Savages nd-32

by Bill Pronzini

  Oh, man, watch it feed, watch it fuck! So hot, so hungry. Swallowing up the camp now, the trees, the fields, the sky, the night, the whole world. Burning everything up. Burning me up inside.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “No! Not here, not now-”

  “Right here, right now.”

  “We can’t, it’s crazy, what if somebody sees us-”

  “Burn you up, too, burn both of us up together.”

  “No, baby, please, please-”

  “Don’t fight me, don’t make me hurt you.”

  Burning up burning up burning up…

  13

  When I came into the offices on Monday morning, Tamara said, “We’re not gonna have Jake for a couple of days.”

  “How come?”

  “He called last night, and again a few minutes ago. Man had a rough weekend up north and it’s still not done with.”

  “What happened?”

  “Walked blind into a murder and arson case, got himself a bad whack on the head. Guy he was supposed to deliver the subpoena to is missing and the local law thinks it’s because he’s the perp.” She explained the rest of the situation, as Runyon had outlined it to her.

  “Christ. How bad’s his concussion?”

  “Not too serious. He figured he’d be able to leave today, but there was another fire last night-that’s how come the second call-and now it looks like he’s stuck until tomorrow.”

  “He need any help from us?”

  “He says no.”

  Cause for concern just the same. Runyon had become an important fit in the short time he’d worked for the agency. He’d put his life and his license on the line for Tamara and me on more than one occasion, and a tight professional bond had developed among the three of us-trust, respect, understanding. That was as far as it went, by tacit consent. He wasn’t the kind of man who invited friendship outside the office, or who seemed to need friends at all. Still grieving for his late wife-another reason he had my empathy. I cared about the man, I knew Tamara did, too, and his actions and as much talking as you could get him to do indicated he felt the same way.

  “Keep in touch with him. If he needs us, we’ll work something out.”

  “Told him that.”

  “Okay. Meanwhile, we’ve got the Ogden investigation to move on.”

  “Already started,” she said. “Last night, after I got back from apartment hunting.”

  “Didn’t tell me you were looking for a new place.”

  “Yeah, well, about time I had me a Horace-free environment.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not much so far. One place I liked on Potrero Hill, but it’s bigger than I need-three-bedroom flat-and the damn landlord ought to be arrested for extortion, the rent he’s asking.”

  “Seller’s market again. We were lucky to get this new office space as cheaply as we did.”

  “Don’t I know it. Maybe I ought to just move my butt in here, save money all around.”

  She wasn’t serious, but I had to look at her closely to make sure. Tamara is the impulsive type, levelheaded most of the time, but every now and then she gets a notion into her head that rattles the hell out of convention.

  I told her how I’d spent part of my Sunday, what little I’d found out from T. R. Quentin. She made a note of it to add to the Ogden file; when it comes to business matters, she’s pure efficiency.

  “Not much on Mathias so far,” she said. “Man’s personal finances look pretty clean-no debts or overextensions or big investments, nothing that even has much of a built-in risk factor. Real conservative type, at least on the surface. If he’s got any vices, they’re well hidden.”

  “Same profile as four years ago. What about RingTech?”

  “Solid. Profits up fifteen percent since Mathias took it over four years ago, expansion plans in the works, looks like they’re going public pretty soon. Another Donald Trump in the making.” One corner of her mouth quirked. “Bet I know who he voted for last election.”

  “Yeah. So any financial motive appears to be out.”

  “Looks that way. No need for his wife’s assets or the life insurance.”

  “And he had full control of RingTech even before her death.”

  “One hundred percent. She wasn’t even on the board of directors.”

  “Doesn’t leave us with much,” I said. “Except jealousy, if she was involved with another man. Or maniacal possessiveness, if she was planning to leave him.”

  “Control freaks like him look at their women same as abusive husbands, you know what I’m saying? Possessions. Can’t stand to lose the women unless they decide to throw them away themselves. Thousands of assholes like that kill their wives every year. After reading that diary, I can see Mathias as one of ‘em.”

  “Maybe. The two things that argue against it are his apparent conservative nature and his ambition. And Ring-Tech’s about to make an IPO, you said. Would a guy with his mind-set, on the cusp of a major step upward in the corporate world, risk everything on a crime of passion?”

  “Might if he figured he could get away with it.”

  “We don’t know enough about him; that’s the problem. All we have is hunches, biased impressions, a lot of secondhand and four-year-old information.”

  “Digging as deep as I can.”

  “I know. I wonder if a face-to-face meeting might help? Form my own impressions.”

  “How you gonna manage that? Let him know he’s being investigated?”

  “No,” I said, “not exactly. I think maybe there’s a better way.”

  N ancy Mathias’s attorney was Harold Moorehouse, of the firm of Zimmerman, Gorman, and Moorehouse. He was in when I called their offices in Palo Alto, and willing to talk frankly; Celeste Ogden had paved the way with an earlier phone call. But he had little enough to tell me. His client hadn’t told him why she wanted to see him or given him any indication of the reason. When she didn’t show up for the scheduled appointment, Moorehouse had had his secretary call her home to ask why. The secretary hadn’t spoken to her; got an answering machine, left a message. The call wasn’t returned.

