Not many parents get Social Security cards for their infants. But it’s suspicious for a guy in his twenties to walk into a Social Security office, ask to be issued a card, and say that he has never had one before. So I had my fingers crossed that some of the names I had dug out of the South Dakota files were for deceased tykes whose parents had obtained Social Security numbers for them. As soon as I was back in my new apartment in Denver, I called my buddy Ann at the Social Security Administration and had her check a few of the names with their associated dates of birth to see if a Social had already been issued. The third name, Brian Merrill, was a hit: baby Brian had had a Social Security number. Fantastic. I had found my permanent identity!