Nobody has to know

The alarm. Coffee from a flask, a van full of parcels, a hundred and forty addresses in a neighbourhood you know better than your own family. You know which dog bites, who never answers the door and who always orders too much.

It pays badly. But it's a job, and a job is a story you can tell.

Your shift is over. In the canteen a colleague puts a parcel on the table. "Can you drop this off tomorrow? Don't open it." There's a fifty underneath.

A block of flats at the edge of the neighbourhood. A man in a dressing gown opens the door, takes the parcel and says nothing. The door closes. You walk back to the van with your heart in your throat.

Nothing happens. No siren, no question. That's the dangerous part.

He asks again. Then someone else asks. An expensive parcel you mark as 'not at home'. A scooter that wasn't locked after all. Little jobs that don't hurt anyone, you tell yourself. They take real time, and your rota turns into a puzzle.

Halfway there, a police car is parked on the corner, engine running. You can walk on as if nothing's up. You can turn around and try again tomorrow. Or you walk up to the window and find out whether this officer has a family to feed.

You choose. Every choice changes your odds, your loot and how hot your street gets.

A handbag, a busy tram stop, a security guard faster than your fingers. Six hours in a cell. You call in sick.

Outside, the world keeps turning. Your plants grow, your colleagues work, someone else takes the job you wanted. Nobody waits for you.

It isn't fifty anymore. You know the back door of the club, the man at the garage who asks no questions, and the officer on duty on Thursdays. You keep the job. On paper you're still someone with a fixed rota.

You notice what you're good at. Some people have a feel for numbers, others for locked doors. You pick a trade, and the trade picks you back: smuggle a lot and you get slyer, and the slyer you are, the better you smuggle.

An attic full of plants in a village where everyone goes to bed early. Two people on the payroll, a bookkeeper who turns a bar into a gold mine. A family drops by to say this street is theirs.

You pay. For now.

You don't do it yourself anymore. A cook for the lab, a driver who never speeds, a kid who collects the takings. On Fridays you pay them in cash. Loyalty costs more than wages, and whoever you underpay talks to the wrong people.

Containers that don't get scanned in Antwerp. A dock worker who goes for coffee at exactly the right moment. A load that leaves the Andes and arrives in a warehouse in Brabant a few weeks later, without anyone hearing your name.

A clan of friends you've known for years. A code, a chat, a four-letter tag. Boxing in a cash van works better together than alone, and whoever in your familia does a job you taught him gives you a cut.

Three districts, two countries. A car wash that's never busier than on a Tuesday morning and still turns over more than anything in town. An estate agent who never asks where the money comes from. Your dirty money slowly turns clean.

A raid on your lab. The door gone, the property gone, a file that keeps getting thicker. Your lawyer calls before you're awake. Nobody talked, but somebody did.

A passport in another name. A flight to a country without an extradition treaty, where a house with a pool is waiting. Or you go to ground in a district where nobody asks questions and wait until it quiets down.

You can grow big and let everyone know.

You grow big and nobody notices. Your name disappears from the lists. On the ranking there's only a title and a country left.

You still have a job. On paper. Your bookkeeper does your tax return, the local officer says hello at the bakery, you pay your taxes on time. Everyone works for you. Nobody knows it.

Above the godfathers there is something else. A table without names, with a handful of chairs per continent. You don't apply.

You get noticed, the moment nobody sees you anymore.