We topped the cement steps and entered the lobby- high-ceilinged, decorous and cool. A gold-framed directory told us that Tad Osborne's office was on the top floor. The elevator was a smooth rocket that didn't help my stomach.
A blond Nordic type with too much bulky jewelry sat at a desk in the plush outer office. She smiled at us when we entered and told her who we were, and she seemed to know Alison. Osborne must have instructed her to send us right in when she buzzed him, because she immediately jangled over to the main office and opened the door for us.
Tad Osborne's office was cool and ordered, and beyond a huge window the ribbon of teeming highway stretched to an even more distant horizon. Osborne himself was a medium-sized, balding man with broad, pleasant features, seated behind a very wide desk on which sat only the basics-pen set, ashtray, "out" basket, telephone, and on one corner the mandatory framed family photographs.
"What is it about Mr. Bender that interests you?" Osborne asked after we'd been seated.
Alison arched an eyebrow beautifully. "Mr. Bender?"
"Why, yes… Frank Bender, the Gratuity Insurance agent."
"There's really not much we can tell you, Mr. Osborne," I said, "because we don't have hard information. Why did Bender want to see you?"
Osborne rotated back and forth slightly in his swivel chair, but his gray eyes stayed trained on me. "He called and said there'd been a series of insurance company mergers and he needed my signature to transfer some of my policies. He assured me it would mean a savings without loss of coverage."
"Whatever he tells you, Mr. Osborne, I'm afraid you're on your own. We don't know enough to predict exactly what he'll really have in mind, but there's sufficient reason for us to believe it won't be insurance."
"I'm sure there is, or Dale Carlon wouldn't have vouched for you." He looked at his digital watch. "It's quarter to nine. How is this thing going to unfold?"
I didn't tell him that that question was ruining my health. "Just pretend we're not here. Listen to what Bender has to say, tell him what you think best, and when he leaves, I'll follow him. If it's all right, I'll wait in the file room off your secretary's office so I can see him enter and leave."
"Fine," Osborne said. "I'll tell Mary to cooperate with you."
"Miss Day will be waiting with me, and when I've left she'll want to talk to you to get all the details of your conversation with Bender while they're fresh in your mind."
"Suppose I record our conversation without his knowledge?"
"I wouldn't advise it. Bender might have one of a number of devices to detect an operating recorder."
"Our talk should only take a few minutes," Alison said through her best interviewer's smile. "I'm with Business View, but I promise you nothing you tell me will be used without your permission."
I thought she was putting herself in a corner there, but I kept quiet.
"I've read some of your articles with interest, Miss Day," Osborne said, spreading thick honey. "You do fine and accurate work."
"Bender should be arriving any time now," I told him. "It would be better if he didn't see us."
Osborne rose and showed us out of his office, resting a hand on Alison's shoulder in what I assumed to be a fatherly manner. A favorable article in Business View wouldn't hurt either Heath Industries or his career.
The file room was almost as large as the anteroom. It was furnished with two wooden chairs, a table, and three walls lined solid with charcoal-gray file cabinets. The fourth wall was all metal shelving stacked with varied but neatly stored office supplies. Alison took a chair near the table. I propped the file room door open at just the right angle and positioned the remaining chair so I had a view of anyone entering the outer office and approaching Osborne's bejeweled secretary.
My nerves took over, tapping my right toe in staccato rhythm on the cork floor, rubbing the fingertips of my right hand on the tabletop until they tingled.
But I didn't have long to wait. Five minutes after I'd sat down, at exactly nine o'clock, Frank Bender arrived.
He was a well-groomed and stylishly dressed man in his late twenties or early thirties, wearing a neat dark suit that went far to disguise the fact that he was overweight. He had an even-featured, handsome face with bright, small dark eyes narrowed by the fleshy padding around them. Holding his attache1 case before him, he aimed exactly the right sort of friendly but impersonal smile at the secretary, and I heard him small-talking her as he gave his name.
Osborne's secretary seemed genuinely charmed as she got up and ushered Bender into the main office. She was still smiling at something he'd said as she walked back toward her desk.
Alison and I looked at each other. There was an anxious, super-alert expression in her eyes, and I wondered if I wore the same expression.
No, I was sure mine was tempered by worry and fear. The things that could go wrong! Might Gratuity be legitimate, a small or newly formed company not yet brought to the attention of the various agencies that had been contacted? Frank Bender looked like a thousand other insurance agents, didn't he?
Then I thought about the business card in Victor Talbert's jacket, in Chicago, on the back of which was the name of a man who'd died a violent death in Los Angeles. As Victor Talbert had died. As Craig Blount, in Seattle, had died.
It was nine-twenty, and Bender hadn't come out. My stomach was vibrating.
He came out at nine twenty-eight, and by then I was on my feet, waiting. Through the crack in the door I saw him walk past Osborne's secretary and smile as he did when he entered. He said something I couldn't understand as he went out, and the secretary smiled and adjusted an earring. With a last look back at Alison, who was now also standing, I left the file room to follow Bender.
He left the parking lot in a light-tan sedan, probably a rental, and I trailed in the Avis Chevy. He wound his way through the streets almost as if he didn't know exactly where he was. I stayed three cars back, eating antacid tablets like candy.
Bender must have skipped breakfast. I watched him pull up to a hamburger restaurant, one of a chain, that had a sign proclaiming that they served eggs and pancakes. Parked in an inconspicuous spot near a discount store, I waited for him and thought of things other than food.
I hadn't carried a gun since I was with the department, and I wondered if I should have one now. Bender looked harmless enough, even amiable, but I remembered the deceptively peaceful death photos of Victor Talbert and the fear on Belle Dee's bloodied face when she opened her apartment door for me. And I remembered my own reaction to the sight of her injuries.
Bender finally emerged from the restaurant, his suit coat unbuttoned and his stocky arms swinging freely, the expansive walk of a well-fed man. I watched him get into his car; then I saw a hazy rush of exhaust fumes from the tailpipe of the tan sedan, and it backed from its parking slot and maneuvered in tight quarters to point toward the driveway to the street.
I started the Chevy and sat with the engine idling. When Bender turned the sedan into the flow of traffic, I reminded myself of Carlon's fifty thousand dollars and followed.
Bender was driving more confidently now, as if he knew where he was going. He was easier to follow.
We took a cloverleaf and were on Highway 67, where it was called Lindbergh Boulevard. Within a few minutes Bender made a left into the parking lot of the King Saint Louis Motel.