Roger Rampkin is his full name, but everyone calls him Rambo. Not just a play off his name but his army background before joining the force in Indianapolis, and he’s got some size on him, too. The kind of cop who would scare the shit out of you in an interrogation room.
He retired from the force four years ago, now working as a private detective and doing some “security” work as well. He’s done some work for me in the last few years and proven his worth.
“You clean up nice,” he says.
Not sure I’d say the same for Rambo. The years have not been so kind to him. He has at least twenty more pounds in his midsection, his eyes heavily bagged, his beard more salt than pepper. Less badass-cop now, more mountain-man-crazy.
I take the file from him and hand him an envelope of cash. “Thank you very much, sir.”
He tosses the envelope through the open window of his car onto the front seat and lights a cigarette, offers me one. I decline. I quit smoking when I quit everything else. Smoking was harder to kick than cocaine.
“Tell me why,” he says.
“You’ve never asked why before,” I say.
He blows out smoke. “I’ve always known why before. But I take your point.”
Mind your own business, is the point. “That’s a good boy, Rambo.” I wag the folder, noting how light it is. “Not much in there.”
“Not much in there,” he agrees.
“Give me the highlights.”
“The highlights are . . . there’s not much in there. I did a full workup, all over again, like you asked. Every source I could tap. Vicky Lanier was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, went to Fairmont Senior High School, disappeared in 2003 at the age of seventeen and was never heard from again. Declared a missing person, but it was never known if she was a runaway or abducted or murdered. Never showed up on the grid. Never filed a tax return, never got arrested or fingerprinted, never enrolled for school, never opened a bank account, never took out a credit card, never got a W-2 or 1099, never opened a social media account, never did a single thing after age seventeen.” He looks at me, squinting into the sun.
“Okay, so no irregularities? No red flags?”
“No irregularities. No red flags.”
“Bottom line,” I say. “I’m still safe using Vicky Lanier’s identity.”
“You are safe. Though I never understood why you picked an alias with the same first name as you.”
How quickly he forgets. I slip my foot out of my shoe, bend my leg, and hold my foot up for him to see the tattoo above my right ankle, a small red heart with the name Vicky wrapped around the top half. A bad idea when I was sixteen years old. And pretty hard to explain if I used an alias with the name Jane or Molly or Gina.
“Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot about that. It’s been a while since I’ve . . .”
Since you’ve seen me naked. Yeah, Rambo. I’d just as soon put that behind me. I have put it behind me, as much as you can ever put something like that behind you.
“So, Rambo, nobody could say I’m not Vicky Lanier, right?”
“Nobody could say that. As long as your story is that you ran away from home at age seventeen from Fairmont, West Virginia, and kicked around doing things that kept you off the grid. Paid in cash, that kind of thing.”
The sad part is that my real bio isn’t far off from that. And that’s no accident; that’s why I picked Vicky Lanier for my identity. Rambo himself was the one who said it to me—back in the day when he was a cop hearing bullshit from suspects, sorting out the truth from the crap—the best lies are the ones closest to the truth. I didn’t live in West Virginia, and nobody abducted me, but I did leave home at age seventeen in 2003. So when I had Rambo create me an identity, I had him find a girl named Vicky who went missing in 2003 at age seventeen. I wasn’t sure there would be a match with criteria that specific. Turns out, there were three girls who fit that description, which is disturbing in itself. Vicky Lanier from Fairmont, West Virginia, looked the most like me, so I chose her.
“Just make sure nobody does a fingerprint-based background check on you,” Rambo says. “Then your prints would come up with your real name.”
Right. But I can’t do anything about that.
He cocks his head. “You realize you just paid me to do the same thing I did when I created this identity for you. I wouldn’t have given you ‘Vicky Lanier’ in the first place if it wasn’t clean.”
“Always good to update,” I say.
“Nah,” he says out of the side of his mouth. “You’re expecting someone to inquire. To look into your background. You’re expecting trouble.”
I stare at him with a perfunctory smile.
“Never mind,” he says. “I don’t want to know.”
He’s right on both counts. There’s going to be trouble. And he doesn’t want to know.
8
Simon
I’m meeting Vicky for lunch at the Chinese restaurant by the law school. She often works days, so when she doesn’t, we try to hook up for lunch, especially in the summer, when my schedule is so light.
She kisses me on the cheek. “Hey, handsome.” She wets her finger, wipes the lipstick off my cheek, and takes her seat across from me in the booth. “How’s your buddy, the dean?”
“Not this again,” I say. “What am I supposed to do, defy him? Spit in the face of the most powerful guy at the school?”
“He spit in your face first.”
Vicky, bless her heart, fights for me. She doesn’t like the idea of Dean Comstock forcing me out of consideration for the full professor slot. She can get pretty worked up when people disrespect me. I find that incredibly sexy about her, for some reason.
“Simon, all you’re doing is applying for full professor. You have just as much a right to do that as that schmuck with the rich daddy, Reid whatever. Who cares what Dean what’s-his-name, Dean Cumstain, thinks?”
“Comstock.” I laugh. “The guy who could single-handedly derail my career? I think I do care what he thinks.”
She shakes her head, disappointed and angry. I meant what I wrote in my journal. I love this woman and I always will. But she doesn’t love me back. She likes me and cares about me, but I don’t do it for her in that way. And that, for me, takes the air out of the balloon. Maybe Freud would have something to say here about the id or superego, but I’m not one of those guys who likes challenges. I’m not attracted to someone who’s not attracted to me.
When I first met Vicky, just six weeks after her sister’s suicide, she was so angry. Sad, too, but mostly angry. I was able to help her. Maybe that’s the only reason she was drawn to me. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to her. Your heart doesn’t come with explanatory notes.
“You already put your name in, right?” she asks. “All that’s left is submitting all the materials. And you have until sometime in September?”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” I say. “But I’m going to withdraw my name.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. It still stirs something inside me when she touches me like that, no matter what else I may tell myself.
“You deserve this promotion, Simon. You’re one of the best minds at that school. You love it. It’s what you were meant to do. I hate seeing some pompous jerk stick a finger in your eye, and you’re supposed to say, ‘Thank you, sir, may I have another?’”