Rest in peace. I digress.
— One Ahead
"It's weird not spending so much time together," Claire said. "You've been busy lately."
"I know, right?"
We didn't have any marks lined up on Thanksgiving, so we were both home. Instead of turkey, I picked up a small deep friend chicken because grease is the word and a bird is a bird. Claire made me get some vegetables too. Fine. I also brought out a damn fine bottle of Scotch.
After dinner, we started arguing about whether a guy named Alfonso was an avocado. I don't know why she chose that word, but I let it go. I said he was a bagel, but she didn't believe me, so we headed down to my workshop to find his picture.
And since we didn't have anything better to do, we ended up going through the pile of marks to sort the who, what and whatever. It wouldn't have been a pile if she didn't dump everything on the floor, but... Whatever.
With one of her eyebrows raised sky high, she said, "Why in the fuck'd you just shove everything in here? It's a file cabinet. It's for filing."
I said, "I don't know," as I let it go, but she didn't.
"And why's everything in baggies?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time, Claire."
"It wasn't. Sorry."
"Fuck you. Pour me another drink. And one for you, too. C'mon. You're at least one behind, and this bottle isn't gonna empty itself!"
She was right though.
When she saw that all the marks were in the same drawer regardless of whether or not they had any Bitcoin, she said, "Girl, if you're gonna be doing this long term, you need a system." I cringed, so she offered to help.
I thought I had a system.
Each baggie had keys, with pictures of the mark's driver's license and his Bitcoin seed words. It made sense when we were getting started. I could remember who was who by looking at the pictures. But by this point we had... I don't know... sixty sets of keys? Maybe seventy? Had to be more since there were bagels too, and they were all dumped in the same drawer.
Claire was right. It was a mess.
I decided to split them into three drawers. YES, NO, and NONO. That last drawer was for the marks I couldn't get my way. I let Foke handle them. How he'd handle them, I didn't want to know. No, no.
"And why didn't you make a list, for future reference?" Claire said. "What if you ever want to look up an old job? You should keep track of details, like why a guy was targeted, what you got, and if there were any issues."
"Jesus Christ, are you reading my mind? I was just looking at this one, thinking, 'Why wasn't he a mark?'"
"Show me the picture? ...Oh, that's Elliott. He was nice. A little sad though. I think he was going through a divorce or something. He didn't have any Bitcoin, but one of his students did."
"Oh, yeah..."
Then we both shouted, "LANCE!" and we had a good laugh. What a tool that guy was. I overheard him talking to Claire about how to survive a financial apocalypse, like one was coming any day.
Then again, his day did come. She got him in the hot tub. I got his coins. And he got proven right, though not how he expected, when I wiped him the fuck out. 18.27 BTC. He had an unequivocally unrelated heart attack shortly thereafter. Rest in peace. I digress. Note to self: "Don't tell Claire."
When we weren't fighting, the two of us made a good team. By this point, we'd been together eleven months, and they'd flown by so fast. Our original deal was to do this for a year, and it was almost up. I knew she wouldn't keep going, and she knew I couldn't stop.
I already had Beanie as the new me, to search homes. Soon, I'd need a new Claire, to reel in marks.
Claire and I really were good at this, but we had different goals.
I was on a mission. She was just looking for a fresh start.
To be honest, I was still figuring out what my mission was.
Deep in the pit of my stomach, I've always had a feeling of doubt. Not self-doubt. More like an acknowledgement of the doubts of the world being thrown at me, from all sides. "Oh, she's a girl. Oh, she's poor. Oh, she's nothing." Oh, fuck that.
Wanting more wasn't about what I needed. It was about what I needed to prove, even if only for myself, to prove the world wrong, even if the world never knew. And it was about the rush that comes with the get. One by one, I got these guys, and I loved it.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Shay. What are you doing?"
"I'm filing Charlie."
"You're putting him in the Yes drawer. We agreed. He's a bagel. Sesame bagel."
"Right. He's a no. What about this guy?"
