The Crimes of Jordan Wise

future. I didn't blame her for pointing it out, or resent her for cutting me out of her life. How could I? If our positions had been reversed, I would probably have done the same thing.

But I couldn't get rid of the idea; it had already put down roots. The enormity of it and its potential consequences terrified me, yet at the same time it was fascinating, energizing. It gave me something to focus on, a way to lift myself out of the mire of depression and self-pity. All right, I thought, so I wasn't capable of actually doing it. I could still treat it as if I were. Determine whether or not it could be done. An intellectual exercise, like solving sophisticated puzzles and cryptograms.

For the next two weeks I worked on the problem every weeknight and all day Saturday and Sunday. I approached it mathematically, as a complex algebraic equation. Only in this case it was a problem I had to design myself, in its entirety, in order to arrive at a viable solution. I broke it down into two main linked equations: how to appropriate the money, and how to disappear with it without getting cought. The first was the easier to construct, with fewer corollary difficulties; the second was the harder, with more corollaries. I worked on the equations one at a time, shaping and building each with care and noting the corollaries on separate sheets of paper. Once I had the basics in place, I addressed the secondary problems individually, working on each in turn until I had its solution and then plugging it into the main equation.

By the end of the first week, it was no longer an intellectual exercise but a solid possibility. By the end of the second week, it had become a probability.

I knew something else by then, too: it not only could be done, I was capable of doing it.

Annalise hadn't been right, after all. I was not just an accountant who would always be an accountant; I was not a nice, unexciting guy who was too timid to take risks. Not any more. The enormity of the plan and its potential consequences no longer frightened me. If by some chance I was cought and sent to prison, life behind bars couldn't be much worse than the restrictive life I'd been leading behind invisible bars of my own construction.

I saw myself as I really was. And discovered my dark side.

I went over the equations half a dozen times, factor by factor, backchecking, refining. There was room for further refinement, but in the main they were flawless except for two factors. One was a y factor: the unforeseen mishap, like a submerged rock in shoal water, that could rip the bottom out of any plan—bad luck, coincidence, miscalculation. The other was a missing x factor.

There was nothing to be done in advance to forestall a y factor. The x factor was essential; it had to be added to the equations to make them complete and functional. The x factor was Annalise.

I could do it for her, but I couldn't do it without her.

I called her the Wednesday after the company audit was completed. She wasn't happy to hear from me, that was plain enough from her voice, but neither did she sound angry or hostile. A little exasperated was all.

'Why are you calling?' she said. 'I meant what I said at Perry's.'

'I need to see you,' I said.

'No, Jordan. It wouldn't do either of us any good.'

'As soon as possible. It's important. Very important.'

'There's nothing you can say to make me change my mind.'

'One hour of your time, that's all I'm asking.'

'So you can plead and beg? I couldn't stand it.'

'I'm all through with that kind of thing,' I said. 'What I have to say I think you're going to want to hear.'

'And that is?'

'When I see you.'

She sighed. 'Oh, all right. Tomorrow night at Perry's, after work.'

'No,' I said. 'It has to be your apartment or mine.'

'Why? Why are you being so mysterious?'

'I'm not. This talk has to be in person and in private. You'll understand why when you hear it.'

'I don't know . . .'

'One hour. You can stop me any time, and I'll leave you alone and never bother you again.'

'You mean that?'

'I swear it.'

Annalise gave in finally. She'd be home tomorrow night, she said, I could come by for a few minutes then. I said I'd be there at seven.

'You'd better not make me regret this, Jordan.'

'If anybody regrets it,' I said, 'it'll be me.'

She wasn't wearing white this time. Blue jeans, an old blue sweater, floppy slippers. Face scrubbed free of makeup, hair tousled. A large glass of white wine in one hand and a flush to her skin and shine to her eyes that told me at least two other glasses had preceded it. All a calculated effort, I was sure, to make herself appear unattractive to me. It didn't work. She could have been caked with dirt and wearing a sack and I still would have wanted her.

Music throbbed through the apartment, the kind of heavy rock I'd told her I didn't much care for. That was intentional, too. She didn't look at me directly when she let me in, didn't ask if I wanted a drink. Just went straight to one of the chairs and sat down. The chair was separated from the other furniture, so that I couldn't sit next to her if that was my intention.

It wasn't. I sat on the couch across from her. 'Could you turn the music down a little?'

'It's not that loud.'

'It is for what I have to say.'

She shrugged and got up to lower the volume on her stereo. When she came back to the chair, she looked at me directly for the first time and what she saw seemed to surprise her. 'You look . . . different,' she said.

'I am different,' I said. 'That's why I'm here.'

'Well, go ahead, then. I'm listening.'

I had already worked out the best approach to take, and on the basis of what she'd told me at Perry's I was reasonably sure I knew how she'd react. But I could have been wrong. People are seldom as predictable as they seem to be; I was living proof of that. It depended on how much she cared for me, if she still cared for me at all, and on just how much larcency there was in her. If she took it badly and sent me packing, I would have to admit she was lost to me and learn to deal with it. And scrap the entire scheme, or revise it to exclude her. To this day, I'm not sure which I would've done.

I said, 'The last time we saw each other, you said you were fond of me. Did you mean that?'

'Of course I meant it. I don't say things I don't mean.'

'How fond?'

'I can't answer that. Fond is fond.'

'Fond enough to be with me if I could give you money, luxury, travel, excitement?'

'Be with you?'

'Long-term. Exclusively.'

'Oh, God, I don't know. What difference does it make?'

'Answer the question, Annalise.'

I said it sharply, more sharply than I'd ever spoken to her. She narrowed her eyes and bit her lip before she said, 'I don't love you the way you love me, you know that. I don't know that I ever could.'

'But you could try. Given the right circumstances.'

'Will it make you feel better if I say yes?'

'If you mean it.'

'All right. Yes, I could be with you. It just isn't possible.'

'It is possible.'

'I don't see how.'

'You said you'd didn't care what you had to do to get the things you want, as long as you got them. Did you mean that?'