The Anonymous Man Read online

  Jerry frowned, more than a little perturbed that Jeff had brought up this rather secret aspect about himself. It was conceived while he was still in college not long after 9/11 and he had kept it hidden from most everyone over the years except Holly, and later, Jeff.

  “Yes, the Anonymous Man. A guy whose family and friends think he’s been killed at his job in the World Trade Center on 9/11. In truth, he had gotten to work late that morning and so survived but decided to use the disaster as a cover to escape his humdrum life, beset with financial and marital problems, and start a new life as an anonymous man. And the really neat part about the story, showing how keen of a mind Jerry had, was that this anonymous man uses his anonymity as a kind of cloak to help people escape from their own bad or miserable lives. Anyway, that was the special something about Jerry that I’ll always savor, his unique talent, and I really think that had he lived, Jerry would have worked at that comic book and gotten it published. Who knows, there may have been a movie made out of his Anonymous Man.

  “But unfortunately for us, in his real life adventure, Jerry died. He did not become anonymous. And a great guy was taken from all of us.”

  At that moment, Holly let out a wail and Raymond wrapped his arms around her. Jeff let her display of grief linger for a time, and while doing so, stared out at Jerry’s solitary figure in the back pew. Jerry looked down again, certain now that Jeff knew it was him in the church.

  Finally, Jeff looked heavenward and said, “From all of us, goodbye my friend. And goodbye to the Anonymous Man.”

  That was it. The mass concluded with the ritual spreading of incense by the altar boys. The pall-bearers were called forth and started to wheel the casket down the aisle while Mary Grace McDonnell started bellowing “Ave Maria.” Some of the mourners, including Holly, of course, wept as they shuffled after the casket.

  Jerry had slipped out ahead of them. He hurried to his car and crouched below the steering wheel as the funeral procession re-formed and started on its way out of the parking lot to Holy Cross Cemetery. When the last car took a left turn onto South Park Avenue Jerry started his car and pulled out after them. All the while, Jerry held onto the woeful thought that this really had been his funeral and that now his life was over.

  But he was not dead.

  In fact, he had truly become the Anonymous Man.

  Chapter Three

  Someone rapping at the passenger side window woke Jerry from a near wet dream involving Marcy Teresi, the slim, sultry, dark-haired, ample breasted receptionist who cheerily greeted visitors from behind a half-circle information kiosk in the lobby of the squat, modern Micro-Connections building. Marcy was partial to short dresses, clinging low-cut sweaters, and, on especially good days, fishnet nylons.

  Jerry gasped as he stumbled out of the haze of the dream. He feared he had screwed up the perfect crime. But he saw it was only Jeff Flaherty at the window, wearing a cynical sneer that distorted his good looks. He mouthed, Open it!

  Jerry yawned and fumbled for the switch that unlocked the doors of the silver Chevy Malibu. It had been purchased three months ago in the name of the New Mexican limited liability company in which he, Jeff, and Holly had each become silent partners. The faint red numbers on the Malibu’s dashboard read 11:17 am. He hadn't slept for long.

  The Malibu was parked along a narrow road crisscrossing the sprawling Holy Cross cemetery that stretched literally from one side of the city to the other. Jerry had parked in clear view of the mausoleum where the service for the cremated ashes of his fictitious corpse had just concluded. He had closed his eyes for only a moment while waiting for the mourners to proceed from the cemetery to the funeral breakfast at a nearby Italian restaurant when he had fallen asleep.

  Jeff slid onto the passenger side and slammed the door. “What the fuck are you still doing here, Jerry boy?”

  “Watching my funeral,” Jerry said. “I couldn’t resist.”

  Jeff sighed and a slight curl of a smile finally formed on his lips. “I hear ya.”

  Jeff lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and blew out a thin line of gray smoke. After almost three years of their inexplicable acquaintance, it was the first time Jerry had seen Jeff smoke. Lately, Jeff seemed full of surprises.

  “I couldn’t believe you came to the church this morning,” Jeff went on, “sitting alone back there as if you didn’t exist. What the fuck is going on in that mind of yours? I couldn’t believe your stupidity. And your balls. What if someone saw your fat ass?”

