“You probably should lose the sport coat,” said Guttman.
“Nah,” I said, pulling up the right sleeve well above my elbow. “See? It’s a baggy coat over a short-sleeve shirt.”
He shrugged for me to suit myself and sorted sterile packets in the tote, gathering his paraphernalia.
I smiled at Ray and turned my right arm supine, the crook of my elbow naked below the coat sleeve and shirt.
Mainly I was thinking that no matter what happened here, I had discharged my obligations to Agent Jeffrey Rhuteen and his Viatical Fraud Task Force. GothicRage86 would send me the image of whoever was at Lenny’s, and I could hand it to Becker tomorrow. I could clear Lenny of a suicide and maybe even prove that it was Heartland, not Lenny, that had done the lion’s share of the scamming when it came to selling his insurance to viatical investors like Ashwater.
Hector grabbed some sheets as they came off the printer. I could see that the top page was written in all capital letters. A disclaimer or a legal waiver of some kind?
“I know it’s tedious,” Hector said, and smiled with teeth so perfect they had to have been whitened by the new argon lasers, “but I always sit right here and wait while a prospective client like yourself reads our application. Most misunderstandings can be avoided if applicants just take the time to read the paperwork very carefully. I’ll answer any questions you may have.”
Hector slid off the top sheet only, the one with the capital letters, and he didn’t really give it to me, he turned it around and held it up in front of my face so I could read it. The top two lines said:
(1) WEARING A DIGITAL LISTENING DEVICE! HOW AWKWARD!
(2) READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY OR YOU WILL BE DEAD.
Right about the time I read the word dead, I heard a cough and a muffled click to my left, where Don’s right hand had been inside his folded black jacket. Then he was standing in the periphery like the proverbial Footman, only he wasn’t holding my coat and snickering, just pressing cold metal against my left temple.
Hector’s face was still a beacon of professional good cheer, and he held up what looked like a small, black walkie-talkie with a stubby black antenna that was as thick as a cigar. The LCDs on the face of the device were silently streaming numbers and lights, and the white lettering above the readout said, “Digital Range Finder.”
On Ray’s side I felt something soft and plastic brush the top of my wrist, like those hollow rubber tourniquets they use to tie off your arm for a blood sample.
“Do keep reading,” Hector said.
(3) PRISON TERMS AND DEATH SENTENCES HOLD NO TERRORS FOR MY GOOD FRIEND DON. AND WHO WILL BLAME HIM IF HE LOSES IT AND COMMITS JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE AGAINST AN INSURANCE NAZI WHO DENIES MEDICAL CLAIMS FOR A LIVING?
(4) SAY ONE WORD. ANY WORD! ONE WORD COMES OUT OF YOUR MOUTH AND YOUR BRAINS WILL EXIT YOUR SKULL STAGE RIGHT.
(5) DO NOT MOVE.
(6) DO NOT SAY ONE WORD.
(7) JUST LISTEN.
(8) DO THAT AND YOU’LL LEAVE ALIVE, MAYBE EVEN UNHARMED.
I started shaking hard and taking breaths wherever I could fit them in. Guttman reached across my lap, and I felt another delicate brush of tubing or string on my left wrist. Then two light clicks, and when I looked down my wrists were strapped to the chair arms with thick plastic zip ties, the kind electricians use to bundle cables, the kind you don’t get off without wire cutters, or maybe that’s why Guttman had that huge pair of surgical scissors in his tote? Only question, I guess, was whether I’d be alive or dead when he cut them off.
Hector shrugged as if he truly regretted the poor choices I’d made in life but was helpless to do anything about them at this late hour.
Don coughed, and the muzzle nudged my temple.
