Identity Thief Read online

  I had no idea why I felt so bad. I felt worse than when I’d worry about getting caught for the identity theft or for what happened to Biff. I felt worse than I did when the cops first apprehended me at Betsy’s, and I had no idea what was even happening. I felt worse than I did when Betsy told me Biff was Scotty’s father, or when I lost my job after years of hard work. I felt worse than when I got shot. As much as I hated to admit it, I even felt worse than when Scotty told me about Biff, or for that matter when Scotty shot and killed Biff, or when I was burying the body.

  I kept telling myself nothing bad was happening. If anything, I should be grateful for all the trouble I was not in and look at the great future I had to look forward to. Yet it seemed like my entire life was caving in, and I would never feel better again. I’d always taken great pleasure in writing my ballsy answers as McShrink, but suddenly I thought I’d been belittling all those people who wrote me. Their problems were real; they hurt. And they probably still hurt after they got even with their tormentors.

  I crashed and burned so rapidly. By Saturday afternoon, I found myself deciding that now was as good a time as any to get out of everyone’s way. Scotty had a support system. Sequoia and Mom would not have to deal with any more of my messes. The cops would have to solve their case without me. For what it was worth, I wasn’t able to find Jesse Falcon, anyway.

  I thought some more about that poem about different methods of suicide. How did it go again? I knew that cutting your wrists was supposed to be a female way to die, so I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t have a gun. The oven was electric and that also seemed more of a woman’s way of doing things. I didn’t have a private garage, unless I went to my mom’s place, but that seemed a bad idea for any number of reasons. Carbon monoxide was out, too. I could hang myself, but what if Scotty saw me that way? I could drown myself in the nearest body of water, only it might take days to find me, and I couldn’t put Scotty through that, either.

  Setting myself on fire seemed too gross. Ditto jumping off a high building.

  Finally, in a detached, why-didn’t-I-think-of-this-before way, I figured it out. Sleeping pills! Talk about the answer staring you right in the face.

  There was nothing dramatic about it. I didn’t take one last hard look at myself in the mirror. I got out my sleeping pills and Mom’s sleeping pills, which were different from mine. And a bottle of vodka for good measure. I figured I’d do it lying in bed. It might look like I’d simply fallen asleep.

  At the last minute, I wrote a quick note to Mom and Sequoia, asking that they not tell Scotty the truth about what I did. But that was all it said.

  I took three of Mom’s pills—which I knew were weaker—and two of mine, and a swig of vodka. I quickly repeated the process.

  Out of nowhere, the buzzer rang.

  I told myself it was Fate intervening and that there really was a God. But maybe I was relieved that I had some excuse to stop what I was doing. Maybe I was more afraid of death than I wanted to die. It’s weird the way you can be certain you want something, only to realize you want the exact opposite.

  Whatever it was, I hurried to the intercom. I wasn’t feeling at all woozy. Some guy named Randall Van Sant was a PI looking for Biff.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “They arrested somebody. Two people, I think.”

  “That’s nice. My client thinks he may still be alive. May I come in?”

  If nothing else, it sounded interesting, and anyway I obviously should be aware of any efforts to find Biff. My purpose for living renewed for having more dishonesty to engage in, I experienced a sudden rush of adrenaline. I ran to the bathroom and stuck a couple of fingers down my throat to puke up the pills. Though I tried and tried, only one of the pills came back up. Oh well, I could put on some coffee and everything would be fine. I often had to take more than one pill to sleep, anyway.

  I hit the button to buzz in Randall Van Sant. To be on the safe side, I murmured, “Thank you, God.”

  By the time we shook hands and introduced ourselves—he said to call him Randy and gave me his card—I was feeling light-headed. Randy looked vaguely familiar to me, but I didn’t know what to make of it. I showed him to our black-and-white living room and quickly nuked some water for instant lattes. I drank one down in the kitchen in a single gulp and brought out two to the living room, one for each of us.

