The Crimes of Jordan Wise

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND my plan, you have to look at it in historical perspective. The two linked equations were designed according to the laws and business practices existing in the late seventies, and my own experiences in the years preceding 1977. They were flawless in that regard, and that was why they worked. They wouldn't work today. Since 1978, laws have been changed and computerization has completely revamped the way in which large corporations like Amthor Associates and their accounting and comptroller departments operate.

Would I be able to commit and get away with the same crime today, given those changes?

Oh, yes, I think so. If now were then, I would be as proficient in the use of computers and accounting technology as I was in adding machines and ledger books. And there are always loopholes in the law to be ferreted out and utilized. It might take me longer now to devise a foolproof scheme to steal more than half a million dollars, and to establish a new and untraceable identity, but it could be done. If you're deliberate enough, resourceful enough, shrewd enough, almost anything is possible.

I put my plan into operation immediately after that first night with Annalise. You might think I was taking a lot on faith, going forward based on a verbal agreement and a single night of sex, and I suppose I was. She might have changed her mind, backed out at any time before she became an actual accessory. But our involvement together, as I'd told her, had to be based on mutual trust. She had to believe I would be able to embezzle the money and that we'd get away with it safely; I had to believe that she wanted the life I'd promised her enough, and cared for me enough, not to back out and to do exactly as she was told. That was the key to the success of the plan.

The fact that I worked in the accounts payable section of Amthor's accounting department was what made the theft viable. Amthor was a large firm, with branches in three other cities and literally hundreds of subcontractors and suppliers spread out across the country and in Mexico and Central America. All of the accounting was done in the San Francisco office, and invoices poured in in large quantities every month. Part of my job, and that of two other accountants, was to check these invoices against existing bids and allocations and, if all was in order, to stamp them with a payment authorization and pass them on to the comptroller's office. Some of the invoices were paid by check, others through direct bank deposit by invoice number. The choice was up to the individual supplier or contractor.

So then, step one: After work on three consecutive evenings I drove to one of the photocopy and job printing stores that dotted the city. In each I ordered a small quantity of invoice forms in different styles and formats, imprinted with six different company names. I still remember all of them, and that the three primaries were Darwin Electrical Contractors, M. & D. Supply, Inc., and West Valley Construction. I provided Bay Area addresses for each—three in San Francisco, two in the East Bay, one on the Peninsula; the cities were genuine, the street addresses made up. There was virtually no risk in this, because I saw to it the addresses never had cause to be checked. Once I had the printed invoices, I took two days of sick leave and went around to various banks in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Mateo and opened business accounts in each of the company names. On the bank forms I listed myself, under my own name, as sole proprietor and requested that all statements and notifications of deposit be sent to my home address.

Step two: On the next Friday after close of business, I flew to Portland, Oregon, and spent the night in a downtown motel. I picked Portland because it was the nearest good-sized city in another state and yet still relatively close to San Francisco. I paid for the ticket in cash and gave the airline a false name; in those days, remember, you weren't required to show identification to airline or airport personnel and so you could fly under any name you chose. I used the same alias at the motel. These precautions probably weren't necessary, but I took them to ensure that no investigator could ever place me in Portland, a city I hadn't been to before and never visited again.

That Saturday morning I went to the main library, where I requested microfilm files of the Portland Oregonian for 1943, the year of my birth. I spent four hours combing through the obituary notices in every issue from January through July before I found what I was looking for. On July 19, a five-month-old infant named Richard James Laidlaw, the son of Carl and Amanda Laidlaw, had died in the Portland suburb of Beaverton. The birth date and place of birth were also listed as Beaverton. I copied down all the relevant information. Before I left the library for the airport, I looked up the address of the office of vital statistics for Multnomah County, in which both Portland and Beaverton were located, and added it to the data sheet.

Step three: I checked the current San Francisco papers for advertisements for mail receiving and forwarding services, made a list, and then went around to check them out in person. The third one impressed me as the most discreet. I paid their standard fee, giving my name as Richard Laidlaw and asking that any mail addressed to me be held for pickup.

