The Namedropper Page 14

  Jordan had only twice before stolen the identity of a commodity trader, but from that experience he knew the basic trading operations, the most important of which was that any buy-or-sell contracts agreed by traders were double-checked and confirmed by the ‘back office’, a secondary, double-checking filter to prevent any contract being overlooked beyond its regulated, three month completion date. But once it was checked and registered – and most important of all dated – it remained on the trader’s book until it was moved on. Which meant, after the back office confirmation, the lid to every cookie jar was open to him, to plunder at will. That night he limited his targetting stings, concentrating upon currency contracts, because of all the commodities they fluctuated the most, sometimes by the hour, and therefore were the most difficult to track. He further limited himself on this first visit to a transfer to the First National bank account, and even more strictly limited the amounts – all of them less than five hundred dollars – he electronically transferred from four, two-day-old currency trades, each in excess of one million dollars from which five hundred dollars would not be detectable, nor swell the initial fake Appleton account beyond what the bank were legally required to automatically report to the financial regulating authorities. The following day, Jordan determined, the taps would be opened more fully to fill all five accounts.

  At last, closer to exhaustion that he could remember for a long time, Jordan closed down the laptop and pushed himself back from the bureau to go to the bar to make himself another celebratory drink, putting on room lights as he did so. He carried his glass to an easy chair, needing its relaxing softness. Gazing out unseeingly over the jewellery-box glitter of the Manhattan night, he shook his head at the memories of all the unnecessary, time-wasting scurrying around London he did in order to avoid any potential surveillance when there had been nothing or no one to avoid or from whom to hide. And then he laughed, recognizing how frenetic he would have seemed if people had been watching him. It might have all been unnecessary and time-wasting, and he didn’t like being made to scurry like a frightened rabbit, but he was glad he’d taken the precautions. There was even a positive benefit: his own money was now far better hidden than it had been and, pointless though most of it had proved to be, it had been a useful, if exhausting, lesson. As he’d reflected before, he had definitely become complacent, dangerously believing things could never go wrong to upset his perfect life, which he certainly didn’t believe any longer. But he was correcting the situation now, Jordan told himself, looking across the room at the blank-eyed computer: pro-active at last, thinking for himself, in charge, in control of himself. Before this was all over there were going to be people – Appleton in particular – who’d fervently wish that he weren’t so in control.

  Jordan started work again early the following day, first reentering the available golden goose of Appleton and Drake and again, from the already dated currency trades, spreading $10,500 in transfers between his five Appleton bank accounts. Next he got into his own law firm’s computer to leapfrog into Daniel Beckwith’s personal station, staying there long enough to read the exchanges about himself between Beckwith and Lesley Corbin in London, and then between Beckwith and Reid in Raleigh. He was intrigued to read Lesley’s early opinion of him as ‘arrogant although knocked off his feet being caught with his pants around his ankles, a position in which it is always difficult to remain upright’, and the correspondence between her and the American lawyer questioning the income possible from professional gambling. It was Lesley, too, who had first suggested he would need repeated instructions on how to conduct himself in court to avoid antagonizing a judge or jury. She’d again used the word ‘arrogant’.

  Jordan’s need for court training was referred to once more in the correspondence between Beckwith and Reid. Of more interest to Jordan was the email discussion between the two American lawyers about potential damage awards, with one suggestion from Reid that if there were individual judgements against Jordan on each listed claim, the total adjudication could go as high as twelve million dollars. Reid’s qualification – ‘in reality I can’t see it reaching half that figure if all awards go against him’ – didn’t do anything to reassure Jordan.

  Neither did Beckwith’s response. ‘A sum in either of those amounts would inevitably attract national if not international publicity,’ Beckwith had written. ‘And from what we already know from our preliminary enquiries, both the Appleton and Bellamy families have a recognized social and financial standing on the east coast, which is an added publicity attraction. My client is anxious to avoid publicity, as you tell me your client is, which makes it imperative we establish as soon as possible who the judge is going to be. If it is someone who enjoys notoriety – as I remember several did from the time of my practising in Raleigh – there might be a difficulty in you successfully arguing for a closed hearing. We need to liaise closely on this point.’

  Jordan was curious that there had been no exchange between the two men following the Raleigh conference, quickly correcting his impatience with the self-reminder of how recent it had been. Whenever it came – and for as long as he required it in the future – he had this permanently open window into their every thought: into every thought of anyone with whom he found himself entangled.

  Except Alyce, he corrected himself sharply. Her lawyer would have been the obvious pathway but nowhere in the man’s computer address book could Jordan locate any email exchanges between Reid and Alyce, and so successful and unobstructed had his entry been into all the other computer systems that there was a blip of positive disappointment at his not being able to worm his way into the last of his targets.

