In Death's Shadow

CHAPTER EIGHT

In olden days, a woman waved her sailor off with a perfumed handkerchief and a kiss, then paced the widow's walk until his sails reappeared on the horizon.

Nowadays, we send them off with plastic bags full of Snickers bars and wait for a call on our cell phones.

But nothing has changed about the kiss. I planted a good one on Paul, then stood on the seawall and watched until Northern Lights was a tiny white triangle against the far, dark shore of Kent Island.

Then I went home to look for my life insurance policy.

I started with the Bombay chest in the living room where Paul keeps Important Papers-capital I, capital P. Frankly, I don't go there very often. It holds our old checkbooks, of course, so you'd think I'd open the drawer from time to time, but after I got cancer, I gave up balancing checkbooks. Numbers had never been my friends, and as it appeared that my days themselves could be numbered, I didn't want to spend a single one of them fooling around with numbers.

Besides, Paul can extract square roots in his head. He does our accounts on Quicken. And he loves his Turbo-Tax. "It's the most challenging computer game in the world," I've often heard him say. "If you play it right, you get money back. If you play it wrong, you go to jail."

H &R Block and I? We love that in a man.

I sat cross-legged on the rug, pulled open the drawer and began to paw through its contents. I found checkbooks going back to 1985, the deed to our house, titles to the cars; and in the back, held together by a green rubber band, were Emily's report cards from elementary school. In kindergarten, I noted, my daughter "played well with others." She still did, I mused. There was a lot to be said for that.

Why Paul would want to hold on to a deed to one square inch of land in Alaska from a 1950s Ralston cereal promotion was completely beyond me, but underneath our precious toehold in the Klondike, I found what I was looking for: a fat brown folder marked, in Paul's neat square capitals, INSURANCE.

Inside there were pockets for House, Car, and Life, and an empty, achingly optimistic pocket labeled "Boat." I pulled an accordion-like document with my name on it out of the "Life" pocket, unfolded and read it through, including the fine print.

If I died tomorrow, Paul would be a quarter of a million dollars richer. He could buy that boat, I thought, and a nice one, too, although I prayed he would wait a decent amount of time before allowing some other woman to lounge about the bow in her tankini like a hood ornament.

I tucked the insurance documents into my handbag, then wandered upstairs to put the rest of my outfit together.

What's appropriate when bartering with strangers for one's life? I decided on a lime green frock with splashes of white because it gave me a demure, slightly vapid look. I wiggled into some panty hose, then buckled on a pair of white-white sandals with two-inch heels and tottered over to the Imari dish on my dresser where I keep my hair ornaments. I selected a rhinestone-encrusted bobby pin and slid it into the cluster of curls over my right ear.

I was done.

No I wasn't. A vision of my life insurance policy poking out of that lumpy brown leather object presently masquerading as a handbag in my entrance hall sent me back to the closet for a small white clutch that had once belonged to my mother. I pulled out the spaghetti-thin strap that was tucked inside and suspended the bag from my shoulder. I minced over to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of our bathroom door to check the results. If my sister Ruth could see me now, she'd be laughing her caftan off: Mary Tyler Moore, circa 1965, on her way to make life miserable for Alan Brady.

I certainly hoped so.

I drive an old LeBaron, an orchid-colored convertible that I wouldn't trade for anything-unless a sweet deal on a vintage Mercedes 450SL happened to come along. Making the most of a beautiful day, I cranked down the top and let the wind run riot through my hair as I sped north on Ritchie Highway as fast as traffic would allow.

I had looked up Gilbert Jablonsky in the yellow pages and discovered he worked for an outfit called Mutually Beneficial Financial Services Group. MBFSG had offices in Bowie, Laurel, and Greenbelt, Maryland, but Jablonsky hung his hat in a building in Glen Burnie, not far from the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles.

Jablonsky's building, when I found it, was newly constructed of pink polished stone, rising smugly above the squalor of the neighborhood. If Jablonsky and Co. hoped they were setting a good example to which their neighbors would rise, they must have been sadly disappointed. A bank kiosk, a gym, a pizza parlor, and a store called Party City occupied an adjoining strip mall that might have been state-of-the-art in the 1970s. On the opposite side, a brushless car wash and detailing center had spruced up a bit with colorful murals and tree-sized potted palms, but it would take more than a good example, I thought, to get Manny to remove that wrecked car from the roof of his auto body shop.

