The Crimes of Jordan Wise Read online

  I kept the total amounts of these first six invoices relatively small; the highest was a little more than $9,000, from Darwin Electric. They were as much a test run as an opening gambit, to satisfy myself that the forgeries were good enough to pass through the comptroller's office without question. Not that I had any doubt of it. In the past I had rubber-stamped invoices in the high five figures, and the comptroller's office had paid them without question.

  Step six: At the office I established new accounts in the names of the six dummy companies, then okayed the invoices and sent them along one or two at a time in the daily batches. In each case I noted that the company had requested payment by direct deposit.

  A week went by without incident. No one in the comptroller's office asked to see me about any of the new accounts. The invoices were absorbed into the system as easily as any of the legitimate ones.

  Notifications of deposit began to arrive from the banks until I had all six. I didn't withdraw any of the money. And wouldn't until much later in the game. I had enough cash in my personal savings account to take care of expenses such as the Portland trip.

  Step seven: I created a second set of invoices along the lines of the first set, with larger total amounts—upwards of $10,000 on both the Darwin Electric account and the West Valley Construction account. After two weeks I sent a couple of the invoices through for payment, since it wasn't uncommon for some of the high-overhead independent contractors to bill on a twice-monthly basis; the other phony invoices went in on the monthly schedule. From then on, I increased the sums of some invoices incrementally, while decreasing others so as not to raise any red flags.

  Three weeks after I sent the letter to the Multnomah County courthouse, I received the copy of the birth certificate. In a sense that would have horrified Annalise's religious aunt and sister, Richard James Laidlaw—like Jordan Wise—had been reborn.

  Step eight: I took another day's sick leave and drove to Sacramento, where I applied for a Social Security card at the local office in the name of Richard James Laidlaw, using the birth certificate as proof of identity. If I'd been asked why a thirty-four-year-old man was applying for his first card, I had a story ready: I had inherited a large sum of money and now that it was almost depleted, I was forced to go job hunting. But the lie wasn't necessary. The bored clerk looked at the application just long enough to make sure I had filled it in properly.

  After another three weeks, I had my second piece of new identification. That completed the first phase of the plan; all the factors in the linked equations were now in place and functioning as designed. Nothing more needed to be done until the following spring.

  I spent only one more night at Annalise's apartment, shortly after that first night together. From then on, as far as anyone who knew either of us was concerned, we went our separate ways. It was vital that there be no apparent connection between us over the next year, no contact that could ever be traced. We had to appear to be two people who had dated casually for three months and then drifted apart, like thousands of others in the city. Two things made this easy: Our dates and our relationship had been casual before the plan. And neither of us had any family or close friends we confided in. Annalise had mentioned me to two women she knew at Kleinfelt's, but only in a general way; she was sure she hadn't told them my full name or where I worked. Even if she had, they were unlikely to remember it after a year's time. The only people I'd spoken to about her, Sanderson and a couple of others right after the wedding reception, weren't likely to remember either.

  Of course, I couldn't stay away from her for long. She was a fire in my blood. And she proved to me, whenever we were together, that I had evolved substantially in her estimation. The nice, gentle, unexciting mouse had changed into a romantic figure, a man of mystery and danger. I did everything in my power to keep that image sharp. What she felt for me wasn't love, I didn't delude myself about that, but neither was it mere fondness any longer. I was convinced it would continue to grow and deepen, until one day, maybe, it would be love.

  We developed a schedule that suited both of us. Once a week, I called her at her apartment, from a pay phone so the calls could never be traced to my home number. Twice a month, we spent a weekend together at a prearranged place well away from the city—the Monterey Peninsula, the Sierra foothills, the Mendocino coast. We decided on the location in advance, picked a motel or lodge from the Triple A guidebook; I made the reservations by pay phone in an assumed name; we drove there in separate cars. Motel registration cards require a car license number, but no clerk ever bothers to check whether the number you write down is the correct one. And of course I always paid cash for the room, meals, gas.

  These weekends added spice to our relationship. Assignations, the secret meetings of conspirators. As soon as we were alone together we'd be at each other in bed—two, often three times before we did anything else. If I'd had any concerns that she was sleeping with the other men she was dating, her passion on those weekends would've knocked it right out of my head. She was mine and that made me want her even more. My sex drive matched hers; I was no longer insecure about my performance. Annalise had been sexually active since the age of sixteen and she was a gifted and patient teacher; she helped me evolve from a student into an innovative disciple.

  When we weren't making love, or out playing tourist, we talked about the Plan. Plan with a capital P by then: it was the centerpiece of our lives. I kept her apprised of each step, but only in the most general way. "Everything is in place now," I would say, "and the money is starting to accumulate." And "The birth certificate came this week." And "I'm about to increase the amount of cash coming in each month." I reiterated that it was for her own protection—the less she knew, the better off she was if anything went wrong.