Step four: I wrote a letter to the Multnomah County office of vital statistics requesting a copy of "my" birth certificate and providing all the necessary names and dates. I signed the letter Richard James Laidlaw and gave the mail drop's address as my own. The vital stats office had no reason to cross-check the name against their death records and no legal reason at that time to turn down the request. I wasn't the first to use this method of obtaining a birth certificate in order to establish a false identity, of course. I got the idea from reading about a similar case in Detroit that had come to light the year before. The method was used often enough, in fact, for the regulations and requirements covering the issuance of copies of birth certificates to be eventually changed in most if not all states.

Step five: I bought a secondhand IBM typewriter, the kind that had a ball element and came with extra elements in different type faces. At night in my apartment, I manufactured half a dozen detailed invoices, one for each of the dummy companies, keying each to specific job sites that Amthor was currently operating in various parts of northern and central California and that were guaranteed by size to last more than a year. In two cases there was a distance of several hundred miles between the job sites and the bogus company addresses, but this was not unusual. Amthor hired its subcontractors on a bid basis and its suppliers on a price-break basis, and the costs of relocating workmen and equipment and of long-haul shipping were always factored in.

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 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.

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.

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.

In the morning, first thing, we performed the physical change of Jordan Wise into Richard Laidlaw. She'd brought a bottle of dark brown rinse that would alter hair color but could be easily washed out. I used the rinse, put on the brown-tinted contact lenses and the dark-brown theatrical mustache. Annalise completed the transformation by using a blow dryer and brush to restyle my hair, erasing my usual part and making it appear fuller.

When she was done, we stood side by side in front of the mirror. "It's really amazing," she said, "how much different you look."

"The best disguises are the simple ones. Subtle differences, nothing elaborate."

"I like the new you. You know, now that I see us together like this, I think the Laidlaws are even better looking than Bonner and Wise."

"No question in my case," I said.

The second mail-drop place we went to was just right. Street address rather than a box number, no questions asked, mail to be held on the premises indefinitely until picked up in person by either Mr. or Mrs. Laidlaw. From there we went to the Mutual Trust branch, where we opened a joint checking account with the $2,000 cashier's check, giving the local mail-drop address as our own. We also rented a safe deposit box, into which I put the remaining cash I'd brought along.

Next stop: a photographer's studio near the federal building that specialized in passport photos. We took ours to the passport office, where Richard J. Laidlaw and Annalise Laidlaw applied for passports. They were the first passports for each of us under any name, which simplified the process. Birth certificates were the only form of identification required. Again, we gave the local mail-drop address as our current U.S. mailing address.

That used up all of Monday. Most of Tuesday we spent at the DMV filling out applications for Illinois driver's licenses, having our pictures taken, taking written tests and then behind-the-wheel tests with different examiners. When we left the office, it was with interim licenses in hand.

May.

One of our get-togethers that month was a trip to Las Vegas. Annalise had never been there and wanted to go, and I saw no reason not to oblige her. It would be our only opportunity; once I became a fugitive, I had no intention of ever going within two thousand miles of San Francisco. We were spending a fair amount of money on necessities and incidentals, and we would spend a lot more before the end of September, but I'd factored that into the equation. I could always spread another $10,000 among the final six dummy invoices to cover increased expenditures. Besides, the whole point of the Plan was to live well, travel, see new sights, so why deprive ourselves during the setup year?

We stayed in a motel off the Strip, registering as the Laidlaws and appearing in public in our Laidlaw personas. We ate in four-star restaurants; we saw a musical revue at one of the casinos and Dean Martin at Caesars Palace. Neither of us was much of a gambler, but Annalise played the slot machines and keno and I risked a few bets at the $5 blackjack tables. I won $45 and she had the thrill of hitting a $100 keno ticket.

Good omen. After the Vegas trip, I knew that the Plan was going to work exactly as designed.

