James Swain - Take Down

It was past midnight when he pounded on Gabe’s front door. The porch light came on.

“It’s Billy. Lemme in. I’ve got a job for you.”

The door swung in. Gabe stood in the foyer in a bathrobe, his eyes ringed with sleep.

“What’s up?”

“I need a fake driver’s license so I can go visit the high-roller salon at Galaxy.”

“Is the deal on?”

“Yeah. But I want to check the place out first, just to be on the safe side.”

“Come on in.”

They walked through the downstairs to the spare bedroom in the back of the house that served as Gabe’s workshop. Having grown sick of her husband’s gambling addiction, Gabe’s long-suffering wife had thrown their belongings in a U-Haul and bolted with their kids, taking every stick of furniture, every wall covering, and all the photographs, as if trying to take the memories as well. Gabe’s idea of redecorating had been to put packing crates with TV sets into each room. That way, he could watch his beloved college sports anywhere in the house.

They sat in front of Gabe’s computer. Billy fished the false ID from his pocket.

“I need a driver’s license for this guy,” he said.

Gabe put on a pair of cheaters and studied the plastic. “Who’s Thomas Pico?”

“Hedge fund manager out of New York. His name’s in their database.”

“Sweet.”

Making a fake driver’s license took several steps. To start, Gabe did a search on the Internet and located a blank template for a New York State driver’s license, which he copied with Adobe Photoshop into a folder on his Mac. Then he typed Thomas Pico’s personal information off the voter registration Billy had given him onto the template, which he and Billy both proofread to make sure the information was correct.

The next step was the head shot. Gabe kept several head shots of Billy stored on his hard drive as JPEG files. He picked a recent photo, copied it from the folder, and inserted it into the template on the screen. Billy shook his head disapprovingly.

“Use another one. I look hungover in that photo.”

“I’ve got to use this one,” Gabe said. “The other shots don’t have your shoulders in them. Every state in the Union requires that the top of the shoulders be included in a driver’s license head shot. It gives the face better proportion.”

“Like a mug shot.”

“That’s right, like a mug shot.”

The final step was creating the driver’s license number, which was encoded with the driver’s name, gender, and date of birth. These numbers were created with special algorithms, and each state used a different one. Gabe owned a software program with all fifty states, plus Puerto Rico and Guam, and using that program, he created a fake New York driver’s license number using Pico’s personal information. Seconds later, the number appeared on the screen: P091095704268392?80.

“What’s the question mark for?” Billy asked.

“Good eye,” Gabe said. “The question mark indicates an overflow digit, which means there’s another guy in the state of New York named Thomas Pico who shares the same birth date. The question mark distinguishes them from each other.”

“That’s good to know.”

“To you it is. To the rest of us, it’s just another piece of useless information.”

Gabe resumed his task. He inserted the driver’s license number into the template, keyed a command into his computer, and watched the inkjet printer on the stand spit out the fake license. They took turns examining it under a bright desk light.

“Like it?” Gabe asked.

“It looks good,” Billy said.

Gabe moved to the worktable and glued the fake license to a stiff sheet of Teslin plastic, trimmed the edges, and used a piece of sandpaper to make the card look old and worn. He handed the fake license to Billy, who tucked it away with the rest of the fake IDs.

“Thanks for the quick turnaround,” Billy said.

“Anytime, my man. Let me walk you out,” Gabe said.

The Maserati was parked in the drive. Keys in hand, Billy said, “I’ll see you tomorrow at one. We’re going to that Gamblers Anonymous meeting, and don’t try to talk your way out of it.”

Gabe shuddered from an imaginary chill and tightened the knot in his robe’s belt. “Can’t it wait? A couple of days won’t be the end of the world.”

“You’re gambling too much. Has Tony G sent his boys around to collect?”

“They came by the other day. I made them scrambled eggs and bacon.”

“Did they threaten you?”

“I’ve got it under control.”

Gabe was pretending the money he owned Tony G was no big deal. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and Billy put his hand on Gabe’s arm. “You’re going to that meeting. I’ll drag your sorry ass there if I have to. You’ve got to kick this habit.”

“Whatever you say,” the jeweler mumbled.

Billy got into his car and fired up the engine. Gabe was old enough to be his father, and it felt shitty talking to him this way. Gabe stuck his face in the open driver window.

“Don’t be mad at me, Billy. It’s just making things harder,” Gabe said.

“I’m trying to help you, man.”

“I know you are. Just don’t push so hard, okay?”

“You think I’m pushing too hard? I can push you so hard, you won’t be able to breathe.”

Gabe paused for a few beats, then said what was really on his mind. “Do you really think you can steal all this money off Galaxy?”

“It’s sure looking that way.”

“What are you going to do with your share?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. You?”

“What else? Pay off Tony G.”

“Good idea.”

Gabe was smiling as if all his troubles had disappeared. Slapping his hand on the roof of Billy’s car, he walked back into his house without another word.

The houses in Gabe’s subdivision looked the same, and Billy drove around until he passed the empty guardhouse and knew he was home free. He connected with Las Vegas Boulevard, the Strip’s casinos lighting up the northern horizon with the intensity of a nuclear detonation.

He did the limit, deep in thought. He’d never impersonated a hedge fund manager before, and he needed to find out what their deal was. He pulled into the Fatburger across the street from the Monte Carlo and was soon sitting in the parking lot, eating greasy onion rings while studying photos of hedge fund managers on his Droid that he’d pulled up using Google Images. To a man, it was a boy’s club of soft-looking white guys with spiffy haircuts and teeth as white as piano keys. Blazers and gray slacks were the norm, the shirts button-down.

Preppies.

By clicking on the images, he was taken to several online newspaper bios, which he read to get a feel for the lifestyle. Hedge fund managers were übersmart, with MBAs from Wharton, NYU, and Ivy League programs. On a whim, he typed “Thomas Pico” into Google, and discovered there were no photos on the Internet of the man he was impersonating.

Beautiful.

He got out, popped the trunk, and rummaged through his box of disguises containing wigs, glasses, ball caps, and several sports jackets. He tried on a pair of black eyeglasses and a blazer with gold buttons that screamed conservative, combed down his spiked hair with a stiff brush, and had a look in the driver window’s reflection.

That worked.

Back in the car, he unlocked the glove compartment and filled his pockets with stacks of hundred-dollar bills that he planned to play with tonight in Galaxy’s high-roller salon.

He left the Fatburger lot thinking that only suckers walked around with this much cash, and laughed out loud.

One a.m. and the Strip was jamming. He drove the Strip whenever possible, the glittering casinos and blinding neon never failing to flip on the pleasure switch in his head. Vegas made Providence feel so small and dirty that he’d never wanted to go back, and if his old man hadn’t croaked one dreary Christmas a few years ago, he never would have.