I nodded, pretty sure it wasn’t the airline food that had given me a sudden urge to vomit.
“So whoever got your checks had your name, phone number, and bank account number.”
“Well, not my full name. My checks only had a first initial.”
“So all they needed was your Social Security Number.”
Alexander had been right again. I had lost it. “I gave them the one thing they needed.” Talk about a crappy day.
CHAPTER TWO
The bank manager plucked his glasses off the desk. Now, they became the sole object of his attention. There was no more alma mater enthusiasm, forced or otherwise. He retreated into a safe space, focused on the all-important business of playing eyeglass-Twister. If I hadn’t been gullible enough to give away my social security number to a complete stranger, I might have grabbed Mr. Twister’s specs and ripped them in half. On the other hand, I’d proven myself a standout moron in the world of finances, a place where I once dealt out frontier-style justice with assured professionalism. Crooks, even normal people, had feared what I might do to them. Was this my payback?
Surely none of them had been stupid enough to do what I’d done. My bravado took a left turn, a detour I hadn’t seen coming. My best option was to play dumb. I cleared my throat to bring Vernon back to the real world. “So, um, I suppose this doesn’t happen very often, huh?”
He shrugged. “On the contrary, identity theft is a fifty billion dollar a year business.”
Fifty billion? I gulped. A lot had happened in the five years since I’d left the business. The number began to rattle around in my brain. How many “me’s” out there had this happened to?
I was beginning to wish Vernon would loan me his calculator when the clacking of his glasses on the desktop startled me. He grabbed a pen and jotted a note on a piece of paper. All of a sudden, I was Mr. Important—almost as though I’d had a coronary in his lobby. He handed me the note. “This is an address for a website that provides information about identity theft.”
I glanced at the address. Right. Website. Education. I folded the paper in half, then stuffed it in my pocket. Sorry, Vern, but I’m busy doing higher multiplication. Fifty billion divided by four thousand was . . . what? Damned if I knew. “So how many victims are there?”
“Last year, in Honolulu alone, there were more than 500 reported cases. On average, the last number I saw was that three percent of the population are affected each year.”
Poor bastards. Bullshit. Poor me. I’d become one of those poor bastards. At the counter, one of the tellers ended her transaction with a smile. She waved to a short fat guy who was walking to the door. He returned the wave on his way out, obviously about to have a happy little day—far better than mine, I’d bet.
Vernon shifted in his seat. I figured he was preparing to get rid of me. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Lots of people fall for these scams. You get a call, they’ve got enough information to sound authentic. I’m sure you wouldn’t give that kind of information to just anyone over the phone or online, right?”
Uh, yeah. Right. I wouldn’t do anything that stupid. But, I had. The more I thought about what had happened, the more pissed off I got. “Why would someone else want to be me?”
“They don’t really want to be you, they want to use your checks. It’s usually over in a couple of weeks.” He glanced down at the pile of pink greeting cards I’d received from the bank.
Oh, yeah, by then even a moron would wake up. There would be some advantages to having the right kind of duplicate me around. I, Number One, could give the presumably obedient McKenna, Number Two, orders. “Do this, McKenna. Do that. Good boy. Fetch the paper. Now my slippers.”
“Mr. McKenna?”
“What? Oh, sorry, I was thinking about how irritating it is to have someone impersonating me.” That ought to cover it.
Vernon stared at me impassively. “The good news is that once identity theft is discovered, everything starts shutting down. You know, the use of your information stops almost immediately. It’s the aftereffects that make it drag on.”
Aftereffects? Now what? “I’ve reported the problem. You can return all the checks and it’ll be done. You will return the checks, right?”
“The merchants who took ‘your’ checks might want you to pay.”
Even though he made quotation marks in the air to indicate that the checks weren’t really mine, his choice of words irked me. “They’re not mine.”
“The lawyers they’ll hire to collect from you will start calling. Your credit record will be impacted unless you jump on this. It goes on and on. We can point you to some resources, starting with that address I gave you earlier. Getting past this can be very time consuming.”
