Chapter 5: A Change of Plans

August 12, 1983, Chicago, Illinois

Keiko’s words hit me like a runaway freight train, but I had to keep control of my emotions. I walked over to her, took her hand, and gently urged her up from the Papasan chair and into my arms.

“Tell me what you need, Keiko-chan,” I said lovingly.

She sighed deeply, “A miracle.”

“What else did Doctor Morrison say?”

“That I should continue the chemo, because it’s helping, but he put me into the system for an immediate bone marrow transplant. We’ll have to go to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for that.”

“Have they found a donor?”

“No, the drive you arranged at Loyola doesn’t start until Monday, and one is being organized in San Francisco by my great-uncle.”

“And what do you need from me right now?” I asked.

“Just hold me, please.”

I sat down in the Papasan chair, and Keiko climbed into my lap. I wrapped my arms around her, and she curled up, resting her head on my shoulder.

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“No. I wanted to tell you first.”

“We should tell your parents and grandparents,” I suggested. “I can make those calls if you want.”

“Not right now; just hold me, please.”

“Of course, Keiko-chan,” I agreed. “Did the kimono arrive?”

“Yes, this morning. But I’m not sure we should...”

I didn’t wait for her to finish the sentence.

“Keiko, I’m going to marry you,” I said firmly.

“But...”

“But what?”

“You know where this leads,” Keiko sighed, then began sobbing.

I simply held her, as there was nothing else I could do at the moment. I kissed the top of Keiko’s head, or rather, the scarf she wore to hide her hair loss. About five minutes later, she sat up, reached for a tissue, dabbed her eyes, and blew her nose.

“What else did Doctor Morrison say?” I asked.

“Nothing he hasn’t already said, other than that, I absolutely need a bone marrow transplant. There really isn’t much else to say.”

“Did he tell you how long we have to find a donor?”

“No. I asked, but he said there is no way to tell, but obviously sooner is better.”

And not just for the transplant in my mind — the wedding, too.

“Keiko, let’s get married tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“At the «yuino». It’s a «Taian» day, and my mom will be here. And we’ll have my aunt and uncle, and your parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin in attendance.”

“We need a marriage license,” Keiko replied. “And it’s too late to get one today.”

“I bet if I call Noel Spurgeon, he could make that happen.”

“You’re serious?”

I almost replied ‘deadly’ but caught myself before the words left my mouth.

“Yes.”

“What about October and the money we’ve spent and the plans we’ve made?”

“Is there anything in Shinto that would prevent repeating the ceremony?”

“I don’t know. It’s something we’d have to ask the priest.”

“Let me call Noel Spurgeon and find out if it’s possible. Of course, I might not find him at home, but let me try.”

“OK,” Keiko replied. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea, though.”

“I, on the other hand, think it’s a wonderful idea.”

I helped her from my lap, then got up and went upstairs to my room to get the company phone directory from my bag. I found Noel Spurgeon’s home number and dialed it. A woman, who I assumed was his wife, Valerie, answered.

“This is Jonathan Kane calling for Mr. Spurgeon,” I said. “Is he available?”

“We’re just about to go out. Let me check, please.”

A minute later, Mr. Spurgeon came on the line.

“Spurgeon,” he said.

“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I have a request for a significant favor, if possible.”

“What do you need?”

“Keiko received her test results, and they aren’t good. I’d like to marry her tomorrow, even if it’s a civil ceremony, but we don’t have a marriage license. Do you have any contacts in the County Clerk’s office?”

“I know Stanley Kusper personally. He was my attorney in the mid-70s. I can call him, and I’m sure we can find a way to accommodate your request. I take it the October date is off?”

“No, we’ll still have that, assuming Keiko is well enough, but...”

“I get it. Murray said he offered a contact I have at Mayo Clinic. Do you want that?”

“Yes, please. I was going to ask on Monday.”

“My jet is available to fly you both up, and I’ll authorize whatever time off you need. Let me call Stan and figure out how to handle this. I’ll call Judge Milton as well and arrange for him to perform the ceremony tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spurgeon.”

“Keep making me money the way you are, and I’ll grant any reasonable request, and some unreasonable ones, too!”

“I very much appreciate that, and I’m sorry to disturb your evening.”

“Give me thirty minutes, and I’ll call you back.”

“Thank you.”

I hung up and then went downstairs to the Japanese room.

“He’s going to call his friend, the Cook County Clerk, to see if a marriage license can be issued today, and arrange with a judge to marry us in the morning. We can still have the public ceremony on October 8th. He also offered his Gulfstream III to fly us to Mayo Clinic, as well.”

“All that just because you asked?”

“All that because I’m making him hundreds of thousands of dollars this year, and millions in the future. I’ve already made him something like five times my loaded salary and bonus numbers.”

“Loaded?”

“Including benefits and taxes they pay, such as the employer portion of Social Security and Medicare.”

The phone rang, and I knew it wasn’t Noel Spurgeon calling back that quickly, so I suspected it was my mom calling to say she’d arrived. I went to the kitchen to answer the phone and discovered my guess was correct. I didn’t say anything about Keiko’s diagnosis or our plans, and simply said I’d see her tomorrow.

