Free Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan

of lemon, a bowl of peanuts and a variety of drinks ranging over half a dozen shelves. Frankie wasn’t very clear about the kind of life he was working towards, but it included a games room like this. The kind of place where you could pull a pint when you had your mates over for a frame or two.
    Frankie had last played snooker here with Jo-Jo eighteen months back, two days after he got out of prison. Jo-Jo was the kind of snooker player who chalked his cue before every shot. He’d assessed the lay of the blue, first from one side of the table, then the other. ‘There’s always room on my crew, you know that,’ he told Frankie. Jo-Jo bent low to judge the probable track of the white, then went to the top of the table to see if there was a follow-on pot. After staring at the balls for a while, he decided on a safety shot and sent the white gently up the table, where it softly kissed the blue and spun off to stop within a hair of the top cushion.
    Frankie had explained about the plans he’d made with Waters and Cox, two hard men from Rialto that he’d hooked up with in the Joy. Partners, they said, three partners with a big future. This was before experience proved what fucking eejits they both were. Jo-Jo understood the need to move on, to start over.
    ‘Come see me any time, Frankie. You know you’re always welcome in this house.’
    With nothing much on, Frankie went for the remaining red down the other end of the table. He hit the white hard, the red jangled and the white had enough speed left to touch three cushions before glancing off the red again and leaving it hanging over a centre pocket. Jo-Jo cleared the table.
    Later, standing in the hall when Frankie was leaving, Jo-Jo produced an envelope and tucked it into the inside pocket of Frankie’s jacket.
    ‘A little welcome-home present.’ He winked. ‘Get you up and running.’
    On his way home, Frankie checked the envelope and found three grand. That night, they left Sinead with Joan’s mother and Frankie took Joan for a slap-up at La Stampa and they spent the night at the Shelbourne.
    As the Waters and Cox thing went pear-shaped, Frankie talked on the phone with Jo-Jo a couple of times, met him in this house with a roomful of others for Christmas drinks. It was understood that Frankie was still trying to find his feet as an independent, but within the glow of Jo-Jo’s goodwill.
    There were lots of others who saw Jo-Jo as a mentor, but only Frankie Crowe had stood with Jo-Jo Mackendrick in the front room of this house, just over ten years earlier, when death came crashing through the window. Not yet out of his teens, Frankie was rooted to the floor, white-faced. Jo-Jo scrambled to a desk drawer and came back in a hurry with two handguns, one of which he held out to Frankie.
    A hard man from Blanchardstown, figuring there was a short cut to writing off the debt he owed Jo-Jo, had sent two assholes over Jo-Jo’s garden wall with shotguns. After the front window was blown in, Jo-Jo and Frankie stood shoulder to shoulder, blazing away, while the dark figures in the garden crouched in the bushes and fired one more volley before their nerve broke and they legged it. The trouble ended a few days later, when Jo-Jo sent a crew to Blanchardstown and the hard man had his debt cancelled in the most permanent way possible.
    The events of that evening made Frankie more than just another crew member, which was why he now felt confident that Jo-Jo would look tolerantly on any new direction he wished to take. Jo-Jo was old stock, came up the hard way, one of the pioneers. Maybe a bit laid-back these days, maybe a bit out of touch with the younger scene, but Frankie knew he was a fair man.
    ‘Frankie! Frankie Crowe!’ The fragile, high-pitched voice came from behind him. Crowe turned and saw Jo-Jo’s mother coming through the kitchen doorway. Pearl Mackendrick, once a legend of inner-city Dublin, the hard-nosed widow-woman, a pitiless moneylender. Now she was celebrated