Identity Thief Read online

  But you know? I couldn’t help noticing the unusual satisfaction she took in the letter—the way she scrunched her mouth to keep from smiling. I was a bad person in her eyes, so I deserved to have bad things happen to me. Hers was a classic passive-aggressive personality. She left it to the rest of the universe to condemn me for my wrongs against her. Over the years, I occasionally dreamt that she’d poisoned me, and then I’d wake up and see her at the breakfast table, drinking her coffee and staring into space.

  The Thai food arrived. I didn’t feel like eating. I called the credit company instead.

  “Hello, my name is Tiffany, may I have your account number please?”

  “Good evening, Tiffany,” I said. “I’d be happy to.” I thought I would keep things as friendly as possible, to get them straightened out quickly. I always imagined people who worked at these kinds of jobs to be like nasty kids in a reform school, who would do all sorts of nonsense if they didn’t like you.

  After I rattled off the incoherent account number on the letter, Tiffany read what was obviously a generic message on her computer screen. She read aloud in a choppy, phonetic style, over-pronouncing her words as if she had no idea what they meant. “Please be informed that your account is over ninety days past due. If you do not make a payment immediately, legal action may result. The total amount you owe is—”

  “Yes, but you see, I don’t owe this money. It’s a mistake—”

  Tiffany would not be deterred. “The amount you owe is twenty thousand dollars, plus one thousand five hundred dollars in late penalty fees, plus a fifty dollar service charge. How will you be making a payment this evening?”

  “I won’t be making any payment because I never spent the money. I don’t even know who you people are. And I’ve never been late with a bill in my life.”

  “Are you saying, sir, that you are not Dr. Jesse Falcon?” She read off my social security number, my former address, and my current address.

  “Yes, but I sold that other property before you say my account was opened. I can prove it. Really, it wasn’t me.”

  “One moment, please.” She put me on hold. Annoyingly, there was a recording of someone like Robert Goulet singing, “The Impossible Dream.”

  After what seemed an eternity, Tiffany came back on the line. “I spoke to my supervisor, sir. She said we could mark your account as ‘pending further investigation.’ This means that what you need to do is show us proof that this account was never yours. Things like cancelled checks with your signature, proof of address, and a notarized letter will help. You may want to speak with an attorney, though hopefully that will not be necessary. You will have thirty days to provide us with this information.”

  “Thirty days from when?” The letter, though it just arrived, was dated ten days earlier.

  “From today,” she said brightly, which I took as a good omen.

  “So you will not contact me in the meantime?” Though I had nothing to hide, threatening certified letters were a hassle I could live without, not to mention that I didn’t want to have to explain all this again to some other minimum wage ninny.

  “No, sir, we will not.”

  After getting off the phone, I ate some room temperature Thai food in silence. Esther was equally taciturn in the living room, looking over some possible sofa fabrics for a client.

  The next morning, I was not at all pleased to see Linda waiting for me at my office. “I have to talk to you,” she said.

  “Mrs. Goldstein, you are not scheduled until next week.”

  I looked meaningfully at my receptionist, who said, “I know, Doctor, I already reminded her.”

  “Doctor, please, this is an emergency.” Linda hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Very well,” I sighed. “But my nine o’clock should be here soon.”

  I didn’t know what to expect from Linda, but as soon as I closed my office door to find out, my receptionist buzzed me, stating I had an urgent call.

  “Hello, my name is Mark,” said the voice from the credit company. “I am calling to collect a debt—”

  “Mark, look at my account,” I said, in a more forceful tone than the night before. “It should say, ‘pending further investigation.’” I went on about my talk with Tiffany, and how I would be sending out the materials requested.

  “Yes, I am familiar with accounts pending further investigation. But I see no PFI designation on your record.”

  “No what?”

  Linda nuzzled me; I pushed her away in annoyance.

  “PFI—pending further investigation.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Sir, all I am showing is that your account is over ninety days past due. How would you like to make a payment today?”