Late June.

I'd put in for my annual vacation time well in advance, to ensure that I had the last two weeks of the month. On my first day off I made the rounds of the banks containing the dummy accounts and withdrew $2,000 from each. By then, there was an aggregate of more than $400,000 spread among the six. The next day I drove to the airport and bought a round-trip ticket to Chicago, a trip I was making alone this time. I carried some of the cash in my wallet, some in an envelope in my briefcase; the balance was in a hidden compartment of my checked suitcase. I didn't much like traveling with that much cash or entrusting any of it to TWA's baggage handlers, but it was necessary and there were no problems.

I stayed at the same downtown hotel, transformed myself into Richard Laidlaw the following morning, and was waiting at the Mutual Trust branch when it opened. I deposited $2,000 in the joint checking account and put the rest of the cash in the safe deposit box. From the bank I took a cab to the mail drop. Both passports and both Illinois driver's licenses were waiting.

Another cab delivered me to a downtown travel agency I'd picked out of the phone directory. I booked a round-trip Pan Am flight to Georgetown, Grand Cayman, via San Juan, leaving O'Hare on Sunday morning and returning on Tuesday; I also booked accommodations for two nights at a hotel in Georgetown. I was able to reserve a seat on a Chicago to San Francisco flight Tuesday night, with only a four-hour airport layover. All of this I paid for by check drawn on the Laidlaws' joint account; the price was too steep to fund in cash without the risk of arousing suspicion. The travel agent assured me my tickets would be ready as soon the check cleared, no later than Friday afternoon.

Within walking distance was a car rental agency, where I used Richard Laidlaw's new driver's license to rent a compact for the rest of the week. At the hotel after my arrival I'd combed through the apartments-to-lease ads in the local papers, making a list of several in the metropolitan area. I began canvassing them that afternoon and evening.

I expected the process to take two or three days, possibly longer, but I found what I was looking for on the morning of the second day: a furnished, vacant, one-bedroom apartment in a nondescript building in a lower middle-class South Side neighborhood for $600 a month; and a landlord who was willing to settle for a six-month lease. I gave him a check to cover the first and last months' rent plus a $200 cleaning deposit. He had no objection to letting me have the keys early, "soon as your check clears," or to my arranging for a telephone to be installed right away. I told him my wife and I were moving to Chicago because I had a new job there, and that she would be moving in first while I finished up my old job in Minneapolis. He didn't seem to care; he wasn't the nosy type.

The rest of the week I dealt with the phone company and played tourist. On Friday afternoon, just before closing time, I returned to the Mutual Trust branch and removed $5,000 from the safe deposit box—a sum that didn't exceed the maximum amount of cash that could be brought into the Cayman Islands by a nonresident.

The flights to Puerto Rico and then to Grand Cayman were uneventful. Richard Laidlaw's new passport passed inspection and I went through customs without incident. As soon as I could on Monday, I went to one of the larger banks and, with half of the $5,000, opened an account under the Laidlaw name. At a different bank, I used the other half to open a second account in the name of Wise Investments, Inc., Richard James Laidlaw of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., sole proprietor, and arranged for all monies that came in to that account to be immediately transferred to the first one. My passport was the only identification required.

The two separate accounts guaranteed untraceability. Bank accounts in the Caymans are sealed, just like those in Swiss banks, a fact that in those days wasn't as well known as it is today. Not even government agencies like the FBI and the IRS can gain access to personal information related to them. Monies held in Caymans banks are also free of corporation and other taxes and are not subject to exchange controls, which allows free transfer of funds in and out of the islands. Richard Laidlaw would have no U.S. tax liability on the sums he moved from the Caymans to his bank on St. Thomas, because that money was already his; he would be simply transferring assets.

The rest of my time on Grand Cayman I soaked up the heat and local attractions, and the blue-water vistas from my hotel balcony—an invigorating foretaste of what was to come. The tropical sun and humidity didn't bother me. From that brief exposure, I knew I would thrive on them.

