Identity Thief
Forthcoming
Chapter One
When the phone blasted him into consciousness one grey November afternoon, Richie Gordon could not know it would change his life. Who can know such things? And not just change, tweak, or even transform, but knock his plain as vanilla existence ass over teakettle, as his father liked to say. God, how he missed him, Hank Gordon, taken at fifty-four.
If Richie, who despite his very adult marketing skills had not outgrown his childhood diminutive (sometimes in the voice that lingered somewhere deep inside him, he was still Ricky, even little Ricky), had understood who and what the call might lead to, would he have answered? This much is certain. Other than an early flu that had sent him home before lunch to be awakened by the phone, he felt as content as he had in years, as if, at long last, Richard Allan Gordon were growing into an ease with himself. He owned a Mt. Adams condo. He’d been promoted to B.M (which in childhood had meant bowel movement, but at Procter and Gamble indicated Brand Manager) sixteen months ago. His one year B.M. review was a One. Great vision, his V.P. had written. Sound business plan. EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS! A month later he’d received his commitment. Project Turf would launch during JFM or maybe AMJ, depending on the Wal-Mart modular. He was pulling down a cool one-twenty, and because BM’s were Band Three, he could count on a sizeable year-end bonus. All this, and Richie still had his hair, which his mother’s father had lost in his twenties. Since eighth grade, when he mastered the basics of Mendelian genetics, he’d assumed a similar fate awaited him. Dome-head. For years he’d fretted, still did, despite the mirror’s thick assurances. Any moment it could vanish, like his father and later his mother had. Luxuriant, was how his biz school lover Trish had described Richie’s hair, and follicular health had turned out to be more than the sum of fear or vanity. Folgrow, Richie’s brand, was P & G’s entry in the hot hair regrowth market, and a thick head of hair, well, he could sell the bejesus out of it because Richie Gordon knew how wretched it felt to fear losing it.
The phone sounded a fourth and final time, and he snatched the receiver.
“Richard Gordon?”
Telemarketer, Richie thought. “Speaking.”
“Sergeant Matthews, Hamilton P. D.”
Last spring, Richie had donated fifty dollars to send underprivileged youth and police officers to a Reds game. Now every police department in southwest Ohio hounded him.
“Would you mind . . . ?” He sneezed. “Try--?” Sneezed again. “—me back?”
“Sorry, sir, this can’t wait.”
What’s so goddamn urgent, mucous flying like bird shot, Opening Day’s five months off?
“ . . . individual we arrested, unrelated charge, had your wallet.”
Richie’s sinuses pounded. His forehead beat like cymbals. He started for the couch, shoulder-clenching the phone to his ear. “That’s impossible.”
“I’m looking at your social security card, Mister Gordon. ID’s. Baby picture.”
Richie found his black bi-fold in his trousers. “I’ve got my wallet right here.”
“Oh, nine, one, three, four, four thousand. That it?”
“Yes.”
”Best,” Sergeant Matthews intoned, “to arrive before six when the property room closes. You know how to find HQ in Hamilton?”
Richie admitted he did not. Half an hour later, double-dosed on Allegra, he approached Hamilton, a crumbling industrial city forty minutes north of downtown. In the half-decade he’d lived and worked in Cincinnati, Richie, Brooklyn-born and orphaned, had rarely ventured beyond I-275, the loop that divided Cincinnati from its suburbs. He was soon lost. The sergeant had said the first right after the bridge. Who knew he meant the first right headed east across the Hamilton River? He sought directions at a Hispanic grocery, reversed course, and reached the police lot a minute to six.
Burly men and one or two burly women strode in rough formation towards their civilian vehicles, mostly pick-ups. Richie avoided them, parked at the far end of the lot and hurried towards the one-story structure, clenching the lapels of his topcoat. In the good black mohair, he appeared taller than the five-eight he claimed, but without the scarf he’d left home, cold air buffeted his throat.
He entered the cinder block lobby sneezing. His nostrils were raw meat. He shouldn’t have answered the damn phone! Wallet? He’d had it on the drive home from work; he still had it. Curly-haired, sick and sallow, Richie Gordon stepped to a brass-barred window. He could feel bad attitude beading on his forehead. After passing three triplicate forms through the narrow slot–nine pieces of paper!–the uniformed officer behind the glass disappeared through a fire door, re-emerging some moments later, his gun belt riding low on his fat ass as if it were a belly-dancer’s golden chain.
Seated in the front seat of his CRV, Richie examined the unfamiliar tri-fold in the dome light’s spectral glow. No credit cards in the front slots, nothing at all. In golden letters, Genuine Leather was embossed into the center of three sections, but Richie didn’t believe it. The billfold contained a dozen paper scraps scribbled with names and numbers, but no cash. In the center of the shredded papers, as if it were an exotic pear, lay the insert from a man’s wallet, which, as soon as he touched it, Richie recalled losing. Well, not losing, but realizing it was gone, four and a half, almost five years ago, shortly after he moved to Ohio and applied for a driver’s license. He’d had to take the morning off, find the Federal building and apply for a new social security card to replace this one, which he thought he’d somehow misplaced during the move.
In the dark car, in the bleak police parking lot, Richie glanced over his shoulder as if he were the criminal. Yes, that was his adolescent signature between the blue columns holding up the official government seal. This number has been established for Richard A. Gordon. He must have been eighteen when he signed it, still making a wide loop on the top left hand side of the G. He’d stopped doing that more than ten years ago.
He flipped to the next sheet of the plastic insert. A Barnes and Noble Gift Card he’d forgotten he ever had. Next, his membership card to the Fountain Square Health Club. On the back, someone had forged his adolescent signature, and not very well, either, copying it from the social security card. The R of Richard slanted too far right. He examined the next slot. A white business card: Mercy Health Partners, Admitting Fairfield. He turned it over. Someone had written in blue ink: I, Richard A. Gordon, have no known allergies. In case of emergency contact, L. Nelson (513) # 889-2541.
I, Richard A. Gordon, and Richie hadn’t written it.
That was it; the Mercy card occupied the insert’s last plastic sleeve. Richie flipped back towards his social security card and a spot of color he’d somehow missed the first time caught his attention. He spun the sheaths more slowly. In the second, between the social security card and the heavier Barnes and Nobles gift card, he found a two-by-two snapshot of a newborn. Against a pastel blue-green background, she – it must be a she because the baby wore a pink stocking hat, the sort hospitals placed on newborns – stared out through puffy slitted eyes. Her right hand seemed to support her chin in a miniature Thinker’s pose, but that was an illusion. The baby lay on her back. Her hand was near her golden chin, not under it. A hospital bracelet banded her tiny left wrist. Superimposed across the bottom of the photo, which, when he could think again, Richie realized must have been hospital-issued was the baby’s name: Jada Reece Gordon.
Mother-fucker gave his kid my name.
Richie’s weakened body trembled. First a sneezing fit, then chills so bad he had to set the wallet down and squeeze the wheel to keep from shaking. When he’d stopped spraying the steering column and windshield, he started the engine, shifted into reverse, then drove ten miles below the speed limit all the way to Mt. Adams, the image of the child, her puffy newborn cheeks, printed on his aching eyes. He parked in his designated spot, took two Tylenol P.M’s and passed out.