THE POLICY

by Bentley Little

  Beth had obviously caught the same whiff of desperation from his near-manic defensiveness that Hunt had. “You don’t seem to understand,” she said slowly and clearly, as though talking to a small child. “We are not happy with the service you have provided us. We’re accustomed to receiving much better, much more respectful treatment from our”—and here she sounded theatrically dismissive—“insurance agents.”

  “I’m here to serve you,” he assured her and whoever else was watching/listening. “My goal is your complete satisfaction.”

  Here was their chance.

  “Are you serious?” Hunt asked.

  “Yes. Of course. Tell me what you’d like. Tell me what your needs are, and I’m sure I’ll be able to find a corresponding policy to meet those needs.”

  Hunt faced the agent, took a stab in the dark. “I’d like life insurance. Your deluxe policy.”

  The sides of the agent’s mouth spread upward in a predatory smile, and suddenly he was back to his normal self, brimming with confidence, all trace of servility gone. “Now you’re talking, boy. Those are some hefty premiums, but that’s our ultimate package.” He stood, walked around the desk and threw a beefy arm familiarly around Hunt’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, boy, and I can guarantee you that for this you will be eternally grateful. And I mean eternally. There’s absolutely nothing like this offered by anyone, anywhere.”

  The arm, Hunt thought, felt like a cushioned log, and this close to the agent he thought he caught a faint whiff of that foul rotting odor.

  “How about you?” The man placed his other hand on Beth’s shoulder, pulling her close to him. “Are you up for some added insurance? Want to spend the rest of your days—the rest of eternity—with your hubby here?”

  Beth pulled away, slipped out from under his arm. “Count me out,” she said coldly.

  Again he gave out with that deep chuckle, half hearty, half hellish. His big hand squeezed Hunt’s collarbone tightly. “I guess it’s just you and me, hombre.”

  You and me.

  He had life insurance.

  Deluxe life.

  Hunt was afraid to glance over at Beth, afraid of tipping his hand, but he hoped that she’d caught that as well. The agent had a life insurance policy that made him immortal. That’s why he had been around for so long, that was how he had sold insurance to all of those people in all of those countries. And that’s why he kept the pressure on Hunt and Beth and God knew who else. Because he needed to pay his own premiums—which were doubtlessly expensive beyond imagining. If they could only keep the agent from paying those premiums, if they could only…

  Find the policy and tear it up.

  That was it.

  Hunt was suddenly filled with an irrational exuberance, a feeling he made every effort to hide behind a blank facade. They were in the game. They had a chance. He had a vulnerability and they knew it and they were going to bring that son of a bitch down.

  Even as the agent led him over to the desk, even as he brought out a lengthy document and began describing the terms of the coverage, Hunt was mapping out a plan, trying to figure out how they could destroy the agent’s policy. What they needed to do first was find the real headquarters of The Insurance Group, the corporate office. Then they had to break in, find the policy and torch it. Once the document was dust the agent would… what? Hunt’s imagination could not go that far.

  “You will live forever,” the agent promised. “This policy can only be terminated by you and the company under joint agreement and may not be suspended or canceled by either of you alone. Only failure to pay your premiums will terminate the policy prematurely, and that event will bring about substantial penalties.”

  “What penalty could be worse than death?” Beth asked.

  The expression on the agent’s face sent goose bumps racing down Hunt’s arms. “There are many penalties worse than death, penalties that last beyond death, and believe me, you do not want to know what they are.”

  Then the agent winked, gave them a friendly smile. “But if you do want to know, simply consult the fine print on your policy. It’s all there.”

  “So where do I sign?” Hunt asked.

  The agent flipped over the document, pointed to an open line at the bottom. “Right there. Sign and date.”

  “It doesn’t have to be in blood or something?”

  The agent laughed, and for once there was real merriment in it. This he thought was funny. “No,” he said. “Just grab a pen. Your signature’s good enough. That’s all we need.”

  Hunt reached over the document, took a pen from a pencil holder next to the monitor. With a glance at Beth, who shook her head slightly as if to say, No, don’t go through with it, stop this game now, he put the pen to paper and signed his name, wrote the date. He didn’t want to, but he had the feeling that it was the only thing that was allowing them to walk out of here alive. Besides, if all went well, this would all soon be over and both his and the agent’s policies would be terminated.

  “I guess our business here is done.” The agent stood, shook his hand. “Thanks for stopping by. Although next time”—and once more he appeared to be speaking for the benefit of an unseen listener—“I will come to your residence rather than make you drive all the way out to my office. We offer full service to all of our customers and are at your beck and call. Our goal is to make buying insurance easy for you rather than convenient for us.”

  He started to walk around the desk in order to show them out, but they started for the door themselves. “We can find our own way,” Beth said shortly.

  “See you soon!” the agent called from behind them, and then they were through the door and back in the basement. They walked up the steps to the surface without speaking and did not say a word until they were safely inside the car. Hunt was not even sure they were safe here, but they could not live their lives thinking they were being watched twenty-four hours a day by some omniscient company.

