Victimless Crimes

"Let's set you right here, little buddy," Colin said. His perfectly-tousled hair stayed in place as he turned his head, checking his surroundings. His clients weren't there yet. He lifted the gray kitten up to a branch of the tree in the front yard.

"That's perfect," Colin said. The kitten mewed, gripping the treebark with its tiny claws.

He smoothed his freshly-pressed button-down shirt and checked his new Rolex as a white Rolls Royce pulled into the driveway. Right on time.

A tasteful, suede high heel stepped out of the passenger side, followed by a polished pair of leather wingtips that Colin recognized as a new shade in the line, “Brandy.”

Colin was already mentally counting his money. These two would have no problem affording this million-dollar home.

"Hello, so nice to meet you!" Colin said, extending his arm for a firm, confident handshake. "Did you find the place okay? Great location, eh?"

The kitten made a pitiful sound. The woman pointed at the tree, gasping. "Oh my,” she said. “Is that a…kitten stuck in that tree?”

Colin's eyes sparkled as he turned. He couldn't have set it up better. "Oh, you poor thing," he said, reaching up on his tip-toes to reach the kitten. "I've got you."

He pet the cat gently, peering up through his eyelashes to ensure the woman saw. She placed her hand over her heart as he set the kitten free.

Turning so they couldn't see his grin, Colin punched his real estate agent code into the lockbox and led his clients into what he knew would become their new home - and his next score.

~

Colin returned to his girlfriend's two-bedroom condo and kicked off his shoes. Before too long, they'd be in a million dollar home, too.

"Kylie?" he called.

"In here," a female voice said. His girlfriend turned the corner in one of his university sweatshirts, holding a mixing bowl and wooden spoon. She had pushed her long brown hair over one shoulder. Her lips turned up at the corners warmly. "You want a taste?" she asked, holding out a spoonful of brownie batter.

Colin smiled, scooped up some batter with his finger, and dolloped it on Kylie's nose.

"Stop!" she shrieked, giggling. He scooped her up into a hug, then set her down with a kiss on her neck.

He backed away, leaning against the counter, and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

"Did you have a good day?" Kylie asked.

Pressing his thumb against the screen to unlock his bank app, he nodded. "...um, yes," he said, his eyes bugging when he saw how many zeroes were in his checking account balance. He staggered into a seat at the breakfast bar.

I might have to look into that whole money laundering thing, he thought to himself. Who would have thought a simple, drunken conversation with Sam would have led to this? He could taste the beer now.

He had sat, hunched over, at the bar with Sam, his very first home inspector. He was drinking his feelings along with that stale lager.

“It’s no one’s fault you lost the sale,” Sam said. “The house had foundation issues. You couldn't have known. And I’m not going to lie on the report. Not unless…” he lowered his voice. “Not unless you threw me a couple hundred. You know, under the table? Then I’ll put whatever you damn please on the report.”

Colin spat his beer back into his glass. He turned to Sam. “Would you, really?” he asked.

Sam nodded, then burped. "I'll do just about anything for a couple hundred," he said.

Colin had sunk back into his bar stool, his thoughts racing, much the way he was seated in his kitchen now.

He swallowed, feeling a twinge of guilt at all the money he had been swindling from his clients. Passing home inspections was just the beginning - he had ins with nearly every real estate agent, appraiser, and lender on the East Side of Cincinnati. Every little kickback added up.

“It's a victimless crime,” he whispered to himself.

Kylie was kneeling down in front of the oven, peering in. "What was that?" she asked, lifting her head.

"Just asking how much longer on the brownies," Colin said. He knew Kylie wouldn’t view it his way. He inhaled the rich, chocolate aroma of homemade sweets as she opened the oven door.

She cut the batch into squares and handed him one, and he blissfully sank his teeth into it. "I have an early meeting tomorrow," he said between bites, “so I can't stay up long."

"Let's take care of some business, then," she said, a sly smile spreading across her face as she grabbed his hand and pulled him towards her. Colin set his brownie on the counter, temporarily forgotten. What a life, he thought.

~

The next day, Colin crossed off another client's name on his calendar app. Four showings down, only one to go, he thought, checking his schedule for the address of the next meeting.

That’s bizarre. The meeting was back in his own office. Every senior agent had a room set aside for them in the Prestige Homes’ building, but he rarely met anyone there.

He parked in the lot, checked his hair in the rearview mirror, and sauntered into the office. A man was already standing inside the door of the lobby.

"Hello, are you..." Colin looked down at his phone again. "Wes Whitman?"

"Yes, that's me," the man said, stretching out his long arm and bony fingers. A chill rose up Colin's spine as their hands met.

“Great to meet y…!" Colin started, but Wes interrupted him.

