“Nasty, nasty,
nasty. Hope you don’t mind spending the day just missing Mr. Evan Beckett.”
Alvarez sat at
the assistant bank manager’s desk. She was about his age and completely
oblivious to anything that didn’t interest her, and Alvarez didn’t interest
her. She never once noticed him referring to his drivers license for basic
information about himself or looking at his cell phone to figure out his own
telephone number. “Maybe Corbin’s right? Maybe this isn’t so unusual,”
Alvarez said to himself, as he signed the application form and slid it across
the desk. Although he had already committed several criminal acts, to him,
this was the moment the crime began. Thus, even though she seemed more focused
on her e-mail than him, his hands were clammy and his heart raced.
“I’ll need your
drivers license, Mr. Lamont,” she said, after skimming the form.
It took Alvarez
a second to realize that he was ‘Mr. Lamont.’ He reached into his wallet and
pulled out the fake license. The woman took the license and the social
security card and walked off behind the tellers. So far, Corbin’s fake
documents were passing the test. If Corbin made a mistake though, Alvarez
could find himself in trouble fast. As the seconds passed, Alvarez became
increasingly nervous. He began sweating. His heart pounded. He heard Corbin
tell him: “Crooks take money out of banks, they don’t put money into banks.”
But then, Corbin wasn’t here.
After what
seemed an eternity, the young woman returned and handed him some paperwork and
a set of starter checks. “Here you go, Mr. Lamont, we’ll send the printed
checks to your address in five business days.”
“Great.”
“Is there
anything else I can help you with today?”
“Nope, that’s
it.”
“I hope you
enjoy your banking experience with us.”
“Thank you, I’m
sure I will.” Alvarez smiled at the woman and promptly made for the door. As
he reached the door however, he heard the woman shout his name.
“Mr. Lamont,
wait!”
Alvarez froze.
Slowly, he turned.
“You forgot your
drivers license.”
“He forgot his
wallet?” Corbin chuckled.
“Yeah, and he
was nervous, but that wasn’t the worst part,” Molly said, as she swiftly shook
her leg back and forth despite her tight skirt. Her arms were folded tightly across
her chest and her face glowed with a combination of glee and, perhaps, a hint
of embarrassment. She smiled uncontrollably.
“I’m all
atwitter.”
“Don’t be a
smart ass. I have other places I can be besides here, telling you the sordid
details of my love life.”
If there was one
topic Molly could talk about endlessly, it was her love life. She happily
replayed each date for anyone who wanted to listen and sometimes for those who
didn’t. Despite his belief that Molly was crazy when it came to dating
matters, Corbin nevertheless enjoyed her stories because they were usually
well-told and almost always contained interesting twists, turns and surprises.
He once described them to Beckett as “the Masterpiece Theater of dating
insanity,” which Beckett shorted to “Dating Disasterpiece Theater.”
Corbin waved
generally toward the door. “By all means, don’t let me keep you.”
“Do you want to
hear this or not?”
“Not.” Corbin
knew she would tell him no matter what he said, so he enjoyed tweaking her.
“I thought you
would,” Molly said confidently.
“Wait a minute,
I just said I didn’t.”
“You said ‘no,’
but you clearly meant ‘yes’.”
“I see. . . my
mistake. Please continue.”
Molly set her
coffee down on Corbin’s desk after taking another sip and leaned a little further
back in Beckett’s chair.
“So we’re at the
restaurant and he tells me he forgot his wallet.”
“You already
covered that part.”
“I’m just
backing up in case you forgot. Soon we’re making small talk. He tells me
about his job and where he went to school and all that—”
“What does he
do?”
“Do you mind? That’s
not the point. Suddenly, he tells me I’m beautiful.”
“Are you sure he
didn’t say ‘gorgeous’?” Corbin laughed.
“I’ll thank you
to drop the sarcasm.”
“He didn’t break
into poetry did he?”
“Will you stop
interrupting.”
Corbin acted
property chastised.
“That’s when it
all went wrong. The next words out of his mouth were, ‘I like your shoes.’
Can you believe that?” she said, wrinkling her nose. The question was
rhetorical, and Corbin knew not to answer. “That was it. Fini, right there.