  Jerry shrugged.

  Jeff took another drag, leaned back. “You could have ruined everything. In fact, it’s a miracle somebody didn’t see you.”

  Jerry thought of Mary Grace McDonnell looking down but somehow not seeing him and passed it off with another shrug.

  “I know,” he said. “I know. It was stupid. But again, I couldn’t resist.”

  “Stupid is right,” Jeff said. “Stupid is becoming your middle name.”

  Another thing Jerry had noticed lately was that Jeff was becoming more and more insulting toward him, and not only about his weight. Only a few days ago, Jeff had labeled Jerry, “a stupid fucking useless lazy fat bastard oaf.” What made it even worse was that Jeff seemed to spew these insults whenever Holly was around.

  But Jeff was right about one thing. It had been criminally stupid for Jerry to be lurking around the funeral parlor the last couple of nights, and to have attended his funeral mass, not to mention the graveside service. Jerry had simply been overcome by the curiosity of watching one’s “loved ones” and “friends” paying their last respects. But what he had observed had been frankly disappointing.

  Last night, for instance, at his wake, except for Holly’s fake numb look which had been part of her role all evening, and the sad, lost frown of Jerry’s father, there hadn’t been much display of sorrow among the mourners. Jerry attributed that to the closed casket. It was as if the deceased wasn’t even there. Without a body to look at and grieve over, Jerry reasoned, there was no ultimate reminder of the tragedy of a young life cut short. The mourners had no object giving rise to an expression of grief.

  Still, corpse or no corpse, Jerry had been to enough wakes to know that people weren’t in the habit of spending much time grieving. They were gatherings of living human beings, desperate not to be reminded of death’s inevitability. Thus, wakes had become merely a reason to socialize, to catch up on news, or have a good laugh at old times. At various points during the evening, the rise of laughter from the mourners even became somewhat embarrassing. This inevitable occurrence took place during Jerry’s fictitious wake. Once the mourners recognize that the wake has been transformed from a solemn ritual into a kind of impious revelry, the noise level subsided and everyone settled into a kind of acknowledged glumness, reminded temporarily at least of the purpose for the occasion. This lasted only a few minutes until the talk and laughter rose up again. Through all that, the coffin and the corpse of the dearly departed are mere props.

  “You should be in Binghamton by now,” Jeff said. “Setting up your new life.”

  “I was just leaving,” Jerry said. “Guess I fell asleep.”

  “Damn straight you did,” Jeff said. “And damned straight you are leaving. Where have you been staying, anyway?”

  Jerry described the cheap motel out on Route 20 near Ralph Wilson Stadium. It was forty-five dollars a night with smoke-stained cinder block walls run by some sullen, swarthy Arab.

  “You keep a low profile at least?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jerry said. “You know how many people they see at those places, day and night.”

  Jeff grimaced, unconvinced. “How’s Holly?” Jerry asked.

  Holly seemed a million miles away from him right then, completely out of his life. Jerry was surprised how much he missed her. Over the last couple of years, things hadn’t been quite right between them. What was wrong had been difficult for Jerry to pin down, and Holly was not inclined to want to talk about it whenever he broached the subject
by asking her exactly that—what was wrong between them? Maybe, Jerry thought, it was the fact that he couldn’t get her pregnant. Or maybe it was because the reason for her initial attraction to him, his affecting, boyish chubbiness, had worn off like a bad habit.

  Jerry’s tendency toward obesity all the way back into childhood had made him shy, lacking in confidence. And, until Holly had come into his life, he had operated on the usually correct assumption that fat guys didn’t get pretty girls. How he had ever won Holly’s heart was still largely a mystery to him, and a matter of much speculation and wonder for most of his as well as her friends and relatives.

  Jeff shrugged. “Holly? She’s alright, I guess. Nervous. But she was damned impressive as the grieving widow, don’t you think?” He laughed. “Tomorrow she puts in the claim on your life insurance policy. Four million bucks.”

  “Four million?” Jerry asked, frowning. “I thought it was two.”