I still had two vacation days left when I got back to San Francisco. I spent these making the rounds of the six banks and arranging for wire transfers of half the funds in each dummy to the new Wise Investments account in the Caymans. Only one of the bank officers commented on the procedure, but his main concern was the loss of business to his bank, not the transfer itself. The completed transactions fattened the Wise account to more than $250,000.

That weekend I saw Annalise, gave her a report on the Chicago portion of the trip, and handed over her passport and Illinois license and the keys to the South Side apartment. For her protection, I didn't tell her about the trip to Grand Cayman or the new accounts.

July.

Annalise gave notice at Kleinfelt's, saying that she was moving to Seattle at the end of the month to get married. Her apartment was rented on a month-to-month basis, so there was no lease to break; she gave notice there as well. Over that month, she disposed of nearly all her personal belongings, either selling them to acquaintances or giving them away to Goodwill. She kept only the clothing and personal items she could fit into two large suitcases and one small carry-on bag. She held on to her car until the thirtieth, then sold it for the Blue Book price to a Van Ness Avenue dealership. On the thirty-first, she rode a cab to the airport and bought a one-way ticket to Chicago, as before paying in cash and using an assumed name.

The previous weekend was our last together during the preliminary stages. We met at a small hotel on the Monterey coast and wallowed in bed most of the two days. She was nervous and excited about the move, and this translated into tremendous sexual energy. I was worn out by the time we were ready to leave.

"I'm going to miss you so much," she said. "Two and a half months seems like an eternity."

"They'll go by faster than you think. We'll talk on the phone at least once a week."

"I can't make love to the phone."

"Well, you could, but it would probably be painful."

She laughed and nipped my neck. "Messy, too."

I said, "I'll be thinking of you all the time."

"Same here."

"And of how'U it be for us on St. Thomas."

"And of all that lovely money."

August.

I called Annalise from a pay phone the day after she flew to Chicago, to make sure she'd arrived safely and gotten settled into the apartment. She didn't like the place. Statement of fact, not a complaint. There wasn't much about it for anybody to like. I'd explained why I picked it and why it was important for her to establish residence in Chicago well in advance of October 1. She'd be bored and antsy back there alone, but she'd manage all right.

I increased the amounts on each of that month's dummy invoices, to bring the aggregate close to $500,000. The last set, to be put through the following month, would push it well over the half-million-dollar mark, to a final total of $600,000. My motive now wasn't greed so much as added security The more we had, the more I could invest for the future, and the better our new life would be.

Later in the month, I made a careful inspection of my belongings, to be certain I left nothing behind that might help the authorities. There were no recent snapshots or posed photographs of me—no one to take any, no reason for the taking. I did find an envelope of old, mostly black-and-white photos my parents had taken. I'd forgotten I had them, wasn't sure why I'd bothered to save them; I had no sentimental attachment to my family or my past. The photos of me were infant and childhood images, mostly. Three had been snapped in my mid-teens; they showed a four-eyed kid I barely recognized or remembered. Shuffling through them had a depressing effect. I tossed the lot into the trash.

I had also saved my high school senior yearbook. My graduation photo was a fair likeness, but in those days I'd worn nerdy hornrimmed glasses and my hair was in a stiff butch cut that made my ears look larger than they were. Nearly all of the senior-class pix had multiple caption lines; mine had only two. "Activities: Math club. Ambition: To do something important someday."

I laughed long and hard when I read the second line. Oh, Jordan, you teenage schmuck, if you'd only known! I ripped that page out and tore it into little pieces and flushed the pieces down the toilet. The rest of the yearbook went into the trash with the old photos. Investigators would be able to track down another copy, but why make it easy for them?

The only other picture of me in existence was my driver's license photo, four years old. A copy would be on file with the DMV, but it was another fair-only likeness. Average height, average weight, average build, no distinguishing marks or characteristics other than the blue eyes and glasses. Mr. Average. Richard Laidlaw was somebody, Jordan Wise could be anybody.

