Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) Read online

  He needed to spend the moments he was awake processing the emotional events of his job, but he couldn’t talk with me because I always sided with the kids. I was an anarchist and his authoritarian rule over them was tyranny. Why they didn’t all run away was a mystery to me.

  “Because they would be caught,” Ed said.

  “No they wouldn’t,” I scowled. “They’re not idiots.”

  He became patronizing. “It’s not easy to run away. If you’d been placed out there, you wouldn’t have been able to run away either. You’d have been caught if you tried.”

  The insult was extreme and I was livid. “I’ll remind you, I did run away and no one caught me. And you might want to think about who I was playing with before you make another claim that you could do better.”

  Every now and again, Ed needed to be knocked back.

  He knew from the start I was a con artist. He knew I was a criminal. He knew shortly after we met that I had already assumed more names than I could remember, and he knew when he made me promise to never do it again that I couldn’t.

  When he finally learned what I had been up to, he blamed me for psychotically destroying his neurotic fantasies.

  “You built the castle,” I accused. “I am not responsible for its structural integrity.”

  ~~~~~~

  He learned that even the most stable structure can’t survive a sustained attack against the foundation. I’d been lighting fires in the cellar against the powder kegs for years, and when the damage tore down the walls, I asked to move out. I wanted a divorce. But I wanted to make the parting painless. I needed him to want me out, so every time he suggested a repair, I would recall a small fire I had set.

  “Did I tell you about the time I rented a house in Fayetteville and ran about sixty thousand in credit under a stranger’s name?”

  He looked away, murmuring, “No.”

  “It was last year, right around my twenty-third birthday. I was intending to send her the diamond bracelet to make amends, but then I thought it would just freak her out.”

  “That bracelet is real?”

  “Yeah,” it almost sounded like an apology. “I told you it was silver and cubic zirconia, but it’s actually platinum and diamond.”

  We were going on the third week since I had first tried to get him to evict me, and he knew I would keep sharing details until he hung his head in defeat and admitted, “Stop. It’s over. I see that.”

  But then the next day, he recovered and offered again, “We can fix it.”

  I felt forced to counter with, “Do you know about the week I took a job in Columbia just to clear out the company safe? I can’t even remember what name I used, there’s been so many.”

  It was taking less and less to drop his head.

  “It amazes even me that I can continue to call up a new incident every time you falter. I wonder how many more times we can do this?”

  “I wonder, too.” But he continued to try. “I forgive all you’ve done.”

  “You recall the time the sheriff came to arrest you for bank fraud? Sorry about that. My mistake. But you have to give me credit, I did fix it before he could get the cuffs on you.”

  “Dear God, Tanya, what did I do to deserve such dishonesty?”

  “Hard to say, but whatever it was, it must have been pretty bad.”

  “We’ll start over.”

  “Did you know the car in the backyard is stolen?”

  “I still love you.”

  “The lock picks you found were actually mine. Do you want to know how I used them?”

  “No. I’m done. You’ve made your point. It’s over.”

  And still, I could have gone on for weeks. I could have told him things that would have burned the roof, razed the walls, and blasted the rubble into dust.

  ~~~~~~

  It had started with a storm. It so often did. The systems moving in would rip through my skull, blinding me with migraines, enraging me with pain that would last for days and sometimes weeks while I waited for the rains to come. My head could predict the weather like a satellite image. I knew the severity of what was coming by whether it made me retch, and I didn’t always mind because the worst headaches disappeared almost instantly with the lightning. The dramatic release would ensure a rush of euphoria that was exhilarating and I’d want to do something.

  But I had promised I wouldn’t. So for a long time, I didn’t.

  Then Ed went into the woods and I was alone. And I was bored. And there was only one thing I wanted to do. It was the only passion I had besides Ed.

  It was 3:00 a.m. and I was in a manic state of desire. The power had just gone out when lightning hit a transformer. Abruptly my head was clear and a lot of plans were flooding my thoughts, but with them came quite a few questions.

  Legitimate identification and what you could do with it still possessed me, and of late, the mailbox was filled with pre-approved applications for credit.

  I studied the form in candlelight. It seemed a weak system, one easily foiled by nothing more than a date of birth and Social Security number, and both were easy to come by. But I wasn’t certain about the fallout, and I didn’t want to ruin a stranger’s life.

  I decided to test out the scheme on myself.

  The first question was, “How much credit can be accumulated in a month?” It was 1993 and everyone was eager to give me plastic, so the answer was a little over fifty thousand and I hadn’t been trying.

  Then I wondered, “How do the creditors know it was me that applied for it?”

  The answer was clear, they didn’t know, and based on how easy it was, they really didn’t care.

  So in three days, I ran every line of credit to its max and when the bills came, I called the banks and said, “I didn’t apply for this and I didn’t use it.”

  “The card was sent to your address,” was the sole argument in security.

  “No one has been home for months,” was my defense. “It was identity fraud.”

  Now the biggest question: What were the consequences?

