this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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How did I get caught up in this. Every time I meet Jimbo at the bar he has another "set is up for life" scheme. Should have known grabbing a couple marbles from the British bloody Museum could not pay out as much as he said it could for how easy he said it was. Sure, those manuscripts fetched a pretty penny, far lower then setting us up for life but still a decent pay.
Elgin Marbless sounded like easy enough job. walk in, pocket them and out. What metal detector can pick up marble? €200K per marble too and there was 17 of them? €3,5M split 4 ways. Fuck me did I not expect thing to fuck up this badly, thinking of the money I guess.
When planning the heist I wondered why it took such a long room to house 17 marbles surely there must be better things to pinch in that room than 17 marbles, but I ignored my doubts thinking of the payday this job will bring.
We get to the job and are waiting for the signal that the guard has started his rounds. It would take 20 min to get back to room 18. Hiding in the cloakroom wasn't as fun as it was when we were kids but it was all we could do.
We get the signal and leave through the rear entrance turning right into the Ancient Greek and Roman displays. Following the corridor till we spot the Rosetta Stone. From there we turn left and follow the passage until we hit room 18. Each step closer the bad feeling in the back of my head increases.
Finally we enter the room and the problem hits us all at once. The Elgin Marbles aren't marbles at all, they are sculptures made of marble. Did none of us check? Shit.
This was good. A good, complete story in a couple dozen lines. Character intro (not the brightest but has actually pulled off jobs before), setup with some dramatic irony (for other readers, not me: I didn't know what the Elgin Marbles were), small action piece, followed by the drop.
Nice stream of consciousness that really matched the kind of character who would do something like this and miss a major (but seemingly obvious) prep step along the way.
I was originally going to ask why he feels like he's so fucked, when it kind of just seems like they can go through with their escape plan with no payout, but I think that's mostly on me. On a second read, he's just upset that he and his boys were so dumb, and they're not necessarily about to face any impending doom in the marble hall.