THE POLICY

by Bentley Little

  Hunt glanced toward Beth, saw a strange unreadable expression on her face. She backed nervously up to the sink.

  The agent walked over and picked up his briefcase before starting toward the kitchen door. “It’s a business doing pleasure with you.”

  Hunt wanted to slug him, wanted to feel his fist smash into flesh and break the bone beneath. But he had the unsettling feeling that there wouldn’t be bones underneath. And that the flesh wouldn’t feel like flesh.

  With a quick wave, the agent was out the door and gone. Hunt watched through the window as he walked up the path, past the ocotillos and down the sidewalk. Hunt was sorely tempted to run after him, follow him, see where he went. He had no idea if the insurance agent walked everywhere, rode in a limousine, drove his own car or took a bus. For some strange reason, the man’s mode of transportation was never visible from the house. This was just one more tantalizing bit of secrecy, and it was one that Hunt had the means to uncover.

  It was a place to start.

  Beth was on the same wavelength.

  “Let’s follow him,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I have an idea.”

  She’d changed, but he was wearing only yesterday’s pants, and they quickly ran to the coat closet by the front door. He grabbed a Levi’s jacket, put boots on over bare feet, she slipped on sandals, and they both hurried outside. The agent was just turning the corner at the end of the block, and they sped up, needing to follow at a discreet distance but still keep him in sight.

  There was no car around the corner, no black-windowed deathmobile, nothing. The agent was simply strolling down the sidewalk in a disconcertingly jaunty manner.

  They watched him. Followed. Less than two blocks away, he turned in the driveway of a low sprawling ranch-style house and promptly sat down on the front stoop. They were nearly caught off guard, but the second he stepped off the sidewalk, they were ducking behind an oleander bush next door, and they peered through the leafy branches, watching as the insurance agent put down his briefcase and sat.

  He remained there, expressionless, completely unmoving, staring at nothing. Like a statue. Hunt had never seen a person so still, and the sight seemed creepily unnatural. He was afraid that they would have to crouch behind the bushes for hours, but less than five minutes later, a red Range Rover pulled into the driveway, and the agent stood as though the vehicle had arrived just as expected, right on schedule.

  Suddenly the Range Rover shifted into reverse and sped back onto the street. Through the windshield, Hunt saw the male driver’s panicked face and the wildly gesticulating woman in the passenger seat mouthing the scream “No!”

  Grinning, the insurance agent jogged across the lawn and into the street, standing directly in front of the SUV, blocking its way.

  “Get it!” Beth whispered fiercely.

  “What?”

  But she was already off, and before he could stop her, she was pushing her way through the bushes and running across the next door lawn.

  To where the agent had left his briefcase on the stoop.

  “No!” he wanted to yell. “Get back here!” But he dared not draw attention to her, and he kept looking back and forth from the street, where the insurance agent was calmly repositioning himself in order to block the SUV’s escape, to the stoop of the house, where Beth was grabbing the briefcase and running like hell.

  She broke through the bushes, and then they were both running, not needing to speak, not daring to do so, staying on the lawns of the adjoining homes, staying off the sidewalk. He expected any minute to hear a monstrous roar behind them, to feel the grip of cold fingers around his neck as the agent caught up to them and held them aloft. But they jumped over a small hedge, darted around a parked Cadillac, and then they were at the corner, turning right on Elm Street.

  They did not slow down until they’d reached another residential intersection, turned left and were a good two blocks away from the insurance agent. They stopped in front of a too-cute home painted pink and gray, breathing heavily.

  “We made it,” Hunt said, desperately trying to catch his breath. “He didn’t catch us.”

  “But where are we going to go now?” Beth said, speaking low, conspiratorily, as though afraid of being overheard. “We can’t go home. It’s the first place he’ll look. When he sees the briefcase is gone, he might think he left it at our house and go back to check. He might stake the place out.” She shivered. “Or have his buddies do it.”

  Hunt thought for a moment. “The library,” he suggested. “We’ll call everyone from there, have them meet us.” The Dorothy Pickles branch of the library was only three blocks away.

  “It’s a holiday. They won’t be open.”

  “Damn!” Hunt said.

  “How about Kinko’s? Over there in that strip mall across from Safeway.”

  He nodded. It was over a mile away, would take them a good half hour to get there, but it had plenty of chairs and tables they could use, was always open—and they could make copies of whatever they found.

  But they had no money! He quickly dug through the pockets of his pants and found one wrinkled dollar bill, a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and three pennies. Change from groceries they’d bought yesterday. Beth was always after him to clean out his pockets, saying she was tired of washing money and business cards and other things he left in his clothes, but he was glad now that he had not yet broken that habit.

  He took the briefcase from her. “Let’s do it.”

  They walked quickly, turning at every intersection, afraid to remain on any one street for too long. They saw neither the insurance agent nor ghostly men in hats, however, and twenty minutes later they were approaching the copy store from a back alley. They walked around the side of the building, went in through the entrance.

  Hunt found a study cubicle where people could pay for Internet access by the hour and placed the briefcase on the table.

