Without a Hitch (15 page)

Beckett nodded.

“Same thing if I
need to reach you.  I’ll call, but won’t leave a message.  I set your phone to
flash red when you miss a call.  When you see that, plan on calling me that
night after ten.”

Beckett nodded
again.

“Never use that
phone except to call this phone.  Understand?  Never.”

“Got it.”

“When we talk,
don’t say anything incriminating or I’ll hang up right away.”

“Understood.”

“When we get the
stuff, I’ll give you a call and tell you where to meet.”

“Check.”

“Any questions?”
Corbin asked.

“Nope.  You’ve
covered it all.”

“Good work
today.”

“Thanks.  I
still don’t feel right about it, but I’ll get over it.  And I have to give you
credit, you’re one heck of a criminal.  It’s a good thing for the rest of us that
few criminals can scheme like you can.”

“I think I’m
flattered.”

“I meant it in a
good way.”  Beckett put the last of his belongings into a duffel bag.  He
looked around the office.  His phone rang.  “Hello.”

“Small
conference,” came Kak’s voice.  The line disconnected.

“What do you
think?  Should I see Kak or should I skip out the door?”

“And pass up
your last chance at enlightenment?”

Beckett
laughed.  He picked up his bag.  “You know how to reach me,” Beckett said,
tapping the prepaid phone.

“I do.”

“It’s been
interesting.  Make us rich.”

The two friends
shook hands, then Beckett headed home.

Chapter 13

Corbin sat on
his ivory carpet.  He had moved his coffee table near the balcony door and now leaned
his back against the couch.  To his right, beyond the island countertop, was
his kitchen.  The Philadelphia packets were spread out before him.  He counted
again, but still came up short.

“Son of a
bitch!”  Corbin picked up the phone and called Alvarez.

“Yo.”

“Vez, we’re one
wallet short.”

“What?!  Holy
shit!”

“Check your
pockets.  Check your car.  Check everywhere you might have been,” Corbin
commanded.

“Whoa, whoa,
hold on,” Alvarez protested.  “I couldn’t have lost one.  I never opened the
bag after I took it from him.”

“When was that?”

“The train
station in Philly.”

“
Are you sure
?”

“Yes, one
hundred percent.  We walked to the train station.  He sat down.  I took the duffel
bag.  It never left my sight after that until I gave it to you, and I never
opened it.”

“Think back
carefully. . . did you lose a wallet anywhere along the way?”

“No.  Your
system was perfect.  He took the wallets from the bags and handed them to me. 
I did my thing.  I handed them back to him, and he stuck them back into the
plastic bags as I watched.  We would have known right away if we lost a wallet.”

“Did you see him
put the plastic bags into the duffel bag?  Is it possible he dropped one
somewhere along the way?”

“No.  He put
every one into the bag.  Everything was always closed before we moved on from
the spot.”  Alvarez waited for Corbin to speak.  The silence was oppressive.

“Shit!” Corbin
exclaimed.

“What are you
thinking?” Alvarez asked.

“I’m thinking he
kept one.  If you didn’t lose it, and he couldn’t have lost it, then the disappearance
has to be intentional.”

“Why would he do
that?”

“He wants to
keep one to hold over us,” Corbin said angrily.

“For what?”

“I’m guessing he
thinks we might stiff him.  Keep in mind, he needs this money.  He rearranged
his entire life in anticipation of getting it.  If we stiff him, he’s in real
trouble.”

“I wasn’t
planning on stiffing him, were you?”

“Don’t be
ridiculous.”

“So what does he
do with the wallet if we
do
stiff him?”

“Presumably, he
threatens to take it to the cops.”

“Can he do
that?  I mean, if he goes to the cops, what’s our exposure?”

Corbin closed
his eyes and considered the possibilities.  “I think we’d be fine,” he finally
said.  “They can’t find you, except through me, because Beckett doesn’t even
know your name.  They can’t get to me because of the alibi.  I’m not telling
them about you, because that would only implicate me.  I would just deny
everything.”

“But if he gives
them the wallet?”

“Nothing in the
wallet points to me in any way.  In fact, having the wallet doesn’t give the
cops anything they couldn’t already have gotten from the banks.”

“What about
fingerprints?”

“I made sure not
to leave any prints on the wallets or papers.”

“My fingerprints
might be on the wallet!” Alvarez blurted out.

“Calm down.  Nobody
has your prints on file.  Your prints are a dead end.”

Alvarez loudly
exhaled.  “Yeah, good point.”

“Since they
can’t break my alibi, and they can’t find you, giving the cops the wallet only
gives them Beckett.  Sounds like a bluff to me.”

“So. . . we’re
ok?” Alvarez asked cautiously.

“As far as I can
tell.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m fucking pissed!  And I’m not comfortable waiting
to see whatever he has planned, but I don’t think he can touch us.”

