Step seven: I created a second set of invoices along the lines of the first set, with larger total amounts— upwards of $10,000 on both the Darwin Electric account and the West Valley Construction account. After two weeks I sent a couple of the invoices through for payment, since it wasn't uncommon for some of the high-overhead independent contractors to bill on a twice-monthly basis; the other phony invoices went in on the monthly schedule. From then on, I increased the sums of some invoices incrementally, while decreasing others so as not to raise any red flags.
Three weeks after I sent the letter to the Multnomah County courthouse, I received the copy of the birth certificate. In a sense that would have horrified Annalise's religious aunt and sister, Richard James Laidlaw—like Jordan Wise—had been reborn.
Step eight: I took another day's sick leave and drove to Sacramento, where I applied for a Social Security card at the local office in the name of Richard James Laidlaw, using the birth certificate as proof of identity. If I'd been asked why a thirty-four-year-old man was applying for his first card, I had a story ready: I had inherited a large sum of money and now that it was almost depleted, I was forced to go job hunting. But the lie wasn't necessary. The bored clerk looked at the application just long enough to make sure I had filled it in properly.
After another three weeks, I had my second piece of new identification. That completed the first phase of the plan; all the factors in the linked equations were now in place and functioning as designed. Nothing more needed to be done until the following spring.
I spent only one more night at Annalise's apartment, shortly after that first night together. From then on, as far as anyone who knew either of us was concerned, we went our separate ways. It was vital that there be no apparent connection between us over the next year, no contact that could ever be traced. We had to appear to be two people who had dated casually for three months and then drifted apart, like thousands of others in the city. Two things made this easy: Our dates and our relationship
Of course, I couldn't stay away from her for long. She was a fire in my blood. And she proved to me, whenever we were together, that I had evolved substantially in her estimation. The nice, gentle, unexciting mouse had changed into a romantic figure, a man of mystery and danger. I did everything in my power to keep that image sharp. What she felt for me wasn't love, I didn't delude myself about that, but neither was it mere fondness any longer. I was convinced it would continue to grow and deepen, until one day, maybe, it would be love.
We developed a schedule that suited both of us. Once a week, I called her at her apartment, from a pay phone so the calls could never be traced to my home number. Twice a month, we spent a weekend together at a prearranged place well away from the city—the Monterey Peninsula, the Sierra foothills, the Mendocino coast. We decided on the location in advance, picked a motel or lodge from the Triple A guidebook; I made the reservations by pay phone in an assumed name; we drove there in separate cars. Motel registration cards require a car license number, but no clerk ever bothers to check whether the number you write down is the correct one. And of course I always paid cash for the room, meals, gas.
These weekends added spice to our relationship. Assignations, the secret meetings of conspirators. As soon as we were alone together we'd be at each other in bed—two, often three times before we did anything else. If I'd had any concerns that she was sleeping with the other men she was dating, her passion on those weekends would've knocked it right out of my head. She was mine and that made me want her even more. My sex drive matched hers; I was no longer insecure about my performance. Annalise had been sexually active since the age of sixteen and she was a gifted and patient teacher; she helped me evolve from a student into an innovative disciple.
When we weren't making love, or out playing tourist, we talked about the Plan. Plan with a capital P by then: it was the centerpiece of our lives. I kept her apprised of each step, but only in the most general way. 'Everything is in place now,' I would say, 'and the money is starting to accumulate.' And 'The birth certificate came this week.' And 'I'm about to increase the amount of cash coming in each month.' I reiterated that it was for her own protection—the less she knew, the better off she was if anything went wrong.
There was another reason, too. Each little morsel I passed on only whetted her appetite for more. Tantalized her, kept her in a constant state of suspense. It grew into a game, a kind of verbal foreplay. I dropped hints, she begged for more details; and when I refused, she offered to do this or that in bed in exchange for another tidbit of information. But I never gave in. There was no need. We were already doing most of what she offered as it was.
The one thing we did discuss in detail, and often, was where we would go to start our new life together. Annalise's first choice was Paris, then New York, then the French Riviera or one of the Greek islands. None of those places appealed to me. New York was too expensive and the chance of recognition there too great. Paris and the French Riviera were simply too expensive. More than half a million dollars was a small fortune in those days, but you could go through it in a hell of a hurry in overpriced cities or jet-set playgrounds. My objection to a Greek island, to most locales where English was not the primary language and Americans not the primary inhabitants, was that U.S. expatriates with plenty of money and no visible means of support were liable to stand out. The last thing we could afford to do was to attract attention.
She was disappointed, but she understood. When I reminded her that she could pursue her interest in fashion design from anywhere in the world, we moved on to other choices. Bali was one, Tahiti another. I liked those better, but they seemed too remote to Annalise. We both dismissed Hawaii. Too close to San Francisco, too many mainland tourists. And I still remembered how little I'd enjoyed the vacation trip to Maui.
The Caribbean, the Virgin Islands had been my selection all along. They had all the tropical lures of sun and sea and laid-back lifestyle, they were a long way from California and drew relatively few visitors from the West Coast, they'd been U.S. possessions since the 1917 purchase from Denmark, and they were inhabited by English- speaking natives and a large percentage of American expats.
Annalise was dubious at first. 'I don't know anything about the Virgin Islands,' she said. 'Aren't they pretty isolated?'
'Not at all. Close to Puerto Rico. Miami, too, for that matter.'
'Virgins. Why are they called that?'
'Columbus named them Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Virgenes on his second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493. In honor of Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and because there are thousands of islands in the region.'
'Who were all those women?'
'A fourth-century British princess and her sisterhood of maidens. All allegedly raped and massacred in Cologne by marauding Huns.'
'Lovely.'
'The islands are, yes. Wait until you see the guidebooks.'
The Virgins had two other draws for me. One I didn't confide to her because I was afraid it might worry her.
Mixed in with all the positives was an element of risk that held a perverse appeal. The crime of embezzlement as I'd planned mine would violate U.S. banking laws as well as California state laws, and was therefore a federal offense. I would be a federal fugitive; the FBI would come into the case along with state and insurance investigators. If the Plan went off as designed, I had little to fear from any of them. No matter how much manpower went into the investigation, they would have a hell of a time finding me. The perverse appeal lay in the fact that the American Virgins were U.S. federal territory, and that meant the FBI maintained a local branch office there. The prospect of being a federal fugitive living off stolen money in U.S. government territory made me smile every time I thought about it.
The other draw of the Virgin Islands for me I did tell Annalise about. 'That part of the Caribbean offers some of the best sailing in the world,' I said. 'It's the reason a lot of people move there and vacation there.'
'Sailing?' she said.
'I've always wanted to own a boat, learn how to sail.'
