The Crimes of Jordan Wise

'You never told me that before.'

'Just a dream until now.'

'Well, I don't know, Jordan—'

'Richard.' I'd asked her to call me by that name on these weekend getaways. The sooner it became second nature to her, the less likely she would slip up later on.

'Yes, right—Richard. Somehow I just can't see you in a yachting cap at the wheel of a sailboat.'

'Helm,' I said.

'What?'

'At the helm of a sailboat. I can see myself there, maybe not in a yachting cap but on my own boat. A schooner, maybe even a ketch or yawl. All I have to do is close my eyes.'

'Well, I don't much care for boats,' she said. 'The one time I went out on one, on the Bay, I got seasick.'

'The Bay waters tend to be choppy. That's not usually the case in the Caribbean. There's a lot of shoal water down there.'

'What's shoal water?'

'Shallow water. Calm and placid. Everybody's a good sailor in the Virgins, they say.'

'I'll take your word for it. Personally I prefer dry land.'

'You won't feel that way once we get there.'

Later, on another of our weekend getaways, I bought her a Virgin Islands guidebook and a coffee-table book of photographs of the U.S. and British Virgins. Annalise's enthusiasm for the region increased when she read through them. Subtropical climate with temperatures that seldom varied from the average of 79 to 88 degrees in the summer and 72 to 82 degrees in the winter, and an annual rainfall of only 27 inches. Sun worshipper's paradise: white-sand beaches, coral reefs, deserted palm-fringed cays, placid waters in ever-changing shades of blue and green. Plus stately homes and old forts and ancient pirate strongholds. Nobody with an imagination and a yen for adventure and excitement could resist this part of the world.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, before the winter snows made driving through the Sierras difficult, we met in South Lake Tahoe and then went down to Carson City together and applied for a marriage license. Annalise Bonner and Richard James Laidlaw were married that afternoon by a justice of the peace.

We had a champagne wedding supper at the Ormsby House, then drove back to South Lake Tahoe and bought another bottle and consummated the union. Afterward we lay in bed and drank champagne and toasted the future.

'How do you like being married?' I asked her.

'So far, it's terrific,' she said. 'But my God—Annalise Bonner Laidlaw. It doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue, does it?'

'I like it,' I said. 'It has class. An East Coast, old-money, finishing-school kind of name.'

'You think so?'

'Absolutely. Mine's not bad either.'

'Well. . . maybe.'

I smiled. 'Laidlaw is perfect, in fact. I couldn't have found a better surname.'

'How do you figure that?'

'Exactly what we're doing, isn't it? Laying the law?'

She burst out laughing. So did I. We laughed so hard she got the hiccups and spilled champagne on my belly. She leaned down and began to lick it off, laughing and hiccuping the whole time, and that led to a second round of lovemaking—'laying each other like we're laying the law,' she said, which started us giggling and her hiccuping again right in the middle of it.

I think that weekend may have been our happiest time together. I know it was for me.

We spent Christmas together at a small out-of-the-way inn on the Mendocino coast. I gave her a $300 pair of gold earrings, heart-shaped, with pendants of amethyst—her birthstone. Her presents to me were a yachting cap, not the fancy commodore type with gold braid but a functional Gill sailing hat, and books on sailing for beginners and on cruising the Virgin Islands and Lesser Antilles.

New Year's Eve we spent apart, by mutual agreement, to maintain the pretense that we were actively dating others. She accepted an invitation to a party from one of the men she'd been seeing. As for me, there was a plain, friendly secretary in Amthor's design department, whose smiles in my direction I'd interpreted as wistful little signals that she was interested and available. I seem to remember that her name was Joan, but it could have been Jane or Jean. I'd been invited to a party by the newly married Jim Sanderson, and in turn I invited the secretary. We danced, drank champagne, kissed and sang 'Auld Lang Syne' to ring in the new year. And every time I looked at her I saw Annalise, only Annalise.

I dated Joan or Jane or Jean four more times over a period of seven weeks. On the last of these she made it plain that I was welcome to stay the night at her apartment, but I couldn't have had sex with her if my life depended on it. I tried to let her down easy—she was a nice person and pleasant enough company—and she took the rejection well enough, but I could tell that she was hurt by it. Alone in the world, hungry for affection . . . a female version of the old Jordan Wise. That Jordan Wise might have learned to care for Joan or Jane or Jean, allowed a relationship to develop. Not the reborn version. Not the faithful and committed married man, Richard Laidlaw.

Establishing a new identity requires more than just paperwork and the altering of a few physical characteristics. You can't simply pretend to be somebody new and different. You have to shed your old personality in layers, the way some snakes shed their skin. Learn how to wear your new one. Change the way you think as well as the way you walk, talk, act in public.

Jordan Wise was an accountant with simple tastes; quiet, passive, uncomfortable in large groups. Richard Laidlaw was a successful executive with expensive tastes, self-confident, aggressive when the need arose, at ease in social situations. Polar opposites in attitude, expectation, mind-set. The first thing I had to learn was how to switch back and forth seamlessly; then, when the time came, I would be able to shed Jordan Wise once and for all. That meant practice, and plenty of it.

Alone at home I worked on a more erect posture, on demonstrative hand gestures, on holding my head at an angle that gave a forward jut to my jawline, on deepening my voice and speaking in terse sentences sprinkled with mild to moderate profanity. The first couple of times I tried out the package on Annalise, she made suggestions for improvement that I incorporated into the Laidlaw personality. Whenever we were together after that, I remained in character until we parted—like an actor perfecting the most challenging role of his life. Now and then she would catch me in an inconsistency. Alone, I worked on correcting it until I was sure it would never crop up again.

None of this was easy, but by the first of March, when the time came to put the second phase of the Plan into operation, I was no longer acting the role of Richard Laidlaw, I was Richard Laidlaw.

On a Saturday morning I drove out to Walnut Creek, looked up optometrists in the telephone directory, found one that was open, and called ahead for an appointment, using an assumed name. When I got there I had myself fitted for a pair of inexpensive contact lenses that matched the prescription for my glasses. I asked for the tinted kind, brown. The optometrist commented that I was the first blue-eyed person he'd ever known who wanted brown-tinted contacts. I told him my wife was always needling me, saying she didn't know why she'd married me because she preferred brown-eyed men, so I'd decided to give her a surprise and see what happened. He laughed and dropped the subject. All he really cared about was making the sale. And a cash sale, at that.

At a costume shop in Oakland on the way back, I bought a dark brown theatrical mustache, the can't-tell-it- from-the-real-thing kind that attaches with spirit gum. Not too large or bushy, but thick enough to cover my rather broad upper lip.

It was necessary for Annalise to be in on the rest of phase two. I requested and was given three days off from work, citing personal reasons; she made a similar arrangement with Kleinfelt's. I withdrew $2,000 in cash from the Darwin Electric account and $1,000 in cash from each of the other five dummy accounts. I gave her $2,500, to pay for a round-trip airline ticket to Chicago and to cover a $2,000 cashier's check made out to R. J. Laidlaw, which she obtained at her bank. I also paid cash for my round-trip ticket to Chicago on a different airline.