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that she wanted the life I'd promised her enough, and cared for me enough, not to back out and to do exactly as she was told. That was the key to the success of the plan.
     
    The fact that I worked in the accounts payable section of Amthor's accounting department was what made the theft viable. Amthor was a large firm, with branches in three other cities and literally hundreds of subcontractors and suppliers spread out across the country and in Mexico and Central America. All of the accounting was done in the San Francisco office, and invoices poured in in large quantities every month. Part of my job, and that of two other accountants, was to check these invoices against existing bids and allocations and, if all was in order, to stamp them with a payment authorization and pass them on to the comptroller's office. Some of the invoices were paid by check, others through direct bank deposit by invoice number. The choice was up to the individual supplier or contractor.
     
    So then, step one: After work on three consecutive evenings I drove to one of the photocopy and job printing stores that dotted the city. In each I ordered a small quantity of invoice forms in different styles and formats, imprinted with six different company names. I still remember all of them, and that the three primaries were Darwin Electrical Contractors, M. & D. Supply, Inc., and West Valley Construction. I provided Bay Area addresses for each—three in San Francisco, two in the East Bay, one on the Peninsula; the cities were genuine, the street addresses made up. There was virtually no risk in this, because I saw to it the addresses never had cause to be checked. Once I had the printed invoices, I took two days of sick leave and went around to various banks in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Mateo and opened business accounts in each of the company names. On the bank forms I listed myself, under my own name, as sole proprietor and requested that all statements and notifications of deposit be sent to my home address.
     
    Step two: On the next Friday after close of business, I flew to Portland, Oregon, and spent the night in a downtown motel. I picked Portland because it was the nearest good-sized city in another state and yet still relatively close to San Francisco. I paid for the ticket in cash and gave the airline a false name; in those days, remember, you weren't required to show identification to airline or airport personnel and so you could fly under any name you chose. I used the same alias at the motel. These precautions probably weren't necessary, but I took them to ensure that no investigator could ever place me in Portland, a city I hadn't been to before and never visited again.
     
    That Saturday morning I went to the main library, where I requested microfilm files of the Portland Oregonian for 1943, the year of my birth. I spent four hours combing through the obituary notices in every issue from January through July before I found what I was looking for. On July 19, a five-month-old infant named Richard James Laidlaw, the son of Carl and Amanda Laidlaw, had died in the Portland suburb of Beaverton. The birth date and place of birth were also listed as Beaverton. I copied down all the relevant information. Before I left the library for the airport, I looked up the address of the office of vital statistics for Multnomah County, in which both Portland and Beaverton were located, and added it to the data sheet.
     
    Step three: I checked the current San Francisco papers for advertisements for mail receiving and forwarding services, made a list, and then went around to check them out in person. The third one impressed me as the most discreet. I paid their standard fee, giving my name as Richard Laidlaw and asking that any mail addressed to me be held for pickup.
     
    Step four: I wrote a letter to the Multnomah County office of vital statistics requesting a copy of "my" birth certificate and providing all the necessary names and dates. I signed