Police attention

Attention is what the law thinks of you. It never changes how often a job pays or how much it pays — it changes what happens when things go wrong: how long a cell holds you, how hard a deputy looks at your crates, and whether a raid comes through your door. Botched jobs, caught loads and bodies all raise it.

It bleeds away while you keep your head down, and it dies with you. A bribe at the precinct buries most of it but never all — there is always something on file — and it costs more the higher you have climbed. At the top bands the police come looking: a raid takes a quarter of the cash in your pocket, never a cent of the bank, and holds you in a cell.