Like Love

9

In police work, “a routine check” is very often something that can hardly be considered routine. A pair of detectives will kick in the front door of an apartment, be greeted by a screaming, hysterical housewife in her underwear who wants to know what the hell they mean by breaking in like that, and they will answer, “Just a routine check, ma’am.” A patrolman will pass the stoop of a tenement building and suddenly line up the teenagers innocently standing there, force them to lean against the wall of the building with their palms flat while he frisks them, and when they complain about their rights, will answer, “Shut up, you punks. This is a routine check.” A narcotics cop will insist on examining a prostitute’s thighs for hit marks, even when he knows she couldn’t possibly be a junkie, only because he is conducting “a routine check.”

Routine checks sometimes provide excuses and alibis for anything a cop might feel like doing in the course of an investigation- or even outside the course of one. But there are bona-fide routine checks, especially where suicide or homicide is concerned, and Carella was involved in just such a check on the day he discovered Mary Tomlinson was a liar.

Carella never read mystery fiction because he found it a bore, and besides he’d been a cop for a long, long time and he knew that the Means, the Motive, and the Opportunity were three catchwords that didn’t mean a damn when a corpse was staring up at you- or sometimes down at you, as the case might be. He had investigated cases where the motive wasn’t a motive at all. A man can push his wife into the river because he thinks he wants to teach her to swim, and you can question him until you’re both blue in the face and he’ll insist he loved her since they were both in kindergarten and there is simply no Motive at all for his having murdered her. The Means of murder were always fairly obvious, and he couldn’t imagine why anyone outside of a motion-picture cop confronted with exotic and esoteric cases involving rare impossible-to-trace poisons got from pygmy tribes would be overly concerned with what killed a person: usually, you found a guy with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, and you figured what killed him was a gun. Sometimes, the cause of death was something quite other than what the surface facts seemed to indicate-a girl is found with a knife in her chest, you assume she’s been stabbed until the lab tells you someone drowned her in the bathtub first. But usually, if a man looked as if he’d been shot, he’d been shot. If a woman looked as if she’d been strangled, she’d been strangled. Means and Motive were both crocks to the working cop. Opportunity was the biggest crock of all because every manjack in the U.S. of A., Russia, Madagascar, Japan and the Tasman Sea, Sicily, Greenland, and the Isle of Wight was presented with the Opportunity for committing murder almost every waking minute of his life. The consideration of Opportunity was only valuable in protecting the innocent. A man who was climbing Fujiyama while a murder was being committed in Naples couldn’t very well have had an Opportunity for mayhem. The point was, as Carella saw it, that one million, two hundred seventy-four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine other Neapolitans did have the Opportunity for pulling off a bit of homicide that day, and the guy who did the deed certainly wasn’t going to tell you he just happened to be with the dead man when it happened. The Means, the Motive, and the Opportunity, Baloney, Carella thought, but he nonetheless was calling every insurance company in the city in an attempt to find out whether or not either Tommy Barlow or Irene Thayer had carried life insurance.

He had spoken to twelve insurance companies that morning, had knocked off for lunch when his voice and his dialing finger showed signs of giving out, and had called six more companies since his return to the squad room at 1 p.m.. He was dialing his nineteenth company when Meyer said, “What are you doing there on the phone all day?”

“Insurance companies,” Carella answered.

“You’re a cop. Forget about insurance. The rates are too high.”

“It’s not for me. I’m trying to…” Carella waved Meyer aside with his hand, and said into the phone, “Hello, this is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad. I’d like some information, please.”

“What sort of information, sir?”

“Concerning policy holders.”

“I’ll connect you. Just a moment.”

“Thank you.” Carella covered the mouthpiece and said to Meyer, “I’m trying to find out if Barlow or the girl were insured.”

Meyer nodded, not particularly impressed, and went back to his typing. Carella waited. In a few moments, a man’s voice came onto the line. “Mr. Kapistan, may I help you?”

“Mr. Kapistan, this is Detective Carella of the 87th Detective Squad. We’re investigating a suicide and are making a routine check of insurance companies in the city.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I wonder if you could tell me whether your firm had ever issued policies for either of the two victims.”

“What are their names, sir?”

Carella was instantly taken with Kapistan. There was a no-nonsense attitude in the man’s voice. He could visualize him immediately understanding everything that was said, could see Kapistan’s pencil poised over his pad waiting for the victim’s names to be spoken.

“Irene Thayer and Thomas Barlow,” Carella said.

“Miss Irene Thayer?” Kapistan asked.

“No, that’s Mrs. In fact, it’s Mrs. Michael Thayer. But you might check under her maiden name as well. She was only married for a short time.”

“And the maiden name, sir?”

“Irene Tomlinson.”

“Can you hold on a moment, Detective Carella?”

