Four large filing cabinets took up most of the remaining space. A curling poster of the Chinese national table-tennis team provided the only decoration. A large pot hung from a chain above the window, but the plant within had withered down to a few drying leaves.

He sat up and tried to put a semblance of energy into his tone. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m V I Warshawski.” I handed him one of my cards. “And you are?”

“Fepple. Howard Fepple.” He looked at my card. “Oh. The detective. They told me you’d be calling.”

I looked at my watch. It had been just over an hour since I left Ajax. Someone in the company had moved fast.

“Who told you that? Bertrand Rossy?”

“I don’t know the name. It was one of the girls in claims.”

“Women,” I corrected irritably.

“Whatever. Anyway, she told me you’d be asking about one of our old policies. Which I can’t tell you anything about, because I was in high school when it was sold.”

“So you looked it up? What did it tell you about who cashed it in?”

He leaned back in his chair, the man at ease. “I can’t see why that’s any of your business.”

I grinned evilly, all ideas about charm and persuasion totally forgotten. “The Sommers family, whom I represent, have an interest in this matter that could be satisfied by a federal lawsuit. Involving subpoenas for the files and suing the agency for fraud. Maybe your father sold the policy to Aaron Sommers back in 1971, but you own the agency now. It wouldn’t be the Internet that would finish you off.”

His fleshy lips pursed together in a pout. “For your information it wasn’t my father who sold the policy but Rick Hoffman, who worked for him here.”

“So where can I find Mr. Hoffman?”

He smirked. “Wherever you look for the dead. But I don’t imagine old Rick ended up in heaven. He was a mean SOB. How he did as well as he did…” He shrugged eloquently.

“You mean unlike you he wasn’t afraid of the cold call?”

“He was a Friday man. You know, going into the poor neighborhoods on Friday afternoons collecting after people got paid. A lot of our business is life insurance like that, small face value, enough to get someone buried right and leave a little for the family. It’s all someone like this Sommers could probably afford, ten thousand, although that was big by our standards, usually they’re only three or four thousand.”

“So Hoffman collected from Aaron Sommers. Had he paid up the policy?”

Fepple tapped a file on top of the mess of papers. “Oh, yes. Yes, it took him fifteen years, but it was paid in full. The beneficiaries were his wife, Gertrude, and his son, Marcus.”

“So who cashed it in? And if they did, how come the family still had the policy?”

Looking at me resentfully, Fepple started through the file, page by page. He stopped at one point, staring at a document, his lips moving soundlessly. A little smile flickered at the corners of his mouth, an unpleasant, secretive smile, but after a moment he continued the search. Finally he pulled out the same documents I’d already seen at the company: a copy of the death certificate and a copy of the countersigned check.

“What else was in the file?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “There was nothing unusual about it at all. Rick did a zillion of these little weekend sales. There’s no surprise to them.”

I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t have a way to call his bluff. “Not much of a way to make a living, three- and four-thousand-dollar sales.”

“Rick did real well for himself. He knew how to work the angles, I’ll tell you that much.”

“And what you’re not telling me?”

“I’m not telling you my private business. You’ve barged in here without an appointment, fishing around for dirt, but you don’t have any grounds to ask questions. And don’t go waving federal lawsuits at me. If there was any funny business about this, it was the company’s responsibility, not mine.”

“Did Hoffman have any family?”

“A son. I don’t know what happened to him-he was a whole lot older than me, and he and old Rick didn’t hit it off too great. I had to go to the funeral, with my old man, and we were the only damned people in the church. The son was long gone by then.”

“So who inherited Hoffman’s share of the business?”

Fepple shook his head. “He wasn’t a partner. He worked for my old man. Strictly commission, but-he did well.”

“So why don’t you pick up his client list and carry on for him?”

The nasty little smile reappeared. “I might just do that very thing. I didn’t realize until the company called me what a little gold mine Rick’s way of doing business represented.”

I wanted to see that file badly, but short of grabbing it from the desk and running off down the stairs into the arms of the guard in the lobby, I couldn’t think of any way to look at it. At least, not at the moment. As I left, I tripped again on the corner of the linoleum. If Fepple didn’t fix it soon I’d be suing him myself.

Since I was already south, I went on another two miles to Sixty-seventh Street, where the Delaney Funeral Parlor stood. It was in an imposing white building, easily the grandest on the block, with four hearses parked in the lot behind it. I left my Mustang next to them and went in to see what I could learn.

Old Mr. Delaney talked to me himself, about how sorry they were to have had to inflict such grief on a sweet decent woman like Sister Sommers but that he couldn’t afford to bury people for charity: if you did it once, every freeloader on the South Side would be coming around with some story or other about their insurance falling through. As to how he’d learned that Sommers’s policy had already been cashed in, they had a simple procedure with the life-insurance companies. They had called, given the policy number, and been told that the policy had already been paid. I asked who he’d spoken to.

“I don’t give anything away free, young lady,” Mr. Delaney said austerely. “If you want to pursue your own inquiries at the company, I urge you to do so, but don’t expect me to give you for nothing information I spent my hard-earned money finding out. All I will tell you is that it isn’t the first time this has happened, that a bereaved family has discovered that their loved one had disposed of his resources without privileging them with the information. It isn’t a regular occurrence, but families are often sadly surprised at the behavior of their loved ones. Human nature can be all too human.”

“A lesson I’m sure Gertrude Sommers and her nephew learned at Aaron Sommers’s funeral,” I said, getting up to leave.

He bowed his head mournfully, as if unaware of the bite behind my words. He hadn’t gotten to be one of the richest men in South Shore by apologizing for his rigorous business methods.

VIII Tales of Hoffman

The score so far today seemed to be Warshawski zero, visitors three. I hadn’t gotten any satisfaction from Ajax, or the Midway Agency, or the funeral director. While I was south, I might as well complete my sweep of frustrating meetings by visiting the widow.

She lived a few blocks from the Dan Ryan Expressway, in a rickety twelve-flat with a burnt-out building on one side and a lot with bits of masonry and rusted-out cars on the other. A couple of guys were leaning over the engine of an elderly Chevy when I pulled up. The only other person on the street was a fierce-looking woman muttering as she sucked from a brown paper bag.

The Sommerses’ doorbell didn’t seem to work, but the street door hung loosely on its hinges, so I went on into the building. The stairwell smelled of urine and stale grease. Dogs barked from behind several doors as I passed, briefly overwhelming the thin hopeless wail of a baby. I was so depressed by the time I reached Gertrude Sommers’s door that I was hard put to knock instead of beating a craven retreat.