Page 44 of Benjamin and the Thief

Eddie and Thomas exchanged a look.

“He’s your nephew,” Thomas said. “I’ll get us some drinks in the meantime.”

Thomas headed for the door.

“Make it a double for me,” Eddie demanded. “I’m quite famished.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder. “I know.”

With a smirk, he left the office and closed the door behind him.

“Don’t you guys ever get enough of each other?”

A tender smile spread over Eddie’s face. “Oh, God, I hope not.” Then he motioned to his desk. “So, what do you need now?”

“I’m looking into this public defender, Gloria Evans. I need to see if she’s been getting any unusual payments.”

Eddie raised his eyebrows. “And by payments you mean…?” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Bribes,” Benjamin confirmed.

Eddie sat down behind his computer and began typing. Benjamin walked around the desk to look over his shoulder. It was fascinating watching him work with unerring confidence, opening windows to type commands, then hopping to the next program to continue, until the entire desktop was littered with open windows that overlapped each other, blinking and beeping.

“I’m amazed by what you do,” Benjamin said truthfully.

“Thomas is even better. He taught me everything I know.”

There was pride in his voice—and admiration. Eddie didn’t just love his partner, he admired him too. Their bond had made them inseparable. Frankly, he couldn’t imagine one without the other.

“So, what’s she done, this Gloria Evans?” Eddie asked, while he continued to type and click.

“She might not have given somebody the defense he deserved,” he replied.

“Alright, let’s see,” Eddie said with a nod and widened a window. “These are her financials: bank accounts, investment account—pretty non-existent, which is no surprise at her age. A couple of credit cards. Here’s the student loan statement. She doesn’t own any property as far as I can see, at least not in her name.”

Benjamin scanned the rows of transactions on her bank statements and saw various recurring payments. He pointed to a monthly credit.

“What’s this? Her salary?”

Eddie nodded. “Yep. See? Paid by the City and County of San Francisco, since every public defender is paid by them.”

“Okay. Virtually all other entries are debits, expenses, bills… Hmm.”

He didn’t see any big amounts being deposited into her account.

“Can you go back three more months?”

Eddie clicked on a few buttons, then pointed to the screen. “Here. That’s going back to November last year.”

Again, he looked through the transactions.

“Nothing. And no big deposits into her investment accounts either?”

Eddie shook his head. “Nope. Just a few hundred bucks every month. Nothing to write home about.”

“Hmm. So how did she pay for her new car?”

“How much was it?”