Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) (14 page)

I had plenty of acquaintances and admirers, but Mittwede was my only friend, and I’d scared him off to Georgia. There were so few people I actually liked, and even fewer that were completely comfortable with me, so I knew if I got another, I would have to take better care of them. They would need to be protected from my antics.

And I already had someone’s attention.

At first he unnerved me. His interest was fixed and intense, his eyes steady. And he didn’t care if I caught him staring, he wouldn’t look away. Six-foot-two and built like a Greek statue, he was hard to overlook. He was large, muscular, and perfectly formed, and this made him daunting, but there was something else unsettling about him, something too charming and powerful.

The only reason he wasn’t outright frightening was because absolutely everyone on campus, and everyone in Tullahoma, seemed to know him, and they all genuinely adored him.

After four years away, he’d just returned home from the Marine Corps and people were excited to see him. Every time I saw him, another half dozen people would have spotted him and they’d race to him, calling, “Ed, oh my god, you’re back.”

Small crowds were constantly forming around him.

I was keeping my distance but I was watching, and he’d talk to his innumerable friends but stare at me. The same scene played out repeatedly in the library, the cafeteria, and the theater, and then finally off campus at a pizza parlor.

He was clear of the table, sitting in the center of the restaurant, holding court. The chairs around him were never empty but his audience kept changing. It was appealing because he wasn’t arrogant in the least. He was laughing and sincere, and it was plainly evident he was loved and people wanted to be near him, but he still made me nervous.

The place was crowded. Several groups were standing, and people were packed so tight together they were forced to shift to allow others to pass through. If you entered the scrum, you were completely at the mercy of where they directed you, and they funneled me to Ed.

Stepping past him, I felt his hands on my hips and then I was in his lap.

The move had been effortless. After an exchange of smiles, we said nothing. I just relaxed against his chest and he wrapped an arm around my waist, then we sat for several minutes without speaking. It felt perfectly natural, even right, to be there.

Finally, he said, “We should go for a ride. I have a second helmet on my bike.”

I loved to charge, and Ed rode like he was late for the battle. The highway was full of bends yet the speedometer was buried, and the engine was still able to kick up speed in the straights. The wind was battering him harder than me, and I had to keep my face hidden behind his back. When we finally turned onto the back roads, I thought he would slow to a cruise, but he would only brake to a hundred to take the curves. We were leaning so low that if I had dared let go of him, I could have run my farthest hand over the asphalt.

There was no doubt in my mind we were going to die, and it was going to be spectacularly gory. I was certain the fire department would have to be called to wash away the trail of blood, and our skin would probably be splayed across the barbed wire fences that lined the road. I was just hoping that when the flesh was ripped off my bones, I would already be gone.

I had just turned seventeen and thought it was a pity I would perish so young, and without having proved a passport could be attained with a forged birth certificate too.

As Ed swerved around one curve, I remembered I had never gone back to Nashville to finish a half completed bank loan, and on another curve, I wished I had told Mittwede where all the money was buried.

The hour-long ride gave me a chance to reflect on my activities and my first year of college. I’d not taken it very seriously. I’d not proved to anyone that I was smart, or made grades that supported the designation of genius. I’d skipped class, failed history, and convinced Mittwede to do an instructional video for communications class titled
How to Make Bathtub Barbiturates
.

I wasn’t a good student and I wasn’t a good friend. I’d lost Mittwede his job and his future prospects, then, before he could be suspended from college for violating the code of ethics, I’d forced him to flee to Atlanta for fear of being charged with felony forgery.

If at any time in the past year I’d been particularly clever, it had only been with bank managers, Social Security agents, and licensing officials, and that wasn’t the sort of thing my family would inscribe on my headstone.

It would probably just read:
Here lies Tanya. She could be charming
.

I wouldn’t need a very big space because I doubted they’d be able to scrape up much of what remained, and a lot of me would probably be buried with Ed.

We were going to go out as one indistinguishable smear of blood, gore and bike parts on an old country road, killed by a combination of speed and testosterone, loose gravel, and maybe even a wandering farm animal.