More silence.

“What do we do
now?”

Corbin massaged
his temples.  “We do what we were planning.  We give him his share and we walk
away, and the wallet becomes a non-issue.”

“Are you sure?”

“What else are
we going to do?  Are we supposed to walk away because of what he might do?  Forget
that!”

“There’s
something else we could consider,” Alvarez said.  He again spoke cautiously.

“What?”

There was another
long silence.

“You know where
he lives. . . let’s go get the wallet back one night.”

“No, we don’t
know where he keeps it,” Corbin said.  His tone was considerably calmer than
Alvarez had expected.  “It could be in a safe deposit box for all we know.  And
if he found out we broke into his house, where his family lives, he’d lose his
mind.  It would be vendetta time.  There’s no reason to risk that, especially
since we can’t be sure we’d find it.  Our best bet is to finish the job, give
him his money, and walk away.”

“I’d like to
shoot the fucker,” Alvarez growled.

“Don’t be an
asshole.  I’ve never killed anyone, you’ve never killed anyone, and neither one
of us is going to start now. . . especially over money,” Corbin said
dismissively.  “Plus, that doesn’t get us the wallet back,” he added as an
afterthought.  “What if he’s got a note with it?  We would only be adding
murder to our charge sheet.”

“What if we give
him the money and he still decides to turn us in?”

“There’s no
reason for him to take the money and then turn us in because there’s no way he
could keep the money.  That would be like calling the cops in the middle of a
bank robbery to turn in your fellow robbers.  And don’t forget, he needs this
money way more than we do.”

“What if he
demands all the money?”

Corbin scratched
his chin.  “We’ll deal with that if it happens.  There are too many unknowns
for us to start speculating wildly.  Let’s just focus on the task at hand for
now.”

“Are we at least
going to demand the wallet back?”

Corbin
considered this idea for a moment.  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“What?!  Why
not?”

“Right now, he
doesn’t know that we know.  That allows him to maintain the illusion he has
insurance.  When he gets his money, he’ll no longer need insurance.  He may
toss it to me at the handover point, saying he kept it by accident.  He may
throw it away himself—”

“How do you know
he won’t keep it?” Alvarez interrupted.

“Because it’s
evidence implicating him in a crime, a crime which explains where he got all
the money that’s supporting his family.  He’ll want to get rid of it as soon as
possible after it’s outlived its usefulness.  Once he thinks he no longer needs
insurance, he has no reason to keep it anymore.”

“Then why not
demand it when we hand over the cash.”

“Because the
moment we tell him we know what he did, we’re raising the stakes.  He’ll sense
danger, which means he’ll take whatever steps he thinks are necessary to
protect himself.  That means keeping his insurance.  Let’s not push him into
doing anything rash when we don’t need to.”

“But we’d never
know what he did with it?”

“I know one
thing for sure, he’ll never hand us evidence that implicates him in the crime
right after we accuse him of trying to blackmail us.”

“Yeah,” Alvarez
agreed reluctantly, “and I guess we would never know if he gave us the real one
or not.  He could just hand us a fake wallet at that point.”

“Our best course
is to let him calm down, thinking we never figured it out.”

“So we’re not
going to do anything?”

“Not at this
point.  If an opportunity presents itself, we will, but not right now.”  Corbin
ran his fingers through his hair.  “One thought though, let’s lower the value
of what he’s got.  He took the wallet containing Helcher’s documents.  Let’s
drop Helcher from our active list.  If we don’t apply for any cards in his name,
all they’ll find on Helcher is an unexplained new bank account with $100 in
it.”

“Tell me
honestly, do you think Beckett’s going to be a problem?”

Corbin hesitated. 
“No.  I think we’ll never see him again after he gets his share.”

Chapter 14

Corbin found the
new guy sitting in Beckett’s chair when he arrived for work the following
morning.  It didn’t take Corbin long to develop a strong dislike for his new
officemate, the same dislike shared by most everyone else in the office.  Molly
particularly disliked him.

Molly leaned against
Corbin’s desk.  This was a new spot for her, and she was still getting used to
it.  In the past, she typically stood in the doorway or near the edge of
Beckett’s desk.  That allowed her to see the entire office at once and it gave
her room to move around, which she liked doing because she animated her stories
with motion.  But she was determined to ignore the new guy, so she now placed
herself on the edge of Corbin’s desk, with her back to the new guy.  This was normally
Theresa’s spot.

“He just walked
out without talking to Kak?  That’s rich!” she said, meaning Beckett.  She
laughed.

“Yep.”

“Kak must be
furious!”

“No doubt.”

Molly’s lips
curled into a sly smile.  “Change of topic:  you do realize I’m still going to
figure out what you and Beckett were doing, right?”

“I’d be
disappointed if you didn’t,” Corbin said with a laugh.

