Without a Hitch
Without A Hitch
by AndrewPrice
Without A Hitch
is a work
of fiction and all characters mentioned herein are products of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance between anything in this book and real people or
events is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 Andrew Price.
All rights are reserved. If you want to use this book or its characters for
any purpose, please contact me at
[email protected]
.
Cover by Stanley J. Tremblay of
FindTheAxis.com.
Please visit my website (
http://andrewmprice.blogspot.com/
),
this book’s website (
http://andrewpricewithoutahitch.blogspot.com/
),
or my Amazon page for more information about me, this book, or my other books.
Enjoy.
It had come to
this. The man stared at the semi-automatic pistol in his shaking hand before shoving
it into his belt and buttoning his suit jacket over it. He took a deep breath
and went to meet his friend for the last time.
Eleven months
earlier. . .
“
That
’s
your plan?!” Alexander Corbin didn’t hide his skepticism. Corbin, an
attorney, was a couple years out of law school and not yet thirty. He and his
officemate were at Fiddeja’s, a restaurant where they typically spent their
lunches. Apart from them, Fiddeja’s was empty today because of the sleet.
“What’s wrong
with it?” asked Evan Beckett, running his fingers through his tousled hair.
Beckett neared forty, and unlike the younger Corbin, who favored designer suits
and ties, Beckett’s clothing was well-worn, his shoes were unpolished, and he
generally looked disheveled.
“Is it legal?”
Beckett shifted
uneasily. “It’s not illegal.”
“Wanna try and
explain that one?” Corbin asked, finishing his beer.
“You know what I
mean. It’s not
technically
legal, but no one gets hurt. No harm, no
foul!” Beckett said with a smile.
Corbin laughed.
“Wait a minute! Aren’t you the guy who lectured me a few months back that
‘right is right and wrong is wrong no matter what the circumstances’?”
Beckett pointed
at himself. “
Moi
?”
“
Vous
.
In fact, if I remember correctly, you said ‘stealing is always wrong because
theft is the deprivation of the labor of another,’ which you said was ‘akin to
slavery.’ Then you called me ‘morally vacant’ and said I should go to church.
Any of that sound familiar?”
“You should go
to church. Faith is the foundation of happiness.”
“Uh huh, sure.
Now that you’re advocating theft, when should I expect an apology?”
“I wouldn’t rush
home and check your mailbox,” Beckett responded doubtfully.
“Hypocrite.”
“This isn’t
stealing!” Beckett insisted.
“What else do
you call it? Aggressive borrowing?”
“I’m just
borrowing more equity than they expected me to borrow, that’s all.”
“You mean, more
equity
than you legally own
, don’t you?”
“Technically,
that is correct,” Beckett conceded.
“Ok Socrates,
square that with your position on stealing.”
“Easy: I’m not
taking the equity. I’m only borrowing it. It’s not like I’m going to default
or anything.”
“If it’s that
simple, why don’t you tell the mortgage company what you’re up to?”
“I’m sure they
have other things to worry about.”
“Does your wife
know about this?”
Beckett smiled
again.
“Face it, it’s
stealing no matter how you slice it.”
Beckett furrowed
his brow. “Call it what you want, but you don’t have a family to worry about.
I have people who depend on me. Sometimes, you need to bend the rules if you
want to take care of the people you love.”
Corbin ignored
Beckett’s suddenly darker tone. “The old Evan Beckett once said to me, after
calling me ‘hopelessly corrupt’ mind you, that ‘a starving man may need to
steal bread to survive, but his need does not make the theft proper. It
remains theft.’”
Beckett shook
his head. “I’m not stealing. Think of it this way. I’m not taking bread from
the baker’s shelves, I’m dumpster diving for the bread he no longer wants.”
Corbin pursed
his lips. “‘Dumpster diving’? Remind me never to accept an invitation to your
house for dinner.”
“Consider it
done.” They both laughed.
“All right,
stealing, borrowing with intent, call it whatever you want. I have no love for
mortgage companies.” Corbin poked at his half-eaten french fries and watched
Beckett finish the last of his fajitas, adding a new grease stain to his frayed
paisley tie. “Hey Evan,” Corbin asked cautiously, “how far would you go to
help your family?”