  I said, “Mrs. Mathias sounded upset when she made the appointment, is that right?”

  “If I used the word ‘upset’ to Mrs. Ogden, it was a poor choice.”

  “What would be a better one?”

  “It’s difficult to gauge a person’s emotional state over the phone. But the word that comes to mind at the moment is ‘wounded’.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “As if she’d been badly hurt in some way,” Moorehouse said, “and was having difficulty coping with it. I assumed whatever it was, was her reason for wanting to consult with me.”

  “She didn’t give you any idea of what it might be?”

  “None. I asked her, of course, but she said she preferred not to discuss the matter over the phone.”

  “Have you spoken with her husband since her death?”

  There was a slight pause before Moorehouse answered. And when he did, his voice had tightened perceptibly. “Twice, as a matter of fact. I called him when I received the news. And we exchanged a few words at the funeral.”

  “Did you mention her call or the missed appointment?”

  “No. It didn’t seem appropriate.”

  “What’s your opinion of the man, Mr. Moorehouse?”

  “That’s not a relevant question,” he said.

  “Maybe not, but I get the impression you don’t much care for him.”

  “If that’s your conclusion.” Typical lawyer response.

  “May I ask why?”

  “Another irrelevant question.”

  “Not to me.”

  “I would rather not answer it, just the same.”

  “I’d really appreciate it if you would. Or at least tell me how you’d characterize him. Off-the-record, of course.”

  Silence for a few seconds. Then Moorehouse said, “Very
well. Cold, indifferent to the feelings of others. The kind of man who has no genuine human emotions, only simulates them.”

  Perfect thumbnail description of a sociopath.

  T he San Francisco offices of Pacific Rim Insurance were located in one of the city’s downtown landmarks, the Transamerica Pyramid. I walked in there at 12:35, ten minutes early for my appointment with the head of Pacific’s Claims Investigation Department, Irv Blaustein.

  When you’ve been in private practice as long as I have and one of your specialties is freelance work for insurance companies too small or too cheap to maintain an investigative staff of their own, you get to know a lot of people in the industry. Pacific Rim was one of the larger outfits, with their own staff, and while I’d never done a job for them, I’d met Blaustein three or four times during the course of other cases. I knew him well enough to call him and convince him to give up part of his lunch hour on short notice for a consultation. Not that it had taken much convincing; all I’d had to do was mention the possibility of Pacific Rim saving a potful of money.

  He didn’t keep me waiting. Promptly at 12:45 he appeared in the waiting room and personally conducted me through a rabbit warren of cubicles to his private office. He was about my age, and he moved in a plodding, stooped-over posture as if he had back or spine problems. From this, and his nondescript face and mild manner, you might have taken him for the nonaggressive executive type taking up office space until his retirement. You’d have been wrong. He was a bulldog, one of the most tenacious claims chiefs in the business-a kind of tall, gangly modern version of Barton Keyes, the Edward G. Robinson character in Double Indemnity.

  Once we were seated with the door closed, he wasted no time getting down to the business at hand. “I looked over the Mathias claim after we spoke on the phone,” he said. “It seems reasonably straightforward and aboveboard.”

  “My client, the deceased’s sister, doesn’t think so.”

  “She doesn’t believe it was an accidental death?”

  “No. She suspects foul play-a murder-for-hire job.”

  “The husband?”

  “Yes. Husband and beneficiary.”

  “Based on what?”

  “A lot of intangibles so far. But enough to convince me that an investigation is worth undertaking.”

  “I’d like to know what they are.”

  “I’ll have my partner e-mail you a copy of our case file to date.”

  Blaustein leaned back, elbows on the arms of his chair, fingers steepled. “So what is it you want from us?”

  “Question first. Has whoever’s handling the claim for you had any personal contact with Brandon Mathias?”

  “No. Given the preliminary findings, our man hasn’t found it necessary.”

  “Good. What I’d like to do is interview Mathias myself, get a better handle on the man, probe him a little. I can’t just walk in and announce that his sister-in-law hired me to investigate him as a possible homicide suspect; he’d refuse to talk to me. But he isn’t likely to refuse to talk to a representative of Pacific Rim.”

  Blaustein frowned. “We don’t hire outside investigators, you know that.”

  “Sure. And you know my reputation, Irv. I’m not looking to cadge another fee; I don’t operate that way. Strictly a quid pro quo favor is what I’m asking.”

  “I don’t know,” Blaustein said. “I can’t justify misrepresentation.”

  “It won’t be misrepresentation. Call it a sanctioned smoke screen. I’ll make the approach using my own name, give you a full accounting of my conversation with him, and turn over anything my investigation might uncover that has a bearing on his claim.”

  “Permission to use Pacific’s name, that’s all you’re asking?”

  “Onetime usage, right. And for you to back me up if Mathias decides to make a checkup call.”

  “Why should he? You plan to come on that strong?”

  “Not strong enough to get his back up, no,” I said. “I’d never do or say anything that would reflect badly on Pacific Rim.”

  “When are you going to see him?”

  “As soon as he’s available.”