By the time the ride was over, I’d envisioned fifty types of death, confronted my destructive nature, regretted the harm done to Mittwede as well as my wasted potential, then accepted my fate along with my mortality, and was left too exhausted to feel any further fear.

I stepped off Ed’s bike at the pizza parlor and started stumbling around the parking lot, struggling to get the helmet off but too weak from repeated adrenaline attacks to manage it.  I was pretty certain I had lost a couple of my senses on the ride. Sight and sound seemed to be limited to the helmet.

The sense of touch returned when Ed tore back the Velcro strap under my chin and I was finally able to free myself from the headpiece.

Ed was laughing.

I had just enough composure left to be defensive. “I’ve never ridden on a bike before.”

He said, “I know. I had to compensate on the curves because you were fighting it.”

“It was terrifying.”

“But you liked it.” He was smiling because he knew it was true.

It took a moment for me to realize, “It was…” I couldn’t admit erotic, so said instead, “…amazing.”

“Do you want to do it again?”

“Oh my god, yes. But faster.”

~~~~~~

I was so completely possessed with Ed, I forgot all about the birth certificates and Social Security numbers. The allure of banks and fraudulent loans lost its dominant place in my mind. And it was no longer so important to procure that last elusive piece of genuine federally recognized identification when Ed could move me so much further than Passport Services.

I could barely remember a thing I had been doing before meeting him, and everything I had done shortly after turning sixteen was so distant as to be another lifetime; so I was particularly taken aback to get the letter from the United States Navy telling me the date I  needed to show up to ship-out for basic training.

That had been a crazy Saturday. I couldn’t quite recall what had possessed me to run off and join the Navy, but I’d taken the tests, passed the exams, and sworn the oath before noon.

The recruiting agent had been incredibly helpful, telling me I didn’t need parental permission if I enrolled in the Delayed Entry Program. Being sixteen, I could spend the next year finishing high school, or in my case, accumulating college credits, and I wouldn’t have to worry about basic training until six months before I turned eighteen.

I called the same recruiting agent and told him a lot had happened in the last eighteen months, and, “Regarding this whole Navy business, I’ve changed my mind.”

He laughed before realizing it wasn’t a joke. “You can’t change your mind. You already signed and swore an oath. You are a United States soldier. Let me make this clear: You will be arrested by the military police and thrown in the brig if you fail to show up.”

Oh
.

Ed was staring at me aghast. “You did what?”

“I was bored one weekend and joined the Navy.”

“How could you forget?”

“Well, I didn’t so much forget as not think about it again.”

“They
will
arrest you.”

“I guess I won’t be bored that weekend.”

“Tanya?”

“Yes?”

“Do you understand this is serious?”

“I suspected it was.”

Then the certified letter arrived telling me to turn myself in. The recruiting agent had been calling me Mario Andretti because of the number of speeding tickets I had acquired, and he warned the next time I was pulled over, I’d be taken into custody.

That could happen at any moment. The cops had me on the side of the road at least once a month. I’d charm my way out of most of the tickets and laugh my way into the rest. I was just one point away from losing my license but even so, I couldn’t drive the speed limit. Ed knew this. He said, “They won’t make you serve if you get married.”

It was a strange way to propose, but I loved that it wasn’t sentimental or emotional.

Four months before my eighteenth birthday, two months after I should have shipped off to the Navy, Ed and I had a big church wedding.

It made not the slightest bit of difference to the Navy, but by the time they found us again in Memphis, they had given up. They sent a letter dismissing me of all obligations, but also warned I was not eligible to enter any of the other services. I was glad to hear it, too, because I still had a problem with boredom and there was no telling what I might get up to.

From the very beginning, Ed was warned against me.

“She’s trouble,” was the general opinion, as was, “You’re going to regret it.”

“She’s a bit of a rogue,” was the affectionate version of “She’s an unrepentant criminal.” And, “There’s something wrong with her,” was the polite way of saying, “She’s fucking crazy.”

Most people that loved Ed feared I would do something that would either result in his arrest or his death.

But Ed’s psychology professor had a more specific concern. “She will do it again,” he said. “Once a runaway, always a runaway.” It was a certainty. “Maybe not tomorrow or even this year, but she’ll encounter some stress she doesn’t want to face and then,”
snap
, “she’ll be gone. Why? Because she’s a runaway and that’s what runaways do.”

The same professor had me as a student the previous year so he felt confident saying, “She’s not stable. Oh, she’s intelligent, but once you cross over 150 IQ, there is guaranteed psychosis. And what you’ve got in Tanya is over 170 with a history of psychotic behavior.” He was shaking his head, “I wouldn’t do it.”

Ed had also tested well over the safety threshold, but the madness wasn’t the same.

We had been married for six years when Ed demanded, “Do you know the difference between neurotics and psychotics?” He answered before I could speak, “Neurotics build castles in the sky; psychotics move into them.”

And there was no denying I’d made an unholy mess of the place either, but he’d invited me in and then locked all the doors. The invitation alone was foolish, but it became downright stupid when he took the keys and left.

Nearly everyone he knew tried to warn him, “She is up to something. She’s not the type you can leave alone and expect to behave.”

I even tried to threaten him, “You keep ignoring me and we’re both going to regret it.”

But he didn’t believe any of it. He was a counselor at a wilderness program for juvenile delinquents and he loved his work. It was where he most wanted to be. He would spend weeks in the woods, and then come home for two days to recuperate. He spent most of the two days sleeping and the rest of it meeting with other counselors to discuss the week. 

He needed to spend the moments he was awake processing the emotional events of his job, but he couldn’t talk with me because I always sided with the kids. I was an anarchist and his authoritarian rule over them was tyranny. Why they didn’t all run away was a mystery to me.

“Because they would be caught,” Ed said.

“No they wouldn’t,” I scowled. “They’re not idiots.”

He became patronizing. “It’s not easy to run away. If you’d been placed out there, you wouldn’t have been able to run away either. You’d have been caught if you tried.”

The insult was extreme and I was livid. “I’ll remind you, I
did
run away and no one caught me. And you might want to think about who I was playing with before you make another claim that you could do better.”

Every now and again, Ed needed to be knocked back.

He knew from the start I was a con artist. He knew I was a criminal. He knew shortly after we met that I had already assumed more names than I could remember, and he knew when he made me promise to never do it again that I couldn’t.

When he finally learned what I had been up to, he blamed me for psychotically destroying his neurotic fantasies.

“You built the castle,” I accused. “I am not responsible for its structural integrity.”