Beckett set down
his fork. “What do you mean?”
“Would you break
the law?”
“Depends on the
law, I guess.”
“What if I could
show you a way to get a lot of money, and no one gets hurt?”
“Somebody
always
gets hurt when money goes missing.”
“Not necessarily.
. . not if they don’t miss the money.” Corbin looked around to make sure they
couldn’t be overheard. “Every year, credit card companies issue millions of
credit cards. The more cards they issue, the more money they make. Of course,
the more cards they issue, the greater the chance they’ll extend credit to the
wrong people.”
“You’re talking
about credit card fraud. They’ll definitely miss the money,” Beckett replied,
before finishing his Coke.
“No, they
won’t. Hear me out on this. Credit card companies make their money by
charging high rates of interest and high fees to high risk cardholders. The
trade off is they know lots of those people won’t pay. Sure, they make a
cursory effort to collect the debts, but they give up quickly and write them
off their taxes. To cover the losses, they buy insurance. Since they have
insurance, they won’t miss the money.”
“Then the
carrier will miss it,” Beckett retorted.
“Believe it or
not, they’ll welcome the theft.”
“Welcome it?
How many times were you dropped on your head as a child?”
“I’m serious.
Insurance companies make money by selling policies, but they can only sell
policies if people fear a potential loss. If no one ever stole from credit
card companies, there wouldn’t be a market for insurance. No market for
insurance means no premiums. So rather than being upset, insurance companies
welcome a bit of theft because it allows them to get rich.”
Beckett
scratched his head. Corbin could see Beckett looking for holes in the
argument, so he waited quietly for Beckett to formulate a response.
“This may work
in theory, but they’ll still miss the money you actually steal.”
“
We
. . .
we steal, Evan. And no, they won’t. They’ll just raise their premiums to get
the money back.”
“Then it’s back
to the credit card companies.”
“Yeah, but they
don’t care about premiums. They pass those on to customers in their fees.”
“So the
cardholders get hurt.”
“In a way, but
these premiums get spread over billions of cardholders, each of whom knows what
fees they need to pay to get and keep the card. If they think the fees are too
high, or they aren’t getting a good deal, they can cancel the card. But
frankly, they don’t even know or care what the charges are for. Trust me, they
won’t miss the money. No one will miss the money.”
“It’s still
stealing,” Beckett protested.
“Yes, it is.
But these are large, soulless multinational corporations that spend millions
more lobbying to take away your rights than we will ever be able to steal from
them. Who gives a fuck about them?!”
Beckett stared
at his empty plate. Normally, he would never entertain Corbin’s suggestion,
but lately, he’d begun to worry about his finances and how he could care for
his family. A year ago, he had a job he loved as a Federal Public Defender in
New Jersey. But with two children in private school and a mortgage that was a
little too large, he had trouble making ends meet. He desperately needed a promotion.
But in the federal government, it’s often impossible to move straight up the
career ladder. Instead, employees learn to zigzag between agencies to get
promoted. So when the Washington job came open, Beckett’s boss told him to
take it and then zigzag back once an available slot opened at his old agency in
New Jersey. This sounded so certain Beckett even decided to leave his family
in New Jersey and commute to Washington by rail each morning. But as the days
passed, and he heard nothing about any openings in New Jersey, he began to feel
a growing sense of desperation. The credit card bills were piling up beyond
the point of no return and even hints of a divorce had been made. This was the
only reason he considered Corbin’s suggestion. . . well, that and he knew if
anyone could pull something like this off, it was Corbin. Corbin was one of
those rare people who could do anything he set his mind to doing.
Corbin waited
silently, but didn’t break his gaze from Beckett’s eyes.
“How do you know
so much about credit cards?” Beckett asked.
“When I worked
for my uncle’s law practice during law school, I helped him represent a credit
card executive who was wrongfully terminated. He laid out all their tricks and
tactics, every strength, every weakness, every motivation.”
Beckett returned
his eyes to his empty plate for some time. “I’m going to wait for my
promotion,” he finally said, though without the certainty with which he usually
spoke.
“Fair enough.”
After a quick
walk through driving sleet, Corbin and Beckett found themselves back at the
office, where they discovered yearly evaluation forms sitting on their chairs.
