Hero's Curse (6 page)

I grabbed my tooth brush and went into the shower. I let hot water run over me and brushed my teeth. It was wonderful to feel clean again. I let my mind drift. It just figured that the house I’d found with a threshold would come with an over-attractive landlord and an under-aged sister that liked older men. I didn’t look my real age, but to a normal sixteen-year old, someone like me who looked like he was in his mid twenties should have been too old to check out.

The idea of being celibate unless I got married was disturbing enough; the idea of never having privacy, the possibility of always being watched by God or a guardian angel was disgusting. B had jokingly encouraged me to masturbate as soon as I was alone, but if God and angels truly existed, there was no privacy. The thought of B or Jehovah watching me at all times turned my stomach.

I didn’t have any concerns about Mina’s background check. If I had been willing to live in the woods like the Unabomber, it would have been possible for me to live off the grid. Living off the grid is a pain in the ass. It’s close to impossible to have any of the modern conveniences like broadband internet access, smart phone, bank accounts, or credit cards while off the grid. To get all of these things you need a valid social security number.

An illegal immigrant can buy a stolen identity for less than two hundred dollars; these identities usually won’t hold up to a ten minute internet search. For a thousand dollars you can get the social security number and a birth certificate of a real infant who died when he was a few months old. This scam has been common knowledge for almost twenty years. Searchable death certificate databases are available online; law enforcement has been wise to this scheme for a long time. If you use this technique, your fake identity doesn’t have a paper trail. No tax payments, school records, or credit history. If you have access to the right databases, it takes longer than ten minutes to figure out the identity is false—but not that much longer.

People who aren’t meticulous or who trust other criminals are fools. They’re just asking to get caught. It’s a pain in the ass to get false identities on your own, but it’s worth it if you don’t like prison.

For my disposable identities, I look in the obits for a guy with brown hair and eyes, about my height, without close family, who recently died in an accident. I know I have the right guy when I go to his home and see a stack of mail. If there’s a preapproved credit card application, I pick the lock on his house to find a document that has his social security number.

I usually visit the dead guy’s home in the middle of the day and make a point of saying hello to the neighbors. If they ask, I tell them I’m a cousin of the deceased. All credit card companies allow you to fill out preapproved applications online; all you need is the social security number. After that it’s just a matter of visiting the house and picking up the mail every couple of days until the credit card comes.

In most states, if you claim you’ve lost your driver’s license you can get a replacement by mail and have it sent to the address on record. Typically, you fill out an application online and pay by credit card. Once I have the driver’s license, I have an identity that is difficult but not impossible to penetrate.

I put even more effort into my main identity. Ten years ago, I got a job for a couple of months as an orderly at Henry Ford Hospital in downtown Detroit. John Evans was a sixteen-year old, brown haired, brown eyed victim of a drive by shooting who was DOA. His mom was a drug addict prostitute who came by just once to ID the body. It took no effort to get a hold of John’s driver’s license before his mom came. I didn’t touch what she most cared about; the cash in his wallet. Minutes after she left the hospital and before the cops came, I made sure his hospital records were lost and modified the death certificate to make him a John Doe. None of the doctors or nurses on duty had paid much attention to John after they realized he was dead. Inner city Detroit is predominantly black, but there are still whites living there. The police there are color blind about dead gangbangers; they don’t care much about any of them. John’s death didn’t make it into any public, private, or official database. Since John was a minor when he got into trouble with the law, his juvenile records were automatically sealed when he became a legal adult.

John had dropped out of high school so I didn’t have to mess with any of his school records. When I was in my thirties, I constantly got carded. It wasn’t a stretch to convince people I was eighteen. Two years after John died, I took a high school equivalency test under his name and got a GED, a job at McDonalds, and started paying taxes. Based on that first job, I got a bank account and a credit card. On John Evans’ twentieth birthday, I renewed his driver’s license and also got a Passport. His mother, the only other person who knew for sure John Evans was dead, died of an overdose four years ago. All my identification cards with his name had my photographs. My identity was bulletproof.

