I pushed my plate away. I’d only eaten half the fish, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. “The trouble is, I guess I’m a bit gun-shy now. There really are times when I wish I did have a couple of children and was doing the middle-class family thing. But that’s a myth, you know: very few people live like an advertisement, with golden harmony, and enough money, and so on. And I know I’m feeling a longing for a myth, not the reality. It’s just-I get scared that I’ve made the wrong choice, or-I don’t quite know how to say it. Maybe I should be home watching the soaps, maybe I’m not doing the best thing with my life. So if people try to suggest it, I bite their heads off.”
Ralph reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I think you’re remarkable, Vic. I like your style. Dick sounds like an ass. Don’t give up on us men just because of him.”
I smiled and squeezed his hand in return. “I know. But-I’m a good detective, and I’ve got an established name now. And it’s not a job that’s easy to combine with marriage. It’s only intermittently demanding, but when I’m hot after something, I don’t want to be distracted by the thought of someone at home stewing because he doesn’t know what to do about dinner. Or fussing at me because Earl Smeissen beat me up.”
Ralph looked down at his empty plate, nodding thoughtfully. “I see.” He grinned. “Of course, you might find a guy who’d already done the children-and-suburbia number who would stand on the sidelines cheering your successes.”
Tim came back to take dessert orders. I chose Ahab’s spectacular ice-cream-and-cordial dessert. I hadn’t eaten all my fish, and I was sick of being virtuous anyway. Ralph decided to have some too.
“But I think this Earl Smeissen business would take a lot of getting used to,” he added after Tim had disappeared again.
“Aren’t there any dangers to claim handling?” I asked. “I would imagine you’d come across fraudulent claimants from time to time who aren’t too happy to have their frauds uncovered.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But it’s harder to prove a fraudulent claim than you might think. Especially if it’s an accident case. There are lots of corrupt doctors out there who will happily testify to nonprovable injuries-something like a strained back, which doesn’t show up on an X ray-for a cut of the award.
“I’ve never been in any danger. Usually what happens if you know it’s a blown-up claim, and they know you know, but no one can prove it either way, you give them a cash settlement considerably below what it would be if it came to court. That gets them off your back-litigation is very expensive for an insurance company, because juries almost always favor the claimant, so it’s really not as shocking as it sounds.”
“How much of there is that?” I asked.
“Well, everyone thinks the insurance company is there to give them a free ride-they don’t understand that it all comes out in higher rates in the end. But how often do we really get taken to the cleaners? I couldn’t say. When I was working in the field, my gut sense was that maybe one in every twenty or thirty cases was a phony. You handle so many, though, that it’s hard to evaluate each one of them properly-you just concentrate on the big ones.”
Tim had brought the ice cream, which was sinfully delicious. I scraped the last drops out of the bottom of my dish. “ I found a claim draft lying around an apartment the other day. It was an Ajax draft, a carbon of one. I wondered if it was a real one.”
“You did?” Ralph was surprised. “Where did you find it? In your apartment?”
“No. Actually, in young Thayer’s place.”
“Do you have it? I’d like to see it.”
I picked my bag up from the floor and got the paper out of the zippered side compartment and handed it to Ralph. He studied it intently. Finally he said, “This looks like one of ours all right. I wonder what the boy was doing with that on him. No claim files are supposed to go home with you.”
He folded it and put it in his wallet. “This should go back to the office.”
I wasn’t surprised, just pleased I’d had the forethought to make Xeroxes of it. “Do you know the claimant?” I asked.
He pulled out the paper again and looked at the name. “No, I can’t even pronounce it. But it’s the maximum indemnity payment for this state, so he must be on a total disability case-either temporary or permanent. That means there should be a pretty comprehensive file on him. How did it get so greasy?”
“Oh, it was lying on the floor,” I said vaguely.
When Tim brought the check, I insisted on splitting it with Ralph. “Too many dinners like this and you’ll have to give up either your alimony or your apartment.”
He finally let me pay my part of the bill. “By the way, before they kick me out for not paying the rent, would you like to see my place?”
I laughed. “Sure, Ralph. I’d love to.”
13
The Mark of Zav
Ralph’s alarm went off at 6:30; I cracked my eyes briefly to look at the clock and then buried my head under the pillows. Ralph tried burrowing in after me, but I kept the covers pulled around my ears and fought him off successfully. The skirmish woke me up more thoroughly. I sat up. “Why so early? Do you have to be at the office at seven thirty?”
“This isn’t early to me, baby: when I lived in Downers Grove I had to get up at five forty-five every day-this is luxury. Besides, I like morning-best time of the day.”
I groaned and lay down again. “Yeah, I’ve often said God must have loved mornings, he made so many of them. How about bringing me some coffee?”
He got out of bed and flexed his muscles. “Sure thing, Miss Warshawski, ma’am. Service with a smile.”
I had to laugh. “If you’re going to be so full of pep this early in the day, I think I’ll head back north for breakfast.” I swung my legs out of bed. It was now the fourth morning since my encounter with Earl and his boys, and I scarcely felt a twinge. Clearly, exercising paid off. I’d better get at it again-it would be easy to get out of the habit on the excuse that I was an invalid.
“I can feed you,” Ralph said. “Not lavishly, but I’ve got toast.”
“Tell you the truth, I want to go running this morning before I eat. I haven’t been out for five days, and it’s easy to go downhill if you don’t keep it up. Besides, I have a teen-age guest at Lotty’s, and I ought to go see how she’s doing.”
“Just as long as you aren’t importing teen-age boys for some weird orgy or other, I don’t mind. How about coming back here tonight?”
“Mmm, maybe not. I’ve got to go to a meeting tonight, and I want to spend some time with Lotty and my friend.” I was still bothered by Ralph’s persistence. Did he want to keep tabs on me, or was he a lonely guy going after the first woman he’d met who turned him on? If Masters were involved in the deaths of John and Peter Thayer, it wasn’t impossible that his assistant, who had worked for him for three years, was involved as well.
“You get to work early every morning?” I asked.
“Unless I’m sick.”
“Last Monday morning, too?” I asked.
He looked at me, puzzled. “I suppose. Why do you ask-Oh. When Peter was shot. No, I forgot: I wasn’t in early that morning. I went down to Thayer’s apartment and held him down while Yardley shot him.”
“Yardley get in on time that morning?” I persisted.
“I’m not his goddamn secretary!” Ralph snapped. “He doesn’t always show up at the same time-he has breakfast meetings and crap-and I don’t sit with a stopwatch waiting for him to arrive.”