‘I want to know everything – and more – about a man you say hates my guts. And who you describe as the reason for that hatred. I read it all, I might come up with something else, something that fits, like I did today remembering her tit for tat response.’
‘I was trying to lighten things up a tad,’ said Beckwith. ‘Of course you get your own copies. I want you to have your own copies. There are reasons.’
Now it was Jordan who frowned, not understanding. ‘What reasons?’
‘Read everything for yourself first. Take your time.’
‘What about my being there at the meeting with Alyce’s lawyer?’
Beckwith shook his head, his uncertainty genuine now. ‘I’m not sure about that: if I want it or if Bob Reid would want it. Let me speak to him first, see what he’s got in mind. Might be something I hadn’t thought of.’
‘I hope not!’ said Jordan, too quickly, although at the same time admiring the unexpected humility.
‘So do I,’ replied the lawyer with a grin, ‘but you’re still doing it, speaking before you properly think.’
Jordan ignored the rebuke. Instead, mocking, he said, ‘I also think – after full and proper consideration – I should stay on until you see Alyce’s guy, don’t you?’
‘A day or two maybe,’ allowed Beckwith.
‘Can I have my copies: something to read through while I’m waiting? And the advance I asked for?’
Suzie’s outfit today was an aquamarine tube dress with the same effect as the previous tight sweater and skirt. She said, ‘Hi!’ as before, after collecting what needed to be duplicated, but this time there wasn’t any flirtatious repartee.
Beckwith said, ‘You got over the flight now?’
‘Totally,’ assured Jordan. ‘Spent the last couple of days in Atlantic City.’ He had considered Las Vegas, which he knew well, against Atlantic City, which he didn’t, but decided upon somewhere to which he could conveniently commute from Manhattan.
‘How’d you make out?’
‘Dropped a little. Nothing disastrous but it’s why I’d like a cash infusion. Need to get the feel of the place.’ Jordan preferred European to American casinos, believing that the electronic surveillance of the individual tables in the American ones – in addition to the alertness of the croupier, dealer and pit boss – was far more likely to catch his minimal stake technique. His two long nights on the Atlantic coast had cost him close to $2,000, which he philosophically accepted was about right for the all important pieces of paper.
‘Losing’s an occupational hazard, I guess?’ suggested the lawyer.
‘It happens,’ agreed Jordan, reluctantly. But was soon to stop, he thought, as Suzie re-entered the room.
Jordan objectively acknowledged that there’d already been false starts and dents to his confidence, but for the first time he decided that with the statements of Alfred and Alyce Appleton tightly in his possession this really was the beginning of him regaining his lost control; of actually setting his own agenda, not conforming to that of others. Just as objectively he recognized that he would have to be more careful than he’d ever been in, or with, anything he’d ever tried to plan before.
If Alfred Appleton’s lawyers got the faintest hint of what he had in mind – Reid or Beckwith as well, Jordan supposed – the sky would come crashing down upon him. But he’d lived as an identity thief without once being caught out for the last fifteen years by his own hidden and extremely profitable agendas. And could – most definitely would – do it again now, just as successfully undetected as he’d always been. Being ensnared as he had in France didn’t come into any equation or conflict: everything about France was totally different. Just as this new agenda would be completely different.
Jordan accepted that he had far more to do – and very differently – than was usual in one of his identity frauds. But then he was starting with a lot more, he consoled himself, gazing down at the copied divorce application statements of Alfred and Alyce Appleton set out on the bureau of his locked Carlyle suite, the Do Not Disturb sign displayed on the outside of his door, the hotel telephone exchange under orders not to put through any calls, no matter how persistent or convincingly argumentative the caller.
