Identity Thief

by JP Bloch

  Even Randy. If he was such a great PI, why could I fool him so easily? And I had to admit, I was sick and tired of people treating me like I was this nice little nothing that obviously had never done anything wrong or had anything of substance happen to him. Even when people knew at least a few things, like getting fired or Betsy dumping me, they assumed I’d be perfectly fine because I was always nice and was never a bother. Good ol’ me. I think this was one of the things that brought Sequoia and me together. We both knew what it was like to be treated as though we were invisible. One exception was Mom, who knew I was visible all right but wished I wasn’t. I was determined that Scotty would never feel invisible—that he knew I would stop at nothing to protect him.

  Speaking of Scotty being ten, per my earlier promise to him, he was now old enough to get a dog. I figured we’d go to the animal shelter and rescue one of the dogs. My motives were not completely altruistic; the dog already would be housebroken.

  Sequoia being Sequoia, she was touched that I wanted to rescue an animal. We agreed that the dog shouldn’t be too big. When we went to the local shelter a few days later, Scotty wanted to take home a Great Dane, but Sequoia talked him into the smallest dog there: a bulldog that Scotty named Astronaut. He was only a few years old, according to the shelter, though when we took him to the vet for a check-up, the vet said he was much older and that shelters sometimes say dogs are younger than they are to help them get adopted. I decided to ignore this piece of information. I was already getting very attached to Astronaut myself, and I wished him a long and happy life. Astronaut went totally crazed when he met Randy and wouldn’t stop jumping up on him and licking his face.

  Then, on top of that, Sequoia led me blindfolded to our bedroom, and when she took off the blindfold there was a cake with candles. The message on the cake was, “Congratulations, Daddy!” I literally wept for joy when I realized I’d be a father again. We fed each other the cake while having sex, making a big mess out of the bed sheets. The slash I gave to my face was leaving a faint scar that the doctor said would disappear over time. Sequoia kept kissing and kissing the scar, as if it had something to do with the baby we were going to have.

  “How do you feel?” I asked her, burying my face between her breasts.

  She giggled for the sensation. “Stop worrying. The doctor says I’m fine. There shouldn’t be any—”

  I lifted up my head. “I mean on the inside. How do you feel about having a baby after . . . you know, how your own childhood was.”

  She answered as if I’d asked the stupidest question in the world. “Obviously, I’m going to give this baby all the love I never got. What did you think I wanted to do, toss it in a dumpster?”

  To lighten things up in a hurry, I made a goofy face and said, “Hell, yeah.”

  Fortunately, she was amused, and we had a pillow fight. Yet her reaction troubled me. I wondered if it really was going to work out. How do you give to someone else what you never got yourself? You could mean to do it, you could say you’re going to do it, but could you do it? Still, Sequoia was truly elated. She never seemed more beautiful, and I put this fear out of my mind.

  Scotty was so enamored of Astronaut that he barely stopped playing with him long enough to hear that he’d soon have a baby sister or brother. He was mildly confused.

  “Why have a baby when we already have a dog?” he asked.

  Soon he was asking to be homeschooled in order to play with Astronaut all the time. I said absolutely not, he needed to go to school and be with kids his own age. He’d started throwing these weird fits when he didn’t get his way. Screaming, red-faced, his hands clenched into fists at his side, he would yell out all sorts of strange things before running off to his room. In this instance, it was: “If the baby wanted to be homeschooled, you’d let it!”

  He talked to his psychiatrist about it, who said we should let him express himself because he otherwise might withdraw so far into himself there’d be no getting him out.

  “Are you sure nothing else happened to traumatize him?” the doctor asked. Sequoia and I guiltily shook our heads and shrugged.

  Sequoia said it would be a good idea to homeschool Scotty. She said she’d be home with the baby, anyway, and Scotty needed to know he was equally important. He wasn’t making any friends in school, and if he could give and receive love with his dog, that at least was a start. The doctor agreed with her. Mom, though, took my side . . . sort of. She said it was clear who wore the pants in my family, and obviously, it wasn’t me. But she also had a lot to say against taking Scotty out of school.

