French Twist

I've written a few stories featuring Joe Pepper and Cal Gibson. The first was The Goldfish Heist, which was originally published by the Scotsman but can also be found in an old DSD post. The second story was The Tin Foil Heist, which is collected in Discount Noir, available through Untreed Reads. After a month of us talking craft here at DSD, I was toying with the idea of writing one more craft post. I asked for a few suggestions on twitter but, as is often the case with craft talk, I didn't really feel I was the guy qualified to be taking on some of the suggestions. So I thought I'd go to the other end of the tunnel, and give out some free fiction. So here's another short tale starring the Abbot and Costello of Glasgow crime.

French Twist

“I think I’m gonna move to Paris.”

“Paris?”

“Yeah, you know how you wanna move to New York? Well I want Paris.”

“When did this happen?”

“Last night. I was watching TV? I thought, hey, that looks nice.”

“What were you watching?”

“Emmanuelle.”

“Right. You’ve never even been to Paris. You don’t know anything about France.”

“I like Garlic Bread.”

“Garlic bread? You’re talking about moving to Paris, not to Pizza Hut. What will you do over there?”

“My Da’ knows this guy over there, Claude or Pierre, something French-”

“-Good to see you’re picking up the lingo-”

“-Shut it. Anyway. Da’ knows this guy, he’ll sort me out a job as a cleaner.”

“You’re moving to Paris to be a cleaner?”

“Not like mops and dishes and shite, it’s like a code, a hitman, see? Like what Baz does for Da’ except, you know, in French.”

“I know what a cleaner is, bawbag, I hired Baz, remember? But nobody actually calls them cleaners.”

“Right? What do they call them?”

“Hitmen.”

“Oh, right, yeah. But they probably have a different name for them in France, right?”

“Yes, they’ll call them something French.”

“Do you speak any? French, I mean?”

“No, see, that’s my plan. If I don’t speak the language, then if the Polis lift me, they can’t interrogate me.”

“Right.”

“But I need to learn a little, I guess. Stuff like toilet and sex, aye? And, hey, I want a catchphrase too, like that guy in Pulp Fiction. Something cool to say just before I do it, something to remember me by.”

“They’ll be dead, Cal. They won’t be remembering you to their pals.”

“Oh yeah. Baws. I’d got that one worked out an’ everything.”

“Okay, hit me with it, go on. What’s your French hitman catchphrase?”

“Je’Mapelle Vengeance.”