Without A Hitch

Corbin became annoyed. “I’ve said he’s reliable and that’s that.”

“That’s not that-”

“That is that, end of discussion,” Corbin said, cutting Alvarez off.

“No! Not this time. He better get his shit together or I swear I’ll-”

“You’ll what?!” Corbin demanded.

“If he screws this up, I swear I’ll kill him.”

“What the hell is wrong with you two?!” Corbin’s voice grew deep and menacing. “I’m sick of these games! It’s time to get serious. I don’t want to hear any more crap from either of you about setting anyone up or killing anyone. That’s bullshit, and it tells me you’re not taking this seriously.” Corbin pausedbefore suddenly continuing: “I don’t know if you’ve been watching too many movies or playing too many video games, but this isn’t some fucking B-movie melodrama. In real life, you don’t solve your problems with murder. Death is the fucking end.”

Alvarez started to speak, but stopped himself.

“Listen man,” Corbin’s tone became more conciliatory, “when you say you want to kill him, that tells me you’re not grasping how seriously we need to take this project if we’re going to pull this off. If we start playing around, we’re gonna make all our worst fears come true. I can guarantee that. Now, can I trust you?”

An uncomfortable silence passed before Alvarez replied. “You can trust me. I’ll do my job. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Cool. And I’ll take care of Beckett. You have my word.”

“Good enough. Hey, what do you think about getting the cell phones in D.C. the day before? That could save us time and give us a chance to open more bank accounts.”

“I thought about that, but we need phones with local numbers to match the local addresses. I’ve seen phones that let you choose a number, but you have to sign up for those. We’re better off picking up anonymous prepaid phones locally.”

“How many do we need?”

“I figure we can get away with six total. I’ve drawn up a color-coded matrix. When you buy the phones, mark them with the colored stickers I’ll give you. Then, when you go into each bank, use the matrix to decide which phone to take with you.”

“I’m never going to remember six new numbers,” Alvarez said doubtfully.

“You don’t have to. Write the phone number for each phone on the colored sticker.”

“Won’t that look suspicious if I don’t know my own phone number?”

“You’re new in town. That’s why you’re opening the new account. That’s also why all the lease agreements and utility bills will be dated from the end of May, same with the licenses.”

“I’ve got a question. What do I do if Beckett comes into the bank while I’m in there?”

“If he does that, then you have my permission to kill him. Just make sure it’s a painful death.”

Alvarez laughed. “Seriously, what do I do if he freaks out?”

“If he freaks out, you’ve got to calm him down. Make eye contact and hold it. Speak firmly and directly with no emotion. He plays off emotion. Keep telling him to calm down. Don’t threaten him or swear at him. He reacts poorly to that.”

“Got it.”

“If he walks into a bank and you haven’t opened the account yet, excuse yourself. Walk over and shake his hand like he’s some old friend you haven’t seen in a while. Then escort him out. Do not open the account. Once he’s on video, that bank becomes poison to us.”

“What if he walks in after I get the account open?” Alvarez asked.

“Just walk him outside and mark the form so we know which bank it was. We’ll close the account through the mail. Hopefully, no one will figure out that account was part of the project.”

“Do you still want me to run the credit scores? Collette’s out of the office this week, and I know where she keeps her password.”

“Are you sure this won’t stand out on their credit reports?” Corbin asked.

“It shows up like a generic request for a total score, not a full credit check. You get three or four of these on your credit report every month. There’s nothing suspicious about it. You know those credit card offers you get in the mail? They run one of these before sending you the offer. Our office does it all the time.”

“Can they trace it to your office?”

“I’ll do it from our Baltimore office. I work up there once in a while.”

“What do we get out of this?”

“We get a credit score. It’s not the most precise information, but it’s good enough. It’ll tell us if there are any red flags on the credit or if they’ve blocked access to their credit. Also, combined with the salary information we have, the score should let us estimate, roughly at least, how much credit they have available. The higher the credit score, the higher the credit limit.”

“All right, do it.”

“Your wish is my command. Have you thought about the route we’re going to take for day two?”

Knowing the amount of cash they could withdraw from each account at any one time was limited, Corbin and Alvarez planned to return the following week and open additional bank accounts to increase the size of the take. This trip would be undertaken by car and would stretch far beyond Philadelphia.

“I’m thinking we just blast up I-95. We can hit Delaware, Newark, even the New York suburbs, before we turn around.”

“It’s your gas. What about withdrawal day?”

“We start up north and work our way south, just in case they match up the receipts to try to figure out where we came from. I don’t want it to look like we started in Baltimore both times.”

“Fine by me. Any more thoughts on alibis for the later days?”

“Yeah. Keep in mind though, our alibis from the first day are enough to protect us completely. That’s why Beckett’s so important. He helps us establish unbreakable alibis which will protect us throughout the project.”

“I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll have to trust you on that one.”

“It’s simple. If the prosecutor claims you or I did this crime, then he has to show how we opened the accounts on June 14th. Since we have unbreakable alibis, he can’t do that.”

“What if he just doesn’t mention the 14th?”

“Then we introduce the evidence of June 14th to show he’s trying to set us up.”

“How would we know about the 14th? Wouldn’t we incriminate ourselves by bringing it up?”

“No. We would ask for information like complete credit reports on the victims. Then we would ‘discover’ the crime actually began on June 14th, a day we couldn’t possibly have been involved.”

“What if this clever prosecutor decides we got someone else to open the accounts on the 14th?”

“Then he has to prove who it was and connect us to that person. If he can’t do that, which he can’t, the jury will see this as nothing more than a prosecutor trying to hang his case on us when he should be after the mystery guy he can’t produce.”

“Ok, so we’re not even going to set up alibis for the later days?”

“No, no, of course we are. I’m just saying, we don’t need to. But since I’m a lawyer, I like to be ultra cautious — belt and suspenders, my friend, belt and suspenders,” Corbin said, repeating an expression used by several of his law school professors.

“So what do we do?”

“I’ve got this modem I can program to make phone calls. Actually, I’ve got two of them. I’ll hook one up at my place and one at your place. They can call each other throughout the day. I’m also thinking of loaning my credit card to a friend who goes to a farmers market in Manassas each week and asking him to pick something up for me. That puts me in Manassas and Arlington throughout the day and you in Arlington. With both of us here, we couldn’t have been flying up 95 touring banks.”

“You know, I do have one concern.”

“What?”

“When we go pick up the money, how do we know some Sherlock Holmes banker hasn’t figured us out and flagged the account?”

“We can’t be absolutely sure, so you should be ready to make a break for it if necessary.”