  “Homeschooling is for the birds,” she said. “If you don’t teach your kid he’s normal, you might as well forget it. You were the strangest kid I ever saw, but I always told you you were as good as everyone else.”

  I couldn’t let that one go. “Mom, when have you ever told me I’m as good as everyone else?”

  “I’ve certainly never criticized you. I’ve always supported everything you did.”

  “Fine, Mom. You’re right. I don’t know what came over me.”

  So, there I was, the suburban success I’d always pretended to be with Betsy: beautiful wife, a second kid on the way, money, a nice home that was paid for. All it took to achieve was pretending about everything else in my life and keeping my fingers crossed that I didn’t end up in jail. Over time, I was getting used to my many fears, the way you got used to any troubling thought after a while.

  When I learned Sequoia was pregnant, I called Mom, who said, “Great, just what I need, another kid to worry about when you’re done flushing yourself down the toilet.” She did go on to ask if Sequoia was getting enough rest. Oddly, she didn’t ask to talk to Sequoia herself. “Do me one favor,” Mom said. “If you find out the sex of the kid, don’t tell me. It’s weird, people knowing ahead of time if they’re having a boy or a girl. The surprise is the only fun thing about getting knocked up, and now they even spoil that.”

  “Is that why I was an only child? Because you didn’t like being pregnant?”

  “Never you mind why I never had another screaming, shitting, pain-in-the-ass kid. It’s none of your goddamn business. Kids don’t have respect for their parents anymore.”

  I also called Randy, who said we should meet for drinks to celebrate. We met at what had become our usual haunt, a low-key neighborhood bar in the city.

  “Here’s to Dad.” Randy offered up his shot glass. I raised mine to hit his in a toast. Since knowing Randy, I’d developed more of a taste for alcohol. I even got drunk once with Mom.“And here’s to Godfather,” I replied. “And I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Randy seemed taken aback. “Godfather? Gee, I don’t know. Don’t you have someone else, like an old friend or cousin?”

  I was hurt and confused. “Why, don’t you want to?”

  “Oh, it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s only that we haven’t known each other all that long. I wouldn’t want someone else’s feelings to get hurt.”

  I laughed bitterly. “Believe me, there is no one else.”

  “Okay then. So long as no one thinks I’m the other kind of godfather.”

  It took me a moment to get it: godfather, mafia, and so on. I pretended I thought it was funnier than I did. Next, because supposedly I was a know-nothing, I asked him if there was any news about Biff.

  Randy’s face turned red. “I’m leaving you out of all that. We agreed. Ever since the island.”

  I motioned for refills. “I know, but I deserve to know something, don’t I? After everything Biff did to me.”

  The woman who always waited on us came to our table to take our orders. I heard her mutter “prick,” under her breath. Randy explained that they’d had what he called a roll in the hay, and now she was upset because he never called her back.

  “I don’t get that about women,” he said. “Everything is so serious all the time.”

  I thought about it. “In my experience, men are more serious. But speaking of men, what about Biff?
You still haven’t answered my question.”

  Our drinks were served with a scowl. Once we were alone again, Randy said, “Biff won’t be bothering us anymore.”

  I tried to have no particular reaction. “What does that mean? Has he been arrested?”

  Randy roared with laughter. “Not exactly. That’s all I’m going to say.”

  I was concerned about what exactly Randy meant. I could feel that scared feeling coming over me. “Oh, c’mon. We’re celebrating. As a father-to-be, I deserve a present, and I want it to be the latest on Biff. In fact, I insist.”

  Out of nowhere, Randy rose and grabbed me by my collar. “Nobody tells me what to do or when to do it.” There was pure rage in his eyes, though his voice was quiet, which in a way made it more frightening than if he’d yelled. “I gotta go,” he said, letting go of me.

