Our goal is to
make the world a better place.
— Frustration
I returned from Tonawa still reeling.
Claire could tell something was wrong when I didn't text after finishing a job. No grapes. No bagels. No Maxi Pads despite the fact the situation warranted it. I didn't tell her about the dead mark. Or Boogie. Or my trip to Tonawa.
I only told Claire what she needed to know.
I didn't even check in when I got home, so she came to the basement to find me.
I was staring at my phone when she walked in. I'd just put the dead mark's seed words into my Bitcoin app. He was sitting on 6.26 BTC, worth almost three hundred grand. I should have been thrilled, but I was too busy being pissed off at the whole situation.
Claire tried to look at my phone, but I turned it off.
"You alright?" she asked.
"Yeah. I had a close call. It was bad, but I got what I needed. Now, I need a drink."
"I could use one too. And a talk."
"Oh?"
"Don't freak out, but... I've been thinking about Elliott."
"Who's Elliott?"
"He was a mark that turned out to be a bagel. The guy from the writer's group at the library."
"Why the fuck are you thinking about him?"
"It's more like, I've been thinking about how bad a guy has to be to deserve what we do. It's great when we bring down somebody rotten, but what about the guys who aren't so bad? Elliott was a nice guy, so I was glad he turned out to be a bagel. And, remember Sam? He was a jerk, but he wasn't dirty."
"What's the difference?"
"You don't wreck somebody for being rude. He was just a broke guy trying to get by, though he could have been nicer. I'm glad he was a bagel too."
"What are you saying, Claire? You don't want to do this anymore? You want to go back to working the streets?"
"Come on! I didn't say that!"
"Then what are you saying?"
"I'm saying, we need to do a better job of targeting the marks. Just because a guy is rude, it doesn't mean he deserves to get got. Not the way we do it. I don't want that on my conscience."
"Oh, so now you've got a conscience, Claire?"
"We're supposed to be going after bad guys, Shay, not just guys in general. The last guy you found was a total sweetheart. Thank God, he was a bagel."
"Was he a bagel? Or were you lying to me about that?"
"SHAYNA."
"It's a fair question, Claire!"
"Yeah, well, here's a fair question for you. What about the money? Huh?"
"What about it?"
"We never talk about the progress we're making. When we started, you said a million dollars each. How close are we to getting there?"
Actually, it was one year or one million dollars after expenses, and as the months passed, I regretted saying it. That was a mistake.
"I think we're at a hundred grand each," I lied, "but that's before expenses."
"Jesus! That's it? What expenses?"
"Expenses, like, I bought a goddamn house for this, Claire! And because of what we're doing, I had to buy it in cash. I also bought a top-of-the-line hot tub. That fucker was expensive. And we had to put a lot into the house, because it needed to look like the kind of place an elegant woman like Claire Jenkins would live. And by the way, it's not like you're paying rent. I keep cash in your pocket, and we're living large, just like I promised. So, we're ahead, but we've got expenses."
I didn't like where this conversation was going. She was living out of her car when I found her. I put her in a nice house. A house with a backstory I never burdened her with. I put her in nice clothes and fed her well. She went from being a streetwalker to living like a queen.
"I'm just asking what our end game is," Claire said. "What's our goal?"
"Our goal is to make the world a better place by making sure bad guys get got. We get their coins and they get karma, or fate, or whatever the fuck you want to call it."
That was just the frustration talking. There was a lot I hadn't been telling her, because it was none of her goddamn business.
I hadn't even told her I had a deal with Foke to swap Bitcoin for cash. She didn't ask where the money came from, so I didn't tell her. But I was feeling pretty pissed about how I was putting myself in danger while she went out to bars and splashed in a hot tub. The balance of duties in our partnership was not even close to being even. And she complained!?
I thought about putting her ass back on the streets, but I'd need to find somebody to replace her first.
"I've been thinking about our end game too," I said, but I didn't mean it how she thought. "I've been thinking about ramping up, to make more money, faster."
"So we can afford to get out?"
"Yeah, Claire." No, Claire. Come on. There was too much money to be made. Or taken. Whatever.
"You're saying there's a new plan?"
"I'm saying I'm working on a new plan."