“Digging as deep as I can.”
“I know. I wonder if a face-to-face meeting might help? Form my own impressions.”
“How you gonna manage that? Let him know he’s being investigated?”
“No,” I said, “not exactly. I think maybe there’s a better way.”
N ancy Mathias’s attorney was Harold Moorehouse, of the firm of Zimmerman, Gorman, and Moorehouse. He was in when I called their offices in Palo Alto, and willing to talk frankly; Celeste Ogden had paved the way with an earlier phone call. But he had little enough to tell me. His client hadn’t told him why she wanted to see him or given him any indication of the reason. When she didn’t show up for the scheduled appointment, Moorehouse had had his secretary call her home to ask why. The secretary hadn’t spoken to her; got an answering machine, left a message. The call wasn’t returned.
I said, “Mrs. Mathias sounded upset when she made the appointment, is that right?”
“If I used the word ‘upset’ to Mrs. Ogden, it was a poor choice.”
“What would be a better one?”
“It’s difficult to gauge a person’s emotional state over the phone. But the word that comes to mind at the moment is ‘wounded’.”
“How do you mean?”
“As if she’d been badly hurt in some way,” Moorehouse said, “and was having difficulty coping with it. I assumed whatever it was, was her reason for wanting to consult with me.”
“She didn’t give you any idea of what it might be?”
“None. I asked her, of course, but she said she preferred not to discuss the matter over the phone.”
“Have you spoken with her husband since her death?”
There was a slight pause before Moorehouse answered. And when he did, his voice had tightened perceptibly. “Twice, as a matter of fact. I called him when I received the news. And we exchanged a few words at the funeral.”
“Did you mention her call or the missed appointment?”
“No. It didn’t seem appropriate.”
“What’s your opinion of the man, Mr. Moorehouse?”
“That’s not a relevant question,” he said.
“Maybe not, but I get the impression you don’t much care for him.”
“If that’s your conclusion.” Typical lawyer response.
“May I ask why?”
“Another irrelevant question.”
“Not to me.”
“I would rather not answer it, just the same.”
“I’d really appreciate it if you would. Or at least tell me how you’d characterize him. Off-the-record, of course.”
Silence for a few seconds. Then Moorehouse said, “Very well. Cold, indifferent to the feelings of others. The kind of man who has no genuine human emotions, only simulates them.”
Perfect thumbnail description of a sociopath.
T he San Francisco offices of Pacific Rim Insurance were located in one of the city’s downtown landmarks, the Transamerica Pyramid. I walked in there at 12:35, ten minutes early for my appointment with the head of Pacific’s Claims Investigation Department, Irv Blaustein.
When you’ve been in private practice as long as I have and one of your specialties is freelance work for insurance companies too small or too cheap to maintain an investigative staff of their own, you get to know a lot of people in the industry. Pacific Rim was one of the larger outfits, with their own staff, and while I’d never done a job for them, I’d met Blaustein three or four times during the course of other cases. I knew him well enough to call him and convince him to give up part of his lunch hour on short notice for a consultation. Not that it had taken much convincing; all I’d had to do was mention the possibility of Pacific Rim saving a potful of money.
He didn’t keep me waiting. Promptly at 12:45 he appeared in the waiting room and personally conducted me through a rabbit warren of cubicles to his private office. He was about my age, and he moved in a plodding, stooped-over posture as if he had back or spine problems. From this, and his nondescript face and mild manner, you might have taken him for the nonaggressive executive type taking up office space until his retirement. You’d have been wrong. He was a bulldog, one of the most tenacious claims chiefs in the business-a kind of tall, gangly modern version of Barton Keyes, the Edward G. Robinson character in Double Indemnity.
Once we were seated with the door closed, he wasted no time getting down to the business at hand. “I looked over the Mathias claim after we spoke on the phone,” he said. “It seems reasonably straightforward and aboveboard.”
“My client, the deceased’s sister, doesn’t think so.”
“She doesn’t believe it was an accidental death?”
“No. She suspects foul play-a murder-for-hire job.”
“The husband?”
“Yes. Husband and beneficiary.”
“Based on what?”
“A lot of intangibles so far. But enough to convince me that an investigation is worth undertaking.”
“I’d like to know what they are.”
“I’ll have my partner e-mail you a copy of our case file to date.”
Blaustein leaned back, elbows on the arms of his chair, fingers steepled. “So what is it you want from us?”
“Question first. Has whoever’s handling the claim for you had any personal contact with Brandon Mathias?”
“No. Given the preliminary findings, our man hasn’t found it necessary.”
“Good. What I’d like to do is interview Mathias myself, get a better handle on the man, probe him a little. I can’t just walk in and announce that his sister-in-law hired me to investigate him as a possible homicide suspect; he’d refuse to talk to me. But he isn’t likely to refuse to talk to a representative of Pacific Rim.”
Blaustein frowned. “We don’t hire outside investigators, you know that.”
“Sure. And you know my reputation, Irv. I’m not looking to cadge another fee; I don’t operate that way. Strictly a quid pro quo favor is what I’m asking.”
“I don’t know,” Blaustein said. “I can’t justify misrepresentation.”
“It won’t be misrepresentation. Call it a sanctioned smoke screen. I’ll make the approach using my own name, give you a full accounting of my conversation with him, and turn over anything my investigation might uncover that has a bearing on his claim.”
“Permission to use Pacific’s name, that’s all you’re asking?”
“Onetime usage, right. And for you to back me up if Mathias decides to make a checkup call.”
“Why should he? You plan to come on that strong?”
“Not strong enough to get his back up, no,” I said. “I’d never do or say anything that would reflect badly on Pacific Rim.”
“When are you going to see him?”
“As soon as he’s available.”
Blaustein thought it over, taking his time. At length he said, as much to himself as to me, “Double indemnity clause. Hundred-thousand-dollar payoff if the claim is valid.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well, what the hell, why not,” he said. “Just don’t make me regret this.”
“I won’t.”
“All right. Consider yourself an unofficial and unpaid Pacific Rim employee for the next forty-eight hours. I’ll even give you one of our claims department business cards to cement the deal.”
O n the way out of the building I rang up Tamara, reported the gist of my conversation with Blaustein, asked her to e-mail him our case file and to call RingTech and make an ASAP appointment with Mathias using Pacific Rim’s name. The old secretary-calling-for-her-boss dodge tends to lend weight and urgency, true or false, to business arrangements made by phone.
She called back as I was ransoming the car from the Sutter-Stockton garage. “Four o’clock today,” she said. “He’s giving you fifteen minutes out of a real tight schedule.”
“You talk to him personally?”
“His assistant, Drax. No surprise Nancy Mathias didn’t like that dude. He’s got a bloodsucker’s voice-Bela Lugosi without the heavy accent.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll see if I can talk to him, too.”
“Keep your neck covered if you do.”