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The alarm clock buzzed, and Michael reached over and struck out at the heap of metal that had aroused him from his slumber. And then he began to sleep again.
Seconds passed.
"Michael, get your bloody lazy rear end out of the bed NOW!" Michael felt a sharp pain on his head, once, then twice. He sat up with a start and rubbed his crown. He glared in the direction of the door, and looked down to see what had hit him. His boots. His boots had been thrown at him, and he opened his mouth to scream some sort of abuse at Eric, but then remembered why he had set his clock for such an early hour to begin with, and the gaping hole in his face shut. They were supposed to be off to work.
He attempted to stand, but the remnants of yesterday's alcohol binge at The Regency had now taken his toll, and he began to wonder if were the boots had been the cause of his heads pain. And so he proceeded to roll out instead. And once he hit the floor, he lay there for a few moments in a desperate bid to regain consciousness. He didn't have to worry, though, because Eric was in the process of taking care of that problem.
Michael's face froze. The shock of the icy water pouring over his head made him leap to his feet and punch out at his brother. With a graceful movement, Eric limboed out of the way and danced out of the bedroom, making no attempt to stifle his chuckles. Michael instantly ran out, heading straight into the bathroom to turn on the hot water. He could hear the loud guffaws coming from the direction of the kitchen but proceeded to ignore them. He smiled. He would get Eric back later...
Eric handed Michael some strawberry jam on toast. "I thought you were going to completely forget," he said. "I just knew you'd go back to sleep!"
Michael frowned. "You never even gave me a CHANCE!" he argued. "I would have been up if you hadn't have decided to soak me!" Eric laughed as he watched Michael spin on his heel and march out of the kitchen, open the front door and head out in the darkness towards the car. He then winced as his brother shouted out to him.
"Well, are you coming or not?"
"Not so loud!" he retorted as he darted out after him. "You'll wake the goddamn neighbours!"
"Well, we wouldn't have to worry about the neighbours if you'd picked a humane time to scout this joint out!" he replied as he opened the door and put the keys into the ignition. He revved the engine a couple of times, threatening to drive away without Eric. Eric's reaction was to open the passenger door, leap inside and sit down as comfortably as he could, given the fact that Michael at that moment was zooming away at a rather fast rate.
"Got the blueprints, Eric?"
"Yeah."
"What about a pen?"
"Uh-huh."
"Was that 'uh-huh' yes or 'uh-huh' no?"
"Yes."
"Okay then. Have you got your glasses?"
Eric looked at Michael and pointed to the end of his nose. "Yes."
"Good. Just checking. You're a bit of a fool at times. Memory like a sieve."
Eric rolled his eyes and stared ahead, watching the towns gradually fall away into the countryside. A stray strand of hair flopped over his eyes, and he took his comb out of his pin-stripe waistcoat and carefully combed it back into place, leaving the comb marks visible in his hair. As he replaced his comb, he ran a finger over his Clark Gable moustache and looked at Michael. He sighed. Michael shot him a look.
"What?" he snarled.
"I'm just thinking that its good one of us doesn't dress like his only clothes come from the ragman," he replied. Michael growled.
"And what's that supposed to mean? We're only going to have a look at a building. Do I honestly need to get dressed up for that?"
It wouldn't look as suspicious!" Eric argued.
"Are you saying that I stick out like a sore thumb and I can't pull this off?" he grumbled.
"Not at all. I'm just saying that you'd even manage to look suspicious at a fancy dress party."
The car came to an abrupt stop. Michael looked at his younger brother as he took his keys out and dropped them into the pocket of his worn-out trench coat. He opened the door climbed out, regarding their area. Their car was hidden at a blind-man's bend, surrounded by bushes and ditches. He leapt across a ditch and peered through the hedge. He smiled. He could see the red of a brick building in the near distance. Their target. He turned and looked at Eric, who was standing by the side of the car, breathing on his pocket-watch and rubbing it with his handkerchief. "You ready for a walk now?" Michael asked. Eric looked up at him and nodded, watching as Michael bounced back across the ditch again.
"I'll just get the briefcase," he replied, leaning far enough into the car again to be able to reach across to the back seat and grab his case. Then he carefully climbed out again and started to walk towards the corner of the bend. He glanced back briefly at the car. "You really think that she'll be alright here?" he asked. Michael laughed loudly as he checked that each of the doors were locked, and then he jogged to Eric's side.
"Your baby will be fine, Eric. Now, let's go and survey!" They both walked in silence the mile to the building, and when they got there in the red light of the dawn, Eric opened the case and took out a large piece of rolled-up rectangular paper. And then he set to work, marking on the paper the all the points of each and every piece of barbed wire, and any detail that stood out that was not on each blueprint.
After an hour of circling the building like a vulture, he was done. He looked at Michael, and Michael nodded. "Right, then. I guess that this's it," he said with a smile. "Once we do this, we'll have won fair and square. And then we can get out of this god-forsaken town once and for all!"
"Are we still going to go ahead with that heist later on, though?" Eric asked, rolling up the blueprints and carefully replacing them.
"It's on the diary now. We can't not do it," Michael responded. "They're expecting us to do it, and to do a good job of it!"
"I've got a bad feeling about tomorrow, though, Mike. Maybe we shouldn't do it?"
Michael's smile turned to a frown. "Not do it? I've already said that it's on the diary! Do you want to get this all over with? Or do you want to be doing it for the rest of your life and have a reputation for not producing the goods!"
Eric noticed that the question was, in fact, not a question. And he also knew that the only answer he could give was yes. And so they headed back to Eric's baby, being passed by two cars as they walked.
"Told you you should've dressed better than that."
"Shut up."
"I did, though. Did you see the looks they were giving you?"
"Shut up!"
"You stand out! They'll ask who did the robbery, and they'll all say that man with the rotten corduroys!"
"I said, shut UP!" |
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This is the beginning of my latest masterpiece. It is my interpretation of a dream I recently had (starring the ever-lushious Sean Connery). It also somewhere along the line featured a submarine, but I have yet to even THINK about working that in somewhere. (Let me say that it will not be happening. At least, not in THIS book!)
My dream also involved some sort of James Bond-style escape from a ship out at sea. An orca featured, not actually eating 007, but it was there. Maybe I can work the escape in, too. I'll tell you right now that it was a rather ingenious escape, involving a bomb and a plucked chicken.
In short, Michael and Eric are framed for murder and sent to jail, and on their release, they continue planning the same job that they had felt would get them away from the life of crime. (It was all just a contest to begin with between themselves and a rival family.)
When they get out, they have to be even more skilled, agile and well-organised than before because modern technology has, to say the least, sky-rocketed, and they have problems, naturally, bearing in mind that they are no longer very young men, but - well - old gits.
After they work out how to do it, they also have to work out one slightly more important deal. How to get their revenge on those who framed them.
You know that story I was going to recruit you on, Rachael? Well, this could very well be it! ;-) |
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