Sight Unseen
Authors: Brad Latham
“I don’t speak German,” Lockwood said
.
The Nazi officer grinned and pulled back the breeching mechanism of the Luger, checked to make sure there was a shell in the
clip and let it go.
“Now,” the officer said. “Into the boat.”
The Hook looked down and saw the Luger pointed at his stomach.
He stepped onto the raft.
Then, someone grabbed his arm from behind and forced his hands behind his back. He felt the handcuffs tighten and click on
his wrists.
He had no choice now. He had to take the journey to the submarine.
And he had to escape.
The Hook # 1: THE GILDED CANARY
The Hook #2: SIGHT UNSEEN
Published by
WARNER BOOKS
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1981 by Warner Books, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.,
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56609-4
Contents
“What was stolen that was so valuable?” Lockwood asked his boss.
Mr. Gray drummed his pince-nez against the glass surface in a rat-a-tat tattoo. “
That’s
the problem, Lockwood,” Mr. Gray answered. “Our enterprising president took it on himself to insure an article that’s spelled
out in the policy only as ‘the insured product—as developed.’ “
“The—insured product?” Lockwood asked.
“The insured product,” Gray repeated irritated. “Gordon—
Mr
. Gordon—says he’s not allowed to tell me—
me!
—chief of claims!—what this so-called product is. Could be a sack of potatoes for all we know.”
Pushing through Gray’s irritation, Lockwood asked, “Why didn’t you turn down the application?”
“I never saw the application.”
“You never saw it?”
“I never saw it!”
“Isn’t that against the board’s policy?”
“Damn right!” Gray shouted. “Would never have happened in Gordon, Sr.’s day, too, you can believe that!”
“Will you stop shouting?” Lockwood shouted back.
It was useless for Lockwood to think he could stop Mr. Gray from being overbearing for long. Lockwood even liked Mr. Gray—sometimes;
it was just that when it came to claims his boss had a one-track mind, and Mr. Gray rarely had anything but claims on his
mind.
Gray eyed his senior investigator with a hard stare and pursed his lips. He saw a solidly built man of about thirty-seven
who sat straight in his chair. Gray resented Lockwood’s youth and smooth good looks, the way Lockwood almost always looked
as if he had just stepped out of an Arrow collar advertisement. Everything Lockwood did he did with style and verve, a quality
Gray both loathed and envied. He hated people for whom life came easily; and while Lockwood ran into as many problems as the
next fellow, to Gray he seemed to solve them with a minimum of huffing and grunting. Of course, Lockwood had been to college
and Gray had not. The older man figured that this accounted for the difference between them, and it made him dislike college
men all the more.
Without acknowledging that he had been shouting, Mr. Gray quieted. “The old man didn’t think he knew every damn thing about
insurance, Lockwood, even though he did,” Gray went on. “You won’t believe this, but we have only one copy of this policy,
and it was written by Junior G. himself and has never left his personal safe.”
Lockwood winced. “Irregular.”
“
Damned
irregular,” Gray said with some satisfaction. The claims chief sat back and lit another English Oval while his other hand
spread ashes from the last cigarette into his gray vest. Between rapid puffs, Mr. Gray went on, “Now Gordon—
Mr
. Gordon, Jr.—wants me to have you investigate the claim. I almost refused.”
Lockwood was caught up now in the puzzle. “This is crazy, Mr. Gray.”
“I know it’s crazy,” Gray said. “He says he can’t tell me anything about it because of the government, although what the government
has to do with a product a refrigerator company’s making is beyond me.”
“A refrigerator company?”
“Yes, damn it! Don’t repeat everything I say.” Mr. Gray took a deep drag on the Oval cigarette, turning almost a fifth of
it into ash. He mused, “I wonder if I could get away with refusing. The board would back me, I think.”
Lockwood almost smiled a thin smile of amusement at his boss, but he knew that Gray would have no sense of humor about the
situation. Mr. Gray was all business, the insurance business, all the time. Lockwood was pretty sure Gray would do what Gordon
wanted. For all of the claims chief’s disdain of Thomas Gordon’s way of running the Transatlantic Underwriters company, still
Gray knew who was his boss and who owned 35 percent of TA’s shares. Sure, Tom Gordon had only inherited them, and yes, he
had elected himself president just five years before when he was but a sprout of thirty, but young Gordon had pushed the company’s
business forward during the lean years from 1933 to the present, doubling business during hard times.
Intrigued as well as irritated, Lockwood said, “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“The ‘insured product’ weighs five hundred pounds. It was stolen—no, discovered ‘missing’—this morning at 8:00 when the plant
opened.”
“Are we sure there was an ‘insured product’?” Lockwood asked. The remark was a telling blow.
Gray threw his hands a foot and a half above the glass desk top, dropping another inch of ash on his vest. “I want you out
there fast, Lockwood, and find this thing—if it ever existed—or we have got to fork over $75,000.”
Lockwood whistled at the size of the figure. “And Gordon doesn’t know what we insured?”
“Doesn’t know, or won’t—maybe can’t—say.” Gray shoved a policy in Lockwood’s general direction. “Here, read it—right here.
I’m not allowed to let you take it out of here, and I have to take it back to Mr. Gordon’s office myself.”
Lockwood looked at the face of the policy and grimaced. “What’s this ‘time of the essence’ clause? Pay the claim in ninety-six
hours—we never write a policy like this. We pay in weeks and months—not in hours—and only after an investigation.”
“Look at the premium,” Gray said in a dry tone that heaped scorn on men who would endanger the company’s asset base for a
few dollars more in income.
