The Sleepless (6 page)

Michael massaged his temples with his fingertips, like a man who feels a migraine coming on. ‘So what you’re telling me is, a person or persons unknown reached the helicopter ahead of the rescue services, and removed something from the wreck?’ 

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Exactly.’ Michael stayed thoughtfully silent for a while. Joe watched him and mopped sweat and occasionally cleared his throat. 

‘Who’s handling this case?’ 

‘Kevin Murray and some new guy, Rolbein.’ 

‘Kevin’s good,’ said Michael. ‘He’ll solve it for you.’ 

‘Kevin’s good, yes. But Kevin’s not inspirational.’ 

Michael turned back to him. ‘And that’s why you’ve driven all the way down here to Noplace-on-Sea to see me? To get some free inspiration?’ 

Joe spread his hands wide. ‘I admit it.’ The armpits of his striped coat were stained with semicircles of sweat. ‘Aren’t I a shit?’ 

‘Nothing changes,’ said Michael. 

‘Well, sure, Michael. But look at it from my point of view. There are hundreds of millions of dollars involved in this claim. You should see the size of John O’Brien’s life insurance policy alone – it’s twice the national reserves of Haiti and Dominica put together, and you can throw in Cuba’s for luck. Then there’s Eva O’Brien’s life insurance policy and their daughter Sissy’s life insurance policy; not to mention all the contingent claims for losses and damages and negligence.’ 

He blew his nose loudly. ‘All this wouldn’t be so bad if everything was straightforward, cut-and-dried. But this whole business has a very suspicious smell about it. You know what’s it like when you’re checking out a claim on a burned-out apartment building, and you think you can just detect the faintest whiff of gasoline, or paint-thinner, or methylated spirit? It’s that kind of a smell. And there are too many weird inconsistencies. Not the kind of normal inconsistencies you get in everyday life; but inconsistencies that make you think ... now hold on, how could
that
be?’ 

‘Give me a for-instance.’ 

‘Well, think about it. The helicopter has engine failure, crash-lands on Nantasket Beach, and there’s somebody apparently waiting for it to crash-land. If the engine failure is genuine, how does this somebody know exactly where the helicopter is going to come down?’ 

‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself some kind of a problem,’ said Michael, sitting down on his revolving chair, and swinging from side to side. 

‘Don’t tell me. And I’m being pressured for a quick result. Henry Croteau is on my case seventeen times a day. And our beloved president Edgar Bedford is on my case
seventy
times a day.’ 

‘How about the police? Are they co-operating?’ 

‘There’s another weirdness. When Commissioner Hudson first talked to the media, he promised a “full, frank and fearless investigation”. But so far, the police seem to be treating the whole case with about as much seriousness as if GI Joe fell out of his plastic Huey.’ 

‘The FAA?’ 

‘Zip. They refuse to release even their preliminary findings. They say they have to piece the whole wreck back together again before they can come up with any whys or wherefors whatsoever. I’ll tell you how cagey they’re acting. They won’t even admit that they
have
any preliminary findings.’ 

‘Who’s handling the reconstruction?’ 

‘Your old buddy Jorge da Silva.’ 

‘Really? It’s not like Jorge to be cagey. How about the coroner’s office?’ 

‘Same thing.’ Joe pretended to tug a zipper across his mouth. ‘All that the coroner is prepared to tell us so far – and I more-or-less quote – is that “the O’Brien party was involved in a fatal helicopter incident and there were no apparent survivors.” ‘ 

Michael thought for a moment, and then he said,’ ‘The O’Brien party”. How many people was that, exactly?’ 

‘You tell me,’ Joe replied, with a gleam in his eyes. ‘The plain fact is that nobody’s saying. In that particular helicopter, it could have been three, it could have been anything up to eight. And what the hell is an “apparent survivor”? There’s nothing apparent about surviving, not in my book. If I ever find myself in a helicopter crash, God forbid, I don’t want to
apparently
survive. I want to be right there on NBC evening news, live and kicking, with a smut on my snout and a Bandaid on my forehead, praising the skill and courage of the pilot.’ 

