All That Money

I’ve robbed a millionaire before but never a billionaire.

My apartment has several perks. It’s rent-controlled, therefore cheap. The views of the city are breath-taking. The balcony has space for my aviary. It can see three ATMs directly through my telescope, all of which are far enough away that I can avoid suspicion.

This morning I saw a man in a fine suit at the ATM outside the bank four blocks away. My pigeons were waiting atop lampposts nearby ready to get to work when I knew the guy’s pin. Out of his pocket came an expensive looking leather wallet, not pleather, probably Italian because I’ve heard that’s a thing people care about. Out came the credit card and then he had his back to me.

Then came the voyeurism, that’s what I’m calling it. It’s not possession because I can’t exert any control, but I can see what people see if I really concentrate. There are a lot of people in the city and focusing on one requires proximity or, with the aid of a telescope, a direct line of sight. The pigeons are always a distraction at that point. They’re used to having me in their head and know that it means they get a treat when the job is done but it means they all but welcome me in when they can sense my mind feeling towards them.

He shook his head, feeling a bit dizzy as I picked at the locks of his mind. Everyone has defences but unless you’re used to fighting off mental invasion they’re underdeveloped. My headache began as he rubbed his forehead, but I was in. As he opened his eyes and gave a little shake, I saw the wallet in his hand. I saw his manicured fingers and the cut of material that I would never spend money on. His suit was worth the down payment for my apartment.

Into the slot went the little plastic card. The ATM screen switched to the page for the pin code input. He looked down, those long smooth fingers hit 4829 and then Enter. Like all rich people he wasn’t interested in seeing his balance and selected to make a withdrawal. I watched him hit the 5 then add three 0s as if that was a casual amount. He smoothed his gelled hair in the reflection of the dark screen. I saw black hair and the jawline of someone who had been sporting in high school and had not kept the exercise up. The whirring inside the machine began and then the machine began to beep as the slot with the card flashed.

Right on cue my pigeons attacked. I couldn’t see through his eyes anymore. I saw through theirs and went for the card with one bird then the cash with the next. The sound of flapping wings and the businessman on his back swearing filled my ears. I had the card in one beak and some of the cash in another.

Notes spilled across the pavement as the machine beeped, wanting the man to remove the receipt. He dashed across the ground trying to snatch up the ten-dollar bills as the wind whipped them away. It wasn’t what I’d intended but fuck me if it wasn’t funny. As the cash fluttered along the street other people grabbed for it. The man protested, ripping the shoulder of his suit as he made wild swipes at the air.

            “Fuck you birds. That’s my money,” said the man who was looking more and more familiar. He hadn’t even thought about his card yet. Why should he? There was no one else near the ATM.

He threw a shoe at one of my pigeons, smacking a wing as my buddy was in flight. Up until then I had been content to laugh at the misfortune of the fortunate but no, not if he was resorting to violence.

Pigeons always need to shit. If they wait it’s just to find the best target. My birds had their target locked and as they flew overhead, they loosed their loads, spraying him with white mess. People nearby were filming it on their phones and sniggering. It was time to go. My birds had to escape and go on a detour before coming back to my balcony. Up into the sky they went, leaving the suited, half-shoeless man in mess on the street.

At another ATM in the car park of a 24-hour convenience store my team was making another withdrawal. Pigeons are amazingly dextrous when they’re motivated. In went the card, probably scratched by its journey in the beak but that wasn’t my problem. In went the code 4829 and then the questions. Check balance? Make a withdrawal with receipt? Make a Withdrawal without a receipt?

Usually, I just double the amount the last person withdrew from the ATM then leave the card there to be reclaimed. Given the suit at the familiarity of the man’s face I wanted to know what he had to lose. A beak hit the button to check the balance of the account.

WOW. I’ve never seen so many zero’s.

Given the balance I could guess who the guy was. Looking back through the telescope at the man in his suit I saw the titan of industry having a full-on meltdown and probably going viral on someone’s live cast as well. His face was bright red, tomato red. He was pointing those manicured fingers at people in the street and yelling stuff that looked very threatening. Being covered in bird shit wasn’t helping him look tough but it was another reason people gave him a wide berth.

I was shocked as I realised that he was the guy from the news being sued by hundreds of workers in India for locking them inside his factories overnight and being investigated for child labour. Half of the shoes in shops had put money in his pocket. Not just that, he had a chain of shops back home where workers reportedly made less than the minimum wage and were threatened if they tried to take legal action about it.