~~~~~~

He learned that even the most stable structure can’t survive a sustained attack against the foundation. I’d been lighting fires in the cellar against the powder kegs for years, and when the damage tore down the walls, I asked to move out. I wanted a divorce. But I wanted to make the parting painless. I needed him to want me out, so every time he suggested a repair, I would recall a small fire I had set.

“Did I tell you about the time I rented a house in Fayetteville and ran about sixty thousand in credit under a stranger’s name?”

He looked away, murmuring, “No.”

“It was last year, right around my twenty-third birthday. I was intending to send her the diamond bracelet to make amends, but then I thought it would just freak her out.”

“That bracelet is real?”

“Yeah,” it almost sounded like an apology. “I told you it was silver and cubic zirconia, but it’s actually platinum and diamond.”

We were going on the third week since I had first tried to get him to evict me, and he knew I would keep sharing details until he hung his head in defeat and admitted, “Stop. It’s over. I see that.”

But then the next day, he recovered and offered again, “We can fix it.”

I felt forced to counter with, “Do you know about the week I took a job in Columbia just to clear out the company safe? I can’t even remember what name I used, there’s been so many.”

It was taking less and less to drop his head.

“It amazes even me that I can continue to call up a new incident every time you falter. I wonder how many more times we can do this?”

“I wonder, too.” But he continued to try. “I forgive all you’ve done.”

“You recall the time the sheriff came to arrest you for bank fraud? Sorry about that. My mistake. But you have to give me credit, I did fix it before he could get the cuffs on you.”