Michael asked, ‘So nobody has yet officially confirmed the number of dead?’ 

‘Got it in one. You know what they told me? “Physical trauma was so severe that full identification is still pending.” Pending my ass. You and I were up at Rocky Woods, and there wasn’t any pending up at Rocky Woods. If you wanted to know how many bodies you had, you counted heads, just like we did, whether those heads were attached to anything or not.’ 

Michael said, thoughtfully, ‘There was John O’Brien, right? And his wife Eva O’Brien. And their daughter, am I correct?’ 

‘That’s right, Sissy O’Brien, fourteen years old.’ 

Michael was counting on his fingers. ‘There was also a pilot, of course. Any co-pilot?’ 

‘Unh-hunh. But there was a young hotshot from the Justice Department, Dean McAllister. He flew up from Washington the previous night so that he could escort Mr O’Brien back for the swearing-in ceremony.’ 

‘So, five. That shouldn’t have been too difficult to work out, even after a fire. Who’s the medical examiner?’ 

‘Raymond Moorpath at Boston Central.’ 

‘Moorpath? He’s in private practice these days.’ 

‘All the same, that’s where the bodies were taken, and Moorpath’s doing the honours. Special request from very, very,
very
high up. But you can’t deny that Moorpath was always the best, especially with fire fatalities. Good with floaters, too.’ 

Michael thought for a while. Then he said, ‘You want a beer?’ 

Joe shrugged. ‘So long as you’re having one.’ 

‘Come on through to the kitchen.’ 

They left the studio. A sudden gust of wind blew a small blizzard of paper off Michael’s desk. The door banged behind them and they walked Indian-file along the narrow wooden bridge that led to the kitchen door, their feet making hollow noises on the planking. To their left, there was nothing but the grassy beach and the glittering sea. To their right, a steep flight of sunbleached steps led down to the sloping concrete front yard, where Patsy was hosing down their faded green Mercury Marquis, ‘6g vintage, and Jason was watching her, perched on the cinderblock wall, swinging his legs. Patsy looked up and waved and Michael waved back, and cheerfully called out, ‘How’s the carwash, honey?’ At the same time, however, he gave her the subtlest twitch of his head and bugged out his eyes, to tell her that he didn’t appreciate Joe’s presence here at all. 

Patsy smiled and carried on hosing. Michael had never felt so close to anybody in his entire life, man or woman. He and Patsy laughed together; worried together; they practically breathed in and out together. He loved her, but the way they lived together day by day was very much more complicated than anything that he had ever called love before. It was complete physical and emotional and intellectual entanglement. 

Patsy was only a hair’s-breadth taller than five-feet-two, with a shaggy carefree mane of sunbleached hair, and a sweet doll-like face, with china-blue eyes and a snubby nose and plump pink lips. Today she was wearing a tight pink-and-white striped T-shirt, which exaggerated her chubby breasts, and the tiniest pair of white cotton shorts, and fluorescent pink rubber boots. 

The president of Plymouth Insurance Edgar Bedford had once disparagingly called her ‘Michael’s bimbo’. But in spite of her Barbie doll looks, Patsy was educated and funny and determined: and it was those qualities with which Michael had really fallen in love. Of course she was eyecatching and of course she was sexually exciting, and he loved that, too. But she could hold her own in any dinnerparty conversation about Mozart or Matisse or Guy de Maupassant; or the Big Bang theory; or politics and censorship; or rock’n’roll; or the ordination of women; or whether the earth was really warming up or not. 

Michael and Joe went into the kitchen with its plain scrubbed table and its big old-fashioned sink and its tinkling ceramic mobiles of swans and yachts and vegetables. Michael opened the icebox and took out two bottles of Michelob, tossing one over to Joe. Then he sat astride a chair and unscrewed the cap of his beer and took a quick, uptilted swig. 

‘It definitely sounds like somebody’s trying to cover something up,’ he said. ‘The question of course is what, and whether it’s meaningful in terms of any insurance claim.’ 