“That was my mom,” I said to Keiko when I returned to the Japanese room. “She’s safely at Violet’s, and we’ll see her tomorrow. I should probably call Violet and let her know the ballgame is off for tomorrow evening. I can’t very well leave you alone on our wedding night!”

Keiko laughed softly, “No, I suppose not. Are you sure, Jonathan?”

“Positive.”

“If we do have a judge marry us, do we say anything to anyone?”

“That’s an interesting question. Noel Spurgeon will know, but I’m positive he’d keep it to himself. I’ll need to change some paperwork at Spurgeon to make you my beneficiary rather than my mom, and check to see about insurance. You’re on your dad’s policy from Bell Labs, right?”

“Yes, so long as I’m enrolled in college full-time.”

“What about next semester if you don’t take classes?”

“I’m still enrolled in a full-time degree program. I’d have to not take any classes for an entire year, but even then, I could apply to remain enrolled due to special circumstances.”

“OK. Do you feel like eating?”

“No, but I should.”

We went to the kitchen, and after checking ingredients, I decided to make vegetable stir-fry and rice, which Keiko felt she would be able to eat, as her digestive system was slowly returning to normal. Keiko sat at the dinette table while I made our meal, and when I had the stir-fry ready, we decided to sit there to eat. Just as I sat down, the phone rang.

“Kane,” I said.

“Jonathan, it’s Noel Spurgeon. Did Murray advise you to always keep a grand of cash around?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Be at the Clerk’s Office at 118 North Clark Street, Room 120 at 7:00pm. Bring $400. That covers the license and the clerk’s time. Do you have recent VD tests? A syphilis test is required.”

“We both do, because she had one before her treatment began, and I had one when I had blood drawn to check for a marrow match.”

“Take those results with you tonight. Then tomorrow morning be at 119 West Randolph Street, Lower Level, at 9:00am. Judge Milton will be waiting for you.”

“Do we need witnesses?”

“No, but you can bring up to six people with you if you want. You’ll need $300 for the ceremony and the judge’s honorarium.”

“The judge is cheaper than the clerk?” I asked.

Noel Spurgeon laughed, “It’s the Chicago way!”

“Of course it is,” I chuckled. “Thank you.”

“On Monday, come see me, and I’ll put you in touch with the top oncologist at Mayo.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep earning, Kane. The rewards are almost limitless. Have a good evening.”

“You, too.”

I hung up and sat back down.

“All set,” I said. “We need to be at the Clerk’s office at 7:00pm, then meet the judge at the courthouse tomorrow morning at 9:00am. On Monday, we’ll make the arrangements to fly to Rochester.”

“And we don’t say anything to anyone?”

“It’s up to you, but either way, October 8th will be a party to celebrate our marriage, and I would like to have the Shinto ceremony as we planned.”

“I want to think about it. I’ll decide before we meet at the restaurant for the «yuino».”

“OK. Let’s finish eating, then get dressed so we can be at the Clerk’s office on time.”

We ate, then went upstairs to change. Once we were dressed, I got the cash from my desk, and we headed out to the car.

“I didn’t realize you kept so much cash around,” she said.

“Murray Matheson advised me to do that for emergencies. It’s weird because I had more in that small lockbox than I had in my savings account right before I came to Chicago.”

“Is it safe to do that?”

“Nobody goes into my room, so I’m not worried, and it’s in a locked box. I’ll give you the spare key, which I keep at the office.”

“But what if someone were to break in?”

“We’d lose a lot more than cash,” I replied. “Perhaps I should have an alarm system installed.”

“That would make sense, I think.”

“I’ll call on Monday. There is something we never discussed — are you changing your name?”

“In Japan, the husband and wife have been legally required to use the same surname since 1896. It can be either the husband’s family name or the wife’s family name, but almost always it’s the husband’s. I had planned to do that.”

“From what I understand, you can put anything you like on the marriage certificate, and that becomes your new legal name. You don’t have a middle name, so you could be Keiko Suzuki Kane, if you wanted.”

“I like that idea,” Keiko replied. “People always ask me about a middle name when I fill out forms, and there’s no way to specify I don’t have one. Your suggestion will prevent that hassle in the future. Is there anything else we have to decide before we do this?”

“Other than whether we tell people or not, nothing I can think of.”

“We’d at least have to tell the priest, right? Because he wouldn’t be signing a marriage license.”

“True. Practically, it would create a problem with anniversary celebrations, but only we would know that.”

“This doesn’t seem like you,” Keiko observed. “You’re always direct and honest.”

“My concern is the negative reactions we might have from your parents or grandparents. My mom will understand, I think, as will our friends. Of course, the downside is if it were to get out, then people might be more offended. I’ll handle it however you want to handle it.”

“Is it OK to think about it overnight?”

“Yes, of course.”

When we arrived in the Loop, I parked in a garage not far from the Clerk’s office. Keiko put on her mask, and we walked to the building that housed the office. The doors were locked, but promptly at 7:00pm a man came to the door, unlocked it, and opened it.

“Mr. Kane and Miss Suzuki?”

