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When I was sure I hadn’t skipped anything, I stepped in, locked the door, and moved on to the next step. The last step. Because everything else was done. All the pieces were in play. It was all ready to go, the whole brilliant scheme, except for one thing:
Me.
I stripped, put my clothes in a garbage bag, and washed as completely as I could in the rusty little sink. I dried off and shaved in the cracked plastic mirror hanging above the sink on a nail. Then I scrubbed the sink and put the soap, towel, razor, everything into the same garbage bag and moved over to the big mirror.
I sat in the chair to put on the suit and the black wingtips that went with it. But first I reached into the briefcase and pushed PLAY on my mp3 player. Tupac, “All Eyez on Me.” Then I opened the little suitcase, turned to the mirror, and went to work on Me.
Every professional has rituals that go with going to work. I know; I’ve done a lot of different jobs, at least for a while. You know, as a cover for doing my real job. A pro does the same meaningless things each time, things that really don’t make sense or have anything to do with their job. They probably wouldn’t admit it, but they do it for luck. Because they can’t believe the job will come off if they don’t. So they do a few small superstitious things because they did it last time, and the time before. I do, too.
The cleaning isn’t part of it. That’s just being careful. If I leave any clue behind, no matter how tiny, I’m leaving a way for somebody to get lucky and figure out who I am. It’s after I’ve cleaned up that the rituals start.
The music is first. The same playlist every time. If the prep takes longer, the playlist repeats.
When I’ve got the music going, I move to step two: the mirror. For a few minutes I just look at my face and listen to Tupac. When I have a perfect picture of who I am, I start to become somebody else.
I’d already changed who I was a half dozen times setting this up. This time was for real. This time, it would have to be better, and it would have to last for a while. There was no way to know how long, so I had to make someone who would last. I had the tools. I’d done the research on this New Me, and I’d done the creative part, too. Filling in the blanks, like where I was from, my parents’ names, my high school, all that shit. And I’d gotten all the documents to prove it—driver’s license, passport, Social Security card, all of it. You might be surprised to learn how easy it is to get all that stuff. And if you’re willing to pay, you get documents so good that nobody could possibly know that’s not really you.
I’d done all that. Now it was time for the final step.
I can do makeup, prosthetics, all that. I’ve studied with the very best people I could find. There’s no point in learning from somebody who isn’t the best. And I didn’t mind paying top dollar for top talent. So I’m good at that kind of thing. But this time wasn’t about makeup. I was changing Me. Who Me actually is.
The costume was first. As the music changed to Iron Maiden, “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” I started to get dressed. “Riley” would not normally wear a suit. This new person did, and putting it on forced me to leave Riley behind and let the new identity take over and guide my speech and movements.
Any good actor will tell you that what you wear tells your audience a lot about who you are. It also tells you. With Monique’s help, I’d picked what I thought was the perfect suit. It was expensive, but not crazy-rich expensive. It was the best New Me could afford. I put it on slowly, watching how it hung on me. I moved my arms, my legs, my torso, and watched what happened when I did. I started to feel how somebody who wore this suit would move. It was different.
Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” began to play. I moved in time to that for a few minutes, watching myself in the crappy mirror. When I got how I moved now, I draped the jacket over the back of the chair and picked up my tie. It was a great expression of who I was now; flamboyant but beautiful silk, hand-painted in imitation of a Gustav Klimt. I knotted it in a loose Windsor that showed a casual nonchalance mixed with superb taste. When it was tied, I reached up with my thumb and forefinger and pushed it slightly crooked. Not a lot; just enough so most women would want to reach over and straighten it.
As I finished the tie, “Freddie Freeloader,” Miles Davis, started up. I sat in the chair and started on my hands.
Everybody’s hands tell a story. Even the way you clip the nails is different depending on where you come from, what you do, what you think of yourself. Are they clean or dirty? Chewed or manicured? Square cut or round? I trimmed my nails neat but short. From my makeup kit I got a small bottle of blue stain. I worked it into the heel of each hand. Then I scrubbed at it until it was just barely visible. It looked like what a draftsman’s hands might show after hours of leaning on a drawing or plan as he worked.
From the top tray of the little suitcase I pulled a signet ring. Nothing outrageous, a class ring from a pretty good prep school. Again—Monique’s suggestion. Her brother went there. I don’t think I would have thought of a class ring or known about this school. It’s not my world. It is hers, or it was before she moved into mine. I put the ring on the pinky of my left hand as Yo-Yo Ma came on, playing the Prelude to Bach Cello Suite #2 in D Minor.
I finished my hands in just another minute and stood up. I looked in the mirror for the first two suites. I studied New Me. One tiny flaw, no matter how small it seemed, and the entire job could be torpedoed. So I looked hard. Everything seemed perfect—but seemed was not enough. It had to be perfect. Two more minutes of hard inspection. If there was any kind of flaw in my appearance, I couldn’t see it. And if I couldn’t, the odds were very good that no one else would, either. People see what you tell them to see. I was sure they’d see what I wanted them to this time.
Okay. Time for the last ritual.
I sat in the chair, opened the briefcase, and took out two photographs. They looked like they had been printed by a computer, and they had been. They were securely stored on several flash drives and on a cloud account so I could always access them. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, took a couple of slow, deep breaths. Then I opened my eyes and looked down at the first picture. It showed a young boy, nine or ten years old, and a man in his thirties. They were playing catch in a well-kept yard. Behind them, down a hill, you could see green, rolling countryside.
Off to one side, just visible in the photo, was a large house. Victorian architecture, two stories, with a couple of cupolas and a front porch, with a strip of gingerbread trim running above it. A 1992 Cadillac Eldorado sat in the driveway.
The
music changed to Barbra Streisand singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I shuffled up the second picture. It showed a woman of around forty. Her face was careworn, and her hair was a bit wild, but she was smiling. I sat and looked at the picture until I could hear her voice again. “We are living the life,” she would say. And I would smile back and say, “We sure are.”
The music switched one last time: Alice Cooper, “Vengeance Is Mine.” I felt my breathing slow, and I kept all my focus on the picture.
The song ended. The sudden silence was a little bit of a shock, like waking up too quickly. I took a deep breath and stood up. One final scrub of the area, getting any tiny traces I might have left. Then I looked in the mirror one last time. You maybe couldn’t name anything specific, but the face was subtly different. The way I held my head, the movement of my eyes, all changed.
Riley Wolfe was gone.
I smiled. It was a good smile: worldly, amused, guardedly friendly, and not at all like Riley Wolfe. “Baa,” I said. I looked at the smiling reflection for a moment. Then I switched off the smile, spun away from the mirror, and headed out the door.
Showtime.
CHAPTER
9
