Without a Hitch Read online

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Two

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Three

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Without A Hitch

  by AndrewPrice

  Without A Hitch is a work of fiction and all characters mentioned herein are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance between anything in this book and real people or events is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 Andrew Price. All rights are reserved. If you want to use this book or its characters for any purpose, please contact me at [email protected].

  Cover by Stanley J. Tremblay of FindTheAxis.com.

  Please visit my website (http://andrewmprice.blogspot.com/), this book’s website (http://andrewpricewithoutahitch.blogspot.com/), or my Amazon page for more information about me, this book, or my other books. Enjoy.

  Acknowledgement

  With special thanks to Christina, Mike, John Woodward, Scott Saslow, Larry, Todd R. Maxwell, and Writer X for all your help, support and ideas.

  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 u
pset, 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.

  Corbin waited silently, but didn’t break his gaze from Beckett’s eyes.

  “How do you know so much about credit cards?” Beckett asked.

  “When I worked for my uncle’s law practice during law school, I helped him represent a credit card executive who was wrongfully terminated. He laid out all their tricks and tactics, every strength, every weakness, every motivation.”

  Beckett returned his eyes to his empty plate for some time. “I’m going to wait for my promotion,” he finally said, though without the certainty with which he usually spoke.

  “Fair enough.”

  After a quick walk through driving sleet, Corbin and Beckett found themselves back at the office, where they discovered yearly evaluation forms sitting on their chairs. Beckett’s desk sat closest to the door, facing the wall. Corbin’s desk sat behind Beckett, facing Beckett’s back. Both had brown leather chairs with high backs, as did each of the attorneys in the office. Next to each desk sat wooden chairs with padded cloth seats which matched the gray commercial carpet. Filing cabinets lined the wall by the door. A large window spanned the office, looking out over a parking garage several floors below. Sleet struck the window.

  Corbin picked up his evaluation form from his seat. Their boss, George Kak, intensely disliked dealing with employees face to face. Hence, he tended to drop off work and things like the evaluations when the employees were out of the office. He also used the time to search desks. These particular forms were blank as Kak always made the employees fill them out themselves before he reviewed them.

  “Ah, the yearly evaluations. I did mine in iambic pentameter last year,” Corbin said.

  “Did he sign it?” Beckett sounded shocked.

  “Without reading it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he never told me to take out the part where I listed harnessing the power of lightning as an achievement for the year.”

  Beckett stared at Corbin. “You’re insane, you know that?”

  Corbin grinned. “I do like to amuse myself.”

  Beckett sat down, put his feet on his desk, and picked up his copy of The Washington Post, required reading for federal employees. “Aren’t you afraid someone will read it, someone who cares, like a future employer or an inspector general?”

  “Not really. These evaluations go into our files, never to be seen again. Besides, it’s Kak’s name on the form. He’s the one who swore I conquered lightning, not me. I can’t help it if he was a little over-exuberant in his praise. I bring that out in people.”

  “Well, I need to take mine seriously.”

  “Don’t worry my friend, this is Club Fed, everyone gets great evaluations no matter how crappy they work.”

  Corbin and Beckett had similar experiences upon joining the office. The more diligently they worked, the more their coworkers dropped by and “jokingly” suggested they slow down. When neither heeded those suggestions, Kak himself “jokingly” suggested they slow down. When they ignored his hint as well, Kak cut off their supply of work. When they still found work despite Kak’s embargo, Kak took the extraordinary step of telling them directly to “slow down or else.” These days, Corbin and Beckett did just enough work to annoy Kak.

  Beckett looked at his blank form and grimaced. “This really is a horrible job. What I can’t figure out though, is why you’re here? This doesn’t seem your speed at all.”

  “First job out of law school, other than the clerkship. Once I get this on my resume, I am outta here!”

  “Where to?”

  “The private sector, that far away land our coworkers fear and loathe, and yet envy.”

  Just then, Stuart appeared at the door. Stuart came to deliver a letter, a letter which would change Corbin and Beckett’s lives forever, though Stuart had no idea of the importance of this letter. But first, Stuart had something more important to discuss.

  “Knock knock,” Stuart drawled. The ever-present fluorescent lights reflected brightly off his prematurely-balding forehead and his thick glasses.

  “Come on in, Stuart,” Beckett said, waving Stuart into the office.

  Stuart entered the office, leaving his mail cart in the hallway. “Hey, I’ve got something you gotta see,” said Stuart, as he unzipped the fanny pack on the front of his belt. Fearing this meant pornography, Beckett tried to stop him, but Stuart was undeterred. He pulled a bent paperback book from the fanny pack. “Did you know the moon landing was fake? Do you know how they know?” Stuart asked in an overly-loud conspiratorial whisper. “NASA forgot to put stars in the pictures. They say they took pictures on the moon, but there aren’t any stars. That’s because they took the pictures in a warehouse and were supposed to add the stars later, but they forgot.”

  Stuart paused for a response, but got only silence.

  “Know what else? NASA never got any satellites into space. You know this one?” he asked, fanning the book open and pointing to a picture near the book’s middle. “It’s called Pioneer. It’s got pictures of naked people on the side.” Stuart chuckled.

  Corbin smirked. “You mean the menu?”

  “What? What do you mean?” Stuart asked, suddenly perplexed.

  “The picture on the side. It’s a menu.”

  Beckett didn’t approve of anyone “playing” with Stuart, so he tried to interrupt Corbin. But his efforts came too late, Stuart was hooked.

  “What do you mean ‘menu’?” Stuart started shifting back and forth nervously.

  “Think about it, Stuart,” Cor
bin said, ignoring Beckett. “When you go to a restaurant, they hand you a big book with a lot of pictures of food in it, right? This is the same thing. This tells aliens, whoever finds the satellite, ‘come to earth. . . eat human’.”

  Stuart snorted. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It’s an ad,” Corbin continued. “It says, we’re on planet number three and we’re tasty.”

  “Why would the government do that?” Stuart asked, sounding somewhat mystified.

  “He’s just kidding, Stuart,” Beckett interjected.

  “Am not. This is the government advertising their willingness to trade us for some crazy alien gear. Seriously Stuart, why else would NASA send drawings of naked people into space? Trust me, Uncle Sam would trade you for a fancy new ray gun in a heartbeat.”

  Stuart increased the pace of his shifting and began rubbing his hands together.

  “Fortunately, we don’t need to worry about that, do we Stuart?” Beckett said trying to calm Stuart.

  “What do you mean?” Stuart asked.

  “You said it yourself. NASA never got any of those satellites into orbit. That means there are no satellites flying around for aliens to find, right?” Beckett flashed Corbin a “shut up now” look.

  Corbin ignored him. “Of course NASA got those satellites into space. How else do you think we got those great close ups of Jupiter, Saturn,” Corbin rolled his head toward Beckett, “and Uranus.”

  “I need to think about this,” Stuart said. He began scratching his forehead. “You might be right. I never believe the government. My mother says I’m crazy, but she’s the crazy one. She believes everything the government tells her. You guys don’t believe what the government tells you, do you?”

  “Not if it comes from Kak,” Corbin responded sarcastically.

  “Stuart, do we have any mail?” Beckett asked, trying to redirect the conversation.

  “You can borrow my book if you want to?” Stuart said to Beckett.

  Beckett shook his head. “No thanks Stuart, I have too much to read already. Do we have any mail?”

  “What about you Alex, do you want to borrow my book?”