Stolen (4 page)

T
he UniSol Health phone tree might have been the most annoying of them all. That was probably because it felt like I’d listened to the same computerized female voice a thousand times. She sounded less pleasant to me than Freddy Krueger’s nails traveling down an endless chalkboard.

I pressed five to speak with a customer service representative—same as I’d done the last twenty-three times. Odds were good I’d get a hit eventually. Going by the numbers on the UniSol Web site, the company insured one out of every four Americans.

Ruby was out with friends from school, enjoying a little get-together, which I helped to arrange. I needed privacy to make my calls, and Ruby rarely ventured farther than our front door. The desire to socialize was just one of many things Verbilifide had extinguished, along with her appetite, ability to sleep, and a host of other activities we used to take for granted.

Ruby still had her hair—this wasn’t chemo—but she looked noticeably thinner to the four girls and one guy who came over to take her out to lunch and a movie. Her friend Elisa, whose olive skin and dark hair made Ruby’s sickly pallor all the more pronounced, told my wife she looked great, while her eyes betrayed the lie.

Ruby paused briefly at our apartment’s threshold, giving me the same look Ginger uses whenever she wants to sleep in our bed. I gave Ruby a long hug, whispered in her ear, “You’ll be fine. It’s just for a little while.” I actually checked the time and made a mental note of the hour. My plan already had enough pitfalls, and I sure didn’t want Ruby coming home to the scene of the crime while the crime was taking place.

Social engineering exploits a weakness in one of humanity’s greatest strengths: our inherent desire and ability to trust. I don’t particularly enjoy lying to people, and what I was doing filled me with remorse. At least my intentions were noble, so I could justify my actions. That dollop of justification was all I needed to take those first awkward steps across the line of the law. I was a criminal as soon as I made my first call, and I did so thinking,
I’m doing this for Ruby
.

I pressed buttons so that my call would be routed to a living, breathing human being.

“Thank you for calling UniSol Health. How may I provide you with exceptional customer service?”

I wanted to say to the chipper-sounding UniSol rep, “Could you just give me the account number of a customer whose insurance will cover the full cost of Verbilifide?” But Social engineering requires a bit more subtlety, so instead I lied and said, “My name is Greg Johnson, and I’m calling to check on a prescription status.”

According to my game logs, Greg Johnson is an avid player of
One World
. If he realized that he’d spent well over two hundred hours chasing away virtual zombies while building a town out of make-believe bricks, he might opt for fewer CPU cycles and more time spent with real people. But I’m not here to judge Greg. I’m trying to use him. Greg represented the latest call I made pretending to be someone I’m not. He was next on my list of potential candidates who might have UniSol health insurance that would save my wife. According to the birth date Greg entered when he registered for my game, he’ll turn thirty-three this October. Assuming he didn’t enter bogus data, it’s close enough to my age. Good enough for my purposes.

My phone-spoofing program made the rep think Greg—aka me—was calling her from a Wisconsin area code. I had checked my log, confirming that I hadn’t made any phone calls from Wisconsin yet. Heck, I’d never even been to Wisconsin. Go, Badgers!

“I’d be happy to help you with your prescription status. I just need your account number to get us started.”

I groaned into the phone, feigning embarrassment at my own made-up forgetfulness.

“That’s the problem,” I said with another sigh. “I’m traveling on business, and I left that card at home. I’ve tried my wife—both the house phone and the cell. Even texted her. She’s not getting back to me. But that’s just like her. If she’s not one place, she’s another.”

I didn’t know what I meant by that last bit, “If she’s not one place, she’s another.” However, the point wasn’t to make a lot of sense. The point was to be chatty. Seem friendly. The guard comes down as soon as a rep thinks I’m on her side. I’m not calling to yell or harass. I’m just a regular guy with regular problems, thank you very much. I learned all this by Googling
social engineering.
The Internet is like a distance learning crime school.

“Well, that’s not a problem, Mr. Johnson,” the rep said. “I can look it up for you. What’s your home address?”

I gave her the address Greg gave me when he registered for my game.

Fingers went tapping. A moment passed. It got real quiet when the rep became confused. Eventually, she came back on the phone and said, “I’m sorry, but we don’t seem to have a customer by that name.”

“Oh, my mistake,” I said, sounding as chipper as she. “I must have the wrong provider. Thanks for your time.”

I hung up before the rep could say good-bye. Time was running short. Ruby would be coming home, and I needed to make more calls. The next five calls yielded the same results as my attempt at being Greg Johnson. I spoofed numbers from Delaware, New Jersey, two from California, and one from Anchorage, because the Michelle Shocked song of the same name came up in my iTunes shuffle. Ruby kept such an eclectic collection of music.

