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.