‘Did Arthur Lamm write the policy on Carson?’
‘Lamm’s agency is huge. He writes a lot of the people we insure. Give me other names, so I can see if we got screwed over with them, too, and maybe I’ll tell you a little more about Carson’s policy.’
‘Benno Barberi, James Whitman.’
I heard his fingers typing at a keyboard. ‘No go on both.’
Lamm had spread the policies around, to avoid attracting attention. ‘The check on Carson has gone out?’
‘Some days ago.’
‘Who was the beneficiary?’
‘A guy from Chicago PD called just an hour ago, asking the same thing.’
‘The police, and not the IRS?’
‘The police. Now you. The IRS will be next. Sometimes it takes the Feds longer, is all.’
‘Did the cop leave a name?’
‘Come to think, no,’ he said. ‘Just some guy, younger.’
‘You knew to stonewall him, didn’t you, Gaylord? You didn’t give him the beneficiary?’
‘I told him that information was confidential, like I’m telling you. He said he’d get a subpoena over, but I’m doubtful.’
‘He was no cop, but maybe you already figured that.’
‘Damn right I did, just like I’m trying to figure your motives this very moment. Why do you need the name of the Carson beneficiary?’ he asked.
‘I want to see who’s collected on running Carson down. You’d look dumb, Gaylord, if you blew a chance to recover the payout.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning you let an opportunity slip by to stop the Carson check.’
‘We’re an insurance company. We can’t go grabbing back checks because there’s an insinuation of a crime.’
‘Not even from the killer?’
‘Oh, hell, Elstrom, I don’t want to know anything more,’ he said, speaking fast now. ‘It was a two-million-dollar term life policy, payable to a Second Securities Corporation.’ He gave me an address on North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago.
‘Thank you, Gaylord.’
‘Up yours,’ he said.
Jenny called me as I headed to that north part of the city.
‘Though a most interesting story out of Chicago has gone national,’ she said, ‘and I’ve been on intimate terms with the man at the center of it…’ She faked a cough. ‘And I’ve been anticipating becoming even more intimate…’ She let her voice trail away.
‘I’ll tell you almost all of what’s new,’ I said, and did.
‘What about Wendell Phelps?’
‘I don’t know the truth about Wendell.’
‘Do you know your truth about Amanda?’ She wasn’t asking about the case.
‘I think so,’ I said, but it might have been after a hesitation.
‘You’re still coming to San Francisco?’
‘Soon,’ I said, but I wondered how long it would take to know the truth about that as well.
FIFTY-THREE
I blew past the place twice before I saw the tiny numbers. They were tarnished, almost invisible on a dark brick building wedged between a dry cleaner’s and a quick loan place that had gone out of business. I parked around the corner on a residential side street and walked back.
A rusting bracket looked to have once held a barber pole, and the front window next to it had been filled in with glass blocks. The front door was full glass except for the mail slot cut into the metal scuff plate at the bottom. There was no name anywhere, or anything else that made it look like the legitimate recipient of a two-million-dollar insurance payout. I went in.
A young girl, nineteen or twenty, was talking to a glitter-encrusted cell phone that lay on a small wood desk. She was chewing spearmint gum and painting the nails on her right hand with silver glitter that matched the phone, the sequins on her black sweater and the sparkle of the silver studs piercing her ears, nose, and one cheek. Even her dark hair had been dusted with silvery specks. I didn’t imagine all that sparkle was problematic during the day, but come nightfall, any driver catching her million glints in his headlights would likely be blinded and driven off the road.
She had no computer, no typewriter, no papers, and no desk phone. The walls were also blank, except for a closed door in the wall behind her.
Her thick eyelashes rose and then sagged, probably from their own caked weight, as I sat on a ripped vinyl chair and smiled.
‘I’ll call you back, Arnold,’ she said, releasing more spearmint into the air. Mindful of her wet nails, she touched a button on her cell phone with only the tip of a glistening little finger.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘I’m here to see Mr Lamm.’
‘I’m sorry. We have no…’ She’d already forgotten the name.
‘Lamm.’
‘Like in “Mary Had A Little-?”’ She ground harder at the spearmint gum, working the thought.
‘No. L-A-M-M.’
She shook her head, confused. As she did, she caught sight of her wet right nails, still suspended like pincers splayed up in the air. She laid them down carefully, nails up, on the surface of her desk.
I replaced my smile with an officious frown. ‘This is Second Securities Corporation?’
‘Just a minute.’ With her left forefinger, she hooked open the center drawer of her desk, read something, and said, ‘Yes, this is Second Securities Corporation.’
‘I’m with the Department of Verification,’ I said, trying to intone like Tan-tone did on the news at noon. ‘My office set up an appointment with Mr Lamm.’
‘I’m sorry, sir-’
‘Sorry won’t cut it.’ I stood to loom over the poor girl. ‘If Lamm thinks he can avoid this, he is sadly mistaken.’
‘I don’t know Mr Lamm,’ she said, her chair scraping back on the tile floor as I made for the door behind her.
The faintest of foul smells came as I reached to turn the door knob. It was locked.
‘What’s back there?’
‘A garage full of rats, I’m thinking. Some alive, some dead.’ Her voice, frightened, had shot up an octave.
‘Where’s Lamm?’ I demanded, louder than was necessary.
A tear began descending in a black rivulet. ‘I don’t know any kind of lamb. My ma never cooked it. I’m just supposed to sit here and take in the mail and not look at it and put it in the desk.’ She tugged at a right-side drawer handle, mindless now of her wet nails, and pulled it open. It was stuffed with flyers and catalogues. ‘Somebody comes by at night to pick it up.’
I reached past her, grabbed a handful. All of it looked to be junk: grocery flyers, ads for cosmetic dentists, sales at a tire discounter. There were no first-class business envelopes in the pile.
‘This looks like more than a day’s worth,’ I said, handing it back.
She took it, sniffling. ‘They must be on vacation. They haven’t been by for a few days.’
‘I have to get in back,’ I said.
My cell phone rang. I pulled it out.
‘Dek?’ It was Amanda. Her voice was high pitched, almost shrill. ‘An Agent Krantz-’
‘Department of Verification,’ I said officiously, for the glitter girl’s benefit.
‘Dek, he says-’
‘Hold please,’ I said, cutting her off again. I nodded curtly to the glitter girl and started for the front door. ‘Tell Lamm I’ll be back. He can’t hide forever.’
‘Tell him yourself,’ she sniffled behind me. ‘I haven’t been paid in over a week, and I don’t need this shit.’
I strode out, pompous and erect, a bully. And sure of the obvious: Second Securities was a front, a mail drop, a place set up only to receive an insurance payout.
I clicked Amanda back on. ‘Sorry; I was role playing.’
‘An Agent Krantz just phoned…’ More words came, but they were muffled, indistinct, lost to the traffic rumbling along Milwaukee Avenue.
‘Yell, Amanda,’ I shouted.
‘He says my father’s going to jail!’ she screamed.
FIFTY-FOUR