Death Benefit

12.

CASTLE TOWERS RETIREMENT HOME PHOENIX, ARIZONA MARCH 2, 2011, 11:50 A.M.

At her home outside Phoenix, Sally Mason sat on a bench next to the entrance making the most of the last of the morning air before the sun made sitting outside unbearable. Even though Sally had been born in the state and lived here all her life, the heat had always got to her. Sally was proud of the fact that she was a lifelong Arizonan. There’d been only about 450,000 people living in Arizona when she was born in 1933, and that was about the current population of Mesa, a place that was barely a dot on the map when she was growing up.

Today, Sally was scheduled to receive another visit from Howard Essen, the salesman she’d met a couple of times and spoken to on the phone frequently in the last few weeks. Sally appreciated the fact that Essen hadn’t been too much of a hard-seller, not as relentless certainly as the man who sold her husband the life insurance policy in the first place. She’d actually enjoyed talking to Howard about his family, a wife and three children, to whom he was clearly devoted. He’d also shown interest in her story, about Arizona when she was a girl when they still tied up horses outside stores in downtown Phoenix, about her Preston, now twenty years gone, and about their only daughter, Jean, and her son. This was one of the good days, a day she didn’t have to travel forty-five minutes for hours of tedious and uncomfortable dialysis.

Sally had decided that today she was going to tell Howard Essen she was accepting his proposal.

Howard agreed to Sally’s request to come at noon, as she wanted to keep the afternoon free. She checked her watch-it was about ten of-and Sally closed her eyes and thought about Preston as she did most days. She’d been so young when they met, barely eighteen, and he looked so dashing in his Air Force uniform when he came into her pop’s convenience store. The fifth day in a row he came in he ran out of things he needed to buy and he had no ready excuse: He was here to see Sally. Life with Preston hadn’t always been easy, but he was always a caring man. Toward the end, he set up the life insurance policy for Sally and funded an annuity to make the payments with a little left over. Preston wanted to make sure their daughter, Jean, was taken care of, and he hoped that would be one less worry for Sally.

The money going to Jean under the policy always seemed like such a huge sum to Sally. That was until Jean’s husband died suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of bills and debts she had no idea existed. The money that Sally had squirreled away after selling the house Preston bought in 1965, the best year he’d had in his plumbing business, had been diminished to help Jean pay her bills. Now Jean was having to give up most of her inheritance to help her mother. Sally protested a little, but Jean insisted, and Sally knew she was right. Preston Mason would never have hesitated-he’d have done whatever it took to help his wife live the best life she could.

Sally’s kidney condition was at stage five, the end stage, and she needed a new organ. But there were thousands of people on the waiting list and the state had just decided to stop paying for lung transplants altogether, as well as some heart and bone marrow procedures. How long would it be before kidney transplants were added to the list? Sally didn’t want to wait to find out. She didn’t want to spend her last years chained to a machine; she wanted her freedom back but it came at a price. She needed at least $250,000 for the operation. Above and beyond the money she’d need to keep her place at Castle Towers, she had some savings and there was a little money Jean had promised she could have. But she was still tens of thousands of dollars short, which was the reason that when the idea of selling her life insurance policy was presented to her, she was receptive to it.

The call from Howard Essen came at a particularly apposite moment. It wasn’t a coincidence, although Sally would have been upset if she’d known how it came about. Howard found potential clients through an informal network of contacts he’d established at more than two dozen retirement homes and nursing facilities. He paid a mix of orderlies and supers and front-desk staff to tip him off when a resident told them about certain medical or personal issues, like starting dialysis or visiting a heart specialist or not being able to afford to help with their grandchild’s college tuition. Howard found it distasteful, but he felt he had little choice. These were tough times, and he had to find a way to keep his own family’s heads above water. In this case, Sally had told a friendly orderly her predicament, and he mentioned it unthinkingly to the superintendent, who in turn called Howard.

For ten years, Howard had made a decent living selling starter mortgages to young Arizonans. When things were going well he’d been caught up in the all-pervasive hysteria of home ownership. Everyone was selling mortgages with no supporting documentation, so why shouldn’t he? There was no one who said it was a bad thing. After more than six months out of work he’d found this job with LifeDeals. In fact, they’d come after him, looking for once-successful mortgage salesmen and offering a job paid almost wholly on commission. The cheaper Howard bought a policy for, the better his remuneration. It helped him sleep at night when he didn’t squeeze that extra percentage point out of the policyholder. Not that he thought it would have been so easy to get Sally Mason to capitulate.

The first time he paid her a visit, Howard had introduced himself and Sally said, “Essen, like the city in Germany?”

“Yes, ma’am. Exactly.” This was a sharp one, he could tell at once.

Howard presented his spiel, showing Sally the graphs and tables indicating how much money Sally would save if she didn’t have to make the premiums and how much money she might make if she invested it wisely.

“So if I stop paying into the policy and use the annuity money, I can have this much cash when I’m, let’s see, a hundred and two?” Sally pointed at a very large figure at the outer edge of one of the projections.

“That’s right. Who’s to say you’re not going to live twenty years with your new kidney? And we base our projections on a historically average rate of return on a sensible mixture of investments. I can give you the name of a great investment specialist who could help you with that.”

“I’m sure you can, Howard. And what rate of return might you expect?”

“As I said, using historical averages, about eight percent, give or take.”

“Oh, Howard, I wish you’d called me thirty years ago. If you had, I wouldn’t be in this position.”

A couple of minutes before the hour, Sally saw Howard pull up in his Ford truck and park. She waved to him, and he walked over. “Hello, Mrs. Mason,” he said.

“Good morning, Howard. Let’s go do some business,” and Howard smiled at her.

Sally’s room was small so Howard and Sally sat in the dining room of the home where she felt more comfortable. Howard had brought all the paperwork, and he laid it out in front of Sally for her to sign. Sally picked up her pen and put it down again.

“You know, Howard, when Preston bought this policy, he said it was going to set up our daughter for life. But instead of that I’m using it to give me another ten years because I can’t trust the state I’ve lived in all my life to help me anymore. I’m almost out of money, my daughter’s almost out of money. There’s just my grandson, George, up there in New York at medical school who’s always said he wants to make some money so he can help his mom out. He doesn’t know anything about this because he’s already further in debt than my kidney’s going to cost me. No one’s got any money, they’ve just got debt. How’d it get this way, Howard?”

Howard Essen looked down at his feet. They’d talked a little about Howard’s previous career and the mortgage craziness and about how Sally’s pop sometimes gave customers a little bit of credit at the store before the end of the week when they’d spent the previous paycheck. And how he almost always regretted doing it.

“I swear I don’t know, Mrs. Mason.”

“Oh, I think we have some idea, Howard.”

Howard watched as Sally Mason signed the paper that turned over her half-million-dollar life insurance policy in exchange for just over $75,000, 15 percent of its value. Sally had gone quiet and didn’t say much to Howard after the transaction was completed. Howard would come by in a few days with a cashier’s check and Sally’s copy of the agreement. When he finished up and said his goodbye and left, Howard felt like going back home and taking another shower. Sally decided she’d wait a couple of hours and call her grandson, George, and leave a message. She wanted to make sure things were still going well for him in New York.