The Crimes of Jordan Wise

RICHARD LAIDLAW DROVE STRAIGHT through to Santa Barbara, with brief stops for gas and a coffee-shop sandwich. Good-bye, Jordan Wise.

There was no hurry, but no reason to dawdle, either. The Plan called for me to be in and out of San Diego no later than Sunday morning. That would leave me another three days, of what I figured to be a five-day grace period, to put two thousand miles between me and California. My failure to show up or call in would not raise any alarm bells at Amthor on Monday or Tuesday, and the auditors weren't likely to catch on to the fraud, or the company executives to notify the authorities, until sometime Wednesday at the earliest. That meant late Wednesday or Thursday before a fugitive warrant was issued and the story broke in the media.

An exhilarating feeling of freedom rode with me that night. I was completely relaxed; driving seemed effortless, the usual Friday-evening traffic snarls a source of amusement rather than irritation. All my senses were heightened: colors and the light-shot darkness intensely vivid, night smells crisp, the classical music on the radio as tonally clear and stirring as if I were sitting close to the orchestra during a live performance.

It was after ten when I stopped at a motel on the southern edge of Santa Barbara. At eight A.M. Saturday, I was back on the highway. Traffic through the San Fernando Valley and LA was relatively light and I made good time. I stopped only once, for gas in Orange County, and rolled into San Diego shortly past noon. I had lunch in Old Town, drove around for a while to kill time, and checked into the Greenbriar Motel as Philip Smith at three thirty.

Annalise called fifteen minutes early, at a quarter to six. She sounded relieved when I answered promptly. "Everything went all right, then?"

"Just as I drew it up."

"I knew it would, but you can't help worrying a little."

I smiled at that. "No, you can't."

"I should've left Phoenix a little earlier than I did," she said. "Desert driving really wears you out."

"What time did you get in?"

"After three."

"You're at the airport motel now?"

"Straight from the garage."

"But you're not calling from your room?"

"Come on, Richard, you know I wouldn't make a mistake like that. I'm in a pay phone in the main terminal lounge. I took the motel shuttle over here."

"What kind of car did you buy?"

"Nineteen seventy-three Mercury Cougar. Blue and white. I had to pay a little more than we planned—almost thirteen hundred dollars. I could've bought something cheaper from one of the smaller lots, but you said there was less risk of getting a lemon from a large dealership."

"The price doesn't matter," I said. "The important thing is that it's reliable."

"Well, so far. Good gas mileage, too."

"Parked where in the garage?"

"Second floor, space number two fifty-six. The keys are in a magnetic holder under the right front fender, the registration's locked in the glove compartment, the parking ticket is on the dash. And there's a full tank of gas. I filled up just before I parked."

"That should do it, then. You're booked on the nine o'clock flight to Chicago?"

"I've already picked up my ticket. Richard?"

"Yes, baby?"

"I hate being this close and not seeing you. I want you so much."

I wanted her, too. But my hunger was not as great as hers after the long separation, not at this point. It was still a long way to Chicago, and there was plenty to do before I got there. First things first. We'd be together soon enough, and I said as much.

"I know we will," she said, "but that doesn't make it any easier now. Get to Chicago as quickly as you can, okay? Take a more direct route."

I said, "I will," but I knew I wouldn't. Every factor to that point had been carried out with perfect precision. There was no compelling reason to change any of the remaining moves. If I did that, I might be inviting bad luck.

Before nine A.M. on Sunday I packed my suitcase, leaving out the theatrical mustache and spirit gum and the bottle of dark-brown hair dye I'd bought in San Francisco. The suitcase went onto the backseat of my car. I put out the "Do Not Disturb" sign and locked the door to Philip Smith's room, keeping the key. Then I drove the short five blocks to the Mainline Parking Garage.

This early, the second floor had no sign of life and was mostly empty of parked cars. I pulled into the space next to the one marked 256. The Mercury Cougar had a coating of dust, but was otherwise nondescript and in good condition for its age. The tires had plenty of tread, I noticed as I went around to the front and collected the keys. I opened the trunk, transferred my suitcase inside, locked it again, and then drove my car down to the first-floor exit. The sleepy attendant took my money without even glancing at me.

