Andrew Price
Without A Hitch
Part One
Chapter 1
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.