Death Benefits_ A Novel Part 6

"No," said Stillman. "They may even add five inches to your pen back in the stable."

"How do you know?"

"McClaren's is a peculiar operation. There are lots of bigger companies. They're probably more efficient and their rates are cheaper. What gets people to do business with McClaren's is the same thing that got you to work for them. It's the name. If McClaren's refused to pay that Werfel character on his father's insurance policy-for any reason, legal or illegal-it would be the beginning of the end."

"If enough people heard about it, maybe, but-"

"Of course they would. Rich people know other rich people. They go to the same two hundred private schools, then the same twenty-five colleges. They take vacations-more of them than other people do-in the same seventy-five spots on the earth, where they stay at the same seventy-five hotels. I'll bet it's sometimes hard for them to believe that the world contains six billion people, because they spend their whole lives b.u.mping into the same six thousand. They won't talk to anybody but each other. And they file lawsuits. If Werfel v. McClaren Werfel v. McClaren got filed, McClaren's would have to settle quick and throw in a few million extra to soothe Werfel's ego and rea.s.sure everybody else." got filed, McClaren's would have to settle quick and throw in a few million extra to soothe Werfel's ego and rea.s.sure everybody else."

"I saved them money?"

"Lots. Also probably Winters's a.s.s. They wouldn't fire him for being fooled; they might for being dishonest."

Walker scowled. "Why the h.e.l.l didn't you tell me that?"

Stillman shrugged. "It wouldn't count if you had known the right thing was also the smart thing. You had to say to yourself, 'If this job means I have to stiff this guy, then they can stick the job in their ear.' Now you'll never have to wonder."

"What if I'd made the wrong decision?"

"The wrong decision?"

"What if I had looked at those two and said to myself, 'Alan Werfel is just a rich a.s.shole who is going to get richer, and Winters is probably a decent, hard-working man who started with nothing and isn't all that much better off now, and will probably lose his job. He's fighting for his life, and I should let him take his shot at it?'"

"You wouldn't be much of an a.n.a.lyst if you couldn't figure out that much."

"That doesn't answer my question. What would you have done?"

"Nothing," said Stillman. "I'm not in the insurance business."

Stillman was gliding along Colorado Boulevard when, without warning, he braked and swung quickly into a driveway. Walker made a grab for the dashboard, but his seat belt tightened across his chest and held him, his hands grasping nothing. "What?" he gasped. "What's wrong?" He held the door handle, not knowing whether to get out or clutch it in case Stillman accelerated out again. Walker was vaguely aware that they were in a large parking lot.

"Not a thing," said Stillman. "I just happened to see a vacancy sign, and we ought to get a place. There aren't many of them in this part of town."

Walker's breathing slowed to normal while Stillman eased the car into a parking s.p.a.ce near the entrance to the lobby. "What happened to the other place on Wils.h.i.+re?"

"Why? Did you leave something in your room?"

"No," said Walker. "I just-"

"It's not smart to get too attached to hotels on a case like this," said Stillman. "You get too predictable, you're liable to get popped."

"Popped?" repeated Walker. "You mean those two guys would kill us?"

Stillman said, "Unfortunately, Pasadena's finest showed up before I could ask them about that. But somebody stole twelve million bucks. You shouldn't let that slip your mind."

"That doesn't mean they'd kill us."

Stillman sighed. "There's no reason to get all sentimental about it. There are people within a block of here who would kill you for the change in your pockets. I'm pretty sure I'm one of them." He got out of the car and waited while Walker joined him.

"Then what's the difference between you and them?"

Stillman smiled peacefully. "If I have enough to stay alive you're safe from me. No matter how much a thief has, he still wants yours."

8.

Walker found his room and unlocked the door, then realized that Stillman was following him inside. Stillman tossed his pile of files on the bed, sat down, and opened one. He looked up. "You weren't planning an afternoon nap, were you?"

"No ..."

"Good. Then let's get started."

Walker set his suitcase down and stood still. "Doing what?"

"Figuring," Stillman said. "It's been three weeks since Andrew Werfel died. He was in New Mexico, and the cause of death was congestive heart failure." He looked up. "I suppose you read that on the death certificate."

"Yes," said Walker. "They always say that. Or pneumonia."

"Yep. It's always heart or lungs. I checked with an acquaintance in Santa Fe, who checked with the coroner's office. The cause was verified. No foul play, as they're fond of saying. Then, after about a week, when the certificate was issued, the bogus Alan Werfel showed up in Pasadena with a copy. He also had Alan Werfel's real ID, and collected a check. Your friend Ellen seems to have handled everything."

"I saw that too," said Walker. "Her signature is on every piece of paper."

"Another week pa.s.ses, and who calls the Pasadena office but the real Alan Werfel? He wants to know the procedure for collecting on his father's insurance policy."

"Did he talk to Ellen too?"

"No, Winters. He asked for the manager, so that's who he got. Winters thought it was somebody trying to pull a scam, so he told him what he would need to bring, set up an appointment, and called the cops."

"What happened?"

