Alvarez watched Corbin zip up the last of the duffle bags. His bags were already sitting by the door. Corbin’s were sitting against the wall.
“Let me ask you a question?” Alvarez asked cautiously.
“Shoot.”
“You and I know Beckett kept that wallet. That means we can’t trust him.” Alvarez had Corbin’s attention. “Now, I know all about how hard it’ll be for him to use the wallet to cause us trouble, but we don’t really know what kind of trouble he’s planning to cause. But we do know, if he does cause trouble, it could be serious.”
Corbin listened quietly.
“You think handing him the money will get rid of him, but what if it doesn’t? Right now, we can do something about this, to head it off at the pass.”
“Go on,” Corbin said. His mood darkened.
“You know me. I wouldn’t mention this unless I really thought this through.”
“And?”
“Why don’t we make sure this thing can never come back to bite us.”
“Say it.”
“You know what I’m getting at.”
“Say it,” Corbin repeated louder. “Come on, spit it out!”
Silence.
“Shit!” Corbin said dismissively. “You want to murder him, but you can’t even say it!”
“I just think we need to consider it.”
“Are you gonna do it?!”
“I think I can,” Alvarez said, with his eyes downcast.
“I think you can’t,” Corbin taunted Alvarez. “I think you’ve seen too many movies and played too many video games, and they’ve warped your mind. You think killing someone’s easy because you’ve seen it so many times, but real life is a whole different world. The moment you point a gun at somebody, every fiber of your being is gonna tell you to stop. You’ll never be able to pull that trigger.”
Alvarez didn’t respond
His silence angered Corbin. “Let’s test it!” Corbin went to the bookcase where he kept his gun. He pulled the nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol from its case. He grabbed a magazine and slapped it into the pistol’s grip. Then he pulled back the slide, chambering a round, and let it slide back into place. It made the infamous clicking sound Hollywood finds so fascinating.
“What are you doing?” Alvarez asked.
“Here,” Corbin said, tossing the gun to Alvarez.
Alvarez caught the gun in mid-air. His heart pounded in his ears. He had never held a gun before. The gun was heavier than he expected and colder.
“Point it at me.”
“What?”
“Point it at me,” Corbin said, emphasizing each word.
Alvarez looked at the gun. He looked at Corbin and then set it down on the table.
“That’s what I thought. And you want to kill Beckett?!” Corbin said derisively. Corbin retrieved the gun and jettisoned the round from the chamber. He returned the gun and the spare round to the gun case. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because we can’t kill him because we can’t be sure that solves our problem.” Corbin’s tone softened as his anger abated.
“What do you mean?”
“I already told you this before. We can’t guarantee we get the wallet back before we shoot him. For all we know, it’s sitting in some lawyer’s office right now, with instructions to forward it to the cops unless Beckett calls by some date. If we shoot him, we just add a murder charge to our list of crimes. That’s one they will pursue.”
An uncomfortable silence passed between them.
“What time are you meeting him?” Alvarez finally asked.
“Three thirty.”
“Do you still want to go alone?”
“I think it’s best.”
“If you see any hint of cops-”
“Then I don’t even stop the car.”
When Corbin reached the rest stop in Delaware, he found Beckett already waiting for him. To make sure this wasn’t a setup, he instructed Beckett to follow him. A few miles down the road, he turned off the highway onto a rural road. A few miles down that road, he pulled over by a thick stand of trees. No one followed them. He now sat on the hood of his car. Beckett’s car stood parallel to his, about six feet away.
“I thought we were meeting at the rest stop?”
“The cops patrol rest stops looking for drugs and perverts.” Corbin looked at Beckett’s beat up old car. “Man, if you look closely, you can actually watch your car rust.”
“You don’t like my car?”
“What’s not to like? What happened to your Chrysler?”
“We sold it. It was too expensive. . this money couldn’t have come at a better time.”
“Remember, you can’t spend it for six months.”
“I know, but just having it will ease my mind.”
“Speaking of laundering, remember how we figured one duffel bag each?” Corbin walked toward the rear of his car and pulled out the first of the three duffel bags from the backseat. He tossed it onto the ground before Beckett. Thunk! “Turns out we got that part wrong.” He tossed the second one. Thunk!
“Holy cow!”
“We were pretty amazed ourselves.” Thunk!
“I’ll bet. Any problems?”
“Nope, everything went smoothly.”
“Have you heard anything?” Beckett asked, as he loaded the duffel bags into his trunk. He opened one to look at the money.
“No, all’s quiet on the southern front.”
“How’s the new guy?”
“Total bobo. Stuart misses you by the way. He sends his thanks for the UFO books you sent him.”
“A client of mine gave them to me when they shipped him away for a very long time. I figured Stuart might like them. How’s Kak?”
“He sends his love. How’s the new-old job?”
“I enjoy it, I just can’t afford it.”
“Remember, six months, then launder. Follow the plan we discussed.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I gotta head back. You know how to reach me if something comes up.”
“Same here.”
“So long, Evan Beckett.”
“So long, Alexander Corbin.”
They shook hands. The issue of the wallet never came up.
Over the next two months, Corbin dutifully drove to Philadelphia several times to mail off payments to credit card companies. He planned to callin address changes for each card to a series of non-existent addresses in Phoenix in six months. After that, the cell phones would meet their fiery fates. However, events would supersede his plan.