  “I’m calling my lawyer.” I slammed down the phone. “Now, Mrs. Goldstein, what do you have to tell me?” I nearly shouted.

  Linda stared incredulously. “Why are you being mean? I’ve left Marty.”

  I could all but see my insides crash to the floor. Marty was her husband of twenty years. “What do you mean, left him? You mean you’re maybe thinking about possibly leaving him?”

  “No, I mean I left him. I told him last night it was over. That I’d found someone else.” She wiped away her tears and blew her nose into a Kleenex.

  “And who did you say this someone else was?” I grabbed her arm so hard she begged me to let go. But I didn’t.

  “I didn’t tell him, I swear.” She twisted free of my grip, rubbing her arm in self-pity. “Marty said he would kill this other guy.” She feebly and nervously touched my cheek.

  I felt like she was crowding me, and resisted.

  “Why are you mad at me, Jesse?”

  Clearly, things were not going as she expected. Yet as she nuzzled her leg against mine, damn it if I didn’t get aroused.

  “Look, Linda, do what you want with your life, but I’m not interested in changing mine. Do you get it?”

  “Of course, Dr. Falcon.”

  We both laughed in spite of ourselves.

  “Okay, we have maybe five minutes.” I loosened my belt. “But after today, this is it, do you understand?”

  “Of course, Dr. Falcon.”

  She unzipped my fly and got down on her knees.

  The instant I was done, she walked a few feet to my office water cooler and drank two mini-cups of cold water, one right after the other. Some women found the taste of semen repulsive, which always annoyed me. If they liked giving blowjobs so much, what was the big deal? It made no sense.

  “I’m pregnant,” Linda said.

  “Somehow I knew that was coming.” As I caught my breath, I turned away from her and looked out at the city. “I want nothing to do with it. Assuming it’s mine.”

  In a fury, she threw her wet paper cup at me, though it landed only inches in front of her. “Who the hell else’s would it be? My dumbfuck husband’s? Christ, give me some credit. Rubbers aren’t a hundred percent, as I’m sure you are old enough to know.”

  “Don’t ruin my carpeting. Look, I’ll pay for half the abortion. Deal?” I offered my hand hopefully.

  “Abortion? Abortion?” She narrowed her eyes as if she suddenly was this great moralist.

  “Yes, abortion. As in, terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Ever hear of it before?”

  “I’m having this fucking baby, damn it. I’m not getting any younger, and this is my one chance for happiness.”

  “So go and be happy. But not on my dime.”

  In the end, I needed my receptionist plus the building security guard to remove Linda from my office. She alternated between cursing me out and crying like a helpless baby every step of the way, but luckily for me she never spilled the beans about the kid. I hoped against hope that she took the hint that I had no intention of becoming a father again.

  I got two more calls that day from the stupid credit people. So I called my brother, my lawyer, and the police. Before long, the situation degenerated into a limbo of endless and contradicto
ry letters and phone calls, each more pissy than the one before.

  From my brother, I learned that someone claiming to be me got that damn twenty thousand dollar credit line, put it into my account, and withdrew the money. But there were what the cops called additional legal complications to the case that they would not specify. Then there was a tug of war between my local police and the police where I used to live as to whose jurisdiction it was. Soon the FBI got involved. Then the FBI got uninvolved. One day I got a voice mail from the out-of-state police saying they had apprehended the person who did it, but when I called to find out who it was they said there was no record of this and I must have misunderstood the message. The most I could get out of the local police was that there were several persons of interest but not enough evidence to prosecute anyone. I called my lawyer about the possibility of suing all the cops and the FBI for incompetence, but he talked me out of it.

  “Be patient,” he told me. “They’ll find who did it. Give them a chance to build their case. Besides, the debt’s been removed from your account. They know it wasn’t you who spent the money.”

