David Dean - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

“What changed you into an embezzler?”

“Combination of things. A woman I wanted and couldn’t have without a lot of money. Dreams of living a life of luxury in the tropics, never having to work anymore. The realization of how easy it would be, given my position with the firm. The challenge of planning it, setting it up, getting away with it.”

“How did you go about it?”

“My job was in accounts payable,” I said, “authorizing the payment of invoices from the firm’s various subcontractors. I set up several dummy companies and arranged for the submission of monthly invoices of small to moderate sums, never more than a few thousand dollars, and authorized payment into dummy bank accounts. Then I opened a private account in the Cayman Islands and funneled the money into it a little at a time. I went about it all very carefully, very methodically. It took me a year to embezzle a total of $480,000. And to establish an untraceable new identity and make the necessary arrangements to disappear, so I would be free to spend it. When the time came, the Friday afternoon before the annual audit was scheduled, I left San Francisco and spent nearly two months traveling across country by car, train, bus, and plane, using assumed names and different disguises. Then I used my new identity to get to St. Thomas — no trouble at all. Annalise had already been in Charlotte Amalie a month by then—”

“Annalise? Oh, the woman. She was in on it, then?”

“Oh yes. From the first. She found the project as exciting as I did.”

“Project. That’s a nice way of putting it.”

I shrugged. “She rented a villa, a large one at Limetree Beach, and let it be known that her husband would be joining her shortly. By the time I arrived she’d made several friends in the community — she had that knack. I was accepted immediately, without question.”

“You never came under any kind of scrutiny?”

“No. Annalise and I did nothing to call undue attention to ourselves. And I was thinner than I’d been in San Francisco, I’d let my hair grow long and wore a moustache — I looked nothing at all like the embezzling accountant. We had no difficulty settling into the luxury lifestyle I’d always coveted — parties, fine dining, catering servants. I bought an old yawl and learned to sail, and we visited some of the other Caribbean islands, alone and with other couples. I had everything I ever wanted. I thought I had the world by the tail.”

“But then the money ran out, is that it?”

“No. We spent a lot, yes, but I’d also invested a third of the original sum — wisely enough so that we had a steady supplementary income.”

“Then what did happen?” Talley asked.

“For a long time nothing happened. That was the problem.”

“I don’t understand.”

I said, “You can change your financial status, your environment, your lifestyle, but you can’t change your basic nature. You’re still the same person. I led a dull, conservative life in San Francisco. Once the newness and the excitement wore off, I led a dull, conservative life in Charlotte Amalie. Even with the investments, we couldn’t afford to live as we were indefinitely; I began to worry enough to start cutting back. Over a period of time we stopped traveling, stopped giving parties and being invited to parties, stopped going out to restaurants and clubs. The friends we’d made drifted away one by one. I lost interest in sailing and sold the yawl. I had no other hobbies or interests and neither did Annalise. After the sixth year all we were doing was staying home by ourselves, drinking too much and watching the sunsets.”

“How did Annalise deal with that?”

“She hated it. We were barely communicating by then.”

“I suppose eventually she left you.”

“I knew she would. She started going out by herself every night, staying out late, and I just let her do it. One night she didn’t come home at all. I never saw her again.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I heard rumors that she went to Martinique with the owner of a yacht brokerage.”

“But you didn’t bother to find out.”

“There didn’t seem to be any reason to.”

“What did you do after she left?”

“Nothing for a time. But the villa was too big and too expensive for one person, so I moved to a smaller place. The owner raised the rent after the first year and I moved again, an even smaller place near Frenchtown.”

“Still alone?”

“Yes. There has been no one else in my life since Annalise.”

“How long did you stay on St. Thomas?”

“Another two years. The tourist explosion had started by then and prices had skyrocketed. So I left the island for good.”

“And came over to St. John?”

“No. St. Croix first. But my cottage there was burglarized one night, everything of value I had left stolen — everything except my bank books, which were hidden. That was when I moved to St. John. A bungalow in Coral Bay, then the saltbox at Hansen’s.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A little over four years.”

“End of the line.”

“That’s right,” I said. “End of the line.”

Flies circled listlessly in the hot breeze. Talley made wet circles on the tabletop with his sweating beer bottle.

“That’s quite a story,” he said.

“Meaning you don’t believe it.”

“I don’t know if I do or not. You could have made it all up as a way to cadge free drinks. For all I know you tell it to every tourist who comes in here.”

“Not every tourist. Only the willing listeners and free spenders.”

“So it is just a story.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“All right,” Talley said, “for the sake of argument let’s assume it’s true, all of it or some of it. You must know I could turn you in to the FBI. This is federal territory, you’re an interstate fugitive, and there’s no statute of limitation on federal crimes — you’d probably still go to prison. There might be a reward of some kind, too, even after twenty years. In any case, I could buy myself a lot of free publicity and an article assignment if not a book contract. I told you I was a writer — why open up to me?”

“Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I don’t care anymore.”

“Uh-huh. ‘The Perfect Crime that Wasn’t.’ Not a bad title.”

“But not accurate. The crime was perfect.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes. It was, but I’m not. That’s the only flaw.”

“Then let me ask you a hypothetical question,” Talley said. “If you had it to do over again, would you still embezzle that money?”

I said without hesitation, “Yes.”

“Even if you knew how things were going to turn out?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why not? I got away with stealing close to half a million dollars. For a while I had everything I ever wanted. Would I have been any better off in a dead-end corporate job all those years, living in a furnished apartment in San Francisco?”

“You wouldn’t have ended up an alcoholic fugitive in a place like this.”

“One’s no worse than the other, from my perspective.”

We were silent for a time. Then Talley said, “Well,” and pushed back his chair. “I’d better be moving along.”

I didn’t say anything.

“One more question before I go. What’s your real name?”

“The one I gave you. Paul Anderson.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I might like to talk to you again, Paul. Take some notes.”

“Any time. You know where to find me.”

He went away.

I drank and watched the sunlight sparkle on Round Bay, throw sharp glints off the brightwork on the pleasure craft. After a while Jocko came over and blocked my view.