  Blaustein thought it over, taking his time. At length he said, as much to himself as to me, “Double indemnity clause. Hundred-thousand-dollar payoff if the claim is valid.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, what the hell, why not,” he said. “Just don’t make me regret this.”

  “I won’t.”

  “All right. Consider yourself an unofficial and unpaid Pacific Rim employee for the next forty-eight hours. I’ll even give you one of our claims department business cards to cement the deal.”

  O n the way out of the building I rang up Tamara, reported the gist of my conversation with Blaustein, asked her to e-mail him our case file and to call RingTech and make an ASAP appointment with Mathias using Pacific Rim’s name. The old secretary-calling-for-her-boss dodge tends to lend weight and urgency, true or false, to business arrangements made by phone.

  She called back as I was ransoming the car from the Sutter-Stockton garage. “Four o’clock today,” she said. “He’s giving you fifteen minutes out of a real tight schedule.”

  “You talk to him personally?”

  “His assistant, Drax. No surprise Nancy Mathias didn’t like that dude. He’s got a bloodsucker’s voice-Bela Lugosi without the heavy accent.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll see if I can talk to him, too.”

  “Keep your neck covered if you do.”

  14

  RingTech’s headquarters were in an upscale office park off Page Mill Road, just south of the Stanford University campus. Low-slung black granite-and-glass building surrounded on three sides by an acre or so of manicured lawn and shade trees. The fourth side was a parking lot complete with a small section whose slots were labeled Visitor.

  In the lobby I had to sign in at a security desk, put on a visitor’s badge with my name on it, and then pass through a metal detector, all of which made me wonder. Sign-of-the-times precaution? Paranoia on the part of Brandon Mathias? Or did RingTech manufacture something more sensitive than business software?

  The place was a beehive; lobby, elevators, second-floor hallways were all crowded with people on the move. There was a sense of urgency in the air, as if everybody was working under some sort of deadline pressure. Gearing up for the imminent IPO, maybe; when a company goes public with its stock, it has to make sure all its contracts are being met on schedule, its research and development and other divisions operating at maximum efficiency.

  The executive offices were at the rear. Big anteroom with a receptionist, who checked my badge before she permitted me to pass into an inner waiting room with nobody human in it except me. There was a couch, a matching chair, a table with a coffeepot on a hot plate and a stack of cups (“Please help yourself to coffee; Mr. Mathias will be with you shortly”). No windows and nothing adorning the walls, which gave it the look and feel of a privileged prisoner’s cell in a minimum security prison.

  I tried sitting down, but the couch was uncomfortable. So I paced around instead, listening to silence-ten paces from wall to wall one way, eight paces the other because of the furniture. It was five past four o’clock, and I’d been there ten minutes and reduced to reading the label on a jar of Maxwell House instant coffee when the door opened and somebody came in and got me.

  Not the receptionist and not Brandon Mathias. “I’m Anthony Drax,” he said, “Mr. Mathias’s assistant. Sorry to keep you waiting, but I’m afraid he’s running a bit late this afternoon.”

  “No problem.”

  “It shouldn’t be too long. He asked me to show you into his office.”

  Mathias’s sanctum was big, windowed on two sides with views of lawn and trees, but as spartanly furnished and functional as the waiting cell. Just the type of no-frills office you’d expect a phlegmatic, dedicated, ambitious business exec to have. Drax indicated a chair to one side of a broad gunmetal gray desk, and when I sat i
n it he said, “I’ll keep you company until Mr. Mathias comes in, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  He plunked himself down in a matching chair on the other side. I watched him cross one leg over the other and rest both hands comfortably on his knee. He wasn’t what I’d expected, given Nancy Mathias’s diary entry and Tamara’s phone comment earlier. The Dracula comparison was an overheated exaggeration. Tall and lean, all right, with sharp incisors and piercing eyes, but his swarthy skin didn’t seem particularly leathery and there was nothing sinister about his appearance or his manner. Rising young executive type, suit and tie, shoes polished to a gloss, fingernails manicured, thinning hair neatly barbered and combed. I didn’t much like those eyes-they looked through you, rather than at you, and the irises were a kind of subterranean black-but you can’t judge a man on that basis alone.

  Pretty soon he said, “Terrible, what happened to Mrs. Mathias. Just terrible.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I imagine you see a lot of that sort of thing in your business.”

  “What sort of thing is that?”

  “Fatal home accidents.”

  “We see a lot of alleged accident claims, yes.”

  “Alleged? I don’t understand.”

  “Not all of them turn out to be accidents.”

  The black stary eyes narrowed. “You’re not suggesting Mrs. Mathias’s death wasn’t accidental?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” I said.

  “The woman was alone behind locked doors when she fell,” Drax said. “The police were satisfied.”

  “The police don’t get paid to be skeptical. I do.”

  “Why are you skeptical?”

  “I didn’t say I was. I said I get paid to be.”

  “Then why are you here? What do you want with Mr. Mathias?”

  “The answers to a few questions. Clarification of facts.”

  “What questions? What facts?”

  “That’s between Mr. Mathias and me.”

  “He wasn’t even in the state when his wife died. You must know that. He was at a business meeting in Chicago.”

  “So we understand, yes.”