The front door opened. A guy wearing a dark pinstripe suit with a brightly colored red and green tie entered. He carried an expensive-looking briefcase and wore wraparound sunglasses, which he flipped around to the back of his head two steps inside the lobby. Oh, look at me, I have eyes in the back of my head. Moron. He probably had money, unlike me. He was probably obscenely rich while I was going to be a money leper. Next thing you know, they’d cart me off to the far side of Molokai, quarantining me as they’d done to all the real leprosy victims for nearly a hundred years.
Vern spoke in a lowered tone as Sunglasses Guy walked in our direction. “You should focus on keeping your credit from being impacted.”
Sunglasses Guy was at the teller’s station now. I felt like he was staring at me through those glasses on the back of his head. It was like he could see things I couldn’t. Two could play that game, I could see things he couldn’t. “My boss at the newspaper has been after me for a new investigative series. Here it is, right in my lap. I’m going to find who did this and write about it. They’ll be sorry.”
“Let the police handle this,” said Vern. “File a police report. Some of the creditors will want a copy to prove this isn’t fraud on your part.”
“On my part? I’m the victim, not the perpetrator. Why don’t they do something? Build a task force to find out who ripped me off. Send an undercover agent off to Kauai to find this person.”
Vernon put both hands up, palms facing me, fingers splayed. “Whoa. They can’t spend much time on investigating individual crimes, but they do try to get the ones behind the crime. You know, the leaders of the ring.”
“Ring?” That implied this wasn’t a solo operation. Even more reason to blow this sky high. “I’m going after them, all of them.”
Later that afternoon, I did file a police report, which got me what I expected—lots of sympathy from a courteous officer with absolutely no guarantee of results. Once again, justice was up to me. I contemplated my situation while waiting for my bus. I hadn’t been into the newspaper’s office since about a week before leaving for the mainland. I wasn’t avoiding my part-time boss, but was—well, busy.
Now I was telling myself lies to ease my conscience? Ever since finishing the last story segment on the Willows case, ideas for another had been like humpback whales around the islands in July. Nonexistent. If one did show up, it was probably diseased, headed for disaster. Besides, I was a contractor, not a nine-to-five employee, so I didn’t have the same face-time obligations as the normal reporters. Crap, who was I kidding? I hadn’t been in because I was avoiding my boss. I’d been brain dead.
I dialed Melanie’s number. She picked up on the second ring. “Johnson.”
“McKenna.”
“Where have you been?”
“L.A. hell.”
A transplant herself, she laughed. “Oh, that’s right, the personal business. Why’s it been two weeks? I thought you were only going to be there for one. What’d you do, get lucky?”
I liked my boss because she could get right down there in the wise-guy mud and sling with the best of us. “No, I got an idea.” No need to admit that it hadn’t germinated until a few minutes ago.
“You know I like ideas, especially good ones. What’s hitting the
fan now?”
Oh, yeah, she’d like this. “My identity got stolen. I want to do a story on it.”
There was an audible sigh on the other end. “McKenna. I’m sorry. That horse has been beaten pretty hard lately. Maybe in a few months.”
A few months? I couldn’t wait that long. I had to get this resolved now. In a few months, I’d be broke and living on the streets. “You don’t understand. I want to do a different angle.”
“The save-your-credit tips are everywhere. There’s been lots of hype about the state’s new laws. The cops are getting up to speed. It’s old news. Maybe later. Come up with another idea, okay?”
“This will be different. The pissed-off avenger. I’m not going to sit around moping while some two-bit crook screws me over.” This wasn’t going to be like my first series for the paper. No more getting embroiled in drug-smuggling operations or taking unnecessary risks. This time, I’d be smart.
The line went silent. I could almost see her chewing on her pencil. I’d never actually seen her write with it, so I figured it was just a prop, a placebo for some other activity. Suddenly, I heard the mother-hen clucking. Yup, she got it.
