In her imagination, she played through the scenario: walking through the gorgeous rooms of a mansion in search of something blackmail worthy.
The odds of stumbling across another person in flagrante delicto were absurdly slim. She toyed with the possibility of finding someone’s stash of cocaine or heroin or pills—the few remaining illegal drugs—but what could she really expect? A pile of baggies of white powder, each one helpfully labeled?
Even if she did find such a stash, how much would a possession charge hurt one of the Entitled? She was no prosecutor or criminal defense lawyer, but she suspected that such people didn’t often serve time—or find themselves in the media spotlight—for minor possession charges.
No, the noteworthy crimes committed by these people were surely white-collar crimes, all committed on Earworms and projcoms. She’d find no physical evidence. If she knew how to hack computers, it would be easy, she imagined. But with her limited technical skills, she would have to find an unlocked projcom to rifle through, like at Mr. Alvarez’s house.
All afternoon, Helen researched her next two targets, Mr. and Mrs. Takeuchi and Mr. and Mrs. White, looking for any possible lead on white-collar crimes.
As a break, while she was using the library projcom and the cops couldn’t track her activity back to her or Mandy, she logged in to check Whatsit.
Since Wednesday, she had collected 4,291 reactions and 238 comments.
Her fans had boosted her post and profile 112 times. They had augmented her post into over 20 variations, with 7 of them projected into the 3’scape. She’d made a very welcome $4,000 from the few ultrawealthy who couldn’t resist their curiosity about her first post.
Messages from two journalists were waiting for her. One was from MCCTv, the channel that broke the news about her string of thefts, and she deleted it with prejudice. The other was from LSTV: [ Hey, I'm Christian Smith, a journalist and a huge fan. Can I interview you? I'll protect your privacy and identity, I promise. ]
She felt a moment of temptation, but then decided not to take the risk. She could talk directly to her people here, on Whatsit.
She scanned the augmentations and comments. A large number of people were doubting that this account was real. Of course—she should have thought of that. She would need to figure out a way around it.
It occurred to her to check to see whether her retirement fund check had hit her bank account yet. She had $2,750 coming. She logged into her account and saw no payment. She went back to the retirement fund website to check the status, and there was nothing about a pending request. Her heart sank, and she picked up her e-paper to call.
She spent the next two hours on hold, only to be told that the fund manager had no record of her request and that she would need to file it again.
She slowly banged her head on the desk in front of her. Thank God for the eight thousand dollars she’d gotten from Tolbrook’s sculpture. With a heavy heart, she repeated all the paperwork.
She remembered to check the news at five o’clock. The fourth story revealed that Tolbrook had made the donation to Hand in Hand—one million dollars. That, at least, made her smile.
The library lights flickered on and off three times and a recording told the patrons to make their way to the exits. It was time to go get ready for the evening’s robbery.
Helen went into the party that night having drawn a blank on Mr. and Mrs. Takeuchi, and as she pessimistically expected, her brief search of rooms unguarded by sentries turned up no contraband. Her second attempt to blackmail failed.
She found only a moderate prize—Mr. Takeuchi’s Centaure watch, in plain sight on his nightstand. She recognized the brand and knew it was worth about a thousand dollars.
Before she left the mansion, she took a video of the watch on the nightstand, also capturing the portrait of Mr. Takeuchi in the background. In a day or two, after the watch had passed through too many hands to be tracked back to Egemon, she would post the video to Whatsit along with the comment, “Mr. Takeuchi, I have your Centaure.” That would prove she was the Robin Hood Thief.
She sold the watch to Egemon, left the pawn shop—calling “Good night” to him as she went out—and headed home.
As she got out of Old Blue in her parking spot at her apartment building, she heard muffled rock music coming from somewhere on her floor. Enthusiastic but inexpert rock music, she decided as she trudged along tiredly. The guitar and drums were slightly out of sync, and then the lead guitar hit a flat note, which suggested that it was a live band practicing.
The music only got louder as she approached her hallway and even louder as she approached her door, until she realized with equal parts dismay and confusion that it came from her own apartment.
It had to be friends of Mandy—that was obvious—but did they really have an entire rock band shoved into her microscopic living room? Annoyance and frustration arose, and fear for her daughter’s future along with it. When was the girl going to grow up? Other people had a right to peace and quiet in their own homes.
She was ready to give Mandy a piece of her mind as she opened the door and went to step in. The head of a lead guitar nearly hit her in the face, and she pulled back. Two guitarists stood in the kitchen. The drums filled the living room. The keyboard was set up in the bedroom, a step inside the door.
They kept playing, of course. The guitarist, a skinny kid with long black hair and a black motorcycle jacket and a sad excuse for facial hair, grinned maniacally at her and vigorously nodded his head in time to the music. Helen frowned at him.
Where was Mandy in all of this?
She looked around a second time, absolutely ready to believe that Mandy had turned their apartment over to a random band and then gone out, and ready to be livid about it—and then she spotted the plumes of blue hair on the other side of the lead guitarist.
Mandy was playing bass guitar. Her pale, delicate face was intent and her black-lipsticked mouth set in a focused line as she stared at the fretboard.
