. "I didn't tell him. I didn't tell anybody. Unless someone here told someone, he didn't know."
     
     
"Duggy. People know. People in the Town."
     
     
"Tell me how they know."
     
     
"They just know."
     
     
"What do they know? What? Yeah, maybe they think they know something. But thinking you know something, and actually knowing something-- that's two different things. The cops and the G, maybe they think they know something. But not knowing it is exactly what keeps us on the street, keeps us in the game."
     
     
"Fergie knows a lot of secrets, Duggy."
     
     
"And now he's got one more on us. I don't see the point of putting it out there."
     
     
"We don't duke him, there could be trouble down the road."
     
     
"How?" Doug felt himself getting carried away and not caring. "Trouble how? What trouble, explain that to me. This 'Code of Silence' trial now, everybody in town is an opera star. Clutching their hankies and belting it out for the cops and the papers. The fat lady, she's singing. Just tell me you didn't visit him in his shop."
     
     
"I saw him out on the pier. He's my mother's cousin, Duggy."
     
     
"We're not Italian, Jem. Third or fourth cousin means maybe a nice Christmas card, not 'Here's my kidney, you should need one.' The G is all over his shop, that is guaran-fucking-teed."
     
     
"It's so. But you think he don't know that?"
     
     
Dez piped up, "That thirty-five grand or so you gave him-- he gonna wash that clean before sending it out to the IRA?"
     
     
Jem scoffed and said, "All that's rumor. That's just for street cred."
     
     
Doug said, "Dez thinks he knows that Fergie fronts for the IRA. He doesn't know it-- not like he knows that Fergie puts dust out on the street, not to mention has a taste for it himself. This is a sixty-year-old man on angel dust you're meeting out there on the pier, Jem kid. Chatting with, handing bank money to."
     
     
"Look, Fergie's always putting things into motion. You're working on our next, sure, but he said, and in not so many words, that he's got some big things that would suit us nice. That we could buy from him."
     
     
Doug thought he was going to levitate out of his seat. "Why the fuck would we want to work for someone else? One good reason."
     
     
"These are marquee scores."
     
     
"Marquee scores!" Doug waved at the vanished salt. "You got kids in braces or something, that's not enough? We got more than we can conveniently wash as it is. Marquee scores mean marquee busts, Jem boy. Fergie's got room on his roster exactly because Boozo's crew got lazy up in New Hampshire and Boozo's tweak-freak son, Jackie the Jackal, shot up that armored guard. And the heat from that is still out all over the Town. Jackie's what, he's our age? Younger? And he's gonna die in prison. He'd fucking die there anyway, for being stupid and running his mouth, but eighty years is not something he's gonna survive. And that's without a murder charge ever being brought-- that's the racketeering thing, interstate, plus the firearms mandatories. This isn't kid stuff anymore. We all of us, except the Monsignor, got strikes against us. We take a fall now, with twenty-year gun mandies, we're never gonna land. Got it? I gotta spell this out in salt for