Death in Nostalgia City

by Mark S. Bacon

  “I’m sorry. Ms. Burgess is out of the office today. May someone else help you?”

  Ms. Burgess was one of the corporate attorneys. Lyle thought the legal department would be a good place to hang out and eavesdrop so he tucked his cell phone in his pocket, picked up his small briefcase, and headed back inside. A few clouds took up space in the blue sky, but none blocked the sun. It beat down, reflecting off the mirrored office windows.

  The reception area was larger than he imagined. Federal Patrician Insurance must generate lots of lawsuits. The room, with a combination of upholstered couches, chairs, and glossy wooden tables, looked like a furniture showroom, except that several people in suits were sitting and waiting. Lyle asked a receptionist with bleached hair for Ms. Burgess, saying he had an appointment for 11 o’clock.

  “I’m sorry. I think she’s out today.”

  Lyle looked puzzled. “Not here?”

  “I don’t think so. Um, her administrative assistant is on break.”

  “Anne--Ms. Burgess--told me she was going to be out of the office this morning but would be back about now. Said I should wait if she wasn’t here.”

  “Okay. Can I have your name?”

  Lyle gave a phony name, took a seat near the front of the room, and settled in to wait. He wasn’t waiting for anything in particular--certainly not the absent Ms. Burgess--just sitting, watching, and listening.

  After lunch, he repeated the process in another department. Then he modified the visitor badge to make it look like he worked there and hung out for a time in two employee lounges, listening and making note of what he heard. Unfortunately, after several hours, he’d not collected any intelligence he thought would be useful. But there were still a couple of hours left in the day.

  Chapter 31

  Looks like we made a mistake with our friend Lyle. He was discharged from the Phoenix police for mental illness.”

  “Lyle, mentally ill?” Kate said.

  Max had come to see Kate in her office, a rare occasion that meant he was mad, that he wanted something, or both. This looked like the third option.

  He made himself comfortable in one of her padded aluminum visitor chairs and glared at her.

  “Clyde Bates told me he checked Lyle’s background.”

  “And they fired him because he was mentally ill?” Kate said. “I don’t think they can do that, can they? Wouldn’t he have to get treatment, disability, something?”

  “Yup, that’s what I thought. Bates didn’t have all the details. Obviously, it would be in private personnel files. Don’t know whether he took disability or what. But Bates was sure on the mental illness part. I called Deming. Must have his phone turned off.”

  Kate’s immediate instinct was to defend Lyle, but she didn’t know why. The other evening he had burst into her apartment, insisting that because the company had denied his daughter’s insurance claims, FedPat must be the evil force behind the park’s troubles. He hadn’t said it exactly that way, but that’s what it sounded like. Still, she didn’t have enough information. “You going to ask him about his mental health on the phone?”

  “I want to know what he’s doing. He could really screw things up. We made a big mistake with him.”

  Max reminded her of a basketball coach who called the wrong plays then tried to blame it on the team’s execution. “Why don’t we wait for his side of the story?” she asked.

  “You shouldn’t have told him about our financial relationship with FedPat.”

  “Max, it’s done. Let’s see what he has to report.”

  “Well, doesn’t he seem, you know, a little crazy?”

  “He’s different,” she heard herself say, “maybe even excitable at times, and anxious.” Some other words occurred to her but she didn’t say them. “He’s been questioning people, running down leads, everything you told him to do. And, he’s been keeping me up to date, something Bates hasn’t done.”

  “He doesn’t seem strange at all?”

  “Because he wears that cab driver’s outfit?”

  “No. The way he behaves. What about his running into the gas station with all that gasoline spewing out? That sounds wacky.”

  Or brave, Kate thought. Was Lyle wacky? Had he recruited her into his delusion? Earlier that morning, Kate’s curiosity had led her to check the memory card on the telephone listening device. Little had been recorded. Waterman had evidently not talked on the phone much the day before. She listened for a moment then slipped the card back into the recorder and slipped herself out of the electrical closet. This was definitely not a good time to tell Max about the wiretap. She was pretty sure there never would be such a time.

  “So why did Bates wait until now to tell you this stuff about Lyle?”

  “Said he just found out. Told me when Lyle started investigating for us, he checked Lyle’s personnel file here and it looked okay. But recently, one of his contacts came up with the story about Lyle’s condition. We’ve got to get a hold of him,” Max continued, “pin him down. I want to know what he’s up to in Boston. I told him he couldn’t interrogate anyone. I’m going to keep calling, but I was wondering...”

  “If I could wheedle some information out of him?”

  “Ask directly. Pump him. I don’t care. See what you can find out. Only we need to get him the hell out of there.”

  ***

  Having temporarily run out of ideas, Lyle realized there was one more office he could haunt--legitimately: the customer service department where policyholders congregated to inquire about claims. Unlike the other offices he’d been in, the waiting room provided people with styleless, utilitarian furniture. It reminded Lyle of the waiting rooms at HMO clinics or tire stores. At the front of the room was a long, low counter separated by partitions into small, half-height booths.

  He had to take a number and wait. It took thirty-seven minutes.

  “How may I help you?”

