Little Criminals Read Online Free

walkie-talkies to share info and dirty jokes with neighbouring bouncers, using their mobile phones to text friends, or just shuffling their feet and chewing gum. Brendan Sweetman loved the job. Some of the thieves waited until near closing time, knowing the bouncers were likely to be tired, bored and inattentive. Brendan Sweetman was as lively at five minutes to six as he was when his workday started.
    Hair cut so tight it was little more than a shadow, he was short and wide and made up in bulk what he lacked in height. He tended towards plain black T-shirts along with plain black trousers that he had made by a tailor in Ringsend. Although he was eligible for staff discounts, the shops he protected didn’t sell much in Sweetman’s size. Jeans big enough to go around his waist were several inches too long for his legs, and had to be taken up at the ends. Shirts that accommodated his neck had sleeves too long for his arms. Much of his bulk was muscle, and few who came across him dared make any of the obvious fat jokes in his hearing. No one had ever done it twice.
    The idiot two doors down was jabbering into his radio again. ‘The tart in the yellow top, look at the tits on that!’
    Brendan Sweetman didn’t reply. That kind of unprofessional carry-on, passers-by could hear shit like that, it gave the business a bad name. He’d just spotted Frankie Crowe standing with his back to a nearby shop window. Frankie mimed drinking a pint and Brendan nodded. Frankie poked a finger in the direction of Coley Street, then gave the thumbs-up. Sweetman went in search of the manager, to arrange a break.
    There were two pints of Guinness on the counter in front of Frankie when Brendan arrived ten minutes later. Crowe held out his hand.
    ‘Looking good, mate.’
    ‘Jesus, Frankie, it’s good to see you. It’s been, what—’
    It had been three and a half years. Sweetman had been the back-up muscle on a successful job across in Terenure, a jewellery thing organised by Jo-Jo Mackendrick and carried out by Frankie. That was just before a garda raid on the Drumcondra house where Frankie then lived turned up a stash of stolen cigarettes and Frankie went away for two years.
    ‘Been a long time, Sweets,’ Crowe said. Brendan sat on the next stool. The pub, which used to be called Maguire’s or Malloy’s, something like that, had recently been extended and renamed Vesuvius. A lot of work had gone into the volcano motif, with predictable consequences for the price of drink. Everything seemed to have a hard, shiny surface, including the barmen. The male customers tended towards long hair and long black overcoats. The women customers more often than not were insistently blonde and had fashionably surly mouths.
    Frankie Crowe said, ‘You retired? Someone told me you were full-time at the security game?’
    Brendan Sweetman grinned. ‘You know how it is.’ He picked up his pint. ‘Cheers.’
    Frankie Crowe held his pint and watched Sweetman take a long swallow. Frankie moved his beer mat a fraction of an inch, so it was exactly parallel to the edge of the counter. He put his pint down in the exact centre of the beer mat.
    He said, ‘You’re not open to suggestions, then?’
    ‘Nothing wrong with talking.’
    When she became pregnant, Brendan’s wife told him she wouldn’t ever visit Mountjoy, and if he ended up there so would the marriage. Which was fair enough. After fifteen years of stroking, with only two short spells in the Joy, Sweetman owned his own house and the security job was pulling in a steady wage, so he made her a promise.
    When Frankie told him about the kidnap, Sweetman took another long swallow of Guinness. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
    He asked about the when and the where and how long it would take and who else was on the crew and Crowe explained. Then they talked money.
    The thing about the straight life, as far as Brendan Sweetman was concerned, was it took away the anxiety. You knew more or less where things were