The Fire Triangle -- Part II, Oxidizer

The Fire Triangle: Book II - Chapter 35

"Dark?" The young doe bunny's ears were standing up and her nose was twitching feverishly.

"Yeah, dark," her companion answered, pointing to the time signature on the laptop. "Sun's been up for almost 15 minutes now. And I do NOT wanna make any moves in daylight—not unless I have to," he said this, and then added as an afterthought. "Anyway, even if someone does decide to show up, there'll be plenty of warning." His certainty sounded more than a little forced—and Erin had also caught his use of the singular 'I' rather than 'we'.

She knew better than to bring that up, too...and so she turned back to the subject they'd been discussing before he'd brought out the laptop.

"You said you thought you could get away with that loanshaaa—ahhh, lending business. Oh-kayyy, but how?" He had never gone into detail on the subject.

Conor sighed, it seemed to deflate him just a little, and then he turned to face her; rueful, but still able to meet her gaze.

"Well, when you look at our plan on paper, our plan was stinkin' foolproof. Like I said, we weren't hacking into the banks' computers, only some of their employees' home set-ups; way easier to get into without being spotted than a bank's database. And even if those King John jerks had managed to figure out we'd hacked 'em—which, believe me, they weren't going to—what were they gonna do, call the cops? Yeah, right..." He made that thumb-and-little finger gesture again. "'Hello, ZPD? This is Potter Sleezeball from the King John Gang. Yes, well...some lowlife hacked into our ripoff scheme. Can you send somebody over right away? Oh, good; thank you.'"

He pretended to disconnect, while Erin curled up into a fit of giggles.

The fox in the chair facing her didn't seem to think it was all that funny. If anything his outlook had change from biting to bitter.

"Yeah, yeah...the perfect setup. But there was just one, teeny-weeny little thing we forgot about, bunny girl—Wells Furgo."

Erin wanted to groan; there he went, talking in riddles again—and there went her nose and ears...again. "Wells...Furgo. That's another bank right?" They didn't have any branches in Bunnyburrow, but she seemed to recall hearing something about that particular institution on the news. When was that, a year ago?

In point of fact, it was two years...as Conor now swiftly confirmed.

"Yep that's right. Coupla years back, they got socked with a $3 Billion Smacker fine; the biggest penalty ever laid on a bank...up until then, that is."

"Whoa," Erin felt her ears stand up again; okay, that was impressive. "What'd they do?"

"Nothing...not the guys in charge anyway," Conor was waving a finger, "It was a group of employees, scheming behind their bosses' backs, same as the King John Gang. What they did was open a truckload of savings and credit card accounts for a whole bunch of different mammals—without their knowledge or consent. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but it cost a lot of honest mammals a lot of money."

"Okay," Erin nodded, still slightly confused, "but if Wells Furgo's employees were running that scam behind their back, why did they end up getting fined?"

Her fox-companion's demeanor became almost scholarly for a moment.

"Because of something called due diligence; basically, it means that if you hire a guy, you're responsible for keeping an eye on his activities. I forget the exact details, but it doesn't matter. The important thing is, THAT'S what caused our lending business to go south on us—and here's how it happened. One of the guys in the King John Gang got greedy and started skimming off some of the businesses they'd grabbed. When his partners found out, they tried to put out a contract on him." He paused for a second, sniggering and grinning sardonically. "Like THESE jerks were ever gonna pull that off! Total amateurs, buncha soft-pawed suits; they had no idea what they were doing. The first guys they hired to do the job just took the money and split." He growled and turned serious again. "But then it really hit the stinkin' fan. The bum they'd tried to have whacked found out about the contract and just totally lost it. He went running to the bank president and told him everything, gave up every other member of the gang...anything to save his own tail."