  He would not have been surprised to discover that it was not really a briefcase but only looked like one, that it could only be opened by the special touch of the insurance agent’s inhuman fingers. But it felt normal, and when he pushed the latches on the left side and then the right, they opened immediately, revealing a compartment filled with papers and file folders.

  They sorted carefully through the briefcase’s contents. On top was the application for life insurance they had just signed, and below that was a folder marked with their names. He opened the folder and quickly looked at the papers inside, but found nothing unusual, only a computer printout containing personal information on each of them, followed by copies of all of their numerous insurance policies.

  Beneath the file folder were glossy brochures and blank application forms and, most important, well-thumbed insurance manuals, books printed by The Insurance Group for use only by their representatives. Hunt’s heart was racing, and for the first time in a long while there was hope within him. He pushed aside the papers and picked up a surprisingly thick book titled Offered Insurance. He opened it to the first page, saw the title again, then turned to the next page, where a short paragraph stated that the book listed the names and IT numbers (whatever that was) of each type of coverage offered by the company. The pages were thin, tissuelike, similar to Bible pages, and he had a hard time turning them one by one.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Look at this.”

  Beth moved next to him, held his arm protectively as he glanced through the book.

  There was insurance for everything. Literally. In print so fine it was nearly impossible to read was an alphabetical listing of the situations and states, the people, places and things for which policies were offered. Abandonment, Abdomen, Abduction… He flipped randomly through the book. Contamination… Overpass… Telescope… He turned to the last page. Zulu, Zuni, Zymotic.

  He closed the book, feeling overwhelmed. A company that could offer and enforce coverage of such a comprehensive catalogue was truly, awesomely powerful. At the same ti
me, by poring through the nearly endless list, they might be able to discover something for which the company did not offer insurance, a loophole or Achilles’ heel that they could take advantage of.

  He placed the book on the table next to the briefcase and continued sorting through the other titles. Three books down was a digest-sized manual simply titled The Insurance Group, and Hunt eagerly grabbed the volume and opened it. There was no index or table of contents, but there did seem to be chapters and subchapters with headings offset in bold. He quickly turned the pages, scanning them until he found what he was looking for.

  “Who Are We?” the heading asked.

  Hunt read the following paragraph. The insurance agent had said that The Insurance Group was a consortium of different carriers, and here they were listed. Next to him, he heard Beth’s sharp intake of breath as she read the names.

  “They own UAI,” she said. “And your rental insurance company and my old homeowner’s company and… and everything.”

  Hunt nodded, feeling surprised but not shocked.

  “So…” she said slowly, “we were right. All those problems we had, everything that happened to us, was done purposely, for a reason, to manipulate us and prime us for The Insurance Group’s insane policies. All this time, they were guiding us toward what they wanted us to do.”

  “Why us, though?” he wondered. “Why did they target us? Was it something specific or just random? Did you or I do something? Did we fit a profile? Or were our names just picked out of a hat?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why not hit on people with power? The governor or the president or Bill Gates or Ted Turner? People whose words and actions make a difference. If the insurance company controlled those people, it would have real influence, it could get everything it wanted.”

  “It can get everything it wants,” Hunt pointed out. “It’s obviously after something else.”

  What that could be, though, neither of them knew and neither of them cared to speculate about.

  Hunt quickly looked through the rest of the book, trying to discover who had founded The Insurance Group and when, but if that information was to be found in the text, it was buried. He did learn that the company’s motto was the nonsensical yet frighteningly focused “Insurance Above All Else,” and that the company employed nearly three thousand people worldwide.

  “What’s this?” Beth asked as he was flipping through the pages. She withdrew a folded piece of yellowed paper from the bottom of the briefcase and proceeded to spread it out on the only section of the table not covered with pamphlets and manuals and forms. It was a map of the world, with X’s marked over certain regions and lines drawn from the X’s to notes scrawled in the margins. Hunt put down his book and scooted around the table next to Beth.

  “Look,” she said, pointing.

  He had already noticed. The marks and notations were in the trouble spots of the world, the areas of unrest over the past fifty years: Cambodia, Bangladesh, Beirut, Angola, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq.

  Beneath that map was another map, an older map. Iran was Persia, Istanbul was Constantinople, Thailand was Siam, Sri Lanka was Ceylon. This map was virtually buried under lines and X’s and stars, scribbled notations leaking out of the yellowed margins into the blue expanse of ocean. He saw names he remembered from history, important figures in world events, the men behind wars and scourges and revolutions and assassinations. Suddenly everything became clear. He understood why these maps were in the insurance agent’s briefcase.

  He’d been their insurance agent.

  Beth figured it out at the same time. “Oh my God,” she breathed.

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Squinting, he tried to decipher what had been written at the end of one of the starred lines. The only word he could make out was “Hannibal.”

  “Do you think…?” Beth swallowed hard. “Do you think all those wars and assassinations and everything happened because people didn’t buy insurance? Ox couldn’t pay their premiums?”

