J is for Judgment (2 page)

Mac followed me down the hall, making polite responses as I filled him in on my current circumstances. When we reached my office, he was properly complimentary. We caught up on gossip, exchanging news about mutual friends. The pleasantries gave me time to study the man at close range. The years seemed to be speeding right along for him. He’d lost color. He’d lost about ten pounds by the look of him. He seemed tired and uncertain, which was completely uncharacteristic. The Mac Voorhies of old had been brusque and impatient, fair-minded, decisive, humorless, and conservative.
He was a decent man to work for, and I admired his testiness, which was born of a passion for getting the job done right. Now the spark was missing and I was alerted by the loss.

“Are you okay? You don’t seem like your old self somehow.”

He gestured peevishly, in an unexpected flash of energy. “They’re taking all the fun out of the job, I swear to God. Damn executives with all their talk about the bottom line. I know the insurance business…hell, I’ve been at it long enough. CF used to be family. We had a company to run, but we did it with compassion and we respected each other’s turf. We didn’t stab each other in the back and we didn’t short-change any claimants. Now, I don’t know, Kinsey. The turnover’s ridiculous. Agents are run through so fast, they hardly have a chance to unpack their briefcases. All this talk about profit margins and cost containment. Lately I find myself not wanting to go to work.” He paused, looking sheepish, color coming up in his face. “God, would you listen? I’m beginning to sound like a garrulous old fart, which is what I am. They offered me an ‘early retirement package,’ whatever the hell that means. You know, they’re maneuvering to get some of us old birds off the payroll as soon as possible. We earn way too much and we’re too set in our ways.”

“You going to do it?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but I might. I just might. I’m sixty-one and I’m tired. I’d like to spend time with my grandkids before I drop in my tracks. Marie and I could sell the house and get an RV, see some of the
country and visit the clan. Keep making the rounds so we don’t wear out our welcome.” Mac and his wife had eight grown kids, all of them married with countless children of their own. He waved the subject aside, his mind apparently focused on something else. “Enough of that stuff. I got another month to decide. Meantime, something’s come up and I thought about you.”

I waited, letting him get around to the subject in his own good time. Mac always did better when he set the stage for himself. He took out a pack of Marlboros and shook a cigarette into view. He dried his lips with one knuckle before he put the cigarette between his teeth. He took out a pack of matches and lit up, extinguishing the match flame with a mouthful of smoke. He crossed his legs and used his pants cuff as an ashtray, leaving me to worry he’d set his nylon socks ablaze. “Remember Wendell Jaffe’s disappearance about five years back?”

“Vaguely,” I said. As nearly as I remembered, Jaffe’s sailboat had been found, abandoned and adrift, off the coast of Baja. “Run it by me again. He’s the guy who vanished out at sea, right?”

“So it appeared.” Mac seemed to wag his head, casting about for a quick narrative summary. “Wendell Jaffe and his partner, Carl Eckert, put together limited partnerships for real estate deals to develop raw land, build condominiums, office buildings, shopping centers, that kind of thing. They were promising investors a fifteen percent return, plus the return of their original investment within four years before the two partners would take a profit. Of course, they got in way over
their heads, taking off big fees, paying huge ‘overhead’ expenses, rewarding themselves handsomely. When profits failed to materialize, they ended up paying old investors with the new investors’ money, shifting cash from one shell company to the next, constantly soliciting new business to keep the game afloat.”

“In other words, a Ponzi scheme,” I inserted.

“Right. I think they started with good intentions, but that’s how it ended up. Anyway, Wendell began to see that it couldn’t go on forever, and that’s when he went off the side of that boat. His body never surfaced.”

“He left a suicide note, as I recall,” I said.

“That he did. From all reports, the man was exhibiting all the classic symptoms of depression: low spirits, poor appetite, anxiety, insomnia. He finally goes off on his fishing boat and jumps overboard, leaving a letter to his wife. In it, he says he’s borrowed every cent he can, pouring it into what he now realizes is a hopelessly failing business. He owes everybody. He knows he’s let everybody down and he just can’t face the consequences. Meantime, she and his two sons were in a hell of a situation.”

