“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.