My adrenals were sparking like 220 volts ungrounded, firing currents all the way out to my fingertips. My internal organs swelled up with fight-or-flight juices. I discovered that terror dramatically affects vision, because suddenly I could see everything—the minute textures of every surface in my field of vision, as if I were a bird of prey scanning the forested terrain of the desktop, the floor, the tote, the file cabinet, searching not for prey but for a tool, a clue, any new detail—the letter opener in Hector’s pencil cup, the syringes and scissors in Dr. Ray’s lab tote, the distance between my restrained left wrist and the gun Don held to the side of my head—any speck of hope I could fall upon and embrace, any byte of information that might help me convince these men to let me leave that room alive. But I had to do it without saying one word. Without moving?
Hector shook the same paper in front of me. His voice was still ringing like a bell. Perfectly natural. He could win friends, influence people.
“And for their own protection, we always insist that our prospective clients read the application twice, so please take another careful look, Mr. Hartnett. It’s standard procedure, and it’s to protect you and every single one of our valued clients.”
My eyes were twitching in their sockets now, but I could see he was waiting for me to read it again, and I felt Don give me a patient nudge with the barrel. Along with my new OmniVision technology, I felt the scales of religious skepticism fall from my eyes. I suddenly believed every single word of the Apostles’ Creed with a new fervor that would have taught Job a thing or two.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son…
“Pay particular attention to lines four, five, and six,” said Hector, “where it lays out the necessary preconditions for a successful application.”
They were easy to find because Hector had thoughtfully bolded them for me.
(4) SAY ONE WORD. ANY WORD. ONE WORD OUT OF YOUR MOUTH AND YOUR BRAINS WILL EXIT YOUR SKULL STAGE RIGHT.
(5) DO NOT MOVE.
(6) DO NOT SAY ONE WORD.
Dr. Guttman tore open a syringe packet with a practiced snap of his wrists and popped one of the bubbles for a needle. I smelled alcohol when he tore the seal on a prepackaged wipe.
The cell phone was banging hard against my thrumming heart muscle, and I knew just what they were hearing outside: “Pay particular attention to…Review the application carefully…” I’d be dead five times over before the FBI knew what was going down, especially since one of them was deaf!
Deep inside my limbic system—somewhere in my squirming brain—a little homunculus sat at his console screaming the escape clause that McKnight had given me: “Do you have a rest room I could use? If not, I’m about to have an accident and flood command central with pure adrenaline.”
Hector propped his paper up on the front of his desk so I could still read it. Guttman donned double surgical gloves and finished preparing the syringe.
Hector pattered along in the mundane singsong voice he would use to convince any skeptical applicant of the worth of his services.
“Now it’s true you probably wouldn’t be a typical Heartland Viatical client,” he said. “God knows, Lenny was anything but typical.”
“Too true,” Guttman chimed in. “Nothing typical about dear Lenny.”
Hector opened a file and took out a big glossy photo and handed it to Don.
“You see, Mr. Hartnett,” said Hector, “you are accustomed to seeing us and our mission to serve our clients from inside the Special Investigations Unit at Reliable Allied Trust. Our goal is to help you see Heartland Viatical the way our patients and clients see us. Imagine that you or perhaps a loved one had a terminal illness.”
Don held a grainy eight-by-ten digital photo of Miranda up in front of me, where the afterimages of Hector’s printed death threats were still swimming in the air. It was a head shot of her coming out the revolving door of Reliable’s offices, unaware of the camera: right between her eyes was a big bullet hole in the photo, with real powder burns around it, from the looks of it.
“When you or a loved one has a terminal illness, life becomes a desperate struggle to survive at any cost,” said Hector in the soothing voice of a financial consult
ant or a bereavement counselor.
Guttman had slipped out of his chair on my right and had come around to my left where Don was holding the photo. The doctor wasn’t looking at me, and I was damn glad because I’d decided ixnay on the blood work. Maybe next time.
Guttman took the photo and handed it back to Hector. Don extended his left arm, so Guttman could palpate a vein.
“Unlike you, most of our clients are desperate when they come to us,” Hector continued in the same maddening, routine tone of voice, pausing briefly now and again to shuffle papers.
