Andrew Vachss - Flood

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.”

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.