able to write and make an income.”
She melted into his arms and was relieved to have a husband like William Fortune. They embraced for a moment before he let her go and fixed their plates. He stepped away from her, and said, “You could always quit.”
Their conversation lasted through dinner. William rode with her, and listened to her vent. She elevated his belief that writers had it easier than an office gig. After dinner they snuggled on the sofa and sipped red wine. They caught up on episodes of Amazing Race and Bad Girls Club. Later they retired to the loft and went half on that baby.
SEVEN
E arly the next morning, they dragged themselves out of bed at 6 a.m. They did an expedited tour of the bathroom, and then an a.m. run. They returned and had breakfast—English muffins, egg whites and homemade squeezed orange juice. They showered together, dressed, and William walked Lundin outside to her Buick Rendezvous. They stood and chatted on the curb until they ran blank on words. The perfect picture of a successful married couple. Lundin departed at nine and hoped that she missed rush hour traffic.
William had research to do and looked forward to going through federal case law for current fraud cases. He watched her truck vanish, and then he traced his steps back into their apartment.
A set of eyes smiled at William from three blocks away using binoculars.
* * *
William had watched the news, and then headed out. It was 10:30 a.m. when William stepped into UCLA’s Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library. He donned expensive chinos, red Polo shirt, and Gucci loafers. He sat at an elongated oak table, sat his briefcase on top, and glanced out at perfectly manicured campus lawns. The library was empty considering it was finals week. The corner was perfect and unofficially his man cave. Same place, same author time every week.
He spent countless hours in the corner researching legal procedures and reading trial transcripts to shape his manuscripts. He had spent enough hours in the library to ace the criminal law section of the Bar Exam. Since he was first published and became a consistent, effective novelist, he did not need to frequent the library as much. His fan P.O. Box kept up by Jewel was often under siege with offers from an array of government officials and attorneys from both sides of a trial proceeding. All of them willing to dole out their agencies’ most sacred secret new equipment, gadgets, and techniques. And for what, a listing in the acknowledgment page?
William walked through the labyrinth library and gathered the books that he needed. He planned to search for flaws that Government agents made prior to an arrest. Mistakes that ultimately lead to the dismissal of a defendant’s charges.
He told stories about identity theft to warn the public about crimes in a more colorful manner than the six o’clock news. Despite William’s work, banks harshly condemned his novels right to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers List. To no one’s surprise, William called them blue prints for hard working citizens to be less inadvertent with their personal data. He had shown them how simple and rewarding it was for a law abiding America denizen to become ashamed of themselves for having spent 330 hours and $1,400 to regain control over their good name, for their own errors.
William’s novels conveyed a chilling snapshot of thieves fixated on hacking computers, stealing mail, counterfeiting checks and identification, and forging documents as a job. A job that spawned the Truncated Act, which required merchants to use a series of X’s to safe guard all but the last few digits of a credit card number on a receipt. A job that cost the business community $15,000 per compromised identity. A job that federal statistics indicated stole $53-billion annually from the economy. A job so ruthless that William had cashed in millions in book sales forcing ordinary people to think twice about how
She melted into his arms and was relieved to have a husband like William Fortune. They embraced for a moment before he let her go and fixed their plates. He stepped away from her, and said, “You could always quit.”
Their conversation lasted through dinner. William rode with her, and listened to her vent. She elevated his belief that writers had it easier than an office gig. After dinner they snuggled on the sofa and sipped red wine. They caught up on episodes of Amazing Race and Bad Girls Club. Later they retired to the loft and went half on that baby.
SEVEN
E arly the next morning, they dragged themselves out of bed at 6 a.m. They did an expedited tour of the bathroom, and then an a.m. run. They returned and had breakfast—English muffins, egg whites and homemade squeezed orange juice. They showered together, dressed, and William walked Lundin outside to her Buick Rendezvous. They stood and chatted on the curb until they ran blank on words. The perfect picture of a successful married couple. Lundin departed at nine and hoped that she missed rush hour traffic.
William had research to do and looked forward to going through federal case law for current fraud cases. He watched her truck vanish, and then he traced his steps back into their apartment.
A set of eyes smiled at William from three blocks away using binoculars.
* * *
William had watched the news, and then headed out. It was 10:30 a.m. when William stepped into UCLA’s Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library. He donned expensive chinos, red Polo shirt, and Gucci loafers. He sat at an elongated oak table, sat his briefcase on top, and glanced out at perfectly manicured campus lawns. The library was empty considering it was finals week. The corner was perfect and unofficially his man cave. Same place, same author time every week.
He spent countless hours in the corner researching legal procedures and reading trial transcripts to shape his manuscripts. He had spent enough hours in the library to ace the criminal law section of the Bar Exam. Since he was first published and became a consistent, effective novelist, he did not need to frequent the library as much. His fan P.O. Box kept up by Jewel was often under siege with offers from an array of government officials and attorneys from both sides of a trial proceeding. All of them willing to dole out their agencies’ most sacred secret new equipment, gadgets, and techniques. And for what, a listing in the acknowledgment page?
William walked through the labyrinth library and gathered the books that he needed. He planned to search for flaws that Government agents made prior to an arrest. Mistakes that ultimately lead to the dismissal of a defendant’s charges.
He told stories about identity theft to warn the public about crimes in a more colorful manner than the six o’clock news. Despite William’s work, banks harshly condemned his novels right to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers List. To no one’s surprise, William called them blue prints for hard working citizens to be less inadvertent with their personal data. He had shown them how simple and rewarding it was for a law abiding America denizen to become ashamed of themselves for having spent 330 hours and $1,400 to regain control over their good name, for their own errors.
William’s novels conveyed a chilling snapshot of thieves fixated on hacking computers, stealing mail, counterfeiting checks and identification, and forging documents as a job. A job that spawned the Truncated Act, which required merchants to use a series of X’s to safe guard all but the last few digits of a credit card number on a receipt. A job that cost the business community $15,000 per compromised identity. A job that federal statistics indicated stole $53-billion annually from the economy. A job so ruthless that William had cashed in millions in book sales forcing ordinary people to think twice about how
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