Free Without a Hitch by Andrew Price Page A

anyone
else!”
    “I sure don’t,”
Beckett admitted, “but I don’t pretend I work hard.”
    “I don’t pretend either,” Theresa gasped.
    “Ok, tell me one
thing you’ve finished in the past month.”
    “That’s not a
fair measure of what I do!”
    “Then what is?”
    “I’m not going
to argue with you about this.”
    “It doesn’t
bother you that taxpayers are working hard to support my napping habit?” 
Beckett’s tone sharpened.
    “ I don’t
nap at the office!” Theresa barked indignantly.
    “Face it, if you
had to hire someone for a job that mattered, you’d never hire anyone who worked
as little as the people do in this office, including yourself!”
    Theresa stepped
toward Beckett, shaking her finger in his face.  “Not everyone wants to work in
a dog eat dog environment.  I don’t want a job where my boss can fire me
because he doesn’t like me or because he thinks I don’t work hard enough. 
I want the security this job provides, and you don’t have a right to criticize
my choice.”
    “That’s enough,
both of you!” Corbin said, rising from his seat and pulling Theresa away from
Beckett.  He ushered her toward the door, where she stomped off down the hall. 
Corbin watched her march the length of the hallway before turning to Beckett.
    “You’re just
determined to be all kinds of popular around here aren’t you?”
    “She started
it.”
    “Yeah, and she
was gonna finish it too.”
    “I’ll drop by
later and make it up to her.”
    “Why do those
sound like famous last words?”

Chapter 7
     
    Every criminal
scheme needs a moment where the schemers stop thinking of it as a theory and
start thinking of it as a fact.  If that moment doesn’t come, the scheme never
attains reality, it just slowly fades away into the realm of forgotten dreams. 
But if the moment does come, the plan takes on a life of its own, an
inevitability, and it gains a momentum which pulls the participants relentlessly
toward their fate.  No one could say exactly when Corbin’s plan became a fact,
but by early May it had.
    Corbin and
Beckett sat on opposite sides of Corbin’s desk.  The door was closed and one of
the extra chairs was pushed against it to stop anyone from barging in.  Corbin
reached into his leather wallet and pulled out various items.  “Observe: one
social security card, phony; one social security card, real.”  Corbin set the
two cards down side by side.  “One Virginia drivers license, real.  Another
Virginia drivers license, phony.  One Pennsylvania license, phony.  You tell
me, what’s phony, what’s real.”
    Beckett picked
up the social security cards.  They were identical except for a nearly
imperceptible coffee stain on one card.  The Virginia drivers licenses also
were identical, except for a frayed edge on one card and the laminate on the
other appearing thinner and cheaper.
    “Pretty amazing,
I’ll give you that.”  Beckett rubbed the social security cards with his thumb. 
“They even feel similar.  Still,” Beckett held up the card with the coffee
stain, “you can’t fake a coffee stain.”
    “Actually, you
can.  It’s a digital image I added to the card.”
    “I’ll be
damned.”
    “What about the
licenses?  Which one’s real?”
    Beckett examined
both Virginia licenses closely.  “My money’s on the one with the frayed edge
and the professional lamination.”
    “Wanna bet lunch
on it?”
    “Apparently,
not.”  Beckett returned to the social security cards.  “Where did you find the
paper?”
    “Staples.  The
clerk thought I was crazy feeling all of their card stock.”
    “These are amazing,
but I’m no expert.  I don’t look at these things for a living.  A banker might
not be fooled.”
    “My banker was,”
Corbin said matter-of-factly.
    “What?!” Beckett
snapped.
    “I switched
banks this weekend, and I used the phony documents to do it.”
    “And you lecture me about taking risks?!”
    “Someone had to
test