  Never did I feel more grateful for Sequoia’s phobia about photos of us on display. This would give me free rein to say all kinds of things. Though Randy said he couldn’t tell me who his client was, I was reasonably certain it was Betsy. Who else could it be? Certainly not Biff’s parents.

  “You’re Biff’s best friend, is that correct?” Randy blew on the steam of his latte.

  “You mean am I Biff’s BFF?” I joked. It’s strange the way humor had nothing to do with how you otherwise were doing. We both chuckled. “It was by default. Even in grade school, the other kids didn’t like him. You know someone is pretty screwed up when he’s the richest kid in town, and you still feel sorry for him.”

  “Do you believe he’s dead?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  I put a couple of fingers to my chin in mock thought. “I guess it was . . . I dunno, maybe a week before he disappeared?” I shrugged. “I knew him all my life. It’s not like I kept track of when I saw him.”

  Randy nodded in agreement. “That makes sense. You know, I always think it’s weird on TV shows, when they make a big deal about how someone can’t remember what they were doing at some precise moment a year ago.”

  “A year ago, nothing. I have trouble remembering what I did yesterday.” Maybe I was feeling wobbly, but I kind of liked Randy. He seemed like one of those rare sympathetic souls. “Though as I think of it, Biff came to see me at my mother’s condo. I remember because she asked him to go get her mail, and afterward he made some really bad joke about this sexy lingerie catalog.”

  “And your mother’s name is . . . ?”

  I told Randy her name. He smiled broadly and said, “Oh. That’s a nice name. A common name to be sure, but a very nice name.”

  “She’d agree with you.”

  Randy shook his head in empathy. “Mothers. What can you do with them? Now, I have to ask this, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Was it your impression that Biff was having an affair with your ex-wife?”

  I laughed out loud. “Best thing that ever happened to me. She—I mean, Betsy—thought I didn’t know about it, but Biff told me years ago. I didn’t care. My only reason for keeping the marriage together was my son.”

  “Is he here now?”

  “No, he and his stepmother have gone on a trip. They get along great.” I made a point of smiling.

  “Now, you say Biff was rich. But did he have any debts?”

  I leaned back in my chair and yawned. Though I was getting drowsy, I realized I had a perfect opportunity to get back at Biff. “Always. His parents got sick of bailing him out. I have a background in computers. Biff even asked me if I could help him to hack into someone’s account to steal money. Naturally, I refused. I told him if he mentioned it again, I’d call the police.” I couldn’t have been happier that I’d already set up a computer trail of Biff supposedly stealing from Jesse Falcon, the murderer.

  Randy narrowed his eyes. “So if he did hack into someone’s accounts, he couldn’t have done it alone?”

  I yawned again. “He could’ve paid some computer crook to do it for him. And probably he’d hire someone to do his in-person transactions. So that Biff himself wouldn’t be seen on tape and could deny everything. You might want to check out those offshore island banks. Biff was always . . . ” I fought to keep my eyes open. “He was always saying how he wanted one of those offshore accounts. He planned to do all sorts of illegal things. He . . . he wanted to open a gambling house. He wanted to pimp whores. He was setting up Betsy . . . to become . . . a whore.”

  “Hey, man, are you okay?” I di
mly saw Randy walking toward me.

  I was confused because there seemed to be two worlds at once, and I was trying to figure out which was real and which was . . . it was hard to tell, maybe a dream? There was someone shaking me in the one world. In the other world—the more vivid one—I was with Biff. We were twelve years old and sneaking off to smoke cigarettes. Or pretending to. We bragged about which girls in school we’d fucked, though of course neither of us had even kissed a girl yet. Some other part of me, the grown man, was thinking, I remember this day, this really happened.

  Next thing I knew, there was an angry deluge of cold water on my face. Someone’s fingers were in my mouth. I saw some puke go down the shower drain. I realized it was Randy who was helping me, saving my life, literally. We were both fully clothed and sopping wet under the shower. The black shower tiles seemed to give off colors, sort of like when you wear those 3-D glasses.

