Major Mistakes

Chapter 1 - Meet the Cody's

Oceanside California
Thursday 3:55pm

It is a beautiful spring day in Southern California and the Cody boys are taking advantage of the beautiful day. Craig, Deran, Baz, Pope and J are standing on the roof of the pool house in the backyard of their childhood home. The house where they feel most comfortable. One by one they run and jump off falling into the clear water of the swimming pool.  From deck chairs their mom/grandma watch her boys act like children in the pool. The boys are wrestling and play fighting. Until Craig in an attempt to punch Baz, elbows Pope in the face. Pope snaps, headed at Craig who is already trying to get out of the pool, to avoid conflict.
Pope wiping the blood from his face, where his nose has been busted. He calmly smiles as only Pope can and says

"Craig, you asshole, I'm going to kick your ass."

Baz and J struggling against the water try to rush over and grab Pope before he pounds their brother/uncle to a pulp.

"Pope it was an accident, I didn't mean to hit ya, I was aiming for Baz" Craig says laughing from the pool deck.
Pope has almost climbed out of the pool, only to be pulled back into the water by the other 3 boys. He escapes their grasp and leaps out of the pool smacking Craig, when suddenly a voice stops everyone in their tracks.

"Stop it now boys! Enough fooling around, get dried off and let's get down to business."

They all dry off, and they all head into the house. J heads to his room to take a quick shower, he glances at his phone 16 missed calls and 84 text messages. He sighs. "Damnit Nicky can't you take a hint, I am just not ready to talk to you yet." He says to himself before heading into the shower. Once in the shower he lets the hot water run over his well tanned body. Thinking that he hopes this family meeting isn't another 30 minute bitchfest about how he screwed up the last job. It wasn't his fault, he had cased the place for 2 weeks and there had never been 3 guards there ever. It was always 2 guards, one at the desk and one patrolling. He also knew that the patrolling guard was lazy and most of his patrolling was done outside the back door chain smoking cheap  cigarettes. And neither of the 2 guards he had seen had ever been armed. It's not like his uncles hadn't ever screwed up a job. But the night they had done the job, there was a 3rd guard. Lucky for them he was a bad shot, but they had to leave half the haul to escape unscathed. By the time J gets to the living room, all of his uncles were already there. He has only been living here with his grandmother and his uncles for about a year now.  It seems to him that his uncles still consider him an outsider, even more so after his little snarfu last week. He doesn't mind it though it's better than scoring drugs and shooting up his mom, which was his life before she finally ODed and died.

Andrew, his mom's twin brother sat stiffly in a chair staring off into space. Craig was sitting on the floor, doing lines off the glass top coffee table. Deran was sprawled out across the couch behind Craig smoking a joint. While Baz was sitting on a couch, impatiently, he never seems to do well with stillness. J grabs a seat on the couch nearest the window. The boys don't have to wait long, Smurf glides into the room, her silken kimono floating behind her. She smacks Deran and takes a seat next to him.

" Ok our next target, we are going to hit that check cashing place the one right off the 5, on the way out towards Pendleton. So Deran did our scouting, so Deran tell us?" She turns to Deran who sits up she snatches the joint out of his hand and sits back to listen.

"So the building is small, 3 tellers, except on Wednesday there are only 2, there are 3 cameras but they look like they are wifi only. So we clip the wifi and no cameras. There are 2 doors to the outside 1 in front for the customers and 1 in the back for employees. The door between the lobby and the tellers is reinforced. Not sure about the layout of the back. They leave the vault open while they are open. Oh and Wednesday at 2:15pm they get their cash delivery, armored truck in and out in 10 minutes. That's what I saw for the 2 weeks I was watching, nothing ever changes ." His eyes shift to J, taunting him.
Baz stands

"So, we go in from the both sides, Craig and Deran go in the front, crowd control, while Pope, J and I pull the back door off it's hinges and we are out in what 3 minutes max. Should be easy, not many places for it yo go wrong. So we need a car and a truck, Pope can you take care of that." Pope nods.
Smurf smiles "good work Deran, this should be easy, you should go as soon as that armored truck pulls off, guarantees us the biggest payoff." She hands Deran back his joint, before standing up, kissing each of the boys before leaving the room. Pope gets up headed for his room as well.
Baz sits back down

"So boys, we good on this? Should be pretty straightforward, no mistakes. I have to head home, Cath's waiting up." He stands and leaves.
Craig is cutting another line on the table, "J, you want one. I'm sure you need to unwind a bit. You are wound too tight. Chill the fuck out man, on to the next job."
Deran laughs, "For real nephew, no one even remembers that you screwed up."

J gets up and heads for bed. Shaking his head thinking to himself 'will they ever trust me? When will they forget that he messed up that job, I mean how many jobs had his uncles mess up. He could think of at least 2 that Deran and Craig messed up.' He stretches out on his bed and closes his eyes. Not sleeping, just thinking and plotting.

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