Andrew Price - Without A Hitch

Corbin recoiled. “What happened to the money?!” he all but screamed.

“I gave it away.”

“To who?!”

“It doesn’t really matter. It’s gone.”

Corbin ground his teeth and his eyes burned a hole into Beckett’s skull.

“I couldn’t keep it,” Beckett admitted. “It was tearing me apart. It was. . it was wrong.”

“Is there anything else I need to know?!” Corbin asked through gritted teeth. His fists clenched.

“I’ve told you everything.”

“Fuck, you better have! This money isn’t going to show up at trial, is it?”

“I don’t see how.”

“What about the wallet?”

“I don’t know anything about a wallet!” Beckett insisted. Beckett looked around and noticed for the first time that people were walking past them. “You know, maybe we shouldn’t be arguing about this here, on the street.”

They returned in bitter silence to the Tribune Building.

The conference room, like the rest of the Tribune Building’s seventh floor, had been renovated. Yet, the room still smelled of cigar smoke from the days when newspapermen occupied every inch of the building. One wall of the conference room was lined with books. A Rockwell-like painting of a Tribune paperboy hawking newspapers hung on another. Three windows peered down onto the grayish streets seven floors below.

Corbin spread Beaumont’s file out across the oak conference table. Being a fraud case, a so-called “paper case,” the file contained significantly more evidence than the typical criminal file. Not only were there the usual witness statements and forensics reports, but the file also contained a vast array of bank and credit card documents, copies of checks, and dozens of receipts, along with a raft of evidence related to Beaumont’s prior run-ins with the law. Corbin took copious notes. After an hour of digging through the file, Corbin emerged from the conference room to find Beckett. Beckett’s office was small, but relatively modern. His personal effects were scattered throughout the room.

“I know how they caught our boy,” Corbin stated.

Beckett closed the file he was reading.

“It looks like Beaumont operated an identity theft ring,” Corbin continued. “He was stealing credit cards and checkbooks from mailbox stores. Then he used the checks and credit cards at local stores. Sadly for us, he robbed one of our boxes.”

“I thought you cleared all those out?”

“We did at first . We emptied every box completely, and I accounted for every check and credit card we were expecting. But we never went back to collect monthly statements. It’s possible Beaumont used those to order more checks or maybe some bank sent free checks without telling us? I don’t know. We used the starter checks, and we never ordered regular checks. If a whole new set of checks showed up a few weeks later, we never would have known.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter how he got them?”

“No, not really,” Corbin agreed. “At this point, they’ve charged him with about a dozen bad checks on our accounts and about two dozen bad checks on accounts that aren’t ours. They also charged him with stealing three identities we used to open the accounts and with a weapons charge.”

“They’re up to something with the weapons charge,” Beckett suggested.

“Could be. It seems out of place and there’s not much about it in the file. What’s interesting is they could have charged him with a lot more. I’m not sure why they didn’t. If he’s convicted on all counts, he’s only facing five years max if they run everything consecutively, two if they run everything concurrently. With time off for good behavior, he’ll be free in either three years or one year. That’s not a lot of time for a guy like Beaumont. He can do that standing on his head.”

“The prosecutor wants him to plead to three years.”

Corbin furrowed his brow. “That seems a little optimistic on their part. Do you think they’d take two years?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Beckett blurted out. “I’m not letting Beaumont plead guilty to anything we did.”

“What if he wants to?!” Corbin retorted.

“Forget it. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Beaumont brought this on himself and our crimes are only tangential to his. I don’t accept that.” Beckett rose and stared out the window. “I’m not letting him go down for our crimes, even if they’re mixed in with his own. He’s innocent, and if you’re just here to talk me out of this, then you should leave now. I’m serious about doing the right thing.”

“He may not be guilty, but he’s hardly innocent. Have you read his file?”

Beckett shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what he’s done in the past. I’m only concerned with what he’s accused of now.”

“It does matter. If you’re going to throw your life away for the guy, then you need to understand who he is.”

“I know he’s a bad guy, but right and wrong don’t depend on who gets hurt.”

“Sometimes they do, Evan,” Corbin growled.

“No, Alex, they don’t.”

Corbin flipped through his notes. “Did you know your friend Beaumont deals crack to school kids?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell that to the parents. Did you know your friend Beaumont killed two women, at the same time?” Beckett opened his mouth to speak, but Corbin cut him off. “He raped one before killing her. The other one, his girlfriend, he brought along to watch the rape. Then he shot her, right after he shot the woman he raped.”

“Then they should have charged him with murder.”

“Oh, they did. They’ve charged him with all kinds of things, but witnesses have a habit of vanishing before they can testify against him. Take Manuel Lopez. Manuel, a day laborer, had the misfortune of seeing Beaumont leave the scene of the aforementioned double homicide. Two days after his name became known to Beaumont, Manuel disappeared. Manuel reappeared in the river a week later. They’d broken most of his bones with a lead pipe before dumping him into the river to drown.”

“I’m sorry the system doesn’t always work, but maybe if the cops did their jobs a little better, he would already be behind bars. Our suspicion that he’s bad doesn’t give us the right to let him take the fall for our crimes. No matter what he did or what we think he did, this, what’s happening now, isn’t right.”

“Wait a minute,” Corbin protested.

“No. Allowing him to be punished for our crimes is wrong, and we can’t hide behind his prior actions to justify our failure to take responsibility for our own.”

Corbin took a deep breath. “Has it dawned on you that sometimes, maybe just maybe, doing the right thing means letting something wrong happen?”

They stared at each other silently.

“You can’t do good by doing evil,” Beckett finally said. “Right is right. Wrong is wrong. Right and wrong depend on what you do, not who you do it to.”

“Sometimes it does, Evan,” Corbin replied bitterly.

“No, Alex, it never does. We don’t have the right to judge this man.”

“The hell we don’t!”

Both men glared at each other until Beckett turned away.

“Alex, I want you to understand, this isn’t about Beaumont. This is about reconciling ourselves to our consciences and to a higher power.”

“Fair enough,” Corbin replied. “But I want you to understand who you’re protecting.”

“I do.” Beckett picked up the file from his desk. “Are you ready to meet Beaumont? He should be back at jail by now.”

“Can’t wait.” Corbin rolled his eyes. “Before we meet him though, tell me this: what if Beaumont pleads guilty to the other crimes and the charges related to our crimes get dismissed. Will that satisfy you?”