  He’d been wrong about all his suspicions of Alyce, Jordan acknowledged not even having to force the unfamiliar honesty. He’d been wrong about believing she might in some way be complicit with her husband in trying to get money from him, wrong in imagining that she would have exposed him to the sexual complaint with which she’d been infected, and wrong to have made his hostility so blatantly obvious towards her during the Raleigh encounter. Objectively, continuing the honesty, Jordan accepted that he had been as much the cause of Alyce’s misfortune as she was guilty of being his. Judging from what he had just read of Appleton’s efforts to uncover Alyce’s infidelity to compensate for his own, if he had not so deliberately set out to seduce her, Appleton would have wasted even more money having her pursued by the inappropriately named Watchdog.

  Fully aware of the contradictions and inconsistencies there were in the vocation he followed, Jordan would have been the last to claim that he suffered a conscience from his actions and certainly didn’t consider that conscience was part of what he was feeling now. But there was at least a genuine regret at behaving as he had towards her in Raleigh. Maybe, he thought, there would be other opportunities to apologize.

  There had been several times in the past, working as successfully in America as he had in England, when Jordan had actually considered relocating permanently to the United States. Everything he needed to adopt and take advantage of a new identity was so much more easily and publicly accessible in the States, if a person knew how and where to look – which Jordan did. Upon application the essential and identity-proving Social Security number was readily available; so essential that it was more often than not printed as a guaranteed payee authenticity, along with full addresses, upon personal cheques, which was why he had included Appleton’s on all five accounts he’d opened in the trader’s name. As he knew from the legal exchanges, it was on Appleton’s bank record. Determined upon avoiding any conceivable error on this very particular occasion he confirmed it as he accessed all the social register entries in Boston through the public library reference books and the archives of the Boston Globe. Through this he learned the Appleton family history from the Boston tax rebellion, that was the incendiary to the War of Independence, to the marriage of Alfred Appleton’s parents, from the records of which he double-checked the family name of the commodity dealer’s mother. From the sa
me sources he got the names of the man’s prep schools prior to Harvard, into which he phished to learn that pre-college as well as at Harvard Appleton had been considered dilatory and disinterested in anything other than sailing. Through the Harvard records Jordan discovered three police references to drunken driving offences, none with conclusions, all presumably minimized into cautions due to his family money and influence.

  It was while he was scrolling through the final Harvard records, cross-referencing dates wherever possible, that Jordan began to be troubled by an inconsistency that he could not immediately isolate, but which remained in his mind as he forced himself on. It was not until he had downloaded everything on to hard copy and was cross-referencing from all his various sources that it became obvious to him, although the basic mystery remained even more tantalizing.

  Jordan realized that he had assembled virtually enough information about Alfred Jerome Appleton to write the man’s biography. But, missing from any publicly available source Jordan had so far accessed was what Appleton had done in the three years after his Harvard graduation.

  How, where and doing what had Appleton spent that time? Jordan wondered.

  And wondered further how much it would benefit him to find out. Which he would, Jordan thought, adding this to his list of determinations. And then he thought that Alyce would probably know.

  Fifteen

  But there again, she might not, Jordan accepted. He would still have liked to ask her in the hope she could provide a short cut to the information, but didn’t think he could – or should – so soon after the lawyers’ warning in Raleigh against he and Alyce meeting alone, to which she might not have agreed anyway. And there was the problem of providing a reason for asking the question, although that was not insurmountable.

  Instead – after his early morning and now regularly timed raid upon Appleton and Drake’s easily available gold mine – Jordan escaped the entombment of the previous two days in his hotel room to take up the search in his preferred way of working by walking the corridors of the reference section of the New York public library, beginning in its Milstein genealogical division. At first it appeared to be a good route. Because the library is the largest sourced library in the world the history of the Appleton family of Boston was far more extensive than any he had been able to access from his laptop, particularly the details of Appleton’s sailing prowess, which was recorded with several indexed newspaper and yachting magazine reports. Jordan logged each and, when he had completed primary source searches, worked his way steadily through the miscrofiched copies of thirty-five different publications.

  From them Alfred Appleton began to emerge a world class yachtsman, predicted, not just as a potential US Olympic team choice, but also as an obvious selection for the American team that competed in the America’s Cup in 1992. The date rang an immediate bell in Jordan’s mind: 1992 was the second of the missing three years. The final reference to Alfred Appleton was in The Yacht, in its February edition of that year. The two-line item recorded Appleton’s withdrawal – for ‘personal reasons’ – from among those on the selection list. Jordan switched from where he was working to access the records of the New York Yacht Club, the America Cup’s governing body. Appleton was named four times in the selection procedures in late 1991. Without explanation the man’s name dropped out of the list in November of that year. The only other mention was the same as that in The Yacht, of Appleton’s withdrawal. Again, there was no offered explanation other than the amorphous ‘personal reasons’.