From the garage I headed to the airport, which in San Diego fronts on the bay and is virtually downtown; flights in and out pass over and between some of the taller skyscrapers. I left the car in long-term parking, locked but with the keys on the floor inside and empty of anything I didn't want found in it. A shuttle bus took me to the main terminal, where I boarded another bus that brought me back into the city center. By then I was hungry; I took the time to eat breakfast in a cafe on Broadway. It was a short walk from there to the Greenbriar Motel.

In Philip Smith's room, I washed and dyed my hair, dried it, combed it. Put on the mustache and the tinted contact lenses. Tucked the bottles of dye and spirit gum into my jacket pocket. Left the room key on the dresser; I'd paid cash in advance, so there was no need to go through the usual checkout ritual. The courtyard was deserted when I stepped out of the room. I walked the five blocks to Mainline Parking. When I drove the Mercury down, the attendant in the exit booth paid no more attention to me than he had earlier.

Like Annalise, I had memorized all the necessary street and freeway routes. Even after twenty-seven years, I could tell you my course out of the city with reasonable accuracy. It was a few minutes past noon when I turned off Highway 8 onto Highway 15, heading north—right on schedule.

The long drive from San Diego to Chicago was one of the y factors in the equation. The unexpected is always a possibility during a two-thousand-mile cross-country driving trip. A chance accident. Some sort of mechanical problem with the car that couldn't be fixed. Annalise had bought the Mercury from a reputable dealer, it had performed for her on the desert drive from Phoenix, and it seemed to handle well enough for me as I wheeled north through Escondido and Riverside. But it had 67,000 miles on the odometer and there was no way of knowing whether the engine and transmission had been mistreated by a previous owner or whether it would hold up for the duration.

All I could do was take normal precautions and trust my judgment and my instincts. Which meant driving carefully and defensively, keeping to a sedate twenty-five on city streets, never exceeding the posted freeway speed limits, observing all traffic laws to a fault. And I checked oil and water levels and tire pressure every time I pulled into a service station to refill the gas tank.

That first day I followed Highway 15 on its eastern loop through Barstow and across the Mojave Desert into Nevada. It was late afternoon when I reached Las Vegas. I wasn't tired and the car continued to run smoothly; I could have kept on going all the way through Nevada, maybe even across the southwestern corner of Arizona into Utah. Instead, I stopped at a motel on the eastern outskirts of Vegas, and had dinner before putting through a collect call to Annalise from a pay phone to make sure she'd gotten back all right and to let her know where I was.

The run to Chicago took four more days. I could have made it in three if I'd pushed it, but the Plan called for four. Too many hours behind the wheel invites mistakes in judgment.

Monday: across Nevada and the northwestern corner of Arizona, then up the middle of Utah to Salt Lake City and Highway 80. I found a bookstore in a shopping center near my motel and bought a new, comprehensive Virgin Islands guidebook and another book on Caribbean cruising, to replace the ones I'd had to give up. Appetite-whetters, and far more enjoyable nighttime diversions than anything television had to offer.

Tuesday: straight across Wyoming and southern Nebraska. In a motel coffee shop outside North Platte, the young waitress and the middle-aged cashier both smiled at me—genuine smiles, not the meaningless lip-stretch variety most women give male strangers. Jordan Wise had been insubstantial, as transparent as a jellyfish; women of all ages looked right through him, never saw him at all. Richard Laidlaw was solid, with the kind of self-assured swagger that comes from a strong nature. Women saw him, all right, and felt his power, and responded accordingly.

Wednesday: northeast to Omaha, through Iowa to Des Moines. The Merc was still running smoothly, the time spent on highways and city streets uneventful.

Thursday: Chicago.

It was late afternoon when I reached the city, almost five by the time I got to the South Side apartment. I'd called Annalise the night before, with an approximate arrival time; she was waiting for me with champagne on ice and candles burning and her fine body naked under a terrycloth robe. Thirty seconds after I walked in, the robe was off and she had my fly unzipped and my cock in her hand.

The story had broken in the media that morning. Annalise had scouted a newsdealer not far from the apartment that sold out-of-town newspapers, and all week she'd kept an eye on the Chicago papers and on both San Francisco rags, the morning Chronicle and the afternoon Examiner. The crime hadn't made much of a splash in the Midwest; the Tribune carried a brief account on an inside page. In the Chronicle, of course, it was front-page news. We lay in bed, sipping champagne as I read the account.

