Flood (9 page)

While the Doberman’s successor prowled her rooftop, I set about making preparations for the coming hunt.

11

THE FIRST ISSUE was identification. If Wilson was really a Vietnam vet, he must be wise to the grab-bag of goodies Uncle Sam makes available. If he was scoring from the VA on a regular basis, for instance, he had to be using his righteous name. And that name would have to be connected to an address somewhere in the government computers. I knew a guy who specialized in that racket for a long time—a computer wizard who just liked to play with keyboards and telephones. He was the same guy who gave the Mouse the idea for his big social security scam (which, from my recent mail, was obviously still working). Unfortunately, finding that guy would be tougher than finding Wilson. He’d done me a lot of favors over the years, so when he came to me for help in disappearing, I showed him how to work the game and he vanished. He should have been satisfied making regular little scores, but he talked too much. One of the mob guys overheard him bragging in a singles bar about how he could get access to any government computer and approached him to get inside the Witness Protection Program. The mob guy wanted to find out the new identities of some of the informants who had been relocated by the government. It worked to perfection, but when people started turning up dead all over the place (especially in California—for some reason, most of the gangsters who opt for relocation have to try the Holy Coast), my friend decided to exit the stage. The mob made so much noise looking for him that they tipped off the feds—or maybe, in a touch of perfect irony, one of the mob guys leaning on my friend for information was a rat himself. Who knows?

Since the guy was a friend, I didn’t send him down the Rhodesian pipeline, but recommended Ireland instead. They’ve got no extradition treaty with the U.S., and he should be all right if he keeps his head down. Israel is another good choice, especially since my friend had such marketable skills, but those people are too serious and I don’t think they would have tolerated his nonsense. The guy had bad personal habits and no real sense of surviving by himself. Between the need to talk to the wrong people, which means
any
people, and the need for computer toys and telephones, he probably won’t last.

I sell a lot of identification, mostly to clowns who want the option to disappear but never will. The stuff looks pretty good—all you need are some genuine state blanks, like for drivers’ licenses, and the right typewriter. IBM makes a special typing element—one of those things that looks like a studded golf ball—designed for computer reading. They call it an OCR element and you can’t buy it over the counter but this is something less than a significant deterrent to people who steal for a living. I have a complete set in the office. A white dropcloth, a Polaroid 180 with black-and-white film, some state blanks, and I can put you in the driver’s seat in about half an hour. I also sell discharge papers from the army, draft cards (although there isn’t much business in them anymore), social security cards, marriage licenses, and a variety of firearms permits.

But none of that crap is really any good. The proper way (and the way I fixed up my computer-junkie friend) is simply to find someone who died soon after birth with an age and race similar to the person you want to fix up. Then you apply for a duplicate birth certificate in that person’s name, which becomes
your
name when it’s issued. This perfectly legitimate piece of paper opens the door to all the rest—driver’s license, social security card, you name it. And that paper is perfectly good. To get a passport, for example, all they want is a birth certificate, which you can get certified at the Health Department for a couple of bucks, and a driver’s license or something similar.

The finishing touch is to hire some local lawyer and tell him you want to change your name for professional reasons, like you want to be an actor or something equally useful. Then you put an ad in the paper announcing to the world, including your creditors, that you want to change your name. Most dead people don’t have too many creditors, especially those who have been in such a state for a couple of decades or so. When nobody comes forward to object to the change of name, the court will give you a certified order so you can change your name legally on all the other documents. This adds another layer of smog to what was phony to begin with, and it’s more than enough to keep a step ahead. The whole package costs less than $500 from start to finish. It’s a bargain—you’d pay more than twice that just for a phony passport.

The next thing you do is run up some credit accounts. It doesn’t take much—most of the charge card companies will issue one of their pieces of magic plastic to someone on welfare. Then you pay the bills, not exactly on time but close enough. When a cop stops you, there’s nothing like the American Express Gold to make him think you’re a solid citizen, especially if you’re outside New York.