Beckett’s desk sat closest to the door, facing the wall. Corbin’s desk sat
behind Beckett, facing Beckett’s back. Both had brown leather chairs with high
backs, as did each of the attorneys in the office. Next to each desk sat
wooden chairs with padded cloth seats which matched the gray commercial
carpet. Filing cabinets lined the wall by the door. A large window spanned
the office, looking out over a parking garage several floors below. Sleet
struck the window.
Corbin picked up
his evaluation form from his seat. Their boss, George Kak, intensely disliked
dealing with employees face to face. Hence, he tended to drop off work and things
like the evaluations when the employees were out of the office. He also used
the time to search desks. These particular forms were blank as Kak always made
the employees fill them out themselves before he reviewed them.
“Ah, the yearly
evaluations. I did mine in iambic pentameter last year,” Corbin said.
“Did he sign
it?” Beckett sounded shocked.
“Without reading
it.”
“How do you
know?”
“Because he
never told me to take out the part where I listed harnessing the power of
lightning as an achievement for the year.”
Beckett stared
at Corbin. “You’re insane, you know that?”
Corbin grinned.
“I do like to amuse myself.”
Beckett sat down,
put his feet on his desk, and picked up his copy of
The Washington Post
,
required reading for federal employees. “Aren’t you afraid someone will read
it, someone who cares, like a future employer or an inspector general?”
“Not really.
These evaluations go into our files, never to be seen again. Besides, it’s
Kak’s name on the form. He’s the one who swore I conquered lightning, not me.
I can’t help it if he was a little over-exuberant in his praise. I bring that
out in people.”
“Well, I need to
take mine seriously.”
“Don’t worry my
friend, this is Club Fed, everyone gets great evaluations no matter how crappy
they work.”
Corbin and
Beckett had similar experiences upon joining the office. The more diligently
they worked, the more their coworkers dropped by and “jokingly” suggested they
slow down. When neither heeded those suggestions, Kak himself “jokingly”
suggested they slow down. When they ignored his hint as well, Kak cut off
their supply of work. When they still found work despite Kak’s embargo, Kak
took the extraordinary step of telling them directly to “slow down or else.”
These days, Corbin and Beckett did just enough work to annoy Kak.
Beckett looked
at his blank form and grimaced. “This really is a horrible job. What I can’t
figure out though, is why you’re here? This doesn’t seem your speed at all.”
“First job out
of law school, other than the clerkship. Once I get this on my resume, I am
outta here!”
“Where to?”
“The private
sector, that far away land our coworkers fear and loathe, and yet envy.”
Just then,
Stuart appeared at the door. Stuart came to deliver a letter, a letter which would
change Corbin and Beckett’s lives forever, though Stuart had no idea of the
importance of this letter. But first, Stuart had something more important to
discuss.
“Knock knock,”
Stuart drawled. The ever-present fluorescent lights reflected brightly off his
prematurely-balding forehead and his thick glasses.
“Come on in,
Stuart,” Beckett said, waving Stuart into the office.
Stuart entered
the office, leaving his mail cart in the hallway. “Hey, I’ve got something you
gotta see,” said Stuart, as he unzipped the fanny pack on the front of his belt.
Fearing this meant pornography, Beckett tried to stop him, but Stuart was
undeterred. He pulled a bent paperback book from the fanny pack. “Did you
know the moon landing was fake? Do you know how they know?” Stuart asked in an
overly-loud conspiratorial whisper. “NASA forgot to put stars in the
pictures. They say they took pictures on the moon, but there aren’t any
stars. That’s because they took the pictures in a warehouse and were supposed
to add the stars later, but they forgot.”
Stuart paused
for a response, but got only silence.
“Know what
else? NASA never got any satellites into space. You know this one?” he asked,
fanning the book open and pointing to a picture near the book’s middle. “It’s
called Pioneer. It’s got pictures of naked people on the side.” Stuart
chuckled.
Corbin smirked.
“You mean the
menu
?”
“What? What do
you mean?” Stuart asked, suddenly perplexed.
“The picture on
the side. It’s a menu.”
Beckett didn’t
approve of anyone “playing” with Stuart, so he tried to interrupt Corbin. But
his efforts came too late, Stuart was hooked.