Although they were already near Vance's house, he and Ben ducked off down the road to one of those out-of-the-way places that children know but adults seem to forget, out of the way and overlooked. They spent the next hour or so there, and Vance outlined his entire plan. It was a more sophisticated idea that one might expect from a person his age, but Vance was already showing evidence of a prodigious nature when it came to subterfuge and manipulation.
The simplest part of it was really just positioning themselves not as "takers" but as "finders" - people who could retrieve missing items by infiltrating a seedy underbelly, working their network, and so on. The fact that it was also the same team that was doing the pilfering in the first place was a fun twist on it, but it solved the demand problem.
They would use some urchins and troublemakers for disconnected, one-off jobs, while also building a small network of their own people for more complicated things. It would mean understanding not only what people valued, but what they were likely to pay to get back. At the same time, nothing so valuable that they'd hunt down whoever took it themselves.
There are all sorts of things that have petty rewards offered - a lost wallet, a missing pet, keys. Things that might have been misplaced, or might have walked off; it was totally believable that an industrious poor street child might work hard enough (or be lucky enough) to find a missing item for a small reward - and if they happened to humbly present the "wrong" item with an opportunity to buy it at a steep discount, that would just be an extra revenue source.
At the same time, there was a whole separate class of items, more valuable but trickier, that would surely be stored in a person's house. To get those, with a plausible story, they'd probably have to ransack a place, taking a combination of miscellaneous things along with family heirlooms or treasured memories. The various knick-knacks and sundry items that served as cover could be fenced off as a way of covering their increasing costs.
Vance was well-aware of the power of perception and mind games, so he outlined another axis of his plan, this one somewhat less direct. It would also serve the purpose of training their new recruits somewhat, and determining what they were good for. They could cause accidents to happen - for instance, coming into a shop and subtly placing objects near the edge of a shelf, or poking out just enough that some innocent bystander might brush into it, causing it to fall and break.
Vance had several varieties of this, and while there was no monetary gain, directly, he saw great value in this part of the plan. People would have increasing amounts of bad luck, and then things would go missing and they would be less suspicious. When Vance’s crew found things for them, they’d be so grateful that they would be happy to pay.
At the same time, they would notice that their luck had started to change, and the accidents gradually stopped. Eventually, people would subconsciously start to associate his crew with good things happening. That would open them up for all kinds of later exploitation.
It was an ambitious plan, and Ben was amazed to hear every facet of it covered in such minute detail; Vance gave examples of the kinds of stores he would target, the sorts of items that sold well, connections to fences, and ways to hide their money from the "help." What choice did Ben have, when presented with such vision, but to redouble his commitment? He eagerly accepted, and the proceeded to discuss some names for low-risk additions to their founding crew.
The team started to come together quickly, although this was as much out of necessity as it was Vance's own drive. Unless they were going to choose a completely new area to operate in (and lose a lot of time to daily transit, as well as learning the area), Vance was going to have to take a backseat. This perfectly suited him and his desire to move to the "clean hands" model his mother put into his head, but had the downside of removing his primary income source.
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He still needed to bring money home, and although Ben could be used for many things, he was never going to be a decent pickpocket - and there wasn't time to teach him, anyway. Instead, he made the quick decision to use other boys that operated dangerously by themselves, giving them the protection of an experienced lookout in exchange for a good cut of the proceeds. As the team grew, he instructed Ben to first build more teams of spotters so that he could remain inconspicuous and scale the amount of pickpockets and thieves that they could work with at one time.
Vance and Ben debated having Vance be the front face of the "find lost things" operation, with a spin on redemption - a play in which he decided that rather than take things from people, he'd rather help them find them. But ultimately, both boys realized it was too likely to make people suspicious as to how he just happened to find the items, and so again Vance managed to relegate himself to a position with less direct involvement, and more planning and orchestration.
One of the important decisions that Vance made was that they should fail to find a certain percentage of items, lest they come across as too lucky; as a result, they would take on jobs that they knew they couldn't deliver at least ten percent of the time, and expect to lost another ten percent to opportunistic cross-selling. That would still be a high enough ratio to be considered skillful, but hopefully under the level of too good.
There was no shortage of talent available for making things disappear. In any city the size of Khartok, especially one with so big a difference between the rich few and the poor masses, those who would take from others were plentiful. In order not to give away the plan, Vance positioned another boy as a runner for a mysterious, unnamed fence that would receive the stolen goods.
That was good enough for the help, as long as they got paid, and it gave Vance a further degree of protection; if the runner was ever caught, he could simply be replaced with another, and Vance would not have to worry about his own exposure.
Before long there were several different streams of activity up and running, and while he was giving away a huge percentage of the take every day, Vance was still netting more money than ever before. Even better, with so many different small activities going on, the only person with a true sense of the operation's income was him, so he didn't have to worry about complaints on unfair splits.
While not much of a bookkeeper (due to both age and temperament), Vance did carefully account for himself the money he had to pay the others, the money he should bring home, and the money he could set aside for growing the operation. He had to increase the amount he brought his mother slightly, be he made sure that she had no idea of all the different lines he was running.
Even the money that was retained for growing the operation had a small percentage that was regularly cached away separately, a stash that Vance guarded extremely jealously. He considered this his escape fund, and not a day went by when he couldn't say exactly how much was in there, down to the last copper.
By the time six months had gone by, Vance's operations had over a dozen regular "employees" with nearly twice as many rotating one-offs. He finally started to ramp up the introduction of unfortunate accidents, allowing for a very slow build of paranoia that he knew he would be able to leverage when the time was right. Although Richard left the house to strike out on his own, with an apprenticeship opportunity in a nearby brewery, Vance was nearly too busy to notice - and if anything, it was a relief.
Richard's continuous torment and threats had become such a part of the background noise of his life that Vance rarely considered them, but their absence brought a calmness that allowed him to focus like never before. Vance expected that he would never see his brother again, and that was just fine by him. Richard wasn't exactly a sentimental fellow either, so Vance doubted that he'd ever stop by just to check in or share his good fortune - if Richard ever returned, it would be a sure sign of trouble.
Ben had continued to grow in his responsibilities, and now ran the spotting and pickpocket operations reasonably solo. While Vance saw him as a valuable lieutenant, he also never forgot that Ben was the one person in his circle who had enough knowledge of what Vance was planning to really cause him trouble, and a such, he needed to be watched and controlled. This Vance primarily accomplished via regular "bonuses" and other small gifts, but Vance still couldn't help but feel that he needed to do something to keep Ben on a shorter leash.
He couldn't do what he needed to do without Ben - at least not yet - but that weakness was the biggest flaw in his plans. Ben could control him rather than the other way around, if he ever chose to get into something like blackmail, and until that situation was resolved, Vance would never be able to rest easy.