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 clerkbarely 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.
“This is the last of them,” Corbin said, slamming the trunk. “I’ll count it out, and then we’ll distribute.”
“Beautiful. Just beautiful,” Alvarez said. He felt exhausted, but also elated at the same time. He couldn’t stop smiling.
“We did it,” Corbin said. “We beat the system in a big, bad way. I’ll tell you, I’ve never felt more alive in my life than I do at this moment.”
The two friends shook hands.
“Don’t forget the car,” Corbin reminded Alvarez. Alvarez needed to return the rental car to BWI in the morning. They had already replaced the license plates, leaving the New York plates at the bottom of some little-knownriver in rural Maryland.
“Will do,” Alvarez replied. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
The two friends shook hands again.
Corbin returned to his apartment. That night, he divided the money into three equal piles which would be stuffed into duffel bags once Corbin bought more bags. After separating the money, he took the clothes he had worn and placed them in a box, which he would toss into the building’s incinerator the following morning. He then took the documents, except for the correspondence and the checks he still intended to mail to the credit card companies, and placed those in a separate box. These would be shredded and burned before Alvarez dumped the ashes into Chesapeake Bay on his next fishing trip.