The Moth (34 page)

TRISTAN JIMERSON

W
hen I first transferred to a small art school and moved to Minneapolis, everything in my life went horribly wrong. My girlfriend wrecked my car. Said girlfriend became an ex-girlfriend. And the house I was living in was condemned. I was working for minimum wage at a comic book store during the day and going to my night classes at art school.

It was not a high point in my life. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of spring break, just one week back home with my parents and friends and away from this life. I had been saving for six months for this trip, because when you make minimum wage, saving for anything takes a really long time.

I finished my last final at school, and I went home and celebrated my new bachelorhood by ordering a Domino’s Pizza, eating it off napkins, and playing video games all night. Two days later I was packed, and I was ready to go home. All I had to do was drop my last paycheck off at the bank.

I went into the bank, and I handed the teller my check. I got
the receipt, and I flipped it over, and on the back it said my account balance was negative $536.

And I felt all the life just drain out of me, because I just couldn’t catch a break.

And so I asked to see my balance statement, and there they were: two $600 Western Union money transfers, a bunch of random delivery orders, and a $400 charge to a website called InmateCanteen.com. I sat down with the banker, and she saw that the charges were false and went about trying to reverse them.

While she was doing that, I went and sat in the lobby, and I started thinking about how unfair identity theft is, because when somebody steals your identity, they only take the good parts. You know? They don’t take the rattrap apartment and the depression and the shitty job.

No. They just take the one thing that I had been looking forward to for the past six months. Because while I’m mulling this over, the banker comes back and she tells me that the bank is gonna give me all my money back, but it’s gonna take about a week of processing.

So I go home, and I can’t get it out of my head. Because the bank wasn’t gonna do anything about this, and the police weren’t gonna do anything about this, and so these people who rob you, they don’t get caught. Nobody cares enough.

But this identity theft was different, because this person had messed with the most dangerous type of person that exists, which is someone with limited options and a lot of free time.

And so I decided to start my own investigation. I took my bank records, and I started going through them, and I called Western Union, and they were no help. And I went to Inmate Canteen.com, and I called the support number, but it was disconnected.

So all I had were these delivery charges, and I noticed something, which was that they were local. And then it hit me: The last charge that I had made on my own account was the last night of my finals—the night that I ordered that Domino’s Pizza. I realized that when I read my credit card number over the phone, the woman at Domino’s must’ve written it down and used it again.

The woman at Domino’s robbed me.

This was more upsetting, because this was someone who could live six blocks from me, who spoke to me on the phone and heard my voice. Someone who I trusted. I mean, I trusted Domino’s! Out of all the people or things in my life that could betray me, Domino’s was not on the list. And because I’d spent years as a delivery driver, this broke the code of ethics. So this wasn’t just a theft; this felt personal.

And so I had a suspect, and the next day I marched into that Domino’s, and I demanded to know who was working the night my identity was stolen.

The manager on duty passed me to his manager, who passed me to
his
manager, and eventually they told me to come back later, and they would have the names for me. So I continued my investigation, and I went to a place called the Green Mill, which was a restaurant where some of the false delivery charges had taken place.

The manager there was really helpful because there was nothing else to do, and he gave me a week’s worth of delivery tickets, and I started digging through them looking for a match. After about thirty minutes, the phone rang, and he picked it up and started taking down an order, and then he picks up a piece of paper and starts waving it back and forth, and I come over, and on the paper is a credit card number, and it’s
my
credit card number.

The person who stole my credit card is on the other end of that phone! And the manager is looking at me like,
Well, what do we do now?
And I look him straight in the eyes, and I say, “Give me a topper, a hat, and I will take that delivery.”

And he looks at me, and he says, “And that will get me fired.” And I say, “Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best idea. Tell them that your driver is out sick and that it’s pickup only,” and so he does, and he hangs up, and he looks at me, and he says, “They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

So I grab a newspaper, and I sit down for my very first stakeout.

An agonizing seventeen minutes later, a car pulls in, and a woman gets out and comes inside and asks for her pickup order. I start writing down every detail. The fact that it’s a white lifted Chevy Tahoe, the license plate number, what she’s wearing, and what she looks like. Meanwhile, she’s having a conversation with the manager, and he’s saying that the card was declined, and he needs to run it again. She says she doesn’t have it on her, it’s in her car, and she leaves the restaurant and doesn’t come back.

I ask the manager to do me one more favor: I ask him to *69 the number she called from, and I add that cell phone number to my growing list of evidence.

A couple hours later I received a call from a man who introduced himself as the head of Domino’s security. He was calling to apologize, to thank me for my help in the investigation, and to let me know that once I filed a police report, Domino’s had my back. He had also pulled the hours I wanted and had them waiting at the original Domino’s shop.

So I went back and picked ’em up, and I started asking questions there. I asked if anyone there drove a white lifted Chevy Tahoe. The daytime driver said that a girl who worked the
night shift did, a girl who matched the description of the person who came into the Green Mill, who was also working the night that my identity was stolen.

I took the cell phone number and gave it to the manager, because I didn’t want to call it myself and arouse suspicion. So he called it, and she answered and confirmed her identity, condemning herself.

Next I asked to see her application, because those places always keep those things on file. And at first the manager was wary of the legal things with that. But once I assured him that this was for the police report, he relented.

And so after I’ve copied down this information, now I have her first, middle, and last name, her date of birth, her Social Security number, her driver’s license number. I know her car make and model and the license plate number. I know where and when she works, where she lives, her previous job references, and her e-mail address.

And so I go home, and I’m in a frenzy. I can’t stop. I Google her e-mail address, and when you do that, you can pull up all of the accounts that have been created with that email address. And so I found her eBay account, her Flickr account, and her MySpace. Her MySpace was set to public, and I could see her pictures and her comments and her blogs, and I realized that I was going crazy.

