Suspenseful Tales Part 9

"We're only human," I said. And some of us are pigs.

"This better not keep me from getting my check, boy."

"No, sir, I promise you it won't. This is a minor error. We'll fix this in no time and get your money out to you."

"You better," he said. "I been paying a lot of cash into this d.a.m.ned thing, and my agent said I could draw some of it out after I'd kept up the payments a few years. He better not have lied to me. Liars don't sit well with me, boy."

"Your agent isn't a liar, sir, and neither am I. We'll fix this and give you your money as soon as possible. In fact, instead of pa.s.sing this along to someone else, I'll take care of it myself. How about if I order your file, take a look at it, and call you back later today?"

"What's your name, boy?"

"Kevin," I said. "Kevin Jackson."

"I'll call you," Stone said, and hung up.

An hour later, I opened Ralph Stone's thick manila file.

The first thing I saw was the top sheet, a printed doc.u.ment that gives you almost all the information you would ever need on a policy: name of insured, date of issue, face amount, beneficiary, and modal premium, to name a few. When the insured died, the claim adjustor stamped the date of death on the top sheet. And because colleagues thoroughly checked and double-checked the adjustor's work, it was highly unlikely that a top sheet would ever be stamped in error. In my dealings with thousands of files, I had never seen it happen.

Nevertheless, that blood-red stamp glared at me from the top sheet: DECEASED 2-12-2000.

Impossible. I had talked to Ralph Stone on the telephone.

Hadn't I?

Searching for some error that would make sense of all this, I dug through the file, spreading papers across my desk.

I found a certified copy of the death certificate, which validated the date of death as February 12th. Full name of decedent was Ralph Edward Stone. No wife. Usual occupation was truck driving. Cause of death was a heart attack. Age at death was fifty-three. Place of death was his home in Peoria, Illinois. Informant, the person who had reported his death, was Irene Stone, sister, who also lived in Peoria, though not at Ralph's address. Irene had discovered him dead on the couch at seven o'clock in the evening.

I found a copy of his driver's license. Ralph E. Stone was six-feet-two, two hundred and fifty pounds. He had a large, square face covered with a wooly grey beard. A pug nose and cold, squinting blue eyes. He was scowling in the photograph, as if angered at the idea of needing a license to drive his vehicle. All of the data on the card matched the data in the file.

Lastly, I found a letter written in sloppy ma.n.u.script on yellow notebook paper: Give me a loan for a thousand dollars. My agent said I could get money after I kept this thing for a few years. / need money now, so send it right away. Thanks, Ralph E. Stone.

The letter was postmarked February 11th. The day before Stone had apparently died of a heart attack.

Looking at these things, I felt as though I might suffer a heart attack myself. What was going on here?

Was the man I had talked to earlier an imposter trying to chisel money out of us? Or was he really...

No, don't even consider it, because that's crazy.

The man was nothing but a swindler. In my three years at this company, I'd heard about his type. They were doctors who sent in fake claims, insureds who were healthy and working yet tried to get disability benefits, agents who forged applications and got the fat commissionsa"the insurance industry teemed with treacherous people who'd do anything to grab a dishonest buck. This case was just a little stranger than usual. One call to Irene Stone, the sister (who, incidentally, also had a policy with us that Ralph had been paying for), would clear up everything.

I picked up the phone.

A woman answered on the fourth ring. "h.e.l.lo?"

"This is Kevin Jackson, from Lake Sh.o.r.e Insurance. May I please speak to Ms. Irene Stone?"

"Speaking." Her voice was frail, whispery. "This isn't about my brother, is it?"

I hesitated. I wished I'd taken the time to plan my conversation. How could you tell a woman that you were getting calls from a man claiming to be her dead brothera"without upsetting her? That lesson wasn't taught in any of the customer service cla.s.ses I'd attended.

"Because if you're calling about Ralph, I'm afraid I can't say much," she said. She sighed heavily. "It still hurts me to talk about him."

