The Crimes of Jordan Wise

'I don't read much.'

'You're not alone there,' Talley says ruefully. 'I'm between projects now. Down here on vacation and to soak up a little local color.'

'And you think I might qualify in the color department. Rumpled, unshaven, rumsoaked—an old character.'

'Well, I'll admit you interest me. My sixth sense says you might have a story to tell.'

'Everybody's got a story to tell.'

'But only a few are worth listening to.'

Jocko brings the drinks and I taste some of mine. Out of the corner of my eye I see a sleek blue-and-white ketch tack in from the sea, her Dacron sails fat with wind. Forty-footer with a clipper bow and enough beam to handle weather in blue water. She reminds me of Windrunner. A little larger, and Windrunner was a yawl, but the two types are similarly rigged. It'd be cool out there on her foredeck. The trades are blowing today.

'I'm staying up at Coral Bay,' Talley says. '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 a long time, have you?'

'Twenty-seven years.'

'Practically a native. You live out here on the tip?'

'That's right. A saltbox not far away'

'What's a saltbox?'

'Small square house. Cheap rent.'

'Mind if I ask what you do for a living?'

'I don't do anything,' I say.

'You mean you're out of work?'

'No. I mean I don't do anything. Except come here to Jocko's most days.'

'Retired?'

'No.'

'Independent means?'

'No.'

'Then how do you make ends meet?'

I empty my glass. The blue-and-white ketch glides up toward Hurricane Hole, passing a big motor sailer flying the British flag. Her sails and bright work gleam in the hard glare of the sun.

After a time I say, 'You want to know about me? All right, I'll tell you. Here's the short version: I moved down here after committing a crime, a perfect crime. Later on, I committed two more. Three perfect crimes over a period of about six years.'

Talley sits still, his beer bottle poised halfway between us. His eyes reflect sharp interest for a few seconds. Then his mouth quirks and he lowers the bottle to the table.

'You're putting me on,' he says.

'Am I?'

'Three perfect crimes?'

'That's right.'

'One would be a hell of a trick. But three?'

I smile. 'Damn few people can make that claim.'

'If it's the truth. What kind of crimes?'

'Oh, they were all major felonies.'

'And you got away with them?'

'I wouldn't be sitting here if I hadn't. That's what 'perfect crime' means, doesn't it?'

'You must've been born lucky, then,' Talley says.

'Lucky? Well, luck had something to do with it. Other factors, too. But mainly it was ingenuity All three, in one way or another, were creative as hell. If I do say so myself.'

'You made money from these crimes?'

'Just the first one. A small fortune.'

'But the money ran out, is that it? Or you squandered it.'

'Wrong on both counts. I still have a fair amount left. That's how I make ends meet.'

He frowns. 'Then what're you doing living way out here on the cheap, spending your days drinking in a place like this?'

'That's the long version of the story.'

'And I suppose you wouldn't care to provide details.'

'I didn't say that.'

'So you are willing? Why?'

'Why not?'

'Oh, I get it,' Talley says. 'After more than twenty years, the statutes of limitation on your crimes have run out.'

I don't answer. The motor sailer has cought my eye again. I watch it move down the bay, cleaving the water smoothly, her wake a long smear of cream on the dark blue surface. I have always preferred sailing vessels— ketches, yawls, schooners—to those big power yachts, but there is something majestic about any boat taking the sun on her way out to sea. For a few seconds, I feel a stir of the old yearning. But it doesn't last long. It never does.

'Wise? Did you hear me?'

I look at Talley again. He taps a small device he has taken from the pocket of his shirt. 'Voice-activated tape recorder,' he says. 'Of course I won't use anything you say without your permission. I'll give you a signed statement to that effect—'

I wave that away. 'Go ahead and turn it on. But it'll take a while to tell it the way it needs to be told.'

'I've got plenty of time. And a spare cassette.'

'Talking's thirsty work.'

Talley says, 'So's listening,' and signals to Jocko for another round.

When I have a full glass in front of me, I say, 'From the beginning, then. The summer of 1977, when I met Annalise . . .'

SAN FRANCISCO

1977

NONE OF IT would have happened if I hadn't met Annalise. Sure, I know—that's the way a lot of stories start. Mister, I met a man once. Mister, I met a woman once. You go along living a normal life, more or less on the moral high road, and then you meet the wrong person and suddenly everything changes and you find yourself losing control, running against the wind. It's almost a cliche. Hell, it is a cliche.

But it wasn't like that with me. Annalise was no Circe-like temptress luring me to ruin. The reverse was true, in fact. I was the one in the helmsman's seat all along. The tempter on the first crime, the prime mover on all three. She was the catalyst. If it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't have and couldn't have done any of them.

Yet I didn't corrupt her, any more than she corrupted me. I don't believe one person can corrupt another by intent alone. I think you have to be born with the capacity to commit acts of what some might term moral anarchy; to possess a dark side that you might not even be aware of until the right set of circumstances reveals it. If you meet another person who has the same sort of dark side, as Annalise and I did, fusing the two spreads the darkness through both, until they're consumed by it. Like when you mix chemical agents that individually are harmless but that together produce a volatile reaction.

I was thirty-four when I met her, the summer of 1977. But before I get to that, I should give you a little