Livewire

Chapter 15

Trudie danced round her living room wearing her short satin dressing gown. Kyle could just make out the delicate curves of her body in his peripheral vision. What exactly she was doing he did not know. His eyes had not left the pages of the shipping manifest since breakfast. She bent over in front of him and his eyes flicked up from the page.

He cocked his eyebrow. "What are you doing?"

She blushed and stood upright. "Oh, nothing."

He chuckled. "Ok then."

She plonked herself down next to him and sighed hard. "Sorry. I was just messing around. I shouldn't distract you. How's it going anyway?"

He sighed too. "It's slow. There is a lot of information on here. I didn't realise how much freight actually comes through in just a month. Trouble is, a lot of it is low value consumer goods. The take won't be enough."

She put her arm around his shoulders. "There'll be something," she placed a soft kiss on his cheek, "Keep looking," then got up again.

As if he was going to stop. His life might actually depend on it. The task would be easier if it wasn't so mind-numbingly boring scanning through pages and pages of text, looking for something that might be worth stealing. A hundred thousand pounds was not an insignificant amount. So it wasn't a simple matter of just stealing anything.

He turned to the next page. More rows of text. It was quite impressive how much detail it went into.

Something caught his eye. "Ha."

"What? You found something?"

"Maybe."

She darted up behind the sofa and wrapped her arms round him, leaning her smooth face against his. "Show me."

He pointed to the line on the page. "Glenroch."

"Glen what?"

"Glenroch. It's whiskey."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course it is."

"Not just any whiskey. It's what Uncle Joe always described as the good stuff." His eyes scanned further along the line.

He almost choked. "Black label, fuck me."

"What does that mean?"

"The thing about whiskey is, the good stuff is old enough to buy itself a drink. The best stuff is old enough that it has a kid old enough to buy itself a drink."

"This is that whiskey?"

"Glenroch is a small distillery up in the Scottish highlands. Black label their is fifty year aged whiskey."

She laughed. "Wow, even older than Daddy."

"Every year when they lay down new barrels to age, over the years those barrels are bottled. However long it sat for at the point it's bottled is the age. So let's say you start with a hundred barrels. Ten years later you bottle half the barrels, Another ten you bottle half again. And so on. Not many barrels make it to fifty years. This isn't just the best whiskey."

"I see." she nodded slowly. "So where did you learn all that?"

"Uncle Joe is really into his whiskey. And Glenroch was his favourite."

"So how much would you need to sell to make the money?"

He scratched his chin. "High street value is over a grand. Bootleg won't get the same price though. Probably a few hundred bottles to be safe."

"How many bottles are they shipping?"

His mouth gaped. "Fuck."

"What?"

"There's three containers of the stuff. Five hundred bottles in each." Both their mouths dropped open and they stared into each other's wide eyes.

The moment was interrupted when his phone erupted its brash ringtone. It was Emilio.

"Emilio, you're up early."

"Hey to you too." He sounded as tired as Kyle expected. "Beer?"

"Thinking about the important things already I see. Where?"

"I wanna know how the heist planning is going. Boat shed in twenty?"

"Sure." He put the phone down and turned to Trudie. "Beer's with Emilio?"

She looked at him with hard eyes, "It's only ten."

He shrugged. "You aren't working tonight." She didn't protest any further. He grabbed his notes and they left her flat, jumping on his Harley which was parked in the alley. He weaved through the light traffic in the centro district, taking the back roads to reach the boat shed. Emilio was still sitting in his truck when they arrived. He climbed out and pulled the coolbox out with him.

"Hola muchachos."

Trudie smiled and waved. "Hey Emilio."

Emilio led them all inside, unlocking the shed and pulling the doors wide open. He set the coolbox down and took out a beer for them each. Air rushed out when the cap was wrenched off and Kyle took a swig from the ice cold bottle.

"So," said Emilio, "You found something to steal?"

"I think so." He spread his notes out onto the workbench. "A shipment of whiskey. Uncle Joe's favourite whiskey. There's something poetic about stealing it to pay him off actually. There's three containers of the stuff coming through every month." He pointed to the line on the manifest. "One container bound for Mérida by sea, one to Mexico City by rail and one to Puebla by road."

"And how do you plan on getting it exactly?"

"If we can hack the system–"

"Which you won't."

He scowled at Emilio. "If we can hack the system, the safest way is to collect the Puebla container and drive it out on the back of a truck. The Mérida container remains in port for three days before onward shipping. The second option is to get some people on the ground to empty the contents out. If we can get a small boat in at night, we could load the cargo and be in and out unnoticed. The final option is to somehow rob the last container off the back of the train."

Emilio laughed. "You have an easy job then. How many containers do you need to pay off your uncle?"

"One should do it." He shrugged. "Probably best to make a plan for all of them just to be sure. You got a good map of the city?"

"I should have one in the truck. I'll go fetch it."

Emilio left the shed and Trudie drew close to him. "What are you thinking?"

"Maybe we could use Emilio's boat to get into the port. He's very precious over it though. His dad bought it before he died so it's very sentimental to him. That's the real reason he never takes it out onto the lake. Not because–"

Emilio returned with the map. Kyle spread it out on the workbench and used some stray tools to hold down the edges. His eyes traced all over the map, getting the lay of the land, checking all the roads and railways coming into the port.

He pointed to the port. "It's tucked right into this nook, we won't get a boat close enough to look, but..." His finger tapped the page. "You fancy some sight seeing Trudie?"

"Do we have time? Don't you need to plan–"

"The fort is right across the water from the port. We'd get a great view."

"Oh right." She laughed, "I thought you were being serious. Are you coming too, Emilio?"

"Gracias. But no. I don't wanna be a third wheel. I'll paint the boat here instead."

Kyle laughed. "Sure you will. Suit yourself, hermano."

Emilio swatted the air. "Go on, get outta here."

Kyle and Trudie left him in the gloomy shed with his beer and paint pots. He fired up the Harley sped off towards the old fort.