Boldface headline: HUGE AMTHOR EMBEZZLEMENT. Smaller sub-head: "Accountant Vanishes with Six-Figure Sum." Jordan Wise's driver's license photo hadn't been released yet, just his Everyman description. The auditors had discovered the theft on Wednesday, confirmed the scope of it by late afternoon, and were still working to assess the total amount of the loss. Both the local authorities and the FBI had been called in and a fugitive warrant had been issued. Amthor officials were shocked, stunned. A vice president was quoted as saying, "There is no way we could have anticipated anything like this. In the ten years Wise worked for Amthor, he had a spotless record."

Annalise clung to me, her eyes as bright and hot as the candle flames. "It says the theft might run upwards of three hundred thousand."

"Early estimate. It'll take them a while to come up with the full amount."

"How much is it, exactly?"

"Six hundred and two thousand, four hundred and ninety-six dollars."

"My God!" She jabbed her finger at the boldface headline. "You did it, Richard, you did it!"

"We did it," I said.

"No, all I did was what you told me to. The Plan was yours. You made us rich!"

"Did you ever doubt I would?"

"Never. Sometimes I wished the time would go by faster, but that's all. I thought the year would never end."

"You won't have to wait much longer."

"Six more weeks," Annalise said. "And six hundred thousand dollars. Just thinking about all that money gives me chills." She wasn't exaggerating. Her arms were covered with goosebumps. "Tell me the details. You said you would."

"Right now?"

"I'm dying to know. Everything. Don't leave anything out."

I explained each of the factors that I'd kept from her. She pouted a little when I told her about the two Cayman accounts.

"You didn't put my name on them? Why not?"

"Same reason I withheld the details. For your protection in case anything goes wrong."

"But we can add it now, can't we? After we get to St. Thomas?"

"There's no reason to," I said. "We'll have a joint bank account and I'll arrange for regular transfers of funds—more than enough to cover anything we'll want or need."

"Well. . ."

"Just let me handle the financial end. You reap the rewards. And keep making me happy in and out of bed."

"Oh, I'll do that, all right," she promised. She reached down for me again. "You'll be the happiest man in the entire Caribbean."

The crime remained front-page news in the San Francisco papers for two more days. I can still quote those headlines verbatim too: AMTHOR THEFT TOPS HALF-MILLION MARK. WISE MANHUNT INTENSIFIES. The Chronicle carried the driver's license photo on Friday, the evening Examiner in their Saturday edition. Annalise laughed when she brought the Chronicle and pointed out the photo. "That doesn't look anything like Jordan," she said, "much less Richard." She was right. The newsprint reproduction was grainy, the oh-so-average features made even more indistinguishable. I barely recognized the face myself.

Grudging superlatives littered the articles. Bold. Daring. Ingenious. Brilliant. And my favorite: audacious. Each was like a sip of strong wine. So were the quotes from law enforcement officials and Amthor executives and employees. "Pursuing several strong leads to Wise's whereabouts." "Won't rest until he's apprehended." "Prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law." One, by Jim Sanderson, made me laugh out loud: "I worked with Jordan for nearly ten years. He was such a quiet, unassuming guy. I still can't believe he had the nerve to do something like this."

News stories the next two days, mainly rehashes, ran on inside pages. Then Jordan Wise was back on the front page again, down toward the bottom with a smaller headline: "Embezzler's Car Found." FBI officials, the account said, were working to trace Wise's activities after his car was found abandoned at San Diego International Airport. Speculation as to his present whereabouts ran along the false trail I'd laid: he had either taken a flight under an assumed name or used some other means of transportation to leave the area, with Mexico his most likely destination.

That was the last of the front-page stories. Inside pages off and on again for a time—"No New Leads in Wise Case"—and then, less than two weeks after the story broke, nothing at all. The FBI doesn't advertise its frustrations; neither do other law enforcement agencies. And there are too many new crimes, too many world crises and natural disasters, too much political chicanery for one man's white-collar crime, even one that has netted him $600,000, to feed the public's hunger for sensationalism for long.

We were home free.