“It’s five times as high as it would be for jewels or paintings,” Lockwood said. “What’s this all about?”
“That’s what you’re going to find out. Read it.”
So, while Mr. Gray sat there and smoked his English Ovals, Lockwood skimmed through fourteen pages of small print.
It wasn’t easy for Lockwood to concentrate with Gray keeping one glass-covered eye on him, but inside Lockwood smiled a bit
at Gray’s habitual suspicion. Mr. Gray trusted no one and nothing. The joke among all the claims investigators at Transatlantic
Underwriters was “Gray hates to pay,” for if there were any possible way to refuse a claim, Gray pounced on it. More than
once Lockwood had found his boss asking him to bend an investigation to get the company off the hook even when the suspicious
claim appeared to be legitimate. Several times a year Lockwood suppressed evidence that he knew Mr. Gray would use to deny
a proper claim. After all, some claimants deserved to get paid.
The ageless old man sat in his corner office high in the RCA building, steadily moving files from the left-hand side of his
desk to the right-hand side, deciding, at the steady rate of twenty files per hour, which claims Transatlantic Underwriters
would pay, which would be investigated, and who of Lockwood and the other nine claims investigators would do the investigating.
Mr. Gray was the envy of presidents of other insurance companies. For his part, Lockwood was sure that Gray’s big advantage
over any other claims chief was his never leaving his office. He sat here in his corner office, the window shades pulled down,
rain or shine, like a spider at the center of its web, ready to snare claimants after Transatlantic Underwriters’ money. Every
claim passed through his hands, whether it was a railroad widow’s $1500 from her husband’s roadbed accident to the most brazen
Garment District scam, and Gray gave every file the same hard-eyed scrutiny, sure that at the bottom of each claim lay fraud.
Lockwood knew he had been put on this mysterious Long Island claim because he was the best investigator Mr. Gray had, and
he was proud of the old man’s opinion, even if Gray did take the attitude no claims investigator was ever as bright or clever
as he, Gray, was.
When he had finished reading the policy, Lockwood asked, “You want me to go out to Patchogue?”
“Right now.”
Lockwood stood up and dropped the policy on the desk. “I’m off.”
“Call me the first thing this afternoon and let me know what’s going on,” Gray said.
He picked up the next file from the pile at his left hand. “Don’t go nuts again on the expense account, hear me? We’d be fools
to pay off on a policy written like this. I’m sure we can win a refusal to pay in court.”
Lockwood just sighed, smiled, nodded, and left. There had never been a policy claim about which Mr. Gray hadn’t said those
exact words. Gray ought to have little cards printed up that simply read,
“Forget it—we won’t pay.”
On his way back to his office, Lockwood reflected again on what he figured was Mr. Gray’s ideal insurance company—one whose
only function would be to collect premiums, never to pay claims.
Back in his own office, Lockwood’s spirits soared. Nothing excited him more than a case that took him out of New York City,
and a drive out on Long Island with the top down on his convertible was a glorious way to spend an April morning.
He quickly prepared to leave. First he jotted down what details he remembered from the policy, and then he packed the attaché
case he kept at the foot of his office closet with two extra shirts, socks, underwear, and two subdued silk neckties. From
his desk drawer he took out his .38 Detective Special and a box of .38 shells. You never knew. He clipped the spring holster
just to the right of his backbone under the waistband of his trousers, cop-style.
He stashed four packs of Camels and fresh underwear in the case and pocketed his silver and black Dunhill lighter. He carefully
topped off his silver pint flask with Canadian. Before walking out he called down to the garage and asked Hank to bring his
car up, and to make sure it was filled with gas and oil.
An hour later found Lockwood, still in high spirits, driving a bit faster than might have been safe for the average motorist
on Highway 27 toward Patchogue, the top down on his gunmetal gray ’37 Cord. Lockwood loved the gorgeous spring day, the open
road, and the way the Cord handled. The car had racing shocks and front-wheel drive, and because he considered the stock Cord
a bit underpowered, Lockwood had hopped it up with a Packard Twin Six under its coffin hood. The car could burn rubber for
a block and outperformed almost every car he met on the road.
When Lockwood figured he was within a half-hour of Patchogue, he turned on his police radio, curious to see what kind of law
was crawling around this part of the Island, but he heard only faint words, as if there was little law this far out into the
Atlantic Ocean.
A service station attendant on the outskirts of the village told him how to get to the Northstar Company, and he was startled
to be stopped by a U.S. Marine at the company gate.
Lockwood consulted his notebook and said, “I’m here to see Mr. Dzeloski, soldier.”
“Move your car back, mister,” the marine said with a hard wooden face as he bolted a cartridge home in his Springfield’s breech.
“Get back behind the line.”
Lockwood looked down and saw a stripe painted on the asphalt road. Though exasperated, he decided not to argue with the Springfield.
He backed the Cord up five feet. “What gives?” he asked.
Not answering, keeping a steady eye on Lockwood, the marine backed into the guard shack. Without taking his eyes off Lockwood
he called someone on the telephone.
Fuming a bit, Lockwood looked around. The sign over the gate read,
The Northstar Refrigerator Company
, all right. What the hell was a marine doing guarding the front gate of an icebox factory? Wire mesh fence, with three strands
of barbed wire at the top, ran from each side of the gate around the premises. Inside stood a concrete block building some
three stories high—it was hard to gauge the size of the building for it was built entirely without windows. What could have
been stolen from an icebox factory with a marine guard? None of this made sense.