  I coughed for a while, then stepped out onto the black bathroom tiles on my own. Feeling fully conscious again, I felt a little crowded. I’m one of those people who, when I don’t feel well, prefer to be left alone.

  “Easy now.” Randy grabbed my shoulders and sat me down on the toilet seat lid. “You’ll be okay now. What the hell did you do?”

  “I don’t like being in wet clothes. Could you hand me my bathrobe? There, on the door hanger. I have an extra one, if you want.”

  “Sure.” He tossed me my bathrobe and took the extra one underneath it. Then he grabbed a towel and stepped outside to dry off and change, keeping the door ajar.

  “What’s up?” I heard him ask from the other side of the door. “What did you do? Why?”

  “I only took a few sleeping pills. It was a mixture. Oh, and vodka. I swear, it was literally moments before you got here. You saved my life.” Drying off, I rubbed the towel so hard on my skin it turned red. But it was good—the sense of touch, the sense of being alive.

  “When you’ve been a PI for as long as I have, you learn to do all kinds of things. But you still haven’t told me why.”

  Michelangelo once said that the sculpture was already in the marble slab, and all he had to do was chisel it out. Likewise, a perfectly plausible explanation was right there waiting for me, I only had to catch it. I realized that I’d always been this way. Even back in college, I never wrote outlines for term papers or oral presentations. I improvised as I went along and always got an “A.”

  “It was Biff,” I said quietly. “He’s been blackmailing me. He’s threatening to tell my son that he’s his actual birth father. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  Randy opened the door. I noticed he had tied a double knot in his bathrobe. “I still don’t see why you tried to kill yourself. He could tell your son, anyway.”

  “You don’t know Biff. He doesn’t want to be Scotty’s father at all. In fact, he’d deny it if there wasn’t a chance to make money. I figured if I were dead, the secret would be safe. Betsy might tell Scotty about it, but I have no control over that, and anyway, even Scotty knows his mother is liar.”

  “You were willing to die to spare your son?”

  “Yes. But there was—there was a little more to it. You know how I said Biff would have to pay someone to hack into somebody’s bank account? That was the blackmail. He didn’t want cash from me. He wanted me to commit all these serious felonies and show him how to hack into other people’s money. He didn’t tell me who’d been helping him, but he said that whoever it was could no longer be reached. He also said something about how he’d been shot at himself, though he didn’t get specific. Who knows, maybe the computer hack got bumped off. Biff really needed my help. Maybe it sounds corny, but death seemed better than getting involved with him. I mean, what good would I be to my son if I went to jail? So again, I figured, ‘Okay, Biff, here’s my answer.’”

  “Biff’s been missing. How’s he been communicating with you?”

  “He hasn’t been. Not until the other day. He sent me a long text message. I was so freaked out by it that I threw my phone away. Down a sewer.” I scooped up our wet clothes and walked over to the laundry room. Randy followed behind as I threw our clothes into the dryer. “I’m one of those sensitive new-age guys,” I joked. “I know how to turn on the dryer.”

  “Just as long as your wife doesn’t know,” Randy shot back. “Or is she your wife? Have you gotten married?”

  “That’s set for next month.” I rolled my eyes. “My mom wants to put what she calls a little something together for us. Naturally, she’s complaining every step of the way.”

  “Naturally,” Randy agreed. “By the way, did Biff mention having a new girlfriend?”

  “I don’t think anyone except Betsy would be dumb enough to get involved with him.” Realizing what I’d said, I amended, “But I guess that doesn’t say much about me, either.”

  Randy laughed again, but then heaved a heavy sigh. “Let’s sit down for a moment. There’s something you need to know.”

  “Uh, sure.” I acted like I had no idea what it might be.

  Randy clasped his hands together in thought. He leaned forward in his chair, almost like a doctor telling a patient a serious diagnosis. “This is what I think happened. Biff disappeared after his visit to your mother’s, am I right? This was because he started stealing money online. Identity theft. I believe there was something in your mother’s mail that he used to get going.”