“You should take a moment and imagine yourself like poor Lenny,” offered Hector. “Because before I accept your application, and before we enter into our agreement, I need for you to believe in us and our services, believe in Heartland Viatical, and know with all of your heart that we are a legitimate, professional viatical-settlement association.”
I opened my mouth to say something like, “By the bleeding wounds of Sweet Jesus Christ my Savior, I believe!” But then everybody froze in horror and looked like there was going to be an awful mess to clean up if I did.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, and that Heartland Viatical is a legitimate, professional viatical-settlement association…
Without moving my head, I tried to strain to the left for a look at Don. He must have felt my eyeballs roll against the gun barrel, because he leaned forward a little, as if to reassure me that he was still there, placid countenance and all, manifesting not a trace of malice or ill will; nothing but angelic tranquility and inner peace, except now he happened to be poking a gun barrel against my head.
Guttman had finished drawing Don’s blood and pushed a cotton ball over the hole he’d made. Don folded his arm over it and mashed it in place between his bony forearm and biceps.
“Lenny had insurance policies to sell,” said Hector brightly. “And he supplied us with medical records that would indicate he had a qualifying medical condition.”
Guttman’s eyebrows flew up and he made an exaggerated face that wordlessly said, “Yeah-right!”
Guttman walked back around to his lab tote, but he still had the needle uncovered, and he went right past the tote and sat down in the captain’s chair next to me. He held the needle about six inches from the crook of my elbow and frowned, as if he was thinking about what to do with it.
My eyes stayed on the needle, where a black tear of Don’s blood quivered and hung from the tip. It was like a tiny dark convex mirror, and if I kept zooming in on it with my new panoptic, high-resolution eyesight I could see the whole room, I could see to infinity and beyond reflected in it.
Show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus! O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
“But you must understand that Lenny’s transactions with Heartland Viatical, and indeed your transactions with us here today, are strictly confidential,” said Hector.
Guttman held my right arm down even though he didn’t need to, if I struggled, the zip ties would tear into my flesh like razor wire and weasel teeth.
Guttman wasn’t smiling really, just lowering the needle an inch or two at a time toward the bulging vein at the inner aspect of my right elbow, with his thumb on the plunger of the syringe.
My pores flushed sweat, and I kept wondering what the juvenile government morons in the van were thinking about my gasps for air.
Hey, Growney. Does that guy you wired have asthma?
Would Don and Hector and Guttman consider it an innocent mistake and excusable error if I suddenly said, “Do you have a rest room I could use?” Under the circumstances, they had to know I needed a rest room.
Do not say one word? Fellas, I took it to mean unless I was about to have an accident and needed to go to the rest room?
That gun had to be getting heavy for poor Don, I thought, and our telepathic link must have transmitted the data in real time, because he went for the two-handed grip and kept the gun in place. He leaned forward again and gave me another face full of beatific serenity, as he silently mouthed words to me: “ONE WORD. SAY ONE WORD.”
I realized that unlike Hector or Ray, I, too, had stepped right out of Time onto Don’s side of the relativity equation, and we were both looking at each other and sharing the black magic of the moment standing still forever. It was just like old Einstein had said: God invented Time so that everything doesn’t happen at once. It didn’t last longer than any other single moment in my life, and under other circumstances I’d probably have filled it with a lazy half notion about what to drink that night or what new stratagem I could employ to get Miranda into bed. Instead I was deep in nowness with Don, capable of satellite imaging and of thinking several hundred thoughts all at once, not all of them rational. For instance, I was wondering if I could look down at the growing damp spot between my legs and say by way of explanation, “Rest room?”
Now that Ray was back on my right, would Don really splatter him with—?
Hector courteously held the paper back up, with his fingertip helpfully bookmarking line 6:
(6) DO NOT SAY ONE WORD.
