Without a Hitch (16 page)

Chapter 15

The sun beat
down on the rental car as Corbin and Alvarez sat outside the mailbox store. 
The first mailbox waited inside to be emptied.  Alvarez nervously turned its
key over and over in his hand.

“There’s no
danger.  You’re just picking up your mail,” Corbin said soothingly.

“If it’s so
easy, why don’t you go in there?”

“Because I can’t
show up on the surveillance tapes.  You know that.”  Corbin tapped his thumb
against the steering wheel.  “Why is this bothering you?  You didn’t complain
when we opened the accounts?”

“No one was
looking for us then; no one could have been looking for us.  This is
different.  For all we know, they’re waiting for us, and I’m supposed to walk
in there and present myself on a platter?  You’ll have to excuse me if it takes
a few minutes to get my courage up before I step out of this car.”  His mouth
was dry.

“You’re being
irrational.  No one’s figured this out.”

“How do you know
one of the credit card companies hasn’t figured it out?  What if they called
the cops and the cops are
in there
waiting for me.”

“First of all,
none of the credit card companies has a clue.  If they did, someone would have
called the cell phone numbers I gave them to verify information.  I not only used
the cell phones as home and work numbers, but also as employer reference
numbers.”

“What if they
contacted them directly?  What if they had the real numbers?”

Corbin pursed
his lips.  “No one in my office can take a shit without everyone knowing.  All
they do is sit around, drink coffee and gossip.  If somebody got called by
their credit card company, it would be all over the office.  Nothing like
that’s happened.  As for calling the cops, the cops don’t care.  Not to
mention, there’s
no way
they would stake out a mailbox place in the off
chance of catching us.  We could show up any time 24/7.  We might not even show
up for months.  No police department can spare the manpower to stake out a
mailbox with those odds in the hopes of catching one little identity thief.”

Alvarez took
several deep breaths.  He looked over his shoulder toward the store.  “What if
the clerk calls the cops when I get in there?” he asked, before quickly adding,
“I’m not nervous, I just want instruction.  What do I do if they start acting all
strange?”

“Stay calm, it’s
your box.  You have the right to get your own mail.  All you need to do is walk
in there, empty the box, and get out.  Don’t take off the glasses.  Don’t take
off the ball cap.  Don’t talk to anyone unless spoken to, and then only respond
in kind.  Get the mail and get back out as efficiently as possible.  If the
clerk calls the cops, just finish your job and leave.  Even if they have the
cops on speed dial, we’ll be long gone before the cops can even assign someone
to follow up on the call, much less show up.”

“Security
guards?”

“Stores like
this can’t afford them.”

Alvarez took
another deep breath.  “Ok, I’m going.  Do you see any cops?”

Corbin looked
out the rear window.  “All clear.”

“Here goes.”

The tattoo and
piercing-covered clerk
barely noticed Alvarez
enter the store.  He was working on a crossword puzzle.  Alvarez found the box
and turned the key.  When he opened it, mail poured out all over the floor. 
Alvarez felt his heart jump.  He snapped his head around toward the clerk, but
the clerk never reacted.  Alvarez gathered the mail from the floor and closed
the mailbox.  Still no reaction from the clerk.  Alvarez made for the door.

“Hey dude, can
you give me a seven letter word for ‘observer’?” the clerk asked.

“Nope,” Alvarez
replied, without breaking his stride.  He went straight to the car.

Corbin looked at
the bundle of mail.  “How’d it go?”

Alvarez burst
out laughing.

As the day wore
on and the novelty wore off, Alvarez’s fears dissipated and his tension gave
way to tedium as his task became largely mechanical.  By the time they
finished, Corbin’s duffel bag was stuffed with forty pounds of mail, including credit
cards, bank statements, checkbooks, and introductory credit card checks.  It
also included a lot of junk mail.

Withdrawal day
came two weeks after Corbin mailed credit card checks to each of the banks and
two days after he called each banks’ automated teller service to verify the
funds’ availability.  The morning began with a long drive from Arlington to New
Jersey, with a stop at a hospital parking lot in Delaware.  At the hospital,
Corbin stole New York license plates from a car that looked like it had been
sitting for quite some time.  He swapped those with the plates on the rental
car, which they procured with a fake identification the day before.  The rental
car came from Baltimore Washington International Airport, BWI, and had to be
returned the following day.  It rattled constantly and its engine had seen
better days.