  “That makes sense. Say, you’re pretty good.” I had to admit, I was genuinely impressed by how quickly Randy was putting it all together, albeit in a totally wrong way.

  “I think he stole from the condo’s previous owner. Classic identity theft. Then he figured he had to lay low. He might even be off in the islands as we speak. And if he’s a gambler and a shitty one, he probably lost everything he stole. No wonder he’s trying to blackmail you.”

  I mulled it over. “Wow, that’s an awful lot you’re hitting me with at once. But it sounds reasonable. Yes. I’ll bet you’re exactly right, Randy. What should I do?”

  Randy looked at me with dead seriousness. “Nothing. Do absolutely nothing. Wait for Biff to contact you. Tell him you’ve agreed. Ask how to contact him. Then contact me.”

  “Sounds good.” I lowered my head in embarrassment. “A hell of a lot better than taking my own life.”

  He stood up and touched my shoulder. “You can’t help it if you’re a good man. Unlike the Biffs of this world, you have a conscience.”

  “If I’m such a good man, why did I try to do the worst possible thing?”

  “Because . . . because shit if I know.”

  We laughed in a guy sort of way. I really did like Randy and hoped we could be friends. If, of course, a million different lies never came to the surface. Still, he and I clicked in a big way. I know it sounds dumb, but it was like we’d known each other all our lives. Like we both understood something about life that other people didn’t, and we didn’t even have to say what it was. He was older than me, not that it mattered. I’d forgotten the pleasant sensation of having a friend and being liked. Yet, at one time I was popular. Did I mention I was vice-president of my senior class in high school and at college three different fraternities invited me to pledge? What happened to that guy, who liked parties and being around people? How did I let Betsy become my universe?

  Still, it was a strange feeling to genuinely want to connect to someone while at the same time wanting him to know nothing about me. It made me nervous in a new kind of way, like maybe mixing gin with bourbon. I felt better and better about meeting him while at the same time I felt worse and worse.

  “I should see a shrink,” I said. “What I did—it’s not normal.” For all the lies I told him, I genuinely reached out to Randy for answers. I trusted him, the way you might trust a bartender or cab driver. I sometimes trusted people I had no real reason to trust, as if my vulnerability would conquer all my apprehensions. Of course, it never did. Despite all the things I’d done, I was like a little boy wanting to be taken care of. Usually, th
e closest I came to achieving this was by taking care of other people instead. But Randy genuinely cared. I knew it somehow.

  “Normal shmormal,” Randy replied. “Have you seen this website called McShrink.com? Write to him. He gives people the best advice I’ve ever read.”

  I was flattered. Too bad I couldn’t say thank you. “What if Biff doesn’t contact me?”

  “Oh, he will. I know his type, believe me. After all, I’ve—”

  “I know, you’ve been a PI for years.”

  “That’s right.” As he walked to the door to leave, he added. “And under no circumstances, not a word to the cops. All they do is get in the way.”

  “I agree. Not a word to the cops.”

  MY FIRST IMPULSE WAS TO IMMEDIATELY CALL THE COPS and tell them I’d found my identity thief. But I quickly realized that the less I had to do with cops, the better. And anyway, proof could be staring them in the face and they still wouldn’t do anything. Maybe it was incompetence or indifference. But it also occurred to me that Biff’s parents had been using their influence all along to keep the case on the back burner.

  I continued to worry about Sabrina when she wasn’t exasperating me. The guy who said he was me in the bank robbery clearly worked for Biff. And if she was dating this guy—despite her blithe protests to the contrary—it could mean big trouble for her. Biff was no one to mess with. And I knew Biff was still alive because not long ago, he deposited and later withdrew another ten grand from one of my accounts. Not that he used his real name, but who else would it be? And the mobster guys accused of his murder were sitting safely in jail when this happened.