Free The Namesake by Conor Fitzgerald Page A

making no move to retrieve it.
    ‘You want me to bend down and open it, show you the money?’
    ‘No, no,’ began Teo, but Tony bent down, unzipped the bag completely, and opened it so Teo could see inside. He could feel the Romanian’s eyes being drawn towards the grip of the pistol protruding from the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms.
    ‘You came armed,’ said Teo.
    ‘I live in a dangerous world.’ Tony picked up a broken piece of rubble from the ground and tossed it in his right hand, then from hand to hand as he straightened up. ‘This,’ he showed the lump of concrete to Teo, ‘is all that remains of Italian industry.’
    Teo glanced quickly at the rock in Tony’s fist, but his gaze was drawn inexorably to the cash-filled bag. He lifted it up, and casually ran his hand inside it.
    Tony slipped the piece of concrete into the kangaroo pocket on the front of his tracksuit top, adjusted his crotch, pulled out the lump of rubble again, and rubbed it with his thumb. ‘You’re not going to count the money?’
    ‘No. You need us again, you know where to come. Always glad to help.’
    He turned around.
    ‘Hey, Teo!’
    The Romanian spun around, his dark eyes widening in alarm.
    ‘Zip up the bag or you’ll lose the money. Two days’ work and nothing to show for it. What would your wife say to that? She’d be suspicious, wouldn’t she?’
    Teo smiled, then nodded, and zipped up the bag. Tony watched him, giving him a friendly wave as he opened the door of the van and got in beside the driver. He allowed them to say a few words, waited till he saw the driver begin to turn the steering wheel, then called out again:
    ‘Hey, Teo!’
    The driver stopped his action. Tony dropped his hand into the kangaroo pocket of his tracksuit, pulled out a black object the size of a computer mouse, and tossed it casually from hand to hand as he approached the van. He got to the window, which was a little higher than he had anticipated.
    ‘There is one thing you could do for me next week, but . . .’
    Teo rolled down the window.
    ‘I didn’t hear that. You said something about next week?’
    ‘Yeah, I was saying there is something you could do. It’s a little harder than this job.’
    ‘What?’ asked Teo.
    Tony stretched his arm out and dropped the black object at Teo’s feet.
    ‘What’s that?’ asked Teo.
    ‘A Mecar something or other. I forget the make.’ He fell to the ground and rolled to the rear wheel of the van, hoping the young Slovakian dealer who had explained this trick to him was right about the ‘relatively contained’ explosive force.
    Teo and the driver managed to get a lot of words out between them before an enormous thud caused the entire vehicle to jump from the ground. The sound banged against the wall of the factory and bounced back. The Slovak had told him the fragmentation grenade would not make much noise, but he’d been wrong.
    Megale stood up, a little unsteady. His ears felt as if they were full of water, and he realized he couldn’t hear the traffic on the highway any more. He surveyed the front of the vehicle. The blast had lifted the windscreen out, frame and all, peeled back part of the roof, and knocked out Teo’s door, which was hanging on the buckled remains of a hinge. Teo lay on his seat, his head back. Something blunt and harmless looking, like a piece of soft plastic, was sticking out of the front of his throat. The driver had found time to turn around, because his head was draped over the back of the seat. The blast had blown the shirt right off his back and embedded thousands of red and black fragments across his body, almost as if the cuts had already turned to scabs. The cab was filled with countless droplets of blood, something sticky and black, and a frothy white substance. Many of the banknotes looked unharmed, but he would not be touching them.
    The thing was, the Romanians were alive. Both of them. The Slovak had told him they would never survive. He said it would