"That's perfectly understandable, ma'am. I don't want to upset you, buta""

"He was such a sweetheart, Ralph was," she said. "Took care of me like a father. The man believed in family, would do anything for his kin. You don't see that as much these days."

"My deepest sympathies to you, ma'am. But I got a calla""

"I'll never get over his pa.s.sing. Never." She sniffled, and I feared she was about to break down and weep. "No one ever cared about me as much as Ralph did."

"I'm sure you're right, ma'am. I'm sure Mr. Stone was an honorable man. By the way, do you happen to know anyone who might try to impersonate him so he could con money out of an insurance company?"

"Ralph was so ... what did you say?" she said, a sudden edge to her voice.

I mentally kicked myself in the b.u.t.t. Wasn't I just br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tact? I ought to open a charm school and educate the less-graceful ma.s.ses.

Determined not to make another gaffe like that, I pressed on. "I hate to discuss this with you, Ms. Stone, but I received a call today from a man who says he's your brother, Ralph E. Stone. He's demanding that we mail him a loan check. He made reference to an actual written loan request from your brother that was postmarked February 11 th. And, of course ... Mr. Stone died on the twelfth, so we never processed the loan. But the man who called me is very convincing. He insists that we mistakenly declared him dead."

"Why're you calling me? I sent you a copy of Ralph's death certificate, didn't I?"

"Yes. But--"

"What else do you need? His poor dead body sent overnight mail?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I only wanted to verifya""

"Mister, these past few weeks have been absolute h.e.l.l for me, and you've just made it worse with your crazy G.o.dd.a.m.ned questions. If this is the kind of compa.s.sion I can expect from my insurance company, I don't want anything more to do with you people. Cancel my policy immediatelya"with a full refund of every cent Ralph ever paid into it!"

Click.

She had hung up on me. I can't say I blamed her; I'd figured my call would p.i.s.s her off. But I needed to be sure about this guy. And now that I was, I knew what I had to do.

Wait for him to call me back.

I didn't have to wait long. Barely fifteen minutes after I finished speaking to Irene Stone, my telephone rang again.

"Got it all straightened out, boy?" the man claiming to be Ralph Stone said.

"I sure do," I said. I leaned back in my chair, took a sip of coffee. "You're dead, Mr. Stone."

Silence. Then: "Come again?"

"I found your death certificate in the file. You died on February twelftha"a day after your written loan request was postmarked. I'm sure you remember, sir. Dying of a heart attack has to be hard to forget."

Stone chuckled. "I died of a heart attack, eh? I can't say I remember, though I reckon I should." He chuckled again, then cleared his throat. "Now look, boy, I've had enough of these jokes. I need-"

"I need a break from your con act!" I said, speaking louder than I had intended, rising halfway out of my chair. I drew a deep breath, sat down. "Listen, whoever you are, I'm not buying your story. Mr. Stone died, we paid the benefits to his sister, and we've officially closed his file. You aren't getting a dime, so you can quit this tired act of yours. Now good-bye, sir, and please don't call again."

Without waiting for his response, I hung up. I pressed the b.u.t.ton on the telephone that would automatically send any calls for me to my voice mail. It went without saying that if he called again and left me a message, I would not return his call. As far as I was concerned, I'd had my last conversation with Mr. Whatever-his-real-name-was.

Pleased at how I had handled the situation, I finished off my coffee and went to lunch.

When I returned from lunch, I saw the blinking message indicator on my telephone. I frowned, certain of who had called.

I listened to the message. It was him, of course. Mr. Whatever-his-real-name-was.

"You've went and made this personal, boy. I'm in a real tight spot, and you're jerking me around with some nutty story about me dying of a heart attack. I wasn't a whiz in school, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'm dumb enough to fall for your bulls.h.i.t. My agent said I could get a loan, and I'm gonna get it. So I'm coming up there, boy. Leaving within the hour, ought to get there by this afternoon. And when I stop in, you better have my check ready. Or else."

