Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

Three Dead Deadbeats by Robert Fester and Joe R. Lansdale

Three death claims had been filed against the insurance company. All three listed the same beneficiary. And all three deceased had died in exactly the same way. Was it coincidence — or was it murder?

I was at my wits’ end. I’d studied the problem for hours, but still no answer. I crumpled my scratch paper and tossed it in the general direction of the waste can.

I touched my intercom button and called into the outer office. “Hey, Debbie, can you come in here? I need some advice.” I turned my attention back to the newspaper.

I didn’t look up from my Post Dispatch, but I knew the moment that shapely brunette secretary of mine entered the room. I’d know that Eau De Roma anywhere.

“Yes, Mr. Hunter?” she asked, leaning over my desk.

I tried to ignore her big blue eyes and the other endowments that the tight brown sweater advertised. “What’s an eight-letter word that means ‘a bitter denunciation’?”

She looked at the half-filled-in puzzle. “Hmmmm... How about diatribe?”

I looked at the squares. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s sort of what I thought.” I wrote it in. “Any calls?”

“Oh! I almost forgot. Mr. Capella from International Underwriters called. You’re to call back after lunch.”

Since it was well after lunch, I suggested that she get in touch with him immediately. Insurance cases are hardly glamorous, but the companies pay well and promptly — traits conspicuously absent in a good many clients.

The white light below the dial on my phone lit up. I picked it up. “Leif Hunter.”

Frank’s soft Italian tones greeted me with, “Leif, ma boy. I was afraid you wouldn’t get back to me before I left the office.”

“What’s up, Frank?”

“Got a little problem I hope you can help me with.”

Seems that three death claims had been filed against — International. Underwriters within the last month, and all three had listed American General Finance as the beneficiary. None of the three had any family to speak of, and odder yet, all three had died of a coronary while driving on Jefferson Avenue near Bixby, and two of the three had died within a block of each other. The other had kneeled over six blocks closer to the heart of the city. It appeared all three had been traveling in the same direction, and last but not least, were probably on their way from American Finance. Of course, being a month apart, the deaths had not struck anyone as odd until all three were processed through International Underwriters. It all sounded fishy to Capella, fishy enough for him to offer me a ten percent saviour’s bonus to straighten things out. If it was all a case of incredible coincidence, I got a nice fee anyway.

I jotted down the three names on a legal pad, plus a little background information, and set myself to snooping.

It was a bright, cold winter day in Clayton, Missouri, and I shivered in spite of my wool overcoat. To the east, that delightful St. Louis smog hung in the air like a thick, yellow blanket. I climbed into my dirty, blue Mustang, cranked the wreck to life and headed down highway 44 toward the morgue.

Doc Warren had presided over the downtown morgue since Pierre La Clede first traded beads to the local Indians for their furs. It wasn’t hard to find the grumpy old pathologist. As usual, he was at work in the crypt-like dissecting room of the morgue.

Doc looked like a balding, old elf with watery blue eyes. And I always thought his voice was a lot like George Bums’.

“Well, well,” he said patting the chest of an outstretched corpse. “It’s our old pal Leif Hunter.” He bent down to whisper in the corpse’s ear. “What do you think, Dave? Think he wants a favor?”

Some folks say Doc Warren has a morbid sense of humor, but don’t you believe it.

“Well,” I said. “Dr. Frankenstein at work.”

Doc stepped aside, exposing Dave’s abdomen, the skin of which had been neatly sliced open and laid aside to exhibit the entrails and such with disgusting clarity.

I put my eyes on Doc’s face — which was almost as bad as “Dave’s” entrails — and said: “What say I buy you a cup of coffee, Doc?”

Doc turned to his supine straight man. “Bribes, Dave. He’s going to try and ply me with spiritous drink.”

“Hardly spiritous,” I said.

“At my age coffee is spiritous. By the way. What brings you to Necropolis, Leif?”

I told him briefly about the insurance problem. When I finished, he nodded, motioned to a vulture-faced young intern who was examining a vial of vitreous pink fluids. “Take care of Dave here for me,” Doc, said, and we left Vulture-Face in charge of Doc’s buddy.

We stopped at a file cabinet in the outer office, and using my list of names, Doc picked out the three deaths I was investigating. “This isn’t exactly kosher,” Doc said, “but as long as you don’t actually look at them...”