“What ages were his kids?”

“I believe the older boy, Michael, was seventeen and Brian was about twelve. Jesus, what a mess. The scandal left his family reeling and forced some of his investors into bankruptcy. His business partner, Carl Eckert, ended up in jail. It looked like Jaffe jumped just before his house of cards collapsed. The problem was, there really wasn’t any concrete proof of death. His wife petitioned for a court-appointed administrator to
manage his assets, or the few he had left. The bank accounts had been stripped and the house was mortgaged to the hilt. She ended up losing that. I felt sorry for the woman. She hadn’t worked in years, since the day she married him. Suddenly she had these two kids to support, not a cent in the bank, and no marketable skills. Nice lady, too, and it was rough on her. Since then, we’ve had five years of dead silence. Not a whisper of the man. Not a trace.”

“But he wasn’t dead?” I said, anticipating the punch line.

“Well, now I’m getting to that,” Mac said with a touch of irritation. I tried to silence my questions so he could tell it his way. “The question did come up. Insurance company wasn’t anxious to pay off without a death certificate. Especially after Wendell’s partner was charged with fraud and grand theft. For all we knew, he was a skip, taking off with the bucks to avoid prosecution. We never said as much, but we were dragging our feet. Dana Jaffe hired a private investigator who initiated a search, but never turned up a shred of evidence pro or con.” Mac went on. “Couldn’t prove he was dead, but you couldn’t prove he wasn’t, either. A year after the incident, she petitioned the court to have the man declared dead, citing the suicide note and his depressed mental state. Presented affidavits and whatnot, testimony from his partner and various friends. At that point, she notified CF she was filing a claim as his sole beneficiary. We launched our own investigation, which was fairly intense. Bill Bargerman handled it. You remember him?”

“Name sounds familiar, but I don’t think we ever met.”

“He was probably working out of the Pasadena office back then. Good man. He’s retired now. Anyway, he did what he could, but there was no way we could prove Wendell Jaffe was alive. We did manage to overcome the presumption of death—temporarily. In light of his financial problems, we argued successfully that it was unlikely, if Jaffe was living, that he’d voluntarily appear. Judge ruled in our favor, but we knew it was only a matter of time before he reversed himself. Mrs. Jaffe was plenty mad, but all she had to do was wait. She kept the premiums on his policy paid and went back into court when the five years were up.”

“I thought it was seven.”

“The statute was changed about a year ago. The Law Revision Commission modernized the procedure for probate in the estate of a missing person. Two months ago, she finally got a finding and order from the superior court and had Wendell declared dead. At that point, the company really had no choice. We paid.”

“Ah, the thick plottens,” I said. “How much are we talking?”

“Five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Not bad,” I said, “though maybe she deserved it. She sure had to wait long enough to collect.”

Mac’s smile was brief. “She should have waited a little longer. I had a call from Dick Mills—another retired CF employee. He claims he spotted Jaffe down in Mexico. Town called Viento Negro.”

“Really. When was this?”

“Yesterday,” Mac said. “Dick was the agent who sold Jaffe the original life insurance policy, and he went on to do a lot of business with him afterward. Anyway, he was down in Mexico, dinky little place, midway between Cabo and La Paz on the Gulf of California. He says he saw Wendell in the hotel bar, having drinks with some woman.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” he echoed. “Dick was waiting for the shuttle on his way out to the airport and he stopped off in the bar to have a quick one before the driver showed. Wendell was sitting on the patio, maybe three feet away, a little trellis arrangement between the two of them. Dick said it was the voice he recognized first. Kind of gravelly and low with a south Texas accent. Guy was speaking English at first, but he switched to Spanish when the waiter came over.”

“Did Wendell see Dick?”

“Apparently not. Dick said he never was so surprised in his life. Said he sat there so long he nearly missed his ride to the airport. The minute he got home, he picked up the phone and called me.”

I could feel my heart begin to thump. Put me anywhere close to an interesting proposition and my pulse accelerates. “So what happens next?”

Mac tapped a length of ash into his pants cuff. “I want you to go down there as soon as possible. I’m assuming you have a valid passport in your possession.”