“You can’t hide
forever.”

“Yes, we can.”

“One of us is
going to be disappointed.”

“Time will
tell.”

“Eventually, the
tide will go out, and we’ll see who’s been swimming naked.”

Corbin smirked. 
“Where did you come up with that?  That’s the silliest line I’ve ever heard.”

“Business
channel.”

Corbin raised one
eyebrow.  “I find that incredibly disturbing.”

“What?  That I
watch the business channel or that they would say something like that?”

“Both.”

Corbin’s phone
rang.  It was Kak.  “Small conference.”

Molly sighed. 
“Speaking of the disturbed.  Fun’s over.”  Molly moved toward the door.  As she
did, Corbin’s officemate raised his hand to get her attention.  “Don’t talk to
me new guy,” she said, as she left the room.

Corbin downed
his coffee and went to Kak’s office.  Kak was in a bitter mood.

The following
day Corbin and Alvarez cruised up I-95, opening the rest of the bank accounts. 
Unlike the relationship between Alvarez and Beckett, Corbin and Alvarez got
along well.  This made the day go smoothly and neither found themselves the
slightest bit nervous.  Still, the real test wouldn’t come until they returned
to collect the money.

The next
morning, Corbin called dozens of banks to get the credit cards they would
need.  He would have preferred making these calls from his couch, but he didn’t
know if cell phone calls could be traced to particular locations.  Thus, he made
the calls from the scenic overlook on the GW Parkway overlooking Georgetown. 
It was raining and somewhat foggy, though he could see the row of restaurants
that lined the river on the other side.  Two folders and a duffle bag sat on
the seat next to him.  The first folder contained personal and account
information for each of the identities they had stolen.  Corbin had
meticulously summarized this information on a series of forms and charts.  The
second folder included information on hundreds of credit card companies and the
cards they offered.  That information too was summarized, with individual cell
phone numbers matched up to individual names and specific credit card companies
so that Corbin wouldn’t use the same cell phone or identification twice with
any company.  The duffle bag contained each of the cell phones they had
acquired.

Corbin hated
creating so much documentation, but he had no choice.  He intended to destroy
everything as soon as he could.  In the meantime, he began dialing.

“You seem a lot
happier lately,” Blue proclaimed, as he poured Corbin a beer.

“Do I?”

“For a couple
weeks now.  You finally quit your job?”

“No, but I’ve
been working on a new project I’m enjoying.  It gives me a lot of energy to
finally put my mind to work again.”

“And here I
thought it might be your lady friend?”

Corbin’s “lady
friend” came regularly to hear him play.  He first noticed her because she
brought a single pink rose with her and set it on the table, something she’d
done every night since.  Despite his fascination with her, they’d only spoken
briefly, so briefly in fact, he didn’t even know her name.  Tonight, she sat at
one of the well-lit tables under a cone of yellow light, which gave her silver
mini-dress a fiery appearance.  As usual, a single pink rose lay on the table.

“Know what,
Blue?  Tonight’s gonna be special.”

Blue smiled.  “A’right,
if you gonna talk to that young lady, then you gots to do something special
tonight.  Not nex’ week, tonight.  You ready to show me what cha got?”

For weeks, Blue
had been pushing Corbin to expand his musical horizons.  Corbin resisted on the
grounds he didn’t want to bore the audience with music they didn’t know, to
which Blue always responded:  “they gonna know it if you make ’em feel it.”

“I don’t have
anything new prepared,” Corbin demurred.

“That’s a good
start.  Get your ass on stage and just do it.  Trust yourself.”

Corbin looked
across the room at the stage.  He set down his beer.  “All right Blue, it’s
time for something new.”

A few minutes
later, Corbin sat down with his guitar before the microphone.  He’d spoken to the
band on his way to his seat.  Being Friday, Blue had assembled a larger band
than the one which normally played during the week.  This gave Corbin
considerable freedom to experiment.  Corbin looked out at the audience sitting
just beyond the silver stage lights.  The audience grew each week.  Blue
attributed this to Corbin, but Corbin never gave it much thought.  Tonight’s audience
numbered about two dozen, plus the woman with the pink rose.

“Ladies and
gentlemen and children of all ages, tonight we’re gonna try something new. 
Mind the exits. . . just in case.”

The audience
laughed.

“Before we
start, let me give you a preview of where we’re headed.”  Behind Corbin, the
drummer quietly brushed his snare drum.  “You might recognize the baseline as ‘Take
Five.’  When everything feels right, we’re gonna lay a little ‘Terminal Frost’
from Pink Floyd right over ‘Take Five.’  I always wanted to see what would
happen if we did that.”

Blue smiled. 
Corbin picked a challenging combination, as these two songs didn’t naturally
merge.  Blue closed his eyes and waited to hear if Corbin could pull it off.