People used to use post office boxes as a mail drop, but that’s out of fashion now. Any process server can get the Post Office to disclose the home address of anyone who took out a box if he says he has no other way to serve legal papers. Anyway, all anyone has to do is watch who comes to the box and follow them home. I work mine a bit differently. The return address I put on any correspondence is a box, all right, but no mail ever goes there. As soon as I opened it (using another name and an address that would be somewhere in the East River if it existed), I put in a change-of-address card that got my mail forwarded to a place in Jersey City. The guy there sends it on to a warehouse that Mama Wong owns, although her name doesn’t appear on the incorporation papers. They put all my mail in this old battered desk in the back, and Max the Silent picks it up once every couple of weeks or so. Then he gives it to me or to Mama. The delivery isn’t fast, but I don’t get any personal mail anyway. If anyone came around the warehouse asking questions, they’d be told that mail comes there for me regularly and they just as regularly throw it in the garbage. If the investigator asked why they didn’t notify the post office that I don’t live there, he’d get either a lot of broken English laced with Cantonese or an unbroken stream of hostility, depending on his attitude. But no information. The guys who work there would never rat on Mama Wong—it wouldn’t be worth it to them. Anyway, Mama doesn’t have my address.

So Wilson could be using a post office box to pick up VA checks, if he was getting any. That would be the easiest way. You’d think the government wouldn’t allow you to get checks at a post office box, but you’d be wrong. First of all, in New York a lot of folks on welfare and social security get their checks at the post office because their own apartment mailboxes are considered withdrawal windows by the local junkies. Secondly, the VA doesn’t want to know who’s getting the checks—it would just depress them. Remember that Son of Sam freako who killed all those women a while back before the cops stumbled onto him? Well, there’s a contract out on him in prison, I heard. Not because the cons hate a sex offender—that doesn’t happen anymore—but because some reporter found out he was getting a VA disability check every month while doing about seven life sentences. That snapped out the public, and a later investigation revealed there were literally thousands of prisoners getting checks while they did time. Some of the cons noted the media explosion about this, and figured Son of Sam was to blame, so there’s a lot of hostility. (They should save their energies for scamming the parole board—no politician is going to vote to take away a government benefit merely because the recipient is locked up. It would hit too close to home.)

If Wilson was using a box anywhere between lower Manhattan and the Village, I could find him sooner or later if I knew what the hell he looked like. Flood wouldn’t be much help there either. I halfheartedly checked through my resume file (from applicants for mercenary work), but none of them had a picture attached and none of them sounded or smelled sufficiently like my man to make me think we’d get lucky there.

Pansy trotted downstairs while I was still going through the files, and I put together some breakfast for her. Then I went to the phone, checked to be sure the hippies hadn’t become early risers in my absence, and dialed the number Flood gave me.

“Yoga School.”

“Is that you, Flood?”

“Yes, what’s happening?”

“Some things—I can’t talk long on this phone. You know where the Public Library is, on Forty-second Street?”

“Yes.”

“Meet you inside the doors, all the way to the right, at about ten o’clock, tomorrow morning, okay? The doors off Fifth Avenue, with the lions?”

“I know where it is.”

“Okay, listen, you have a pair of white vinyl boots, like go-go dancers wear?”

“Burke! Are you crazy? What would I want with things like that?”

“For the disguise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain when I see you, Flood. At ten, right?”

I could almost hear the exasperation in her voice but she kept it under control and just said, “Right.”

12

AFTER I FINISHED talking to Flood, I spent some time just sitting by the open back door looking out toward the river with Pansy next to me, explaining the whole mess to her. Part of me just wanted to stay where I was, where it was safe. But I had already thrown too many pebbles into the pool for that. If I just wouldn’t get involved with any other people—if I could just live like the Mole. But it’s not too good to start thinking like that. It makes you crazy. Scared is okay—crazy is dangerous.