I kept on calling. I got closer on my twenty-fourth call to UniSol Health. William Spader, thanks and praises, was an actual UniSol customer. Unfortunately, Spader wasn’t the ideal customer.

“Could you tell me if this policy covers my wife?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” the representative said after much finger tapping. “But according to our records, you’re not married.”

“Oh well,” I said. “Sorry about that. Thanks for your time.”

I picked the next name from my list. Spoofing a Massachusetts exchange, I called again. This time, I was Elliot Uretsky. I was traveling on business and needed to look up my prescription coverage. Dang it, but go figure—I left my cards at home. So naturally, I provided my home address upon request. I verified Elliot’s mother’s maiden name, Askovitch, which was one of the security questions I stored in my database—oops, not encrypted—for password retrieval purposes. It was also one of the security questions UniSol asked before they’d give me any of Uretsky’s account information. I found out that my policy (I mean Elliot’s) covered my wife (I mean his). The rep gave me the account numbers, which I jotted down in a spiral-bound notebook.

And I picked up an interesting tidbit. It seemed that Elliot last filed a claim four months ago. He was also behind on making his payments. In my mind, that was a plus. To pull off this scam—lifesaving scam, that is—I intended to change his mailing address with UniSol so that he wouldn’t be receiving any of Ruby’s bills in the mail. Given that Uretsky didn’t seem very interested in keeping his health insurance coverage in good standing, I suspected he was also a guy who wouldn’t be looking for his bills.

Still, I decided to keep fishing, made ten more calls, got lucky twice, two names that would fulfill my purposes: Chuck Trent and Racine Romaguera. Both were in the UniSol network; both were married; both spouses were covered by hubby’s insurance policy. Trent was the healthiest of the lot—he hadn’t had any claims filed in the last nine months. Romaguera beat Uretsky by some, as he’d last seen a doctor six months ago.

I decided to learn a bit more about these men before I made my selection. I checked them out first on Facebook. I couldn’t tell what Uretsky looked like from his profile pic, unless Uretsky and Mario from
Super Mario Bros.
were related by blood. That was because the picture Uretsky used for his Facebook profile was a screen grab from the video game.

Romaguera was a bald, good-looking, outdoorsy type.

Trent’s picture showed him sunbathing on a towel. Clearly, this was a guy who thought chest hair and aviator glasses made him sexy. Their profiles were otherwise set to private, so I couldn’t glean much useful data.

LinkedIn provided me with some more basic information. All three kept profiles on the world’s largest professional network. Trent was in sales, which sort of explained his Facebook profile picture. Nothing says, “Trust me,” quite like a half-naked, oiled-up body. Romaguera was employed by Fidelity. Uretsky was a contract computer programmer with a passion for start-up companies. Maybe he was too busy developing software to realize that he’d fallen behind on his health insurance premiums. On the downside, Uretsky lived in Malden, and I wasn’t too keen on him residing so close to my home.

But the way I saw it, Uretsky was the least likely to become suspicious. When the bills stopped coming, he wasn’t going to notice. That was my thinking.

I had found my helper.

R
uby had no idea where I was taking her. It was a sunny May afternoon, the kind of day where the warm breeze carries a sense of newness, a signal of spring. It seemed an appropriate day to kick off our new life. New beginnings—that’s what this was all about. Starting today, we were no longer going to live as John Bodine and Ruby Dawes. Ruby didn’t know it yet, but we were about to become Elliot and Tanya Uretsky.

Phase two of my plan went off without a hitch. Forged health insurance cards were much easier to make than credit cards, which require an image that goes on the card itself. Not to mention credit cards usually have embossed numbers and those funky holograms. I suppose I could have made a fake credit card, but I doubted it would have come with a $270,000 credit limit. For my purposes, the UniSol health insurance card I made was just as good as plastic. Even better.

Ruby walked, hands stuffed into the pockets of her well-worn gray hooded sweatshirt, moving at a brisk pace, though not so quick as to pass by her surroundings unaware. If anything, she seemed intent on taking everything in. Ruby paused as we strolled past the Coolidge Corner Theatre, a former church building converted into a classic Art Deco movie house.

“I want to go to the movies,” Ruby said, reading the marquee.

“After,” I said.

“After what? Where are you taking me, John?”

“I can’t tell you. I have to show you.”

Ruby sighed aloud and looked away.

“I’m not in the mood for surprises,” I heard her mutter under her breath.

