Part 2 (1/2)

McClaren looked at Stillman, his eyebrows rising as though they had something to do with listening. Stillman was up. ”We just stopped by to get your blessing, Rex. We won't hold you up.”

McClaren half-grinned, but there was a question behind it. ”You've got it,” he said. ”But don't worry about holding me up. I thought you guys had a plane to catch.”

Stillman glanced at his watch. ”Oh, thanks. Yeah, we'd better do it.” He raised his eyes to Walker. ”You have any questions while we're here?”

Walker shook his head. ”Thanks for taking the time to see us,” he said to McClaren. He retreated, with as much dignity as he could manufacture, toward the elevators.

The car was out of the garage, a mile away, and accelerating onto the 101 before Walker said, ”What's going on?”

”I'm afraid our hope of lunch is fading. We'll concentrate on making the plane.”

”I didn't mean that.”

”My investigation just turned something up,” said Stillman. ”Somebody from McClaren Life and Casualty has to go with me to check it out. That's you.”

”Why me?”

Stillman slipped into the left lane and flashed past a line of cars, then veered to the right and shot through an opening into a clear s.p.a.ce ahead. ”I need someone who really works for the company, who knows a little about what goes on in all parts of it, and who can disappear from his cubicle for a while without having the company fall apart. I also need somebody who knows Snyder.”

”Ellen Snyder?” said Walker. ”This is about her?” He was shocked, pained.

”There. You do know her.”

”She was in my training cla.s.s,” said Walker. ”There were sixty of us, and I don't know her any better than the others do.” He heard himself say it, and was surprised that his first, almost automatic response was a lie.

”I interviewed a few candidates, and I had to settle for you.”

”Why?”

”Because you're not a psychological mess.”

”Who is?”

Stillman looked at him in irritation. ”The rest of them. They're hiding behind layers and layers of bulls.h.i.+t. I ask them where they were born, and they say, 'I'll check and get back to you.' I ask them if they filled out some stupid form in a file, and they tell me who they told to do it for them. They're so ambitious for the next promotion that they can hardly think about what they're doing for the next ten minutes.”

Walker began to compose a defense for them, but he realized that all he would be able to come up with was ”Being ambitious doesn't make somebody a psychological mess.” This was not exactly true, or not always true, so he was silent.

Stillman said, ”I'm afraid for people like that. And if they're on my side, I've got to be afraid for me, too. I'm going to have to teach my partner a few things as we go, and I don't have time to go back to the beginning.”

”Partner?” Walker protested.

”Did I say 'partner'? It's a figure of speech,” Stillman said.

Walker a.s.sembled his arguments and began to touch them off, one by one. ”I am a data a.n.a.lyst. I was hired to work in the insurance business, not in security, or whatever you call it.”

”Then maybe you ought to know more about insurance,” said Stillman. ”The problem with insuring against theft is that you can't always cover yourself against loss by raising premiums. Once in a great while, you have to leave your cubicle and go convince some actual thieves that you won't put up with it.”

”You're joking.” Having detected no change in Stillman's expression, Walker began to worry that he wasn't. He found himself remembering woolly tidbits of propaganda from his training cla.s.s: the agent on the Malaysian s.h.i.+p who had held a sawed-off shotgun to the captain's head to keep him from surrendering to the pirates. What Stillman was saying made a certain surreal sense. ”What, exactly, would you want me to do?”

”Most likely, not a thing,” said Stillman. ”I think it's a case of fraud. We verify that I'm right, collect some leads, and turn everything over to the police. It's a terrific deal for you.”

”Why is that?”

”McClaren's is an old-fas.h.i.+oned company,” said Stillman. ”You've been around for a couple of years, so you must have noticed that much.”

Walker said, ”It's the only insurance company I've ever worked for.”

”The company is what Wall Street calls 'closely held.' That means that the forty percent of the stock that isn't owned outright by people named McClaren is in blocks held by spindly-looking horse-faced daughters with different married names, their heirs, and their descendants.”

”That much I know,” said Walker.

”Well, every twenty years or so, they all get together for a picnic in the back yard of the old house on n.o.b Hill and decide who in the next generation ought to be president. They thank the last one and send him off to spend the rest of his life shooting clay pigeons, sailing boats, or raising grapes on a vineyard in Napa.”

”How do you know all this?”

”Rex, the one you just met, is the third generation of the family that's hired me to do odd jobs, and he's probably the last I'll see, because he's younger than I am. It doesn't matter. He's so much like his grandfather and his uncle that I know what he'll say before he does. The point is, the company doesn't change, and they do pretty much what they want.”

”I'm not clear on what this has to do with me.”

”You like your job. The pay is decent. If you're at a c.o.c.ktail party and some girl asks you what you do, you can say 'I work at McClaren's' and she will have heard of it and think you must be pretty respectable. And while I was in the building, I noticed your bosses don't pay much attention to you, so you probably are. If you want to, the McClarens will probably let you stay in that cubicle until you're seventy, and pay you a little more each year. You'll get promoted to Joyce Hazelton's job when she retires.”

”Is that the terrific deal you're talking about? That I don't get fired from my job if I go with you?”

”Well, it's not so bad, is it?” said Stillman. ”But there's a fast track, and while you were stumbling around, you blindly stepped on the low end of it. A company like McClaren's will always need a lot of workers, but they're always looking for a small, steady supply of players.”

”Players?”

”Gamblers,” said Stillman. ”Insurance is just gambling, with the bets in writing. They're the guys the rest of us see when we think of McClaren's, the steely-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the dark suits you talk to if you want to insure your fireworks display or your oil-drilling rig. McClaren's doesn't recruit them from outside. They just hire a bunch of young people to do jobs like yours, and wait to see which ones grow into the suit.”

”And going with you is going to prove I'm a steely-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.d and get me promoted?”

”h.e.l.l no,” said Stillman. ”You get to spend a couple of days out of your box telling me what the little numbers on an insurance policy mean, and you get credit with McClaren's for showing promise.”

Walker nodded sagely. ”What I get is points with McClaren for being a risk taker without taking any risks.” He paused. ”Of course, if I don't go, then I'm already marked: I'm not promising.”

Stillman shrugged. ”Don't look at me like that. I didn't pick the business you're in.”

Walker glared at him. ”But you did pick me, and told the president of the company that you had picked me, without asking me if I even wanted this golden opportunity.”

Stillman grinned and slapped Walker's shoulder, making the car take a dangerous wobble on the freeway. ”There we go. That's what got you into this. You cut right through the smoke and figured out who did what, and you're not afraid to shove it up my nose. I don't know if you're a promising insurance executive or not, and I certainly don't care. You're good enough for this.”

Walker's jaw muscles worked compulsively as he stared at the entrance to the airport parking area. ”I know. I remind you of yourself at this age,” he muttered.

Stillman's head swiveled so he could stare at Walker in surprise. ”Not even remotely. Whatever mistakes your parents made, that much they did right.”

He pulled into a s.p.a.ce too quickly, stopped the car with a jolt so it rocked forward, then went around to the trunk. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a small suitcase, slammed the lid, and set off toward the terminal.