We went out of the office and walked down the hall to the little staff canteen. The coffee was out of one of those big tan machines that eats dimes like candy, and the coffee, though hot, tasted like the stuff they put in the corpses.

After we seated ourselves at a table, Doc flipped open the files. I said, “Any sign of foul play on the three?”

Doc was quiet for a moment. He went through each file slowly, sipping his coffee as he read. Finally, he said, “No... But, often times, unless foul play is suspected, it’s difficult to find.”

“Come again,” I said.

“Well, unless it’s something obvious, like a gunshot wound for instance, you have to have an idea what you’re looking for. I mean I can see how it would all be curious now. The three dying the same way, in the same area, within a month of each other, but there was no way of knowing the deaths were unusual at the time. They were just routine, and no autopsy was performed on any of the three.

“One thing that’s sort of curious, not enough to get excited about, but all three died of cardiopulmonary dysfunction. This Dravek guy, the young one, seemed to be healthy enough. I mean, it’s not impossible, but young guys like him just don’t keel over from heart attacks every day. He was a mailman and did a lot of walking, I presume. He should have been in pretty good shape. At least as far as the heart is concerned. But like I said, that’s not astounding. The other two were old enough, in their sixties, and heart failure is a rather common cause of death at their age. That’s about all I can tell you.”

“And where are the bodies now?”

“Some cemetery, of course. You think they just hang around the morgue?”

“No, guess not.” I told Doc to give my regards to Dave, went out to my car and steered her for American General Finance Company, the address of which led me down Jefferson Avenue, the main drag where all three of my dead clients had met their end.

The building that housed American General Finance Company was squat and cheaply modem. It sat at the back of a blacktopped parking lot between a shoe store and a barbershop. It hadn’t rained for three days, but puddles still stood on the lot in mute testimony of the ineptitude of its designers.

Inside, a three-hundred-pound secretary whose name — so help me God — was Miss Little, took my card between two fingers the size of frankfurters and examined it. She read it, put it on her desk and looked up at me. “Well.”

“I represent International Underwriters,” I said. “I’d like to speak to your office manager.”

She darted me with her flat, brown eyes, waved a pudgy hand at a row of chairs that looked like Goodwill rejects. “Have a seat.”

I had a seat.

Reminding me of the hippo in Disney’s Fantasia, she plucked the phone from its cradle, dialed two digits, said into the mouthpiece: “Say, Charlie. There’s a guy out here wants to see you. I don’t know... Wait a minute.” She looked at the card I had given her, read it off to him.

“Representing International Underwriters,” I offered.

Miss Little frowned at me, gave that information to Charlie, replaced the phone. “He’ll see you in a moment. Make yourself comfortable.” It sounded like a direct order.

I watched as she flipped my business card into the already overfilled trash can to the right of her desk, and she watched me watch her do it. She had a smile like a razor slash.

“Got to keep it tidy,” she said with hardly any inflection at all.

I looked around the reception room. Cracked plaster showed at its edges, cobwebs decorated the corners and there was a half inch of dust sticking out from the wall. The ashtray urn to my left had enough cigarette butts in it to give Missouri lung cancer.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Nothing like tidiness.”

The hippo smirked, went to shuffling papers on her desk. After awhile her phone lit up. She clutched if in her chubby paw, said, “Okay,” into the instrument, then said to me, “All right, Charlie — Mr. Fredrickson — will see you now. Go on back.”

I stepped into an office of tasteless luster. A rotund man with a whisky-veined hose, blue-pin-stripe suit and a three-dollar maroon tie greeted me from across the desk with an extended hand and hundred proof breath. I fought the urge to peek and see if he was wearing white socks.

I took the clammy hand and shook. “Charlie Fredrickson,” he said as if that explained everything. “Sit down, Mr... Sorry, what was it again?”

“Hunter,” I said. “Leif Hunter.”

I dropped in the chair across from his desk. He sat down behind his desk, twisted in his swivel chair like a nervous cobra.

“Now, Mr. Hunter. What can I do for you?”

I explained who I represented, and gave him a brief rundown of the coincidences that bothered International Underwriters. He listened passively.

“And how may I help?” he asked with an expansive spreading of his hands. The left hand just missed knocking his coffee cup off the desk and his right rocked a bottle of Bug Off Roach Spray.