He slammed down the phone, a sharp sound that hurt my ear.

My heart was suddenly pounding.

Of all the reactions I had expected from him, I had never expected this.

I opened Stone's file, flipped to the copy of his driver's license. In his early fifties. Square face, wooly grey beard, pug nose. Cold, squinting blue eyes. An angry scowl.

You've made this personal, boy.

This was madness. Sheer insanity.

Ralph Stone was dead. The death certificate said so, and the sister said so. This imposter was blowing smoke. He wasn't getting a thing from me, and he knew it. He probably wasn't actually driving up here. He was only trying to scare me.

And I had to admit that he was doing a good job of it.

Work proceeded as usual until a few minutes after three o'clock that afternoon. Then my phone rang. It was the receptionist.

"A man named Ralph Stone is waiting in the lobby for you," the receptionist said. She coughed a couple of times. "He says you should have a check for him."

I was speechless. I sat there holding the handset to my ear, like a poster boy for AT&T.

"Will you come down here and meet him, please?" the receptionist said. She coughed again.

Tell her no, a voice in me pleaded. Tell her to get security to kick the man off company property. Tell her that talking to psycho con men isn't in my job description.

But I said none of those things. I only said: "I'll be down there in a minute."

Coughing as if she'd caught a terrible cold, the receptionist thanked me and hung up.

I gathered Ralph Stone's file and walked to the elevator.

Ordinarily, I always take the stairs, for the exercise. That time, however, I didn't feel confident about my ability to make it down the stairs without my trembling legs giving way and spilling me on my face.

The elevator doors whooshed open.

About fifteen feet away, a man turned from the reception desk and looked at me as I entered the lobby.

Right away, I knew this man was no imposter. He looked exactly like Ralph Stone.

That is, if Ralph Stone had climbed out of the grave after having been dead for three weeks.

He still appeared to be about six-feet two, but seemed to weigh not two-fifty, but three-fifty, maybe more; his body was round and swollen, nearly bursting out of the shearling jacket and jeans that he wore. Large blisters marred his bloated face; the skin had a strange green-red tint, and seemed to be loose, ready to drip like hot wax from his skull. Half of the hairs of his wooly grey beard had fallen out, the remaining hairs limp and colorless. The cold, squinting blue eyes were now flat, and so clouded up with fluid that they seemed as white as the eyeb.a.l.l.s of a voodoo priest caught up in the ecstacy of spirit possession.

And the smell. Jesus. No wonder the receptionist had been coughing when she'd spoken to me on the phone. Such a stench filled the air that I felt as though I had stepped into a busy slaughterhouse on a hot August day.

The mana"or what had once been a mana"shuffled toward me, muddy black boots dragging across the carpet.

The lobby was warm, but a chill gripped me.

To h.e.l.l with trying to explain his presence. I didn't want to know the inexplicable details. I only wanted to get him out of there.

He stopped a few feet away from me, planted his discolored fists on his soft waist, and scrutinized me from head to toe with his milky pupils.

This close, the stench was too much. I backed up a little, covered my nose with my forearm.

I thought I saw a maggot quivering in his nostril.

"You the boy I talked to?" he said, his voice somehow strong and clear.

"Yes. I'm Kevin Jackson."

He grunted. "Got my check?"

"No, I don't," I said. I clumsily opened the file, riffled through the various doc.u.ments. Talk about absurd. What was nuttier than explaining a death claim to the decedent?

"See here, Mr. Ralph Stonea"or you, since I know that's who you are nowa"died on February twelfth. The death benefits were paid to your sister, Irene. The policy has been terminated. I don't know what else I can tell you, sir. I can't give you anything. Sorry."

Gazing at the file, viewing his own death certificate, he pursed his split lips. "You folks never stop bull-s.h.i.tting, do you?"

"Excuse me?"

He slapped the file out of my hand.

Then he seized me by the front of my shirt.

"No more lies! Give me my G.o.dd.a.m.n check!"