Free Die Tryin' by Stavro Yianni Page A

armchair. ‘Listen, Dad. What we talked about last week…’
    Dad put his coffee down into the small saucer in his free hand and turned to face his son. ‘About the factory you mean?’
    ‘Yeah. Exactly how serious is it?’
    ‘Very serious,’ Dad replied, placing his coffee down on the table next to his newspaper. ‘I told you
re
, the market is dying, and it’s costing too much to run. We hardly make profit now.’
    ‘Yeah, but will it get better again?’
    Dad gave him a grave stare and slowly shook his head. ‘These fucking Eastern Europeans are taking over,
re
. They work cheap, and sell even cheaper.
Bastards!’
    Nick puffed his cheeks, and then stared solemnly at Dad. ‘All right, Dad,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to think of a different thing to do.’
    ‘Yes, Niko. There’s no future in this, and I’m old now… I don’t want to see you struggle. I’ll help you as much as I can, you know that…’
    ‘Yeah. I do.’ He patted Dad on the knee and got to his feet.
    He knew he needed a quick sting, a sudden major inflow of cash, just to reassure his mind as well as maintain a lifestyle that he had gotten used to—cash on hip, jewellery, gadgets, nice car. And somehow, like divine intervention, this Marco bloke had come out of nowhere and given him a remedy to his headache, offered a way of making a quick buck to tide him over once the shit did hit the fan with the factory. He could invest that money into a new business, a more modern and profitable one, get into the property game, or even move abroad. Whatever the future held, he would have options, and that was the most important thing.
    He went straight upstairs to his room, and made the call to Marco. Let him know that they were all in: Tony, Nick Black, Taki, even Charlie. Nick was more than a little surprised when Charlie rang him earlier to tell him he was in. He was expecting to have to go round there and convince him, no,
bullshit
him into coming. The fact that he volunteered was unexpected, but it saved him a lot of time and energy. When Charlie had his mind set, it was a very difficult thing to change. The paranoia had him the same way the cancer had the olive oil man from Dad’s obituary, and once someone had
that
, it was virtually impossible to convince them they were wrong.
    He was intrigued to know what it was that made him go 180 so quickly, then realised it was best not to question it, be thankful for it, and just go along with it instead. Nick reasoned that the thing that had convinced Charlie that it was a bad idea the previous night was most probably what was now convincing him that it was a good idea. That was Charlie’s logic in a nutshell. Charlie added that he only wanted to keep lookout, which was fine by Nick, and that he didn’t want any of the jewels, which was also fine by Nick, and that was that.
    Tony sounded like he couldn’t wait to get on with it. He was going on about how great Marco was, and how this was the opportunity they had all been waiting for, and how he was going to ditch his job, and blah blah blah. It was weird. This was the same bloke who wanted to kick off with Marco the other night, now he was talking like he was his new best friend.
Another fucking loon!
    Nick Black was calmer in his tone, but Nick could tell he was just as excited as Tony. Going on about travelling the globe and paying back uni debts. Nick wondered why anyone would waste their time at uni. It was a debt trap, and life just ended up passing you by in the meantime. And when life passes you by, so do its opportunities. And you didn’t get many of
them
. On that score, he could understand Nick’s excitement. Maybe the prick was finally realising this, and had been praying for someone like Marco to come along and hand him a pot of gold.
    Maybe they all were…
    He dialled Marco’s number, and it rang for a long time. And for a while, Nick had a horrible thought that maybe Marco had been playing them all along, and it was all some joke,