The Black Book

The year is 2018. The weather is cold. It’s snowing. The sun is setting. It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving. And also the worst time to be incarcerated. “Take him up to booking,” says the intake officer. The booking officer tells Dan, “Stand there. We’re gonna take your picture.” Dan proceeds to walk to the tape on the floor that marks where to stand. Though he has had many pictures taken before, he has never had one taken in jail. Dan is feeling a mix of emotions - anger disappointment, rage and frustration - but for some strange reason, he asks himself, “Should I smile?” Before he makes his decision, he hears the click of the camera and sees a flash of light. “Turn to your left so I can take a side view picture,” says the officer. “What am I charged with,” Dan asks. “Battery and second-degree assault,” the officer replies. “But I was just defending myself. The guy tried to shoot me,” Dan protested. “Save it. You don’t need to plead your case to me. Tell it to the judge,” the officer says. He adds, “Since it’s Friday night, you’re spending the weekend here.” The officer proceeds to give Dan his jumpsuit, picks up a mattress, and puts him in a holding cell. “This is your room till we find you a cell.”

Still pumped up on adrenaline from the fight earlier in the day, the reality that Dan is in jail hasn’t sunk in yet. The officer leaves and 20 minutes later comes back with a tray of food. He unlocks the door and hands Dan the food. Dan takes the food and sets it on the sink. Still angry that he got locked up the weekend before Thanksgiving because of a dumb fight at a bar, he takes the food and flushes it down the toilet. Dan is disappointed, He thinks of how this whole episode would so disappoint his late father and mother, who had been so proud that he had earned a college scholarship, and now here he is being locked up for the first time in his life in his first semester of college. “I knew I shouldn’t have talked to her or punched her boyfriend. And where did that officer come from?” Dan asks himself. He keeps rethinking the fight that got him locked up, and wondering if he should have just walked away when he was pushed by the girl’s boyfriend. “But I did knock him out with just one punch,” he chuckles to himself.

The officer comes back 30 minutes later and tells Dan to pack up and bring his mattress. As he enters the cell block that will be his home for the time he is incarcerated, he hears an inmate yell out, “There’s a new one.” The officer shows Dan his cell and leaves. Dan walks into the cell. It’s a two bed cell. The toilet is connected to the sink. Lying on the bottom bunk is an elderly looking man with tattoos on his arms. His beard is long and has some shades of gray in it. “You just come in or you got transferred?” asks the man whose name is Rob.

Dan: “I just came in. What’s a bail hearing?”

Rob: “That’s when you go see the judge and he sets your bail. You should have a court date. When is it?” Dan: “The officer told me it’s the 6th of February. So you’re saying if I don’t get bail I sit in here till then?”

Rob: “Yup. What you in for?”

Dan: “Battery and assault.”

Rob: “You should get bail for that. Until then, this is where we sleep, so keep it clean.”

Dan: “OK. If you don’t mind me asking, what are you in for?”

Rob: “Fraud, theft, and money laundering. I’ve been here for a couple of days. I had a bail hearing today, and it wasn’t granted. I go to court on February 3rd.”

Dan: “Why didn’t you get bail?”

Rob: “Because my charges violate my probation.”

Dan: “And what were you on probation for?”

Rob: “Fraud.”

Dan: “What kind of fraud?”

Rob: “I was printing counterfeit money. You don’t seem like you’ve been here much.”

Dan: “Why do you say that?”

Rob: “Because you didn’t know what a bail hearing was.”

Dan: “You’re right, I’m actually going to Brightwood State studying business.”

Rob: “Good for you.”

Dan: “Thanks. I hope I get out of here on Monday so I can go back to classes.”

Rob: “I hope you do too.”

