THE POLICY

by Bentley Little

  “Still…”

  “Well, I’m going to try to get off early tomorrow and stop by, but I’m not sure I can really take any time off. Technically, I’m still on my probation period.”

  “Jorge and Edward’ll cover for you.”

  “Yeah, but Steve can be a real pain in the ass, and he could make it tough for me if he wanted. Besides, I’ll gather up the important stuff right now. The rest…” He gestured around. “It’s just furniture. It’s replaceable.”

  “What are you going to do tonight? You can’t sleep here.”

  “I get a living allowance to stay someplace while they do the work. It’s part of my policy.”

  “You’re staying with me.”

  He’d been about to say that he would spend the next few days at a Motel 6 or something. “You don’t have to—” he began.

  “I want to.”

  He had to admit, that sounded nice. The prospect of living out of a motel did not appeal to him at all, particularly since they were working all the way down by Green Valley this week, and with Jorge’s Saturn in the shop for repairs, the two of them were carpooling. The thought that he could spend his evenings with Beth, eating home-cooked meals and sleeping next to her on her comfortable king-sized bed seemed very attractive indeed. Especially after dealing with this mess.

  Outside, the sun was already sinking in the west, stretching long shadows in the opposite direction and giving everything a skewed expressionistic perspective.

  Sayers emerged from the hallway, shaking off a Polaroid picture. “Bastards took a dump in the toilet,” he said, grimacing. “I hope those cops got some DNA off it.”

  Beth looked disgusted. “They didn’t flush it?”

  “That’s his job,” he said, pointing at Hunt.

  “God.”

  The landlord walked outside, letting the screen door slam. “Let me know what happens,” he said. “I expect to be kept informed. This is my house, you know.”

  “Friendly guy,” Beth said dryly.

  “Yeah.”

  “So what’s the plan? Are you just going to lock up and… go?”

  “I have to look for some things first, make sure they weren’t stolen or destroyed. Insurance policies, receipts and guarantees, addresses, photos. Stuff like that.”

  “But afterward, you’re coming home with me.”

  He looked at her, nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

  2

  “I think there’s someone out there,” Nina whispered.

  Fuckers. Steve was out of bed, Smith & Wesson in hand, running down the hall toward the addition before Nina could even get the next sentence out. It was those cholos. He was sure of it. Fucking wetbacks were pissed off that he was doing all the labor himself, that he hadn’t hired any of them or their illegal alien buddies to work on the addition, and they were hell-bent on making him pay. Last Saturday morning when he’d gone out to put up Sheetrock, he’d found an empty tequila bottle in the middle of the plywood floor and a puddle of piss in the corner. Bastards had had a party in his new addition while he and Nina had been asleep.

  That’s what he got for staying here in the shitty part of town, for not moving when the brown wave crested over the neighborhood.

  But he’d vowed it wouldn’t happen again, and if there was someone on his property right now, he’d shoot first and ask questions later. Worse came to worst, he’d claim he saw a gun, that he’d shot in self-defense. He doubted it would even come to that, though. That’s what was great about the old Wild West states. They believed in property rights, and if someone was on your property and needed shooting, then you could go ahead and do what had to be done and everyone would understand.

  He reached the door at the end of the hall. The only thing he worried about was if it wasn’t some anonymous illegal alien, but someone from work. Or, worse yet, someone he’d fired or who’d quit in anger. God knew there were enough of those. Maintenance services was a sludge catch for the dregs of humanity, and a lot of men had passed through there and hated his guts. It would be a hell of a lot harder to prove it wasn’t intentional if he shot someone he knew.

  He paused, listened. Nina was right. There was someone in the addition. Just on the other side of the door, by the sound of it Where the bar was going to be. He heard the knock of boot heel on wood, heard what sounded like a sniffle.

  He looked at the door, not certain that this was the right approach. Because the door opened onto the addition and the addition was little more than a partially roofed frame, open to the outside world, there were three locks on the door: The regular knob lock, a dead bolt, and a chain. By the time he got all three open, with the attendant clattering and clanking, the trespasser would be alerted and gone. It might be better to go out the back door and sneak around the side of the house to confront him.

  He crept away from the door, back down the hall, careful not to make any noise. Nina was peeking her head out of the bedroom, and he angrily waved her back in. “Stay there!” he hissed as he hurried quietly past the bedroom.

  The back door was closer, he decided, and offered the cover of shadow. He carefully slid open the dead bolt, turned the knob, then hastened through the darkness at the rear of the house, gun at the ready. Too much time had passed since he’d awakened—he’d had time to think, and he no longer planned to just shoot the intruder in cold blood. That would bring a world of problems on his head that he didn’t want to deal with right now. He’d scare the shit out of the bastard, threaten to shoot him, but then he’d hold him for the cops and let them take care of the problem.

  He’d prosecute to the full extent of the law, though. He didn’t care if this was just a prank or an accident. It was a crime, and he was going to see that the criminal was punished.