I nodded at the roach spray. “Interesting paperweight.”

Fredrickson offered me an embarassed smile. “Roaches are bad in this building. Constant war.”

“I bet.”

Fredrickson gave me a cold stare. “Now, you were saying...?”

“First,” I said, “you can let me speak to the employees who wrote up the agreements with my three clients.” I named them again for him.

Fredrickson leaned back in his chair, cupped his hands together over his stomach. “Do you suspect wrong-doing?”

“I don’t suspect anyone of anything, yet. But I suspect everyone.” Someone had said that corny line in a movie once and I had been saving it for just such an occasion.

“Well,” Fredrickson said, “we’re a small company. I mean there isn’t anyone else except myself and Miss Little.”

“You wrote the agreements then?”

“That is correct, Mr. Hunter. Uh, would you care for a cup of coffee? I have some cups in my desk drawer here.” He made a gesture for the bottom, right hand drawer.

“No thanks. Doesn’t it strike you odd that three people would come to you for a loan, sign you as beneficiary for their insurance and all three die of a coronary in the same area? And why were you named as beneficiary? Any idea?”

“Yes, I do, Mr. Hunter. All three clients you named were credit risks. The younger of the three, Dravek, had a good solid job, but he was an alcoholic. You know how that is?”

I didn’t know, but I nodded.

“The others were old, had meager incomes from the government. I know how this is going to sound, but I was very much afraid to give them a loan. At their age it was unlikely they could manage the payments. They just might up and die at any moment.”

“But you did approve the loans?”

Fredrickson sighed. “Yes. My humanitarian instincts got the better of my common sense. Well, not entirely. The three were deadbeats, really. So that being the case, I suggested, as a protection for myself and the company, that they take out policies from International Underwriters. Insurance is not written out to dying people, Mr. Hunter. Insurance companies are a solid business. I knew that if they approved the clients, then I wasn’t taking such a big chance. I chose International Underwriters because of its reputation.”

“But why sign the policies over to you?”

“More security for my company. If they should die, well, I wouldn’t be left holding the bag, now would I? American General would be sure to get its money.”

“In triplicate,” I said.

“Mr. Hunter, you’re looking at this through a knothole.” And with that he made with the expansive gesture again and nearly clobbered the roach spray as before. This time he put the bottle in his bottom desk drawer. He continued as if nothing had happened. “None of these people had any family to speak of, so I doubt if I deprived any loved ones of funds. It was just a business transaction, nothing more.”

“But they all turned up dead shortly thereafter, and all within a few blocks of each other.”

“That is indeed an incredible coincidence, Mr. Hunter, but I can hardly be held responsible for that, now can I?”

“I wonder,” I said. “I don’t suppose you would allow me to look at your files on the three.”

“They are confidential, but in a case like this, of course, you’re welcome. I’ve nothing to hide.”

“May I see them then?”

“Certainly, certainly,” he said, flashing teeth all over the place. “They’re in the front office. Ask Miss Little for them on your way out. I’ll dial into the front office and have her accommodate you.” He did just that. “Sure you won’t have a cup of coffee? It’s hot.” He waved a hand at a Mr. Coffee perched on a small table to his left.

I got up and went to the door. “Fredrickson.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you use some of that insurance money to remodel this joint?”

“Now, Mr. Hunter,” he whined. “That’s no way...”

I went out with him still talking. Miss Little gave me the files and breathed chocolate mint breath down the back of my neck all the while I was examining them. The files didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Fredrickson had made notations about them being credit risks and about his suggestion that they take out policies from International Underwriters to assure American General of their steadfastness. The loans American General had granted to the three were all for a thousand dollars or little over. Everything seemed in order.

I gave the files back to Miss Little, told her not to take any wooden chocolates and got out there before she could throw her desk at me.

That night as I lay back on the couch watching John Wayne single-handedly decimate the Japanese army, I managed to slip the nagging events of the day from my mind. At least until the commercial, and damn if it wasn’t a commercial for Bug Off and that brought to mind Fredrickson again and gave me a headache. I knew that clown was guilty as sure as I knew my name was Leif Hunter. But how to prove it? It looked as if Fredrickson had literally gotten away with murder. And then again, maybe it was all coincidence.

