Chapter Text
By the time the final bell of the day rang at St. Francis Xavier High School, Jimmy McGill had been standing in the parking lot for the past 10 minutes. Cutting class was second nature to him at this point, and he knew he was missing nothing from today's English lecture that a quick peek at a classmate's notes the next morning couldn't teach him. Shakespeare wasn't going to change any time soon; he had more pressing matters to attend to this afternoon. A business opportunity had arisen the previous week, and he couldn't afford to wait any longer to close the deal.
He leaned back against the fence as he lit up his third cigarette of the day, taking a deeply unsatisfying drag from it. A rebellious image required careful cultivation. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mother glaring at him from within her idling car as she waited to pick her child up from school.
The throng of teenage boys in matching blue suits and ties had finally began filing out of the front and side doors to the school, some lining up for the buses, others filtering out into the parking lot. Jimmy knew he had needed to get out here early to pick out a spot with a good vantage point of both exits. He puffed nervously on the cigarette again, scanning the departing students for the one face he needed to find. He'd only spoken to him the one time, and tried to piece his appearance together in his head. Tall. Blond. Thick neck. Mild acne. The beginning of a unibrow. (Not that I can see that from this distance, he thought to himself.) The walking personification of the football jock. The sort of fellow who would probably wearing a letterman jacket rather than the school's prescribed uniform blazer.
"Bingo," Jimmy whispered under his breath, as his eyes landed on his target--who was indeed wearing his letterman jacket--loitering on the edge of the parking lot with a couple other boys. He tossed his cigarette butt on the asphalt and stomped it out before making his approach, rehearsing the lines in his head that he'd worked on since morning.
"Hey John," he said with a casual wave as he walked up to the other boy, who responded with a look of confusion.
"Hey," he said, with a hesitant wave back. "Uh, what was your name again?"
"James McGill, but you can call me Jimmy."
"Right. Jimmy."
John suddenly noticed the other boys who were still gathered around him, and gestured to shoo them away.
"Don't mind them," he said, by way of explanation. "They're sophomores. They want tips on how to make the varsity football team next year."
"You have any good advice for 'em?"
"Yeah. Don't suck."
John laughed as if this were a tremendously witty remark.
"I thought you looked familiar," he continued. "You're the one who talked to me after the senior assembly last week, right?"
"Yep, you got it. Funny running into you out here."
"Why's it funny? School just got out and I've got lacrosse practice in about ten minutes."
Jimmy grinned.
"It's funny 'cause I got a little something on hand right now that I think you had expressed some interest in before."
"You got beer?" asked John, his eyes widening in anticipation. Jimmy resisted the urge to roll his eyes in response.
"What, in my pockets? No. Better! Look at this."
He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pair of small cards.
"These," he said, as he held them up, "are IDs. One for you, one for your girlfriend, since you said she was looking for one too. You don't need to rely on anybody else now. You can buy however much beer you want whenever and wherever you want with these babies. Nobody would ever be able to tell they were fake. Check out the lamination job."
He held out one of the cards out so John could touch it, and he watched the admiring gaze in the other boy's eyes with a certain amount of pride. He had worked hard on those fake IDs--they looked good, and he knew it. If other students came to know it as well, there was a fair bit of profit to be had. (If law enforcement came to know it, however, he was in a hell of a fix.)
"How much did you say they cost?" asked John, as he took the ID and turned it over a couple times, feeling the heft of it in his palm.
"Well, it's ordinarily 22 bucks or so, but since I made these in advance, you got the special rush service, so that's up to 25 dollars. But, since you've got two of them there, and since I'm a generous guy, I'll slash the price to $20 for each of them."
"So it's $20?"
"Twenty each, yes. That's forty total."
John's face darkened, and he handed the ID back to Jimmy.
"I don't know if I really need this."
"But you said you needed it as soon as possible. And I delivered!"
"Yeah, but I changed my mind."
"Ok, but, look, you promised me you were gonna buy one. You promised me you were going to buy not just one, but two. I don't make these for just anyone."
"Maybe I can get them cheaper somewhere else though."
"You're not gonna get this quality though," Jimmy petitioned. John responded with a shrug.
