The Confessors' Club

FIFTY-TWO

‘You said you were going to help us recapture our payout,’ he said.

‘I’ve got a new lead, but I have to know where the money went.’

‘I’ve been reading between the lines in the papers, Elstrom, and watching television. You’re thick in the middle of everything, yet you tell me nothing.’

‘Did Arthur Lamm write the policy on Carson?’

‘Lamm’s agency is huge. He writes a lot of the people we insure. Give me other names, so I can see if we got screwed over with them, too, and maybe I’ll tell you a little more about Carson’s policy.’

‘Benno Barberi, James Whitman.’

I heard his fingers typing at a keyboard. ‘No go on both.’

Lamm had spread the policies around, to avoid attracting attention. ‘The check on Carson has gone out?’

‘Some days ago.’

‘Who was the beneficiary?’

‘A guy from Chicago PD called just an hour ago, asking the same thing.’

‘The police, and not the IRS?’

‘The police. Now you. The IRS will be next. Sometimes it takes the Feds longer, is all.’

‘Did the cop leave a name?’

‘Come to think, no,’ he said. ‘Just some guy, younger.’

‘You knew to stonewall him, didn’t you, Gaylord? You didn’t give him the beneficiary?’

‘I told him that information was confidential, like I’m telling you. He said he’d get a subpoena over, but I’m doubtful.’

‘He was no cop, but maybe you already figured that.’

‘Damn right I did, just like I’m trying to figure your motives this very moment. Why do you need the name of the Carson beneficiary?’ he asked.

‘I want to see who’s collected on running Carson down. You’d look dumb, Gaylord, if you blew a chance to recover the payout.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning you let an opportunity slip by to stop the Carson check.’

‘We’re an insurance company. We can’t go grabbing back checks because there’s an insinuation of a crime.’

‘Not even from the killer?’

‘Oh, hell, Elstrom, I don’t want to know anything more,’ he said, speaking fast now. ‘It was a two-million-dollar term life policy, payable to a Second Securities Corporation.’ He gave me an address on North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago.

‘Thank you, Gaylord.’

‘Up yours,’ he said.

Jenny called me as I headed to that north part of the city.

‘Though a most interesting story out of Chicago has gone national,’ she said, ‘and I’ve been on intimate terms with the man at the center of it…’ She faked a cough. ‘And I’ve been anticipating becoming even more intimate…’ She let her voice trail away.

‘I’ll tell you almost all of what’s new,’ I said, and did.

‘What about Wendell Phelps?’

‘I don’t know the truth about Wendell.’

‘Do you know your truth about Amanda?’ She wasn’t asking about the case.

‘I think so,’ I said, but it might have been after a hesitation.

‘You’re still coming to San Francisco?’

‘Soon,’ I said, but I wondered how long it would take to know the truth about that as well.