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.