  Many of the customer service reps in the room were young. The guy Lyle sat down opposite wasn’t. His wide-set eyes and the curl of his lips reminded Lyle of Strother Martin, the actor who played the warden in Cool Hand Luke. Lyle wondered if he too would suffer from a failure to communicate. “I have a policy for my daughter and I have several claims pending. One is more than two months old.”

  “Let me have your daughter’s name and social security number.”

  Lyle gave him the information, and the clerk entered it in his computer terminal then looked over the results.

  “I can explain the situation to you. It’s fairly common.” Strother Martin smiled and sounded as if he might be interested in Lyle’s problem.

  Lyle relaxed slightly. “Tell me about the claim for physical therapy sessions first.”

  “It looks as if--” The clerk paused, squinting at the computer screen. “--as if it hasn’t been resolved. There was a request for complete treatment records from the clinic.”

  “They were sent in a month ago and I was told they never got there. So I had the clinic fax them directly to the claims department. This was weeks ago.”

  “We have no record of them being received. Let me look one other place.” He clicked more buttons. “No. Nothing.”

  Lyle was ticked off but he was prepared for this one. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a copy of the entire clinic record he’d obtained prior to his trip. “Okay. Here’s the report.”

  The clerk gave the stack of paper a cursory look. “I can submit this for you and the committee will consider it.”

  “Just a minute, please.” Lyle added the word please because he was controlling himself. “I’d like you to sign this receipt. It says that I’m giving you my daughter’s medical records.”

  Eyeing Lyle suspiciously, the clerk quickly scrawled his name on the paper and handed it back to Lyle. “Was there something else?” Now he was starting to sound like Strother Martin.

  Lyle pulled out more paperwork. “You denied a claim for some tests.”

  The clerk punched his compute
r again. “Oh, these were disapproved because your policy requires prior authorization. We always ask for prior approval for these.”

  “I did get approval.” Lyle pointed to his records. “Back on this date I called and talked to Lucy Lomax and she said Samantha could have the tests.”

  “There must have been a misunderstanding. We don’t give approval over the phone to relatives. Only to health care providers.”

  “Misunderstanding? Does that mean that you’re not going to pay that claim, period?”

  “I’m afraid it does.”

  “I’m afraid I want to talk to your supervisor.”

  Cool Hand Luke’s warden got a fixed look on his face, stood up, and walked off without a word. Several minutes later, he returned with a supervisor: a bony, younger woman with straight hair. Lyle could tell by her expression that she was primarily paid to say “No.” She stood behind the low counter and glanced over the papers. Looking down at Lyle over her nose, she confirmed what the clerk had told him.

  “Look, my daughter is recovering very well. She really had me scared. But hospitalization and therapy is so expensive. I bought this insurance specifically to cover her if this kind of accident happened. Your agent assured me this policy was comprehensive.”

  “The policy does cover a variety of circumstances,” the supervisor said, still standing, looking down at the counter. “Have you read your policy and the exclusions?”

  “Yes, I read the policy. That’s why I made the claims. Okay. I have one more question.” Lyle stood up, reached in his jacket pocket, and pulled out a letter he’d received the week before. The letter was crumpled and damp. “How is it that you can deny my claims,” he said in a resounding voice, “and then raise the premiums?” Lyle slapped the wrinkled letter down hard on the counter.

  His quick movements startled the woman. She took a step back. Lyle glared at her then realized people in the other booths were staring at him. He sat down on the edge of his seat. The supervisor scanned the letter then looked down at Lyle. “We must keep up with rising medical costs. We had to re-underwrite your daughter’s policy.”

  “Re-underwrite, huh?” Lyle said, almost to himself. “Re-underwrite this.”

  He said it under his breath, but the two employees heard him. The clerk smirked, but the supervisor’s expression turned from dour to assertive. “Sir. I don’t think--”

  “That’s obvious,” Lyle growled as he stood up again. “You guys don’t think. You just say, ‘no’.” He grabbed his papers and shoved them into his briefcase. Everyone in the office was watching him now.

  For the first time, Lyle noticed surveillance cameras around the room, especially the one in the ceiling facing him. He stood, staring into the camera. He wasn’t smiling. He pointed at it with his index finger like it was a gun barrel and took aim. Then he brought his thumb down as if it were the gun’s hammer. One person a few booths away clapped his hands. A few people gasped. Lyle clutched the handle of his briefcase and stalked out.

  “You really told them, didn’t you, Deming?” he said as he headed to his car. “What the fuck were you doing? How are you going to get insurance now?”

  He had parked in so many places at FedPat that day he momentarily forgot where his rental car was. As he wandered down one aisle, dangling his keys and shaking his head, he noticed someone out of the corner of his eye. It was a security guard following him from thirty yards away.

  As the guard approached, he said something that sounded like, “Excuse me, sir.”

  At that moment, Lyle saw where he’d parked his Ford. With few wasted movements, he got in, started it up, and pulled out of the lot. He watched the security guard in the rearview mirror.