I parked in the shadow of Manny's, gathered up my purse and cell phone, and, leaving the top down, went off to see whether the inside of Jablonsky's building would live up to the outside.

It did.

MBFSG had a suite of offices on the sixth floor, lushly decorated in peach, celadon, and cream. Framed prints from the National Gallery of Art decorated the walls, and, standing proud and tall in an oriental-style pot on the receptionist's desk, was a lipstick red amaryllis in full bloom.

"Is Mr. Jablonsky in?" I asked.

The receptionist considered me with cool, green eyes. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No," I admitted. "But I was in the neighborhood and was hoping I would catch him in."

"Who shall I say?" she asked, plucking a ballpoint pen from a MBFSG coffee mug-red with white letters-sitting next to her monitor.

I told her my name and she jotted it down on a yellow Post-it pad. "Have a seat," she said. "I'll see if he's available." She ripped the Post-it off the pad and wandered down a short hallway with the Post-it stuck to her thumb.

A few seconds later she was back, without the Post-it. "He'll see you now," she said, and ushered me into a small but attractively furnished office with a picture window overlooking the parking lot. If he leaned back in his chair, Gilbert Jablonsky could easily sail paper airplanes through the front door of Amore Pizza. Right now, though, he was on the telephone.

"I think we need to cut our losses on that one, Alex." Jablonsky stood and covered the mouthpiece with a beefy hand. "Sorry," he whispered. "I'll just be a moment." He nodded vigorously at something the person on the other end of the line was saying, but his eyes were all over me. "Please. Sit." He waved vaguely at a pair of upholstered chairs placed side by side, facing his desk.

I smiled.

I sat.

I arranged the skirt of my dress modestly over my knees, folded my hands on top of my handbag and gazed demurely at Jablonsky as he continued his conversation. His voice was deep and resonant, so resonant that I thought he could moonlight doing voice-overs. Darth Vader came to mind, or the voice of God in The Ten Commandments.

Gilbert Francis Jablonsky, Jr., CFO-or so it was engraved on the nameplate on his desk-was tall and tanned, with a generous shock of salt and pepper hair which he'd recently had trimmed, causing his ears to stand out like handles on a sugar bowl. He wore a blue and white striped long-sleeve shirt tucked into the waistband of slim, beltless navy blue trousers held up by a pair of pink paisley suspenders. He had neatly draped his jacket over a hook on a wooden coat tree near the door.

As Jablonsky talked-to someone in Florida about reverse mortgages-he paced. "Nuh-uh," he said evenly. "CJ.'s a big boy. Don't you think it's time he learned to pull his own chestnuts out of the fire?"

Apparently, Jablonsky didn't like what he heard, because he frowned. "Well, sir, just ask him to think it over and get back to me." And he hung up quietly without saying good-bye.

Jablonsky eased into his chair and leaned forward. "So," he said, turning his full attention to me at last. "What can I do for you, Ms., uh…" He glanced at the Post-it."… Ms. Ives. May I call you Hannah?"

"Sure," I said.

"Gil."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Gil. Please call me Gil."

"Oh, sorry." So far I was coming off as something of a dingbat. Begin as you mean to go on, Mother always used to say. "Gil," I began, trying it out. "Well, Gil," I continued, easing into my role, "I was talking to this friend of mine? And she said…" I flapped a hand."…well, never mind what she said, but she told me all about viaticals and, well, I've got this life insurance policy? So I-"

Jablonsky held up a hand. "Whoa! Back up a minute!" He smiled, revealing a row of straight, ultra-white teeth. "Most people have never even heard the term 'viatical,'" he commented. "I'm impressed. So, how did you find out about me?"

"My friend, Valerie Stone?" I said, lacing my fingers together and twisting them nervously this-way-and-that. "Valerie and I talked about it a lot. Before she… before she died."

"Valerie Stone," he repeated thoughtfully. The crease between his brows deepened. "Ah, yes. I remember Valerie well. Young. Very young. Such a pity."

I nodded.

"She had a child, too, didn't she?"

I nodded again. "Yes. Miranda. She's four."

"That's the hardest part about this job, Hannah. Losing my clients."

"But Valerie was sick," I reminded him. "Real sick."

