Death Benefits (5 page)

After a few paces, he noticed that something was wrong with his feet. They were moving faster than he had intended, and after a few more paces he had to take his hands out of his pockets to keep his balance, and then he was jogging, pumping his arms to bring up his speed.

4

There were no assigned seats on the plane, and when the passengers boarded, Walker realized his pass was in a different “zone” from Stillman’s. Stillman sat near the front, and Walker found the only empty seat, beside a young curly-haired woman who seemed to view his arrival with disappointment. She had placed her purse, a shopping bag, and a couple of magazines on his seat, and now she sighed and slowly gathered them onto her lap.

“Sorry,” he said.

She said nothing, just occupied herself with stuffing the magazines into the seat pocket in front of her, then tried to jam the shopping bag and the purse under the seat in front with her backpack, all the time eyeing Walker’s feet resentfully.

Walker could not see Stillman from where he sat, but he was aware of him up ahead, and he felt an impatience that he could not find out what he was thinking. Why would he need somebody who knew Ellen Snyder?

The question shifted Walker’s attention from Stillman and held it on Ellen. As always, she returned in short, meaningless fragments of memory, never still, but in motion: a few strands of blond hair straying across her left eye while she was talking, and then her hand would flit up to push them away. He wasn’t always sure that he had seen precisely what he was remembering, that it had been chemically fixed in his brain on some occasion, because sometimes the memory couldn’t be identified with a specific time and place. Other times, the memory was clear and certain. He could see her on Market Street. It was after class in the late afternoon. She had seen the cable car coming. “There it is. We can catch it!” She had kept her eyes on it, tapped his chest with her small hand, and he could feel it again, fluttering insistently against him six times in a second before her first steps had taken it away, and she had broken into a run toward the stop. He had followed more slowly, because he had wanted to watch her. He remembered that exactly—the blue sweater she had been wearing, the tight skirt and flat shoes—because that had been the day after the first time they had kissed. He had watched her all day, expecting her to be different somehow: maybe softer and more affectionate, or in a nightmare version, strange and distant because she had regretted it afterward. He had not detected any change at all. She had been exactly the same, exuding happy energy, intense interest in what she saw around her, but neither uncomfortable with him nor detectably more interested.

Walker banished the memory and tried to discern what Stillman was doing. What if Stillman suspected her of something, some kind of malfeasance? He had mentioned her, and said they were going to L.A. to collect evidence about fraud. The idea that Walker would participate in an expedition to harm Ellen was insane. The simplest thing to do would be to get off the plane, tell Stillman that he’d once had a personal relationship with Ellen and was not the right choice for this assignment, then get on the next flight home.

Instantly he knew that he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Stillman was an unknown. If Walker simply left, then Ellen would find herself alone in the middle of his surprise investigation, with no advocate, and probably no witnesses. And what were Stillman’s limits, his rules? He wasn’t a cop or something. He was just some kind of private security expert. The company could hardly be relied on to keep him under control: Stillman seemed to have a lifelong social connection with the president’s family.

The flight to Los Angeles was short, so Walker sat still and waited it out, fighting images that intruded themselves on his consciousness. He imagined himself walking into Ellen’s office with Stillman, and looking into her eyes. The friendly, happy manner she’d had when he’d last seen her would vanish. She would detest him. He was going to come into her office looking like some kind of informer. She might even think that after she had dropped him, he had developed some weird scheme to get revenge by destroying her career.

Once again he considered simply getting himself out of this before she knew he had been involved. Seeing him with Stillman would destroy any respect that she had for him. Then he reminded himself of the facts. She had dumped him over a year and a half ago, well before the training period had ended. She had not changed her mind before she had left for her first post. She had not called him after that, or sent him a note. It was over.

Going along to make sure she was safe was a neutral, disinterested act that had nothing to do with any present or future relationship. It was simply necessary because in the course of their past relationship he had come to understand her well enough to know she was not dishonest. She wasn’t a lover, and she never would be again. It didn’t matter what she thought of him now. If it turned out that she needed an advocate, he would be there. Just as he was succumbing to a fantasy in which he cleared her name, she learned of it afterward, and appeared unexpectedly in San Francisco with gratitude that knew no bounds, his ears popped.