  The plan had been to make the claim on the one-million-dollar life insurance policy with Global Life & Casualty Jerry had taken more than a year and a half ago, shortly after they had first hatched the scheme. With the accidental double indemnity rider, it would pay out a flat two million, certainly enough for all of them to live comfortably for a lifetime even split three ways; provided, of course, they used discretion in how their respective shares were spent and otherwise invested the nest egg wisely.

  Jerry had rejected right off the two-million-dollar figure suggested by Holly as simply too much. They shouldn’t get greedy, he had argued, keep the claim reasonable so it wouldn’t arouse any more suspicion than necessary, so the insurance fraud investigators wouldn’t feel absolutely compelled to become hound dogs—they might wonder about a married guy without any kids leaving his widow so much money. In the end, they had all seemed to accept the wisdom of this. But apparently, Holly, at least, had a change of heart somewhere along the way. Jerry was peeved she hadn't told him.

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. “Holly told me last night. I mean, during the wake, she told me that she had upped your million policy to a two mil a few months back. Guess she forgot to tell us about that. Somehow she got your signature on the form without you even knowing what the fuck you were signing. She flatly denied that she had forged it.”

  Jeff laughed and Jerry immediately took it as a mocking sneer. It gave Jerry the distinct idea that maybe Jeff knew more about what Holly had done than he was telling him.

  “We got one conniving bitch of a partner on our hands,” Jeff added. “Lucky for me, it’s you that has to spend the rest of your life with her.”

  “That play on her part could fuck us over real good,” Jerry said, seething over Holly’s lack of judgment, and Jeff’s nonchalance over it. “Worse than me being here.”

  Jerry tried to think back to what document Holly could have snuck under his nose that had turned out to be the policy addendum. Perhaps, contrary to her denial, she had brazenly forged his signature, hoping that it would never become an issue.

  “Anyway,” continued Jeff, “what’s done is done. They still don’t have the slightest proof your death was anything but a tragic accident, no matter how much money she claims. And the body is nothing but a pile of ash at the bottom of an urn. No way to extract DNA out of what they think is left of you.” He smiled. “So, as long as we keep the real you hidden—anonymous, right, the way you put it—we’re in the clear.”

  Jeff was probably right. As long as they kept quiet, and he kept hidden, anonymous, they were in the clear.

  Chapter Four

  Jeff had proposed the plan almost two years ago on a cold, blustery night a couple weeks before Christmas during what had become his regular Tuesday night dinners at Jerry and Holly’s house.

  It was about an hour or so after they had finished off another of Holly’s crock-pot concoctions and retired to the living room to drink yet more wine and gossip about work or mutual friends while a nonsensical sitcom mumbled in the background.

  “How much life insurance you got, Jerry boy?” Jeff had asked as he took another long sip of his wine. He was sitting on the floor looking up at them on the couch.

  “Not much,” Jerry said. “Through work, a little, maybe twenty grand, plus a term policy, maybe another fifty. Not really sure.

  “Why?”

  They had just finished griping about how sick they were of all the bullshit, tired of the everyday toil of life, of the cold, gloomy weather and a winter that went on far too long; and then, of the injustice of money, why some people had it, and others, like them, didn’t, and probably never would. How they were destined to remain hopelessly locked in the struggle with an unknown force that controlled everything, with the prospect of fame and fortune certain to remain beyond their reach.

  At one point, while staring morosely into the dying embers of that night’s fire, Jeff had lumped himself in with the losers, “pure and simple, just plain losers.” Yes, Jeff had concluded remorsefully, their fate was set. They were destined to forever feed at the bottom of the pecking order. Unless, he added while still gazing into the fire, unless they acted affirmatively and decisively and, yes, criminally, to change their destinies.

  Holly had laughed and, after silently burping up some of the wine, lifted her glass to toast the comment. But there was no stopping him.