“You’re not,” she said.
“Oh yeah, I’m going to find these guys and make them pay.”
There was a pause, then she said, “No, I meant, it’s too dangerous.”
“It’s time they got a taste of their own medicine. Besides, I’m on a roll.”
More mother-hen clucking noises came through the line. “One series of reports is not a roll. Sure, everybody wants revenge when something like this happens. It’s every victim’s wet dream. It’s not realistic to think you can take on something this big alone.”
“Every victim will love this. Besides, the beauty of it is these guys don’t know I’m coming.”
“You’re right about that. They won’t know you’re coming because you won’t be going.”
“You’d buy the story, right?”
“I told you, I can’t authorize something that would put you in that much danger.”
That’s the answer I’d been hoping for. “So you would.”
“I told you, I can’t authorize that.”
“No problem, I just wanted you to know why I wouldn’t be around for a while.”
CHAPTER THREE
I had to admit how hungry I was for my next big story. It was closing in on dinner time, my cupboards were bare, and I realized I was hungry in more ways than one. Sure, I wanted dinner, but I also wanted another big story.
For normal people, eating out can be a lot of fun. For the gluten-intolerant like me, eating out quickly becomes an annoyance. Fear of consuming a hidden source of wheat, oats, rye or barley can lead to anxiety and what was once fun no longer is. It can also get damned expensive because a lot of the cheaper restaurants are high risk due to cross-contaminated food. The bottom line is that we celiacs must either be insanely rich or eat at home a lot. Even without the check fiasco my next step would have been to stop by the market and take firm control over my diet. At this time of day, the market would be crawling with tourists adorned in flip flops and bathing suits, grabbing wine, beer, tequila and frozen Margarita mix—all the island-vacation essentials. I, on the other hand, needing to do more than ply myself with copious amounts of alcohol, would go for a small pack of chicken and some vegetables.
I’d just bagged a broccoli crown when I noticed a small, wizened Chinese woman off to my left. She examined oranges like a fruit professional, weighing two specimens, one in each hand. Why not, I thought, everyone needs a little vitamin C. I sashayed over to a spot near the expert, determined not to interfere with her obviously deliberate decision making. I spotted one orange that looked nice and plump. When I reached for it, the bony hand of the fruit-ninja landed on mine. I froze. Grocery-store angst flooded my veins.
A shrill, drill-sergeant’s voice barked at me. “No good. Too dry. Need one heavy, smooth skin—like this.”
She handed me an orange and even I, a mere novice at weighing fruit by hand, could tell the difference. I nodded and thanked her. She returned a gap-toothed smile that reminded me I was overdue for my next dental cleaning. I left my teacher pawing through oranges, willing to bet the little Chinese woman with the Bureau-of-Standards hands and I would use the same mode of transportation to get home—our feet. Therefore, neither of us would load down our baskets like the tourists, who worried their way through the store, adjusting to brand variations, trying to find well-known items in a store foreign to them and, of course, suffering island price shock.
I began the long walk home with an invisible yoke across my shoulders, a little plastic bag in each hand. By the time I arrived, these little bags would feel like lead weights. On the way, I replayed the fruit-counter incident several times. Ding, ding. McKenna, listen up. A little old lady kicked your butt in the fruit-selection business. Some criminal had done the same. I needed to reconcile my ego with the reality that my skills were rusty.
I‘d been out of the finance game and didn’t know everything, even though I preferred to think I did. Except for that little black hole in the middle of my brain where things just seem to get sucked in, I usually feel pretty sharp. But, that rift up there was probably a lot like the ones in space, which makes it a high-density void capable of sucking in anything traveling nearby. Bright ideas? Gone. Mundane memories like what I was just talking about? Pulled in, crammed into some random cubbyhole, and left for dead. Damn, it must be crowded in there.