"I know who you are," he said, his voice harsh.

Colin pulled him into his office and shut the door. "Oh, I, uh, I'm sorry. I usually never forget a face!" he said, his charming smile on point.

"Look, I know what you're doing,” Wes said, his face stern.

"I don't know what you're talking about, sir," Colin said.

The man's eyes gleamed. "I know all about your little con.”

Colin swallowed the hard lump that had formed in his throat without breaking his cool facade. "Why, I think you've got the wrong real estate agent, my friend.”

"You think your crimes are victimless," Wes said.

Colin’s smile faltered.

Wes continued, "They're not. Someone always pays. And if you're not careful, it might be you."

The man set a business card down on the desk and Colin picked it up, tracing the sharp edge with his fingernail. Wes Whitman, Real Estate Ethics Investigator. "I'm watching you - you can thank Drew."

Drew? Why does that name sound familiar? He looks up from the business card to ask, but Wes was already gone.

~

“Drew. Drew?" Colin scrolled through his contacts for a person named Drew, but came up short. Flipping through the pages of his calendar app, his finger stopped and his breath caught.

Drew Malcolm - 3:30pm, last Tuesday. Colin recalled the nondescript coffee shop downtown.

They had been sitting across from each other.

"This is how it works," Colin said, his voice low. "You tell your clients, the buyers, that my clients, the sellers, won't go for any lower than, say, $500k. But the sellers are actually willing to sell for $490k. You and I, we split the difference."

Tall and lanky, Drew had held his phone out at an odd angle. Colin realized now that he must have been recording the whole time.

~

"You go on to bed, Kylie, I'll be there in a minute," Colin said, his face lit up by the glow of his laptop.

His eyes darted across his computer screen as he opened his personal email, which he hadn't checked in a couple of days. He found a few newsletters that he needed to unsubscribe from. A phone bill. And an email from an unfamiliar sender from three days ago. He couldn't mash the button on his mouse fast enough.

The email opened to a video clip. Colin's eyes welled with tears. He already knew what would be on it. He played it anyway.

His own face was barely in frame, but it was clearly him. "You and I, we split the difference," he said, his cheesy smile disgusting even to himself.

Underneath was a screenshot of the email, not yet sent, but addressed to Wes, the Ethics Investigator.

Colin folded his head into his hands.

“Ok, this is bad,” he said out loud. "Really bad. I have to assume he has the whole conversation recorded."

His spine straightened as he felt a chill. He turned his head rapidly towards the window, sensing something. He crossed the room in two steps, ripping the curtain off to one side, which knocked the lamp over with a crash - but no one was there. He was paranoid.

"What's going on out there?" Kylie cried, peering around the corner.

"I thought there was a wasp," he said, pointing lamely at the wall.

"Ok, come on to bed now, honey," she said.

Colin stood over his desk to shut down his computer, but his eyes skimmed the email address from which the video was sent. It ended in the same extension they used in his firm.

~

The next morning, Colin rose early and drove to his office before anyone else would be there. He knew the IT guy, Greg, would be the first to arrive. He timed his entry just as the chubby, unfashionable man was unlocking the front door.

"Hey Greg,” Colin said, the leather bottoms of his shoes clacking across the tile lobby. "I'm having an issue with the front desk’s computer. The receptionist asked me to retrieve some email addresses of former employees to, uh… give exit interviews," he said to Greg. He had rehearsed an entire story in case Greg resisted, but instead, the dull man turned and said, "Whatever, man."

That was easy.

Once logged in, Colin searched all current and previous employees in the Prestige Homes network for “Drew” and found one result - Drew Malcolm. Yes! Colin pumped his fist. He traced the contact information to their sister branch on the West Side.

After some searching on LinkedIn, Colin discovered that Drew had a similar story to him - he struggled at first, but soon rose the ranks to a top agent at the firm. His fancy cars and lavish parties proved that he was having the same, shall we call it, financial success that Colin was.

~

Colin bungled every meeting with his clients that day. He forgot the lock box code to a $2.5 million home for which he was running an open house, embarrassing himself and his associate real estate agent. He called a couple by the wrong last name at another showing. And the animal shelter was out of kittens, so we couldn’t pull his usual routine when meeting the final clients of the day.

Colin climbed into his car, slamming the palm of his hand down on the steering wheel. This video had him all messed up. He flipped through his personal phone’s notifications.

He smiled when he saw that he had a text from Kylie.

Kylie: I got some kind of weird email.

His heart sank.

Kylie: WTF is this guy in the video talking about?

Colin's mind raced with excuses. It's just money. I'm not hurting anyone.

Kylie: Don't even bother coming home.

