Write me a Letter

men at every train station, airport, and bus station in the western world, is he. How could he, where would he get the manpower from. The cops just might be able to, but even if he could get them to look, you’re not going to look like you anymore, are you, you’re going to have contact lenses, maybe a sporty little mustache, and your hair another color. What Fats’ll do is think like this: sooner or later you’ll show up back in the States, if you aren’t still there, because your money won’t last forever and you’ll get tired of Rio or wherever you are and want to go home. So he’ll hire some bright kid in a year or two and pay him a couple of grand and that kid will plug his computer into every credit card system, every air-line booking system, maybe every bank, looking for traces of one William Something Gince, which isn’t that common a name, by the way.”
    ”William V Gince,” Will said. ” V for Vincent.”
    ”Perfect,” I said. ”So that’s why you need a new name, mon ami. And a new name starts with a new birth certificate. A name alone’s no good, you can’t get a driver’s license, open a bank account, sign up for Blue Cross, get Social Security, fly abroad, and a million others, without ID. I happen to know this guy, a friend of a friend, who could provide you with all the ID you’d ever want or need, including a valid passport. The whole package, including credit cards and army discharge papers, would set you back something like two or three grand, depending. My way costs you five Canadian bucks.”
    ”Settled,” said Will, giving my hand a fervent shake. ”Go up to the Gazette office,” I said. ”They got a back issues room that’s open to the public, I checked. Go through the recent obituaries. And the ‘In Memoriam’ announcements—the problem with those is they don’t usually give you a place of birth, which is what you’re going to need, along with the names of both parents, to apply for a new certificate. Find someone roughly your own age who died recently. You might even be lucky enough to find someone with the same first or middle name as yours, to make it easier for you and close friends like Fran. You write the funeral home that’s mentioned in the obit. You say you think the deceased might be an old army buddy or school pal of yours and would like to send the family your condolences, but as you don’t want to impose by making a mistake, would the funeral home please send you in the enclosed stamped envelope the date and place of the deceased’s birth. Once you have that, you drop a line to the address I gave you earlier, enclosing the necessary pittance, and there you are, in business, with your very own, legitimate birth certificate. Canadian, but legitimate.”
    ”I like it,” Will said, leaning forward eagerly.
    ”I don’t,” the twerp, who had been listening carefully, said.
    ”Me neither,” I said. ”Why don’t you?”
    ”So he tries to get a credit card in his new name,” she said, ”and they see he’s already got one with a big D for dead under where it says ‘withdrawn for what reason?’ How does he apply for a driver’s license if he doesn’t know whether or not he’s already got one? Likewise a passport? Likewise God knows what else?”
    ”Good girl!” I said warmly, patting her curls. She scowled at me. Willing Boy grinned, took out his foot-long comb, and began running it lovingly through his blond locks. In the following half-minute or so I told Will how to obtain a birth certificate without the built-in defects of the other. What you do is apply in the name of some child who unfortunately died before the age of five, say, the theory here being that although the old obituary will not mention, or may not mention, where the child was born, just when, it is surely odds on that, at such a young age, the birth occurred in the same county where the child died. Anyway, Will now had a choice—he could nip south of the border and deal with the appropriate county or state officialdom, after having perused back issues of a local rag there, or he could go fast, Canadian, cheap, and no traveling required, but end up with a limited product. I love choices, as long as it’s others who have to make them.
    ”Either way,” I said. ”Don’t wait too long. I’ll try to put Fats off for a while but for all I know he’s got someone else on your trail right now, we could even have been followed here. We weren’t,” I said quickly, before