There’s no way I’m dating ‘Shoe Guy.’”
“It didn’t come
to blows right there in the restaurant, did it?” Corbin struggled to contain
his smile.
Molly pursed her
lips and held up her pointer finger toward Corbin. “Ya know. . . this story is
going to take a
really
long time if one of us doesn’t stop
interrupting.”
Corbin again
acknowledged his chastisement.
“To answer your
question, no, it did not come to blows. But seriously, how can I date a guy who
spends the whole night looking at my shoes. I mean, obviously he’s a freak.”
“Did you
actually catch him staring or was it an off-the-cuff comment?”
“Does it matter?
“Maybe it was
the only thing he could think of to compliment you on? Were you wearing a
particularly ugly dress or something?” Despite his best efforts to say this sympathetically,
the corner of Corbin’s mouth started to curl into a smile.
“If you’re not
going to be serious, then there’s no point in talking to you.”
“Maybe you
forgot to comb your hair?”
Molly rose and
headed for the door. “Some of us have work to do.”
“Wait!” Corbin
called out.
Molly stopped at
the door. “What?”
“Nice shoes.”
Molly scrunched
her nose and flipped Corbin off.
Beckett waited
anxiously on a public bench near the bank. Alvarez had been in the bank a very
long time. Beckett half expected to hear police sirens at any moment. When
Alvarez finally emerged from the bank, Beckett was genuinely relieved to see
him. Alvarez crossed the street and approached Beckett. He handed Beckett the
bank documents and his wallet and sat down.
“How did it go?”
Beckett asked.
“It went well.”
“You nervous?”
“Not so much. I
was at first, but it went away once I got started. You?”
“Why would I be
nervous? I’m just sitting here.” Beckett returned the wallet to the duffel
bag before retrieving a new one. “If Corbin was here, he’d probably tell you
‘this is a moment you can tell your grandkids about, assuming they aren’t
cops.’” Beckett opened the new wallet and read the name. “This time you’re
Elmer Fudd.”
“Funny.” Alvarez
looked at the wallet. “Jacob Primoventi.”
“Strange, you
don’t look Italian.”
“Ha ha.”
“The next bank
is behind me, two doors down,” Beckett said, pointing toward the bank. “I’ll
wait here.”
“You do that,”
Alvarez said with a hint of resentment. He and Beckett were not getting along
well. They were, in fact, getting on each other’s nerves, primarily because Beckett
kept reminding Alvarez of the danger he faced. This made Alvarez nervous.
“They really
didn’t give you any grief at all?” Beckett asked.
“No, none. Quit
asking.”
“This might
really work,” Beckett said more to himself than Alvarez.
“Did you have
any doubts?!”
“Of course I
did! I thought they would slap the cuffs on you the minute you flashed that
fake ID.”
“Thanks for the
vote of confidence,” Alvarez growled.
“Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me
to calm down!”
“You
need
to calm down.”
“You need to
shut the hell up!”
“Don’t go there
friend. . . all I’m saying is stay calm.”
Alvarez didn’t
respond.
Molly leaned
against Beckett’s desk. . . again. Corbin had lost track of the number of times
she was in his office today. “So when you take the calories and do the math,
rather than just relying on what they list, it turns out it’s bigger than it
really is.”
Corbin shook his
head. “You’re like the verbal equivalent of M.C. Escher.”
“I’ll take that
as a compliment.”
“If you insist.”
“So what’s this
I hear about T owning a gun?” Molly’s voice contained traces of disgust, but
not concern.
“Where did you
hear that?”
“Word travels.
Doesn’t that strike you as wrong somehow.”
“I own a gun,”
Corbin said without emotion.
“
You
? I
thought you were a Democrat?”
“So?”
“Don’t you
people hate guns?”
“Not all Democrats.
. . and what do you mean, ‘you people’? I thought you were a Democrat?”
“Non-voter,”
Molly replied indifferently.
“Felon?”
“Apathetic.”
“I see.”
Molly folded her
arms and squinted her eyes. “Wait a minute, isn’t it illegal to own a gun
where you live?”