“Certainly,” Carella said, his respect for Kapistan soaring. He had met too many people who, confronted with any name that ended in a vowel, automatically stumbled over the pronunciation. There was something psychologically sinister about it, he was sure. The name could be a very simple one, like Bruno, or Di Luca, but the presence of that final vowel always introduced confusion bordering on panic. He had had people call the squadroom and, in desperation, finally say, “Oh, let me talk to the Italian cop.” Kapistan had only heard the name once, and over a telephone, but he had repeated it accurately, even giving it a distinctive Florentine twist. Good man, Kapistan. Carella waited.

“Mr. Carella?” Kapistan said.

“Yes?”

“I’ve checked both those names. I have nothing for Thomas Barlow and nothing for Irene Thayer or Mrs. Michael Thayer.”

“What about Irene Tomlinson?”

“Is that the exact name? We do have a policy owned by Mrs. Charles Tomlinson for her daughter Margaret Irene Tomlinson, but…”

“That’s the one. Margaret Irene. Who did you say owned the policy?”

“Mrs. Charles Tomlinson.”

“Do you have her first name there?”

“Just a moment.” Kapistan checked his records. “Yes, here it is. Mary Tomlinson.”

“What sort of a policy is it?”

“A twenty-year endowment,” Kapistan said.

“In the name of Margaret Irene Tomlinson?”

“That’s right. With Mary Tomlinson as payor and beneficiary.”

“How much?” Carella asked.

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“That’s not very high.”

“Well, that’s the cash surrender value of the policy. In addition, there would he about fifteen hundred dollars in accumulated dividends. Just a moment.” There was another pause. When he came back onto the line, Kapistan said, “Actually, it’s fifteen hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Then, if the policy were held to maturity, the company would give eleven thousand five hundred and fifty dollars to the insured.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And if the insured died before the policy matured, that money would be paid to the beneficiary, is that right?”

“That’s right. Well, not that much money. Only the face value of the policy. Ten thousand dollars.”

“To whom?”

“In this case, to the payor, Mary Tomlinson. You know, of course, that when a child reaches the age of fifteen, ownership of the policy can be transferred to the child. But that wasn’t the case here. No one applied for transfer. That’s usually best, anyway. The way some kids behave today…” Kapistan let the sentence trail.

“Mr. Kapistan, as I understand it then, Margaret Irene Tomlinson-Mrs. Michael Thayer-was the insured person in a ten-thousand-dollar endowment policy which would have paid her eleven thousand five hundred and fifty dollars upon its maturity, or which will, now that she’s dead, pay her mother ten thousand dollars as beneficiary.”

“That is right, sir.” Kapistan paused. “Detective Carella, I don’t mean to impose…”

“Go ahead, Mr. Kapistan.”

“You are aware, of course, that there isn’t a state in the Union where an insurance company will pay a cent in the event the insured was killed by the beneficiary.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“I thought I might mention it. Please forgive me.”

“That’s quite all right. Can you tell me when this policy would have reached maturity, Mr. Kapistan?”

“Just a moment, please.”

There was another pause.

“Mr. Carella?”

“Yes, Mr. Kapistan?”

“The child was insured on her first birthday. The policy would have matured on her twenty-first birthday.”

“Which is next month some time, right?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“When next month?”

“The policy matures on May thirteenth.”

Carella had already opened his wallet and pulled out his celluloid calendar. “That’s a Saturday,” he said.

“That’s right, sir.”

“Mmm,” Carella said. He paused, and then asked, “How does the insured usually collect on an endowment policy when it matures?”

“Usually, they’ll write to the company, enclosing the policy, and enclosing some form of identification-usually a photostated birth certificate.”

“How long would it take before the company issued a check?”

“Oh, a week, ten days. It’s simply a matter of paperwork, provided the proof of identity is satisfactory.”

“Suppose the insured were in a hurry? Could it be done sooner?”

“I imagine so.”

“How?”

“Well, I suppose the insured could come directly to our office, with the necessary proof of identity, and with the policy. I suppose that would expedite matters.”

“Would the company give her a check that very same day?”

“Presumably, yes. If everything were in order.”

“Are you open on Saturdays, Mr. Kapistan?”

“No sir.”

“Then, if a policy matured on a Saturday, the insured would have to wait until at least Monday-that would be the fifteenth in this case-before she could come to the office to ask for her check.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“That explains the weekend interfering,” Carella said, almost to himself.

“Sir?”

“I was just thinking aloud. Thank you very much, Mr. Kapistan. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Any time at all,” Kapistan answered, “Its was nice talking to you. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Carella said, and he hung up. He sat at his desk for a moment, nodding, smiling, and then he turned to Meyer. “You want to take a ride to the country?” he asked.

“What country?”

“Sands Spit.”

“Why?”

“To talk to Mary Tomlinson.”

“Why?”

“I want to tell her she’s going to be ten thousand dollars richer. I want to see what her reaction is.”

