Marty

A Possible Alliance

The next day, Alfonso had me collect money from a guy in Redford. It was a guy named Antoine Carter. Fons said Antoine had lost a bet last month and wanted me to collect the money Antoine owed to him. Another casual job I had done many times before. Alfonso told me that Antoine had been real calm with his money, so I shouldn't worry about shooting.

I drove back to my hotel suite and took a shower and put on my red button up shirt, my brown leather jacket, my hat, and my jeans and drove to a small diner just a block away. It was a really good diner called "Mikey's". I had a burger and a bottle of beer. Funny how they had a different brand of beer here in Devlin, yet it tastes the exact same back in Empire Bay. Instead of "Master Beer", this was called "Lumberjack John's".

So after dinner, I drove to Antoine's address in Redford. I looked out the window and saw the beautiful golden sun over the white clouds. July was almost over and August was about to begin. As soon as I parked the car right across the small house that was Antoine's address, I walked up the steps on his porch and over to his door. Something about after I approached the door just felt so...strange.

I waited for about 5 seconds before I started knocking and just as I was about to knock, I heard a loud bang. It was a gunshot. It had to be. I waited before walking inside and hid to the side of the door with my gun in my hand. I then cracked the door open very slightly and looked through the gap.

All I saw was a group of men, about 6 of them, who appeared to be talking to each other. No sign of Antoine. All of these guys didn't match the picture that Alfonso gave me before heading here. They were all wearing leather jackets and jeans. I could hear them talking and they spoke with British accents.

Each one spoke.

"So we took care of him. What do we do with the body?"
"Probably dump it in the drink. Only place we can take it."
"Are you 2 crazy?! We gotta take this one to the junkyard! Jeremy can crush it!"
"Crush it?"
"Crush it?"
"Crush it."
"Well what good will that do? Just leave a mess for the lad to clean up?"
"You dumb prick! We put the body in a car and let him crush it."
"Oh. Well if you ask me, that sounds a bit much fo-"

I opened the door all the way quickly and as soon as they all saw me, they aimed their weapons at me. They all had different colored hair; 1 blonde, 1 brown, 1 light brown, 1 jet black, 1 red hair, and 1 ginger. All had good weapons; 2 had Shotguns, 1 had a Pistol, and the others had a Tommy. I kept my pistol aimed at the one in the middle and occasionally aimed at the others.

"Oy! Who the bloody hell are you!?"
"Hold your fire! I'm just a debt collector! I'm not looking for any trouble."
"Larry, get a hold of this. A debt collector. Just like you back in Chelsea."
"Shut up Brad!"

They all turned to each other immediately after they stopped aiming and carried on the conversation that just sparked and completely ignored me.

"Face it Larry. If it wasn't for Derrick talking to Bill for you, you would still be a debt collector!" He started laughing.
"Brad I said shut up! I'm no ones debt collector now!"
A guy to the right of him joined in.
"Like there's anything wrong with it. You gotta start somewhere don't you?"
"Ohhh looky here lads. Big bad Nigel making his ground breaking speech as usual!"
"Brad seriously. Shut the hell up!"
A man with a much deeper voice all the way over the right spoke over top of them.
"Will you 3 please stop fucking arguing!"
"Sorry Phil."
"Sorry Phillip."
"Sorry Phil."

The one all the way to the right, who was called Phil, walked over to me and shook my hand.

"Sorry about that lad. These kids are still in training ya know?"
"Uh yeah."
"You looking for Antoine?"
"That's right."
He took out some money from his jacket pocket and started counting it and looked over my shoulder and nodded in the direction he was looking.
"Him right there."

I turned and saw him. It was him alright. Except there was a few bullets in his chest and one in his face.

"Oh shit..."
"Oh shits right. Here you are lad. That's the $215 that was in his jacket."
"Thanks."
"No problem."
He turned to the others.
"Alright lads. Move out!"

The men walked over to the body and carried it out the back door.

"Look we had some business to settle too. Sorry about that if it spooked you"
"No. It's alright"
"You Mr. Galante's man?"
"Who?"
"Ah. Must be Don River's then?"
"What? No. I'm an independent."
"Oh? We've been looking for someone to partner with! Tried those Japanese lads out west of Devlin but uh...didn't go too well. Anyway, we've been looking for a partnership."
"Are you of any family?"
"Not necessarily. We're just chums that's all. We have our own sorta agency."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Hit crew. They call us The Union Jack's."
"Oh becau-"
"Yes."
"Ahh ok. I get it. Well I can talk to my partner for you to see if we can arrange something."
"Alright. Here's my number. Have anything for us just give it a call yeah?"

He exited out the back door with the others. Well I'm glad we're not the only ones after the Yakuza. The Union Jack's looked like some badass calvary for the battle. They brought a lot to the table. After collecting Antoine's money, I drove back to Alfonso's.

A smirk on my face and a few hard laughs had actually took up a lot of the car ride to Alfonso's.