  “He has deluxe life,” Hunt said after he’d slammed and locked the door. “It’s what’s keeping him alive.”

  “I caught that, too. What are we going to do about it? Try to find his original policy and destroy it?”

  He smiled. “I like the way you think.”

  “I’m not as dumb as I look.” She frowned. “But why did you sign that policy? Why didn’t you—”

  “Wait? You know his pattern. I might’ve been struck dead then and there just to prove a point. Neither of us may have gotten out of that office.”

  She nodded. “You’re right.”

  “But now we are out. And free to find that policy and terminate it.” He started the car, backed up, turned around, and started for the highway. “But where?”

  She reached under the seat, smiling. “Let’s look at the map, shall we?”

  “He didn’t get all the copies?”

  “Only the ones at home. Not the two we brought with us. I guess he’s not as omniscient as he thinks. We’ll just scan these into the computer when we get home and print out about a thousand copies.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  And they sped north toward Tucson.

  2

  Both Stacy and Lilly were at home safe and sound, waiting for Joel when he arrived. He’d never been an emotional guy, but he practically wept with gratitude as he enfolded them in his arms and pulled them close. “I thought…” He closed his eyes. “I thought…” He couldn’t even bring himself to say it.

  “We’re here,” Stacy said. “Uninsured but here.”

  He laughed, let them go, wiping his eyes.

  “That man was scary, Dad.” Lilly sounded worried. “He reminded me of that man with Kate. The big one with the hat.”

  “I know, sweetie. But it’s all right now.”

  It wasn’t all right, though, and Stacy gave him an unreadable look. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m going to try and call Hunt again, and ma
ybe… Did he give you his card?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, then we’re going to sit inside the house like the bubble family and make sure we don’t put ourselves in harm’s way. If we don’t place ourselves in situations with potential danger, we can’t be hurt, right?” He was saying “we,” but he knew that Stacy knew exactly who he was talking about. Lilly. She had been offered the insurance, not them. She was the one at risk.

  From upstairs came a thunderous crash. All three of them jumped at the sound, and Lilly burst into tears.

  “What was that?” Stacy asked, eyes wide with fear.

  Joel shook his head. “I don’t know. Stay here.”

  He looked around, wishing he had a weapon handy, but there was nothing he could use, and he ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. He saw immediately where the noise had originated although in his mind there had never been any doubt.

  Lilly’s room.

  He hurried down the short hall and through her doorway. A section of the ceiling had collapsed. Pieces of plaster lay everywhere: on the floor, on the desk, on the bookshelf, on the bed. A board, a two-by-four, obviously part of the house’s frame construction, had also been dislodged and had fallen through the ceiling. It had landed on her bed, directly where her head would have been had she been sleeping, and it had hit with such force that it had knocked her pillow onto the rug and ripped a hole in her sheet and mattress.

  Personal injury insurance.

  Through the window to his left, he caught a glimpse of movement, and he moved closer to the glass and looked outside. In the backyard he saw a dark figure skulking between the house and the lemon tree.

  A burly figure wearing a hat.

  “Close the windows!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Pull the drapes!” He yanked down the shades in Lilly’s room, sped down the hall and closed the curtains in their bedroom, then dashed downstairs, where Stacy, with Lilly right next to her clutching her belt, was drawing the drapes in the living room.

  “What is it?” Stacy demanded. “What’s happening?”

  “The ceiling fell on Lilly’s bed. And they’re out there. I saw one of them.” He ran into the kitchen, pulled the string that caused the Venetian blinds to drop over the window above the sink. The backyard was empty now, but he knew that any sense of security he might have would be false. He suddenly realized what a death trap their home was. Light fixtures could fall on Lilly’s head. The water heater could blow up. The old gas pump in the family room could topple over. Records from the jukebox could come spinning out like lethal Frisbees.

  Lilly was sobbing. “I don’t want to die!” she cried. “I don’t want to die!”

  “Mommy’s right here,” Stacy said comfortingly.

  He ran into his office, pulling the shades, hyperaware of the bookcases that could fall and crush a nine-year-old child.

  Everything was done. The house was locked, closed, secure.

  They reconvened in the entryway. “We stay here,” Joel said. “We don’t go outside, we keep away from anything that could fall or explode or burn or be turned into a weapon.”

  The phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it!” Joel ordered.

  Stacy glared at him. “He might be giving us another chance!”

  She was right. He dashed into the family room and desperately grabbed the phone. “Hello!” he shouted into the mouthpiece.

  It was Beth.

  3

  They met at Edward’s house. Beth was in charge of logistics, and since Edward had not only survived a direct attempt on his life but had not seen any sign of the insurance salesman or his cohorts in the intervening weeks, she thought that he might have some immunity from the madness and horror that seemed to have engulfed the rest of them, and picked his house as their meeting place.

  She contacted Jorge and Ynez, Joel and Stacy. Jorge answered the phone and when she told him of the plan said he would come over immediately. “Ynez won’t leave Martina, though,” he explained. “She’ll stay home.”

