Until You Are Dead (14 page)

"Then we insure that something will happen."

"So you're an extortionist and Guarantee is a phony company."

"Not at all," Bent said with an injured air. "We mainly sell legitimate life insurance policies. Call it a front, if you will. But if you go to the police and repeat what I've told you, the company and I are able to deny this part of the conversation and still account for our existence and my visit here. And as I said, Mr. Clark, we're very much aware of your background."

I sat staring at Bent, envying him. He was a man playing with his deck, someone else's money and all the chips. "How much are the premiums?" I asked.

Bent studied something inside his open attaché case. "Five thousand a year, half payable every six months. Not unreasonable, Mr. Clark."

"Guarantee must have a number of clients," I said, "to be able to be so reasonable."

Bent glanced up from the open case and nodded
brightly. "Oh, more than you can imagine. It's all done by computer, both the legal and illegal ends of our business.
Statistically, we were bound to get to you sooner or later, Mr. Clark. If projected over a long enough period, statistics are one of the few sure things in this world. Death, taxes and statistics."

"You're quite a believer in statistics, aren't you."

Bent nodded, displaying his wide white smile. "Because we lease our computer and its memory bank to certain parties, we have access to the facts surrounding a great many illegal transactions everywhere in the country.

"This hard information, when crossed with reliable personal information, invariably links names to transactions. The computer is then fed more information concerning the bearers of those names, furnished by our research department, and it prints out prospective clients on a selective basis." He cocked his head, his smile gaining candlepower. "And here I am."

"Sounds efficient," I had to admit. "Now let me understand the proposition. The policy costs me five thousand dollars a year, half payable every six months. And if I
don't
buy the policy, who knows what could happen to me tomorrow?"

Bent nodded again. I expected him to say "Guarantee knows," but he didn't. Statistically, I was sure that few of his carefully researched "clients" refused to buy the policy.

I ran my palms over my thighs to my knees and sighed, flicked at my pants leg creases. "How about a cup of coffee?" I asked.

"Thank you," Bent said. "Then we can settle the particulars, when and where to send the money, that sort of thing . . ."

He was all business, that one.

I went into the kitchen and rattled things around for a while.

When I returned, Bent was leaning forward on the low sofa, leafing through some papers in his attaché case. "Instant okay?" I asked.

"Fine," he said.

I walked up behind him and plunged my longest butter knife exactly between his shoulder blades at an angle to the heart.

He sat up straight, turned and stared wide-eyed at me for that appalling breach of etiquette. His eyes asked me why, then they asked nothing and he slumped sideways on the sofa and started a gradual slide to the floor. The couch and carpet were ruined.

By the time you get this tape cassette at Police Headquarters I'll be . . . well, you'll find out where soon enough.

You see, Bent was right about statistics, but wrong in assuming they'd never catch up with him or Guarantee Insurance. Eventually the company was bound to approach someone like me, and the story could and would get out. I hadn't much choice, really.

I'd just been released from the hospital the day before, on my birthday. There was nothing more they could do, and with my medication I wasn't in any great pain. The doctors told me about the sort of cancer I had, how I could expect to live only a few more weeks, maybe not even that long.

What they were saying, when you boil away all the medical jargon, was that my number was up.

I
had to have her. Lani Sundale was her name, and for the past three Saturday nights I'd sat at the corner of the bar in the Lost Beach Lounge and listened to her talk to her friends — another girl, a blonde — and a tall, husky guy with graying
hair and bushy eyebrows. Once there was an older woman with a lot of jewelry who acted like she was the gray haired guy's wife. They'd sit and drink and gab to each other about nothing in particular, and I'd sit working on my bourbon and water, watching her reflection in the back bar mirror.

It wasn't until the second Saturday night, when she got a telephone call, that I learned her name, but even before that I was — well, let's say committed.

Lani was a dark haired, medium-height, liquid motion girl, shapely and a little heavier than was the style, like a woman should be. But with her face she didn't need her body. She really got to me right off: high cheekbones, upturned nose, and slightly parted, pouty little red lips, as if she'd just been slapped. Then she had those big dark eyes that kind of looked deep into a guy and asked questions. And from time to time she'd look up at me in the mirror and smile like it just might mean something.

The fourth Saturday night she came in alone.

I swiveled on my bar stool with practiced casualness to face her booth. "Where's your friends?"

She shrugged and smiled. "Other things to do." Past her outside the window, I could see the blank night sky and the huge Pacific rolling darkly on the beach.

"No stars tonight," I said. "You're the shiningest thing around."

"You're trying to tell me it's going to rain," she said, still with the smile. It was a kind of crooked, wicked little smile that looked perfect on her. "I drink whiskey sours."

I ordered her one, myself a bourbon and water, and sat down across from her in the soft vinyl booth. Two guys down the bar looked at me briefly with naked envy.

"Your name's Lani," I told her. She didn't seem surprised that I knew. "I'm Dennis Conners."

The bartender brought our drinks on a tray, and Lani raised her glass, "To new acquaintances."

Three drinks later we left together.

It was about four when Lani drove me back to the Lounge parking lot to pick up my car. Hard as it was for me to see much in the dark, I knew we were in an expensive section of coast real estate where a lot of wealthy people had plush beach houses, like the beach house I'd just visited with Lani.