"Leo? Bagel. He's the one who sold a couple hundred Bitcoin back in 2013 to buy a car."
"Oh right! He was a mark because I spotted his Bitcoin bumper sticker."
"Do you have me filed in here?"
"What? Of course not, Claire."
"Girl, you should have everything filed in here, not just the seed words. You've got a typewriter and you never use it. You should be making a paper backup of everything, just in case."
"Think so?"
"Absolutely. 'Always paper. Never digital.' Isn't that one of your rules?"
"Yeah, yeah. You're right."
"You should be in here too. Where's your camera? I'm taking your picture."
"Mine?"
"You're the mastermind behind all of this, Shay. Nobody deserves to be in here more than you, right?"
We really were good together. I was the big picture thinker. Dreaming up plans and schemes. Claire was all about the details. Hell, she's the reason I started saving any of this stuff. I was going to toss it when a job was done. She told me to play the long game. She said, "If they don't realize how they got got, they'll start again. And they'll double-down on their online security without realizing their mistake was offline, so you can get 'em again." That was brilliant.
I already got two of these guys twice. The first was Kendrick Holmes. I got 4.3 BTC, but he had money and I had a hunch, so I went back a few months later to search his condo again. He didn't change the locks, but y'know what he did do? He bought a fancy new computer. I bet he thought his old one got hacked. And I got a new set of seed words for a wallet worth 1.9 BTC.
And there was Mark Bancroft. "He's now bankrupt," Claire said. He's the art dealer. Was the art dealer. He sold the gallery after I stole his Bitcoin. I found a couple sets of seed words, but only one of his wallets had coins. I found 9.15 BTC. A month later, he deposited 7 BTC into another wallet that I already had the seed words for, so I swiped those coins too.
"Gabe Fillmore? Get in the bagel drawer."
"Goddamn, Claire. What a bagel. Even his name sounds like a bagel."
"With cream cheese. He was cheesy as hell."
"Somebody needs to tell parents, 'IF YOU NAME YOUR KID LIKE A BAGEL, YOU'LL BE RAISING A BAGEL!!!'"
"His name's not why he's a bagel, Shay."
"I know. But it didn't help."
Gabe had a gambling problem. He needed help. I know that's an odd thing for me to say, since I tried to rob him, but both things can be true, and also, fuck you. When he was on a 'date' with Claire, his credit card got declined. We should have bageled him then and there, but you never know, so... we took a shot anyway.
"Shay, what the fuck!? Andre's in here? I thought he was just a test run, for me."
"C'mon, Claire. He was a test run for me, too."
"Oh."
Oh, come on! The same way some guys will try to fuck anything that moves, I'll try to rob any guy that doesn't. Surely Claire knew that.
"You hit his house, didn't you?"
"CLAIRE!!!"
After an awkward silence, we both burst out laughing again, because of course I did.
"Did you find anything good?" she asked.
"You're drinkin' it!!!"
Actually, I got 3 BTC from Andre. The Scotch was Doug's. I know, snatching something from a mark's home goes against my Leave No Trace rule, but Doug was an exception.
"This isn't Andre's hooch," Claire said. "He'd drink trash. Fess up. Whose is it?"
"I stole it from another guy. He wasn't a mark or a bagel. He was something else, from before you and I met."
"You've been hanging on to this for a while then."
"More like, I was waiting for the right time to let it go."
"And this is the right time, because...?"
"Well, one reason is, I'm gonna return the bottle, filled with something else."
"Please say dyed water."
"Dyed water."
"Good."
"And antifreeze."
"Shay, that's not okay. I mean, I know we're no saints, but that's..."
"What if he's really cold, Claire? You don't know!"
"SHAY!!!"
"Relax. I'm kidding. You know my sense of humor is dark."
"Sorry. It's just... That's the kinda thing you shouldn't even joke about."
"No worries."
"Okay."
"Hey, I need to use the bathroom. Be right back."
I also needed to rethink the antifreeze.
I also needed to hide the antifreeze.