  Chapter 32

  Lyle debated about having a third gin and tonic. He decided against it and just had a couple of beers with his dinner hamburger. Maxwell had called him just after he left FedPat. He sounded funny. He wanted to know if everything was going okay. He asked if Lyle had found out anything yet. Lyle told him the truth--that he’d learned very little. Max told him to pack it in and return to Arizona.

  Lyle finished his burger, drained his beer, and headed out of the sports bar to walk back to his hotel. The sun had gone down, but it hadn’t cooled off much. He hadn’t been back to his room and wore the same clothes he’d put on that morning. His shirt was still damp and his feet hot. So was his face, but that was probably the alcohol. The air smelled of exhaust from the nearby freeway.

  He hated to admit defeat, but he readily admitted stupidity. “You blew it, Deming,” he said aloud. He crossed the street and walked diagonally through the hotel parking lot. He retrieved his briefcase from his car and found the safety of his room. Dropping his briefcase and jacket on a chair, he adjusted the air conditioning then flopped on the bed. He started to replay the scene in the claims office again.

  “You’re not going to confront anyone there,” Max had said on the phone. “We really don’t have evidence.”

  Why the hell did Max say that? No, I didn’t confront anyone. I just pretended to shoot them.

  Kate had urged him to delay his trip a week until they heard Kevin Waterman’s conversations with his superiors in Boston, but he hadn’t done that. He had thought more sabotage was on the way. He had to go to Boston, immediately.

  What was it the shrink had told him? It wasn’t reality or the world out there that had the power to influence how we felt--to make us upset--it was only our reactions to the world. We made our own reality. That had made sense at the time. No two people saw the world in the same way. You could choose.

  Lyle’s hotel was not fancy enough to have an honor bar. Just one more drink would have been perfect. He turned on the television.

  ***

  He awoke at 7:14 a.m., later than usual. But as a hazy reality slowly formed around him, he realized he didn’t have anything pressing to do anyway.

  First priority was coffee and a shower. He called room service. A dull ache in his head accompanied the churning in his stomach. His tolerance for alcohol seemed to have decreased as he’d gotten older. As the hot water flowed over his face, details of the previous afternoon flooded back. He pushed them away.

  By the time he toweled off, a bellboy arrived with Danish and coffee. After a half cup, slurped between swipes at his face with a razor, he still felt woozy. He swallowed two aspirin. ‘Why trade a headache for an upset stomach?’ The old TV ad slogan jumped into his head from nowhere. Why did his brain store such a pile of crap?

  A half hour later, dressed in fresh clothes, he felt a little better. He looked at his watch and saw it was still too early in Arizona to check in with his dad. He’d forgotten to call last night and saw in the morning that he’d switched off the phone after Maxwell called.

  On the desk in his room, he spread out the stack of corporate literature he’d picked up and the copies of newspaper articles he’d meant to read the night before. Everything could be read on a computer screen today, but he preferred paper. He leafed through the stories until one from a Boston paper caught his attention. The headline read: Will CEO Retirement Prompt FedPat Power Struggle? The writer speculated who would be the successor to Stanley Shaw, the president /CEO of FedPat, who planned to retire before Christmas. The story named three people who were considered likely candidates to succeed Shaw. Lyle underlined the names. He wondered if Maxwell had dealt with Shaw, with one of his lieutenants, or someone else.

  After skimming all the articles, reading some, Lyle pulled out his pad of paper. He’d made a few notes the day before, during, and after his hours of loitering and listening. It looked as if he’d collected a handful of nothing. He’d learned that:

  ~ New parking assignments, based on seniority, were irking some employees.

  ~ Many departments would need help from temp agencies as the summer wore on, due to vacations and increased workloads.

  ~ Ashley in the travel department was having an affair with a married guy in sales administration.

  ~ Tuesday
’s mystery meat in the FedPat cafeteria was dangerous to your health.

  ~ Sandy something--it began with a T--an investigator trainee, was being promoted ahead of others because he was a department manager’s nephew.

  More useless information, like the trivia that clogged his brain. Absently, he flipped through the FedPat annual report and noticed the addresses on the back. One was in Peabody, but the other was in Boston. He skimmed back through the book and discovered FedPat had its “Executive Offices” in downtown Boston. Consulting his map, he found that FedPat was not far from the state offices. How convenient. After a visit to the state, Lyle could play “loiter and listen” one more time. Then he’d have to follow Max’s order and fly back to Arizona.

  Chapter 33

  Locating the Massachusetts State Insurance Division was the first challenge. Having been to Boston only once before, Lyle had difficulty finding his way around a downtown where few streets ran parallel and drivers seemed to use their horns as often as their brakes.

  The visit to the state building yielded little. Files, facts, and figures filled the state insurance offices, but nothing seemed useful. After talking with several people, he discovered the regulatory agency was most interested in keeping tabs on the financial condition of insurance companies. He’d read in the paper that FedPat’s profits were down, but he doubted that an insurance company--especially one as greedy as FedPat--could be in financial jeopardy. He learned, however, that FedPat’s profits and reserves were below average. Before he left, Lyle checked out the Insurance Division’s Consumer Service Department. FedPat had a record of policyholder complaints. Big surprise.