  Everyone—even Linda Goldstein—kept saying this to me, until I wanted to strangle somebody. “Let’s see how you feel if it happens to you!” I screamed at my lawyer. “It’s like . . . it’s like a form of rape. Someone thinks they can use my good name to get money that doesn’t belong to them. What if he does it again?”

  “Jesse, I think you’re taking this a wee bit over the top. Would you really rather get raped than lose a few bucks? Yes, a few bucks, given your total net worth. And anyway, you didn’t even lose any money.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck everyone.” I hung up on him.

  Since the address the credit people had was that of a condo we’d used as income property before selling it, I wondered if the crazy old lady I sold it to was involved. According to the cops, she wasn’t.

  “She’s quite a character,” said one of the officers. “Every time we talked to her, she’d raise her right hand and swear that she’d never stolen anything in her life. She has all these bumper stickers on her car about supporting your local police. There’s a record of her filing a report with the postal service that she wasn’t receiving some of her mail. We’re not sure she even understands the situation.”

  Next came the real kick in the balls. It turned out that since I myself did not lose any money and because I didn’t owe the credit jerk-offs anything, the entire case was dropped.

  “Keep an eye on your finances at all times,” said the local police, inanely. “Maybe the identity thief will strike again.”

  I was so pissed off I could hardly see. I wanted to say something like, “No, I think I’ll sit back and let this scumbag drive me to the homeless shelter.” But I managed to contain myself, and said instead, “Yes, I’ll speak to my brother, my accountant, and make sure nothing fishy happens.” As if I hadn’t already done this.

  Someone pretended to be me. I could scarcely comprehend how angry it made me.

  Whoever it was, I hated him so much that I would get up in the middle of the night and pace the floors in rage, fantasizing things like setting his body on fire or stapling his dick to a desk. I knew he had to be some lowlife scum. Sometimes I even imagined killing his whole family in righteous punishment. Maybe I’d saw off their heads. Maybe I’d keep the identity thief alive. He’d have to live with his guilt. They probably were all on drugs, on welfare, on everything that spoiled life for decent people like me.

  From her separate bedroom, Esther either slept through my torment, or would care only to the extent that I had woken her up by walking too loudly or knocking something over.

  “Damn it,” she would say, “you’re a shrink. Surely you must know how to handle this better than you’re doing?”

  “Eat shit,” I’d reply. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “If that’s true, then you really are a spoiled little piece of shit.”

  “Ha! Look who’s talking about being spoiled. When have you ever had to worry about anything in your shitty life?”

  “For starters, when my husband fucked everything on the planet with tits.”

  “Oh, yada, yada, yada.”

  In the middle of all this was some asinine shrink conference that I’d already arranged to attend. Everyone wore name tags—I hate name tags—and scurried about like millions of amoebas. I couldn’t begin to concentrate on what any of the speakers were saying. Listening to some idiot drone on in a carpeted hotel stateroom, I experienced true claustrophobia for the first time in my life. I could feel my damp, white dress shirt sticking to my stomach.

  There was a speaker whose English was incomprehensible, but everyone had to soberly nod as he spoke, as if we understood a single word. Finally someone else got up to speak. With a big smarmy smile, he began by saying how he didn’t need a mic because he was sure everyone could hear him. For some reason speakers were always saying that, as if it made them superior beings who were so self-confident speaking in front of groups.

  I stood up, wiping the copious sweat from my forehead. “Yeah, we hear you all right,” I said. “But why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

  The room was silent as I took my leave. I spent the rest of the conference in my hotel room, watching stupid TV shows and drinking scotch straight out of the bottle. I didn’t even try to find a whore, that’s how lousy I felt.

  Hardly adding to my bliss was the omnipresence of Linda Goldstein. The absurd thing was, she was still my patient. She refused to terminate treatment or accept a referral and threatened to report me to the APA if I didn’t let her see me once a week.

  “How have you been since last week?” I asked her on one such occasion, my voice filled with sarcasm.