Helen recognized Mandy’s guitar. It had been David’s, although he didn’t play it anymore by the time he moved in with Helen. When Mandy was eleven, she took an interest in it, and David gave her a few lessons before tuning out again.
It was great to see her daughter playing it. Heck, to see her doing anything besides sitting on the loveseat and staring at a screen. To see her among physical friends, part of something that existed in three-dimensional reality, doing something creative. Happiness soared in Helen, and it chased away her anger and lifted her fatigue.
She watched for a moment, enjoying the awe that comes from discovering some new and impressive dimension of your own child. Mandy wasn’t half-bad. She must have been at this for at least a few months.
Helen didn’t want to make Mandy feel self-conscious by watching too long, so she gave the band a little wave and went back out, drumming her thigh along with the music as she walked down the hallway.
When she got out to the car again, she sent Mandy a message: [ Let me know when your band leaves so I can go to bed. No hurry. So happy to see you playing Dad’s guitar! You’re really good, too. ]
Saturday morning, Helen killed time on her e-paper at home on the loveseat, waiting for Mandy to wake up so they could talk about her new band.
But when Mandy finally came out of their bedroom, she was dressed to leave.
“Good morning,” Helen said tentatively.
“I’m going out,” Mandy replied as she headed toward the door.
“Wait a second,” Helen pleaded. She got up from the loveseat and approached, and while she did, Mandy unlocked the front door and went out.
Helen stopped. “Mandy…” she said in protest.
Mandy stood in the hallway with the door half-open. “What?” she asked. She gave Helen a blank, resentful look that said Can’t you just leave me alone?
“I just wanted to tell you I’m really excited about your band and really proud of you,” Helen said forlornly.
“Yeah, okay, th
anks,” Mandy said. She shut the door.
26 Days
Helen went out immediately after Mandy, not in pursuit of her but just wanting to leave that moment behind as quickly as possible, before it broke her heart too completely.
She would lose herself in her work, as she always did. It was just a new line of work these days.
She hoped to have better luck in blackmailing her next target, Mr. White. That night—Saturday night—he and his wife would celebrate the engagement of their youngest daughter.
Something that Helen wouldn’t live long enough to see for her own daughter.
She spent the afternoon researching White, and she lucked into some news about him and his pharmaceutical company, Fabre-Terre.
A few years ago, he made twenty million dollars in a single transaction by selling off shares of Fabre-Terre—and two days afterward, a whistleblower filed suit against Fabre-Terre under the False Claims Act, and the stock price dropped precipitously. The timing was suspicious. It was as if White knew the lawsuit was about to be filed.
The SEC charged him with insider trading a few months later, but the federal judge’s rulings ever since either damaged or stalled the SEC’s case. Three days ago, the judge ruled in favor of Mr. White’s pleading to eliminate a key witness in the insider trading case, based on a technicality. In short, the judge was suspiciously friendly to Mr. White. It smelled of bribery.
Perhaps she could do something with this information.
That night, Helen presented her fake ID at Mr. White’s door, toasted the glowing couple with pink champagne, and then went into the farthest, most personal rooms to look for a projcom or clamshell.
She might not find a computer unattended, and if she did, it might have security she couldn’t bypass. But Mr. White was older than herself, so that lowered the odds he would be tech-savvy.
She felt the clock ticking away as she went through bedrooms, guest rooms, libraries, studies, a billiards room, and more. A sick nervous dread welled up in her stomach. But finally she walked into a bedroom and spotted the distinctive small black box of a projcom at a desk on the far side of the room.
A rush of excitement drove down the nervous dread as she went over and activated the screen and keyboard, her fingers crossed. It lit up to show a desktop, not a lock screen. Praying her luck would hold, she found an email icon and clicked it.
Ten minutes later, she went back out among the self-satisfied glitterati. She took another glass of pink bubbles while Mr. White finished live-narrating the video of his soon-to-be son-in-law’s elaborate proposal. It had involved a procession of a hundred musicians, acrobats, and jugglers leading them into the Piazza Navona square in Rome and a private display of fireworks, followed by a helicopter lift-off to Venice.
Must be nice, Helen thought bitterly. In fact, it sounded wonderful.
“The hardest part of the whole ordeal was getting the homeless and poor people out of the way, that and all the trash they leave behind,” Mr. White said, “but they would’ve ruined the effect for my daughter. We had the place gleaming. Good thing the local authorities understand the language of money, am I right?”
The audience guffawed and raised their glasses.
Knowing what she had just done, Helen didn’t even get angry.
When the applause wound down, she went out of the mansion and to her rented Mercedes.
As the car took her away to safety, she thought over the email she’d just composed to Mr. White, and she smiled.
Dear Mr. White,
You’ll note that this email comes from your personal email account. Yes, I wrote this from your very own projcom in your bedroom. And no, I’m not there now, so there’s no sense alerting security. I decided to take advantage of the “send later” feature on your email application. I wrote this email an hour ago.
Now, I’d like you to take note of the attached video I just made. It documents a very interesting string of emails about the sale of Fabre-Terre stock that you made—to your immense profit—a few years ago. They show how you profited by being informed about the False Claims Act lawsuit before it happened. And they show how you’ve bribed the judge ever since to obstruct the case.