After a weekend in jail, Dan is ready to get out. He is anxious about the bail hearing, which is today, Monday, at 1:30 PM. An officer comes to get Dan and tells him it’s time for his bail review. “I set bail at $5,000 dollars.” says the judge. Dan returns to his cell with hope, but his problem now is that he doesn’t have the money to pay the bail. His parents are no longer living and before college he had been living with his uncle in Florida. But that’s thousands of miles from Massachusetts. Brightwood State was the only college that had given Dan a scholarship, and it covered 80% of his tuition. Clearly, he didn’t expect he would ever be in any kind of situation where he would be getting locked up. When Dan comes back to his cell, Rob could tell something is wrong.

Rob: “How did the bail hearing go?”

Dan: “I got bail.”

Rob: “That’s great. If I had gotten bail, I’d be out of here today. So why you looking so down?”

Dan: “I can’t afford the bail. I don’t have $5,000 dollars.”

Rob: You don’t need the full $5,000. You can get a bail bond for 10% of that. $500. How about your family members?”

Dan: “I don’t have parents. All I have is my uncle and he’s on unemployment and doesn’t have any money. And if I tell him about all this, I’ll be breaking his heart. He’s done enough for me.”

Rob: “Well, you don’t seem to have a choice.”

A week passes and Dan is still locked up. As the days go by, Rob opens up to Dan about his white collar crime spree and how he has millions in bitcoin untraceable by the U.S. government. He has been accumulating this money over the years through dark web scams, cloned cards, and counterfeit bills. Dan is fascinated by Rob’s stories but he is desperate to get out of jail, which Rob could tell. By the end of the week, Dan has missed a week of classes and is at risk of failing and losing his scholarship. Dan asks Rob if he has the money to bail him out.

Rob: “I do have the money, but why should I do this favor for you?”

Dan: “Please, I’m begging you.”

Rob: “OK, I will do this for you. But you will have to work for me on the outside to pay this off.”

Dan: “OK. What do I have to do?”

Rob: “I will let you know when it’s time.”

Dan: “When can you pay the bail bond?”

Rob: “I will call my attorney and ask him to bail you out tomorrow, and that should do it.”

Just as Rob promised, bail is quickly arranged. Before Dan is about to be released. Rob gives Dan an address to go to in Massachusetts, and a number to call when he gets to the address. “The rest of what you need to know will be given to you in due time,” Rob explains.

As Dan pulls up to the address, he calls the number. The person who answers the phone tells Dan to look in the mail box and hangs up the phone. Dan goes to the mailbox and finds an old but well-kept black diary with a leather cover. Dan opens the diary to the first page and sees the name Robert Washington written in cursive. As Dan continues to turn the pages, he sees details of login information for several bitcoin accounts. Also, there are a lot of phone numbers and the names of many people. This information was clearly vital to Rob in his various shady endeavors. It appears to Dan that this information is somehow the key to all the rest of Rob’s hidden money that he had successfully kept from being seized by the federal government. All of it is in bitcoin, which is decentralized cryptocurrency that can’t be regulated by the government.

Dan puts the diary in his pocket and heads back to his dorm room at Brightwood State. He needs to wait for Rob to somehow contact him and give him further directions. A month goes by. Then one day, as Dan is leaving his biology class, he feels his phone vibrate. It’s Rob’s attorney.

Attorney: “He’s gone.”

Dan: “Who’s gone?”

Attorney: “Rob. Cancer. He had a tumor in his brain.”

Dan: “So what do I do with the book?”

Attorney: “What book? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Before Dan could respond, the phone hangs up. The attorney has ended the call. The news of Rob’s death and the mysterious conversation with Rob’s attorney is shocking to Dan, but it’s so new that it doesn’t sink in right away. Dan realizes that the last memento he has of Rob is the book, the diary with all the bitcoin information and a lot of people’s names and numbers. When he gets back to his dorm room across campus, he decides to take a closer look at the various details contained in the book. It takes some time and some study of all the numbers and other details Rob had scribbled in the pages of his diary, but Dan eventually realizes the diary contains directions about how to transfer Rob’s bitcoins to another wallet. And when Dan adds up the bitcoins, he realizes there are 20 of them. This book, Rob’s precious diary, has given Dan access to the equivalent of a million dollars in bitcoin.