  “For example,” Jeff continued as he turned to Holly, “you had wanted to become an actress, a movie star. Some Hollywood starlet. Live in a fucking mansion or something, like the guys on that HBO series, ‘Entourage.’ Instead, you answer calls all day long from disgruntled clients and lawyers and law clerks, file boring papers for boring, arrogant lawyers for their boring, stupid cases. The rest of the day you sit on your ass behind your computer screen listening to those same arrogant, stupid lawyers spinning out letters or motions, typing sentences and paragraphs that have no meaning to you. You come home exhausted and disgusted with your life and take it out on Jerry boy over here.”

  Jeff sighed and looked over at Jerry. “I bet you and her hardly even screw anymore.”

  That was an understatement, Jerry thought, as he glanced over at Holly while she sat there, stone-faced, looking at Jeff.

  “I bet the two of you are so comfortably numb in your lives you don’t even realize how miserable you are,” Jeff went on, on a roll. “And you, Jerry boy, you had wanted to be an astronaut or something.”

  “Astronomer,” Jerry corrected, smiling. “Yeah, when I started college. But I had no aptitude for calculus, so I switched to accounting, then business management. What I really should have done, what I eventually want to do, is become an illustrator, a cartoonist. You know, drawing comic books. For my superhero.”

  Holly looked at Jerry and smirked.

  “Yeah,” she said, “the infamous Anonymous Man.”

  Jeff nodded, remembering back to the evening a few months back when an enthusiastic Jerry had first revealed the existence of the Anonymous Man. He had been high from too much wine and, after rambling on about his comic book hero, Jerry proceeded to dig out from an old, musty cardboard box down in the basement his old journals filled with comic book storyboards that he had drawn throughout his college years and a couple more years after that. He had spread them out on display for Jeff and Holly on the living room floor.

  Most prominent among the faded drawings were the storyboards from the first issue of The Anonymous Man, and some other strange superheroes, each with a superpower the novelty of which was that it wasn’t truly a superpower, like super strength or flying, but instead was something ordinary involving some human frailty or defect used to confront and defeat crime and overcome general human unhappiness. After staring at them for a time, Jeff had remarked that Jerry’s drawings were actually pretty damned good. And he had meant it. Jeff had seemed especially impressed as he repeatedly leafed through Issue #1 of The Anonymous Man.

  The Anonymous Man, a nebulous, dark figure clinging to the shadows of some city storefront, had come into being the moment his former self was pre
sumed dead when the World Trade Center went down on 9/11. Nobody realized that he had miraculously escaped death because he had been late in arriving at his cubicle for the financial firm on the seventy-third floor of the north tower, and so had escaped its collapse into a monstrous heap of ash and twisted steel beams. Photographs of him were posted by his wife on the wall with hundreds of others but soon she and his other loved ones gave up all hope that he would be found. Finally, he was presumed dead and because his life had not been so wonderful anyway, he became anonymous, a living dead man. He was happy to be off the grid, to have escaped the matrix of his sour life.

  That evening, Jerry went on to narrate what his comic book drawings depicted: how the Anonymous Man had rescued a damsel in distress who was being chased by a vicious wife-beater; he hid her under his cloak of anonymity and she helped him as his front to interact with the world.

  “This is good, man,” Jeff had said. “Real good. You should have continued it, gotten it published.”

  Jerry had shrugged and told Jeff he had drawn a few more storyboards for The Anonymous Man but could never find the time to finish another complete issue of the adventures of his superhero.

  “Waste of fucking time,” was Holly’s belated, mumbled comment. Then she had laughed.

  In retrospect, Jerry wondered if it was that reading of Issue #1 of The Anonymous Man that had sparked in Jeff’s mind the scheme he was now proposing.

  “What if,” Jeff said, continuing on the living room floor, “we bought a bunch more life insurance on old Jerry here, a million bucks, say. Then, after a few months, maybe longer, fake his death.” He looked at Jerry. “You know, make it look like an accident, then collect the insurance money. You know, you could become like your Anonymous Man. For real. We all could escape this comfortable numbness.”

  Just then, an ember exploded and popped from the wood smoldering in the fireplace onto the cheap oriental rug, which was laid out across the oak floor before it. Jeff ignored the heat as he pinched the ember off the floor and flicked it back into the fireplace.