The Crimes of Jordan Wise (7 page)

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 las 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.

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.

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.

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.

At a costume shop in Oakland on the way back, I bought a dark brown theatrical mustache, the can't-tell-it-from-the-real-thing kind that attaches with spirit gum. Not too large or bushy, but thick enough to cover my rather broad upper lip.

It was necessary for Annalise to be in on the rest of phase two. I requested and was given three days off from work, citing personal reasons; she made a similar arrangement with Kleinfelt's. I withdrew $2,000 in cash from the Darwin Electric account and $1,000 in cash from each of the other five dummy accounts. I gave her $2,500, to pay for a round-trip airline ticket to Chicago and to cover a $2,000 cashier's check made out to R. J. Laidlaw, which she obtained at her bank. I also paid cash for my round-trip ticket to Chicago on a different airline.

We flew back there on a Sunday afternoon. I'd picked Chicago for two reasons: it was the largest city in the Midwest, and there were daily flights from O'Hare to Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Laidlaw were booked into one of the larger, older hotels off the Loop. I took a taxi there as soon as we landed. Annalise rented the car we would need, using her real name and California license—a negligible risk for her.

She had a surprise for me at the hotel. She'd had her hair restyled, the long feathery Farrah Fawcett look replaced by a close-cropped shag cut that changed the shape of her face, gave it a gamine quality.

"Why?" I asked her. "It wasn't necessary."

"I know," she said, "but you're going to change your appearance and I thought I'd do the same. A new look for our new life together. Don't worry, I had it done in Marin County and I bought a wig to match the old style. Nobody in San Francisco will know."

"I'm not worried. Just a little . . . overwhelmed."

"You don't like it," she said, sounding hurt.

"No, no, it's not that. I need to get used to it, that's all."

"Well, I think it's sexy. You can pretend you're making love to a hot new babe tonight."

"I don't want a hot new babe. All I want is you."

We sent down for copies of the local Sunday papers, combed through the ads for mail receiving and forwarding services similar to the one I used in San Francisco, and made a list of half a dozen candidates. From the phone directory, we copied down the addresses of a downtown branch of the Mutual Trust Bank, the U.S. Passport Office, and the nearest office of the department of motor vehicles.