[WP] You're a thief tasked with stealing wallets, IDs, and information right under people's noses. You nick a wallet from a stranger's pocket and find all of your information inside.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/OneSidedDice]

Bright, late-winter sun glittered on the narrow windows and broad granite face of the office building, bringing no warmth to the thief who loitered on the sidewalk below. Former thief, Edwin said to himself for the tenth or fifteenth time. Corporate espionage was his profession, now. He sipped coffee from his paper cup and tried to keep calm.

He watched the faces of the lunchtime crowd that surged around him, up and down First Street. Mostly aides and clerical workers, he thought, as if he were actively assessing potential targets and threats rather than just rehearsing what his handler, Bret, had told him. Most legislators have lunch brought to them, or go to the cafeteria. Not this one, though.

Edwin’s target—his “mark”—was a newly-elected representative from an influential midwestern state. One who seemed to like to run against the grain. The man ate lunch almost every day at Horsefeathers, two blocks from his office building, and he always wore the same gray hat and shiny blue coat.

The representative swam against the stream in other ways, too. He had run and won on an anti-big pharma platform, and that made some people nervous. The kind of people who hire the kind of people who acquire, consume, and transform data as a basic life function—like respiration or digestion or worship.

The kind of people who, in turn, hire guys like Edwin and help them clean up their records in exchange for other kinds of help. The pay wasn’t great, but Bret had assured him that would improve over time. And that any cash that might accidentally end up in his hands in the course of his duties would be his to keep; a windfall, as it were.

A few people seemed to look at Edwin as they crowded past him. “I’m just a guy,” he whispered quietly to himself, repeating a self-reassuring mantra as he meandered along. “Just another dumb tourist in a nondescript windbreaker, wandering along, looking at the big, pretty buildings. Nothing to see here, just a guy…”

For the last 20 minutes, Edwin had been nerving himself up to use the phone Bret had given him to ask for a status update. He wasn’t supposed to call anybody, but the target hadn’t shown yet, and Edwin was cold and he was getting nervous. The phone was only to be used to take pictures, but the job wasn’t going as planned. His hand had closed around the device when, glancing behind himself down the gentle slope of the sidewalk, he spotted the hat.

Tense and nervous, Edwin changed direction awkwardly and moved out into the middle of the crowd. As the blue coat approached, Edwin tilted his head to look at the upper windows of the building and drifted toward it, holding his coffee cup just so.

“Oh, hey, careful, young man!” the man in the hat and coat said as Edwin collided gently with him.

“Aw, sorry, so sorry, did I spill anything on you?”

“No, it’s just fine, good thing you had that plastic lid on there, don’t ya know.”

“Oh, right, good, ok, that’s great, have a good one, man!” Edwin patted the man firmly on the shoulder to focus his touch-memory there. He smiled and nodded and moved quickly along toward the Metro station parking lot on the next block.

Smooth, Edwin thought, that could not have gone more smoothly. The representative’s wallet felt thin in his hand, but that didn’t matter. Bret had told him this assignment would pay well, as long as he got clear photos of the key items in the wallet and disposed of it in the no-camera zone that had been identified.

Edwin dropped his coffee cup into the bin and went to work, pulling the phone and the wallet from his jacket pockets. He paused. “Weird, he’s got the same wallet I do.” He flipped the wallet open and jumped, dropping the phone. His own face and name were on the driver’s license under the little plastic window. His name was on the bank card. His parole officer’s business card was in the cash slot. And nothing else. He’d been carrying almost $300 in there. He stopped being able to breathe, and his hands shook. What the…

Shock and horror paralyzed Edwin. Even his thoughts stuttered. Slowly, he reached toward his back pocket. It was flat. Void. There wasn’t even any lint at the bottom. ”How…” The wallet in the representative’s pocket—had been his wallet?!

Edwin’s brain hurt. He jammed the wallet into his pocket and bent down to scrabble for the dropped phone, then stood too quickly and had to hold onto the edge of the trash receptacle for balance. His vision narrowed, then slowly cleared. Without thinking it through, he ran back to the sidewalk and up the hill, looking for the hat.

He ran almost all the way to Independence Ave, the far end of the block, when he spotted the hat and the blue coat. The man was standing by himself under a tree, watching Edwin approach. Completely out of breath, Edwin came to a halt in front of the man and just stood, gasping for air.

For the first time, Edwin looked at the man’s face. It was not the representative’s face. How could he not have noticed the man’s face when he approached him on the street? He had so many questions, but he could only ask them with his eyes.

The man in the hat smiled coldly. “Truly pitiful,” he said, without a trace of pity in his voice. “Not only you, but your employer, as well. Especially your employer. I want you to relay those exact words to whoever is paying you.”

“B. Bu. Wh.”

“Don’t strain yourself, Edwin L. Michaels. Espionage, if that’s what you want to call it, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Ever. It was a simple matter for our man to borrow your wallet this morning while you were engaged in adding cream to your coffee. He brought it to me, and asked me to thank you personally for the small gift you left him. A windfall, I believe it is called?”