An Early Start

An Early Start

Being the only boy in the family it was expected that I'd go into the
family business. I can remember my first job. A week before my
thirteenth birthday. My dad's firm needed another body. I was the
eldest I had been brought up on the stories of my grandma and grandpa.
Usually I stayed with them when my Dad was sent down to do some time.
He never did a long time when I was little, a few months at the most.
But when ever that happened my Mum had to go to work, so she'd farm out
a couple of the children to her parents and a couple to my Dad's
parents - grandma and grandpa. I always went with the littlest, my
sister Kim to them, whilst my other two sisters, the middle two, went
to my Mum's parents.

They use to talk about the good old days, when they used to always say
that everyone had respect for each other, before drugs came into the
business. My grandma spent her early years as a working woman. She
loved to talk about her years when there was honour amongst thieves.
She never told me she was a whore, but my mother always warned me not
to believe everything she said, loose woman she said. Grandpa was a
straight man, a cabbie by trade, he had been use to giving rides to
work for his wife during her working years. Fell for her and made an
honest woman of her and she repaid him by helping him get a job for a
renowned family, as a getaway driver. He made a good enough living to
move to the suburbs, my mother always said they moved there to avoid
all of grandma's ex-punters.

Grandma would tell of the various scams that she got up to and all the
old stories of the faces and names of her era. She grew up during the
war. She knew everyone, intimately my mother said. This coupled with a
fascination of James Cagney movies fired my imagination and my desire
to enter the trade. Nearly every week I would pester my Mum or Grandma
for a bob to go and see Cagney's latest movie, afterwards I would
recount it to my mates and then we'd play cops and robbers. I was
always the successful robber that would outwit the stupid coppers. I
didn't pay much attention to school and it was no surprise that I left,
when I did at thirteen. My old teacher, who saw time in the North
Africa campaign, said I should aim higher, had a decent brain in my
head, but he knew where my thoughts were during his English and Maths
lessons.

That first job taught me a lot, a damn lot, woke me to the reality
that crime is not the fantasy that I dreamed it was or my Grandma had
told me. I remember on my thirteenth birthday I refused to talk to
anyone, so at the end of the day my Dad came in and battered the shit
out of me, I was so glad he did, but I knew that I could never look him
in the eyes again. My first job was simple, they were doing over a
warehouse down the docks that had two roads leading up to it. My Dad
was to watch the one that led past the sewer works and the city rubbish
dump to the docks and I was to watch the other road that went into the
city centre. We must have got there at two thirty a.m. I had bunked
school and slept most of the afternoon. Grandma had visited the night
before specially to give my Dad a sleeping tablet, she knew I would be
too excited to sleep but the pill did the job. It did the job so well
that when I was woken at twelve by my Dad I was still drowsy when they
dropped me off from the stolen Bedford van.

I had been given my instructions from my Dad and Grandma. They were
repeated by the boss of the job on the half light of the cobbled street
corner. Ten bob was given to me to give a prostitute, if a police car
came by, to create a scene whilst I legged it to the warehouse to warn
them. Then we'd all make out getaway down by the sewer works on the
road my Dad was guarding.

I huddled on that street corner for what seemed like years. Watching
the prostitutes going about their business, punters coming out of
brothels smiling, rubbing my hair. Me frozen in the mid April night, my
breath making clouds of smoke, that I played with to keep me from
boredom. I stuck to my task. I watched the road, not the prostitutes
although most of them were well worth watching. I made a mental note to
tell my gang about these things happening here at night and to return
with them on a mission, for what I never was quite sure. But it was to
be a long time before I returned and I was told in no uncertain terms
by the boss later not to tell anyone, especially any of my mates.

The first time I knew something had gone wrong, was when the boss came
haring round the corner from the direction of the warehouse. He must
have been attempting to beat the four minute mile. At first I couldn't
understand why he was running so fast to meet me. The plan had been one
of the others would get me once they had made their getaway and we'd
walk back to my home together. There I would meet my Dad and get
congratulated for a job well done, well that's what I had dreamed of
standing on that cold cobbled corner. But I knew in the next instant
that this was not to happen, I saw the copper chasing the boss, I was
giving one of the prostitutes the ten bob and telling them to help us
get away. The boss steamed past me not acknowledging me, he later
thanked me but said he was trying not to get me involved. I chased him
and the prostitute pushed a punter in front of the chasing
copper.

We kept running for ten minutes and once we were close to our turf we
slowed down. When we stopped the boss puked, another thing he told me
never to tell anyone. At the bottom of my street we met my Dad. The
boss had his arms around my shoulder's and told me I was quick thinking
and had a bright future in the business. On meeting my Dad he sneered
at him and whispered into my ear that he'd pay me twenty bob for my
nights work. He then laid into my Dad. It was five a.m. the first light
of the morning was rising above the terraced houses. The boss yelled,
"You stupid bastard!", at my Dad and smashed his fist into my Dad's
face. My Dad fell to the ground and the boss then kicked him in the
ribs for good measure. He coughed up blood for days and sported a black
eye for two week afterwards. I tried to carry my Dad home when the boss
had left, but he was having none of it. He walked past neighbours
oozing and coughing blood. Luckily his nose wasn't broken again. When
we got home I was sent to bed. Later I told my Mum what happened.

It had been my Dad's fault two of the team had been caught and sent
down for six months. A couple of coppers on foot patrol had been
walking round checking the gypsies by the city dump and had happened
upon my Dad's firm robbing the warehouse. My Dad should have seen them,
but he had nodded off for five minutes so he was later to say and the
coppers had passed him unnoticed in the doorway from where he had been
watching the road. They were between him and the warehouse before he
knew it. The boss said he should have distracted the coppers, assaulted
one or something. But my Dad was still on a bond, so he would have
faced a couple years. The coppers had locked two of the boss's men in
the van as they where loading and one had given chase to the boss who
bumped into them, dropping a television on one of the coppers feet. My
Dad was never to work again for that firm, well he never really did any
serious or petty crime after that, he saw out his bond. Grandpa put him
in touch with a cab firm and he was a cab driver until he died of a
heart attack fifteen years later. Me I had just started.