  “I understand,” Beth said.

  Joel was freaked and angrier than she’d known he could get. But when he explained what had happened, she understood why. A sickening feeling rolled in the pit of her stomach as she thought of the insurance agent targeting Lilly. Aunt Beth, Lilly had been calling her since she was first able to speak, and she didn’t know what she would do if something happened to the girl.

  “I’ll be there,” Joel vowed. “I’m not going to sit around and just wait. If you guys are going after him, I’m coming, too.”

  “I’m not leaving my daughter!” Stacy screamed in the background.

  “Let them stay,” Beth said softly. “It’s all right.”

  Joel sounded conflicted. “Maybe she’d be safer over there with the rest of you. They know we’re home, they might try to get her here. But that’s a long way to drive,” he mused. “A lot could happen on the way.”

  “We’re staying!” Stacy shouted.

  “It’s your call,” Beth told him.

  So Jorge and Joel both arrived alone, almost at the same time, and they gathered around Edward’s dining room table, where Hunt had set up a mosaic made up of the scanned and enlarged sections of map that he’d printed on their computer before coming over. Edward himself had gotten out of bed and, using his walker, hobbled over to the dining room. Outside, the afternoon sun was sinking in the west.

  They looked carefully at the two assembled maps, afraid that at any moment the insurance agent might walk through the front door or emerge from another room to confiscate the pages. Even now he might be watching them, and Beth forced herself not to think about it.

  There was no address for The Insurance Group listed anywhere, but on the oldest map a series of mysterious lines with no corresponding arrows or notes pointed to the southern area of Mexico, nearly obscuring a small circle with a star in the center of it. Hunt found the circle and touched it with his pen. “If I had to guess,” he said, “that’s the point of origin. Everything seems to spread out from there. I’ll bet that’s where they’re located.”

  “Or where they were located,” Edward said. “This is one really old map. What if they’ve moved?”

  “It’s the only thing we have to go on. Does anybody know anything about Mexican geography?”

  They all looked at Jorge.

  “I think that’s Chiapas, but I don’t know for sure.” He turned to Edward. “You have any geography programs on your computer?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think there’s something called Encarta on there, some kind of encyclopedia.”

  The encyclopedia wasn’t much help, but an entry for Mexico and a general map of the country confirmed that the area in question was indeed the state of Chiapas, and they moved on to the Internet to find additional information.

  It would have made more sense, Beth thought, if The Insurance Group’s headquarters were in Africa or the Middle East. Syria, perhaps. The cradle of civilization. But if that had been the case, its existence would have been known, it would have been written about in other ancient texts, word of its existence passed down through various sources. No, if anonymity and secrecy were what the company desired—and that certainly seemed to be the case—establishing the business in the wild jungles of the so-called New World would have been the smartest move.

  But how had its agents—

  Their agent

  —gotten around in those days? Papyrus reed boat? She could not see insurance salesmen sailing for months on end across dangerous waters, at the whims and mercy of nature, as they fanned out across the globe to sell their policies. There had to have been some other way of traveling.

  Come to think of it, how did they get around now? Assuming they had to report back to the head office periodically, did they buy tickets and wait in airports and fly in planes? She had a hard time imagining that as well.

  Hunt located a more detailed map of the region, which he immediately printed out. They all seem
ed to agree that the circled star was located close to Tuxtla Gutierrez, a commercial and manufacturing center that was Chiapas’s largest city.

  “Let’s go,” Jorge said immediately.

  Joel nodded. “Let’s kick some insurance company ass.”

  Edward grimaced, leaning forward on his walker. “I’m with you in spirit, guys. But there’s no way in hell I’d make it.”

  Beth looked over at Hunt, nodding. It was their only hope.

  “All right then,” he said. “Tuxtla Gutierrez it is.”

  TWENTY

  1

  After a nearly three-hour wait in Mexico City, after transferring to a single-engine Cessna, after a bumpy turbulence-filled flight, the four of them finally landed at the Tuxtla Gutierrez airport shortly after midnight. They were the only Americans on board, the only ones brave or dumb enough to fly to Chiapas during this period of regional instability. But the night workers at the airport were very nice and very helpful, and after unloading their luggage from the cargo hold, they took a dirty taxi to a hotel they’d booked through an online travel agent. Surprisingly clean, the hotel was located next to a steel and glass office building and across the street from what looked like a windowless adobe structure transported from a pre-Colombian century.

  Joel and Jorge were sharing a room, and since they both had to call their wives from the lobby telephone, Hunt and Beth tiredly took their leave, Hunt making sure that they would immediately be awakened if something weird had happened back in the States.

  The room was nice, with a queen-sized bed, a table with three chairs next to a window, and a bathroom with a sink, a tub, a toilet and plenty of soap and towels. The only thing that differentiated the room from one in the United States was the conspicuous lack of a television.

  They didn’t need a television, however. It had been a hellishly long day, they were exhausted, and immediately after crawling under the covers, they fell asleep.