The Perfect Crime - I think.

It shouldn't be a stolen car. Depending on where you are, a stolen car may attract immediate attention. In a smaller jurisdiction cops may even have a photo of it taped to their dashboards.

If you're carying an illegal gun or have a kidnapped person in your trunk, you don't speed or run red lights. If you have a trunk full of drugs, you don't drive around in a stolen car. That's just asking to go to jail.

Hm...that could potentially work, but the main factors I can think of would be that it's a stolen car and that if it's been reported stolen, he could easily get pulled over for having it, and then when it's searched and he's found with the drugs, he's screwed.

Though, if I was the Buyer, I'm not sure I'd be trusting enough to do this. I'm assuming that he had to pay the Seller up front. So essentially, he's already paid without having a chance to see or test the product. It could really easily be a setup. I mean, the "drugs" could be packs of flour wrapped up to look like drugs. If they really trust one another and have a long-term relationship, I could see it working. Though I'd also be concerned with driving a stolen car when someone else knows it was stolen. How easy would it be for the Seller to call the cops and set him up?

Another question to ask is how they got the keys to the car. Is one of them a pickpocket as well? Depending on how they do it, there could be risks involved in that part, too.

Anyway, it sounds like a nifty plan. I'm just trying to find questions.

I don't understand the perfect crime bit.Drugs change hands all the time.In London, drug dealers use rented property.In the short term it is safe and you don't have to worry about being seen. The best way to transport drugs in London is using black cabs.The police almost never stop black cabs.The last place you would want to be is in a stolen car with drugs on you.

EdCarroll said:

I have come up with the perfect crime...

So what am I overlooking?

Click to expand...

The fact that no crime is perfect. To borrow and paraphrase a line from John Grisham, which he borrowed from about a hundred other people: "There is no such thing as a perfect crime; if you can think of ten things you missed or didn't do, then you're smarter than 90% of the criminals. But there's hundreds of things you haven't thought of yet."

Biggest thing that gets in the way of a "perfect crime" is the unknown. Remember in the move version of Contact when the NASA guys give Jodie Foster the poison pill? They say they are doing it for the things they can't think of that might go wrong.

I think your crime is good and is well thought out, but remember, if you are writing a mystery, the hero has to have a place to start and the bad guys have to have made a mistake so that said hero can make progress in the case.

> I have come up with the perfect crime

Oooh this is good.

The Buyer goes out the mall, and watches a towing truck hauling the double-parked car away. He catches a taxi all the way to the pound where he negotiates with the owner for an hour. Meanwhile, a bunch of kids looking for trouble and easy money, jump the pound fence and steal away car parts from the yard. The Buyer finally gets to his car only to find it jacked onto cement blocks. Luckily, the trunk hadn't been opened. In despair, the Buyer finds a banged up Gremlin into which he ferries his treasure, hikes the ignition and takes off. The pound owner couldn't be more pleased to let go that old crap the police left him with from a decade-old murder case. But the weight of the drugs, combined with the Gremlin's notoriously frail rear suspension leave sparks flying behind as he drives. It doesn't take long for acrid smoke to engulf the cabin and force the Buyer to pull into someone's driveway in search of a garden hose. After knocking on the door of his improvised savior, The Buyer comes face to face with ... The Driver. Unhappy to see the drugs coming back to him and for fear of the smoke might attract attention, the Driver helps the Buyer transfer the drugs onto his pickup truck, then rides the Gremlin to a deserted landfill a block away. The Driver parks it out of view on a slight slope. The poor Gremlin, old and rusted and out of parking brakes, slips backwards from its parking spot. The Driver, seeing his mischief about to be discovered, runs alongside in an attempt to get inside and hit the brakes. Even from afar, the concussion from the explosion sends shivers down The Buyer's spine. Sirens echo in the quiet neighborhood. The Buyer takes off in the Driver's pickup and go through the lesser used roads to substract himself from the Driver's unfortunate demise. When the rain picks up, his precious cargo's wrapping melts away and everything he holds dear turn into an oozing slur. The Buyer, having spied empty sugar drums besides the dumpster of a Krispy Kreeme, seizes the opportunity to turn his misfortune about. In the drums goes the white slush, and in a nearby parked town car with opened windows go the mushy paper wrappings. Then he moves his pickup to the far end of the lot and away from suspicion. Stressed and tired from his ordeal, the Buyer goes in for some well-deserved rest. But fate never seems to leave him alone. The overpowering smell of coffee beckons him and as he approaches the young lady with high cheek bones behind the counter, it intermixes with the Seller's cheap cologne. The Buyer's nostrils guide his glance towards, the Seller smoozing with a pair of police officers over honey-glazed donuts. The Seller's casual smile turns into an expression borrowed from the letters W, T anf F when their sights cross. The Buyer, sensing an impending doom, walks outside but his paces are matched by the Seller's longer strides. As a heated debate is about to take place near the Seller's car, the police officers come over and, being gifted with good noses and eyes, notice the drug wrappings. Formalities ensue but with a bloody ending. The Buyer, having convinced the police of his innocent whereabouts as an interior painter, drives home free in a brand new pickup, being on the receiving end of a crime for which the witnesses are no more.