  There was another reason, too. Each little morsel I passed on only whetted her appetite for more. Tantalized her, kept her in a constant state of suspense. It grew into a game, a kind of verbal foreplay. I dropped hints, she begged for more details; and when I refused, she offered to do this or that in bed in exchange for another tidbit of information. But I never gave in. There was no need. We were already doing most of what she offered as it was.

  The one thing we did discuss in detail, and often, was where we would go to start our new life together. Annalise's first choice was Paris, then New York, then the French Riviera or one of the Greek islands. None of those places appealed to me. New York was too expensive and the chance of recognition there too great. Paris and the French Riviera were simply too expensive. More than half a million dollars was a small fortune in those days, but you could go through it in a hell of a hurry in overpriced cities or jet-set playgrounds. My objection to a Greek island, to most locales where English was not the primary language and Americans not the primary inhabitants, was that U.S. expatriates with plenty of money and no visible means of support were liable to stand out. The last thing we could afford to do was to attract attention.

  She was disappointed, but she understood. When I reminded her that she could pursue her interest in fashion design from anywhere in the world, we moved on to other choices. Bali was one, Tahiti another. I liked those better, but they seemed too remote to Annalise. We both dismissed Hawaii. Too close to San Francisco, too many mainland tourists. And I still remembered how little I'd enjoyed the vacation trip to Maui.

  The Caribbean, the Virgin Islands had been my selection all along. They had all the tropical lures of sun and sea and laid-back lifestyle, they were a long way from California and drew relatively few visitors from the West Coast, they'd been U.S. possessions since the 1917 purchase from Denmark, and they were inhabited by English-speaking natives and a large percentage of American expats.

  Annalise was dubious at first. "I don't know anything about the Virgin Islands," she said. "Aren't they pretty isolated?"

  "Not at all. Close to Puerto Rico. Miami, too, for that matter."

  "Virgins. Why are they called that?"

  "Columbus named them Santa Ursula y l
as Once Mil Virgenes on his second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493. In honor of Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and because there are thousands of islands in the region."

  "Who were all those women?"

  "A fourth-century British princess and her sisterhood of maidens. All allegedly raped and massacred in Cologne by marauding Huns."

  "Lovely."

  "The islands are, yes. Wait until you see the guidebooks."

  The Virgins had two other draws for me. One I didn't confide to her because I was afraid it might worry her.

  Mixed in with all the positives was an element of risk that held a perverse appeal. The crime of embezzlement as I'd planned mine would violate U.S. banking laws as well as California state laws, and was therefore a federal offense. I would be a federal fugitive; the FBI would come into the case along with state and insurance investigators. If the Plan went off as designed, I had little to fear from any of them. No matter how much manpower went into the investigation, they would have a hell of a time finding me. The perverse appeal lay in the fact that the American Virgins were U.S. federal territory, and that meant the FBI maintained a local branch office there. The prospect of being a federal fugitive living off stolen money in U.S. government territory made me smile every time I thought about it.

  The other draw of the Virgin Islands for me I did tell Annalise about. "That part of the Caribbean offers some of the best sailing in the world," I said. "It's the reason a lot of people move there and vacation there."

  "Sailing?" she said.

  "I've always wanted to own a boat, learn how to sail."

  "You never told me that before."

  "Just a dream until now."

  "Well, I don't know, Jordan—"

  "Richard." I'd asked her to call me by that name on these weekend getaways. The sooner it became second nature to her, the less likely she would slip up later on.

  "Yes, right—Richard. Somehow I just can't see you in a yachting cap at the wheel of a sailboat."

  "Helm," I said.

  "What?"

  "At the helm of a sailboat. I can see myself there, maybe not in a yachting cap but on my own boat. A schooner, maybe even a ketch or yawl. All I have to do is close my eyes."

  "Well, I don't much care for boats," she said. "The one time I went out on one, on the Bay, I got seasick."

  "The Bay waters tend to be choppy. That's not usually the case in the Caribbean. There's a lot of shoal water down there."

  "What's shoal water?"

  "Shallow water. Calm and placid. Everybody's a good sailor in the Virgins, they say."

  "I'll take your word for it. Personally I prefer dry land."

  "You won't feel that way once we get there."

  Later, on another of our weekend getaways, I bought her a Virgin Islands guidebook and a coffee-table book of photographs of the U.S. and British Virgins. Annalise's enthusiasm for the region increased when she read through them. Subtropical climate with temperatures that seldom varied from the average of 79 to 88 degrees in the summer and 72 to 82 degrees in the winter, and an annual rainfall of only 27 inches. Sun worshipper's paradise: white-sand beaches, coral reefs, deserted palm-fringed cays, placid waters in ever-changing shades of blue and green. Plus stately homes and old forts and ancient pirate strongholds. Nobody with an imagination and a yen for adventure and excitement could resist this part of the world.