Opening the thicker of the two files before him Jordan decided that Daniel Beckwith had most definitely encapsulated the information, although not in any obstructive way; the personal material in the Alfred Jerome Appleton dossier would not have appeared relevant to the lawyer. To Jordan it was an Aladdin’s cave of treasure that would normally have taken him weeks to compile. And still would not have been as comprehensive. There was Alfred Jerome Appleton’s copied birth certificate from which Jordan learned that the maiden name of the man’s mother had been Channing. There were the reproduced, personally identifying pages from the man’s passport, still with three years to go before renewal. The actual apartment number – 593 – at West 94th Street was accompanied by the unlisted, personal telephone number. The East Hampton address was on Atlantic Avenue. The man’s Internet address was also given. The most unexpected bonus of all was the man’s New York commodities trading licence. Appleton’s private bank details not only provided the account number but also the man’s Social Security and private health care insurance numbers. Also listed were the clubs and organizations to which Appleton belonged, the most predictable of which was the Commodity Floor Brokers and Traders’ Association. He belonged, predictable again, to two Long Island yacht clubs. And there were photographs, not the posed formal ones that Beckwith had produced in his office, but a selection of amateur pictures: several of Appleton at the helm of a spinaker-bloomed twelve-metre racing yacht, its name obscured; and others of the man receiving awards, twice in sailing clothes at open-air ceremonies, yachts in the background, three at dinner-jacketed banquets. Alyce, smiling in admiration, was close at hand in three of them. In each the bull-shouldered, thick-bodied man dwarfed her, as Jordan had already decided Appleton would physically dominate him.
Jordan eased back in his chair for what was to become the first of several reflections, intentionally allowing the pages – and his initial savouring of them – to mist before his eyes. So much detail, he mused. With more to follow, once he read on, because there would doubtless be spelled out, perhaps literally, the allegedly damaged marriage, social, health and financial loss to support the individual claims. All to establish the severity of each and every loss. He wasn’t scared, Jordan recognized, pleased with the awareness. Apprehensive perhaps, because there was still so much more that he had to learn and there was still the hovering risk of public exposure which had to be prevented. But not as scared as he had been, those few short days ago. Nor when he realized he had been robbed of everything. Now he was thinking for himself, letting the ideas germinate in his mind, sufficiently independent of others, necessary though legal representation was.
Appleton’s personal statement was preceded by a legally phrased caveat that it was preliminary and therefore subject to revision or amendment. There was an immediate reference annotation to the formal beginning, which recorded the marriage having taken place on April 12th, 1996, at the Sacred Heart cathedral at Raleigh, North Carolina. Jordan at once turned to it, to find a copy of a full, two-page cutting from the Raleigh News and Observer describing the marriage as the bringing together of two historically established families: there was a Jeremiah Bellamy among the early settlers colonizing the east coast and a Jeremiah Appleton was one of the Boston rebels against the taxation demands of Georgian England. The wedding photographs showed a little changed Alyce but a much slimmer Appleton.
Appleton’s statement recorded their setting up home on West 94th Street after a honeymoon in Hawaii. He described his marriage to Alyce as happy for the first four years, with both he and Alyce dismayed by a series of miscarriages. That dismay increased with Alyce’s failure to become pregnant despite a year’s IVF treatment. Neither considered adoption an acceptable alternative option. The marriage came under increasing strain because of the amount of time and commitment Appleton had to devote to his business in the early years of its establishment. There were frequent, sometimes violent disagreements between them. Appleton did not consider Alyce sufficiently supportive. She preferred East Hampton, where there was an inherited Appleton family house, and a pattern developed for Alyce to spend the majority of her time there, with his living most of the week alone in Manhattan, returning to Long Island at weekends.
In 1999, for the first time, they discussed divorce, which he neither wanted nor sought. In an effort to avoid it, Appleton, for varying periods of time, commuted daily by seaplane service from Sag Harbour to the 23rd St facility on Manhattan’s East river, despite the strain involved – he was a nervous, reluctant flyer – and it meant his not being able to devote as much time as he considered necessary to his business. Here there was another indexed reference, in which, when he turned to it, Jordan found a selection of financial statements starred to illustrate trading losses. Jordan made a quick mental calculation and estimated the across-the-board deficit from the submitted statements totalled close to two million. Appleton claimed that to stem those losses and get his personal
