by Andrew Price
“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 so
mehow.”
“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.
“We’ll miss him.”
“Maybe he’ll get sick of his new job and come back to us,” Corbin suggested.
Kak seemed unsure whether Corbin was playing with him, so he ignored the comment. “Tell him to, uh, come see me.”
“Will do.”
Alvarez’s heart raced. Not only had Beckett screwed up the colored-dot system, casting doubt over all of the paperwork, but now a security guard decided, for reasons unknown, to stand right behind Alvarez as he filled out the account paperwork. Moreover, the account manager was far too talkative, and her words bore traces of suspicion.
“How do you like your apartment?”
“It’s ok.”
“A friend of mine lives down there. Are you near the Murphy building?”
Alvarez had never heard of the Murphy building. “Uh, I’m not sure, I don’t pay attention to building names.”
“What grocery store do you use? My friend had a hard time finding a grocery store in the neighborhood.”
“Uh, I eat on campus. I shop at the university store.” Alvarez began sweating, and he struggled to maintain eye contact with the woman.
“That’s really expensive.”
“I guess. I never thought about it.” Alvarez pulled out the mismarked cell phone and read the number off the sticker on the back. As he did, he snuck a peek over his shoulder at the security guard.
“Oh, what an interesting phone,” the woman said.
“Uh, yeah, they’re pretty nice.”
“Where did you buy it?”
“It was a gift.” Alvarez handed her the completed form.
She took the form and scanned it carefully. “Do you have a landline where we can reach you? At home?”
“No, I use my cell.” Alvarez fidgeted with his pen.
“What about an office number?”
“No, no desk.” A drop of sweat ran down his forehead. “It certainly is hot in here today, isn’t it?”
“Can I see your social security card again?”
“Why?!” Alvarez nearly yelped the word, before recovering his composure. “I’m sorry, here it is.” He handed her the card. “I’m running late for a lunch date.”
The woman nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
Alvarez watched the woman walk to a back office. Moments later, the security guard drifted in that direction as well. He soon followed her into the office. Alvarez’s mouth went dry. Sweat soaked through his shirt. His nerves were fraying. He shifted in the chair and looked toward the door. Suddenly, laughter erupted from the office. Alvarez froze. He looked at the exit again. His hands gripped the chair. More laughter. He squeezed the chair even harder and snuck another look at the exit, just as the woman emerged from the office.
Beside her, the security guard emerged as well. Alvarez held his breath. The security guard looked at him, but turned and walked away, toward the back of the bank. Only the woman returned to the desk. Alvarez took a deep breath and let go of the chair.
“Here’s your paperwork.”
Alvarez took the documents.
“Thank you for banking with us.”
Corbin returned to the office to find Theresa sitting in his chair. He carried two coffee cups, one for himself and one for Beckett’s desk. “Theresa, what a pleasant surprise.” He set one cup down on Beckett’s desk and took the other to his own desk. As he approached, Theresa moved from his chair to her usual spot on the edge of his desk. She wore a new perfume. This one smelled sweeter than the one she normally wore, which always reminded Corbin of a flower shop.
Theresa’s eyes went to the coffee cup on Beckett’s desk. “Where’s Evan?”
“We were talking to Stuart when the front office grabbed him. Did you know Stuart’s TiVo is watching porn during the day and he’s getting stuck paying for it?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Neither did we.” The conversation actually took place between Corbin and Stuart alone, but Corbin knew no one would verify any story involving Stuart and pornography, so he felt safe adding Beckett to the list of participants. “By the way, have you met the new guy yet? Molly met him earlier today.”
“Oh please, what a loser!” Theresa spat out.
Corbin furrowed his brow. “You know, it’s asinine that Kak introduces him to everyone except me. After all, I’m going to be the guy’s roommate.”
“That’s Kak for you. Speaking of losers, have you heard the latest about our little office whore?”
Corbin rolled his eyes.
“You didn’t get my e-mail?” she asked.
“I got it, but I’m not opening an e-mail titled ‘Our Office Whore.’ I’d rather that one not end up in the government archives.”
Without hesitation, Theresa launched into her tirade, mockingly imitating Molly’s voice. “I’m sorry, but I can’t believe her. ‘Oh, you like my shoes? How disgusting. Oh, you’re gross. What a weirdo. Want to go back to my place?’”