A young mother, with two young children in tow, squeezed past us on the crowded sidewalk of one of Brookline’s more bustling neighborhoods. I could see Ruby take in every detail of the woman and her children as a lump found its way into my throat. I should be a father and Ruby a mother. Judging by Ruby’s pained expression, I guessed she was thinking the same. I’m sure the mother passed by without giving us a second thought. To her, we were just a young couple out for a stroll on a sunny afternoon. To us, though, this mother offered a window into an experience we both longed to have.

We put off having children until my depression eased. Then it was my business that had to get off the ground. Soon after, we had Ruby’s tuition to pay. It never seemed like the right time to have kids; it was something we’d put off until some future tomorrow. How could we have known that tomorrow might never come?

We walked past a bakery that smelled of cinnamon and freshly kneaded dough. With a glance, no discussion needed, I grabbed Ruby’s hand and led her inside. I figured her favorite muffin, banana chocolate chip, would help her feel a little less ticked off at me. She ordered a vanilla bean Frappuccino with whipped cream. When I gave a look—Ruby never ordered such decadent drinks—her response, pre-slurp, was a straightforward, “To hell with eating healthy.”

We finished our treats and then wandered another block or two, past more mothers and fathers with more kids in tow. The closer we got to our destination, the more nervous I became. It felt like the familiar ingredients of a particularly dangerous mountain climb—one part exhilaration, one part trepidation, and two parts “Holy crap.”

There’s no other way,
I kept saying to myself.
There’s no other way.

I stopped at a four-story brownstone on Harvard Avenue. The Coolidge Corner neighborhood offered up a veritable melting pot of residents—all ages, all races, all in varying shapes and sizes. The college student population here seemed equal in proportion to the number of young professionals who called this somewhat posh city neighborhood home. Ruby looked around, didn’t see anything but apartment buildings, and then looked around some more. She couldn’t figure out why I had stopped walking.

“Where are we going?” she asked, perplexed.

“Here,” I said, pointing to the peeling decal numbers, 457, on display in the arch window above a single glass door.

“What’s here?”

I fished out a key from my front pants pocket. It was shiny brass because it was so new. The Realtor had given it to me the day before, after I signed the lease. Warily, Ruby followed me up the concrete front porch steps, still glancing around, still confused. The key felt stiff in the lock and took some twisting and pulling before I finally got the tumblers engaged. Ruby walked right past the metal bank of mailboxes, including the one that I had already labeled with the name Uretsky.

“What’s going on, John? I really don’t like surprises. I’ve had enough surprises lately.”

I kissed Ruby’s forehead, letting my lips linger an extra few moments to make certain my love for her sank in.

“Just give it a second, okay? I’ll explain everything soon enough.”

I walked ahead of Ruby, but imagined she was looking all around as we trotted up the tiled stairs in the grimy stairwell that led to the fourth-floor apartment, number twelve, the last unit in the building. Her curiosity was palpable. I felt bad for not having been more forthcoming. When I devised this plan, it seemed like a good idea. Now I worried the shock would keep Ruby from cooperating, and this endeavor would be a no-go without her.

I worked the apartment key into the lock and kept my back to Ruby so she wouldn’t see my trembling hand. I reminded myself to breathe. Just relax. Like on a climbing expedition, I needed to cross this threshold feeling complete and total confidence that I’d achieve my objective. But this time, it wasn’t just my life I was focused on saving.

I pushed open the door and stepped into a fully furnished apartment. Ruby followed close behind.

“Whose place is this?” she asked, taking a tentative step inside.

“Ours,” I said.

Ruby put her hands on her hips. She pivoted her feet on the coated hardwood floor. From where she stood, Ruby could see into the living room, with its futon couch, two armchairs, bookshelf, a few plants, and small TV on a small TV stand. Yes, we had cable. I’d splurged. Ruby could also see the kitchen, a simple rectangular room with countertop seating. The bedroom door to her right was closed.

Because I wanted a short-term lease, it was simpler to rent a fully furnished apartment. Ruby didn’t know it yet, but I’d already rented our apartment, fully furnished with our furniture, to a professor couple from a university in Barcelona, Spain, who were coming to the States for a six-month research sabbatical. Six months was a perfect length of time, since it equaled Ruby’s schedule for Verbilifide treatments.

“Ours? What are you talking about?” Ruby said, her voice rising in pitch. “We have a home. I don’t want to move.”

“Ruby, I did something, something I probably shouldn’t have done, but I did it, anyway. Come into the living room and sit down. I need to tell you everything.”