“I need insurance,” she said in jittery heavily accented English.
“You don’t have insurance?” Great, he thought.
“No. I need…” She took a deep breath. “… Your insurance.” With shaking hands, she passed him a pen and a piece of paper.
“Oh.” He wrote down his name, address, phone number, make and model of car, license plate number, driver’s license number, and insurance policy number. She looked down at the information, then tried to hand the paper back to him. “No. State Farm.”
“What?”
“State Farm Insurance.”
“I don’t have State Farm,” he explained. He pointed at the name on the paper, speaking slowly. “I have UAI United Automobile Insurance.”
“No! State Farm!”
Clearly, she didn’t understand that there were other valid insurance companies besides State Farm. He tried to think of a way to get across to her that UAI was legit even though it didn’t advertise on TV the way her carrier did.
“I call police.”
Joel looked at his watch, sighing. “Fine.”
They retreated to their respective cell phones, she calling the police, he phoning his wife to tell her that he’d been in an accident and was going to be late. Stacy panicked at the word “accident,” but he immediately assured her that he had suffered no injuries and that even the car had only a few minor dents. He told her that she and Lilly should go ahead and eat dinner since he didn’t know how long this was going to take or when he was going to be home.
“Police coming,” the girl told him after he’d clicked off the phone.
He nodded in acknowledgment, then took down her information. Her name was My Nguyen, and she lived not far from campus on a street he recognized as being in one of Tucson’s poorer areas.
There was nothing more for them to say, so they each waited next to their own vehicle for the cops to arrive. A minor traffic jam was soon caused by the placement of his Toyota as the six o’clock students began to arrive, but he was an instructor and a voice of authority, and he redirected the drivers, making those in the rear back up to the main aisle so that those in the front could escape. How ironic was this? Just last night he’d hung up on an insurance agent who’d called out of the blue and wanted him to increase his auto insurance coverage, stating that the insurance company had analyzed his policy and his needs and had determined that a higher liability limit and expanded coverage was necessary. Joel had hung up on him.
Now he sure hoped that analysis was wrong.
It was a full half hour before the police arrived—not campus security but a patrol car from the Tucson PD—and he waited for what seemed an interminable length of time for the girl to give her side of the story, before succinctly describing to the officer the accident as he recalled it. Joel handed over his driver’s license and insurance card, and waited for the policeman to give him a copy of the report. He assumed that would be the end of it and that he and My would both go their separate ways and let the insurance companies fight it out, but to his surprise, the officer went back to his patrol car and began radioing for two tow trucks.
“Wait a minute!” Joel interrupted.
The policeman held up a hand for silence.
“My Toyota’s fine! It’s just a dent. I certainly don’t need a tow truck.”
The policeman finished relaying his radio message, then looked up in annoyance. “Mr. McCain,” he said, “Mrs. Nguyen requested that I call a tow truck for her, and I did. I am required by law to request towing service for any driver with a UAI policy. If you’ll read the back of your card…” He handed Joel his insurance card.
Joel turned the card over and read the fine print. Underneath the 1-800 number for claims and complaints, there was indeed a stipulation that if any police officer was called to make a report, that officer was required to notify a towing service and have the vehicle towed to the nearest participating dealer’s service department or body shop.
It made no sense, though. Why make the policeman call for a tow truck rather than the client? And why not specify the level of damage required before requesting a tow—why leave it open?
The officer returned the girl’s insurance card to her as well, and gave both of them a copy of the report he’d taken. “Drive safely,” he said, before closing the door to his patrol car.
Joel was tempted to take off and drive home, get some estimates and fix the dented door at his convenience, but he knew that such an action would probably lead to his insurance company not paying for his repairs or not defending him against the student’s insurance claims, and possibly even dropping him.
So he moved his car out of the aisle into a parking space and waited for the tow truck.
They both waited.
His came first, thankfully, a long flat truck with the name Bricklin Brother’s Towing stenciled on its doors. A beefy florid man who could have been forty, could have been sixty, emerged, squinting against the setting sun. “Joel McCain?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“That Corolla there?”
“Yeah.”
“Pull it out here and we’ll get rolling.”
Joel backed his vehicle into the aisle once again, and the tow-truck driver unspooled a length of cable, connected two hooked lengths of chain to the undercarriage of the Toyota, put the car in neutral, and used a motorized winch to pull it up the slanting bed of the tow truck. Another motor righted the bed, he placed the Toyota in park, blocked the wheels, and said, “Let’s go.”
Joel got into the high passenger seat. “I’m not sure where to take it—”
“Dealer,” the man said simply. “Your insurance company already called.”
That was weird, Joel thought. He hadn’t even notified his insurance company. But maybe the cop had. Or maybe Stacy had.
No, Stacy hadn’t. And he doubted if the cop had, either. He wasn’t sure how his insurance company had learned about the accident so quickly, and he found that a little unnerving.
