Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [35]
But none of that crap is really any good. The proper way (and the way I fixed up my computer-junkie friend) is simply to find someone who died soon after birth with an age and race similar to the person you want to fix up. Then you apply for a duplicate birth certificate in that person’s name, which becomes your name when it’s issued. This perfectly legitimate piece of paper opens the door to all the rest—driver’s license, social security card, you name it. And that paper is perfectly good. To get a passport, for example, all they want is a birth certificate, which you can get certified at the Health Department for a couple of bucks, and a driver’s license or something similar.
The finishing touch is to hire some local lawyer and tell him you want to change your name for professional reasons, like you want to be an actor or something equally useful. Then you put an ad in the paper announcing to the world, including your creditors, that you want to change your name. Most dead people don’t have too many creditors, especially those who have been in such a state for a couple of decades or so. When nobody comes forward to object to the change of name, the court will give you a certified order so you can change your name legally on all the other documents. This adds another layer of smog to what was phony to begin with, and it’s more than enough to keep a step ahead. The whole package costs less than $500 from start to finish. It’s a bargain—you’d pay more than twice that just for a phony passport.
The next thing you do is run up some credit accounts. It doesn’t take much—most of the charge card companies will issue one of their pieces of magic plastic to someone on welfare. Then you pay the bills, not exactly on time but close enough. When a cop stops you, there’s nothing like the American Express Gold to make him think you’re a solid citizen, especially if you’re outside New York.
People used to use post office boxes as a mail drop, but that’s out of fashion now. Any process server can get the Post Office to disclose the home address of anyone who took out a box if he says he has no other way to serve legal papers. Anyway, all anyone has to do is watch who comes to the box and follow them home. I work mine a bit differently. The return address I put on any correspondence is a box, all right, but no mail ever goes there. As soon as I opened it (using another name and an address that would be somewhere in the East River if it existed), I put in a change-of-address card that got my mail forwarded to a place in Jersey City. The guy there sends it on to a warehouse that Mama Wong owns, although her name doesn’t appear on the incorporation papers. They put all my mail in this old battered desk in the back, and Max the Silent picks it up once every couple of weeks or so. Then he gives it to me or to Mama. The delivery isn’t fast, but I don’t get any personal mail anyway. If anyone came around the warehouse asking questions, they’d be told that mail comes there for me regularly and they just as regularly throw it in the garbage. If the investigator asked why they didn’t notify the post office that I don’t live there, he’d get either a lot of broken English laced with Cantonese or an unbroken stream of hostility, depending on his attitude. But no information. The guys who work there would never rat on Mama Wong—it wouldn’t be worth it to them. Anyway, Mama doesn’t have my address.
So Wilson could be using a post office box to pick up VA checks, if he was getting any. That would be the easiest way. You’d think the government wouldn’t allow you to get checks at a post office box, but you’d be wrong. First of all, in