  He reached the end of the house proper and peered around the corner at the indented outline of the addition. In the far corner, faintly illuminated by moonlight, he saw a burly man in a hat—one of those old detectives’ hats from the 1940s, what he’d always thought of as a Humphrey Bogart hat. The man appeared to be fooling with the knob of the door that led into the hallway.

  Anger coursed through him, and Steve ran across the backyard grass toward the power box, gun extended. Freeze! he’d yell. Hold it right there! With any luck, the guy would piss himself or brown his shorts when he saw the old S&W pointed at him.

  He reached the switch, flipped on the lights.

  There was no one there.

  The addition was empty.

  3

  It was great living with Beth. Hunt had been so poisoned by those last few years with Eileen that he’d been expecting explosive anger over small transgressions, irrational arguments followed by grim silent treatments. But the truth was that they got along beautifully. Of course, he and Eileen had been happy together for a long time before things went bad, so that wasn’t really a good barometer, but just the fact that he could be with Beth every day and still enjoy her company—still look forward to the time they spent together—gave him confidence. He’d been afraid to take this relationship to the next level not because he didn’t want to, but because he thought that might ruin it, and the discovery that what they had together was stronger and less fragile than he’d supposed gave him hope.

  The biggest surprise was Beth’s cooking. She’d cooked for him before, of course, but because they lived apart, those were special events—dinners meant to impress. But she whipped up fantastic little gourmet meals every night, and he did not get the sense that it was entirely for his benefit. This was just the way she lived. He had known that cooking was one of her hobbies, known that she was a devotee of the Food Network, but he hadn’t realized that it was more of a passion than a casual interest.

  He liked that.

  Eileen had been big on eating out a lot. And frozen food. And tacos.

  Hunt had never considered himself to be a traditional “Hey honey I’m home what’s for dinner?” kind of guy, and he felt embarrassed and a little guilty to be thrust into suc
h a role, but Beth was no subservient suburban hausfrau, she just genuinely enjoyed cooking for him, and that made him more grateful than ever that the two of them had met.

  On Friday morning, he was on break when a representative from the insurance company called him on his cell and said that his house was ready. He told Edward and Jorge, but delayed calling Beth until lunchtime. The truth was that he didn’t want to go back. He’d been at Beth’s for only four nights, but they’d grown much closer during that time, and he felt so comfortable there that it was like home to him now. Returning to his rental house seemed like taking a step backward. Despite the fact that he’d paid rent through the rest of the month, he had no desire to continue living there. So when Beth asked him not to leave, he gratefully agreed to officially move in with her. Behind him, Edward and Jorge, eavesdropping on the conversation, cheered.

  He and Beth laughed.

  Still, all his stuff was back there at the rental house, so after work they drove over to survey the renovation. The locks had been changed, but, as promised, new keys were hidden under a rock to the right side of the front porch. He picked up the keys, unlocked the door, and walked inside.

  “Jesus,” Hunt breathed.

  The walls of the house had been painted black. In place of the framed classic movie posters with which he’d decorated the living room hung grotesque paintings of mutilated women in inappropriately gaudy frames. The books on his shelves had not merely been picked up off the floor and put back, they’d been replaced with far more gruesome fare: an illustrated history of Nazi medical atrocities, texts on mortuary science, the collected works of the Marquis de Sade, a series of graphically titled fetish novels with titles like I Lick Your Blood and Foot Fucking Daddy. Ditto for the videos and DVDs, which were all sadistic hardcore porn. In place of his vinyl albums—a collection of rock, jazz, blues, folk, and country that he’d been amassing since childhood—were boxes and boxes filled with multiple copies of the same record: Debbie Boone’s You Light Up My Life.

  “What is… this?” Beth said.

  He shook his head, stunned. “I don’t know.”

  “Someone fucked up royally.”

  “Yeah.” He walked numbly into the kitchen. An ax was embedded in a freestanding bloodred butcher block that replaced the table in the breakfast nook, and an old-fashioned hand pump had been substituted for the faucet in the sink. In the center of the new black linoleum was a throw rug that appeared to be made from the pelt of a gorilla. The ape’s mouth was wide open, fangs bared.

  “I thought they were just supposed to replace the broken furniture and damaged items. Not toss out all of your stuff and substitute it with… this.”

  “Me, too.”

  “And if they were going to replace something of yours, they should have exchanged it with something identical or asked you what you wanted. They’re not supposed to make unilateral decisions.”

  “No, they’re not,” Hunt said. He walked into the bedroom, anger building within him. Although his pillows and mattress had been ripped open by whoever had vandalized the house, the bed itself had not been damaged. Still, it had been replaced—with a penis-shaped water bed. In place of his dresser was a red glitter-covered bureau topped by what looked like a gynecologist’s plastic model of female genitalia.

  Beth was incredulous. “This has to be illegal. You didn’t sign any papers giving them approval to do any of this, did you?”

  “Of course not. I was only here that one time, Tuesday, and everything seemed perfectly normal then. I didn’t tell them they could do this, they didn’t tell me they were going to do this.”

  Beth opened the closet door, revealing a solid row of black goth clothing.