~

Colin raced to Kylie’s condo, but pulled up only to find boxes sitting on the front stoop, hastily stuffed with his clothes, computer, and books - basically everything in his closet and office.

Anger at Drew exploded deep inside him. He bounded to the door and tried to unlock it but Kylie had already changed the code to the smart deadbolt.

He rapped his fist lightly on the door.

"Kylie, let me in and we can talk about it," he said.

He received silence in return.

"KYLIE" he yelled, pounding his fist against the door. "PLEASE, open up."

He knocked until his knuckles bled, until the next-door neighbor stepped outside.

"Dude, I'm gonna have to call the cops if you don't stop," he said apologetically, shrugging his arms with his phone in his hand.

Colin bowed his head, dropping his hands to his sides. He stacked the boxes and lugged them to his car.

He drove to the empty house he had shown earlier. With the sun low in the sky, he dug in his boxes for a blanket or pillow. He came up empty, but he found enough clothes to stuff into a T-shirt for a makeshift pillow. His fingers brushed across a notebook - his favorite journal from childhood that he had always kept near his desk. He hadn't opened it in years. He flipped it open to a random page.

In his sloppy, eight-year old handwriting, he made out only a few words: "Kindness," and "Never hurt anyone."

"I didn't hurt anyone!" he yelled, smacking his hand on the trunk of his car.

He let himself into the empty house and laid on the cold hardwood floor with his T-shirt pillow and his misery.

~

Days later, Colin finally returned to his office. He was not his usual self. His hair, unadorned by pomade, was loose and fell in his face. His shirt was wrinkled, his pants hadn't been pressed, and his usual freshly-shaven facial hair was a dark stubble.

He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, his eyes dead as he stared at himself. "Who have I become?" he asked, straightfaced. "Who did I even used to be?"

Something in him shifted in that moment. It was bad enough that Colin had lost Kylie, but what if he lost the true loves of his life - his money and status? He couldn’t let it happen - he had to stop Drew from sending that video to the Ethics Investigator. He retrieved Drew Malcolm’s address from his contact list and put it in his GPS system.

~

Colin scoped out the scene for several days. Drew had a routine - he worked at his computer desk until about 8pm, and then left out the front door with a duffel bag, presumably to the gym. Colin knew that the computer was password protected, but was on a 10 minute timeout. If he could just get into that office within 10 minutes of Drew leaving, he could access everything on his hard drive.

Drew gathered up his duffel bag and Colin was already at the unlocked window. He stepped inside the office, the curtains falling closed behind him, just as Drew got in his car to leave. His eyes adjusted to the room. He dashed over to the laptop and wiggled the mouse - the computer was still logged in.

Colin found the videos after a brief search and deleted them.

Too easy.

Fueled by curiosity, he looked through the other folders on Drew’s harddrive. Amongst a litany of unimportant documents, he found the motherload - a spreadsheet of all of Drew’s contacts. It tracked an intricately wound web of real estate agents, home inspectors, appraisers, and contractors. Colin’s eyes widened. He could infiltrate every one of them. He could have an empire. He pulled out the flashdrive he had brought and copied over every folder on Drew’s computer.

Colin’s glee subsided as his thoughts returned to the videos. His stomach knotted at the realization that Drew probably had a copy on his phone, as that was the device with which he had originally recorded it. He would have it in his sent emails. It could be anywhere. Idiot! he thought to himself.

I hadn’t wanted it to come to this. He pulled supplies from his bag and settled into the office chair, twiddling his thumbs. He would wait.

~

Colin saw his own shadow as a glow from Drew’s headlights emanated through the window. He stood and crouched by the doorway.

As soon as Drew shut the door behind him, Colin pounced and wrapped plastic across his face. Drew’s rapid breathing sucked the film in and out of his mouth, until there was no oxygen left to breathe. As his body went limp, Colin sensed movement around the edge of the doorway. He stood to find an eight-year old boy - thin and lanky just like Drew - standing in the doorway. His mouth agape, confusion welled in the boy’s eyes, unsure of what he had just witnessed.

Colin looked at the child as sloppily handwritten words flashed across his vision. "Kindness." he whispered. "Never hurt anyone."

The boy gazed at his father’s body with wide eyes. “Dad?”

Colin looked from the boy, to Drew’s lifeless body, and back to the boy.

He turned, flinging the curtain out of the way, and jumped out of the window, sprinting back to the alley a few blocks away.

He hopped in his car, breathing deeply in huge gasps from exertion and anxiety. He held his head in his hands. "Victimless crimes," he said out loud, putting the car into drive. “Right?”

Colin caressed the flash drive in his

pocket as his eyes met his reflection in the rear view mirror. He nodded as a slight smile spread across his mouth. "Victimless crimes.”