  I followed him outside. It had turned into a rainy night. And after a few seconds outside, a deluge. Our cars were parked next to each other only a few doors down, but we were both soaked to the skin by the time we reached them. As Randy was about to get into his car, I lunged toward him from behind and knocked him to the ground. We rolled around punching each other on the pavement as the rain pelted down, continually washing us both clean of blood.

  I was on top of Randy and had him in a half nelson, which I knew surprised him. He didn’t think I had it in me. A full nelson can break someone’s neck. When I shouted at him, “What happened to Biff?” he realized he had to answer.

  “Okay!” he shouted above the rainstorm, so loud he was hoarse. “I killed him. Are you happy now? I swear, if you tell anyone, I’ll fucking kill you, too.”

  I let go of Randy and sat there on the sidewalk in the rain. “Killed him? We’re talking about Biff, right?” It was one thing when crazy Betsy pretended to have killed Biff, but Randy wasn’t someone whom I thought would make something like this up.

  “Let’s go in my car. This is stupid.”

  As we settled into the front seats of Randy’s car, we took a moment to catch our breath before Randy told me what happened. The rain seemed to hit the windshield in waterfalls rather than in drops. I could see Randy’s face and hands were pretty scratched up, as were mine.

  “Wow, we really had a go at it,” he said, giving me a friendly nudge. “I never fought with a man before.”

  “I did as a kid. And one time in high school, when someone called Biff a jerk.”

  We both sat there, breathing in and out. Our breath made frost on the windows.

  “I went back to the island,” Randy finally said. “It was the day after we returned. I had the address you gave me for Biff. It must’ve been a typo because the street ended before the number of his address. I started calling hotels. I started with the best ones, and the third place I called had a guest with his name. I went up to his room. He wasn’t there, so I waited in the doorway to watch for him. I waited over five hours, but I was so jazzed up to find him I didn’t mind. It seemed like five minutes. He was whistling down the hall when he entered his room, not a care in the world. I knocked on the door, asked for Biff, and said I was the concierge. I can’t tell you what that was like, to finally see him face to face. After what he did to you.”

  “I really appreciate that, Randy,” I felt forced to say. “And you’re sure it was Biff?”

  He stared at me quizzically. “Why wouldn’t I be? He looked a little different from in his photos, Who doesn’t?”

  I remember being tempted to say that this was true, the camera adds ten pounds, but I let Randy continue instead.

  “He let me in and said he was Biff. That was when I told him I was a PI, that there were people looking for him, and that I knew about the identity theft scam, and I also didn’t appreciate his thugs beating up my friends. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about and he wasn’t really Biff after all. ‘Let me show you my ID,’ he said. I told him that if he could do all these other things, he certainly could get a fake ID. I grabbed him before he could say or do anything more. I completely lost it. I said he was a total fuck, and I was going to kill him. He pulled out a gun from his jacket. I reached for a paperweight. It was right next to me on the desk. It had the stupid hotel logo on it. But it was heavy. I hit him in the head with all my might. He fell to the floor. I kept hitting him and hitting him and his head cracked open and there was blood and brain shit everywhere. And he was like, you know. Dead.”

  I had no idea why someone would say he was Biff when he wasn’t. I immediately suspected Betsy, only what was she trying to prove? Or maybe Biff’s parents paid some look-alike to pose as their son? Only why? The only thing I knew for certain was that I had to stop stealing in Biff’s name, especially in case this person had an ID that said he was Biff. And I could only hope that the guy who got killed was up to no good anyway. After all, he was carrying a gun.

  “I never killed anyone before,” Randy said. “No matter how big a shit. But Biff . . . I couldn’t control myself.”

  “It was self-defense, Randy.”

  “I tell myself that. But I know it wasn’t.”

  “Maybe it was the final straw,” I offered helpfully. “You snapped because he was one creep too many.”

