Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) (9 page)

At a certain point, I realized the goal had changed, and now the objective was to just get through it with as much dignity as I could preserve. It became a matter of endurance.

When it was finally over and I was pulling myself back together, he looked down at his hand and wanted to know, “You menstruate?”

As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough, he wanted to talk about my cycle. I kept shifting my clothes around and was about to walk off when he pulled me into his lap to put his hand under my skirt again, between my legs, rummaging around to confirm the blood was mine. He asked a second time, “You menstruate?”

I was struggling to get up, fighting to get his hands off me, but he held me in his lap and asked again.

I admitted, “No.”

“You virgin?”

“Not after that.”

My back was against his chest and I felt him take it like a punch, a great winding that left his lungs empty and made him gasp. Then he was kind, trying to hug me, console me, whispering something that sounded like regret, and I was freaking out, twisting and recoiling for the floor, preferring the violence to whatever this was, strangling a sound close to a scream, just wanting to get away.

On the floor now, I was kneeling with his hand too tight on my shoulder, hurting me so I wouldn’t go any further, but his words were pleading; and I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to see or have it confirmed that he might be crying.

I said, “Okay, everybody calm down. We’re all adults,” and then laughed at my joke. “This is a simple matter. Just go get me a washcloth. A wet towel. Whatever. Bring me something from the bathroom.”

And as soon as he was in the hall, I was at the door, and when the water started to run, I was slipping quietly out to open the garage.

The door to the Audi slammed too loud in the small space and the smell of Givenchy was overpowering to the point of disturbing. I fought a moment of panic not to get back out and slam the car door a second time. But getting caught again, embraced again, that would be so much worse. I turned the keyless ignition, and the engine was louder still, unnerving me further. Then reverse was a grinding nightmare and the tires squealed when the gas and clutch didn’t match going into first, but I was in the street, finding second, then third, speeding off down the road to reach a hundred, finally able to relax, even smile again, thinking this stolen car was pretty damn thrilling, and also damn pretty. It was nearly a shame I was going to have to destroy it.

Until we conclude with Dallas, my every excuse is going to be a singular: Fifteen.

I was fifteen and had no freaking idea what was going on. I was fifteen and had not yet developed a clear sense of myself or others or what was permissible, and even when I knew something wasn’t acceptable, I had no idea how to assert my authority because I was fifteen.

As we continue from this point, you might find yourself clamping your hands to your head and exclaiming, “
What the fuck
? Why did you think
that
was an appropriate reaction?”

And my answer will be, “Fifteen.”

You will be expecting some justification for my perceived indifference, perhaps asking, “Why the hell didn’t you go to the police?”

But my answer will still be, “Fifteen.”

We should come to the understanding now that things will move along at a better pace if you just accept my answer is always going to be “Fifteen,” and then I won’t have to stop and explain that my every ridiculous action was because I was an inexperienced fifteen-year-old sociopath who had never had any depth of emotion.

You might insist I explain, “But why would you ever allow him back in your presence again?”

But it’s still going to be, “Fifteen.”

“You kept speaking to him. What the hell was with that?”

“Fifteen.”

“Why did you not call out for help?”

“Fifteen.”

“And why? Why after all
that
did you then decide to threaten him?”

“Fifteen.”

“Were you fucking crazy?”

“A little, but I was also fifteen.”

There’s a trick to utterly destroying a car without hurting yourself. I discovered it by accident trying to smash the Audi’s headlights into the corner of a brick grocery store. You can rather easily tear away all the mirrors and bumpers and doors, and really just about everything that makes a car attractive, by hooking them on the corner of a sturdy building and then staying on the gas until you rip it screeching off. And those big metal dumpsters are pretty hilarious, too. Donut into those a few times and you can do amazing things to the fenders. Vacillating between the two procedures will quickly turn a top dollar car into such a ravaged and shapeless heap of indistinguishable parts that even the most seasoned insurance adjuster will flinch to see it.

The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how to completely tear off the hood, but as it was, I figured my work stood for itself. Before the remaining dented fenders prevented the tires from spinning, I limped it three houses down from Tricia’s, wiped it of fingerprints, and left it on the street for Sergiu to find.

I spent the next day hiding in the library, and by the time Rick picked me up for dinner, the Audi was gone.

There had been an interesting new development in my case that Rick wanted to discuss. He had been investigating ways to obtain a green card for me so I could work, but first I would need a residence visa. As it stood, I was not legally allowed to remain in the United States but Immigration didn’t know where to deport me either. Lest they be forced to take me into custody, the INS agents advised Rick not to stir anything up.