Deserts, mountain peaks, and vast oceans of eternity all around, but still not a drop or glimmer of hope. Ray was lowering his needle little by little, or I was imagining it, or terror was inflating my muscles, bulging my ripe blue vein out toward the needle. I made up my mind that if Ray stuck it in, I was going to say, “Rest room,” before he could push the plunger down. If he did that, then I wanted Don to finish things for me right here, so I wouldn’t have to count on myself to do it later. But wait, didn’t that mean I should wait and see if he gave me the plunger?
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve! To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears!
“Without mentioning names,” Hector continued, “or disclosing privileged medical information, we can give you demographic and statistical information on some of our clients whose needs and circumstances may resemble your own.”
Hector fetched another sheet of paper and politely held it up for me.
“Here’s a young woman just about your age who came to us with a term life insurance policy she wanted to sell.”
It was a life insurance policy, or a copy of one, for three hundred thousand dollars from Omaha Beneficial.
Owner: Miranda Pryor.
Insured: Miranda Pryor.
Beneficiary: Annette Pryor.
That didn’t make sense, because Miranda’s sister was the beneficiary, not the owner or the insured. It was Miranda’s own life insurance policy.
Hector took that paper away and held up another one.
“And after we purchased the policy and added it to our portfolio of life insurance policies, it looks like this,” he said.
Same policy, only now it had obviously been sold.
Owner: Heartland Viatical
Insured: Miranda Pryor
Beneficiary: Heartland Viatical
Sins don’t come any blacker than the lie she’d told me. Good eye contact, too, Miranda! No blinking! That must take a lot of practice! I saw the whole thing now. It was Lenny and her. She knew what kind of outfit this was, and she’d let me walk in here to find out the truth and get my head blown off or my blood infected.
“I didn’t sell them any policies. Lenny and his friend helped my sister sell one. That’s it. Get over it.”
But Miranda had sold them at least one policy. It was right there in black and white with her signature on it. She and Lenny had both made good money, only difference was Miranda must have invested hers, while Lenny donated his to Harveys and Harrah’s. She matched lies the way she matched scarves and gloves, textured tights and wool sheaths, sofa pillows and chenille throws. Maybe the Catholic bit was a tapestry of fine lies, too. Maybe the strict chastity rules only applied to me, because I might be useful, and it allowed her to keep me around without me despoiling the merchandise.
If I was really on the final jetway to Ai
r Eternity, I’d be taking the last trip knowing she was all sham and scam. I was a fool in the court of her intrigue. I dressed myself in bells and motley, making merry whenever she pushed my remote. “Yes, Your Most Excellent Fraudulency,” I’d sing before curling up on her leather sofa with a bone between my legs.
“So, to answer your question,” said Hector, “yes, we have expanded our services to accommodate the needs of our clients, but we’re careful to disclose the particulars of any diagnosis to our investors, so they have the benefit of our thorough medical testing before they make their decision to invest.”
She could weasel and equivocate about every other bogus story she’d told me, but I had flat-out demanded the truth about whether she had sold any policies to Heartland, instead of just arranging a sale for her sister.
“I did not sell any life insurance policies on myself to Heartland Viatical.”
There it was, and here I was. My only regret was that I couldn’t stop by Miranda’s place on my way to the airport for my last flight out on Infinity Airlines. I’d smash all of her crystal stemware, then tie her up and make her watch while I poured her treasured ’97 Whitehall Lane reserve cabernets one by one into the toilet.
“If he was a scam king who conned Omaha Beneficial out of half a million, then yes, he’d be down there with all of the other liars for hire.”
Liars for hire?
“I did not sell any life insurance policies on myself to Heartland Viatical.”
And all the while my mind deep inside my matter was screaming: Do you have a rest room I could use?
Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
If I could leave here without any bullet holes or needle holes in me, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary, I’ll say the rosary every morning for the rest of my goddamned life! And I’ll be praying that somebody with divine authority will please send Miranda’s soul to Rung Nine with the violent and the bestial, where fraud kings and queens gnaw on each other’s scalps for all Eternity.
Bet Your Life Page 25