The commercial did nothing for my headache. A fellow dressed like a headhunter pleaded, “It blows roaches away!” With that the pseudo head-hunter put a blowgun to his lips and dispatched a silverfish the size of a horse.

An insult to the intelligence, I thought, and the termination of that commercial seemed like a good place to call it a night. The movie would go on without me. I got up, turned off the tube, took a couple of aspirin for my aching head and went to bed.

About three in the morning I woke up with the answer.

Eleven a.m. found me in the office of American General with two plainclothes detectives at my side. One was James Harrison, a friend of mine from when I had been on the force, the other a recently-promoted detective named Jacobs.

The cops flashed their badges at Miss Little, then herded her with the rest of us into Fredrickson’s office for a little chat.

Fredrickson said, “What’s the meaning of this? Miss Little, I specifically...”

“Oh, shut up, Charlie,” Miss Little snapped. “It’s the cops.”

“Listen here,” Fredrickson said to James, “you have no right to intrude. What is the meaning of all this?”

“Mr. Hunter tells it so well,” said James, “we’ll just let him tell you.”

“Tell what?” Fredrickson asked.

“Tell how you killed those three deadbeats, as you call them,” I said.

Fredrickson shook his head. “Yesterday we went over this in great detail...”

“That’s before I got the evidence I needed,” I said. “What got me thinking on the right track was a commercial I saw last night. A commercial for the bug spray you have in your desk drawer. It’s called Bug Off The commercial made me aware of the fact that it has a curare base. I checked that out by going to the dry goods store this morning. Next I called the police and told them my suspicions. Guess what we did?”

Fredrickson licked his lips. “What?”

“We got a court order to have the bodies exhumed for an autopsy. About an hour ago we got the word. Oh, it was hard go considering the embalmer had already been there, but Doc Warren is an expert. He found traces of curare in all three bodies.”

“And I suppose you think I held them down and sprayed bug poison in their mouths,” Fredrickson said.

“Nope. You prepared for them, and after they got the policies signed over, and you fixed up the loan papers, you poisoned them. You had a cup prepare’d before hand with a good dose of Bug Off in it.” I looked, at Miss Little. “Have any idea how much Bug Off it takes, Miss Little?”

She didn’t answer. Just looked like she wished she could melt. I looked at the coffee maker on the far side of the room. “I suppose you poured the coffee yourself, huh, Fredrickson? No matter. They had the coffee, left here and died of disruption of cardiovascular functions. That’s what curare does to the human body. But of course you know that. That’s why Dravek got a little farther into town than the other two. He was younger, and able to resist the poison longer.”

“It’s not a nice way to collect money, Fredrickson, but it worked, and would have continued to work if you hadn’t gotten greedy. They just died too close together and of the same ailment.” I turned to Miss Little. “And you, I bet, are an accessory.”

“He did it,” Miss Little whined. “It was all his idea.”

I said, “Uh huh.”

Jacobs grabbed Miss Little by a pudgy arm and escorted her to the reception room to take her statement. I didn’t bother to mention to Fredrickson that I had lied about having the bodies exhumed.

“I suppose you can link all of this to me?” Fredrickson said, but his voice was a whine.

“She’s link enough,” James said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “She’s in there spilling her guts out. You can bet on that.”

Fredrickson’s Adam’s apple worked up and down, and then suddenly he dove for the desk drawer.

James, still quick after all these years, leaned over and slammed the drawer on Fredrickson’s hand, opened it slowly and removed the .38 snub nose that was resting there.

“Tsk, tsk,” James said. “If you’re going to be a hardened criminal, Mr. Fredrickson, you’re going to have to learn to keep your cool.”

“And not be so greedy,” I said. “You could have gotten away with this.”

“You sonofabitch,” Fredrickson said, rubbing his hand.

James looked at me, his face full of mock pain. “Did you hear that? Such an ugly remark from the mouth of a gentleman.”

“You can never tell these days,” I said.

Fredrickson, defeated, sat down behind his desk and put his face in his hands. James began reading him his rights. I went out quietly.

In the outer office Jacobs was listening patiently to Miss Little’s snarling remarks. I waved at her as I went out between two uniformed cops standing in the doorway.

She waved back with the middle finger of her left hand, the old one gun salute.

I went out to my car and drove over to find Capella and collect my ten percent saviour’s bonus.