"Most of my clients are." Jablonsky's chair creaked, protesting, into an upright position. He rested his forearms on the leather blotter and flashed me a solicitous smile, as if it had just occurred to him that I might be one of those moribund customers, too. "But," he added quickly, "as Valerie's friend you probably know that her death, regrettable as it may have been, was, all too sadly, inevitable. With the money we were able to negotiate for her, though, she was able to live out her last days in comfortable fashion." He paused. "Very comfortable fashion."

I blinked rapidly, fighting back tears that were all too real. "That's what I'm here to talk to you about, Mr. Jablonsky."

"Gil," he reminded me.

"Gil." I studied my thumbnails. "I've got cancer, too, you see."

Jablonsky sucked in his lips, closed his eyes and shook his head slowly from side to side. "Damn," he said simply.

I fumbled for my purse, pulled out my policy and laid it on his desk, smoothing out the creases. "I saw what you did for Valerie and figured you might be able to do something for me, too."

With two fingers, Jablonsky slid my policy toward him across the desk. He folded his hands on top of it, making no move to read it. “Tell me about yourself, Hannah."

So I hit him with my whole medical history, skating just a bit over the question of my prognosis, which was probably much too excellent for his purposes, thank you very much.

Jablonsky made listening noises-uh-huh, gee, um, oh-yes, I see-at all the right places, and when I got to the part about how disfigured I felt after surgery, he closed his eyes, tapped his tented fingers against his lips and said, "That must have been rough."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. You had to hand it to the guy: great bedside manner. Next thing you know, he'd talk me into letting him remove my appendix with his letter opener.

He raised an encouraging eyebrow, so I rattled on and on. When I ran out of steam, Jablonsky thanked me, then skimmed over my policy, flipping through pages at a furious rate, explaining the fine points of viatical settlements to me as he went along. "I see your husband is beneficiary."

"That's right."

"Should we bring him on board?"

"Oh, Paul's away on business," I cooed, "but if he were in town, he'd be sitting right here next to me." I patted the seat of the empty chair to my right.

In point of fact, if Paul had been listening, he wouldn't be sitting anywhere. He'd be flat out on the floor, having a coronary.

Jablonsky examined the last several pages. "Mostly boiler plate," he murmured, picking up a pencil, "but there are some goodies in here." He jotted something down on a pad of lined paper, then looked up at me with a sober smile. "We'll need a certificate from your doctor, of course."

"Of course." I nodded sagely.

"Then, depending on what he says about your prognosis, we should be able to do something very nice for you."

"Can't you tell me how much my policy's worth now?" I asked. "I'd like to surprise my husband when he gets back."

Jablonsky chuckled, as if I'd said something amusing. "I don't buy the policies myself, Hannah," he explained, "I'm just a broker. More like a matchmaker, really." He grinned. I swear to God, the guy practically twinkled! "What I do-with your permission, of course-is shop your policy around to the various viatical settlement firms I usually do business with. When we hear back from them, I'll call you in, we'll sit down at a table, look over the proposals and take the best offer."

"Can you give me a ballpark figure?" I pressed. "You know. For my husband?"

Jablonsky tapped the eraser end of his pencil on his notepad. Then the pointy end. Then the eraser. "Well, don't hold me to this, now, but considering your medical history, you might qualify for as much as sixty-five or seventy percent."

"And that's-" I squinted at the ceiling through half-closed eyes. "I'm not very good at percents, Gil," I said.

"One sixty-five, one seventy thou." He spread his fingers and rocked his hand back and forth. "More or less."

"My goodness!" I squeaked, all the while thinking that goodness had very little to do with it. If Mrs. Gilbert Francis Jablonsky Senior's little boy was donating his services out of the pure goodness of his heart, then step aside Camilla Parker-Bowles because I'm going to be the next Queen of England.

"So," I inquired sweetly. "How much do you charge, Gil?"

Another thousand-watt smile. “Ten percent."

I paused, digesting this bit of information. "Well," I said, standing and gathering up my belongings. "It sounds like a win-win situation to me."

"You bet your life," he replied.

Jablonsky escorted me to the door. He laid a hand gently on my upper arm. "I'll be in touch," he promised.

Halfway down the hall, I turned. Jablonsky still stood in his office doorway, looking after me.

He tipped an imaginary hat.

I waggled my fingers.

You bet your life.

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," I whispered to the amaryllis as I passed it by.