Raucous Read Online Free PDF Page B

would inhale and blow rings in the air.  “The answer is, I’m here for the money I’m owed.”
    “I don’t owe you any.”
    Raucous leaned forward, “Seventeen years of my life inside and I never spoke.”
    “You had nothing to tell”
    “I had plenty. I learnt more.  But I stayed quiet.”
    Turk leaned back and unclasped his hands.  His eyes never left Raucous.  “And how much do you believe that is worth?”
    “My cut, the original figure.  No interest, just what I should have banked back then.”
    “It wasn’t my operation.”
    “Nothing could have happened without your compliance.”
    Turk blew air from his mouth as if it were a cold winter morning.  “You seem to have educated yourself during the years.  I never remember you using so many words.”
    “A lot of time in solitary with books.”
    “Any particular favorites?”
    “Treasure Island.”
    The Turk squinted, unsure.  He knew there was meaning, but he couldn’t find it.
    “Associate with any character in particular?” he asked.
    Raucous nodded.
    “Ben Gunn,” he said.
    Turk smiled showing yellow nicotine teeth worn down by grinding. “You believe you were abandoned?”
    “No, I just like cheese.  For the trip you are about to send me on to meet Jim, I’ll stock up on Parmesan.”
    Turk waited.  Raucous knew he didn’t get the reference, but was pretending to ponder like an intellectual in on the joke.
    “I can offer you work,” Turk said. “But as you see, if what you believe were true, with all the money from that little heist, I wouldn’t be here now.  I’d be retired, long since.”
    “No, you love this life.  The attention, the young women.  No amount of money would get you out.”
    Turk raised his eyebrows, surprised that someone knew the truth
    “Had I been involved, I would no doubt be like the rest, very dead.  It didn’t end well.  Were you not inside you’d be dead too.  Each of those men would have taken a million and been happy before.  A million, that’s a lot of money.  That’s retirement.  No more criminal bullshit, or the game of school-kid bullies acted out as adults.  But when that type of money falls a certain person’s way it is never enough.  They want it all.  And they each tried and they each died.  I was intelligent enough to stay out. You were lucky enough to be inside without a share to be killed for.”
    They let the idea float in silence.  Turk was passive, waiting.
    “The money is somewhere,” Raucous said.
    “Obviously, most was never recovered.  But deposit boxes, property taken back by the state, hell, i knew some of them well, had grown up with a couple, and they would have gone treasure Island and buried the stuff and drawn an incomprehensible map and told no one.  That money will be found many years into the future, and no one will know what the hell it was for.”
    Raucous pursed his lips and thought.  He looked up, tired.  “That almost sounds like you believe it,” he said.
    “You are asking for a share of something I had no involvement in.  And certainly no come back from.  But I can do with a man.  Timothy and Simon, as efficient as they can be, don’t understand us.  They are failed public school psychos who want the gritty life.  They aren’t you.”
    “You haven’t asked me why Jim has run.”
    “I don’t know that he has.  You are the only one saying so.  I have no idea what there is between you, other than an angry father.  Bring him back and I would be very willing to speak to him.”
    “Do you have a car?”
    Turk opened his top drawer and removed a gun.  A small snub-nosed .38 revolver.  Six-shot rotary chamber.  A gun Dirty Harry may carry in his sock.
    “Traceable?”  Raucous asked, knowing it was for him.
    “Yes, if you leave finger prints all over it.  Otherwise, no.”
    Turk produced a key.  “Ford Transit.  Parked outside.  White, obviously.”  Turk smiled at himself.  “White van man, hell, it’s what you