But that was hardly a satisfactory solution to Rick, and as he alone had been left to resolve it, he went instead to the ACLU. The biggest problem was I could not give a date or location of birth, so I would never be able to produce a birth certificate. The only way the lawyers could foresee someone in my position legally working or living in the United States was for Congress to declare me a resident. The situation was so unique, the ACLU agreed to represent me. When the lower house next convened, the lawyers hoped a vote would decide my legal status. The move would set a precedent.

I kept a straight and serious face but I wanted to laugh. Sergiu’s ruse had nothing on mine.

“Only one small problem though,” Rick looked a little disturbed. “Your age is making it difficult. The ACLU said it would go more smoothly if you entered the country as a minor. I think you can pass for eighteen. Do you think that would be okay?”

Now I did laugh, but Rick couldn’t guess why. I said, “I have no issue with it.”

And though he was the one to suggest it, he didn’t appear entirely comfortable with the decision. He looked around the restaurant like someone could be watching and confessed, “With you now eighteen, this dinner might be a little inappropriate.”

~~~~~~

Sergiu was angry with himself for being asleep when Rick dropped me off. He’d had a busy day dealing with the mess I’d made of the Audi, and he’d meant to learn who this detective was that Tricia had mentioned.

He knew the name was Rick, but Tricia couldn’t remember if Rick was with the police or the sheriff’s department, much less what division he represented, and his last name had slipped her mind right after she’d heard it.

I’d noticed an expensive red BMW was parked around the corner and knew either Daniel was spending the night or Sergiu was waiting.

I was hoping it was Sergiu because I had an evil grin just for him.

He was laid back across the center of my bed, unaware until I dropped my head next to his and whispered, “Were your friends in New York terribly mad?”

It was stupid. I saw that immediately.

I didn’t have time to retreat before he had a hand full of my hair and had wound it in his fist. “Who is Rick?” He was rising up, pulling me from the opposite edge with him.

I didn’t want a scene that was going to draw in Tricia, but the pain gripping my hair and the discomfort of being twisted across the bed made me angry. I was growling low, “Let go. I mean it, let me go.”

He’d pulled himself to sit upright and had dragged me down beside him. I knew the back of his hand was turning bloody because my nails were in his flesh, but he didn’t react. He just took it and said, “You no hurt me,” then tightened his grip until I was wincing, “Okay, okay,” and stopped.

“Who is Rick?”

“No.”

“Who is Rick?” He wrenched at the coil he’d made of my hair until I put my nails back into his hand and went for his face with my other. He knocked the attack aside and pinned my wrist to the bed, asking, “Rick?”

He dealt with the blood I was clawing from his hand by tearing at my scalp until I conceded again, “Okay, okay, I’ve stopped.”

“Who is Rick?”

“No.”

He gave a disappointed shake of his head and then started pulling harder at my hair, waiting for me to gasp so he could ask again, “Rick?”

Before he made me scream, I gave in, admitting, “A detective. Stop, he’s a detective.”

“With the police?”

“Yes.”

“What is his name?”

“Rick.”

“What is his name?”

A vicious tug convinced me to lie further, “I don’t know his last name.”

“What is his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Name?”

“I swear, I don’t know. I can’t even remember yours.”

“What is your name?”

I looked at him worried, afraid of where this was going.

“You make much trouble for me. You tell me, what is your name?”

“It’s Constance. You know that.”

But he shook his head, unconvinced, and twisted his fist again.

Trying to pry his hand lose, I was pleading with sounds of pain until he relented enough for me to speak again. “You can rip my damn hair out, it’s still going to be Constance.”

“You tell Rick about me?”

“No.”

“Why you with Rick?”

“He’s trying to get me a green card.”

“How?”

Of all the things, I did not want to say how that was meant to happen. I was trying to think of an answer, but in the quiet pause, I was fairly certain he had wrenched my hair until my scalp was bleeding. I blurted out, “Congress is going to vote on it.”

“
What
?”

That sounded so absurd, I couldn’t say it twice. I said instead, “You have to let go.” The back of my head felt hot and damp, and whether it was from the sweat of his hand or my blood, I couldn’t tell, but he felt it too and changed his pressure to my wrist. I started turning with the stress, rambling, “Okay, stop, the ACLU, it’s complicated, ow, Jesus, no sorry, oh God, ow, I didn’t mean that, wait, it’s paperwork. I swear, it’s just a great deal of paperwork.”

“You no so good with truth,” he seemed saddened by it. “Now you tell me, what is your name?”

He was tossing aside the long fabric of my skirt, reaching between my legs again, and I was begging, “Oh please don’t,” regretting the hilarious question about his friends in New York, but already certain they’d never see that expensive red BMW either.

~~~~~~

And so it went. Once a week Sergiu would come for dinner, and when Tricia went to bed with Daniel, Sergiu would back step me into my room where failed coercion would lead to force. And then, when he fell asleep, I’d take his car and rip it apart on the corner of a building.