But the thing about going crazy is you can’t stop. And so I open one of her blogs called “50 Things About Me,” and the very first question is “What is my favorite food?” and she wrote “pizza.” And by the time I’m at the end of this list, I realize that I know more about this woman, probably, than most of her coworkers and friends, and that this is a real person that I would be sending to jail.

But she broke the code, and so I call the cops. And the next day they send out a police officer to take my report, and the fraud report starts out normal, it’s just “How much money was stolen and when was it stolen, and is the bank reimbursing you?”

And then the last question, almost as an afterthought, was “Do you have any additional information which might benefit the case?”

And I said, “Why, yes I do.”

And I start listing things. And the confusion on the officer’s face turns to laughter once she hears the full story, and she says, “Well, you’ve done my job for me.” And I agree.

Later on that day I receive a call from the detective now working this case. He says that he cross-checked all my information with D.O.T. records and the criminal database, and that it all checks out, and that by the end of the day there will be a warrant out for this woman’s arrest.

I tell him that she’s going to work tomorrow at Domino’s at five. And after a pause, he says that he’ll have a squad car waiting for her.

Then I ask the detective if I can be there. Because I’ve done a lotta work on this, and I kinda want to see the look on her face—that same look of shock and horror that I had when I was standing in that bank and I flipped that receipt over and saw everything I’d saved, gone.

He said that was impossible. But he did say that if I happened to be walking across the street at around five o’clock, no one would probably be the wiser.

So I gotta go undercover one last time, and I found myself standing across the street from that Domino’s at five o’clock, squad car parked in back and two officers inside, and I saw that
white lifted Chevy Tahoe come around the corner and park, and her get out, and go through the front door. And I could see her back arch up as she froze and saw the officers, because she knew she was caught.

Then they handcuffed her and put her in the back of the squad car, and they drove away. Case closed.

But then a couple hours later I received one of the most surreal phone calls I’ve ever gotten in my entire life. The man on the other end of the line introduced himself as the CEO of Domino’s. He was calling to personally apologize, thank me for my help in the investigation, and, I assume, avoid a giant lawsuit. He asked me how much money was stolen and told me that Domino’s would reimburse me for everything. And I told him that the bank was already doing that, and it wasn’t about the money.

And so he asked me what I wanted. And up until this point, I hadn’t really thought about it, but what do you say? I mean, free pizza for life? A pizza named after me? No, I’d lost my taste for pizza at this point.

I told him I didn’t want this to happen to anyone else, that I wanted him to pursue this to the furthest extent of the law, and that every new Domino’s employee that got hired would hear this story: that if you fuck with credit card information of customers, you will go to jail.

He said he could do that. And later I received two letters in the mail. The first was a letter that said the woman had pleaded guilty to all charges and would be serving a short prison sentence. The second was a personal thank-you letter from the CEO of Domino’s, a check for the exact amount of money stolen, and 500 Domino’s bucks. And I realized that I actually did
get everything back that was stolen. The money, yes. But for that week, I wasn’t the pathetic, depressed art student. No, for that week, I was Tristan Jimerson, private eye. The gumshoe that knows that revenge, like delivery pizza, is best served cold.

Tristan Jimerson
is a storyteller, which is a nice way of saying that he doesn’t have a real job. He has stumbled through life working as a bartender, copywriter, radio DJ, local TV news editor, delivery driver, and a handful of other odd jobs. He is currently opening a restaurant of his own. Tristan grew up on the rolling plains of rural Iowa, and after deciding that it wasn’t cold enough, moved to Minnesota.

AIMEE MULLINS

S
o two weeks ago I was a bridesmaid, and the reception was actually here at the New York Public Library, and I will never forget this wedding. Yes, it was very beautiful. But more importantly, I survived the slick marble floors that are all over this building. Tile and marble floors are public enemy number one to a stiletto-loving girl like me. And I had five-inch heels on that night.

Most people learn to walk in very high heels. They bend their ankle so that the ball of the foot touches the ground first; you have more stability.

I don’t have ankles, so I hit each step on the stiletto, which makes the possibility of the banana peel wipeout very likely. But given the choice between practicality and theatricality, I say, “Go big or go home, man. Go down in flames if you’re gonna go.”

I guess I’m a bit of a daredevil. I think that the nurses at DuPont Institute would agree. I spent a lot of time there as a child. Doctors amputated both of my legs below the knee when I was an infant, and then when I was five, I had a major surgery
to correct the wonky direction in which my tibia was growing. So I had two metal pins to hold that—full plaster casts on both legs. I had to use a wheelchair because I couldn’t wear prosthetics.

One of the best things about getting out of the hospital is the anticipation of the day you return to school—I had missed so much class, I just couldn’t wait to get back and see all my friends. But my teacher had a different idea about that. She tried to prevent me from returning to class, because she said that in the condition I was in, I was “inappropriate,” and that I would be a distraction to the other students (which of course I was, but not because of the casts and the wheelchair).

Clearly she needed to make my difference invisible because she wanted to control her environment and make it fit into her idea of what “normal” looked like.

And it would’ve been a lot easier for me to fit into what “normal” looked like. I know I wanted that back then. But instead I had these wooden legs with a rubber foot that the toes broke off of, and they were held on with a big bolt that rusted out because I swam in the wooden legs.

You’re not supposed to swim in the wooden legs, because, you know, the wood rots out.

So there I was in second grade music class, doing the twist, and mid-twist I hear this [
makes loud cracking sound
]. And I’m on the floor, and the lower half of my left leg is in splinters across the room. The teacher faints on the piano, and the kids are screaming. And all I’m thinking is,
My parents are gonna kill me. I broke my leg!