During the first week I stayed put inside the apartment, reading, listening to music, while Annalise ran all the errands. A precaution, mainly. The local papers had also run the driver's license photo, on inside pages, and though there was no reason for anyone in Chicago to think Jordan Wise might be in their midst, it was safer not to be seen in public just yet. The other reason I stayed in was that I was growing a mustache to match the shape and thickness of the theatrical one. After seven days it had filled out enough to look right when colored with the dark-brown hair dye.

My first day out I went to the Mutual Trust branch and arranged for the transfer of $17,000 from the Caymans account to our joint checking account. After that I began going out with Annalise at night, twice that second week, to dinner in dimly lighted restaurants and then to a neighborhood movie theater. If anyone paid attention to us, it was only admiring male looks aimed at her. Alongside Annalise, I was virtually invisible.

Living with her in the close confines of the apartment was a spartan dry run for our life together on St. Thomas. We hadn't spent more than three consecutive days together at any point during the previous year, and those weekend getaways had been all fun and games. It took us a while to get used to being with each other on a daily basis.

Everyone has habits that amuse or irritate others, little idiosyncrasies that don't crop up in casual circumstances. I'd known that she was something of a neatness freak, but not that she was compulsive about it. She was constantly straightening, arranging, picking up, and she chastised me every time I left a glass or dish unwashed or an article of clothing lying around. She drank a little too much, Scotch as well as wine; kept prodding me to get high with her, turned pouty when I didn't and playful to the point of silliness when I did. She was easily bored, used sex to ward off boredom and restlessness, had a tendency to become sullen when she didn't get her way. On the plus side, she was easy to talk to, knowledgeable about more subjects than I'd imagined and filled with an endearing, almost childlike enthusiasm whenever she talked about the Caribbean or showed off one of her new dress designs. At times, in spite of myself, I felt toward her as I'd felt toward Jim Sanderson and the other Amthor employees—as if she were a mortal and I was a higher power, benign and tolerant in my love for her, but superior nonetheless.

The longer I stayed cooped up in that confined space and that downscale neighborhood, the more sympathy I had for Annalise. Three weeks was bad enough; three months must have been torturous. Cabin fever breeds friction, and when we began to get on each other's nerves, snap at each other for no good reason, I got us out of there. It was almost the end of October. There was no need to delay rejoining society on a regular basis.

Over the next three weeks we took day trips in and around Chicago—to museums, the Adler Planetarium, Jackson Park, Monroe Harbor, the wealthy suburbs of Lake Forest and Evanston. We made overnight trips to Milwalikee and the sand dunes region along Lake Michigan. We went to movies, plays, the Chicago Symphony at Orchestra Hall. We shopped at Marshall Field's and a couple of the exclusive women's shops on Michigan Avenue, so Annalise could buy outfits appropriate for the tropics. On November 15, we saw a travel agent and booked her flight to St. Thomas and hotel accommodations in Charlotte Amalie, and my flight to join her a month later. We were two people among millions, faceless, unnoticed, safe and secure enough, yet buoyed by the ever-present danger of recognition. It was that note of danger, as much as escape from the apartment, that put us back on the same close-knit plane as before. The friction disappeared. So did my feeling of superiority.

As the day of her leaving approached, she was like a kid in her excitement. She talked nonstop, making plans, discussing the kind of home we should have and where it should be located and what amenities it should have. I wanted her to pick it out, make all the preliminary arrangements—that was part of the reason for her moving to St. Thomas a month ahead of me. I kept telling her I'd be happy anywhere she was happy, and I meant it. Living space and all its trappings mattered more to her than they did to me.

Two days before her flight, we took the Mercury to a South Side dealership and sold it for $800 cash. Another $1,500 to cover her immediate expenses in St. Thomas came out of our joint safe deposit box. Our last night together we made love three times, and in the morning I rode the taxi with her to O'Hare to see her off.

She called the following night at a prearranged time, full of news and glowing praise. She'd opened a bank account, her first order of business, and she already had an appointment with a real estate agent to look at houses for lease. She loved the island, the weather, everything about the Caribbean. "You were right, Richard," she said. "We're going to be so happy here."