  “Oh, simply dandy,” she replied, with a malicious, exaggerated smile. “I’m a forty-year-old woman soon to be divorced, pregnant by another man who wants nothing to do with me. Oh, and did I forget to mention that if the divorce doesn’t settle PDQ I’ll get nothing because the ol’ tummy will start to bulge, and Marty’s lawyer will bust me for adultery? What am I supposed to say, that I accidentally swallowed a watermelon?”

  I firmly leaned forward in my swivel chair. “You could tell your husband the child is his and propose a reconciliation, Mrs. Goldstein.”

  “Or you could tell your frigid, asshole wife that she’s going to be a stepmama.”

  I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “I’ve told you like a gazillion times that Esther will take me to the cleaners if she finds out I’ve been cheating again. The best I can do is skim a few grand off the top. She’s not dumb, you know.”

  “Why no, she’s a genius. After all, she married you.”

  “Linda, in all seriousness, what are you going to do? If you take me to court, I lose everything, and you won’t get a dime.”

  “There’s your future income, smarty-pants.” She crossed her arms smugly, as if having played the ace of spades. “And anyway, maybe you can hire a better lawyer than Esther and not lose your shirt, like you keep saying.”

  “You don’t know Esther.”

  “Thank God for small miracles.”

  I could feel my face fluster. “Can’t you leave me alone?”

  “No. I love you.” Linda jutted out her chin in defiance. Apparently, part of her neurosis was that she literally believed love conquered all.

  I stomped over to her, not sure what I would do, but too angry to sit still. As she recoiled, Linda fell over backward in her chair. I did not bother to help her up. For whatever reason, she set the chair back in its place before standing to face me.

  “That chair cost me a lot of money,” I said. “Be careful with it.”

  I thought she would cry. Instead she started screaming at me. It was like, flip a coin, will it be crying or screaming? “How could you hit me? I’m pregnant, damn it. And with your bloodline, the loin of your flesh.”

  “I didn’t hit you. Hello, we live in the physical dimension of the universe. This
is a desk, this is a chair—”

  “No, but you were going to hit me, I could tell.”

  She came at me, aimlessly flailing both fists. I easily grabbed her hands and held them hard. “See what a sick fuck I am?” I hissed at her. “Do you really want to be with me?”

  There was a moment of showdown between our eyes.

  “No, I guess not.” Her icy tone came as a relief. She let go and gathered up her purse and coat.

  Glory Hallelujah, she was finally getting the message.

  “You always win, don’t you?” she said, as though I’d done something illegal.

  “Yeah, right. My life is one great victory after another. I reign supreme over time and space.” I reached in my desk for a bottle of whiskey and took a swallow. I hated that stupid desk. It was this steel and glass contraption that only had one drawer. But Esther had picked it out because it was very trendy, and I guess even though she hated my guts, I deserved nothing but the best. “Let’s hear it for me.”

  “You really are a prick.” Linda gave me the finger.

  “This session is on the house,” I called after her, as she took her leave.

  I felt the relief you feel when a bad tooth gets extracted. The worst was over—or so it seemed—but I still needed to heal. Apropos of this, I went to a fine hotel, found a girl, did what I had to do, and was the better for it.

  For dinner that night, Esther served take-out Indian. She kept complaining that the food was neither spicy enough nor sweet enough, to which I replied that perchance the food was hinting at something in regard to Esther herself. She picked up a full container of pindi chana and threw it at me. Fortunately, I ducked out of the way. Esther always stormed off to her bedroom and slammed the door shut. I was supposed to go running after her and beg her to let me in to talk to her. Well, that worked for about ten years before I got sick of it.

  In hindsight, the most obvious characteristic about Esther was her lack of spontaneity. Everything she said or did was premeditated somehow, even if only a split second in advance. She was incapable of manslaughter; only first-degree murder would do for her. Not that she murdered anyone exactly, though hopefully you get the idea. Had I noticed this sooner, my life would’ve turned out much differently.