"This isn't just a beer coupon, it's a whole new identity. You can rent a hotel room. Rent a car. Hell, get a new library card, for all I know--the possibilities are endless. New age, new name, new you...but same face, so nobody gets too suspicious."
John's eyes wandered over the rapidly emptying parking lot. He fidgeted with his bookbag as he looked in the direction of the athletic fields, where members of various sports teams could already be seen assembling.
Jimmy realized he was running out of time, and his client was slipping away from him. He had to bring out Plan B.
"And, uh, just between you and me," he continued, sidling towards John to catch his eye once more, "you might want to have that ID for your girlfriend for other reasons too, if you know what I mean. Just for insurance purposes."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Weeeelll...what with her age and all..."
"What about her age?"
"She's a little young for you, s'all I'm sayin'. She's a little young for anyone, maybe."
"But she's a junior. She said she was 17, and I'm 17 too, so I don't see any problem there."
"Hey, she may be a junior, but you can't judge by what year in school somebody is. When my older brother graduated from this very school, he was fourteen. Check the copy of the 1958 yearbook in the library if you don't believe me. They had a hard time finding him a graduation robe small enough! They pull this kinda shit all the time in schools. You just don't hear about it. Parents think it's great because they get to save a little money on tuition if Dick or Jane graduates a year or two earlier. Where did you say your girlfriend went again?"
"Francis W. Parker."
"Parker, oh man! You think the price point for parochial schools is bad, lemme tell you--you want to know how much the most elite private schools cost?"
John shook his head. He already didn't like where this conversation was headed.
"It's even worse, trust me. And the school this girl goes to is the most expensive of them all!"
"Really?" John asked incredulously.
"Absolutely! Thousands of dollars a year! Talk about an incentive to get skipped ahead a couple grades. And all that money, might I remind you, is still waaaay more than the cost of these two IDs that I've got all lined up for you and your lady friend. And, I might add, these IDs are also a lot cheaper than the cost of getting a lawyer when some cop pulls the two of you over at the local makeout spot, or catches you in flagrante delicto at some party. You think getting accused of underage drinking is a tough rap to beat? Try getting labeled a sex offender on top of that. You have to consider your options and be prepared."
"Are you sure she's underage?"
"Buddy, I wouldn't be warning you about this if she wasn't. I'm looking out for you here--for both of you. Couple of teenagers in love, neither of you wishing to do wrong, but both still under 18, stymied by the cruel laws of the state of Illinois. But if you both have a magical little piece of paper saying you're twenty-one, well...are you going to buy these two IDs or not?"
Jimmy watched John's eyes shift back and forth between his face and the IDs. Come on, he thought as the seconds dragged by. Buy them. Moron. You know you want them.
John hesitated a second longer, but then reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.
"You said it's $40 for both of them, right?"
"Yep."
He watched John flip through a bulky billfold for two twenties, which he handed over in exchange for the IDs.
"You made the right call," said Jimmy, as he pulled out his own decidedly thinner wallet and tucked the bills away.
"Thanks, I guess. I gotta get to practice."
Jimmy watched John run off towards the athletic fields. If he'd known he was carrying that much money on him, he easily could've got twice as much for the IDs. He walked towards his car in the nearly-empty parking lot, ruminating over where he went wrong, where he went right, and what he could've done differently. Minor swindles were one thing, he thought as he opened the car door and tossed his backpack into the passenger seat, but if this was going to be an ongoing operation, it would need some finessing.
There would be time to think about this later. First he had to go to Marco's.
"Hey asshole," Jimmy shouted as he banged on the front door of the Pasternak residence. "That guy bought both IDs, so you lost the bet. Pay up."
The door opened, revealing a girl who couldn't have been more than 10 or 11 years old.
"Oops. Hi Angie. Sorry. Pretend you didn't hear me say any of that."
"But I already heard you say it," she protested, as she opened the door to let Jimmy in. "If you want to talk to my brother, he's upstairs."
"Thanks," Jimmy replied, as he climbed the stairs to the second floor.
"Door's unlocked," shouted Marco from somewhere within his bedroom.
Jimmy opened the door and found Marco laying on the floor in the middle of the tiny, cluttered room, going through a large pile of coins for anything that looked misleadingly valuable.