There you go. Perfect Crime.

-cb

EdCarroll said:

First, the Seller and Buyer are vetted back in the neighborhood (they checked each other out and the Buyer paid the Seller).

Then the Seller told the Buyer to meet the Driver in the food court at the mall.

The Buyers friends drop him off at the mall and he sees the Driver, who gives him the keys to a stolen car with the drugs in the trunk.

Then the Buyer walks out of the mall, unlocks the car with the key and drives away--just like everybody else who exits the mall.

What he does with the stolen car is up to the Buyer, the Seller made enough money from the drug deal that he doesn't care about the car.

So what am I overlooking?

Click to expand...

There's too much trust that the drugs are drugs and not a rouse. Large cash amounts don't get handed over for "future delivery". That's just bad drug business.

If you were going to do it, then I'd use a car rented under a false name and the car gets abandoned once the drugs are taken. Easy enough to get a flunky to rent a car. Or maybe the seller has connections into a rental car business. *shrug*

The biggest thing to me is the unbelieveability that someone would hand over money ahead of time for drugs they can't inspect. You'd have to sell me on that one in the story.

Good luck.

EdCarroll said:

I have come up with the perfect crime (which will result in the largest drug deal in the city. ) for use in my next cozy. It looks brilliant to me, but the Navy taught me that if everything is going smoothly, you've obviously overlooked something.




First, the Seller and Buyer are vetted back in the neighborhood (they checked each other out and the Buyer paid the Seller).

Then the Seller told the Buyer to meet the Driver in the food court at the mall.

The Buyers friends drop him off at the mall and he sees the Driver, who gives him the keys to a stolen car with the drugs in the trunk.

Then the Buyer walks out of the mall, unlocks the car with the key and drives away--just like everybody else who exits the mall.

What he does with the stolen car is up to the Buyer, the Seller made enough money from the drug deal that he doesn't care about the car.


So what am I overlooking?

Click to expand...

You're overlooking the fact that you haven't come up with anything new. Drug deals have been done much this way for as long as there have been drug deals, and with very mixed success.

You may, or may not, be eliminating selling to an undercover officer, but even this isn't certain. Check each other out how? Undercover officers often work undercover for months, and have a well established identity. And informants have all sorts of reasons to inform.

And you have someone driving around in a stolen car.

And something as simple as a flat tire or a dead battery could ruin everything.

And for all you know, both parties are under surveillance.

And it's waaayyyy too public.

And the mall will certainly have security cameras inside and out.

Other than this, there must be at least a hundred ways this deal could go wrong.

Any crime is perfect, if you get away with it. But this one is old hat, and has so many risks it's nothing smart drug dealers would ever attempt for a very large transaction.

This is why God invented isolated spots outside the city, private warehouses inside the city, etc.

This whole thing does not sound like a cozy to me. Is this bothering anyone else? Drug deals in a big mall? Sounds more like a thriller than a cozy.