Is he a bad guy though?
— The Claire Of Éclairs
I found Elliot Anderson at the Merrillville library.
Anyplace with books about Bitcoin was a place to look for marks if I was in the neighborhood with time to kill. Who reads books about Bitcoin? Marks do.
Elliot was reading several books, one of which was Internet Money.
He was sitting at a long table with a stack of paper spread way the hell out. I saw charts and graphs, and he was taking notes, using multiple colored pens, which made it clear he knew somethin' about somethin'.
I was just about to leave the library when he got up. He gathered his papers and headed for one of the meeting rooms at the back of the second floor. I stood nearby and listened for a bit, as he led what turned out to be a creative writers' group.
I sent Claire to join them, the next week.
"His name is Elliot, and he wasn't wearing a ring. Say you want to be a writer and you're just there to check out the group. Blah blah, drinks. Blah blah, hot tub."
"Is he a bad guy though?"
Why would she ask a question like that? They're all bad.
I said, "Listen, the price of Bitcoin is going crazy right now. I have reason to believe he might have a wallet worth two million bucks. It'd be worth more by the time I get it, if I can... so, he's more than just a mark. He's Marky Mark and the funky bunch of Bitcoin."
"Oh, shit."
One of Elliot's papers had a QR code. I snapped a picture with my phone when he wasn't looking. I never use my phone for pictures of anything related to marks, but I made an exception because the library was too fucking quiet, even for a Polaroid.
My phone didn't take a picture though. Instead, it gave me a link to a Bitcoin wallet with over 50 Bitcoin. I thought, "Mega-MARK!!!"
Sadly, it wasn't his. It was a lost wallet, which means it wasn't anyone's, anymore.
Fun fact: Over 20% of all Bitcoin have been lost, forever. In some cases, the owners died without passing on their keys. In other cases, the keys were just lost. So, maybe, by finding it and stealing Bitcoin, I'm preventing Bitcoin from being lost. Maybe I'm doing a public service.
Right?
I know, I know. That was a joke. Fuck you.
I'm just saying, these idiots write their seed words down on paper, and they think they're smart because they hide a fucking sticky note under a mousepad? Are you kidding me? Spill some coffee and it becomes illegible.
Anyway...
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon when Claire finally got Elliot back to our place. Late spring. The weather was nice.
I made sure the garage door was open, so I could eavesdrop. I'd never spied on Claire while she was doing her thing, but I couldn't help being curious. Why'd she ask if he was a good guy? Was she really committed to this job?
Once I snapped a picture of Elliot's driver's license and made a copy of everything on his keychain, I snuck out the back door and sat in the shade by the side of the house, where I could hear their conversation. I got there right as Claire was asking him about his work.
"So, you're a writer," Claire said.
"I am, but really, I'm more of a teacher."
"Oh?"
"I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University, and I freelance for a publishing house."
"A publishing house?"
"Well, I like to read, and I'm good at finding young talent. Basically, I go through tons of manuscripts, looking for potential diamonds in the slush pile. Sometimes, I help clean 'em up."
"Manuscripts?"
"Novels, screenplays, short stories. That sort of thing."
"You write too, right? What do you write about?"
"Honestly? I write what I know. That's what I teach my students to do, too. Everybody's got a story. You probably do interesting things all the time. I'm sure you've got stories to tell. Write what you know."
Oh, Elliot. If only he knew.
"And you're an investor?" Claire asked.
"Me? No. I know I should. Everybody should, right? But I'm not there yet. Why?"
"At the writers' group, you were talking to that one guy, about crypto stuff."
"Oh, that. Yeah. He wanted feedback on an article he wrote about surviving a financial collapse. Parts of it were good, but some of it made my head spin. The more I read, the less I believed any of it. But, hey, what do I know? I teach creative writing, not economics."
I was impressed. Claire was good at steering the conversation, weaving a mark in and out of topics to see if he was worth the effort. And she'd just realized he wasn't.
"Oh, shoot. Can you hang on a sec, Elliot? I almost forgot, my sister's coming over for breakfast tomorrow. I need her to pick up something from the bakery."
Then the text came:
"Butterless Bagels. No cheese. No Tapenade."