They drove for the first few miles in silence. Finally, the tow-truck driver picked up a coffee can from the seat next to him and spit into it. Joel smelled chewing tobacco. “You work at the college?”
Joel nodded.
“You a professor there?”
He tried to smile pleasantly. He already knew where this was headed. “Yeah.”
“Must be a pretty good-paying gig, huh?”
“Not bad.”
“Mmm.”
There was a pause.
“How much you pull down a year, average?”
“Not as much as most people think.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I always wondered something. How is it that professors and teachers get three months off each year? I don’t blame you, you understand. But you know how much vacation I get each year? Two weeks. Sometimes we’re so busy I can’t even take that. So even on a good year, I gotta work a minimum fifty weeks. Minimum. From where I’m sittin’ you got yourself one hell of a good deal. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah,” Joel said again. It was a conversation he’d had more times than he cared to remember, an anti-intellectual insinuation that his job wasn’t real work because it wasn’t manual labor. An angry elitist part of him wanted to say, I get more time off than you do because the job of teaching our future leaders, scientists, artists, and engineers the knowledge they need to know in order to succeed in their respective fields is a hell of a lot harder and more important than driving a truck back and forth, but instead he let it slide and stared out of the dusty windshield at the passing buildings.
Another pause.
“So you don’t really make that much money, huh?”
“No.”
“But teachers get paid for workin’ twelve months a year and you only gotta work nine, right? Only reason I ask is because I’m a taxpayer, you know what I’m sayin’? Those salaries’re comin’ out of my pocket.”
Joel was tempted to point out
that he was a taxpayer, too, and that a portion of his taxes went to paying his own salary, which meant that he was making even less, but instead he simply corrected the driver’s misinformation. “We work nine months and get paid for nine months. That means we have three months of no salary. That’s why a lot of instructors get part-time jobs delivering soft drinks or working as mechanics or what have you.”
That ought to get the bastard.
Sure enough, the tow truck driver looked impressed. “Really? I didn’t know that. Hmm.” He spit again into his coffee can. “So what do you do during your vacation? Where do you work?”
The truth was that he did nothing. He played with Lilly, read a little, went hiking, hung out.
But he couldn’t tell the driver that. He’d already gone this far, so he said, “I’m trying to start my own business.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Computers.”
The driver nodded sagely. “Lot of money in computers.”
Luckily, they’d reached the Toyota dealer, so no further conversation was required. Joel climbed out of the cab once the tow truck had stopped and watched while the driver lowered the truck bed and unhooked all of the chains from his car. He signed the appropriate form, thanked the driver, then walked over to the office where Toyota’s service manager, a skinny mustached man with a stitched name tag that read “Bud,” was waiting for him. His insurance company had called ahead, and all he had to do was show the service manager the damage to the vehicle and then sign a form authorizing the work.
“Even got your loaner ready,” Bud said. He led Joel out of the office and around the corner of the service area to a small parking lot.
Joel stared.
There was only one vehicle parked amidst the marked empty spaces. It looked like a clown car or one of those strange little micro autos he’d seen in European movies from the 1960s. Vaguely Volkswagen-shaped, it was almost small enough for him to sit on, and he didn’t see that there was any way possible for him to fit inside it.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” Bud said. “That’s what your insurance company specifies.”
“What?”
The service manager shrugged. “I don’t make the rules. Most insurance companies have a cap on loaner prices—and we have specific rental rates for all of our vehicles—but UAI requires that we provide their customers with this particular car.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Joel walked across the small lot, put his hand on top of the tiny car. Bending down, he peered through the driver’s door window. “How am I supposed to drive this?”
“I don’t know,” Bud said. “But people do.”
Ten minutes later, Joel was crammed into the miniscule front seat, hunched over the steering wheel, driving up Swan Road, the object of ridicule for every vehicle around him, as, at irregular intervals, the tiny car’s exhaust pipe blatted comically.
“My insurance problems started with the car, too,” Hunt said. “Then they expanded from there.”
Once upon a time, Joel would have put his friend’s opinions down to an acute case of paranoia, but he’d seen and heard far too much lately to dismiss any conspiracy theories out of hand. “You have UAI too, right?”
Hunt nodded. “I was going to change, and I called three other companies, but they all considered my cracked window an ‘accident.’ One wouldn’t even take me. With the other two, my rates would’ve jumped sky high. Although UAI revoked my good driver discount, they were still cheaper than everyone else… so I stayed.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe not. Sometimes it’s worth paying extra just for peace of mind.”
Joel took a pull off his beer. “Did I ever tell you that my grandfather was killed by Howard Hughes?”
Hunt blinked. “What?”
“Yeah. In a traffic accident in Hollywood, long before I was born. He was there on a business trip—he was a buyer for a furniture manufacturer in Phoenix and was there to look at material—and he was driving back from the textile factory to his hotel when this lunatic sped through a red light and plowed right into him. It was Howard Hughes. Hughes took him to the hospital in his own car, paid for the best doctors, but my grandfather died the next day. Howard Hughes even paid for the funeral, although he didn’t go.”