“Well, sure, but what about Gordon Titus? Does he know about this?”

“You let me worry about Titus. This thing with Wendell
has been sticking in my craw ever since it happened. I want to see it settled before I leave CF. Half a million dollars is nothing to sniff at. Seems like it’d be a nice way to close out my career.”

“If it’s true,” I said.

“I’ve never known Dick Mills to make a mistake. Will you do it?”

“I’d have to make sure I can clear my schedule here. Can I call you in an hour and give you an answer then?”

“Well, sure. That’s no problem.” Mac checked his watch and stood up, placing a thick packet on the corner of my desk. “I wouldn’t take much more time if I were you. You’re on a flight leaves at one for Los Angeles. Connecting flight’s at five. Tickets and itinerary are in there,” he said.

I started laughing. California Fidelity and I were back in business.

O
nce my commuter flight landed at LAX, I had a three-hour delay before the Mexicana flight took off for Cabo San Lucas. Mac had given me a folder full of newspaper articles about Jaffe’s disappearance and its aftermath. I settled myself in one of the airport cocktail lounges, sorting through the clippings to educate myself while I sipped a margarita. Might as well get into the spirit of the thing. At my feet I had a hastily packed duffel bag, including my 35-millimeter camera, my binoculars, and the video recorder I’d given myself as a thirty-fourth birthday present. I loved the impromptu nature of this trip, and I was already feeling that heightened sense of self-awareness that traveling engenders. My friend Vera and I were currently enrolled in a beginning Spanish class through Santa Teresa’s adult education program. So far, we were confined to the present tense, short, mostly declarative statements of little known use—unless, of
course, there were some black cats in the trees, in which case Vera and I were prepared to point and make remarks.
¿Muchos gatos negros están en los árboles, sí? Sí, muchos gatos.
I saw the trip as an opportunity to test my language skills, if nothing else.

Along with the clippings, Mac had included several eight-by-eleven black-and-white shots of Jaffe at various public functions: art openings, political fund-raisers, charity auctions. Judging by the events he attended, he was certainly one of the select: handsome, well dressed, a central part of any group. Often, his was the one blurred face, as if he’d pulled back or turned away just as the camera shutter clicked. I wondered if even then he was consciously avoiding being photographed. He was in his mid-fifties and big. Silver hair, high cheekbones, jutting chin, his nose prominent. He seemed calm and self-possessed, a man who didn’t care much what other people thought.

In a curious way, I felt a fleeting bond with the man as I tried on the idea of changing identities. Being a liar by nature, I’ve always been attracted to the possibility. There’s a certain romance in the notion of walking out of one life and into another, like an actor passing from one character role to the next. Not that long ago I’d handled a case in which a fellow, convicted of murder, had walked away from a prison work crew and had managed to create a whole new persona for himself. In the process, he’d shed not only his past, but the taint of the homicide conviction. He’d acquired a new family and a good job. He was respected in his new community. He might have continued pulling off the deception
except for an error in a bench warrant that resulted in a fluke arrest some seventeen years later. The past has a way of catching up with all of us.

I checked my watch and saw that it was time to go. I packed away the clippings and grabbed my duffel bag. I moved through the main terminal, cleared security, and began the long trek down the concourse to my posted gate. One immutable law of travel is that one’s arrival or departure gate is always at the extreme outer limit of the terminal, especially if your bag is heavy or your shoes have just begun to pinch. I sat in the boarding area and rubbed one foot while my fellow passengers assembled, waiting for the gate agent to call our flight.

Once I was seated on the plane with my duffel stowed in the bin above, I pulled out the glossy hotel brochure Mac had enclosed with the tickets. In addition to my flights, he’d booked accommodations for me at the same resort where Wendell Jaffe had been seen. I wasn’t convinced the guy would still be in residence, but who was I to turn down a free vacation?

The picture of the Hacienda Grande de Viento Negro showed a three-storied structure with a stretch of dark beach faintly visible in the foreground. The blurb under the photograph boasted of a restaurant, two bars, and a heated swimming pool, with recreational activities that included tennis, snorkling, deep-sea fishing, a bus tour of the town, and complimentary margaritas.