A New Life

Introduction

With a push of the courthouse door, you walk outside into the sunlight. You’re free – or mostly free. You still have to check in with your parole officer weekly and take monthly tests, but you’re almost there. It’s been a long fifteen years since you got popped on your last job. Add the one year you spent on house-arrest in the halfway house and you’ve lost sixteen years of your life to this point. You’re not the naïve 19 year old petty criminal you were when you got nabbed. You’re not the reformed model citizen you’ve been portraying the past year either. No, you’re ready to be the master criminal you know you can be.

You think back and remember how it started, you had been doing small time burglaries. Nothing big – you had managed to keep yourself under the OPD’s radar for three good years. Your mentor, Luis, had brought you in when you were a homeless runaway and shown you how to run. He was fifteen years older than you and had a daughter he was trying to support. You trusted him. You both started small, residential burglaries, small shops, small fish in Oakland. You moved across the bay and started doing larger jobs in San Francisco, until you attracted attention. At first it wasn’t necessarily bad attention. Through some of Luis’ back channel connections, you were able to meet associates of Mr. Roland Neilsen – one of the largest financiers in the city. You completed some small jobs for him at first – quick break-ins at competitor’s offices, small acts of espionage, again – fairly small fish. Until that one fateful night in January, seventeen years ago. You and Luis met Mr. Neilsen and his bodyguard in one of the buildings his company was gutting. You remember standing there, on the top floor with the cold, windy rain biting your face as you waited taking nervous puffs from your cigarette. Luis kept telling you this one was going to be big – the payout you both were looking for. He would be able to buy a place for him and his daughter to move and you’d be able to afford anything you wanted. What that was, you weren’t sure of yet – but you liked it.

Mr. Neilsen and his bodyguard arrived. He handed Luis a manila envelope. It had detailed instructions of how to enter his office, how to break into his safe and what to steal. His plan was for you to steal rare coins from his safe. You would then meet him back here to give him back the coins. He would make his money off the insurance claims, while still having the coins and paying you & Luis. Simple. You started to feel a bit less nervous. The heist was planned for one week later.

The time came – and the heist went off without a hitch. Everything worked like Mr. Neilsen said it would. Until the day the coin/money exchange was set to happen. Luis got word though his back channel that Mr. Neilsen thought it was too risky to have both the coins and money in the same spot. Luis was to drop off the coins at a mutual acquaintance’s laundromat in the Mission. The acquaintance was to hold them for Mr. Neilsen until the money had been switched, Luis would call and confirm it had been done and Mr. Neilsen would send someone to pick them up. You were to meet him still at the same building as before to get your money.

You and Luis stood there in the cold rain once again waiting for Mr. Neilsen. “Luis,” you said “remember, if this goes South don’t say anything.” “Yeah boss.” Luis replied. At that moment the rain was pierced by a helicopter spotlight. You looked down as a dozen police cars surrounded the building. “Fuck!” you yelled. Luis ran for the stairs.