  I wouldn’t steal anyone’s identity if the repercussions were anything worse than inconvenience. Ed had diagnosed me wrong: I was a sociopath but I was not a psychopath.

  I understood right from wrong, I just didn’t care. I was even capable of guilt, though no one believed it. No one had seen me display it. But I always questioned, “Why would I do something that is going to make me feel guilty?” I wouldn’t. Not intentionally. It made no sense.

  Consequently, I’d only financially hit banks and businesses covered by insurance. I didn’t care if they were rich or poor, I didn’t score money from individuals.

  So I needed to confirm with the recent credit scam that the name on the card would not be held accountable. And it wasn’t. All the banks required to clear the balance was a police report. That was nothing.

  I sat in the police chief’s office again wondering if I was finally going to pay for my laughing insolence, but the chief had retired and the detectives had forgotten all about me and TCBY. They were incredibly sympathetic, the report was filed, and then it was like it had never happened.

  I wasn’t certain how I felt about it.

  The success of my cons was not so much determined by money, but by the swath of destruction I left behind. It was measured by what I had managed to escape or survive.

  And this had been too simple. Nothing had gone wrong. There hadn’t been a single moment when I felt like the deception was slipping away from me or was getting out of control. It didn’t feel satisfying.

  I wanted chaos. I wanted to be chased. I wanted to be questioned, suspected, respected, and loathed. I wanted to fight for my life and liberty. More than anything, I wanted the pleasure of fear. It had been entirely too many years since I had known it.

  I would eventually steal someone’s identity to run a line of credit, but only to prove it was too easy. I did it to add to the mayhem of everything else I was doing, all in an attempt to tip my life over into pa
ndemonium, looking for the thrill of being overwhelmed and challenged, hoping someone would pursue so I could run.

  Weeping Willow

  There had been a fair number of storms during the two years Ed was at the wilderness program. I had spent a quarter of it with screaming migraines tearing out my eyes, and the other three-quarters resuming my experiments with creating legitimate identification.

  Things had changed. Social Security had now become our de facto identification number. All private services and utilities could be denied if you didn’t surrender it upon request. I was furious it had happened and had spent years fighting it. I always declined to give mine or would give obviously false numbers, like a string of nine fives in a row. I’d explain the Unites States was not a police state and the law was clear that our Social Security number was strictly between us and Social Security. I warned that if we continued to submit to the request, it would be tattooed on our wrists. I’d encourage others to fight with me, to refuse or sabotage, or even just whine a bit, but they all had the same line: “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.”

  I hated them.

  They would say, “You’re like my grandfather, getting mad when the state started requiring pictures on driver’s licenses. He said it wouldn’t amount to nothing but an incursion on our rights. But he was wrong; it prevents anyone else from using it. The pictures keep us safe.”

  And I’d clinch my teeth so not to speak.

  “Same with the Social Security number. It will make it near impossible for people to defraud the banks, hospitals, and insurance companies. And that’s good, because we all pay the price when they’re taken advantage of.”

  I wanted to rip their stupid patronizing heads off.

  “But you’re young,” they’d say. “One day you’ll understand the world isn’t safe. People take advantage. You’re just too angel-faced sweet to know any better.”

  It was all I could do not to tear apart their lives just to prove the angels weren’t on their side.

  But it was my own fault. I’d spent years perfecting the image of innocence. I only got speeding tickets when I couldn’t be bothered to cry, and I could make a Social Security agent weep genuine tears that I had been raised by antiestablishment hippies in a bus.

  It explained the name: Willow.

  But I hadn’t made this one up. I had a genuine birth certificate. She’d been buried with her parents in a cemetery with five headstones. The place sat in a farmer’s field and was surrounded by a low iron fence that had fallen into pieces decades before. The oldest graves were from the turn of the century and sat square center of the plot, but then this family of three with a different last name had knocked down one side of the railings to be fitted in. They shared a single, wide marker with the dates of death just one day apart and the year was seventy-four. The child, like me, would have been four.

  Her death, chiseled between mother and father, kept bringing me back. I was glad her parents were dead. I had two deceased brothers and knew most intimately what it did to a family to lose a child. But here it seemed they had been wiped out together and I hoped the mother that had lived an extra day never knew.

  Every now and again, I would show the place to someone, and we would wonder what had happened to them. I was certain it had been a road accident and finally went to the newspaper to search the dates, but the family wasn’t even in the death notices. I asked the property owner, but they’d only bought the farm in the last decade and didn’t know. The oldest neighbors said the former owner had let the fields lay fallow, but I wouldn’t find her as she’d passed many years before. They thought the graves had something to do with a family reunion.

  Blessed hell, that turned it dark.

  I was now fully committed to learning the story and was prepared for anything from shotguns to food poisoning. I suspected it had happened in a state park, because that’s where family reunions take place, so I started searching the libraries on the way to each wide open pavilion with a bar-b-que, scanning the old newspaper microfilms for their names.

