Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy

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Authors: Jeremiah Healy

Shallow Graves

Jeremiah Healy
1992

For Jane Chelius

-1-

A FUNNY FEELING, COMING AS A VISITOR TO AN OFFICE
THAT ONCE was yours.

Harry Mullen cradled the telephone in its console and
stood up. "Jeez, John Cuddy, it's been what . . . years, right?"

"Right, Harry."

I let go of his hand and fought the urge to wipe mine
dry. "You're looking real good, John."

I wish I could have said the same for him. In a word,
Harry looked harried. Sloping shoulders over a donut of fat at the
beltline, troughs under bloodshot eyes in a fleshy face. His teeth
were yellowed from nicotine, like the keys of a neglected piano.
Maybe two years younger than I was, he could have been mistaken for
ten years older.

"I've been running, Harry."

"Running? You mean like jogging?"

"Right."

"What're you weighing these days?"

"About one ninety."

"On six three?"

"Not quite."

Mullen shook his head. "Next thing, you'll be
telling me you did the marathon."

"As a matter of fact"

"You're kidding?"

"Just this last one."

"Jeez." Harry shook his head some more and
sank back into my old swivel chair, the one with the frozen right
front wheel. Moving forward, he scraped rather than skidded to my old
desk and opened the red file folder on my old blotter. I noticed the
laminate on the desk was starting to lift at the corner nearest the
window. Mullen kept his telephone to the right and a triptych photo
frame to the left. The frame held studio shots of his wife and two
kids, one of them a boy of about eight who goofed his pose with no
front teeth. I remembered keeping a vacation candid of Beth in the
same place until she died. Then I moved it to the center.

The back of the visitor's chair was too steep, and I
realized how uncomfortable people must have been when they had
business with Head of Claims Investigation/Boston for Empire
Insurance. From where Harry was sitting, he could just see the
Prudential Insurance Tower, now mostly abandoned by that company.
From where I was sitting, I could just see the Burger King on
Boylston Street.

Mullen spoke without seeming to read from the file.
"You know Phil's gone?"

"No, I didn't."

"Yeah. Early retirement, last — no, month
before last."

"He earned it."

"Yeah. Head of Claims wears you down."

Phil had been Head of Claims/Boston in my time. One
day Phil asked me to sign off on a jewelry theft west of the city
that nobody on my staff had investigated. When I refused, two heavy
hitters from Home Office shuttled up from New York to pressure me.
One of them was Brad Winningham, the Head of Claims Investigation for
the entire company. Winningham had that classic preppy look and
manner, the kind of guy who tended to use four syllables where one
would do. When I still refused to sign off on the jewelry theft, I
got a command invitation to see the Head of Region/Boston, who gave
me a heartfelt handshake and a letter qualifying me for unemployment.
The letter looked better than a lawsuit, and the government checks
gave me the chance to go out on my own. The company at least had the
decency to promote Harry into my old job. And my old office.

Mullen futzed with some of the documents in the file,
his fingers trembling a little, making the papers crinkle till he
noticed that I noticed and stopped. "So, John, you hear from any
of the other guys?"

"From here, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"No. I made pretty much a clean break, Harry."

Mullen pursed his lips. "Meaning, how come I
asked you to come in?"

"Crossed my mind."

"It's got nothing to do with anything while you
were with the company, John."

"Good."

"In fact, it's a new claim entirely, and we'd
like you to look into it for us. Your usual hourly or daily."

I shifted in my chair. "You want an outside
private investigator looking into one of your claims?"

"You got it."

"Since when did Empire start using outside
help?"

Harry grimaced. "Since- they cut me down to five
field agents."

"Five? From twenty-three?"

"And one of them's a gal just off maternity
leave."

"What happened?"

"Long story. Some hotshots out of Home Office —
New Yorkers, think they're fucking gods — they get this brainstonn,
they're going to change our computer system, company-wide. Great idea
on paper, since we've always had kind of a roll-your-own approach to
data processing around here."

"So?"

"So the company they buy the equipment from goes
belly-up out in Silicon Valley, and now there's nobody who can keep
the things on-line or find parts for them when they go down. It's not
like you can just change a tube here and there, you know."

"Which means . . ."

"Which means that nobody can find anything
because nobody can retrieve anything. The equipment breaks once, it's
like the Arabs with their tanks, you just shoot the fucking thing and
leave it in the desert to rot. I'm telling you, John, every
department in the company, every regional office, has a bad case of
the shorts. Most of the hard-copy paperwork's been shipped to New
York, and we're down to only six floors here."

I hadn't checked the directory in the lobby. "I'm
sorry, Harry."