The plane was descending threateningly, moving in toward the runway. In a moment it bounced once and rattled to a stop. Walker overcame his impulse to hurry to keep up with Stillman.

Stillman was waiting for him near the end of the boarding tunnel, but while they walked, he did not speak. Walker noticed that at the car-rental counter downstairs, Stillman merely claimed a car that he had somehow reserved. He had been behaving as though he had received a telephone call at McClaren’s and run for the airport. Maybe he had, and he had called ahead from the plane. But Walker determined to remember these small discrepancies until he could perceive a pattern that was unambiguous.

Stillman sat behind the wheel and drove out onto Century Boulevard. Twice Walker caught Stillman staring at him. Finally, Stillman said, “What the hell is the matter with you?”

Walker said, “Nothing. Nothing new, anyway. What are we doing?”

“I told you. Investigating.”

Walker reviewed his question and admitted to himself that asking questions was a bad strategy. No matter what the answer had been, it would not have changed what he was doing, which was sitting in the passenger seat letting Stillman drag him wherever he pleased until he was sure Ellen was not in trouble.

Stillman’s voice struck him as a distraction. “I’ll tell you what I know so far, so you recognize names. A guy named Andrew Werfel bought a life insurance policy from McClaren’s in 1959. It was one of those policies that rich guys buy to pay the inheritance tax so the government doesn’t take everything when they die. The payoff was twelve million. Okay so far?”

“Sure,” said Walker. “It’s pretty common.”

“He died a month ago. The beneficiary was his only begotten son, Alan Werfel. Everything cut-and-dried. A couple of weeks later, Alan Werfel showed up at the Pasadena office with a certified copy of the death certificate. After a few preliminary faxes and calls to the home office, he was given the usual forms to sign off on, and then a check for the twelve million. Still okay?”

“This doesn’t sound like anything but a dull day at the Pasadena office. I assume there was something wrong with Alan Werfel?”

“That’s the way it looks. The agent who handled the Werfel thing was the assistant manager of the Pasadena office, a young lady named Ellen Snyder. She’s the one who verified the death certificate, checked Alan Werfel’s ID, requested the payout, and handed over the check.” Walker could feel Stillman’s eyes on him.

“Is this where I come in?” asked Walker. “Do I think Ellen Snyder did something dishonest? No. Can I prove it? No. I just have no reason to think she would, and quite a few to think she wouldn’t.”

“I got that far on my own,” said Stillman. “She has a good record, and when she was hired, nothing got into her personnel file that was faked . . . . unlike a few other people.”

“You’re saying there’s something wrong in my file?”

“I’m not investigating you. I didn’t check everything in your file.”

“You want to give me a lie detector test?”

Stillman rolled his eyes and then blew out a breath in displeasure. “You are not the problem. You are helping me analyze the problem. And by the way, don’t ever volunteer to take a lie detector test.”

“Why not—because people will just think I beat the machine?”

“You hear about that more than it happens. Most of the people who can do it are nuts, and you don’t need a machine to know that you met one. What you don’t hear about is—HAH!” His shout was sudden and deafening. “How’s your pulse, kid?”

It took Walker a second to settle back into his seat. His shirt collar suddenly felt tight. The arteries in his neck were pounding, and a faint film of moisture had materialized on his forehead. He fought down the anger. “That wasn’t funny.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be funny,” said Stillman. “It was instructive. Your heartbeat, blood pressure, and breathing just took a big jump all at the same time. You’re lying.”

“You’re saying the lie detector people are going to scream in my ear?”

“They don’t have to. Any six-year-old on a playground knows how to piss off the kid beside him enough to get a reading.”

“Then I’ll stay away from playgrounds, too.”

“Good. Now, back to Ellen. You fucked her, right?”

Walker sucked in a deep breath. “Are you still trying to be irritating?”

“No, it’s a natural by-product of the search for knowledge,” said Stillman. “Didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t.” He tried to detect whether the tone of his voice had betrayed him, and judged that the genuine anger in it had masked the lie. He tested a suspicion. “Did somebody tell you I did?”