The hot water ran out. I’d only been in the shower for a few minutes; it should have lasted longer. Mina must have decided to take a shower before running a credit check. I got out before the water got ice cold. I was toweling off when I looked into the mirror for the first time. “Holy shit!” I was fricking beautiful! I spend a lot of time working out but I’m not into body building. Since the last time I had looked in a mirror, I had become completely ripped and defined. My face was still recognizably me but indefinably different. I looked like a professional makeup artists had spent hours on my face instead of just stepping out of the shower. I didn’t have a single blemish. The seven inch scar on the right side of my chest was gone, as was the scar from a knife wound on my left thigh, and the bullet scar on the left side of my chest.

Andi wasn’t an under-aged nympho with a fetish for older men. She had been a normal, heterosexual teen faced with an amazingly gorgeous guy. ‘Fuck!’ I loved being average looking. It was awesome to have looks that made me hard to describe. I realized now that the people in the restaurant hadn’t just been looking a B. They had also been looking at me. I liked who I was; against my will and without my knowledge, I had been changed. I wanted to scream. I controlled myself. I couldn’t afford to freak out my new landlord.

I stumbled into the bedroom and sat on my bed. I thought of B watching me from up on high, rolling on the ground giggling. I couldn’t help it, I started laughing. It was a better choice than screaming. I was so pissed. I had never laughed in anger before and somehow it made me feel better. B was right. He was a bigger me. Most guys would give their left nut to look this good. Neither one of us wanted to look like Prince Charming. Jehovah was a small lump of crap stuck to the end of an ass hair.

With that appetizing thought, I realized I was starving. Nothing I had eaten during dinner had stayed in my stomach. I decided to go downstairs and make nice with my new roommates. I was halfway down the stairs when I heard Andi talking on the phone. I guess superhuman hearing came with the god-like looks. Somehow I knew she wasn’t speaking all that loudly.

“Oh my God, Stacy, he’s so hot!...You have to come by tonight to check him out…No, he doesn’t look that old, probably Mina’s age—low twenties.” She was going to be a problem. I purposefully stomped down the lower half of the stairs to make sure Andi knew I was coming. She had the phone off and was looking innocent when I entered the kitchen.

“Hey Andi, I know it’s late but I’m starving. I’m going to order some pizza. Do you want some?”

She beamed. “Sure!” She batted her eyes and gave her best sixteen-year old attempt at a come hither look. I kept my face neutral. If Andi had been a dog, she’d have been the kind that slobbered on your face.

“You think your sister will want some?”

“Whatever, as long as it’s vegetarian, Mina loves pizza. Me personally, I’ll eat anything, Vic.”

Andi gave me a coupon from the best local pizza place. I ordered three large pizzas, one plain, one meat lovers, and the last half pepperoni and the other half mushrooms and bell peppers. As we waited for the pizza, Andi became steadily less subtle in her come-ons. She wasn’t used to having to work to get attention and she had too much confidence to believe I wasn’t interested. I was playing stupid—too clueless to understand she was attracted to me. Watching her irritation rise helped keep mine under control.

Shortly, a boy a couple years older than Andi came into the kitchen. At first, he didn’t even look up, furiously texting on his cell phone. He had the same Nordic good looks as his sisters. He was about six foot four and had the lanky, half-filled look of someone who had grown several inches in a short period of time. He bristled slightly when he finally noticed me. From the way he reacted, I figured he was straight. This sucked. No one was going to forget me. Guys would be intimidated and girls would be attracted. I didn’t even want to begin to think about my effect on gays.

“Ben, this is our new renter, Vic. Vic, this is my brother, Ben.” Andi smirked, “Maybe his brain-dead groupies can give him a minute so he can say hello.”