* * * *

What can your reaction be when two bullies march into your living room and tell you they know all about an insurance policy on your dead daughter’s life, and want to know why you didn’t tell them about it? What can your reaction be when these same two bosses tell you they suspect your daughter wasn’t leaving for Reno until the 16th of May because the earliest she could collect on the policy was the 15th of May?

What do you do?

You cry, that’s what you do.

Mary Tomlinson began crying.

Meyer and Carella stood in the middle of the miniature living room and watched her quiver and shake as sob after sob wracked her enormous body.

“All right, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said.

“I didn’t mean to lie,” she sobbed.

“All right, Mrs. Tomlinson, let’s cut off the tears, huh? We’ve got a lot of questions to ask you, and we don’t want…”

“I didn’t mean to lie.”

“Yeah, but you did.”

“I know.”

“Why, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Because I knew what you’d think.”

“And what would we think?”

“You’d think I did it.”

“Did what?”

“Killed my own daughter. Do you think I’d do that?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Tomlinson. Suppose you tell us.”

“I didn’t.”

“But she was insured for ten thousand dollars.”

“Yes. Do you think I’d kill my own daughter for ten thousand dollars?”

“Some people would kill their own daughter for ten cents, Mrs. Tomlinson.”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I wanted her to have the money.”

“Then why didn’t you just sign the policy over to her?”

“I would have, if she’d asked me. But she didn’t make her plans until only recently, and we figured it would be just as simple to wait until the thirteenth of next month, when the policy matured. I wanted her to have the money, don’t you think I wanted her to have it? I took out the policy when she was just a year old, my husband had nothing to do with it, God rest his soul. I gave it to her for a first birthday present because I figured she could use the money for her education or whatever she wanted to do with it, when she reached the proper age. So don’t you think I wanted her to have it? It cost me four hundred and sixty-two dollars and seventy cents a year. Do you think it was easy to scrape together that kind of money, especially after my husband died, poor man?”

“You seem to have managed it, Mrs. Tomlinson.”

“It wasn’t always easy. But I did it for her, I did it for Margaret. And now you think I killed her to get the money back? No, no, no, no, no, believe me, no, no, no…”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Tomlinson.” Carella paused. “You should have told us the truth from the beginning.”

“You’d have thought the same thing. You’d have thought I killed my own little Margaret.”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Tomlinson. Is that why she was holding off on the Reno trip? Until she got the policy money?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Tomlinson sniffed and nodded.

“Was there any possibility that she wouldn’t have got that money?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mrs. Tomlinson, your daughter may have committed suicide, we don’t know. And if she did, she must have had a reason. The note we found said there was no other way, but apparently she’d figured out another way and was ready to get ten thousand dollars that would help make the other way possible. I want to know if anything could have happened, if anything could have been said, or implied, to make her think she wasn’t going to get that money.”

“No.”

“Do you know what I’m driving at?”

“Yes. If she thought the money wasn’t coming, she might possibly have felt there was no other way out. No. She knew the money was hers. I’d told her about it since the time she was old enough to understand.”

“Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said suddenly. “I’d like to look inside your medicine cabinet”‘

“Why?”

“Because our man at the lab casually mentioned that your daughter and Tommy Barlow could have been drugged, and I remember you saying something about taking pills every night, and I want to see just what kind of pills you’ve got in that…”

“I didn’t do anything. I swear on my dead husband, I swear on my dead daughter, I swear on my own eyes, with God as my witness, I didn’t do anything. I swear, I swear.”

“That’s fine, Mrs. Tomlinson, but we’d like to look through your cabinet, anyway.”

The medicine cabinet was in the bathroom at the rear of the house. Meyer put down the seat and cover of the toilet bowl, sat, crossed his legs, opened his pad, and got ready to write as Carella opened the cabinet.

“Boy,” Carella said.

“What?”

“Full to the brim.”

“I’m ready,” Meyer said. “Shoot.”

“Contents medicine cabinet of Mrs. Charles (Mary) Tomlinson, 1635 Federico Drive, Sands Spit. Top shelf: one bottle aspirin, one bottle tincture merthiolate, one bottle Librium, one container adhesive bandages, one packet bobby pins, one bottle sodium chloride and dextrose, one tube hydrocortisone acetate, one letter opener. You got that?”

“I’ve got it,” Meyer said, writing. “Shoot.”

“Second shelf: one bottle Esidrix, one tube Vaseline, one bottle insect repellent, one match book, one tube suntan lotion, one bottle Seconal, one toothbrush, one man’s razor, six razor blades new, two razor blades used, one black address book trylon and perisphere gold-embossed on cover, one bottle Demerol APG…”

“I just thought of something,” Meyer said.

“Yeah, what?”

“If I were J. D. Salinger, listing all this crap in the medicine cabinet would be considered a literary achievement of the highest order.”

“It’s a shame you’re only Meyer Meyer,” Carella answered. “Third shelf: one bottle Nytol, three leads from a mechanical pencil, one bottle Florinal…”

* * * *