Anyway, it was time to go to school. Crook U., to be exact. I’d vented my frustration, visited my bank, called my boss, and now it was time to get my diploma in the surreptitious art of becoming someone else. I needed to become an identity-theft expert to get these guys.
I set my grocery-store workout weights down at the front door. My shoulders ached and my hands were stiff. Inside, the tiled kitchen counter beckoned. Fortunately, the owners of this building had remodeled the units shortly after they purchased the complex, otherwise even the old 50’s-era laminated countertops would have molded through by now. One of the nicer upgrades had been six-inch tiles throughout the units. On the mainland, everyone loves granite, but here, with the cost of transporting raw materials to the islands ranging between ridiculous and obscenely expensive, tile countertops remained a staple. The answering machine light flashed its welcome-home greeting. Great, more good news. I punched the button and listened as I placed the package of chicken on the shelf.
“Hi, this is Violet at Island Electronics. The stereo system you had us order came in today. I have all the components: the tuner, JVC amplifier, the Sherwood CD player—hey, that was a good choice, top of the line—and all the speakers. Come on in or give me a call and let me know when you’d like to pick it up. Thanks.” Bee-eep.
I stared at the machine, my perfectly round, smooth-skinned orange in hand while I remembered my conversation with Vernon Box. Check number 1202 had been payable to Island Electronics. The refrigerator door hung half-open, cool air spilling out into a foggy pool surrounding my bare feet. Screwed again, as usual. And I didn’t even get kissed. I have to confess, I nearly threw my goddamn perfect orange at the machine. What stopped me? It would be my crappy luck that, for a change, my aim would be good. And this orange was heavy with juice, thanks to my fruit tutor. I gently deposited it on the refrigerator shelf, not anxious to buy a new answering machine or trudge back to the market. I took my frustrations out on the answering machine replay button and fumed.
Violet. Island Electronics. Stereo system. Correction, perfect stereo system. Everything was frigging perfect except my goddamn credit, which was being flushed out with all the other sewage by some asshole pretending to be me. So why couldn’t I pretend to be him? Why not turn the tables? Instead of playing it straight and wheedling information from this Violet person, why not lie? And big. Apologize later. I chuckled, then dialed information and asked for the Island Electronics phone number. It, too, was on Kauai.
The bank w
ould start bouncing checks, probably tonight. Given bank processing times, I had one or two days max before the store realized what had happened. After that, they’d clam up. I grabbed the cordless handset, went outside to the lanai and stared at the beach. White foamy streamers from gentle wavelets crawled toward the sandy shore and created a gentle background lullaby, but nothing that would interfere with a phone call. I let the sun warm my face and the trade winds tingle my senses before plopping down onto the chaise lounge. Going into this phone call with an attitude would get me nothing, so I took out the last of my frustrations on the phone with each stab of the keypad.
“Thank you for calling Island Electronics. This is Violet.”
“Violet, you called me just a little while ago about a stereo system. For McKenna.”
“Oh, sure. It’s ready, anytime.”
“What’s the balance owing?”
“Let me look that up for you.” Our only communication for nearly half a minute became the staccato clickety clack of fingers tapping on keys. “Sorry this is taking so long. Um, okay, here it is. With tax and the rush shipping, it comes to $2,849.12. You could arrange financing, if you wanted.”
They’d ordered rush shipping? Bastards. Double bastards. The fingers of my right hand felt like they might crush the handset. Sure. In my dreams. Pissed as I was, I probably couldn’t crush the orange.
A bird landed on the twenty-foot-wide grass strip between my apartment and the sandy shore. He squawked at me, strutted, and then pecked at the ground. My mouth went dry. The Hawaiians believe their ancestors can come back as animals and my recent experiences with my best friend Alexander’s great-grandfather, who’d been dead for ten years, had made a believer out of me. Was he back? Or was this just a scavenger?
Violet’s next question jarred me back to reality and left me dumbfounded. “Are you her father?”
Kauai Temptations Page 2
