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“Okay, so how do we get the money?” Bryce asked after they’d finished celebrating the negotiation with Carducci.
“Huh?”
“How will we get him to pay us?”
After Carducci’s last text— If you’re jerking me around, it will be the biggest mistake of your life—Rory had replied that they would be in touch soon with payment instructions. That’s how a pro would handle it. Don’t rush. Keep control of the situation.
“I don’t know, Venmo or PayPal,” Rory said. “That seems like the easiest way.”
“But is that safe?” Bryce asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know, dude. Isn’t your name attached to those kinds of accounts?”
Bryce was turning out to be a pain in the ass.
“I think we can just use a phone number, and we’ll use the same one we’re using for the texts. This burner phone. It’s not connected to my name or anything.”
Saying burner phone made Rory feel like a thug. He liked it.
“But you have to connect Venmo or PayPal to a bank account, I’m pretty sure,” Bryce said.
“I think that’s optional,” Rory said.
“Yeah, but if we don’t enter it, we won’t be able to move the money anywhere. It’ll just sit in that account. I think. I’m not sure.”
“Okay, then we’ll connect it to a bank account. What does it matter? He won’t be able to see any of that stuff, like our name and address and all that.”
“You’re one hundred percent positive about that?”
Rory didn’t reply, because the truth was, he wasn’t sure. They hadn’t planned that far ahead.
“Dude, you’re making me nervous,” Bryce said.
“Hang on,” Rory said, and he did some googling.
He found various forums discussing anonymous payments, but some of the comments weren’t necessarily reassuring. A few of the commenters suggested some specific websites or apps that allowed you to get paid without sharing your name or any other private details, but others insisted that those methods might actually leave a paper trail. Were those people right or wrong? And what if the site got hacked and suddenly a bunch of user information got stolen? Rory read some of the comments to Bryce.
“Man, if there’s even the slightest chance he can link the account to us, I don’t think we should risk it,” Bryce said.
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“We’re talking about a mafia guy,” Bryce said.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“What about an offshore account?” Bryce asked.
Rory had heard that phrase before, of course, but he wasn’t completely certain what it meant. So he googled that, too. He read for five minutes, and it all sounded pretty complicated.
“I think we’d be raising a lot of red flags if we did that, and it’s probably overkill anyway,” he said.
Bryce let the idea drop.
“There’s gotta be a way to do this,” Rory said. “We just need to figure out what it is.”
Rory lit the joint again and took another hit. He knew it muddied his thinking, but it helped him relax.
“Maybe we just need to keep it simple and ask for cash,” he said.
“Okay, but how do we get it?” Bryce asked. “He’s way the hell up in...which state is he in again?”
“Massachusetts.”
“Yeah. Could he, like, FedEx it?”
“We’d have to give an address. Hey, I got it! We could rent a PO box. Make him mail it.”
Bryce made a face.
“What?” Rory asked.
“He could send somebody to watch the box. I saw that happen in a movie once. No, wait. It was one of those lockers at the airport. Same kind of thing, though. They watched it until somebody showed up.”
“Somebody sat around all day, just waiting?” Rory asked.
“Yup. Then they followed the guy. Or they got his license plate number. I can’t remember. And they killed him after that.”
“It was just a movie,” Rory said.
“I know, but what’s to stop Carducci from doing the same thing?”
“Okay, man. Relax. I’m just throwing ideas out there until we figure something out.”
Rory was wishing they’d worked on these details in advance, but there had to be a solution. Something simple, but smart.
It took a few more minutes, but he finally nailed it. The idea even made sense later, when he wasn’t high.