  He gritted his teeth. “We need to go back to your place—”

  “Our place.”

  “Our place, so I can read through the fine print of my policy. You’re right, this can’t be legal. They didn’t just replace damaged items. They completely remodeled this place, stole my personal stuff, and forced me to accept this… weird shit.”

  “Bring a camera when we come back here,” Beth suggested. “You need pictures, in case you have to take them to court. We have to document everything.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Don’t you want to check out the garage and the backyard?” she asked.

  “The sun’s going down,” he said.

  He was only half-joking.

  It was nearly six by the time they got back to Beth’s, and even if the insurance company wasn’t based on the East Coast—a big if—it still probably closed at five. He’d have to call in the morning.

  No—today was Friday—he’d have to call Monday.

  “Goddamn it,” he said angrily.

  He found a copy of his rental insurance policy in the box of papers he’d taken from the house, and he spent the next hour reading through the fine print. He half-expected to find a clause that said he had to file any complaint within twenty-four hours or else it would not be considered valid, but thankfully there was no such restriction. Still, just to be on the safe side, he called the insurance company’s main office in Delaware, and after winding his way through their convoluted electronic phone system, finally found a place where he could leave a message. Speaking slowly and distinctly, he stated his name, policy number, and claim number, then described what had happened.

  After he hung up, Hunt looked over at Beth. “What kind of homeowners’ insurance do you have?”

  “Don’t worry. They’re great. I had to call them when my roof leaked two years ago, and the year before that when a branch of the tree in the backyard fell during a storm and broke the bedroom window, and they fixed everything with no problem. I can’t complain.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Yeah, well, I pay through the nose for it.” She paused. “In fact, that’s why I didn’t tell them when I had the master bathroom remodeled last year and that sunken tub put in. Any home improvements and the rates jump tremendously. I made the mistake of coming clean when I had my closet enlarged, and it was like I’d added a whole other wing to the house. I couldn’t believe how much my premiums were raised. So this time I didn’t say anything.”

  “If they catch you, that’s called fraud.”

  “It’s not fraud.”

  “And your policy’ll be null and void. They won’t pay off if something happens.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Ask them.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He phoned the insurance company Monday morning right after breakfast—six o’clock Arizona time, nine o’clock Eastern time.

  The man who answered the phone was brisk and officious. “May I have your claim number, sir?”

  “Five two one, five six four U.”

  “U?”

  “Yes, as in ‘unhappy.’”

  “Mr. Jackson?”

  “Yes.”

  “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Jackson?”

  “What’s the problem? What’s the problem?” He had been rehearsing this diatribe in his head for the past two days, and he let the man have it, both barrels blazing, as he described the black walls, the freakish substituted furniture, the pornographic books and videos and DVDs. “I don’t know who did this or why, what kind of sick company you hired to do this work, but they screwed it up royally, and your company utterly failed to rein them in or provide any oversight. There is no way in hell this would have happened if you guys had been on the ball. I expect that house to be fixed up the way it was originally, and I want all of my belongings either repaired and returned to me or replaced with exact replicas. Do you understand?”

  The man remained unruffled. “May I ask when the restoration work was completed?”

  “Friday morning, I assume. I got a call around ten-thirty telling me the house was ready.”

  “You assume?”

  “Well, I don’t—” Hunt paused, suddenly suspicious. “Wait a minute.”

  “I need to enter a
precise time,” the man continued. “And since you don’t know…” There was the sound of typing, and in a sing-songy Southern accent he chanted, “Half past a monkey’s ass, a quarter to his ba-wuls.”

  “Who is this?” Hunt demanded. “I—”

  He was interrupted by a short manic burst of laughter.

  Then the connection was severed. There was only a dial tone.

  He stared at the receiver in his hand. He felt the same anger he had last time, but now there was an uneasiness there as well. His mind made the connections that would logically enable this to occur—his car insurance company, UAI, and the company carrying his rental insurance, All Homes Insurance, were under the umbrella of the same parent corporation and used the same bank of employees to answer the phones; the man had transferred from one company to another and had somehow remembered his name—but each scenario he came up with seemed to be a stretch, and Hunt found that he could not believe any of them.

  What did he believe?

  He didn’t know, wasn’t sure, and that was part of what made him uneasy.

  Taking a deep breath, Hunt dialed again, and, as before, a thoroughly professional woman answered, this one immediately identifying herself as “Alice.” He gave her his name and claim number, and proceeded to describe once more the vandalism to his rental house and belongings, and the bizarre items that had been used to replace his own. He was less angry the second time around, having spent most of his rage on the first telling, but he was still plenty annoyed, and the phone rep was clearly aware of his dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, she also toed the party line, and rather than assure him that a prompt investigation was forthcoming, she read through the information on her computer and stated that the insurance company had done everything properly.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” he said, exasperated. “You didn’t.”

  “I appreciate your position, Mr. Jackson, but I’m afraid that All Homes did everything it was contractually obligated to do. Our responsibilities are very specifically defined under the terms of your contract.”