I do you a Good Price

Monday rolls around again. So, let's see if we can keep this as a Monday to Friday thing between us, a relationship of sorts.

On Friday I hinted about what would come next, so, better deliver, eh? Right, a few months before I finished teaching we had a kid in my class who's dad was testifying against the Russian mafia, so I'd be happily yammering away about declaratives and imperatives and other fun stuff with a SAPO bodyguard in the back of the class looking after little Johnny... (obviously his name wasn't Johnny) I was used to having teachers assistants in the classroom, obviously, but this was the first one with a gun.

So anyway, life was pretty much 'the usual' but we're approaching the trial date and everyone's a bit antsy. Come Friday night me and a couple of the teaches decide to blow off some steam in one of the Irish bars in the town, and grab a cab. We get to the bar, the guys bail out and as I'm handing my visa card over to pay the driver turns and says: "Where I come from we take care of our own." And I realised exactly who he was talking about. For about 30 seconds I felt sure he was going to make some sort of threat, but then he turns around and gives me a business card and says "I heard what you were saying about that woman, look, you want her taken care of, we'll do you a good price for looking after our boy. 4,000 Euros, no questions, nothing comes back to you. Good men. You can trust them. Think about it. Hell, I've got friends who'd fly over from Latvia and do the job, you'd only have to cover the flights, they get to come on holiday, have some fun, drink some beer and go home."

I didn't really know what to say to that, I mean, do you really want to hire a hitman for less than the price of a second hand car? I had visions of the mark saying "Whatever he's paying you, I'll pay you double, triple," and it not even scratching into their savings...

Sometimes I think stuff like this is just more fun in a book where a. no one gets hurt and b. you get to make the character look really cool by putting all the best lines into his mouth... because the reality is more like "Er. Erm. Well. Ahh. You know. Ah. Er. Ah. No thanks. I mean it's very kind of you to offer but... er. You know."