The Scared Stiff

33

The real bombshell came over coffee and dessert. I followed my half-eaten green salad and my picked-over sole meunière with orange sherbet and decaf espresso, tasting nothing, having trouble maintaining my part of the conversation, thinking about that damned Ifigenia. I’d never heard her name until this week, although I’d always known she existed, in some shadowy other part of Arturo’s life. And now, with her letter, she’d maybe undone us all.

Why couldn’t she have kept out of it? Or, alternatively, if she absolutely had to poke her oar in my eye — I know, but that’s what it felt like — why couldn’t the damn post office get the letter to the cops before we pulled the scam? Come warn us, you know what we’re up to, and we’ll give it up, no problem; we’ll think of something else. But no.

Conversation had been general through the meal, mostly Fernando telling college anecdotes from the good old days in Boston with Leon, but then, just as I was taking my first cold mouthful of orange sherbet, Dulce said, “Leon, could I ask you a question about that case you were talking about?”

“Of course,” he said.

“You said people have ways to get new identification for themselves,” she said. “Do you mean forged? But isn’t there a big risk in that?”

“Sure, there’s a risk,” he said. “And that’s where we catch a lot of them. But there’s other ways, better ways.”

Fernando said, “Like what?”

“Well, take this fellow,” Leon said. “His wife is Guerreran, from a pretty large family. Now, the odds are good, you know, that somebody in that family, some cousin, maybe even a brother, was born around the same time our man was born, and died young. So there’s no records on him except his birth certificate and his death certificate.”

“I see,” Fernando said, in the tone of someone who suddenly grasps the entire scheme.

Dulce said, “Do you mean he’ll pretend to be this other person?”

“More than pretend,” Leon told her. “The first thing he’ll do, he’ll get that other person’s birth certificate.”

I pushed away my uneaten sherbet.

“Then,” Leon went on, “he’ll use that identification to get whatever else he needs. A driver’s license, maybe even a passport.”

I pushed away my undrunk espresso.

Dulce said, “So he can pretend to be that other person here. But what if he wants to go back north?”

“Why not?” Leon said. “He has ID.”

Dulce shook her head. “It’s hard to believe such people exist,” she said.

“Oh, they exist,” Leon assured her. “The statistics are amazing. In New York State alone, the fraud division of the state Department of Insurance handles twenty to thirty of these cases a year. In your state of California,” he told me, “it’s more like fifty a year.”

“Wow,” I said.

Fernando said, “So you think that’s what happened this time. He’s borrowing one of his wife’s relatives.”

“Exactly.”

Dulce said, “Is there any way to check?”

“Absolutely,” Leon said. “I have an appointment at the Hall of Records Friday morning. I intend to spend the day there.”

“Doing what?” I tried to say, but my throat clogged. I cleared it and tried again. “Doing what?”

“Our man is thirty-five,” he told me. “I’m going to check every death certificate from his wife’s family from around thirty years ago. Any time I find somebody in the right age range I’ll check the birth certificates to see if there’s been a request for a copy recently.”

“That’s brilliant!” Fernando said.

“Just legwork,” Leon said modestly. To me, he said, “You aren’t eating, Keith.”

“I may have caught a bug,” I said. “I’m sorry, I wish I was better company.”

No, no, they assured me, I’d been fine company. And so had they, I assured them, and I’d very much enjoyed the conversation, but I thought maybe the best thing for me right now was early to bed; thank you very much, yes, I’m sure I’ll be fine in the morning; don’t let me break up the party, you go on; I’ll just go up to my room; good night, good night.

And phone. Mamá said, “Artie’s out.”

“Tell him it’s Keith Emory,” I said. “Can you tell him that?”

“Sure. I thought your voice — I thought you was somebody else.”

“Keith Emory,” I repeated. “I’m at Casa Montana Mojoca, and I want to do that tour we talked about, Arturo and me. I want him to pick me up at the hotel at nine tomorrow morning.”

“That’s kinda early,” she said, sounding doubtful.

“In fact, it’s late,” I told her. “You tell him. Keith Emory. Nine in the morning.”