"There were two plainclothes cops sitting at those desks out front when he got there. They waited until he had presented his claim, signed some papers, then showed their badges and dragged him downtown. After a couple of hours they managed to get his prints run and realized an apology was in order. They issued a bulletin for a guy who looks just like Werfel and uses Werfel's name." Stillman smiled. "I wonder how long it's going to take for Werfel to realize what they've done to him."

"Is that when McClaren's called you in?"

"Not yet," said Stillman. "The company traces the check it issued to the first Alan Werfel a week earlier. It was drawn on Wells Fargo in San Francisco. It was endorsed by the artistic but fake Alan Werfel and deposited in an account at Bank of America." He nodded to himself. "This is, not surprisingly, a new account. But it's a different branch of the same bank that Alan Werfel uses, and the check is to Alan Werfel from McClaren's, so it won't bounce. This keeps them calm, and they only put a hold on the three million they can't cover with his other accounts."

"Where is the money now?"

"It traveled. On day two, the fake Alan Werfel starts moving it fast. He gets a check to a real estate company for a new house. This is one of those certified, guaranteed, immediate-pay cas.h.i.+er's checks for closing escrow. This one is for seven million, six hundred thousand. He gets another check to an insurance company on the same basis: who wants to accept owners.h.i.+p of a seven-million-dollar house with no fire insurance? It's expensive. A hundred grand. Another hundred for earthquake. He also pays two hundred to a contractor as an initial payment for remodeling, four hundred to an interior decorator for antique furniture and s.h.i.+pping, two-forty to a landscape architect. On day five, he pays a million six to an art dealer for paintings. In fact, this guy manages to move ten million, two hundred and forty thousand before noon on day five. Then he takes a one-year lease on another house to live in while his is being fixed up: ten thousand a month for a total of one hundred twenty. He pays a probate lawyer three hundred thousand for settling his father's estate. He even pays for the funeral-twenty grand, plus twenty-five for the caterer."

"For a funeral?"

"An imaginary one, sure. Why be cheap? That must be the going rate, because it didn't raise any flags. That left the account with a million two ninety-five. He transferred a million two to an account at Union Bank with a notation on the check that it was for the rest of the remodeling, and closed the B. of A. account with ninety-five grand in cash. Presumably for tips."

"That's it, isn't it?"

"That's it. All before McClaren's knew enough to stop payment on the first check. Of course, each of the imaginary companies had its own account at a different bank. That bought them more time to move it before it could be tracked down." He paused. "What I'm interested in is this money at Union Bank."

"Why?"

"For one thing, it hasn't been pulled out as checks to businesses that don't exist. It's set up as a checking account owned by a woman named Lydia King."

"So?"

"The original amount was twelve million. The account was a million, two hundred thousand. It's ten percent." He glanced at Walker. "The account was set up after all the other money had been successfully moved, as though they were waiting for that to happen before they paid Lydia King."

"Are you saying it was a bribe to Ellen Snyder? That she's off somewhere living as Lydia King?"

"I'm not ready to make any bald p.r.o.nouncements just yet," said Stillman. He opened another folder and paged through it. "She didn't go into the bank and get herself on the security tapes, so I can't tell you who Lydia King is. She just wrote checks and converted them all over creation. She wrote small checks to other women, who took the money in cash, and she used checks to buy things that can be converted: gold coins, some good jewelry, traveler's checks, money orders, foreign currency."

"So what makes this money different? They made up businesses, and they made up a person."

"The person paid for things I think are overhead: Hermes luggage at fifteen hundred dollars a bag, human-hair wigs, women's clothes, a few plane tickets to other cities where she was converting the money. It goes on and on, in a dozen different names."

"How do you even know it's one woman?"

"I don't. I'm guessing. The theory is, it doesn't matter if she calls herself Lydia King or Georgia Fatwood or Helen Highwater, if the money comes from one account, chances are it's one woman wearing those wigs and new clothes."

"It's still just moving stolen money around. Is the reason you think this account is different just that you know it was a woman who laundered it?"

"It's got a different feel to it, a different smell. A lot of the other money, the ten point eight, goes into some of the same stuff: cash, traveler's checks, gold, money orders, foreign currency, and so on. But none of it goes to overhead. Not a dime so far. What it feels like is that this is her money, and she's got the problem of was.h.i.+ng it separately. She has to buy clothes, luggage, makeup, travel. That's all stuff that gives us leads, so it's dangerous. The other person-or persons, since this is a h.e.l.l of a lot of work to do this quickly-are buying zero that isn't some subst.i.tute for cash."

"So you think that they were set up with whatever they needed ahead of time, before they got the insurance money, but Lydia King wasn't."

"Right." Stillman added, "What she looks like is a person who did some service, then got a ten percent payoff and a good-bye."

"When did McClaren's hire you?"

"Right about at that point," said Stillman. "They got nervous when the second Alan Werfel showed up. They looked at their canceled check, saw it had been deposited at B. of A. They called and found out the account was drained. They tried to get in touch with Ellen Snyder, learned she was gone, and went from nervous to agitated."

"And you did all this tracing?"

