Cracking Up by Harry Crooks Page B

in time, leaving the taxi driver outside departures, counting all the euro shrapnel I’d heaped on him along with coke dust that I’d found stuck to the lining of my pocket.
    There was no question in my mind, once the budget flight was finally airborne out of Malaga, that I could pull this stunt off. I just had to keep a cool head, ease up and be confident but not cocky.
    I got off the flight like a greyhound out the starter trap, heading straight for Customs while most of the other passengers were retrieving their suitcases from the baggage carousel. One of the nice men at the Customs clocked me and gave me a tug. The bastard was rifling through the stale, sweaty contents of my bag as if he had a proper stiffie and it was a dead cert that he would come up trumps with the contraband he was looking for.
    Airport paranoia was setting in double bad. I thought I was going to get led off to a seperate room, subjected to a full body search with a snub-nosed rectal torch and eventually x-rayed. This is it, I thought, the fucking shit is going to hit the fan. It’s about to come on top for you here, Ow-wee lad.
    But I went through Customs without any more hitches, walked into the terminal thank fuck, sweating like a bastard rapist. There was a reception party waiting for me: Dog Sick. He had a big grin on his kipper and was happy to see me. I’d made it back with the contents of my guts intact, ensuring a top profit for him. Well, you can’t go on holiday and not bring back prezzies, can you?

12.
    Dog Sick was in top spirits about the way things were developing. I followed him outside to the car park. He stopped dead besides a brand spanking new, gleaming black beamer, a fine specimen of wheels. He was only about twenty two at the time, decked out in top quality designer gear and driving a swanky motor that most lads that age usually only get to wank about in their wet dreams. Flash bastard! “Top motor, man.”
    “730, Ow-wee. It’s a workhorse. Got it off someone that owed me dough.”
    We got in and screeched off out of the car park, tunes blaring, Wiley’s Can You Hear Me?, on a mission to find a toilet discreet enough to excrete the contraband out of my bloated bowel. Dog Sick began explaining how he was entering into a joint venture with Rez in Spain. They were going to well and truly smash it, off-loading huge amounts of devil dust on the market. They had managed to make contacts and secure a plentiful supply of chisel from a bulk shifter in the Paella place. There were massive returns to be made in this game and they intended to take the corner of this market by storm. We were going to have to fight out possession of the markets with the other local drug crews but, at the end of the day, we would all be delivered from poverty and deprivation.
    Sounded sweet and because he had taken me into his confidence, for a milli-second, I felt pathetically privileged to be part of this glittering, bright future that would provide us all with mega riches. Could it happen the way he said it would? After the buttering-up, I seriously fucking doubted it. It sounded too good to be true, the phoney sweet talk of an investments salesman. Maybe it was my suspicious nature that made me wonder if Dog Sick would be the only real winner out of this deal and the Ju$tu$ Crew would end up as casualties of this money-spinning set up.
    The shit hit the fan, or bucket to be precise. Anal cavity emptied, I slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and rummaged through the bucket, retrieving the smuggled booty. Pretty fucking crap behaviour, disgusting, but a necessary course of action. I went over to the sink, held the pellets under the hot tap and the shit ran off them like water off a duck’s back. I looked in the mirror above the sink, sickened; I’d sank to an all-time low. I had hit rock bottom with this crappy little stunt.
    Fully purged, I asked for a lift to my mam’s house and Dog Sick obligingly dropped me off. I wasn’t looking forward