Union busters were his best paid lackeys trying to keep his underlings from taking their share of his fortune for the work they did. Twelve-hour shifts were a minimum in states where the legal limit was ten.

Despite the cash at his disposal his businesses had constantly been expanding and working at a loss to reduce their taxable profit meaning he could get richer without paying back his due for wringing profit out of hundreds of thousands of workers worldwide. In twenty years, he’d made more money than someone on the minimum wage could if they worked twelve hours a day, every day for two thousand years.

I’m not Robin Hood but fuck this guy. I hit withdrawal and tried to take out everything in his account. The ATM said that his daily withdrawal limit was ten thousand dollars.

Ten thousand dollars was about as much as his charity foundation had given away after storing his billions in another tax dodge for three years. If he didn’t have bodyguards, it was probably because no one was willing to stick their neck out for him.

Ten thousand dollars was spare change to the tycoon, but it was a start. I withdrew the rest of the day’s allowance and my birds brought me as much as they could after going the long way to my balcony.

With that card, despite ATM withdrawal limits, it would be possible to make online payments. It was tempting to post photos of the card on the internet but that would lead back to me and then Kenneth Truzoz would have me put in prison forever. I had to be creative.

One of Mr Truzoz first business ventures was as a slumlord. He bought up shitty flats, divided them up into smaller shitty flats and then found vulnerable people to live in his hovels on rolling contracts that upped the price whenever he felt like it, which was constantly. He was thankfully sued so much that he decided to exploit another industry in a country with fewer rights but still it gave me an idea. I’d seen people who had ended up homeless because of shit like that. They couldn’t make payments they were contractually obliged to despite the fact their boilers were fucked, their air conditioners were faulty, and their black mould was living it up. The only respite for those people was to go off the grid, to become homeless.

There’s a charity street on the bad side of town. It’s where the homeless shelters are. Its where the food kitchens are. It’s where you go if you’re out of options or, like me, you’re doing well and feeling guilty about it.

At some of the charity sites it’s possible to make a card payment for whatever amount you like as a donation. In goes the card, in goes the pin, input the total. Voila, assuaged guilt, for a while.

Times are hard. Thousands lost their jobs during the crash. Hundreds of people living on the street died during the heatwave a few months ago. How many of them were there because they lived in one of Truzoz’s homes? How many were there because they lost their job in one of his stores? If he spent a fraction of his worth on helping, they would have been fine.

Apparently, the next frontier for him is space. Presumably he wants to find somewhere new to dodge tax now that governments are starting to work out that it’s possible to tax the rich as well as the poor.

If I thought he was going to die in a test flight I wouldn’t give a shit but people like him don’t die because they have people to do that for them. Those victims of exploration rarely get their due when the billionaires are smashing perfectly drinkable champagne across their deductible three-quarter life crisis rockets.

I can communicate with most animals with a brain bigger than a cashew. Everything from rodents to elephants, it’s easier to talk to mammals but birds and but some lizards are suitable as well. Fish are just weird. Don’t ask. My favourite four legged agents are ferrets because they are nimble, sneaky and really damned smart.

Since I can communicate with them directly, I can give specific instructions without the need to possess them like the pigeons. I have two little buddies called Pepper and Tabasco because I named them while I was cooking fajitas drunk. I know you’re judging me but trust me they really suit the names, and the fajitas were amazing. Pepper is black and white. Tabasco is gingery orange colour.

Just in case you’re wondering what I look like picture generic white guy who exercises enough to avoid a beer gut but not enough to avoid a double chin unless he’s looking up. I have blue eyes which is a problem when you’re trying to avoid attention in a neighbourhood where brown eyes are standard. I’m a little taller than average but I slouch a bit to make it less noticeable, and because I have terrible posture.

Pepper and Tabasco like to take a crap before I take them on missions. I let them do their business in the litter box before ushering them into their favourite backpack and heading out.

Scott and Knives are my Alsatians that handle security when I’m out. Before you ask, no I wasn’t drunk when I named them after characters from the Edgar Wright movie. I was high.

Strolling down the street in my faded black hoodie and jeans I probably looked like any other drug dealer heading to his corner. That is no doubt why a cop car pulled over in front of me and two officers asked to see what was in my bag. Getting Pepper to sit on the stolen card was easy. After seeing that my backpack was full of fluffy mischief they weren’t as curious about my trip to the vet. I showed them that I wasn’t carrying a weapon but warned them that my babies were a bit bitey. They left the bag alone and drove away.