Without pause, Ben retaliated by flicking Andi in the forehead with his finger. She didn’t move fast enough and yelled a startled, “Ow!” He laughed and quickly crossed over to me, out of Andi’s reach. She tensed to lunge after him but then stopped to glance at me. I could see her decide to act like grownup. The glare she aimed at her brother promised future revenge.

Ben was still glorying in his victory when I offered him my hand. Ben grabbed it like he was going to twist it off. He clearly wanted to show me he was the man in the family and could protect his sisters. I’m strong for my size but brute strength isn’t my forte. I choked high on his hand with a firm grasp to stop him from crushing my hand, but I had no expectation or intention of hurting him. I realized that I was when I saw his eyes get big and his face blanch. Okay, I now had spidey-strength. All I needed was the ability to shoot webbing from my wrists and I’d be ready for great responsibility.

I let go. Ben pulled back and started shaking his hand surreptitiously behind his back. The front doorbell rang, saving everyone from further embarrassment. The pizza was here. I paid the delivery guy. I was glad I had ordered three large pizzas as I was starving and Ben and Andi ate like teenagers.

I could feel myself mellowing as I ate piece after piece of saturated fat-filled goodness. I looked over at Ben and Andi and saw the same calorie induced high. I was satiated. I hadn’t realized how much of my fury had been from low blood sugar. I was still pissed but it was under control.

I got Ben and Andi to start talking about themselves. Ben was a little standoffish but Andi made up for him. In between their bickering, I was able to find out they lost both of their parents to a car accident less than a year ago. The kids had trust funds set up by their grandparents that paid for their education. Andi was going to be a junior at Judge, a private Catholic high school. She was currently in the middle of summer cheerleading training. Ben was going to be a freshman at the University of Utah, and Mina a senior. Their parent’s life insurance policy paid most of their bills, but at the end of every month they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Even though the house was paid for, there were taxes, maintenance, and utilities. A couple of weeks ago, they decided to rent a room in the house to pick up the slack. It was either that or sell the house, and none of them wanted to sell.

They were surprised to hear my fake identity was twenty-six-years old. They thought I was younger. It was tricky talking about my supposed age. I had to speak in the third person whenever I described details about John Evans. After a bit, Ben and I were good. We had done the male dominance thing and I had paid for pizza. Sure, he was taller but I had more years and ready cash. He was close enough to childhood and had a sheltered enough upbringing where he still had some respect for older adults.

Every few minutes, Ben got calls and text messages. He screened most of the calls, answered his phone twice, and texted a half dozen times. From the way he talked on the phone and smiled while texting, I could tell all the calls and texts were from different girls. He was too young to understand that too much of anything will bite you in the ass.

Soon, I had Ben and Andi alternately laughing and groaning at old jokes I had stolen from Groucho Marx. They had no idea who he was. By the time Mina came into the kitchen, I was telling my last joke, “Outside a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

I hadn’t been fair to Mina when I previously compared her to Andi. She cleaned up well. She had put on a little bit of lipstick and mascara, but otherwise showed off her natural beauty. Instead of a tank top, she wore a tight t-shirt that showed off more than it hid. By the way she was outlined it looked like she was all natural. Initially, I had to fight so hard to keep my eyes on her face I almost started getting a headache.

The more I looked into her eyes, the easier it was to keep my gaze there. I could come home everyday to this face. What the HELL was I thinking? I didn’t have time for this shit. I jerked my gaze down to the table in front of me and then to Ben and Andi. Ben looked amused. Andi looked annoyed.

I took a deep breath and looked back up at Mina. “Glad you could make it to our party. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid the pizza is cold. Would you like some?”

She smiled, “No thanks, I already ate. I’m sorry it took so long to come down, but I had to do that credit and background check on you, Vic. I’m glad to say you passed.”

I had written a check for two months rent before I came down. I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it over. “Here’s a check for fifteen hundred dollars. I made it out to you. I hope that’s okay?”