  Was he trying too hard, Jordan asked himself, so outraged at his entrapment that he was too eager to attach importance where none existed? It was years – although not too many – before Appleton’s marriage to Alyce, so those ‘personal reasons’ were too far in the past to have any possible relevance now. Or did they still have relevance, if the characteristics of honesty or integrity or moral rectitude or whatever other words covered personal behaviour – Appleton’s, not his – still applied? Jordan still wanted to know: he still wanted a fully supplied and primed arsenal of every available weapon at his disposal for the battles – wars even – with which he might conceivably be confronted. Or have others declare against him.

  But who to fire these supposed weapons? He couldn’t, not yet. He was the unwilling conscript press-ganged on to a battlefield upon which he didn’t want to be and upon which he couldn’t officially shoot back at those who were shooting at him. Others – Beckwith or Reid or both – had to press the triggers, which meant they had to be led to where the ammunition was. He’d come in at the end, to fight his own, already decided and increasingly well-planned guerilla campaign, not needing anyone else’s help or company.

  Guerilla campaigns relied upon intelligence, the sort of intelligence he was assembling. He was sure there was still some – maybe a lot – that Alyce could provide. How really difficult would it be to seduce her a second time, the difference being that they both kept their clothes on?

  Calling upon a sailing analogy, Jordan decided that he was stuck in the doldrums, becalmed by circumstances with no forward movement after such an initial fair wind. This was surely because it had been such a good beginning, he acknowledged, pleased at the quickness of the balancing awareness. He’d achieved so much because so much had been literally handed to him on a plate in days instead of his having to probe and scour for weeks or months. So, he consoled himself, thoughts of doldrums and becalming was nothing more than stupid impatience.

  He continued to access his strategic computer monitors, disappointed – but no longer impatient – at the absence of any further traffic involving the impending divorce action. It was an afterthought – which surprised him for it not having occurred before – to occupy some of the time towards the end of the week expanding what he already knew of the Bellamy family, which took him back to the New York library’s reference section.

  What it lacked in terms of noted and recorded American history, it compensated for in longevity with forefathers predating the Appleton arrival in the New World by a good seventy years. A Nathaniel Bellamy was recorded as having fought in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 and a William Bellamy briefly served on the personal staff of George Washington, although there was no cited, historical event accredited to either man. There were, however, substantial and continuing listings of over three hundred years of Bellamys who’d served in the North Carolina legislature and five – Alyce’s grandfather being the most recent – who had been elected senators to Congress in Washington. It was the grandfather who had founded the Bellamy Foundation which was described as one of the largest charitable groupings in the country. The printed records contained no reference, apart from her birth, to Alyce until her marriage to Appleton. The concentration then had inevitably been on the bonding between the two American founding families, all the details of which Jordan already knew. The one relevant – and contradictory – fact that did stand out to Jordan was the substantial land holdings throughout the state, predominantly in Forsyth, Rowan, Macon, Allamance and Durham counties, of the Bellamy family, which made nonsense of Appleton’s claimed offer of financially supporting Alyce’s widowed mother. Jordan wondered if Reid had picked up on that – or had it properly pointed out by Alyce – to refute the need, impudence even, for such a suggestion when the case finally reached court.

  On the Friday morning, with an empty weekend before him and no contact from Daniel Beckwith, Jordan decided to go again to Atlantic City, and during the drive there made up his mind to call the lawyer on his Monday return. If there was no likelihood of any active court movement he could use the following week to go back to England and ensure no problems had arisen with the Paul Maculloch identity and the rental of the Hans Crescent flat. With the uncertainty of everything here in America it would be a sensible precaution to extend that lease for a further six months.

  ‘Pullinger,’ announced Reid.

  ‘Shit!’ said Beckwith.

  ‘It’s scarcely a surprise,’ said the North Carolina lawye
r. ‘Hope you don’t mind my calling at a weekend, instead of waiting until Monday?’

  ‘I’m glad you did. No point in holding back,’ said Beckwith. ‘You got the official notification?’

  ‘A friendly call from the circuit office. I’m getting the formal notification in Monday’s mail.’

  ‘I guess I’ll get one too.’

  ‘You should do.’

  ‘What about a hearing date?’

  ‘Still to be fixed.’

  ‘I guess this puts me first out of the gate?’ said Beckwith.

  ‘I had Pullinger’s record checked. He’s heard three alienation of affection and criminal conversation cases. Each time he’s refused pre-trial submissions for dismissal.’

  ‘I ran the same checks,’ said Beckwith. ‘I’ve still got to try it.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ agreed the other lawyer. ‘I’ll file for an attendance of interest, obviously.’

  ‘You heard any more from Bartle?’

  ‘I’d have passed it on if I had. I might also apply to Pullinger for a compliance of exchange order, particularly over the medical records.’

  ‘The more we can get Pullinger irritated by the behaviour of the other side the better,’ agreed Beckwith.

  ‘What about Leanne Jefferies?’

  ‘As soon as I get an attorney’s response I’m issuing Alyce’s claim for alienation of affections and criminal conversation,’ said Reid.

  ‘And a medical report for her,’ prompted Beckwith.

  ‘The demand will go with the other claims.’

  ‘Anything more from your enquiry people?’