Almost forty years have passed since I was put into the Witness Protection Program.

All the criminals involved have now died. I have been informed that it is now safe to resume my old life. One’s identity is not like a Spring jacket, which may be put away and then reacquired.

That old person who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is also dead. That young man who was moral, courageous and naive died long ago in a forest hideout.

My parents, who never were told anything, for their own safety, and with whom I rarely communicated and did not see for ten years, are also dead. Carol, my fiancee, who chose not to relocate to the opposite coast, is now an indistinct and distant memory. Only her eyes remain vivid, because of their clarity and color of indigo. I also recall her neurotic concern that one leg might be thinner than the other.

Neither a victim of circumstances, nor an innocent bystander was I. From the age of fifteen, I had associated with small time gangsters. Mostly bookies. However, friends passed through the tailor shop, which fronted the operation.

I was liked, because I was honest, fearless, extraordinarily fast and accurate with numbers and brought in considerable money from sports betting.

I walked a thin line between this life and a more respectable one. I was born with a moral sense and a wildness. Only the goodness of my family, its supervision and values kept me from choosing a life of petty crime or worse. But I never completely left the life of small-time crime. There were no drugs in this part of the crime family, in those days. And no thuggery that I ever saw. These were not thieves, they were bookmakers.

I can still smell the backroom, when the paper bags were emptied on the tables. The tables were quickly piled high with dirty currency. Smelly bills.

The numbers racket, the horses and sports betting were big in those days. Every now and then, word would come down about a fixed race, and I would make some money.

Money, numbers, odds, statistics, gambling all fascinated me.

While I was “running for the mob,” I was also attending a local college, and then graduate school. I took many courses which had to do with numbers. I took accounting, finance, economics, statistics, calculus. I loved each of these subjects.

Often I would watch or join in, when the guys played poker. There was no such thing as “Texas Hold ‘Em,” in those days. Conventional games of poker were played. I was at a disadvantage, because my funds were always low, but I observed better than most. I also frequently purposely played erratically to keep the table confused.

On the football cards, I kept 25%. During one four year stretch, not one person out of thousands that I collected from, ever won anything. On the weekend that Kennedy was killed, many games were cancelled, at the college level, and so some money was paid out to people who had chosen winners on incomplete cards.

Some of the hoods and bookies thought of me as a kid brother. I was handsome, funny, obedient, trustworthy and interesting in my own right.

During the first few years of the Witness Protection program, I became someone else. I became a hermit in a dense forest. I rarely ventured out. Never saw doctors, dentists, strangers or family.

The crime occurred one day, just before I had arrived at another storefront. I was bringing Cuz’s books to his boss for inspection. I was double-parked, when three men exited the store, with guns in hands.

A car was parked in front of a hydrant. They got in and drove away. I had sat so immovably that all brain waves had stopped. I imagine that I had rendered myself “invisible.” When I entered the store, I found three dead bodies.

– Raphael O’Suna