  As first suspected, it was a car accident. The father’s death certificate was in the county courthouse, but the mother and child’s were not. I understood what I was seeing. They had been transported to a larger city with a better hospital and I knew where to go. They were an hour away, but the couple didn’t share the same last name as the tombstone suggested. Each came from a different city outside the state.

  Something about them seemed too tragic to ignore, but my interest in them was purely macabre. At least until I saw the child’s death certificate. It didn’t list her place of birth. It was unknown.

  It meant her birth certificate was clean.

  And I had to have it. She had to live again. I wouldn’t do anything bad with her, no check kiting or credit card fraud, or anything to sully her name. I’d likely just set her aside, bury her again in my box of stolen names and illicit valuables. I had loved her for ages and now I’d take care of her.

  But first I had to find her.

  I had a good idea of where to go for that too.

  Her birth notice was in her mother’s home paper and her birth certificate was in county records. I arrived at the court house looking like a starry-eyed Deadhead, smelling of patchouli, bells jangling on my ankles, smiling peace and wonder at the Southern conservative clerks. Against my chest was a clearly visible gold cross.

  I had to explain why I had no identification to claim my birth certificate, but the face of an angel never lies and it was really very simple. I’d lived my whole life in a psychedelic bus following the Grateful Dead from one city to the next. My parents were New Age mystics sitting in lotus and meditating on Shiva; but at a Kentucky concert, a Baptist preacher came to denounce our wicked ways and I went down on my knees to accept the Lord.

  “Bless your heart,” the woman behind the counter whispered and then, “Jesus be praised, you found your way.”

  The birth certificate was mine and she was confiding, “I can always tell a good soul.”

  ~~~~~~

  Willow was in a midnight garden under the hickories. I’d buried her in the backyard in the dark hours of morning, and I dug her up six months later at noon. It looked like dusk though. Overhead two systems were colliding and the pain in my head predicted tornadoes. The wind was on the verge of drawing blood, pelting me with nuts and broken twigs, kicking up scattered leaves and grass, and whipping my hair across my face until it stung. My eyes were red and full of tears, and I was nearly blind, but I wasn’t crying.

  I was done with crying. I was battling the wind now and everything it threw at me. It was fierce and cutting, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t anything worse than what was screeching through my skull, and it was definitely preferable to Ed’s indifference.

  I’d been begging him for more than a year to listen to me, to understand we would soon be over if he didn’t pay attention to me. I couldn’t be ignored. I wouldn’t stay home alone any longer. But he said our relationship was too strong for me to do anything. We were too deeply connected for it to end.

  “And right now,” he said, “the juvenile delinquents at the wilderness program need stability. As their counselor, I have to be there for them.”

  And I had to get away. The rains were coming and with them would come the release and the ecstasy, and I’d use the high not to think about what I was doing. I wasn’t exactly running away, I was just leaving without mentioning it. And I wasn’t too certain when I’d be back either. I had a shoulder bag of books and a carry-on, but that meant very little about the length of time I intended to roam. I traveled light. I’d taken only a fur coat, cash, and lipstick to Dallas, so in relative terms, I was packed for a lunar expedition.

  I was back at the Nashville airport buying a ticket at the counter, unsettling the airline agent with my insistence, “I really don’t care what city. I just want the next flight into Mexico,” which was probably not the smartest thing to walk into an airport and say.
r />   She looked suspicious.

  I answered before she could ask, “No, I have not just robbed a bank.” Though I did have someone else’s name on my credit cards, and Willow’s driver’s license in my wallet.

  She offered, “Cancun?”

  And I threw my hands up, “Sure.”

  “Returning when?”

  “I don’t need a return.”

  “No return?” She had a good look at me and decided I was not escaping the law but something else. She became concerned, “Are you sure? A return ticket is invaluable.”

  I was less convinced, “I don’t think I’ll use it.”

  Fingers frozen over the keyboard, she was chewing her lips. Then without further warning, she reached across the counter for my hand, asking, “Are you alright?”

  That was the last question I needed to be asked. I stepped back before she made me cry. I would have agreed to anything. “A return is great.”

  She withdrew. “It will make going through immigration easier.”

  “Lovely. I’ll take it.”

  “When?”

  “Oh ... Um … Well … Hmm …”

  “Let’s just make the return for a week and you can change it if you need. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Mexico

  It was my second day in Cancun and I was sitting alone at an outdoor café in the city’s tourist district, but I was never alone for long. I had no problem traveling by myself because people always reached out to draw me in. This time it was a table of three Mexican men. They were in their late twenties or early thirties, immaculately dressed, and laden with gold.

  We chatted across the café until one extended the invitation, “Come join us.” Then when I took a seat, he introduced the table, “I am Miguel. This is Hector and Ramiro.”

  “And I’m Willow.”

  Ten minutes later, I was explaining, “I hate to dash anyone’s hopes, but I prefer women.”

  They reacted by pulling back in astonishment. Hector asked, “Lesbian?”