The Crime Trade

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‘Where’s the money?’

‘Where’s the gear?’

‘Gear?’

Stegs kept his expression neutral. ‘The dope. The drugs. The stuff we’re buying.’

The Colombian allowed himself a tiny smirk. It reminded Stegs of the expression Barry Growler, a notorious bully at his old school, used to pull before inflicting one of his famous punishments. ‘It’s close to here,’ he said.

‘So’s the money.’

‘OK. That’s good.’

‘I’m going to need to see the gear first, before I hand over any cash. I’ll have to test it, see that the quality’s right.’

‘You don’t trust me?’ asked the Colombian, his hands raised in a gesture of jovial innocence. The smirk grew wider.

Stegs didn’t like the look of it at all, but that was the thing in their game. You couldn’t trust anyone, and not only that, you could never tell how they were going to behave either. This was his first time dealing with Colombians and he couldn’t help thinking about the scene in that old Al Pacino film, Scarface, when Al and his mate, Angel, go to a Miami hotel to buy some coke from a group of Colombians, only for the sellers suddenly to pull guns on them and use a chainsaw on Angel’s head in a (surprisingly futile) bid to get Scarface to reveal the whereabouts of the money. Stegs was not enjoying this meeting one little bit.

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