Charade

Benji

Ice cold air prickled my ears, numbing the tips of my nose and fingers, and sliced through my clothes like a knife. I watched my breath fog around my chapped lips, felt my cheeks flush red, and tried to control my trembling body. The clock rolled into morning and the street was looking more daunting every minute.

Yellow streetlight glinted off puddles of August rain, rippling every time a new drop fell in. It was quiet, mostly, if not for the distant rumble of cars on nearby streets. I stood on the corner of the middle of nowhere, uneasy with the limited lamplight, but captivated by the stars that hung like diamonds in a black midnight sky. I shivered, looking for a moon to illuminate the shadowy parts of the street, the parts that set my nerves on edge. I never liked the dark.

The croaky laughter of two women, obviously heavy smokers, echoed through the street. I jumped, startled, as they rounded the corner. They were in their twenties but their obvious drug habit made them look older. The sunken eyes, washed out skin, the bony frames... It didn't take a genius to figure it out. With linked arms, they passed me, wearing the bare minimum. Fake fur coats which stopped at the stomach, denim short shorts with the pocket longer than the actual denim, fishnet tights, slick black boots that came up to the knee – or in the blonde woman's case, cheap red high heels. Hookers. Great. I felt really safe now, knowing there was some scary-ass pimp nearby with all his drug dealer buddies watching the three of us. God, why the hell did I agree to meet Vic here, in the middle of the night, on the corner of the middle of nowhere? There were so many things I'd rather be doing right now – like sleeping, for example. You know, what normal people do this time of night. Nope. Not me. Never me.

I leaned against a graffitied wall and pulled out a cigarette. Maybe a smoke could put my nerves at ease, or at least convince me to unclench my muscles. I took in a huge drag, feeling the instant relief, and blew it out into the night sky. Whether the fog was smoke or steam, I couldn't tell.

Just as I did so, Vic turned the corner. He sauntered up to me, carrying a plastic bag.

"Hey, Vic." I greeted.

"Hello," he said. "Do you know why we're here?"

I shook my head.

"Not really. You were kind of vague."

"We're here to install these," he said, opening the bag.

I peered inside at what can only be described as grey lumps of shit I didn't recognise.

"What... what are they?"

"Skimmers," he said. "Have you seen them before?"

I frowned.

"Nope," I said, taking one out of the bag. "What exactly do they do?"

"They're credit card readers. Highly illegal. Risky. But worth it. You can make thousands off of these if you use them properly. See here," Vic said, pointing to a slit in the grey lump. "This is where the credit card goes. People insert the card here and the device inside it reads all their details. Number, identity, everything. And this," he said, pulling out a small black cord, "is a camera. This captures the PIN number."

I couldn't help but smile as I examined the skimmer. There had to be a dozen in here, all waiting to tell me whose bank account to hack next.

"That's awesome," I said.

"After we install them," he continued, "we wait a few weeks and come back to get them later. Not many people favour plastic over paper in these parts, but it's much safer to do it here because it's quiet. The only people out here are the stupid and the dangerous, so be careful. Avoid every person you see, no matter how few you encounter or whatever you feel about them, and be aware if somebody is following you. Put that sixth sense to good use. Do you understand, Benjamin?"

I nodded.

"Got it. Avoid everyone. But what do we do we get the skimmers back? Like, do you plug into a computer or something?"

"Blank bank cards. They're worth a bloody fortune but I know a guy who works at the bank. I pay him a couple hundred, sometimes a thousand, and he steals some blank bank cards and gives them to me. We put the blank cards in, the skimmer puts all the details of someone else's card onto the blank one, and there you go. You've got a perfect copy of someone else's credit card. Then all you have to do is look through the camera footage for the PIN number and you can take as much or as little as you want out of the person's account."

"So you can just... take it? All of it? And walk away?"

"Well... yes and no. Usually, if they've got a couple of grand, I'll collect all of it at once but if they're rich, really rich, I'll take a little at a time. You know, a hundred here to help with the rent, another fifty here to pay for petrol. You can only take so much out of the bank at once. So if the person has got a million in the account and I can only take out twenty five grand a day, in a day or two that person knows they've been stolen from. Better to take it slowly, so they never notice."

Somehow, this reminded me of what I did for a living – taking things a little a time so people never notice. A can of food here, a tub of water there. Things people can put down to bad memory or other 'logical' excuses. When I thought about it, what Vic and I did wasn't so different. We took things that weren't ours. We made deals with potentially dangerous people. We were thieves and blackmailers and we made damn sure nobody knew us, or what we did, or if we were even there.

"Huh," I mumbled. "Okay, so how do you install these things? You'll have to show me. My teachers used to say I was a visual learner."

Vic smiled, a real smile, the first one I'd ever seen on him. What was this? Was he happy? Amused? It was impossible to tell with Vic, but judging from all the outbursts of emotion I'd witnessed so far, I had to say this one was by far my favourite.

"Come on, then," he said. "And make sure you cover your face."

© A.G. Travers 2015