Corbin and
Alvarez wore khakis and collared dress shirts, but no ties.  Alvarez wore the
thick glasses again.  As they neared the first bank on their list, Corbin
pulled over at a highway rest stop.  Alvarez needed reassurance.

“The bank’s a
quarter mile up this road.  How’re you feeling?”

“Uneasy.”

“No one said
this would be easy. . . you’re doing fine.”

“You know, the
chances someone figured this out have gone way up,” Alvarez said.

“That’s why
you’re using the ATM card first.  If it gives you money, we can assume nothing
is wrong with the account.”

“I hope this
works.”

“It will.  Everything
you’re doing is legit.  As far the banks know, these are your accounts.  You
have a right to withdraw money from your account.  Besides, you’re not even
taking everything out of the account.”

“It’s still a
lot of money.”

“Sure, but not
as big as you think.  Remember, each bank only sees a small portion of what
we’re doing.  They hand out larger sums all the time.”

Alvarez nodded. 
“I guess you’re right.  You know what troubles me though?  These guys do have
security guards.  If something goes wrong, they just have to hold me until the
cops come.”

“That won’t
happen.”

“If it does?”

“It won’t.”

“Let’s go over
this one more time,” Alvarez said.  “If they start acting up, I stay calm.”

“Right.”

“If they try to grab
me, I start talking about racism and my lawyer.”

“Right, that
always freaks people out and it will freeze them temporarily.  As you do that,
you head toward the door.”

“If they
persist, I run out of there like a greyhound with its ass on fire.”

“Exactly,”
Corbin said.

“You just be
ready to burn rubber when I get to the car.”

“I’ll be ready.”

Alvarez chewed
on his knuckles.  “I wish we had some protection.”

This was a
reference to Alvarez’s prior request that Corbin bring his gun.  Corbin
rejected that request, arguing that it would only make matters worse to start
shooting at security guards.  “This isn’t some liberal garbage about being
anti-gun, is it?  I mean, you own the damn thing,” Alvarez had asked.  “No,”
Corbin had responded, “it’s not political, it’s practical.  One, I’m not
killing anyone.  Two, the guards are wearing vests, you and I aren’t.  If we
start trading fire, they’ll win.  Three, we need to get out of there as quickly
as possible, before the cops show up.  Stopping for a firefight only slows us
down.”

Alvarez’s
comment about wanting protection threatened to re-open that debate, which was
the last thing Corbin wanted.  Not only would the debate itself make Alvarez
more nervous, but Corbin actually had decided to bring the gun, on the theory
of being prepared for all contingencies.  He just didn’t want Alvarez knowing
this, as he feared Alvarez might respond to the gun’s presence by either
becoming more nervous or by taking greater risks, neither of which were good
things.

“Well, we don’t
have it,” Corbin lied.  “So get that out of your head.”  Corbin reflexively
placed his hand on the nine-millimeter pistol resting on the seat between them,
hidden beneath Corbin’s jacket.

Alvarez exhaled. 
“I don’t have any fancy words to start this, so I guess. . . here goes.”  He stepped
from the car.

Alvarez slid the
card into the ATM machine located outside the bank.  He entered the pin number
and the amount of the transaction.  The machine whirred and croaked and then
typed out a receipt.  Seconds later, several hundred dollars appeared, all in
twenty dollar bills.  “So far, so good,” he told himself.  He jammed the money into
his pocket, before walking into the bank and the first real test.

“Good morning,”
said the teller.

“Good morning.”  Alvarez
handed her the withdrawal slip.

She smiled. 
“How would you like that?”

“Uh, twenties
please.”

“One moment.”

Alvarez watched
the teller walk over to an older woman.  His palms became clammy.  When the
older woman headed into a back room, it took all Alvarez could muster not to
bolt for the door.  He knew this would happen.  He knew the teller wouldn’t
have enough money in her drawer and would need to run this by her manager, but that
knowledge didn’t comfort him, nor did it make it easier to stand there waiting.

