Bill Pronzini - The Crimes of Jordan Wise

Boldface headline: HUGE AMTHOR EMBEZZLEMENT. Smaller sub-head: "Accountant Vanishes with Six-Figure Sum." Jordan Wise's driver's license photo hadn't been released yet, just his Everyman description. The auditors had discovered the theft on Wednesday, confirmed the scope of it by late afternoon, and were still working to assess the total amount of the loss. Both the local authorities and the FBI had been called in and a fugitive warrant had been issued. Amthor officials were shocked, stunned. A vice president was quoted as saying, "There is no way we could have anticipated anything like this. In the ten years Wise worked for Amthor, he had a spotless record."

Annalise clung to me, her eyes as bright and hot as the candle flames. "It says the theft might run upwards of three hundred thousand."

"Early estimate. It'll take them a while to come up with the full amount."

"How much is it, exactly?"

"Six hundred and two thousand, four hundred and ninety-six dollars."

"My God!" She jabbed her finger at the boldface headline. "You did it, Richard, you did it!"

"We did it," I said.

"No, all I did was what you told me to. The Plan was yours. You made us rich!"

"Did you ever doubt I would?"

"Never. Sometimes I wished the time would go by faster, but that's all. I thought the year would never end."

"You won't have to wait much longer."

"Six more weeks," Annalise said. "And six hundred thousand dollars. Just thinking about all that money gives me chills." She wasn't exaggerating. Her arms were covered with goosebumps. "Tell me the details. You said you would."

"Right now?"

"I'm dying to know. Everything. Don't leave anything out."

I explained each of the factors that I'd kept from her. She pouted a little when I told her about the two Cayman accounts.

"You didn't put my name on them? Why not?"

"Same reason I withheld the details. For your protection in case anything goes wrong."

"But we can add it now, can't we? After we get to St. Thomas?"

"There's no reason to," I said. "We'll have a joint bank account and I'll arrange for regular transfers of funds—more than enough to cover anything we'll want or need."

"Well. . ."

"Just let me handle the financial end. You reap the rewards. And keep making me happy in and out of bed."

"Oh, I'll do that, all right," she promised. She reached down for me again. "You'll be the happiest man in the entire Caribbean."

The crime remained front-page news in the San Francisco papers for two more days. I can still quote those headlines verbatim too: AMTHOR THEFT TOPS HALF-MILLION MARK. WISE MANHUNT INTENSIFIES. The Chronicle carried the driver's license photo on Friday, the evening Examiner in their Saturday edition. Annalise laughed when she brought the Chronicle and pointed out the photo. "That doesn't look anything like Jordan," she said, "much less Richard." She was right. The newsprint reproduction was grainy, the oh-so-average features made even more indistinguishable. I barely recognized the face myself.

Grudging superlatives littered the articles. Bold. Daring. Ingenious. Brilliant. And my favorite: audacious. Each was like a sip of strong wine. So were the quotes from law enforcement officials and Amthor executives and employees. "Pursuing several strong leads to Wise's whereabouts." "Won't rest until he's apprehended." "Prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law." One, by Jim Sanderson, made me laugh out loud: "I worked with Jordan for nearly ten years. He was such a quiet, unassuming guy. I still can't believe he had the nerve to do something like this."

News stories the next two days, mainly rehashes, ran on inside pages. Then Jordan Wise was back on the front page again, down toward the bottom with a smaller headline: "Embezzler's Car Found." FBI officials, the account said, were working to trace Wise's activities after his car was found abandoned at San Diego International Airport. Speculation as to his present whereabouts ran along the false trail I'd laid: he had either taken a flight under an assumed name or used some other means of transportation to leave the area, with Mexico his most likely destination.

That was the last of the front-page stories. Inside pages off and on again for a time—"No New Leads in Wise Case"—and then, less than two weeks after the story broke, nothing at all. The FBI doesn't advertise its frustrations; neither do other law enforcement agencies. And there are too many new crimes, too many world crises and natural disasters, too much political chicanery for one man's white-collar crime, even one that has netted him $600,000, to feed the public's hunger for sensationalism for long.

We were home free.

During the first week I stayed put inside the apartment, reading, listening to music, while Annalise ran all the errands. A precaution, mainly. The local papers had also run the driver's license photo, on inside pages, and though there was no reason for anyone in Chicago to think Jordan Wise might be in their midst, it was safer not to be seen in public just yet. The other reason I stayed in was that I was growing a mustache to match the shape and thickness of the theatrical one. After seven days it had filled out enough to look right when colored with the dark-brown hair dye.

My first day out I went to the Mutual Trust branch and arranged for the transfer of $17,000 from the Caymans account to our joint checking account. After that I began going out with Annalise at night, twice that second week, to dinner in dimly lighted restaurants and then to a neighborhood movie theater. If anyone paid attention to us, it was only admiring male looks aimed at her. Alongside Annalise, I was virtually invisible.

Living with her in the close confines of the apartment was a spartan dry run for our life together on St. Thomas. We hadn't spent more than three consecutive days together at any point during the previous year, and those weekend getaways had been all fun and games. It took us a while to get used to being with each other on a daily basis.

Everyone has habits that amuse or irritate others, little idiosyncrasies that don't crop up in casual circumstances. I'd known that she was something of a neatness freak, but not that she was compulsive about it. She was constantly straightening, arranging, picking up, and she chastised me every time I left a glass or dish unwashed or an article of clothing lying around. She drank a little too much, Scotch as well as wine; kept prodding me to get high with her, turned pouty when I didn't and playful to the point of silliness when I did. She was easily bored, used sex to ward off boredom and restlessness, had a tendency to become sullen when she didn't get her way. On the plus side, she was easy to talk to, knowledgeable about more subjects than I'd imagined and filled with an endearing, almost childlike enthusiasm whenever she talked about the Caribbean or showed off one of her new dress designs. At times, in spite of myself, I felt toward her as I'd felt toward Jim Sanderson and the other Amthor employees—as if she were a mortal and I was a higher power, benign and tolerant in my love for her, but superior nonetheless.

The longer I stayed cooped up in that confined space and that downscale neighborhood, the more sympathy I had for Annalise. Three weeks was bad enough; three months must have been torturous. Cabin fever breeds friction, and when we began to get on each other's nerves, snap at each other for no good reason, I got us out of there. It was almost the end of October. There was no need to delay rejoining society on a regular basis.

Over the next three weeks we took day trips in and around Chicago—to museums, the Adler Planetarium, Jackson Park, Monroe Harbor, the wealthy suburbs of Lake Forest and Evanston. We made overnight trips to Milwalikee and the sand dunes region along Lake Michigan. We went to movies, plays, the Chicago Symphony at Orchestra Hall. We shopped at Marshall Field's and a couple of the exclusive women's shops on Michigan Avenue, so Annalise could buy outfits appropriate for the tropics. On November 15, we saw a travel agent and booked her flight to St. Thomas and hotel accommodations in Charlotte Amalie, and my flight to join her a month later. We were two people among millions, faceless, unnoticed, safe and secure enough, yet buoyed by the ever-present danger of recognition. It was that note of danger, as much as escape from the apartment, that put us back on the same close-knit plane as before. The friction disappeared. So did my feeling of superiority.