Anything from the bakery meant it's a bust. No Cheese was obvious. No Tapenade was pure WTF. Whatever.
Then, I heard her say, "Irish coffee has alcohol in it, right?"
"Whiskey, usually."
"Great. I'll tell her to bring some."
"Whiskey too."
Alcohol was the code for All Cool, which meant we were done.
The system had quirks, but the system worked. Mostly.
"And what about you, Claire" Elliot asked. "You came to the writers' group. Are you working on anything?"
"Oh, uhm, I don't know if I should say. It'll sound stupid."
"Go for it."
"It's the story of... a former prostitute... who starts a bakery. The story is called... Éclairs."
Oh, guuurl.
With that, I left. I figured she'd wrap it up soon. This guy wasn't a mark.
An hour later, while I was organizing my workshop, which was still mostly just a desk and a beat-up file cabinet... Claire came downstairs to deliver the news I already knew.
"So that was a bust," she said. "I think I'll go back to his writers' group though. He mentioned somebody else who's really into crypto. I'm pretty sure he was talking about a guy named Lance. He's in the group too."
"Lance?! What kind of parent does that to a kid?"
"I know, right? It's a bad name, but it's also a rich tech-bro name. Could be worth a shot."
Our hit rate with marks was surprisingly good. Almost half of them had Bitcoin, but most only had a few thousand dollars worth. Every now and then, though, we'd hit a big fish worth a hundred thousand or more. So, we kept fishing.
By this point, I already had over half a million dollars worth of Bitcoin, but I never told Claire. No way. I split the coins between multiple wallets, just in case she asked to see anything. But as long as the cash kept coming in, she was living the good life.
She'd gone from living in her car and working the streets, to living in a house, rent-free. And instead of fucking guys for money, she was going out for drinks and spending a few hours in a hot tub, a few nights a week.
She was getting good at finding potential marks, too. And she knew how to get them to feed her tons of personal details without realizing they were doing it.
We were both getting really good at this, and it was easy, but was also time consuming. All of the effort to get Elliot only led to another mark who might turn out to not be a mark at all. There had to be a better way. But how?
"So, Claire," I said. "Maybe it's time to think about refining our method. What we're doing definitely works. We're getting better and better at it, but it's so hit or miss. I feel like we're missing something."
"Missing something?"
"Something better. And bigger."
"Bigger?"
"It's like we're at the ocean and we're wasting our time with too many shrimp. I'm a shark! I wanna harpoon a whale."
"Sharks don't do that, Shay."
"You know what I'm saying."
"Do you have a plan, or are you just thinking out loud here?"
"I don't know."
"Well, it sounds like you need food for thought. I'm gonna do a pizza run."
"Hell yeah. Sausage and pepperoni. None of that veggie shit."
"Yeah yeah, I know. You're a carnivore. Can I borrow your car?"
"What's up with yours?"
"I gotta take it to the shop. I wanted to yesterday, but I'm a little light on cash."
So much for subtlety. Her car was shit. I got the hint.
"Sure. And y'know what, Claire? You need something nicer to drive. Let's take care of that this weekend. Marks can't be seeing you show up in a rust bucket. You're elegant, remember?"
"Thanks. Need me to pick up anything while I'm out? Or just pizza."
"I need an idea, 'cause I'm stumped. Our system works, but I want more."
"In other words, you need pizza and a bottle of something with kick. Got it. Be back in a bit."
"Ha! Thanks."
I hated feeling like I was stuck, but defining a problem is always the best place to start looking for a solution. Where's The Allegory when you need it? Quinn's almost-absinth was wicked strong.
And where do you find bigger fish in Garyfuckingindiana?
Editor's Note:
The book referred to above as "Internet Money" is actually titled The Internet of Money, by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. It is a three-volume series, and each volume is very highly recommended for anyone interested in the philosophy and mechanics of Bitcoin.
Elliot was reading an essay from Volume Two, titled "The Five Pillars of Open Blockchain," which explains the principles that make Bitcoin resilient and trustworthy.
The five pillars are: openness, public verification, neutrality, borderless operation, and resistance to censorship.