I was cooking now, and the officer was following attentively, so I finished the story. "Anyway, she knows how much I love my panda, so she suggested that I bring it. We had a picnic lunch and took a walk. But when I got back, it was gone!" I rubbed my eye to wipe away another tear.
The officer let his gaze linger on me for a few seconds, then he turned to his screen and read the report. "Yeah, some kid and his grandpa brought it in. The kid took it, but gramps busted him and made him bring it here. I'll go get it."
That was a relief. My story fit with his, and he didn't ask any difficult questions. This meant that I'd soon have the panda and be on my way. I could relax.
Unfortunately, it wasn't over yet, and waiting gave me more time to worry. My palms got clammy, my breath grew short, and I had to swallow an involuntary cry that bubbled up from somewhere deep. I plainly wasn't suited to this kind of work anymore. Who ever heard of a con artist who was afraid to con?
Two minutes later, the officer came back with a big stuffed panda in his arms and set it on his desk. I waited a little longer, still gauging whether or not he knew that it was more than a toy. But all he did was mutter, "Recovered," click his computer, and hand me a form to fill out. I exhaled slowly and let my worries fade.
Naturally, when I filled out the form, I lied. I listed my name as "Daisy McTavish" and gave a fake address in Glendale. I even had a phony driver's license that supported this lie, if he asked for it. One of five fake licenses I'd had back in the day, all of them now expired. Yeah, I'd done some bad things when I was a kid, and I still seemed to be doing them. Just last night, while packing to come out here, I'd touched-up Daisy's license to make it current.
But my fake identity had one sliver of truth in it. One thing that was always true. My first name does start with the letter "D." I'm Dee Kirkland. And believe it or not, I was intentionally named Dee, a name that sounds like a single letter, so I could play con games more easily.
My foster mother, whose real name is Beatrix, thought it up when she was young, and she used it herself, shortening her name to Bea. She reasoned that if her real name sounded like a single letter, then she could choose any fake name that started with that letter when doing a con. As Bea, she could call herself Betty, Bonnie, or Barbara. Then, if she accidentally ran into someone who called her "Bea," she could explain it as a nickname, and the mark wouldn't suspect a thing. This wasn't a problem when we ran into other con artists, because we had signals we could give to tell them to stay away from our game. But Bea's naming concept gave us extra protection from our school friends and from other acquaintances who didn't know who we were.