Max Lamb realized the conversation had taken a perilous turn. He said, “It’s just business, sir.”
“Well, it’s a business I’m gettin’ out of. Right now. Before I leave this sorry world.”
Max waited for a punch line that didn’t come. He felt a quaking in his bowels.
Clyde Nottage deposited the smoldering Bronco butt in a plastic cup of orange juice. “As of this morning, Durham Gas Meat 8c Tobacco is Durham Gas Meat.”
“Please,” Max Lamb blurted. “Wait on this, please. You’re not feeling well enough to make such an important decision.”
“I’m dying, yoir fucking idiot. Three times a day some nurse looks like Pancho Villa shoots sheep cum into my belly. Damn right I don’t feel well. Gimme Kleenex.”
Max handed him a box of tissues from the bed tray. Nottage snatched one and hacked fiercely into it.
“Mister Nottage, I urge you not to do anything right now.”
“Hell, it’s already done. Made the call this morning.” Nottage spit again. He opened the tissue and examined the contents with a clinical eye. “Last time I checked, I still had fifty-one percent of the company stock. You wasted a perfectly good airplane ticket, boy. The decision’s made.”
Max Lamb, queasy with despair, began to protest. Nottage hunched forward, cupped his palms to his face and broke into a volcanic spasm of coughing.
Max jumped away from the bed. “Shall I get Dr Caulk?”
The old man gazed into his hands and said, “Oh shit.”
Max edged closer. “Are you all right?”
“Considering I’m holding a piece of my own goddamn lung.”
“God!” Max turned away.
“Who knows,” the old man mused, “it might be worth something someday. Put it in the Smithsonian, like Dillinger’s dick.”
He drew back his frail right arm and lobbed the rancid chunk of tissue at the wall, where it hung like a gob of salsa.
Max Lamb bolted from the room. Moments later, Clyde Nottage Jr put his head on the pillow and died with a merry wheeze. The expression on his face was purely triumphant.
Dennis Reedy possessed an inner radar for potential trouble. His legendary instincts had saved Midwest Casualty many millions of dollars over the years, so his services as a claims supervisor were prized at the home office in Omaha. Reedy was an obvious choice to lead the Hurricane Crisis Team: South Florida was the insurance-scam capital of the nation, and Reedy knew the territory inside and out.
His radar went on full alert at 15600 Calusa Drive. The injury to the man’s jaw was old, and healed. But there was another prospective problem.
“Mister Torres,” Reedy said, “how’d you hurt that leg?”
Annoyed, the man looked up from the BarcaLounger. “It was the storm,” he said.
Reedy turned stiffly to Fred Dove. “You didn’t mention this.”
“They’re not filing a claim on the injury.”
Reedy suppressed the urge to guffaw in young Fred Dove’s face. Antonio Torres was a textbook profile of a nuisance claimant. He was disfigured, morose and unsociable-precisely the sort of malcontent who’d have no qualms about defrauding an insurance company. The notion might not have occurred to Torres yet, but it would.
Dennis Reedy asked him how the accident had happened. Mr Torres shot a look at Mrs Torres, standing next to Fred Dove. Reedy detected nervous animosity in the husband’s expression.
Mr Torres began to speak, but his wife cut in to answer: “Tony got hit by a roof beam.”
“Oh?”
“While he was walking the dogs. Down the end of the street.”
Fred Dove smiled inwardly with relief. Boy, she was good. And quick!
Reedy said, “So the accident didn’t happen here on the property?”
“No,” replied Edie Marsh, “but I wish it did. Then we’d know who to sue.”
They all chuckled, except Snapper. He stared contemptuously at the emblem of a growling badger, stitched to the breast of Dennis Reedy’s corporate blazer.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking about the accident,” said Reedy, “but it’s important for us to know all the circumstances-so there’s not a misunderstanding later down the road.”
Edie Marsh nodded cooperatively. “Well, like I explained to Mister Dove, I told Tony don’t you walk those dogs in the storm. It won’t kill us if they pee on the carpet or wherever. But would he listen? They’re like his little babies-Donald and Maria is what he named them. Spoiled rotten, too. We don’t have children, you understand.”