  The weekend after Thanksgiving, before the winter snows made driving through the Sierras difficult, we met in South Lake Tahoe and then went down to Carson City together and applied for a marriage license. Annalise Bonner and Richard James Laidlaw were married that afternoon by a justice of the peace.

  We had a champagne wedding supper at the Ormsby House, then drove back to South Lake Tahoe and bought another bottle and consummated the union. Afterward we lay in bed and drank champagne and toasted the future.

  "How do you like being married?" I asked her.

  "So far, it's terrific," she said. "But my God—Annalise Bonner Laidlaw. It doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue, does it?"

  "I like it," I said. "It has class. An East Coast, old-money, finishing-school kind of name."

  "You think so?"

  "Absolutely. Mine's not bad either."

  "Well. . . maybe."

  I smiled. "Laidlaw is perfect, in fact. I couldn't have found a better surname."

  "How do you figure that?"

  "Exactly what we're doing, isn't it? Laying the law?"

  She burst out laughing. So did I. We laughed so hard she got the hiccups and spilled champagne on my belly. She leaned down and began to lick it off, laughing and hiccuping the whole time, and that led to a second round of lovemaking—"laying each other like we're laying the law," she said, which started us giggling and her hiccuping again right in the middle of it.

  I think that weekend may have been our happiest time together. I know it was for me.

  We spent Christmas together at a small out-of-the-way inn on the Mendocino coast. I gave her a $300 pair of gold earrings, heart-shaped, with pendants of amethyst—her birthstone. Her presents to me were a yachting cap, not the fancy commodore type with gold braid but a functional Gill sailing hat, and books on sailing for beginners and on cruising the Virgin Islands and Lesser Antilles.

  New Year's Eve we spent apart, by mutual agreement, to maintain the pretense that we were actively dating others. She accepted an invitation to a party from one of the men she'd been seeing. As for me, there was a plain, friendly secretary in Amthor's design department, whose smiles in my direction I'd interpreted as wistful little signals that she was interested and available. I seem to remember that her name was Joan, but it could have been Jane or Jean. I'd been invited to a party by the newly married Jim Sanderson, and in turn I invited the secretary. We danced, drank champagne, kissed and sang "Auld Lang Syne" to ring in the new year. And every time I looked at her I saw Annalise, only Annalise.

  I dated Joan or Jane or Jean four more times over a period of seven weeks. On the last of these she made it plain that I was welcome to stay the night at her apartment, but I couldn't have had sex with her if my life depended on it. I tried to let her down easy—she was a nice person and pleasant enough company—and she took the rejection well enough, but I could tell that she was hurt by it. Alone in the world, hungry for affection . . . a female version of the old Jordan Wise. That Jordan Wise might have learned to care for Joan or Jane or Jean, allowed a relationship to develop. Not the reborn version. Not the faithful and committed married man, Richard Laidlaw.

  Establishing a new identity requires more than just paperwork and the altering of a few physical characteristics. You can't simply pretend to be somebody new and different. You have to shed your old personality in layers, the way some snakes shed their skin. Learn how to wear your new one. Change the way you think as well as the way you walk, talk, act in public.

  Jordan Wise was an accountant with simple tastes; quiet, passive, uncomfortable in large groups. Richard Laidlaw was a successful executive with expensive tastes, self-confident, aggressive when the need arose, at ease in social situations. Polar opposites in attitude, expectation, mind-set. The first thing I had to learn was how to switch back and forth seamlessly; then, when the time came, I would be able to shed Jordan Wise once and for all. That meant practice, and plenty of it.

  Alone at home I worked on a more erect posture, on demonstrative hand gestures, on holding my head at an angle that gave a forward jut to my jawline, on deepening my voice and speaking in terse sentences sprinkled with mild to moderate profanity. The first couple of times I tried out the package on Annalise, she made suggestions for improvement that I incorporated into the Laidlaw personality. Whenever we were together after that, I remained in character until we parted—like an actor perfecting the most challenging role of his life. Now and then she would catch me in an inconsistency. Alone, I worked on correcting it until I was sure it would never crop up again.

  None of this was easy, but by the
first of March, when the time came to put the second phase of the Plan into operation, I was no longer acting the role of Richard Laidlaw, I was Richard Laidlaw.

  On a Saturday morning I drove out to Walnut Creek, looked up optometrists in the telephone directory, found one that was open, and called ahead for an appointment, using an assumed name. When I got there I had myself fitted for a pair of inexpensive contact lenses that matched the prescription for my glasses. I asked for the tinted kind, brown. The optometrist commented that I was the first blue-eyed person he'd ever known who wanted brown-tinted contacts. I told him my wife was always needling me, saying she didn't know why she'd married me because she preferred brown-eyed men, so I'd decided to give her a surprise and see what happened. He laughed and dropped the subject. All he really cared about was making the sale. And a cash sale, at that.