Side by Side

22

The second he was released from his spy duty, Click Smoot shoved his laptop into his backpack and rushed to the parking garage to get his car. He planned to spend the rest of his day burning holes in other people’s credit in a few choice stores.

He got into his new Nissan Z, laid the backpack on the passenger floorboard, and drove out of the garage. The rain was falling heavily, so he flipped on both his headlights and his wipers.

Click reached under the dash and pressed a button opening a secret compartment large enough to hold two packages of credit cards each joined with a rubber band. Each package included two or three credit cards in an actual name and a driver’s license also in that name but with a recent photograph of Click on it.

Click used his intellect to make money the modern way and was already expanding the family’s take despite their amazing technological ignorance. Robbing, hijacking, illegal gambling clubs, whores, drugs, extortion, insurance fraud, murder for hire, and all the rest of what the family was into was the old way, and Click wanted no part of it. He wasn’t interested in being killed over some whore, or drugs, or a failed hijacking because some driver belonged to the NRA and had a gun he wanted to fire at some criminal so he could get written up in their magazine.

Click was concentrating on a future that few of the people in the family’s business could grasp. As far as his siblings were concerned, anything that was computerized, digitized, or involved something they couldn’t fold and hold was too abstract for them. The average Smoot’s capacity for grasping new technology was akin to a cat’s ability to appreciate fine art.

Click wasn’t like the other Smoots. Once upon a time the difference had been painful, but as he grew up he had come to appreciate how lucky he was. He had an I.Q. of 160. He had discovered early that a clean-cut young man was practically invisible.

Click didn’t hate his family. He just felt sorry for and was overwhelmingly embarrassed about them. He had come to the conclusion that the only thing he had in common with them was a larcenous gene. Like all Smoots, Ferny Ernest was repelled by legitimate work, was greedy, and, like a Gypsy, got an almost orgasmic thrill when he was stealing from outsiders. Only a stolen quarter was worth spending and only a sucker depended on a steady paycheck.

Click had explained to his father that the family could make more money using keyboards than they could with an army of soldiers. And Peanut was smart enough to realize that Click had something different and had supported his son’s forays into the world of computer-related crime.

When he was ready to make his big move, he would work a dozen big-dollar scams simultaneously, snatch millions, and be cashed out and long gone before anybody saw him coming. He had targeted banks and investment firms that moved millions daily. He would stand beside a flowing river of funds and, using a few keystrokes as his explosives, blow a hole in the levee. He would let the river flow into his canal a bit, then plug the hole and watch the canals he had built, each moving a tributary’s worth, join together and make a river of his own.

Soon.

Peanut’s latest interest in Click’s computers was as an avenue for selling pornography, which he was sure he could generate, and in collecting credit card information from the horny hordes that subscribed. For example, you set up a website for bait, and you chose a subject that rich people would be looking at. They visit, you run into their computer and plant a seed in it that collects their financial information from their hard drives. You didn’t even need to ask for credit card numbers, because people usually had that information on their drives.

Click had to admit that the porn thing would work, but it would attract the mob’s attention since the mob controlled porn and they would demand a big slice. Dixie had all the male and female prostitutes they would ever need. Buck wanted to be a producer, but that would be like hiring a wino to work in a crystal shop and putting him up on stilts.

He parked in front of the Media Warehouse. Ferny Ernest looked at the credit cards again, decided on an American Express card that belonged to Edmund C. Kellogg, and put the others back in the secret compartment.

“Another day, another dollar,” Click said as he opened the car’s door.