Some people get so scared of being scared that they go crazy from the fear—I saw a lot of that in prison. When I was only about ten years old there was this dog the Boss Man kept in the dormitory—a fox terrier named Pepper. He kept Pepper for the rats in the place. Pepper was a lot better than some miserable cat—he really liked rumbling with a juicy rat about half his own size—and he knew his work. Pepper would just kill the rats—he didn’t play around with them. It was his job.

I never would have had the guts to run away from that joint except that Pepper went with me. I ended up by the same docks I use now. Sitting there, scared of everything in the whole world, but not of the waterfront rats—I had Pepper with me for that. I stayed out for almost six months until some cop picked me up because he thought I should have been in school. I could have gotten away but I didn’t want to leave Pepper.

I thought they would put us both back in the same joint, but they didn’t. They put me in some place upstate—the judge said I was incorrigible, and I didn’t have any family. She was a nice judge, I guess. She asked me if I wanted to say anything and I asked her if I could have Pepper with me and she looked sort of sad for a minute—then she told me that there would be another dog where they were sending me. She was a liar, and I haven’t trusted a judge or a social worker since then. I hoped they put Pepper someplace where there were rats, so he could do his work. There were plenty of them where they sent me.

I went into the side room, found a good dark conservative suit, a dark blue shirt, and a black knit tie. I set Pansy up for the day and went off to the docks to find Michelle. For once it didn’t take long—she was in the back booth at the Hungry Heart, sipping some evil-looking potion and eating a rare steak with some cottage cheese. I walked right on through to the back, feeling the looks and giving off businessman vibes like I was Michelle’s date. No problems—I sat down and a waiter appeared, looking at Michelle to see if I was trouble for her. She extended her hand like a bloody countess, smiled, and the waiter withdrew. Nobody came there for the food.

“Michelle, can you do a phone job for me?”

“Starting today?”

“In a few hours.”

“Honey, it’s a known fact that I give the best phone in all New York. But I suspect this has nothing to do with someone’s love life, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re going to tell me more?”

“When we get there,” I said.

“So mysterious, Burke. Is this a paying customer?”

“How much do you want?”

“Now don’t be like that, baby.
I’m
not like that. If you’re on a budget, just say so. If this is a money-maker for you, I should get something for the time
my
money-maker’s out of action, yes?”

“Yes. But I can’t pay you what you’re worth.”

“They never do, sweetie, they never do.”

“It’s a bit downtown from here, Michelle. We’re setting up a temporary office—you know what I mean?”

“Not in that damn warehouse.”

“In the warehouse.”

“And this involves . . . ?”

“I’m still looking for that freak I told you about.”

She thought about it for a moment or so, then reached over and tapped my arm. “We have to stop at my hotel, Burke.”

“For how long?”

“Just long enough for me to get my makeup case and some clothes.”

“Michelle, this is strictly a phone job, you know? Nobody’s going to
see
you.”

“Honey,
I’ll
see me. If I want to sound right, I have to feel right. And to feel right, I have to look right. That’s the way it is.”

I grunted my annoyance at this delay, all the time knowing she was right.

Michelle wasn’t intimidated. She just widened her eyes, looked at me, and said, “Baby, you came to me for this work—if you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree.”

I just looked at her—I’d said more or less the same thing to Flood, but not as well.

“It’s important,” said Michelle, in a serious, no-nonsense voice. And there was nothing I could say to that. We all know what we need to do our work.

She was as good as her word. Less that fifteen minutes after I dropped her off she came tripping down the front steps of the hotel carrying one of those giant makeup cases like models use. I had been sitting in the car with a newspaper over my face—a newspaper into which I had punched a clean hole with the icepick I always keep in the car. It gave me a clear view of the street ahead and the mirror did the same behind. I never turned off the engine, but the Plymouth idled as quiet as an electric typewriter. I kept it in gear, with my foot on the brake, but the brake lights didn’t go on. As soon as Michelle opened the door, I lifted my foot from the brake and we moved off like smoke into fog.