Finally, the
woman re-emerged, carrying a large stack of twenty dollar bills wrapped in
paper bands.  The manager came to the window with the teller and watched the
teller count out the money.  Alvarez remained silent as she counted, just as
Corbin instructed him.  When she finished counting, Alvarez thanked her and
took the money.

“Have a nice day
and come again.”

“Thank you, I
will,” Alvarez lied.  As he made his way to the exit, he pushed the stack of
bills into a professional money pouch Corbin gave him to avert suspicion.  This
pouch, which looked like a small, flat, black purse with a silver zipper on top
and a pizza logo on the side, was the type of money pouch store managers used
to carry their daily receipts to the bank.  Few people would question a store
manager stuffing $20 bills into such a pouch.  Sure enough, Alvarez walked
right past the security guard on his way out.  The guard even smiled at him and
wished him a good day.  Once again, Corbin was right:  no one thought anything
Alvarez did was unusual.

Alvarez returned
to the rental car.  After dumping the money into one of the four duffel bags in
the backseat of the car, they were on their way to the next bank.

As the day
progressed, Corbin and Alvarez methodically worked their way along I-95,
draining the accounts.  They were well ahead of schedule.  The selection of
inner city banks, as compared to suburban banks, and banks sitting in clusters
saved them a lot of travel time; sometimes, as many as three banks sat at the
same intersection.  Adding in the ATMs sped up the take as well.  Indeed, getting
the money out of the banks was proving much simpler than anticipated.  When
they first came up with the withdrawal plan, they feared it might take two
trips to hit each bank.  They actually considered abandoning any accounts they
couldn’t get to in a single day.  But their fears were unfounded; they would
finish in a single day.

However, a new
problem was developing rather quickly:  they had underestimated the volume of
the money they were collecting.  By early afternoon, they had filled all four
duffel bags.  Corbin emptied them into the trunk.  By late afternoon, the
duffel bags were full again.  But when Corbin emptied them into the trunk this
time, the money filled the rental car’s small trunk to capacity.

Corbin shoved
the trunk down several times before it latched, but not before another handful
of bills fell to the ground.  Alvarez picked them up.  Fortunately, they had
parked behind a convenience store, next to a dumpster, and no one noticed.

“This is a
problem,” Alvarez said.

“Ya think?”

“How did we miss
this?”

Corbin shook his
head.  “I don’t know.  We had that stack of bills we measured.  You were
there.  The calculations said four duffel bags was enough.  Of course, those
were crisp new bills.  And we are getting more out of the accounts than we
expected because of the ATMs.”

“Maybe we should
stop asking for twenties?”  Alvarez scanned under the car to make sure there were
no additional bills scattered around the alley.  “Do you think we can fit any more
into the trunk?”

“No way.  The
next time we open the trunk, there’s going to be a waterfall of twenties
cascading onto the pavement.  I’d rather not open the trunk again until we’re
ready to unload the car.”

“Should we
stop?”

“No, not yet. 
The duffel bags are empty again and we have that blanket in the back seat.  If
all else fails, we can stack money on the backseat and cover it with the
blanket.  It’s heavy enough, it shouldn’t fall off.”

Alvarez laughed.

“What’s so
funny?”

“This.  This is
the kind of problem I always wished I’d had.”

Several hours
later, the two friends headed home.  There was money everywhere.  The trunk was
full of money.  The duffel bags were full of money.  The backseat was covered
in money, beneath the heavy blanket.  Money had even fallen onto the floor.  It
wasn’t until they reached Maryland that it finally occurred to them to buy garbage
bags for the loose money.  Fortunately, it was dark, so no one saw them filling
the bags.

Soon, they
pulled into the loading dock belonging to Corbin’s apartment building.  As
Corbin used the service elevator to haul the duffel bags and garbage bags to
his apartment, Alvarez guarded the car.  Using the service elevator prevented any
potential complications with the ever-present tow truck and also hid the car
from view, as apartment buildings tend to hide their loading docks and
dumpsters out of sight.  Also, at this hour, the chances of running into anyone
on the service elevator were slim.