He was angry. His friends in New York were angrier. I was costing them all a lot of money.

I told him, “Then stop. Stop pinning me to the bed, and you’ll stop losing your cars.”

Three totaled luxury cars in, and he arrived to overpower me in an old Ford Pinto. I laughed at the attempt. Taking his set of keys, I drove the Pinto to his house and reversed a Jaguar out of the garage. While I was out, I had a spare key made to his townhouse then, missing one door and dragging the other, the body shredded down to dangling electronics, I forced the Jaguar back into the garage and parked the undamaged Pinto in front of Tricia’s house.

I was laughing to myself as I went to sleep on the couch. Imagining his smug victory when he saw the Pinto undamaged was amusing, but funnier still was what waited for him at home.

He was gone when I left for the library and I knew I wouldn’t see him for several days. He had plans to drive that night with Eugene, Daniel, and half a dozen new Eastern Bloc recruits to New York with a small fleet of cars, so when Rick called telling me there was something new we should discuss, I was unconcerned Sergiu would learn I had gone to dinner with him again.

My concern was with Rick. I had heard it in his voice on the phone, a tone that was on the stiff side of professional, and then when he arrived, he was tense. At the restaurant, he kept his distance.

Something had gone wrong, and I was at my most appealing to smooth it over. But I couldn’t keep the conversation frivolously pleasant all evening. The dinner plates were cleared and we were drinking wine when he told me my file had been sent back to Interpol. He’d been requested to do it when I abruptly changed from twenty-three to eighteen. As a matter of routine, the organization searched three years to either side of a person’s listed age, but now there was a five-year difference, they wanted to look again. And so did the FBI. And the same three-year allowance had been followed with the missing persons search through America’s fifty states.

Starting to feel sick with dread, I was waiting to hear Rick say I resembled a runaway from Tennessee. My nerves were about to shriek when it occurred to me that if the detective suspected such a thing, he would never have allowed me a drink.  But it was still out there, a pending disaster that could drop any day on his desk.

I wanted to ask, but didn’t dare, yet I had to know. I went at it sideways, “Running my details again in the United States will make no difference, but I will be interested to know what Interpol discovers.”

“We both know you’re not eighteen. Interpol won’t find anything, and I’m not searching missing persons in the US again.”

I nodded agreement, saying, “Of course,” rejoicing, thanking the fates that kept letting me slip through.

He started to summarize, “So, the ACLU has your file, and Interpol and the FBI are examining it again.”

“This is all quite excellent,” I was smiling gratitude, still trying to break through the business mood.

But his manner remained the same. He said, “I received a call from Ron Howard.”

I waited to hear who he was.

“He’s a well-known film director. He wants to make a movie about your life.”

It was the sort of thing that should have made me laugh, but it didn’t. Dinner theater with its pleasing dialogue came to an abrupt end. The curtain was down. The show over. Every light in the house extinguished.

I wanted to smile and be obliging, but I felt like the movie was going to be expected of me, and I instantly detested it. My single goal was to possess the lovely title of countess and valid identification. That Congress was going to vote to give it to me was delightfully funny, but something about a movie seemed crude, and more than anything, I did not want to be turned into a spectacle.

I wouldn’t say yes or no or anything to Rick about Ron Howard. I wanted no part of it, but I also didn’t want to openly refuse something Rick brought to me, especially when I thought he was in favor of it, so I just nodded that I had heard, then stared at him blankly when he pressed for a response.

“Should I tell him you’re interested?”

Silence.

“You understand what this means?”

I could hear a waitress scooping ice into a glass.

“They will probably offer you a lot of money.”

And more distant, pots were clanging in the kitchen.

“They could make you famous.”

I looked to see what the table next to us was doing.

For the first time in the evening, Rick laughed and relaxed. He had dealt with me long enough to recognize my vacuous expression and steadfast silence was a passive refusal to cooperate, and this time he was happy to receive it.

Early on he had come to feel responsible for me. He had acquired my file while I was still under observation at the first psychiatric hospital, and he had driven me out to the Falls when I was committed. He had an assumption about the scar on my wrist and the meaning of the word master, and he did not want my past used for entertainment.

Our reasons to be against it arrived at the same position from different paths, but they were both driven by a strong sense of decorum.

He said, “I’ll take care of it,” and I turned the lights back on.

~~~~~~

I was probably only asleep for thirty minutes when I woke up with the realization that someone was sitting beside me on the bed. I could smell him. For explanation, I asked, “Sergiu?”

“You no say my name. Why? You know my name, but you no say Marco. You say Sergiu.”

“I thought you were going to New York.”