  Randy choked back a sob. “Yeah, maybe that was it. I wiped the place around to get rid of fingerprints and ran down the stairs as fast as I could, hoping no one would see me. The hotel was right on the beachfront, and it was dark by then. I took off most of my clothes and rinsed off in the ocean. Some other people were on the beach, but too far away to see me up close. So far, so good. And there haven’t been any more . . . ” He stopped himself.

  “Any more what?”

  “Nothing, just that I haven’t heard anything more about it.”

  “Maybe the whole island hated Biff so much they hushed it up.”

  Randy laughed, in spite of himself. “Or maybe they don’t want bad publicity. It would hurt the tourist trade. Or maybe his parents hushed it up. Who knows?”

  We sat there and watched the rain. After a little while, it let up some. “Guess I should go home,” I said. “Randy, you know I’ll never tell, don’t you?”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “You’re the only person I trust.”

  “Same here. I mean, I guess I trust Melanie, but that’s different, you know?”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  I laughed. “You look like a motherfucking piece of shit.” It was true. He was still sopping wet, and with his scrapes and bruises he looked like some street derelict.

  “So do you.”

  It probably sounds crazy, but I felt very close to Randy in that moment. “This has to stop. All my best memories are of getting beaten up.” He reached across the car, and we gave each other a bear hug. It kind of hurt, given the bruises we gave each other, yet it didn’t matter.

  “You’re the best friend I ever had, Randy.”

  “Same here.”

  I drove straight to Betsy’s. My old home. I couldn’t do anything else until I knew if she was involved in more bullshit. This lack of patience was my weakness as a crook. I knew the best thing to do was sit back and wait, to play it cool. But sometimes I couldn’t. As far as Betsy was concerned, the only thing I could think of was that she had the money to pay for a Biff look-alike, whom she now would marry and save face. And a lot of people had offshore accounts on the island, so maybe the guy was there, waiting for her. Still, what about the murder trial? Surely even Betsy would realize that by producing a fake Biff, she could be indicted for interfering with a criminal investigation or whatever the charge would be. Did Biff mean so much to her that even a fake Biff was worth it? Whatever. If Betsy wasn’t involved, then I figured it would’ve been Biff’s parents because there was no one else it could’ve been. At least I’d know that much.

  I was hoping Betsy would’ve been too stupid to change the locks on the doors. I still had my old house key, but the one time I actually wanted Betsy to be stupid she was smart. My key wouldn’t open the door. I picked up a ga
rden stone and smashed it through the front window. It set off an alarm. I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten about the stupid alarm system. It was a dumb mistake, the kind that gets criminals caught but which you were bound to make sooner or later because . . . because nobody’s perfect. I had to move fast and think fast.

  Betsy had always been the heaviest sleeper I’d ever known, so I wasn’t surprised when she was still asleep despite the racket. I took a mean pleasure in noting that she was sleeping alone. I almost turned on the light but realized that would be stupid, too. I crept over to her. Looking around the room, I saw a fancy glass lamp I had always hated that cost me a whole lot of money. I smashed it to the floor. Betsy slightly stirred. I picked up a sharp-edged shard of glass and shook her awake. As always, she gave the impression of waking up as being the most difficult task in the world. She sounded drunk and drugged whether she was or not.

  “What the . . . Fuck you.” She tried to go back to sleep, and I shook her again.

  This time she noticed the sharp glass in my hand. The house alarm grew louder. It sounded like a psychotic cat in heat. Or maybe a bomb about to destroy the world.

  “Look, I’m done with you. Why are you killing me?” Betsy started crying, something I didn’t know she was capable of doing, since crying required feelings and feelings required a heart. She was such a loud crier that she competed with the alarm for being the dominant sound. What was it about me that made people shocked to see that I got angry just like anyone else?

  “I don’t want to kill you. But I will if you don’t tell me the truth about Biff and tell me now.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she shrieked. “You’ve always been crazy, but my God, this is a new world’s record.”

  “The cops will be here any second. Talk.” I twisted her arm so she couldn’t move. The glass was a millimeter away from her pride and joy—her face.