Ed McBain: The Last Dance

with things she will have to do now, unexpected tasks to perform. She will have to call her husband first, "Bob, honey, my father's dead," they will have to make funeral arrangements, buy a casket, notify all his friends, who the hell are his friends? Her mother, too, she'll have to call her, divorced five years, she'll say, "Good, I'm glad!" But first the police, she is sure the police have to be notified in a suicide, she has read someplace or seen someplace that you have to call the police when you find your father hanging from a hook with his tongue sticking out. She is suddenly laughing hysterically. She covers her mouth with her hand, and looks over it like a child, and listens wide-eyed, fearful that someone will come in and find her with a dead man.

She waits several moments, her heart beating wildly in her chest, and then she walks to the telephone and is about

to dial when something occurs to her. Something just

pops into her mind unbidden. She remembers the key to the safe deposit box in the little black leather purse, and

she remembers her father telling her that among other things like his silver high school track medal there is an insurance policy in that box. It isn't much, her father told her, but you and Bob are the beneficiaries, so don't forget it's there. She also remembers hearing somewhere, or reading somewhere, or seeing somewhere on television or in the movies—there is so much information out there today—but anyway learning somewhere that if somebody kills himself the insurance company won't pay on his life insurance policy.

She doesn't know if this is true or not, but suppose it is? Neither does she know how much he's insured himself for, it probably isn't a great deal, he never did have any real money to speak of. But say the policy's for a hundred thousand dollars, or even fifty or twenty or ten, who cares? Should the insurance company get to keep all those premiums he's paid over the years simply

because something was troubling him so much—what the hell was troubling you, Dad?—that he had to hang

himself? She does not think that is fair. She definitely

does not think that is fair.

On the other hand . . .

Suppose . . .

Just suppose . . .

Just suppose he died in his sleep of a heart attack or something? Just suppose whoever it is who has to write a death certificate finds him dead in bed of natural causes? Then there'd be no problem with the insurance company, and she and Bob would be able to collect on however much the policy is for. She thinks about this for a moment. She is amazingly calm. She has grown used to the silence of the apartment, her father hanging there still and lifeless. She looks at her watch. It is a quarter to ten. Has she been in the apartment for only ten minutes or so? Has it been that short a time? It seems an eternity.

She is thinking she will have to take him down and

carry him to the bed.

She moves up close to the body again. Looks into his dead green eyes, studies the pores on his face, the

pinprick points of blood, the ugly protruding tongue, summoning the courage she needs to touch him, thinking if she can stand this close to death without vomiting or soiling herself, then surely she will be able to touch him, move him.

The fabric around his neck looks like the belt from a

robe. She sees that her father knotted the ends so that it

formed a loop and then slipped the loop over his head and

around his neck. He must have used a stool or something

to climb onto when he put the loop over the hook, and then

he must have kicked the stool away in order to suspend

himself. But where's the stool? Or did he use something

else? She can't worry about that just now. However he did it, he did it, and unless she can take him down and

carry him to the bed, she and her husband will lose out

on the insurance, it's as simple as that.

She does not in these next few moments even once

consider the fact that she is doing something that will

later enable her to commit insurance fraud, she does not for an instant believe she is breaking the law. She is merely correcting an oversight, her father's stupidity in not realizing that committing suicide might negate the terms of the insurance policy, if what she heard is true. She's sure it must be true, otherwise how could she have heard about it?

Well, she thinks, let's do it.

The first touch of him—his face against hers as she

hunches one shoulder under his arm and with her free

hand hoists the belt off the hook—is cold and repulsive.

She feels her flesh puckering, and almost drops him in that instant, but clings tight in a macabre dance, half-dragging,

half-carrying him to the bed where she plunks him down

at once, his back and buttocks on the bed, his legs and feet

trailing. She backs away in revulsion. She is breathing

hard. He was heavier than she expected he would be.

The belt is still looped around his neck like a wide blue necklace that matches his grotesque blue hands and feet. She puts one hand behind his head, feels again the clammy coldness of his flesh, lifts the head, and pulls the belt free. She unfastens the knot, and then carries the belt to the easy chair across the room, over which the matching blue robe is draped. She debates pulling the belt through the loops on the robe, starts to do that, her hands trembling now, loses patience with the task, and simply drops it on the floor, alongside his shoes and socks.

She looks at her watch again.

It is almost ten o'clock.

Somewhere a church bell begins tolling the hour.

The sound brings back a poignant memory she can't

quite recall. A Sunday sometime long ago? A picnic

preparation? A little girl in a flowered sunsuit? She stands listening to the tolling of the bell. The sound almost causes her to weep. She continues standing stock still in the silent apartment, the church bell tolling in the distance. And at last the bell stops. She sighs heavily, and goes back to the bed again.

Her father is lying crosswise on it, just the way she

dropped him, on his back, his legs bent at the knees and

trailing to the floor. She goes to him and lifts the legs,

turning the body so that he is lying properly now, his head

on the pillow, his feet almost touching the footboard. She

frees the blanket from beneath him, draws it down to the

foot of the bed. She knows it will appear odd that he is in bed with his clothes on, knows a safer pretense would be to disrobe him before pulling the blanket up over his chest. But she has never seen her father naked in her lifetime, and the prospect of undressing him, the horrible thought of seeing his naked body cold and blue and shriveled and dead is so chilling that she takes an involuntary step backward, shaking her head, as if refusing even to consider such an act. The horror, she thinks. The horror. And pulls the blanket up over him, to just beneath his chin, hiding all but his face from view.

She goes to the phone then, and dials , and calmly

tells the operator that she's just found her father dead in

bed and asks her to please send someone.

"The girl was in shock," Alexander said. "She didn't know what she was doing."

"She just told us she was planning insurance fraud,"

Carella said.

"No, she didn't say that at all. She doesn't even know

what the policy says. Is there really a suicide exclusion

clause in that policy? Who knows? All she knows is that

there's a policy in her father's safe deposit box. What kind

of policy, in what amount, she doesn't know. So how can

you say she was planning insurance fraud?"

"Well, gee, Counselor," Carella said, "when someone

tries to make a suicide look like a natural death . . ."