You’ll note the datestamp, as well as how I captured the entire bedroom and the portrait of yourself and your lovely wife, just for additional verification.
Naturally, a copy of the video has already been uploaded to a secure location that I have under my control.
Now, I want you to choose one of your assets. A building, a business, I don’t care what. Some asset worth at least five million dollars. Since you made twenty million off your Fabre-Terre sale, I’m sure you’ll find that a very fair number.
You’re going to sign that asset directly over to Star Programs, and you’re going to publicize that generosity. If I don’t see an item on LSTV about this by close of business Monday, I will publish the video.
Star Programs is a charity that helps the homeless. But you might remember that. As I read in the news a couple of weeks ago, you donated a thousandth of a percent to them at the Net Worth Notion.
Five million dollars is a little more proportionate.
I do wish I could see your face right now as you’re reading this on your e-paper with your party still going on all around you, pretending you’re good people while ignoring the suffering of the masses. But, like I said… I’m already gone.
Love, the Robin Hood Thief
25 Days
Helen followed the blackmail attempt with a successful burglary on Sunday morning. She took a sculpture and other odds and ends worth just over seven thousand dollars.
But then the Robin Hood Thief was on LSTV again that night. The news was bad.
Mr. White and possibly Mr. Tolbrook had talked to the cops—about the thefts, not the blackmail. Out at a sunlit and peaceful coffee shop, Helen scanned the text version of the article. Under the headline “Robin Hood Thief Strikes Again,” she spotted the byline of the journalist who’d reached out to her before—Christian Smith. His photo matched his profile photo on Whatsit, and his tone was, in fact, appreciative.
She played the video clip. “Authorities from all six affected counties are now working together to identify the serial thief,” the newscaster announced. “Officials say they have been receiving not only tips but direct assistance and generous donations from several of the victims, though all are doing so under condition of anonymity.”
Helen let out a sigh. The net was being cast. She stared into space, suddenly unable to fend off the vision of herself in handcuffs, probably Tasered by the cops, dragged helpless and sobbing into a patrol car.
Stop. This was pointless.
She just wished she would have the opportunity to see the fruits of her labors. She’d won a million from Tolbrook and a hundred thousand from Alvarez and maybe five million from White. But it took time for the charities to process the donations, work them into their budgets, and disburse them to the ultimate recipients. She wouldn’t live long enough to see the results take shape in the real world.
Her e-paper chimed. That would be Mandy. Only Mandy ever texted her. The message read: [ We need dog food. Jessie’s out again. ]
Helen ground her teeth. [ It’s YOUR job, Mandy. Go get some today. Now. Walk to the store. It is not that far. ]
No reply, of course.
Hoping to find some encouragement, she logged into Whatsit. Immediately, an anonymous message popped up: [ You’re not going to get away with this. You will regret ever setting foot in my house. ]
Her shoulders sagged and she wiped a hand across her face, her heart suddenly thudding. She fought back the urge to look around her in search of someone glaring from a dark corner.
Of course she knew she would make enemies, doing this, but it still freaked her out to have them.
She turned her attention back to her profile. Thousands of people were active on it. Even as she watched, someone posted the police report for Mr. Takeuchi’s missing Centaure watch, just as s
he’d hoped, to corroborate her video.
She scanned some of the thousands of recent comments. A lot were abusive—that would never change. It was the internet, after all. But a lot of the comments bolstered her.
[ What your doing’s awesome. Don’t stop. ]
[ Take ‘em for all their worth. ]
[ Don’t get caught, Robin! Give them the slip. They’re going to be watching closer and closer. ]
[ I just hope she gets out of the country before it’s too late. ]
Then Helen glimpsed something that made her stop in alarm.
[ I did it too! Look at this beauty. Got it from my aunt’s friend’s house. Sold it for $250, gave it all to charity. ] The picture showed a pocketknife with a mother-of-pearl handle.
Dammit. Helen stared into space with fresh dismay. Maybe she should have expected this. Copycats. Proud copycats. This one sounded like a teenager.
She scrolled down and found another dozen or so along the same lines.
Did she want this? She tapped her nails on the table as she thought. More participants meant more money going to charity. On the face of it, nothing could be better.
But these were kids. Kids with their whole lives ahead of them.
[ Copycats: I love you. I’m proud of you. So proud of you. But please don't take the risk. My situation is different. ]
Helen stopped and let out a long sigh. Speaking of clueless kids, there was something she needed to do—something that had been nagging at her for days.
She opened a new window and logged into her documents folder, the one she shared with Mandy. She created a new document called "Day-to-day stuff." There she added how to pay the rent and utilities, and the fact that Helen had now added Mandy to her financial accounts. The phone numbers for all the utilities. The name and address and phone number of their vet, for Jessie.
She added a business where Mandy could get driving lessons. Mandy had never let her mother teach her. And, assuming Mandy decided to keep Old Blue, how often to service her. The name and address and phone number for the mechanic. Admonitions about keeping up with oil changes and the importance of responding to warning lights and messages.
The Robin Hood Thief Page 12