Joe said, ‘John O’Brien’s policy covers accidental death only. It specifically excludes suicide or homicide.’ 

‘And how much exactly is it worth?’ 

‘Two hundred and seventy-eight million dollars and change.’ 

‘So it’s obviously in Plymouth’s interest to show that he was killed deliberately, or that he planned his own death?’ 

Joe swallowed beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, yes.’ 

Michael thought for a while, taking regular swigs from the bottle. Then he looked up at Joe and said, ‘Good luck, then.’ 

‘You realize that I’m asking you to get involved,’ said Joe. 

‘Joe – I quit. I don’t
want
to get involved. Patsy and I dropped out and we’re perfectly happy the way we are.’ 

Joe said blandly, ‘You have a bank overdraft of 6,358 dollars and no prospect of any more money until the end of October, when your next royalty is due from Marine Developments, Inc., which I can advise you in advance will be something less than 1,500 dollars.’ 

Michael stared at him. ‘How the hell did you find that out?’ 

‘Oh, come on, Michael, you know the routine. You don’t go duck hunting without a gun, do you?’ 

Michael knew what Joe was talking about. It was standard practice for insurance claims investigators to check into bank accounts and credit ratings and confidential medical reports. Unlike the police, they didn’t have to be so particular about search warrants or the rules of evidence. During his nine-year career with Plymouth Insurance, Michael had regularly paid off bank officials to let him take a look at private bank statements. But now that he was a victim, he felt exposed and angry, and humiliated that Joe had found out how broke they were. 

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you had no damned right to do that, no right at all.’ 

‘I’m sorry,’ said Joe, although he didn’t sound sorry in the slightest. ‘But, you know, if you’d been flush, it probably would have been a waste of my time driving all the way down here.’ 

Michael said, ‘Believe me, it
was
a
waste of your time, and mine too. I may need money but I don’t need it that bad.’ 

‘Michael ... I’m making a special effort to be nice here. You think I would have come down here for nothing? I hate the beach. All that sea. All that fucking sand. Look – it’s a one-off job. You go in, you sort it out, you collect your money and you go home. That’s all I’m asking.’ He paused to see what kind of an impression he had made, and then he crossed himself and added, ‘It’ll be the first and last time, I promise. You have my personal guarantee.’ 

Michael said, Joe, you must have half-a-dozen guys who are easily as good as I ever was. Not only that, I’ve been out of it for nearly two years. Most of my contacts have moved away, or died, or been promoted. My Filofax is a museum-piece these days. Half the numbers ring and ring and nobody answers.’ 

Joe swallowed beer and drummed his podgy fingers on the deal tabletop and looked out of the window. He cleared his throat. It was obvious that he had something on his mind, but he wasn’t going to say what it was, not without coaxing, anyway. At last, Michael said, ‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me?’ 

A raised eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’ 

‘Don’t screw me around, Joe, you and I go back way too far.’ 

‘All right, yes,’ Joe admitted. ‘There’s something I’m not telling you.’ 

‘Well? What is it?’ 

‘It’s grade-one confidential. I got it right from the tippety-top. I had to swear that I wouldn’t tell you what it was unless and until you agreed to take over the O’Brien investigation.’ 

‘If you told me now, do you think that it would change my mind?’ 

‘Without a doubt.’ 

‘So what’s the problem? You don’t trust me, or what? I mean, who do you think I’m going to tell?’ 

‘Michael, Michael ... of course I trust you. But, you know, even beaches have ears. If I were to tell you, and you still didn’t agree to work on this investigation, and somehow this particular piece of information leaked out, then they’d hang my ass out to dry. And we’re not just talking reprimands. We’re talking ass jerky.’ 

Michael stood up. Joe watched him without blinking as he circled around the table. ‘I’m sorry, Joe,’ Michael told him. ‘I don’t want to sound unappreciative, or anything like that. I mean, thank you for thinking of me. But, as far as I’m concerned, Rocky Woods was it. That was the finish. I’d rather be 6,358 dollars overdrawn in heaven than have an expense account in hell.’