“Is that right?”
“Books, stories, magazine articles. Down here from New York to look for material, soak up a little local color.”
“And you think I might qualify in the color department. Rumpled, unshaven, rum-soaked — a character.”
“Well, I’ll admit you interest me.”
Jocko brought the drinks and I had some of mine.
“I’m staying up at Coral Bay,” Talley said. “I like St. John better than St. Thomas and this side of the island better than Cruz Bay. Fewer people, none of the conventional tourist atmosphere.”
“So do I. For the same reasons.”
“Been in the Virgins long?”
“Twenty years. Almost twenty-one.”
“Practically a native. You live out here on the tip?”
I nodded. “Saltbox up by Hansen’s Bay.”
“What’s a saltbox?”
“Small square house. Cheap rent.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I don’t do anything,” I said.
“You mean you’re out of work?”
“No. I mean I don’t do anything. Except come here to Jocko’s every day.”
“Retired?”
“No.”
“Independent means?”
“No.”
“Then how do you make ends meet, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I emptied my glass, watching the pleasure boats. Catamarans, mostly. Ketches, sloops, a couple of yawls. A big motor-sailer flying a British flag was making down around the point from Hurricane Hole. It’d be cool out there on her foredeck. The trades were blowing soft today.
“Sorry if I seem nosy,” Talley said. “Writers tend to be that way. Nature of the beast.”
“You really want to know how I make ends meet?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“I stole some money once,” I said.
“You... what?”
“Embezzled it, to be exact. There’s still a little left. That’s what I live on.”
Talley moved in his chair, making it scrape on the rough tile floor. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel the pressure of his eyes.
He said, “Are you serious?”
“I’m always serious.”
“How much money did you embezzle?”
“Nearly half a million dollars.”
“My God! You actually got away with that much?”
“That’s right.”
“When? How long ago?”
“Twenty-one years.”
“And you were never caught?”
“Never close to being caught.”
“How did you do it? Where?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “And talking’s thirsty work.”
He signaled to Jocko.
I didn’t say anything until I had a fresh glass in front of me. Then I said, “I was an accountant for an engineering firm in San Francisco, one of the largest in the west. I worked there for ten years. Lived a quiet life alone in a furnished apartment. No vices. Exemplary record. Completely trustworthy employee.”
“What changed you into an embezzler?”
“Combination of things. A woman I wanted and couldn’t have without a lot of money. Dreams of living a life of luxury in the tropics, never having to work anymore. The realization of how easy it would be, given my position with the firm. The challenge of planning it, setting it up, getting away with it.”
“How did you go about it?”
“My job was in accounts payable,” I said, “authorizing the payment of invoices from the firm’s various subcontractors. I set up several dummy companies and arranged for the submission of monthly invoices of small to moderate sums, never more than a few thousand dollars, and authorized payment into dummy bank accounts. Then I opened a private account in the Cayman Islands and funneled the money into it a little at a time. I went about it all very carefully, very methodically. It took me a year to embezzle a total of $480,000. And to establish an untraceable new identity and make the necessary arrangements to disappear, so I would be free to spend it. When the time came, the Friday afternoon before the annual audit was scheduled, I left San Francisco and spent nearly two months traveling across country by car, train, bus, and plane, using assumed names and different disguises. Then I used my new identity to get to St. Thomas — no trouble at all. Annalise had already been in Charlotte Amalie a month by then—”
“Annalise? Oh, the woman. She was in on it, then?”
“Oh yes. From the first. She found the project as exciting as I did.”
“Project. That’s a nice way of putting it.”
I shrugged. “She rented a villa, a large one at Limetree Beach, and let it be known that her husband would be joining her shortly. By the time I arrived she’d made several friends in the community — she had that knack. I was accepted immediately, without question.”
“You never came under any kind of scrutiny?”
“No. Annalise and I did nothing to call undue attention to ourselves. And I was thinner than I’d been in San Francisco, I’d let my hair grow long and wore a moustache — I looked nothing at all like the embezzling accountant. We had no difficulty settling into the luxury lifestyle I’d always coveted — parties, fine dining, catering servants. I bought an old yawl and learned to sail, and we visited some of the other Caribbean islands, alone and with other couples. I had everything I ever wanted. I thought I had the world by the tail.”
“But then the money ran out, is that it?”
“No. We spent a lot, yes, but I’d also invested a third of the original sum — wisely enough so that we had a steady supplementary income.”
“Then what did happen?” Talley asked.
“For a long time nothing happened. That was the problem.”
“I don’t understand.”
I said, “You can change your financial status, your environment, your lifestyle, but you can’t change your basic nature. You’re still the same person. I led a dull, conservative life in San Francisco. Once the newness and the excitement wore off, I led a dull, conservative life in Charlotte Amalie. Even with the investments, we couldn’t afford to live as we were indefinitely; I began to worry enough to start cutting back. Over a period of time we stopped traveling, stopped giving parties and being invited to parties, stopped going out to restaurants and clubs. The friends we’d made drifted away one by one. I lost interest in sailing and sold the yawl. I had no other hobbies or interests and neither did Annalise. After the sixth year all we were doing was staying home by ourselves, drinking too much and watching the sunsets.”
“How did Annalise deal with that?”
“She hated it. We were barely communicating by then.”
“I suppose eventually she left you.”
“I knew she would. She started going out by herself every night, staying out late, and I just let her do it. One night she didn’t come home at all. I never saw her again.”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I heard rumors that she went to Martinique with the owner of a yacht brokerage.”
“But you didn’t bother to find out.”
“There didn’t seem to be any reason to.”
“What did you do after she left?”
“Nothing for a time. But the villa was too big and too expensive for one person, so I moved to a smaller place. The owner raised the rent after the first year and I moved again, an even smaller place near Frenchtown.”
“Still alone?”
“Yes. There has been no one else in my life since Annalise.”
“How long did you stay on St. Thomas?”
“Another two years. The tourist explosion had started by then and prices had skyrocketed. So I left the island for good.”
“And came over to St. John?”
“No. St. Croix first. But my cottage there was burglarized one night, everything of value I had left stolen — everything except my bank books, which were hidden. That was when I moved to St. John. A bungalow in Coral Bay, then the saltbox at Hansen’s.”