I raised the garbage bag.
Brad rolled his eyes. "Shit!" With his free hand, he motioned me inside the entrance hall. "I'm on hold," he said.
"It's okay," I said, "really," referring to the garbage bag. "I could have just thrown it away, but you said you wanted to know."
He raised a finger. "Yes, Linda," he said into the telephone. "This is Brad Perry. Judy Warren called in sick today, so I'll need you to send someone else to look after Mother."
While he talked, I held onto the green plastic bag, admiring Brad's impeccably decorated living room, full of exquisite rugs and fine, Asian antiques that had once furnished his parent's gracious home outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
"Noon?" He frowned. "Well, if that's the best you can do, then." He punched the off button and motioned for me to follow him.
Once we reached the kitchen, he relieved me of the bag, opened the back door and tossed it unceremoniously onto the concrete landing. "I keep thinking if I tell Mother often enough that we're in Annapolis, not Thomasboro, it'll eventually sink in.
"Maybe it was a mistake bringing her furniture here," he continued, pulling the door shut behind him. "I thought it would make her feel at home, but the problem is, now she thinks she is home. That she's still in Thomasboro. I can point out the Naval Academy chapel dome and she'll agree, yes, that chapel dome is in Annapolis, and then she wonders how I did it."
"Did what?"
"Move Thomasboro all the way from Tennessee to Annapolis, Maryland."
"My, you are a clever boy!"
Brad grinned. "So Mother tells me."
I had a brainstorm. "Brad, I don't have anything in particular on my agenda this morning. I'll be happy to sit with your mother until the nurse gets here."
"Thanks, Hannah, but I've already told the office that I'll be late. It's an excuse, really. There's this extracurricular project I've got going."
"I don't mind, really. I'd like to help."
"It's no problem. Mom's had breakfast. I've just got her settled up in her bedroom. She's watching Parenthood for the umpteenth time." He grinned. "Love that movie!"
"You sure?"
He nodded. "If you really want to help me with something, though-” He gestured toward the swinging door that I knew led into the dining room. "In some insane moment, I agreed to help with my high school reunion next month." He spread his arms wide. "You're looking at the yearbook committee."
"Lucky you!"
I followed Brad into the dining room, where piles of photocopies that were soon to become "The Tiger Rag" were neatly arranged on the long, highly polished mahogany table. "There's a pile for every page," he said. "Thank goodness there were only forty in my graduating class at Thomasboro High."
I made a circuit of the table, stopping for no particular reason at the M's. From the page on top of the pile, a high school yearbook photo of Anna Sally Miller smiled back at me. Anna Sally had been a perky, blond, ponytailed cheerleader, sang in the Glee Club, belonged to the Future Homemakers of America, and, if the "Look at Me Today" picture was any indication, had packed on 150 pounds since graduation.
Brad stared at Anna Sally over my shoulder. "Sad, isn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know," I said, picking up the page and closely examining Anna Sally's recent photo. She was dressed for tennis and cradled a racquet in the crook of one elbow. "She looks happy, at least. There's a lot to be said for happy."
I smiled over my shoulder at Brad. "So, where are you, Mr. Bradford Perry, Esquire?"
I moseyed around the table until I came to the P's. In 1973, Brad had floppy hair and wore aviator glasses with photo gray lenses: in the flash from the photographer's camera they had instantly darkened. Young Brad as a blind man.
Brad tapped his temple with a forefinger, as if reading my mind. "Contacts," he said. "Never would have gotten a date without them."
Brad showed me how he was arranging the pages into notebooks, and I began circumnavigating the table behind him, picking up pages and putting them in order. All work should be so mindless. "Brad?" I asked on my second time around. "You're an attorney. What do you know about viatical settlements?"
"A minefield," he said. "Why do you ask?"
I shrugged and placed a copy of Sandy Starbuck's page on top of Charlene Wang's. "Just wondering." Oliver Smoot went on top of Carmen Stansbury. "I have this friend-" I began.
Brad paused and laughed out loud. "My gawd, that's an old one!"
I stopped collating and looked at him. "No, seriously! I'd never even heard of viaticals until this friend of mine sold her life insurance policy to a broker. Frankly," I told him, "the whole idea gives me the heebie-jeebies."
"You and me both," he said. "The insurance companies I represent have been trying to get a law passed in Maryland for several years, but they always run out of time."
"Figures," I grumped. The Maryland legislature meets for only ninety days between January and April. It's a wonder they got anything done.
"The bill died in the House," Brad complained. "In spite of all the bad publicity following a major bust for fraud up in Baltimore. You'd think the Answer Care case would have been a wake-up call. Investors lost more than two million dollars in that fiasco."
"I've heard of that case," I said, "but I didn't make the connection until now."
I started around the table again, placing Jack Popham on top of Oliver Smoot. "But here's something I don't understand, Brad. What's to keep me from buying life insurance policies on everyone on Prince George Street?"
Brad glanced up at me sideways. "Well, even assuming you could afford to pay the premiums on all those policies, the life insurance companies have thought of that. A key insurance principle is insurable interest. What that means is the person buying the insurance has to have a vested interested in the insured person's well-being."
"Like a husband."
"Exactly. The beneficiary has to be a husband or wife or, nowadays, a domestic partner. Someone with a close relationship to the insured. Business relationships count, too, but not your second cousin twice removed.
"But," he continued, "you generally don't need an insurable interest to buy an existing life insurance policy. The policy is considered personal property and can be sold pretty much at will."
"If that's the case, why can't they regulate the resale of life insurance policies like they do securities? People are investing in them, aren't they? You'd think the Securities and Exchange Commission would have something to say about it." I shivered, and began working my way around the table again. Chip Pickett on top of Jack Popham, and Ann Ogden on top of Chip. "Death futures," I muttered. "Shouldn't be different than any other kind of futures, from the SEC's point of view."
"You know the sad part?" Brad said, moving around the table two piles ahead of me. "Most policyholders aren't aware that there are better ways to get money out of their insurance policies."
"Like?" A copy of Stuart Lollis's page slipped from my fingers. I bent down to retrieve it from under the table.
"You can borrow money on the cash value of your policy," Brad was saying when I surfaced. "You can use the policy as collateral. Or take advantage of accelerated death benefits, 'ADBs' for short. There are provisions for ADBs already written into most life insurance policies."
"Most people don't read their policies very well, I guess."
"You got it."
I laid an introduction and a title page on top of Pat Berry's beaming face, then evened up the yearbook I had just completed by tapping its edges against the table. I set it crosswise on top of a pile of others. "I need your advice, Brad."
Brad clipped a photo name tag to the front of the yearbook he'd been working on, laid it down on the sideboard behind him and gave me his full attention. "Shoot."
"I was curious about viaticals, so I visited this guy my friend recommended up in Glen Burnie." I told Brad about my visit to MBFSG, Jablonsky's offer to buy my life insurance policy for $150,000, and about the other policies he wanted me to apply for. "I'm not going to do it, of course, but I figure if he's tried it out on me, he must have done it successfully with others."