"Yeah. Thanks." Mullen sank deeper into the
chair, which balked as he pushed it back to open a drawer. He pulled
out a towel and offered it to me. "John, do me a favor?"

"What, give you a rubdown?"

"No, no. Just run this under the door, like a
draft protector."

I got up, took the towel, and wedged it under the
door. A college freshman afraid the scent of marijuana would leak
into the dormitory corridor. As I turned back around, Mullen was
plugging in a small black appliance that had appeared at the center
of his desk. The appliance had a front grille like an electric space
heater but was no bigger than a clock radio. Harry flipped a switch
on the side, which started a humming sound. Then he took out a pack
of Marlboros and a lighter and fired up. Mullen held the smoke inside
him, like marijuana, then blew it into the grille on the little
machine.

"Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Another new policy. After they bought the
computers they started worrying about some kind of disease you're
supposed to get from being in front of the screens too long. Then
Empire Insurance gets so damned worried about its internal liability
in general that it makes all us coffin-nailers go outside the
building to smoke."

I'd seen it in front of banks and other employers
along the major streets. "You thought about quitting the habit?"

"No. Too late for me. And who's got time to make
the trip every time I need one? But this little gizmo sucks it right
up, so if I ration myself to eight, ten a day, I can get away with
it."

"What happens if they catch you?"

"Three strikes and I'm out."

"Fired?"

"Uh-huh. Third violation and it's the axe."

Harry Mullen. Overweight and overwrought, worn down
trying to do the job I left. Never a smoker, I thought about what the
booze might have done to me by now if I'd stayed.

Sending my eyes toward the folder next to his black
box, I said, "That the file you want me on?"

Mullen filled his lungs, nodded, and blew into the
grille, spreading the stream of smoke around it like a suburbanite
spray-painting patio furniture. "Model. The one got herself
killed."

"When?"

"Week ago Friday."

"I was out of town."

"You wouldn't have heard much about it, anyway.
Strangled in her apartment, looks like a burglary gone sour."

"We got the landlord?"

Harry took a small draw and held it. "No. We got
the modeling agency. Key employee policy."

"Model as key employee, the owners of the agency
as beneficiaries?"

"You got it."

"What's the face amount?"

Mullen pursed his lips again, then expelled the smoke
into the grille. "Five hundred thousand."

Could have been worse. "We — Empire going to
coordinate with the family on this?"

"Family'?"

"Of the model. They're going to sue the
landlord, right?"

"No." Harry finished the cigarette, which
had burned down almost to his fingernails.

"How come?"

Mullen took a liter-sized Coke bottle from the
cigarettes drawer, unscrewed the cap, and dropped the butt into a
sludge of brown water and other filters bobbing near the bottom. "You
see, John, the family is the landlord."

"She was renting from her family?"

Recapping the bottle, he put it away, but let his
smoke-catcher hum a while longer. "Family realty trust."
Harry slid a stapled document from the file over to me.

It was the application for insurance, completed by
the "Lindqvist/Yulin Agency" as the applicant. The model's
name was listed as "Dani, Mau Tim".

I said, "How do you pronounce the first two
names?"

"
I think it's 'Mahow Tim! "

I went back to the application. Her address was 10
Falmouth Street, Apartment #3, a zip code in the South End. The
owner's line said "A and T Realty Trust". Next to
"Relatives" and "Relationship" was "Vincent
Dani/uncle and landlord."

I said, "What about the inspection report?"

Mullen took a breath that had nothing to do with his
departed cigarette. "Wasn't any."

"On a half-million policy?"

"Jeez, John, I know you're right. Before we
approved the application, there should have been a field agent out
there, interviewing present employer, prior employer, neighbors,
family — you name it and I'll agree with you. But we're so fucking
pressed around here, have been for over a year, that nobody ever did
it, all right?"

In the application packet, I turned to the medical
exam of Mau Tim Dani, done by a nurse-practitioner. The dead woman
was eighteen and a half at the time of the examination six months
before. Next to race was a checkmark for "Other" and the
handwritten word "Amerasian." Height five eight and a half,
weight one-fifteen, hair black, eyes violet. The rest suggested she
enjoyed the kind of medical health you'd expect in a drug-free late
teen.

I gave Harry back the application packet. "When
did you hear from the beneficiaries?"

"Next day."

"Saturday?"

"No, I mean next business day. Called us that
Monday, a week ago yesterday."

"Didn't waste much time grieving."

"Not only that"

"What?"

Mullen dipped into the file and came up with a pink
message slip and a piece of stationery. "Guy telephones, then I
get a hand-delivered letter yet."

"Belt and suspenders."

"And real anxious."

"What's this guy's name?"

"George Yulin. Types his title as 'Director' of
the modeling agency."