The next morning I went to the Mutual Trust branch and had $15,000 wired to our new account in Charlotte Amalie. Then I called a small brokerage house I'd picked out and made an appointment with an investment counselor. The broker turned out to be discreet as well as knowledgable, the more so when I told him how much money I intended to invest. We spent two hours discussing various possibilities and the current state of the stock market, and he gave me a stack of literature and performance charts to comb through.

Annalise called again that night. "I found the perfect house for us," she said. "Absolutely perfect!"

"Tell me about it."

"It's on the hillside above town, the oldest and most exclusive residential district on the island. A seventy-five-year-old villa just dripping with charm. Tile floors, beam ceilings, everything you could want, including a small garden and a cobblestoned terrace with a fabulous view of the harbor. Cobblestones! Can you believe that? Of course it's small, only two bedrooms, and the garden has been neglected, but we could put up with that."

"Sure we could."

"It's only been available since the end of last month and the agent says it won't last long. And it's vacant, I could move in right away." She paused before she said, "But there's one drawback."

"Let me guess. It's expensive."

"Yes. Because of the view and the location."

"How expensive?"

"Twenty-five hundred a month on a two-year fixed lease. Can we afford that much?"

"I don't see why not."

"Richard! Do you mean it? Are you sure?"

I said, "I'll never deny you anything you really want, you know that."

She said, "God, I love you!"

The apartment was lonely as hell without her. I got out as often as I could, shopped, went to movies, wandered through parks, took bus rides to various parts of the city. In the evenings I made a careful study of the literature and charts the investment counselor had given me, and an informed decision as to which mutual funds and blue-chip stocks best suited Annalise's and my long-term needs. Then I arranged another meeting with the broker and opened an account for the purchase of the selected funds and stocks with a wire transfer of $150,000 from Richard Laidlaw's Cayman account. I told him that I would be moving shortly to the Virgin Islands and requested that all dividend checks be sent to the Cayman account, all business correspondence to me at my new address in Charlotte Amalie.

The portfolio was fairly conservative, with as much guarantee as it was possible to have of substantial income. A third of the dividends would be reinvested in more shares and mutual funds; the balance would supplement the cost of our new lifestyle. Later, once I was sure I had made the right investment choices, and over a period of time, I planned to invest another $150,000. Eventually we might be able to live comfortably off the dividends alone, preserving what was left in the Cayman account for special needs. Richard Laidlaw would have to pay income tax on dividends that exceeded $600 per year, to prevent the IRS from sniffing around, but the annual tariff wouldn't amount to much even in windfall years.

There was not much else left for me to do in Chicago. I informed the landlord at the end of November that I would be vacating the premises on December 15. A few days before I was due to leave, I closed the Mutual Trust account and had the remaining balance wired to the bank in Charlotte Amalie; I also emptied the safe deposit box of the last of the cash and turned in the key.

One final errand. In an exclusive jewelry store in the Loop I bought Annalise's Christmas present: a $2,000 white-gold wedding ring with a two-carat diamond setting, to replace the plain gold band I'd given her after our Nevada marriage.

She called four more times during that period. She had leased the house, moved in, hired a gardener to cure the garden's neglect. She'd bought a car for a good price, a two-year-old Mini, "a cute little thing, what everybody down here drives." She'd met some of our neighbors and become friendly with one couple in particular, the Verrikers, Royce and Maureen. "He was born here; his people came down from Miami before World War II. He's a divorce lawyer, but not the sleazy kind. St. Thomas is sort of the Reno of the Caribbean, a lot of women come here to get divorces, did you know that? That's how he met Maureen, she was one of his clients five years ago." She'd been invited to a party at the home of another couple, the Kyles, where she'd met several other locals. "I told everyone about you, the story that you made enough in the stock market so we could move down here, I mean, and that you'll be here before Christmas. They can't wait to meet you."

Chicago had stifled her, but in St. Thomas she had found her element—established herself among the kind of people she related to and the kind of society she aspired to belong to. Her natural charm and friendliness led everyone to accept her without question, which in turn would lead them to accept me.

Her enthusiasm was infectious. As the day of departure neared, I grew more and more eager. My bags were packed a day early. I didn't sleep much the night before—left the shabby confines of the apartment and took a taxi to O'Hare four hours before my flight.

How did I feel that day?

Like I had the world by the tail, man. Like I could ride it anywhere, ride it forever, and nothing and nobody could ever tear me loose.