“What happened? Was he arrested? Was there a trial? Did your family get a fortune?”
“No. Nothing happened. That was it. People were stupider in those days.”
“Jesus, I never heard that story before.”
“Yeah, well it just goes to show that my family and car problems have a long history together.”
The phone rang, and a moment later Stacy poked her head around the corner. “It’s the dealer,” she said. “It’s about the car.”
Joel gave Hunt a significant look as he stood and walked into the kitchen. He took the phone from Stacy. “Hello?”
It was Bud. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” the service manager said. “We submitted our estimate, but your insurance company won’t authorize the full amount. In fact, they will not authorize any repairs to this vehicle. They will give you the Kelly Blue Book value if you junk it and buy another car, but that’s it. That’s all they’re offering.”
“Jesus Christ. I can’t believe this.”
“It’s pretty standard practice for most insurance companies when cars and trucks are beyond hope, held together with spit and baling wire. But UAI’s the only company I know of that goes this far.”
“Maybe I’ll just pay for it myself. How much is it?”
“Well, the thing is, we also found some other problems. Drive train problems. I don’t think they were caused by the accident, but you still need a new tranny and a head gasket. Including body work, the whole thing’ll run you about four thousand five hundred, give or take. So as I see it, you have three options. One, you pay out of pocket, although frankly, I don’t think that car’s worth it. Two, you live with the problems until she dies completely. Which will probably be pretty soon. Three, and this is the one I recommend, you scrap it and get yourself a new car. Or a new used car. For the amount you’d pay to repair this one, plus what the insurance company’ll give you, you can get a decent preowned Celica or Corolla.”
Joel was gripping the phone so hard his fingers hurt. The anger he felt went far beyond the mere annoyance he usually experienced when dealing with intransigent corporate lackeys or governmental bureaucrats. This was personal, a white-hot hatred that made him want to lash out. If he’d had the president of UAI in front of him at that moment, he would’ve strangled the bastard.
Still, his voice when it came out was quiet and controlled, professional. One adult discussing business with another. “Let me think about it and I’ll call you back.”
He didn’t wait for a reply but hung up the phone—slammed it down, really—and Stacy looked over at him. “What is it?”
Hunt, by this time, was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“The insurance company won’t pay to get the Toyota fixed. They said it’s too expensive and the car’s not worth it. So they’ve offered to give me the blue book value so I can put it toward a new car.”
“That’s bullshit,” Stacy said. From the backyard, they heard Lilly and her friend Kate giggle. Stacy lowered her voice. “You should be able to get estimates from different places, then let them pick the cheapest and get the damn car fixed.”
“Should is the operative word here. Our policy requires us to use the dealer, and now the dealer’s estimate has been rejected. They’re not paying a dime to fix that car.”
“That’s crap!”
More giggles from outside.
“This isn’t the end of it by a long shot. I’m calling UAI and going all the way up the chain if I have to. I want some answers, goddamn it. And I’m reporting them. I’m going to the insurance commission, the Better Business Bure—”
“Thi
s sounds familiar,” Hunt said.
Joel looked at him. “Well, there must be some way to get these sons of bitches and make them pay.”
“No,” Hunt said, “I’m beginning to think there isn’t.”
SEVEN
The insurance agent stood before the register counter wearing a high-buttoned vest with a gold-chain pocket watch that made him look like the conductor on a Victorian train. Dolores Bessett pretended to add up the day’s receipts, not wanting to look at the agent, not wanting him to think that she was even listening.
She was afraid of him.
It was true, though she was not sure why. In the ten years since she’d opened up her own business—if you could call this hole-in-the-wall bookstore a business—she had to deal with problem people on a daily basis: homeless panhandlers, obnoxious vendors, pedophiles who cut out pictures of children from old photography books, wackos who whacked off in her bathroom. But she’d never been afraid or intimidated by any of them.
Until the agent.
There was no reason for it, really. Despite his marginally offbeat garb, the man looked like what he was—an insurance salesman. He had that soft, doughy, pale face typical of middle-aged men in service professions, and there was a blandness to his voice and demeanor that connoted an uninteresting existence, a prosaic life. Still, each time he came in, he frightened her, and she wished a last-minute customer would walk through the door… or a high school kid wanting a job… or the UPS man or… somebody.
But she remained alone in the store with him, and she pretended to be busy with bookkeeping minutiae as he tried to pressure her into buying more insurance.
“What you need is commercial insurance,” he was saying. “Small business insurance. That includes liability, property, worker’s comp, personal, medical, life, disability, the whole shebang. You probably have every red cent tied up in this store, and one misplaced match, one teenage vandalism spree, and you’d be filing for bankruptcy and looking for a job at Wal-Mart. All of that can be avoided…”
THE POLICY Page 9