"You gotta move out and get your own place at some point," said Jimmy as he cleared a small space on the carpet and sat down on the floor next to him. "This place is a mess. And I don't want to keep accidentally swearing at your baby sister."
"Then stop swearing at her, dummy. Just say 'butthole' instead of 'asshole', or something like that."
"I'm not gonna go around saying 'butthole', then I really will sound like an asshole. But what I said is still true--that guy bought both of those IDs, and you said he wouldn't, so you owe me another ten bucks."
"Damn. Hold on. I was kinda in the middle of this, but I'll get your money now if you're gonna keep complaining about it." He pulled himself up and went over to his dresser, pulling a small bag of loose bills out of his sock drawer. He tossed a crumpled up pile of ones towards Jimmy, who promptly began trying to straighten them out.
"So how much did you sell them for?" asked Marco, as he walked over to his bed and pulled a couple cans of Hamm's out from underneath it.
"Twenty each," replied Jimmy as he flattened out a bill with his thumb. It was still wrinkled, but laid considerably flatter now.
"Not bad."
Marco sat back down next to Jimmy, pulling the tabs off both beers and handing one to Jimmy.
"Hamm's?" he asked, regarding the can with suspicion. "Whatever happened to Old Style?"
"Musta been a run at the store the other day. They were all out. Didn't want to go home empty-handed."
"Huh," mused Jimmy. "So why're we drinking in the early afternoon?"
"A toast! To new business enterprises!"
He extended his can towards Jimmy, who watched apprehensively for a few seconds before clinking his can to Marco's. A toast it was.
"God," muttered Jimmy after taking his first swig. "This stuff is awful. And lukewarm."
"I didn't have time to sneak it into the fridge. But it's still cheap," replied Marco, as he took another sip. "And it gets you drunk."
"Yeah, if you drink, like, five of them. There's almost no alcohol in here. I can't imagine spending a lot of money on a fake ID in order to buy it, you know? If I couldn't make my own IDs, I wouldn't bother."
He drank some more beer and grimaced.
"Speaking of which," he continued, "I coulda done a lot better with the sale today. This guy, you should've seen his wallet. He was loaded. He seemed the sort who would have money burning a hole in his pocket, which is why I went up to him last week to float the whole ID idea to him in the first place. But I didn't see how much he had on him today until after I'd already given him the price and told him it was a discount."
"I keep telling you you're underselling yourself. You forget how rich the kids at that school really are."
"Yeah, well I go there now, and you went there a couple years ago, and we're not exactly upper class. Or even middle class, really."
"Well, we're the, uh, the outliers. Not the norm."
Jimmy took another sip of beer, desensitized to the taste by this point. He stared at the pile of now-straightened bills in front of him before putting them in his wallet.
"I made forty dollars today, fifty if you count the money I won from you. If I can up the price of the IDs and we can extend this operation to a couple other schools, we can pull in a few hundred a week, I think. But we might have problems getting people to buy them. I barely managed this sale."
"You made the sale though."
"Yeah, but I had to cheat a bit."
"Cheat? How?"
Jimmy sighed.
"I...may have suggested to him that he and his girlfriend would need to have fake proof of age for other reasons. Like that she was actually underage and had been lying to him about it."
"Damn."
"Yeah. He was backing off from buying otherwise. Said it was too expensive."
An awkward silence settled into the room as the two of them sat there, drinking.
"She's not really underage, is she?" asked Marco hesitantly.
Jimmy half-choked on his mouthful of beer.
"Hell no!" he spluttered. "She's only a few months younger than I am. When he gave me a photo of her last week to work with in making the IDs, I recognized her immediately. We were in a play together at a summer camp back in 7th grade. Didn't know what happened to her after that until now."
"I'm kinda relieved to hear that," said Marco as he downed the rest of his beer.
"Only kinda?" Jimmy chugged the rest of the contents of his own can, mildly irritated. "Come on, man. I'm not some sort of sleazy pimp or something. I'm here to make some quick cash selling fake IDs to rich brats, nothing more, nothing less."
"I didn't mean it like that. You're a con man, not a monster."
"Hey, con man is such a loaded phrase. I prefer entrepreneur."