"Me?" asked Stillman in surprise. "Not personally. I just kind of diverted some of the people at McClaren's, and when they got in over their heads, I hired some subcontractors. I hate chasing paper around."

"What else have you got?"

"I'd say that it comes down to the disappearance of Ellen Snyder."

"You think she got her ten percent and ran off with a suitcase full of wigs."

"Do you?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why-instinct?"

Walker began to pace. "More than that."

Stillman spoke patiently. "You said you liked her. Haven't you ever noticed that on the TV news, every time a con artist gets arrested, they interview five or six old ladies who say, 'She was such a nice, sweet girl. I would never have believed it.' That's why they call them that. They get your confidence."

Walker said, "I know. I've been trying to pretend I don't know her. I just say, 'Okay, these people exist, and you have to use another way to figure out whether you've met one.' She spent two years with the company, six months of it with me in training. What did she make?"

Stillman searched through his pile of folders until he found one that had a stamp that said PERSONNEL PERSONNEL—CONFIDENTIAL on it. He scanned a few pages, then looked up. "Are you sure you want to know?" on it. He scanned a few pages, then looked up. "Are you sure you want to know?"

Walker waved the question away impatiently. "I won't be jealous. I haven't missed any meals."

"The first six months after training, she had a salary of thirty-seven thousand, so she actually got eighteen-five. She also got commissions adding up to sixty-two thousand."

"In six months?"

Stillman said, "She probably sold a dozen policies to relatives."

Walker smiled and nodded. "How about the next full year, after she ran out of relatives?"

"She got promoted to a.s.sistant manager at fifty thousand, and made a hundred and forty-four thousand in commissions."

Walker sat down on the bed, took the folder, and looked at the figures for himself. "Jesus," he muttered. Then he slapped the folder shut and collected himself, stood, and returned to pacing. "That makes it even clearer. She was young, single, and had hardly any expenses. Her apartment is even smaller and crummier than mine. She was following a plan, and it's hard to imagine how it could be going any better. Onto those figures you have to add the value of the company health insurance, the retirement plan, the-"

"What's your point?"

"The money isn't enough."

"A million, two hundred thousand?" asked Stillman. "At age twenty-four?"

"Right," said Walker. "She made nearly two hundred last year, plus, say, twenty-five percent in benefits. That's two-fifty. The money she would have gotten for stealing, if she invested it at eight percent, would bring her ninety-six thousand a year. She'd be living on less than half her former income. She would also have to give up everything she already had-her savings, past retirement contributions, free health insurance, whatever possessions she couldn't carry. If you forget everything except that she's bright enough to do these calculations in her head, then it's a deal she would never consider." He stopped pacing, turned to Stillman, and held out both hands, as though waiting for applause.

"Does the term 'immediate gratification' mean anything to you?" asked Stillman.

"To me, yes. If it meant anything to her, I might have had more luck with her. She's a person with a plan that's going to pay off over a twenty-year period, remember?"

"Suppose she had an immediate need," said Stillman. "She could have a gambling problem, a drug problem, some vulnerability to blackmail. h.e.l.l, they could have walked in with those papers and said, 'Sign off on this or your kitty-cat dies.'"

"You've been investigating-or duping other people into investigating. Do you believe any of that?"

"I don't know what to believe," said Stillman. "It doesn't feel like blackmail: n.o.body who blackmails you wants to get paid off in women's clothes and wigs." He frowned. "But Ellen Snyder has no history of knowing the sort of people who do this kind of crime, so it's hard to just fall into it. There's also the fact that she had visitors in her apartment before we got there. Friends don't usually come in through your locked kitchen window. But it's possible she could have been young and naive enough to make the mistake of becoming an unprotected, unarmed woman with over a million in her suitcase." He lay back on Walker's bed and stared at the ceiling. "She's the one part of this that bothers me."

"The rest of it doesn't? Werfel conveniently losing his license and pa.s.sport and everything just after his father died and not reporting it?"

Stillman shook his head. "I told you I looked into the old man's death. Then I thought of Werfel the Younger. It could work: Alan Werfel files his claim with Ellen Snyder, and cashes his check. Then he kidnaps or otherwise gets rid of Ellen Snyder. He comes back to the office and says to Winters, 'Here I am. I'd like my check, please.' Then n.o.body fools around with false ident.i.ties, forges any signatures, and so on. Very neat."

"That didn't happen?"

"No. Werfel senior was in Santa Fe, but Werfel junior was in Italy. He got a call, used a credit card to buy a plane ticket and the pa.s.sport to get off the plane in New York. He then used the credit card again to buy a ticket from New York to Santa Fe. He got off the plane in Santa Fe, got whisked away to the father's house by relatives, then cared for by servants for the next five days while he's moping around the place. Then there's the funeral, and a lot more grieving friends and relatives, some of whom stayed on for four days. That puts him in Santa Fe when the other Alan Werfel was in Pasadena. He stays there, in fact, until the family attorney shows up to go over his father's papers with him. The lawyer tells him the various things he's got to get done-among them, filing an insurance claim. The call to Winters was from Santa Fe. It's on the phone bill."