situation and compared it to your other experiences. That very strong uncomfortable feeling is there to protect you!”
Would any of them have occasion to use that advice? She earnestly hoped not.
CHAPTER 13
A thin, young man wit h curly black hair washed his hands at the bathroom sink. Reaching for a towel, Ralph Forbes thought smugly of the lucrative “business” he masterminded. Heists flowed smoothly, each successful job validating his ingenious formula. His mirrored reflection grinned back at him. A successful entrepreneur: not bad for a 23-year-old high-school dropout.
He hatched his “formula” during the one-year stint at the New Jersey Juvenile Detention Center when he was 17. He hated the boring regimentation of institutional life, being pushed around by fellow juvies and the periodic abuse from the despised staff, those self-styled regal lords reigning over their pathetic inmate inferiors.
Ralph partly escaped the detention center’s dreariness through books, eventually reading every volume in their modest library. He treasured the time spent with books, which increased his vocabulary and knowledge. A loner to begin with, he realized the superior attitude the books fostered further distanced him from his fellow inmates and the loathed staff.
Ralph returned again and again to one volume, “Reading and Drawing Blueprints.” To kill time, he mapped out all the rooms at the center and kept the growing stack of sketches in a box under his bed. Soon he tried designs on his own. These drawing exercises improved his skill to the point that when Ralph overheard the counselors discussing a new building to house offices and sports equipment, he submitted sketches for the exact structure they eventually built.
He took juvenile detention sullenly in stride until fellow inmate Bill Burdick ransacked his sketches, defacing or destroying them all. Discovering who did this, Ralph punched Burdick, who pulled a spoon handle he’d honed into a shiv. In the ensuing bloody attack, that damned bully nearly killed him. When he finally emerged from the juvie medical wing, his clothing hid healing defensive-wound gashes on his forearms, wrists, hands and across his chest, but the scar on his face advertised a visible reminder of his hatred for that swaggering Burdick. Gazing into the bathroom mirror this morning, he touched the healed slash across his cheek, despising Burdick yet again.
Patiently, Ralph plotted and then executed a wicked revenge that appeared as something quite different. He stifled gloating satisfaction the day a juvie staff member discovered Burdick’s body dangling limply below the open beamed ceiling in the eight-bed cottage where he and Ralph lived, an extension cord tightly constricting the bully’s bulging neck. Ralph feigned shock like everyone else at this unprecedented suicide. An unexpected bonus for Ralph’s primary effort came when the ensuing investigation focused blame upon the hated Juvie staff, resulting in the firing of two cottage counselors for negligence.
He could have “gone straight” by capitalizing upon his considerable self-taught blueprint skills, but the astonishing success of his revenge on Burdick infused Ralph with new confidence that he could outsmart most people… and any system.
When he finally tasted freedom, he tried out his heist ideas, at first barely escaping five or six very close calls. But he used those mistakes to refine his current winning tactics. While still on probation in New Jersey, he watched with fascination a TV documentary about a master thief named Bernard Welch in a town called Great Falls in Fairfax County, Virginia. The crime-and-punishment show described that place and surrounding neighborhoods as “embarrassingly affluent.” Ralph sat forward, watching keenly and mentally pinpointing Welch’s old territory as his own target destination. Moreover, he had an angle Welch didn’t.
He reached northern Virginia a year later when his probation
Would any of them have occasion to use that advice? She earnestly hoped not.
CHAPTER 13
A thin, young man wit h curly black hair washed his hands at the bathroom sink. Reaching for a towel, Ralph Forbes thought smugly of the lucrative “business” he masterminded. Heists flowed smoothly, each successful job validating his ingenious formula. His mirrored reflection grinned back at him. A successful entrepreneur: not bad for a 23-year-old high-school dropout.
He hatched his “formula” during the one-year stint at the New Jersey Juvenile Detention Center when he was 17. He hated the boring regimentation of institutional life, being pushed around by fellow juvies and the periodic abuse from the despised staff, those self-styled regal lords reigning over their pathetic inmate inferiors.
Ralph partly escaped the detention center’s dreariness through books, eventually reading every volume in their modest library. He treasured the time spent with books, which increased his vocabulary and knowledge. A loner to begin with, he realized the superior attitude the books fostered further distanced him from his fellow inmates and the loathed staff.
Ralph returned again and again to one volume, “Reading and Drawing Blueprints.” To kill time, he mapped out all the rooms at the center and kept the growing stack of sketches in a box under his bed. Soon he tried designs on his own. These drawing exercises improved his skill to the point that when Ralph overheard the counselors discussing a new building to house offices and sports equipment, he submitted sketches for the exact structure they eventually built.
He took juvenile detention sullenly in stride until fellow inmate Bill Burdick ransacked his sketches, defacing or destroying them all. Discovering who did this, Ralph punched Burdick, who pulled a spoon handle he’d honed into a shiv. In the ensuing bloody attack, that damned bully nearly killed him. When he finally emerged from the juvie medical wing, his clothing hid healing defensive-wound gashes on his forearms, wrists, hands and across his chest, but the scar on his face advertised a visible reminder of his hatred for that swaggering Burdick. Gazing into the bathroom mirror this morning, he touched the healed slash across his cheek, despising Burdick yet again.
Patiently, Ralph plotted and then executed a wicked revenge that appeared as something quite different. He stifled gloating satisfaction the day a juvie staff member discovered Burdick’s body dangling limply below the open beamed ceiling in the eight-bed cottage where he and Ralph lived, an extension cord tightly constricting the bully’s bulging neck. Ralph feigned shock like everyone else at this unprecedented suicide. An unexpected bonus for Ralph’s primary effort came when the ensuing investigation focused blame upon the hated Juvie staff, resulting in the firing of two cottage counselors for negligence.
He could have “gone straight” by capitalizing upon his considerable self-taught blueprint skills, but the astonishing success of his revenge on Burdick infused Ralph with new confidence that he could outsmart most people… and any system.
When he finally tasted freedom, he tried out his heist ideas, at first barely escaping five or six very close calls. But he used those mistakes to refine his current winning tactics. While still on probation in New Jersey, he watched with fascination a TV documentary about a master thief named Bernard Welch in a town called Great Falls in Fairfax County, Virginia. The crime-and-punishment show described that place and surrounding neighborhoods as “embarrassingly affluent.” Ralph sat forward, watching keenly and mentally pinpointing Welch’s old territory as his own target destination. Moreover, he had an angle Welch didn’t.
He reached northern Virginia a year later when his probation
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