“Yes,” I replied.

He let us in and led us to the office where marriage licenses were issued.

“You must have some serious pull to make this happen on a Friday night, he observed as he handed me an application form.

“Friends in the right places,” I replied.

I filled out the form, listing our names, addresses, and birth dates, then marked the boxes stating neither of us had been married. I handed back the form, along with a white envelope with the cash to cover the fee and the emolument for after-hours service on a Friday. He asked for our IDs, completed the form, then filled out a marriage license. He entered some details into a computer, stamped the license, and handed it to me.

“Good luck, Mr. Kane, Miss Suzuki.”

“Thanks for taking time out of your Friday night.”

He nodded, held up the envelope, and smiled, “You’re welcome.”

He escorted us out, and license in hand, we walked back to the garage where we’d parked.

“I think that might be the first time I was ever in a government office and didn’t have to wait forever!” Keiko declared. “The Secretary of State’s office is the worst!”

“All patronage jobs and no incentive to be efficient,” I observed. “And I suspect there are ways around the lines for the right people.”

“Mr. Spurgeon?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all. When I spoke to him earlier, he said that if I continued earning money for him, he would grant any reasonable request, and some unreasonable ones as well.”

“What does that mean?”

“I read it as an invitation to ask for any favor I need, and he’ll grant it if possible. He certainly has enough money to do whatever he wants, or as they call it at Spurgeon, ‘fuck you’ money. That is, you can say ‘fuck you’ to literally anyone and not worry about the consequences. According to Jeri, that means legal trouble, too. Fundamentally, Noel Spurgeon has enough money to buy his way out of any trouble, one way or the other.”

“How would that work with criminal charges?”

“A private flight to a country that doesn’t extradite to the US. And he has enough money to make that work without even working up a sweat. The key is positioning funds outside the US, in places the US cannot touch — numbered Swiss, Bahamian, or Cayman Islands accounts would be a start. Keeping gold coins and bullion in some offshore location that would be shipped to whichever non-extradition country he chose if the need were to arise. And he could easily change his identity.”

“How would he do that? Just fake IDs?”

“No, real ones. With enough money, you could easily convince a country to issue completely legitimate IDs in some other name. Think Witness Protection if you need an example. The only caveat would be that his fingerprints are on file with the SEC, so they could identify him if he were arrested. If there were no fingerprints on file, it would be difficult to absolutely identify someone with a legitimate passport, birth certificate, and so on. It happens in the US, too, outside Witness Protection.”

“How?”

“The usual way is to find a child who died who would be about your same age. Get their birth certificate, which is fairly easy to do, then use that to get a driving license, and so on. You want a kid because they won’t have a social security number or any work history. You make up a story like your parents were missionaries, or you worked on their farm, or whatever, so cover for any gaps, and barring a mistake or your fingerprints being on file, it would be really tough for anyone to figure it out. That said, as more and more things are computerized, it becomes easier to check for discrepancies.”

“I didn’t realize anyone could get any birth certificate.”

“They’re public records,” I replied. “I suspect, at some point, they’ll make it more difficult to get a birth certificate, but I can get a copy of mine by simply filling out an application and sending it with a check to Clermont County. And once you have a birth certificate, you can get every other piece of documentation. Did you know that driver’s licenses didn’t have photos until relatively recently?”

“Really?”

“Really. The first ones issued with photos were in California in 1958. Texas didn’t add them until the mid-70s. New York and Tennessee still don’t require photos.”

“Wait! Driver’s licenses without photos?”

“Yes. There are other states that allow non-photo licenses, but I don’t know which ones. I know those because I ran across an article about identity documents while doing some research.”

“That’s weird.”

“Plenty of things which we consider normal would be considered weird less than fifty years ago — TVs, direct-dial telephone calls anywhere in the Western world, ubiquitous cars, computers, battery-operated devices, and so on.”

“I suppose so.”

“Remember, there are many people alive who were born before the first airplane flight, before the Model T, and before incandescent light bulbs were commercially available.”

“OK, OK!” Keiko said with a laugh. “It’s not so weird, I guess.”

“Think about this — it’s been less than a hundred and twenty years since the Civil War ended, and less than forty years since the end of World War II. Compare that to, say, the Roman Empire, which, depending on which way you go, ended fourteen hundred years ago or about five hundred years ago. One interesting thing I remember from history is that the empire which finally defeated the Roman Empire existed until seventy-five years ago.”

“You mean the Ottomans, right?”

“Yes. Back to us — is there anything special you want to do on your last night of freedom?”

Keiko laughed softly, “Isn’t that the question I’m supposed to ask you?”

“I suppose it usually is the guy who is looking at marriage as a straitjacket, but I don’t see it that way.”

“So I’m not your ‘ball and chain’?” Keiko asked lightly.

“Not even close! Bianca teased me about that, but I reject the idea completely. And she was only teasing.”

“I did limit things with her.”

“On the contrary, you gave me far more freedom than I would have given myself!”

“Can I ask you something that might bother you?”

“Ask me anything, Keiko-chan.”

“Did you want to get married immediately because you think I’m going to die?”