“Yes,” he
answered.
“You don’t see a
problem with that?”
“Those laws are
meant to protect stupid people from themselves. If they didn’t try to
discourage average people from owning guns, they’d all be blowing each other
away. There’s no danger of that with me.”
Molly frowned.
“You do know there are hundreds of millions of guns in this country. . .”
“Right.”
“. . . and
people aren’t blowing each other away all over the place?”
“What are you,
the NRA?”
“No, but I think
it’s a little hypocritical.”
“Maybe, but I
know me, and I know I’m not a danger to myself or to anyone else. I can’t say
the same for the people I see on television every night. Those are the people
these laws are designed to protect.”
“That’s really
cynical,” Molly protested.
“Maybe.
Speaking of cynical, shouldn’t you be doing something unproductive?”
“Yeah, but I’m
waiting for Beckers. I keep missing him, so I’m gonna stay right here until he
returns.”
“Knock yourself
out, just don’t expect me to entertain you,” Corbin replied, trying to sound
indifferent.
Beckett leaned
against the big blue mailbox as he waited for Alvarez to cross the street.
This was the third bank Alvarez completed this morning. They were ahead of
schedule. Corbin’s system for keeping track of the identities was proving to
be effective and simple. The relationship between Beckett and Alvarez was
proving to be strained.
“You seem
nervous,” Beckett said, as he stuffed the bank documents into the appropriate
plastic bag.
“Shut up,”
retorted the annoyed Alvarez.
“Calm down, I’m
just making an observation.”
“Well, don’t. I
don’t need you constantly telling me I look nervous.”
Beckett ignored
him. “Here,” he said, handing Alvarez a new wallet. “This time you’re Kenneth
Wilson. The bank is up the street, five doors. I’ll meet you two doors beyond
that at the coffee shop. See the red sign?”
Alvarez slipped
the wallet into his pocket and glanced up the street. “I see it.”
Beckett handed
Alvarez a new cell phone.
Alvarez turned
the phone over several times. “Wait a minute, this is wrong. This phone has
the same color sticker as the last one.”
“What?!”
Beckett seized the phone and examined it. He compared it to the prior phone
and then the other phones in the bag. “I must have put the wrong dot on
there. There were a couple extras in the bag in case we needed them.”
“What does that
mean?!” Alvarez demanded accusingly.
“It means it has
the wrong color dot, that’s all. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“‘
Shouldn’t
’?
What do I do if it is?!”
“Run, I guess,”
Beckett responded, mocking Alvarez’s concerns.
“Fuck you!”
Alvarez got right into Beckett’s face. “You had one fucking job, keeping this
shit straight! Now you tell me you fucked that up?!”
“Step off, man!
It just means the phone has the wrong dot, that’s all. Stop making a federal
case out of it!”
“How do I know
this whole thing isn’t messed up now?!”
“See this chart?”
Beckett held up a playing-card-sized chart. On the chart, were a series of
phone numbers, each with a colored dot located next to the number. “Every one
of these dots can be accounted for except this second yellow. This brown should
have been yellow. For some reason, it ended up with a brown sticker on the
phone. All we have to do is replace the brown sticker with the yellow sticker
and it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
“It better be!”
Beckett placed a
yellow sticker on the phone.
“If this blows
up on me. . .”
Molly got bored
after a few minutes and left Corbin’s office without complaint. But no sooner
had she left than Kak appeared. The mustard stain from yesterday could still
be seen on his dingy white dress shirt, the only color he ever wore.
“Tell Beckett, I
want to see him.”
“I will. He was
by your office about five minutes ago, dropping off files.” In reality, Corbin
dropped off Beckett’s files himself when he saw Kak’s secretary go downstairs
for coffee. First, he sent her an e-mail from his own computer telling her Beckett
was back. Then he dropped the files off at her desk. Finally, he sent an
e-mail from Beckett’s computer telling her that he, Beckett, heard she was
looking for him, that he came to see her, but that she was not there, and that
he left her some files.
“He. . . he’s a.
. . a good man,” Kak said unexpectedly.
“I’m sure,”
Corbin agreed, though he doubted Kak’s sincerity.