  That was exactly what he thought, although he’d superstitiously been afraid to speak the thought aloud. He nodded, licked his suddenly dry lips. “Yeah.”

  “This guy affected history. He caused history.”

  “If it was him.” Hunt didn’t want to think that he’d been around that long, that he was that old. “Maybe he just inherited the maps from his predecessor and so on down the line.”

  “No,” Beth said firmly. “It was him.”

  Hunt traced a line from Rome—

  The fall of Rome?

  —to a side notation whose only legible word was “nonpayment.”

  “What is he?” Beth said. Her next words were whispered. “Maybe he’s the devil.”

  “No,” Hunt said. “He just works for the insurance company.”

  “What are they?”

  For that he had no answer. He emptied his pockets. “See what you can get with that and start copying,” He said. “I’m going to call Joel and Jorge and Edward.”

  All of his friends’ lines were busy, and Hunt found that very suspicious. He imagined them dead or tortured, punished for his transgression. In his mind, he saw the insurance agent pacing in front of Jorge and Ynez, demanding to know the whereabouts of the briefcase while one of those dark burly men with wide-brimmed hats held up their mutilated son and threatened additional atrocities.

  No. He was overreacting.

  He hoped.

  Still, he stopped calling, afraid that if one of the phones rang and someone answered, that someone would be the insurance agent.

  With fifty cents taken out for the phone, they had enough money to copy fifteen pages. That wasn’t much, so they used those pages to copy the maps, copying the two maps in eight-and-a-half by eleven segments so they could reproduce the originals exactly. That took twelve pages. With three copies left over, they shrunk down each map on a single sheet of paper. In addition, Beth had found what appeared to be the address of The Insurance Group’s Tucson office—Southwest Regional Headquarters, actually—and that went on the page.

  Hunt wanted to go out to the insurance office and confront whoever he could find, or, at the very least, get the lay of the land. But they had no transportation, no money, and after talking it over, they decided to take a chance on going back home.

  “We’ll wait and watch first,” Beth suggested. “Hide across the street or something. Or in the Bretts’ yard. Then if it looks like the coast is clear, one of us’ll go in and check.”

  “I’ll go in.”

  She smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  The streets were safe on the walk back, the insurance agent was not striding through the neighborhoods in his funereal domes or cruising in a company car, and when they hid behind the ruins of the Bretts’ house, watching the exterior of their own home, they saw no sign of movement. Hunt went in the side door prepared for anything—the insurance agent, a trashed kitchen, a ghost in the guest room—but the house was clean, and after a quick tour, opening all closets and cupboards, checking the garage, he waved Beth in.

  They worked fast. Hunt put on a real shirt and tennis shoes, grabbed his wallet and keys. Beth took her purse and put on sneakers. Not wanting to take their stolen goods into the lion’s den, he hid the briefcase behind the extra freezer in the garage, while Bern hid the segmented copies of the maps in the house. They took the two small maps with them, as well as the photocopied address.

  It was just after eleven.

  “Ready?” Hunt asked.

  “Ready.”

  And they were off.

  3

  Joel was in the car when his cell phone rang, having just tanked up on gas at Circle K because he had a sneaking suspicion that in the next day or so he might need it. It had been three hours, Hunt had not called back like he promised, and when Joel had tried to call him, no one had answered. After last night’s massacre, his head was full of all sorts of wild possibilities, so he told Stacy and Lilly to
stay home, to not answer the door or the phone, and he set out to fill up on gas and check Hunt and Beth’s house to make sure they were all right.

  He picked up the phone on the first ring, his heart slamming against his rib cage as though it was trying to escape. No one had this number except Stacy and Lilly, and they both knew never to use it unless there was an emergency. He fumbled with the phone, simultaneously trying to push the talk button and not scrape the side of the oversized truck in the lane next to him.

  “He’s here,” Stacy said in a breathless whisper.

  Joel thought he might crash into the truck after all. It was suddenly hard for him to control the wheel.

  “How?” he asked, fully aware that she might not be able to answer.

  Stacy was still whispering. “I let Lilly go out in the backyard to play basketball—”

  “I told you not to go outside!” he yelled.

  “I thought the backyard was safe.” The fact that she continued to whisper, that his criticism did not goad her even to raise her voice, made him realize how serious the situation was. “And I was watching her. I just turned for a minute to get some orange juice out of the fridge, and when I looked back outside, he was talking to her.”

  “Oh, God.” Joel felt as though he were about to throw up.

  “I ran out back, and he was offering her insurance, personal injury insurance, telling her that if she was going to play basketball or soccer or any other sports, she might get hurt and need protection.”

  “Bastard!”

  “Just listen to me!” Stacy said. She raised her voice, and he realized how urgent she sounded. Already he was moving into the left lane, preparing to make a U-turn and head back toward home. “He had the policy out by the time I reached them, and she was agreeing to take it. She was scared. He looked at me and told me that she was buying the policy.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God.”

  “The thing is, we have to sign it as her legal guardians. Both of us.”

  “I’m on my way!”