WHERE TO GO
The most immediate and pressing issue the disappearee must handle is where to go. The first few days of a disappearance are a sensitive time, for this is when the loudest cry will be raised over your vanishing act and when the pursuit will be most intense. It is also likely that you will still be in the near vicinity for awhile, making detection from a wide variety of sources possible. The vanisher must find a safe haven where he can think through his next moves and marshall his resources for the long road ahead.
One of the more elaborate transitions from old life to new I heard was related to me in a bar in Oakland, California. I was involved in a general discussion of disappearances and identity changing with a slim, tanned, well-spoken individual of about fifty years of age. When I mentioned that the first part of an identity change is the hardest, but that thorough planning could smooth out most of the rough spots, he smiled widely and nodded his agreement.
"A few years back I had a friend who vanished," he began. "He was living--existing really--in, well, one of those jerkwater towns in the flat country where you can see the great distances without seeing anything at all. He was a fishing nut and was terribly disappointed that the environs he lived in had no outlet for his favorite pursuit. Sure, there were muddy little creeks near his home filled with bullhead and carp and catfish, but he was a dry-fly purist, and you know how a died-in-the-wool, tie-your-own-flies fisherman feels about such trash."
I nodded my sympathy.
He continued, "The trouble was, his wife didn't like the amount of time and money he spent going to places where the fish live. He was a respectable financial executive, and she was a sucker for lost causes. Ever since their kids had gone through college and moved away, she got more and more involved in volunteer work. That would have been fine with him, except that she was using his position to advance her causes, and she expected--no, demanded--that he attend all kinds of fundraising events and be photographed with disabled kids and the like. It was more than he could stomach.
"I don't know exactly when or how he hit upon the idea of chucking it all and starting a new life under a different name. The idea just seemed to grow. Once he accepted it, he began to make his plans. One of the first things he did was buy a pick-up truck with an insulated, all-weather camper already installed. He purchased it in a distant city that he visited regularly on business. And he paid for it with an unexpected company bonus he received."
"Didn't his wife know anything about their finances?" I asked. "Seems she would have known about the bonus because of the income tax angle."
"No, she didn't know anything about it. It was one of those end-of-the-year deals, and he received the money in February. That gave him about fourteen months before it would show up on the IRS forms, which was plenty of time for him to execute his plan."
"Anyway, he bought the camper under his new name. The dealer was very helpful arranging the insurance and licensing. He stored the camper with the dealer, picking it up occasionally for short trips when he could sneak the time."
"Where did he get the new identity?" I asked. "Just make it up out of whole cloth?"
He gave me a sly look. "No, he'd started reading up on the subject and then he remembered that he had an older brother who died when he was less than a year old. My parents never mention him, and I had no reason to ever tell my wife about my brother. Christ, I wasn't even born when he died!"
He abruptly stopped at this point, realizing he'd slipped out of the third person. He considered whether to continue or not. At last he went on.
"There was a lot of local interest in my friend's disappearance, but as far as I know, no one ever made the connection between him and his brother. It was a perfect identity to slip into because he didn't have to memorize a lot of strange data about place of birth, mother's maiden name, and so on."
"Where did he go when he walked out?" I asked.
"Well the first thing he did was make a fishing trip to end all fishing trips. He lashed flies across every trout stream of note between Kuskokwim in Western Alaska and the little streams on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidentales in Mexico."
"What did he do for money?" I wondered.
"He had a small amount of savings with him when he left. You'd be surprised how little it costs for a man to live in a camper by himself. But without any credit available to him, it wasn't long before he had to seek out work. Even though he was a paper-shuffler in his former life, he had a lot of practical carpentry skills he'd learned fixing up the houses he'd lived in. So he earned money as he went along doing odd jobs and the like, though he was in no condition for heavy physical labor.
"After a while he assembled a decent set of tools and a few good contacts along his favorite routes. He was then able to work a few days a week and spend the rest of his time traveling and fishing. He's since joined a carpenters union and works out of the hall whenever the mood or the need strikes him."
"Sounds kinda romantic to me," I said. "Traveling the country carefree without a responsibility in the world. I imagine it gets a bit lonely, though."
"I suppose it could," he said, "but it doesn't have to be. There are
