Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

The building’s squalor ended on her doorstep. Every surface that wasn’t encased in plastic shone with polish, from the dining table against the far wall to the clock with its fake chimes over the television. The walls were hung with pictures, many of the same smiling child, and a formal shot of my client and his wife on their wedding day. To my surprise, Alderman Durham was on the wall-once in a solo shot, and again with his arms around two young teens in his blue Empower Youth Energy sweatshirts. One of the boys was leaning on metal crutches, but both were beaming proudly.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Sommers. And sorry for the terrible mix-up over your husband’s life insurance.”

She folded her lips tightly. She wasn’t going to help.

I plowed ahead as best I could, laying the photocopies of the fraudulent death certificate and canceled insurance check in front of her. “I’m bewildered by this situation. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions about how it could have occurred.”

She refused to look at the documents. “How much did they pay you to come here and accuse me?”

“No one paid me to do that, and no one could pay me to do that, Ms. Sommers.”

“Easy words, easy words for you to say, young woman.”

“True enough.” I paused, trying to feel my way into her point of view. “My mother died when I was fifteen. If some stranger had cashed in her burial policy and then accused my dad of doing it, well, I can imagine what he would have done, and he was an easygoing guy. But if I can’t ask you any questions about this, how am I ever going to find out who cashed this policy all those years ago?”

She clamped her lips together, thinking it over, then said, “Have you talked to the insurance man, that Mr. Hoffman who came around every Friday afternoon before Mr. Sommers could spend his pay on drink, or whatever he imagined a poor black man would do instead of putting food on his family’s table?”

“Mr. Hoffman is dead. The agency is in the hands of the previous owner’s son, who doesn’t seem to know too much about the business. Did Mr. Hoffman treat your husband with disrespect?”

She sniffed. “We weren’t people to him. We were ticks in that book he carried around with him. Driving up in that big Mercedes like he did, we knew just where our hard-saved nickels went. And no way to question whether he was honest or not.”

“You think now he cheated you?”

“How else do you explain this?” She slapped the papers on the table, still without looking at them. “You think I am deaf, dumb, and blind? I know what goes on in this country with black folk and insurance. I read how that company in the south got caught charging black folk more than their policies were worth.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“No. But we paid. We paid and we paid and we paid. All to have it go up in smoke.”

“If you didn’t file the claim in 1991, and you don’t think your husband did, who would have?” I asked.

She shook her head, but her gaze inadvertently went to the wall of photographs.

I drew a breath. “This isn’t easy to ask, but your son was listed on the policy.”

Her look scorched me. “My son, my son died. It was because of him we went after a bigger policy, thinking to leave him a little something besides our funerals, Mr. Sommers’s and mine. Muscular dystrophy, our boy had. And in case you’re thinking, Oh, well, they cashed the policy to pay his medical bills, let me tell you, miss, Mr. Sommers worked two shifts for four years, paying those bills. I had to quit my job to take care of my son when he got too sick to move anymore. After he passed, I worked two shifts, too, to get rid of the bills. At the nursing home where I was an aide. If you’re going to pry into all my private details you can have that one without charging my nephew a nickel for it: the Grand Crossing Elder Care Home. But you can go snooping through my life. Maybe I have a secret drinking vice-you’ll go ask them at the church where I became a Christian and where my husband was a deacon for forty-five years. Maybe Mr. Sommers gambled and used all my housekeeping money. That’s the way you plan on ruining my reputation, isn’t it.”

I looked at her steadily. “So you won’t let me ask you any questions about the policy. And you can’t think of anyone who might have cashed it in. You don’t have other nephews or nieces besides Mr. Isaiah Sommers who might have?”

Again her gaze turned to the wall. On an impulse, I asked her who the other boy was in the picture of Alderman Durham with her son.

“That’s my nephew Colby. And no, you’re not getting a shot along with the cops to pin something on him, nor yet on the alderman’s Empower Youth Energy organization. Alderman Durham has been a good friend, to my family and to this neighborhood. And his group gives boys something to do with their time and energy.”

It didn’t seem like the right time or place to ask about the rumors that EYE members hustled campaign contributions with a judicious use of muscle. I turned back to the papers in front of us and asked about Rick Hoffman.

“What was he like? Can you imagine him stealing the policy from you?”

“Oh, what do I know about him? Except, like I said, his leather book that he ticked off our names in. He could have been Adolf Hitler for all I know.”

“Did he sell insurance to a lot of people in this building?” I persisted.

“And why do you want to know that?”

“I’d like to find out if other people who bought from him had the same experience you did.”

At that she finally looked at me, instead of through me. “In this building, no. At where Aaron-Mr. Sommers-worked, yes. My husband was at South Branch Scrap Metal. Mr. Hoffman knew people want to be buried decent, so he came around to places like that on the South Side, must have had ten or twenty businesses he’d hit on Friday afternoon. Sometimes he’d collect at the shop yard, sometimes he’d come here, it all depended on his schedule. And Aaron, Mr. Sommers, he paid his five dollars a week for fifteen years, until he was paid up.”

“Would you have any way of knowing the names of some of the other people who bought from Hoffman?”

She studied me again, trying to assess whether this was a soft sell, and deciding finally to take a chance that I was being genuine. “I could give you four names, the men my husband worked with. They all bought from Hoffman because he made it easy, coming around like he did. Does this mean you understand I’m telling the truth about this?” She swept a hand toward my documents, still without looking at them.

I grimaced. “I have to consider all the possibilities, Ms. Sommers.”

She eyed me bitterly. “I know my nephew meant it for the best, hiring you, but if he’d known how little respect you’d have-”

“I’m not disrespecting you, Ms. Sommers. You told your nephew you’d talk to me. You know the kinds of questions this must raise: there’s a death certificate with your husband’s name on it, with your name on it as the presenter, dated almost ten years ago, with a check made out to you through the Midway Insurance Agency. Someone cashed it. If I’m going to find out who, I have to start somewhere. It would help me believe you if I could find other people this same thing happened to.”

Her face pinched up with anger, but after sitting in silence while the clock ticked off thirty seconds, she pulled a lined notepad from under the telephone. Wetting her index finger, she turned the pages of a weather-beaten address book and finally wrote down a series of names. Still without speaking, she handed the list to me.

The interview was over. I picked my way back along the unlit hall and down the stairs. The baby was still wailing. Outside, the men were still huddled over the Chevy.