Getting the attention of police with a bag of ferrets wasn’t the best way to start my mission to liberate Truzoz’s billions but at least they weren’t asking for proof that I owned the ferrets, White privilege.

The rest of my walk was less eventful. I passed some corners where people were selling drugs. I guess I looked like a customer because most of them asked me what I was after. I shrugged my way through and kept going.

The journey from the good side of town to bad is a slow walk through the colour chart from bright greys and blues of clean concrete and glass to the dull browns and greys of concrete that hasn’t been washed down in years. Plant pots outside buildings become trash bags and adverts become tags. Gleaming towers become low rise blocks then housing towers again.

Some of those trashed high rise housing blocks had belonged to Truzoz back in the day. They’d been done up and neglected again since. There were charities trying to change things for the better, but he’d never given a dime to them.

The charity road doesn’t have many working streetlights. It’s got people sitting in doorways in sleeping bags or standing around barrel fires in winter. Those buildings are a thin net of hope for people struggling for the minimum. Only one of the charity buildings has CCTV. It was my alibi. I walked into the shelter and told them I wanted to donate.

The woman in the pastel pink cardigan behind the desk lit up like Christmas. I think she’d been expecting me to ask for help. Getting out my wallet I put down my backpack. Pepper and Tabasco had been let out before I came in. They would be back later. All I had to do was donate and hang tight until they had done their work.

First of all I put my card in the slot she had at the desk, entered my pin and gave them fifty dollars. The name Megan was on the black and white name badge on the woman’s cardigan. She thanked me and asked if I wanted to know more about the charity. I did, because it would take ages for her to tell me everything they did, long enough for my ferrets to do their work.

While I asked questions the dynamic condiment named due were scurrying from shop to shop. Pepper was the distraction master. She could set off fire alarms or knock over desktop detritus to make noise as Tabasco put the card in the slot, punched in the pin code and then gave $200,000,000 to the drug rehab clinic, then the women’s shelter, then the clothing centre, then the soup kitchen and finally the food bank.

I might have exceeded Kenneth’s balance but I’m sure a guy like that can find the change somewhere on his road to damnation. I should hope that Hell doesn’t exist but if it does, I can maybe spit on him from a higher circle of torture. That’s probably not how it works but who cares? I maxed out a billionaire’s credit card. I didn’t even know it was on my bucket list until I’d ticket it off.

Sitting on a park bench around the corner I waited for my ferrets to get back in the bag. It was getting dark and I had a long walk home. Homeless people always have stories. As I sat there a man called Sam told me about his life in Texas. He told me about enlisting in the army because it paid better than any of his other prospects. Sam said he’d seen horrible things on tour. Friends dying. Friends lying dead in the sun while they waited for evacuation. He’d never been the same after that he said. Drugs had helped him numb the pain. Drugs helped him sleep without seeing the dead. Drugs lost him his job. They lost him his wife and daughter. He was clean but didn’t want to see them again because he feared what happened when he had nightmares.

Sam told me about being homeless, stuffing his jacket with newspaper for insulation. He talked about living under bridges and being moved on by police and council officials. He told me he was having trouble remembering things lately. He remembered bad things crystal clear, but the picture of his daughter’s face was getting blurry in his mind.

Sam told me to be careful. He seemed concerned looking at me, genuinely. I guess most people don’t sit on that bench if they have somewhere better to go. I’m antisocial. I don’t bother with people much, but his genuine caring really got to me.

            “You should go and see if the shelter can help you Sam. Megan at the desk seems nice.”

            “Oh, she is. But they don’t have enough beds. Got a hundred beds in their buildings and a hundred people wanting every one of them.”

            “Keep checking in anyway. You hungry Sam?” He looked at me as if I was joking.

            “Most of the time yeah.”

            “Like pizza? I asked, fancying a slice.”

            “Who doesn’t?” he asked, smiling.

            “Come with me then. I came into some money recently and it’ll be nice to share it around.” Along our walk a pigeon landed on my arm with two ten-dollar bills then flew off.

            “You Doctor Doolittle or something?” asked Sam, watching the bird go.

            “Don’t tell anyone,” I said with a finger to my lips. “It’s a secret.”