The Crimes of Jordan Wise

'Yes.'

'You weren't lying just to get me into bed? You can do it?'

'I can do it.'

'Will you? Go through with it, I mean?'

'Yes. Will you?'

'Yes. Jesus, yes!'

Her hands moved on me again. Expert hands, expert mouth, expert body, guiding me, showing me new things, making it last until release was an excruciating mixture of pleasure and pain. Sounds trite, I know, putting it like that, but that was how it was for me.

And that's another thing love is. Bottom line.

Love is the best fuck you ever had.

SAN FRANCISCO

1977-1978

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND my plan, you have to look at it in historical perspective. The two linked equations were designed according to the laws and business practices existing in the late seventies, and my own experiences in the years preceding 1977. They were flawless in that regard, and that was why they worked. They wouldn't work today. Since 1978, laws have been changed and computerization has completely revamped the way in which large corporations like Amthor Associates and their accounting and comptroller departments operate.

Would I be able to commit and get away with the same crime today, given those changes?

Oh, yes, I think so. If now were then, I would be as proficient in the use of computers and accounting technology as I was in adding machines and ledger books. And there are always loopholes in the law to be ferreted out and utilized. It might take me longer now to devise a foolproof scheme to steal more than half a million dollars, and to establish a new and untraceable identity, but it could be done. If you're deliberate enough, resourceful enough, shrewd enough, almost anything is possible.

I put my plan into operation immediately after that first night with Annalise. You might think I was taking a lot on faith, going forward based on a verbal agreement and a single night of sex, and I suppose I was. She might have changed her mind, backed out at any time before she became an actual accessory. But our involvement together, as I'd told her, had to be based on mutual trust. She had to believe I would be able to embezzle the money and that we'd get away with it safely; I had to believe that she wanted the life I'd promised her enough, and cared for me enough, not to back out and to do exactly as she was told. That was the key to the success of the plan.

The fact that I worked in the accounts payable section of Amthor's accounting department was what made the theft viable. Amthor was a large firm, with branches in three other cities and literally hundreds of subcontractors and suppliers spread out across the country and in Mexico and Central America. All of the accounting was done in the San Francisco office, and invoices poured in in large quantities every month. Part of my job, and that of two other accountants, was to check these invoices against existing bids and allocations and, if all was in order, to stamp them with a payment authorization and pass them on to the comptroller's office. Some of the invoices were paid by check, others through direct bank deposit by invoice number. The choice was up to the individual supplier or contractor.

So then, step one: After work on three consecutive evenings I drove to one of the photocopy and job printing stores that dotted the city. In each I ordered a small quantity of invoice forms in different styles and formats, imprinted with six different company names. I still remember all of them, and that the three primaries were Darwin Electrical Contractors, M. & D. Supply, Inc., and West Valley Construction. I provided Bay Area addresses for each—three in San Francisco, two in the East Bay, one on the Peninsula; the cities were genuine, the street addresses made up. There was virtually no risk in this, because I saw to it the addresses never had cause to be checked. Once I had the printed invoices, I took two days of sick leave and went around to various banks in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Mateo and opened business accounts in each of the company names. On the bank forms I listed myself, under my own name, as sole proprietor and requested that all statements and notifications of deposit be sent to my home address.

Step two: On the next Friday after close of business, I flew to Portland, Oregon, and spent the night in a downtown motel. I picked Portland because it was the nearest good-sized city in another state and yet still relatively close to San Francisco. I paid for the ticket in cash and gave the airline a false name; in those days, remember, you weren't required to show identification to airline or airport personnel and so you could fly under any name you chose. I used the same alias at the motel. These precautions probably weren't necessary, but I took them to ensure that no investigator could ever place me in Portland, a city I hadn't been to before and never visited again.

That Saturday morning I went to the main library, where I requested microfilm files of the Portland Oregonian for 1943, the year of my birth. I spent four hours combing through the obituary notices in every issue from January through July before I found what I was looking for. On July 19, a five-month-old infant named Richard James Laidlaw, the son of Carl and Amanda Laidlaw, had died in the Portland suburb of Beaverton. The birth date and place of birth were also listed as Beaverton. I copied down all the relevant information. Before I left the library for the airport, I looked up the address of the office of vital statistics for Multnomah County, in which both Portland and Beaverton were located, and added it to the data sheet.

Step three: I checked the current San Francisco papers for advertisements for mail receiving and forwarding services, made a list, and then went around to check them out in person. The third one impressed me as the most discreet. I paid their standard fee, giving my name as Richard Laidlaw and asking that any mail addressed to me be held for pickup.

Step four: I wrote a letter to the Multnomah County office of vital statistics requesting a copy of 'my' birth certificate and providing all the necessary names and dates. I signed the letter Richard James Laidlaw and gave the mail drop's address as my own. The vital stats office had no reason to cross-check the name against their death records and no legal reason at that time to turn down the request. I wasn't the first to use this method of obtaining a birth certificate in order to establish a false identity, of course. I got the idea from reading about a similar case in Detroit that had come to light the year before. The method was used often enough, in fact, for the regulations and requirements covering the issuance of copies of birth certificates to be eventually changed in most if not all states.

Step five: I bought a secondhand IBM typewriter, the kind that had a ball element and came with extra elements in different type faces. At night in my apartment, I manufactured half a dozen detailed invoices, one for each of the dummy companies, keying each to specific job sites that Amthor was currently operating in various parts of northern and central California and that were guaranteed by size to last more than a year. In two cases there was a distance of several hundred miles between the job sites and the bogus company addresses, but this was not unusual. Amthor hired its subcontractors on a bid basis and its suppliers on a price-break basis, and the costs of relocating workmen and equipment and of long-haul shipping were always factored in.

I kept the total amounts of these first six invoices relatively small; the highest was a little more than $9,000, from Darwin Electric. They were as much a test run as an opening gambit, to satisfy myself that the forgeries were good enough to pass through the comptroller's office without question. Not that I had any doubt of it. In the past I had rubber-stamped invoices in the high five figures, and the comptroller's office had paid them without question.

Step six: At the office I established new accounts in the names of the six dummy companies, then okayed the invoices and sent them along one or two at a time in the daily batches. In each case I noted that the company had requested payment by direct deposit.

A week went by without incident. No one in the comptroller's office asked to see me about any of the new accounts. The invoices were absorbed into the system as easily as any of the legitimate ones.

Notifications of deposit began to arrive from the banks until I had all six. I didn't withdraw any of the money. And wouldn't until much later in the game. I had enough cash in my personal savings account to take care of expenses such as the Portland trip.