One other group of items needed to be disposed of. I boxed up the books on the Virgin Islands and my small collection of sailing and seafaring adventure books, and took them around to a trio of secondhand shops, where I traded them for a variety of nondescript fiction and nonfiction hardcovers and paperbacks. These I took back to the apartment and set out on the shelves.

In a new bookstore I bought a history of Mexico and a travel guide to Mexico City. I cracked their spines and thumb-marked and creased some of the pages to make them appear well-read, then tucked them in among the other books. That was the first step in the final phase of the Plan—the laying of a false trail that would lead nowhere.

September.

The closer it got to the end of the month, the more relaxed I became. No trouble sleeping, no worries, not a single tense moment. There is something about overseeing a daring and dangerous scheme like mine, watching all the disparate factors mesh perfectly, that gives you a godlike feeling of power and invincibility. Outwardly I was the same quiet, nondescript individual I'd always been, a small man going about his daily routine among larger men. Inwardly I stood apart from them, towered above them, like a minor deity observing the actions of mere mortals with an amused, winking, sometimes gloating eye.

Annalise grew more and more anxious as time passed. I had to call her two and then three times a week to reassure her, keep her calm and focused. It wasn't that she was losing her nerve; it was the enforced waiting, alone in that shabby apartment in a strange city, imagining all sorts of disaster scenarios in spite of her better judgment. She would be fine when the time came for her part in the final phase, a role that was absolutely vital.

I created, okayed, and passed on the final set of invoices, the last of them on the fifteenth, to ensure payment before the end of the month. As soon as I received notification of deposit from all six banks, I went around to each and closed the account, requesting wire transfers of the funds to the Wise Investments account in the Caymans. To forestall questions and suspicions, and to add an element of confusion for the FBI and insurance investigators, I gave each bank officer a different explanation for the closure and transfer: I was retiring, I was selling the business and buying another, I was moving to New York, Florida, Cozumel, Grand Cayman.

The total score, including the few hundred dollars I had left in my own savings and checking accounts, was $602,496.

I made my last call to Annalise in Chicago on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh. She said, sounding a little breathless, "I leave for Phoenix at noon tomorrow. The woman at the airline said there are plenty of seats, but I made a reservation anyway. Just to be sure."

"Good."

"Did you make yours in San Diego?"

"All taken care of. The name of the motel is—?"

"Greenbriar."

"Phone number?"

She recited it from memory.

"The name I'll be using?"

"Philip Smith."

"Name and address of the garage?"

"Mainline Parking, 1490 Alvarado."

"Details of your route?"

"All memorized. I'll take the maps along, but I don't think I'll need to look at them again."

"Time to call me?"

"Six o'clock Saturday night."

"Sooner if you're ready early," I said. "I'll make sure to be in the room from five o'clock on."

"God, Richard, it's almost over, isn't it?" She had been calling me Richard for months by then, without a slip; Jordan Wise had already ceased to exist for her. "Almost over!"

"This phase. There's still one more."

"I know, but it won't be bad once you're here. I miss you like crazy."

I said I missed her the same way, and we told each to be careful driving. Just before she hung up she said, "Richard, I want you to know . . ." and there was a pause, and then for the first time she said, "I love you."

I held those three words close the rest of the day, took them to bed with me that night.

Friday, September 30.

Jordan Wise went to Amthor Associates for the last time, sat at his desk in Accounting for the last time, finished preparing for the annual October audit for the last time. He went to lunch with Jim Sanderson, exchanged the usual tired complaints with him and the other drudges. And throughout the long, busy day, he stood apart and looked down at them from his superior height and smiled at their dull normalcy and winked at their foolish weekend plans and gloated at the thought of their reactions when they found out what he had done.

At five o'clock he said good-bye to them for the last time, rode the elevator down to the lobby, walked to the parking garage where he had left his car with his one suitcase and one briefcase already locked in the trunk, drove out into the Friday-evening-commute traffic.

And disappeared.