One
On a pale, grey dawn, on a balcony overlooking Seven Mile beach, Elizabeth Jean Crawford soaked her real passport in rubbing alcohol, dropped a match into the metal wastepaper basket, and said goodbye to her name.
Having landed at Owen Roberts International airport the previous afternoon, and finding - to her infinite relief - that the forged passport she’d purchased in NY had passed muster, Tamara had made her way to the Cayman National Bank and deposited sixteen million dollars in Mexican Government bearer bonds into an account in the name of Tamara Allison Hearn. The man behind the expensive desk had been efficient and pleasant as he examined her documentation. When their transaction was over, she had withdrawn five thousand US dollars in cash and gone in search of a hotel.
As tempting as the luxurious international five-start resorts were, she had decided to eschew them for more anonymous accommodation and directed the taxi driver to the north end of the long, beautiful beach drive. The Seagarden hotel was a small, unassuming three-story building. She checked into a room overlooking the sea, laid her suitcase on the bed, and vomited violently in the toilet.
No amount of care or planning or research had made a difference. After a mostly sleepless night, during which she damned and congratulated herself in turns for what she had done, Liz had woken from the last in a series of terrifying, vertigo inducing dreams to the certainty that holding onto her real passport was too great a risk; it was the last vestige of who she was and what she had left behind. It had to go.
She wrenched open a min-bottle of rum that she’d found in the bar fridge and drank it as she watched the pages curl around the blue and orange flames that licked the side of the metal waste-paper basket. The salt in the humid air caught at her throat as she gave a little sob.
All her life, Liz had played the game: graduated well from high school, taken a degree in finance from a good university, settled into a good job at one of the best hedge-fund management firms in the city. She had put in the hours, the focus, the dedication to her employer and she’d done it all willingly, believing that hard work, intelligence and enthusiasm would put her where she deserved to be.
But the last five years working under Harland Jeffries had taught her better. Her boss at the firm had used her ideas with impunity, demanded more hours than there were in a day, and made her the scapegoat for his fuck-ups more times than she could count.
In the early autumn, as the markets began to plummet, as the banking institutions began to seize, Liz had, for the first time, saw the keen glint of fear in Harland Jeffries’ eyes and she had enjoyed it. The funds he managed were hemorrhaging, and she knew what was scaring him; his own deals, buried deep and quietly in a bed of client transactions, were filthy. After a few long nights of diligent, quiet digging, she’d found what she suspected was there: sixteen million. It had taken her a week and a half to ease the money through the underbelly of the system. She’d informed him of the death of a relative, taken the money, and left him with exactly $1.49. It was the price of the cup of coffee he had demanded she bring to him every morning of every year she’d worked for him - as if she had been nothing but a secretary. He’d never reimbursed her. Not once.
Of all the things that scared Liz now, of all reasons she felt like beating herself up, it was the $1.49 that frightened her the most. It had been a stupid, useless gesture and she doubted he’d even see the significance in the amount – hell, he probably never noticed what a cup of coffee cost. But she’d been so meticulous, so careful with everything else, and her great aunt Sarah – whom she had only met once - had very conveniently, died the previous month. She’d never stolen anything in her life before; never even cheated on her taxes. For the last 34 years of her life, Liz had been a model citizen.
Resting her bare feet on the balcony railing and taking another swig of the little bottle, she stifled another sob. It hadn’t been about the money. Years of working in finance had inured her to its glamour. The richest people she met were inevitably the most miserable. She’d been happy with what she had – her life, her sweet little apartment, her annual vacation somewhere nice. Of course, she would have liked to have a relationship, but the hours she worked, the constant and last-minute trips to grey factories in the polluted, barren wastelands of industrial China, and the ridiculous on-call status her boss had demanded of her: it didn’t lend itself to romantic escapades. It hardly even gave her the time to meet anyone. Her last date had been over two years ago.
Now she was rich, stateless, nameless and scared. Sitting on the balcony of her hotel room, feeling the chilly, early morning sea breeze, she questioned whether her revenge had been worth what she’d paid for it. And now it was time to make some decisions about where to go and what to do for the rest of her life.
Well, she thought as the alcohol finally filtered into her sugar-depleted bloodstream, there were worse places to do it.