“I don’t remember who told me. Cardarelli, maybe. Or it could have been Marcy Wang.”

Walker smoldered. The idea that they would express outrage to him that Stillman was spying on employees, and then tell Stillman all the personal information he wanted on other people, was incredible. How had they even known? The revelation that any of them had known enough about what had passed between him and Ellen to make any conjecture was a shock. It had begun and ended in training, when they had all been almost strangers. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered.

“Then don’t. Maybe I made it up and forgot. I heard you took her out during training. You didn’t?”

Walker was tense and angry. What right did this guy have to ask these prying questions? This had nothing to do with his job or Ellen’s. He said with feigned patience, “I asked her out to dinner once. Then I asked her to go someplace with me another time, and she said no. A concert. That was it. She wasn’t interested, so I dropped it.”

“What do you mean she wasn’t interested?”

Walker sighed to convey his weariness of the topic. “She went out with me once. It was a nice place. We were both pleasant and smiled a lot. I liked her, and I wanted her to like me. A couple of days later, I got tickets to a concert, because she’d said she played the piano when she was a kid and still loved music. But when I asked, she gave me one of those excuses they have that tells you to forget it.”

“Like what?”

“Like they have to wash their hair. It was better than that, but it was still—I remember—she had to study for an exam we were having the day after the concert.” He glared. “Satisfied?”

“You were twenty-two, and so was she, and neither of you was married,” said Stillman. “Jesus, I don’t know about people in your generation. You look the same as people used to, except for the hair, but you’re not.”

Walker said, “What’s the complaint?”

“It would seem to me,” Stillman said, “that the natural thing would be to make friends, have foolish sexual relationships, blow your paycheck, feel remorse. But you don’t. All of you are so serious, so interested in making the leap from third assistant manager to second assistant manager. What is it? Are you all crazy for money?”

Walker stared out the window, pretending not to listen.

“Tell me this. Are men and women still attracted to each other?”

“I was attracted, she wasn’t.”

“That reassures me about you, anyway. A twenty-four-year-old who can’t wait to be sixty and move into the corner office has got a problem.”

Stillman stopped the car in front of a convenience store, but he didn’t go in. Instead, he walked down the sidewalk and turned the corner onto a residential street. Walker got out and caught up, but Stillman still seemed to be marveling over the degeneration of civilization.

“Mind if I ask where we’re going?” asked Walker.

Stillman seemed pleased. “Not at all. In that house up there to the right is Ellen Snyder’s apartment. Bottom floor, rear entry.”

“Wouldn’t she be at work? It’s barely three o’clock.”

“She would be, if she were doing that sort of thing these days, but she isn’t.”

“They fired her for paying off a policy?”

Stillman shook his head. “They didn’t fire her, and she didn’t quit, either. She just seems to have gotten scarce.” Stillman was up the driveway now, and he approached the door.

An uneasiness came over Walker. “Then why are we here?”

Stillman reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of thin leather gloves.

“You aren’t . . . .” said Walker.

Stillman knocked on the door, then put his ear to the door and listened. He knocked again. He shrugged at Walker. “See? What can I do?” He took out a pocketknife, wiggled the blade around between the door and the jamb for a couple of seconds, held it there, and pushed the door open. Walker backed a few paces away, but Stillman muttered, “Sitting in the car doesn’t make you less guilty than I am, it just makes you easier to find.”

Walker stopped backing away. He was almost relieved that Stillman had misinterpreted his reluctance. He was horrified at this man making this kind of intrusion on Ellen, but the mention of guilt made him realize that it was better this way. If Stillman was honest, he would see that there was nothing but evidence of Ellen’s innocence, and leave her alone. If he was trying to frame her, then he had just made a mistake.

Stillman stepped in and held the door. “Come on in.”

Walker had just crossed the threshold into a small, dark kitchen when Stillman edged past him and held his arm. “Don’t touch anything.”

Walker followed Stillman’s eyes. He was looking at a window on the far side of the kitchen above the sink. The curtain swayed a little, then blew inward slightly as Stillman stepped toward it. He pulled the curtain aside to reveal electrical tape in an X shape from corner to corner of the upper pane, and a network of cracks. A couple of large triangles were missing.