She drove her black convertible fast, not bothering to stop and put up the top against the sparse, cold raindrops that stung our faces. What I liked most about her then was that she didn't bother with the ashamed act, and when we reached the parking lot and the car had stopped, she leaned over, and gave me a kiss with that tilted little grin.

"See you again?" she said as I got out of the car.

"We'll most likely run across one another," I said with a smile, slamming the heavy door.

I
could hear her laughter over the roar and screech of tires as the big convertible backed and turned onto the empty highway. I walked back to my car slowly.

During the next two weeks we were together at the beach house half a dozen times. The place spelled money, all right.

Not real big but definitely plush, stone fireplace, deep carpeting, rough sawn beams, modern kitchen, expensive and comfortable furniture. There was no place the two of us would rather have been, the way it felt with the heavy drapes drawn and a low fire throwing out its twisted, moving shadows. And the way we could hear that wild ocean curl up moaning on the beach, over and over again. It was a night like that, late, when she started talking about her husband.

"Howard's crippled," she said. "An automobile accident. He'll never get out of his wheelchair." She looked up at me as if she'd just explained something.

"How long ago?" I asked.

"Two years. It was his own fault. Drunk at ninety miles an hour. He can't complain."

"I've been drunk at ninety miles an hour myself."

"Oh, so have I." The shrug and tilted smile. "We all take our chances."

I wondered how much her husband knew about her. How much I knew about her. From time to time I'd marveled at how skillfully she could cover up the bruises on her face and neck with makeup. She was all that mattered to me now, and it made me ache with a strange compassion for her husband, thinking how it would be watching her from a wheelchair.

"Let's get going," she said, standing and slipping into her suede high heeled shoes. "The fire's getting low."

I yanked her back by the elbow. Then I walked over and put another log on the fire.

Where I lived, at a motel in North Beach, was quite a comedown from the beach house love nest. During the long days of dwindling heat and afternoon showers I'd lie on my bed, sipping bourbon over ice and thinking about Lani and
myself. I'm no kind of fool, and I knew what was happening didn't exactly tally. With her money and looks Lani could have had her choice of big husky young ones, her kind. I never kidded myself; I was over thirty-five, blond hair getting a little thin and once-athletic body now sporting a slight drinker's paunch. Not a bad looking guy, but not the pick of the litter. And my not-so-lucrative occupation of water skiing instructor during the vacation season would hardly have attracted Lani. I already owed her over five hundred dollars she never expected to get back.

Maybe any guy in my situation would have wondered how he'd got so lucky. I didn't know or really care. I only knew I had what I wanted most. And even during the day I could close my eyes and lean back in my bed five miles from sea and hear the tortured surf of the rolling night ocean.

"He has more money than he could burn," Lani said to me one night at the beach house.

"Howard?"

She nodded and ran her fingernails through the hair on my chest.

"You're his wife," I told her. "Half of all he owns is yours and vice versa."

"You're something I own that isn't half his, Dennis. We own each other. I feel more married to you than to Howard."

"Divorce him," I said. "You'd get your half."

She pulled her head away from me for a moment and looked incredulous.

"Are you kidding? The court wouldn't look too kindly on a woman leaving a cripple. And Howard's really ruthless. His lawyers might bring out something from my past."

"Or present."

She tried to bite my arm, and I pulled her back by the hair. I knew what she'd been talking toward and I didn't care. I didn't care about anything but her. She was twisting her head all around, laughing, as I slapped her and shoved her away. She was still laughing when she said it. "Dennis, there's only one."

I interrupted her. "I'll kill him for you," I said.

We were both serious then. She sat up and we stared at each other. The twin reflections of the fire were tiny star-points of red light in her dark eyes. I reached for her.

The beach house was where we discussed the thing in detail, weighing one plan after another. We always met there and nowhere else. I'd conceal my old sedan in the shadows behind a jagged stand of rock and walk down through the grass and cool sand to the door off the wooden sun deck. She'd be waiting for me.

"Listen," she said to me one night when the sea wind was howling in gusts around the sturdy house, "why don't we use this on him?" She opened her purse and drew out a small, snub-nosed .32 caliber revolver.

I took it from her and turned it over in my hand. A compact, ugly weapon with an unusual eight shot cylinder, the purity of its flawless white pearl grips made the rest of it seem all the uglier. "Whose?" I asked.

Lani closed her purse and tossed it onto the sofa from where she sat on an oversized cushion. "Howard gave it to me just after we were married, for protection."

"Then it can be traced to you."

She shook her head impatiently. "He bought it for me in Europe, when he was on a business trip in a communist bloc country. Brought it back illegally, really. I looked into this thing, Dennis. I know the police can identify the type and make of weapon used from the bullet, only this make
gun won't even be known to them. All they'll be able to say for sure is it was a .32 caliber."

I looked at her admiringly and slipped the revolver into my pants pocket. "You do your homework like a good girl. How many people know you own this thing?"

"Quite a few people were there when Howard gave it to me three years ago, but only a few people have seen it since. I doubt if anybody even knows what caliber it is. I know I can pretend I don't." She was watching me closely as I thoughtfully rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth."What happens if the police ask you to produce the gun? Nothing to prevent them from matching it with the murder bullet then."

Lani laughed. "In three years I lost it! Let them search for it if they want. It'll be at the bottom of the ocean where you threw it." She was grinning secretively, her dark hair hanging loose over one ear and the makeup under one eye smudged.