“Dear God, Tanya, what did I do to deserve such dishonesty?”

“Hard to say, but whatever it was, it must have been pretty bad.”

“We’ll start over.”

“Did you know the car in the backyard is stolen?”

“I still love you.”

“The lock picks you found were actually mine. Do you want to know how I used them?”

“No. I’m done. You’ve made your point. It’s over.”

And still, I could have gone on for weeks. I could have told him things that would have burned the roof, razed the walls, and blasted the rubble into dust.

~~~~~~

It had started with a storm. It so often did. The systems moving in would rip through my skull, blinding me with migraines, enraging me with pain that would last for days and sometimes weeks while I waited for the rains to come. My head could predict the weather like a satellite image. I knew the severity of what was coming by whether it made me retch, and I didn’t always mind because the worst headaches disappeared almost instantly with the lightning. The dramatic release would ensure a rush of euphoria that was exhilarating and I’d want to do something.

But I had promised I wouldn’t. So for a long time, I didn’t.

Then Ed went into the woods and I was alone. And I was bored. And there was only one thing I wanted to do. It was the only passion I had besides Ed.

It was 3:00 a.m. and I was in a manic state of desire. The power had just gone out when lightning hit a transformer. Abruptly my head was clear and a lot of plans were flooding my thoughts, but with them came quite a few questions.

Legitimate identification and what you could do with it still possessed me, and of late, the mailbox was filled with pre-approved applications for credit.

I studied the form in candlelight. It seemed a weak system, one easily foiled by nothing more than a date of birth and Social Security number, and both were easy to come by. But I wasn’t certain about the fallout, and I didn’t want to ruin a stranger’s life.

I decided to test out the scheme on myself.

The first question was, “How much credit can be accumulated in a month?” It was 1993 and everyone was eager to give me plastic, so the answer was a little over fifty thousand and I hadn’t been trying.

Then I wondered, “How do the creditors know it was me that applied for it?”

The answer was clear, they didn’t know, and based on how easy it was, they really didn’t care.

So in three days, I ran every line of credit to its max and when the bills came, I called the banks and said, “I didn’t apply for this and I didn’t use it.”

“The card was sent to your address,” was the sole argument in security.

“No one has been home for months,” was my defense. “It was identity fraud.”

Now the biggest question: What were the consequences?

I wouldn’t steal anyone’s identity if the repercussions were anything worse than inconvenience. Ed had diagnosed me wrong: I was a sociopath but I was
not
a psychopath.

I understood right from wrong, I just didn’t care. I was even capable of guilt, though no one believed it. No one had seen me display it. But I always questioned, “Why would I do something that is going to make me feel guilty?” I wouldn’t. Not intentionally. It made no sense.

Consequently, I’d only financially hit banks and businesses covered by insurance. I didn’t care if they were rich or poor, I didn’t score money from individuals.

So I needed to confirm with the recent credit scam that the name on the card would not be held accountable. And it wasn’t. All the banks required to clear the balance was a police report. That was nothing.

I sat in the police chief’s office again wondering if I was finally going to pay for my laughing insolence, but the chief had retired and the detectives had forgotten all about me and TCBY. They were incredibly sympathetic, the report was filed, and then it was like it had never happened.

I wasn’t certain how I felt about it.

The success of my cons was not so much determined by money, but by the swath of destruction I left behind. It was measured by what I had managed to escape or survive.

And this had been too simple. Nothing had gone wrong. There hadn’t been a single moment when I felt like the deception was slipping away from me or was getting out of control. It didn’t feel satisfying.

I wanted chaos. I wanted to be chased. I wanted to be questioned, suspected, respected, and loathed. I wanted to fight for my life and liberty. More than anything, I wanted the pleasure of fear. It had been entirely too many years since I had known it.

I would eventually steal someone’s identity to run a line of credit, but only to prove it was too easy. I did it to add to the mayhem of everything else I was doing, all in an attempt to tip my life over into pandemonium, looking for the thrill of being overwhelmed and challenged, hoping someone would pursue so I could run.