162How hard can it be to retire? Our narrator, while refusing to divulge his name ( My name? If i told you that you'd be as clever as me.), weaves a fascinating tale of crime, deceit, murder, betrayal. It all starts, as the first line suggests, with our boy, a drug dealer, planning to retire on his 30th birthday. The king-size catch comes in the form of James Lionel Price, a.k.a, Jimmy Price, our boy's larger-than-life, pretentious Boss. A loud mouthed, uncouth gangster with delusions of grandeur. Jimmy wants a last couple of favors from our boy. The first is to find the
missing daughter of a friend, whose identity Jimmy keeps a secret. Then there's the matter of a shipment of drugs. Our boy, with the help of his partner, Mister Mortimer plans a deal for the
drugs (a staggering million pills of Ecstasy) with a lowly
gang of thugs. That's when the whole thing blows up. To start with, the shipment is reported to have been stolen from an Eastern European gang, wanted for crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing. This particular gang has the habit of lopping off the heads of their rivals. Now our
boy shouldn't be too terribly fussed about this. But he can be forgiven on this count, taking into account the fact that the bunch of thugs, when they were ripping the gang off the drugs, happened to use our boy's name (as an associate of theirs), to get an in on the gang in the first place. While all this is going on, our boy has hired two of his pals to dig up the dirt on the missing daughter. Simultaneously, he's hitting on Tammy, the girlfriend of Sidney, the nephew of the
head honcho of the thugs.
So, like any other red blooded male, who, upon receiving encouragement from an attractive member of the opposite sex, our boy too, makes plans on taking his acquaintance with Tammy to the next level. So they meet up in a hotel room, start necking. Tammy then goes to the next room to change into something more "appropriate", when our boy is ambushed, kidnapped and that's when he finds out the kidnapper is Eddie Temple, the missing daughter's anonymous father. The biggest gang lord in London. It so turns out good ole' Jimmy planned on finding Charlotte 'Charlie' Temple (the missing daughter of the formerly anonymous Eddie Temple), and hold her hostage to ransom Mr Temple. Jimmy has been very naughty, explains Eddie Temple. Apart from the fact that Jimmy financed a Bogus government somewhere in Africa. After a while, Jimmy finds out the whole thing is a scam. So now, he needs money. Badly. Who does he turn to? Why! our boy, of course! As if this cock-up wasn't enough, Eddie further explains that Dear Ole' Jimmy has gone a step further up naughty street. He's a police informer and planned to sell our boy to the coppers before he retired. So what does our boy do? He shoots Jimmy dead, of course. Using a gun that belongs to Jimmy's lieutenant. Jimmy's lieutenant, Gene discovers the spent cartridge our boy was foolish enough to leave on the scene of the crime. He bashes the holy hell out of our boy the next time he sees him. But then he finds out the dark truth about Jimmy. Now our boy, Morty and Gene have a serious bit of furious thinking to do. So they come up with a plan. The fact that Gene's already killed the head honcho and has his head in his deep freeze was a big help. So they offer the head to the Eastern European Yahoos, get their boys to dress up as cops, raid the warehouse of the thugs, steal the drugs. And Eddie Temple steps up, announcing he's taking over the drugs in return for our boy and his boys' collective lives and a lifetime subscription to the exclusive Pepi's Barn. "Welcome to the layer cake, son." Phew, if you thought building a career was hard, here's a thought for you. How hard can it be to retire?
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