Prayers For Rain Part 13

"That he wasn't insured."

Ray Dupuis studied me, his eyelids hooded, his body very still. I waited, but after a minute of his staring, I held out my hands.

"Look, Ray, I'm not after anyone in this place. You had to do some creative financing to keep afloat? Fine. Or you-"

"It was David," he said quietly.

"What?"

He dropped his heels off the desk and his hands fell from behind his head.

"David sent a-" His face screwed up as if he were chewing tabs of acid, and he looked away for a minute. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. "You learn not to trust. Particularly in this business where everyone's charming, everyone's your friend, everyone loves you until you give them the bill. David, I swear to Christ, I had always believed was different. I trusted him."

"But?"

"'But.'" He snorted at the word, looked back up at the rafters with a defeated grin. "About six weeks before he was hurt, David canceled the insurance policy. Not on the equipment, just on the employees, himself included. The quarterly payment was due, and instead of paying it, he canceled. I'm sure he was rolling the dice-you know, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, planning to move the money someplace else, maybe into the Steadicam."

"Was money that tight?"

"Oh, yeah. My personal finances are tight, and Daddy's locked the vault for a while. We have a lot of outstanding bills sitting on our clients' desks, and once they're paid, we'll be okay, but the last few months have been lean. So, sure, I can see why David did it. I just don't understand why he didn't tell me, and why the money he saved never left the company bank account."

"It's still there?"

He nodded. "It was when he got hurt. I paid the insurance with it, bottomed out the rest of the account putting twenty percent down on the Steadicam, taking out a loan for the rest."

"But you're sure it was David who contacted the insurance agency?"

For a few minutes, he seemed unsure whether he should kick me out of the office or come all the way clean. In the end, he chose the latter, and I was glad, because I doubt I could have lived with the indignity of having my a.s.s chucked to the street by a group of guys who'd collectively seen Star Wars Star Wars more times than they'd had s.e.x. more times than they'd had s.e.x.

He glanced around to make sure no one in the warehouse was paying attention to us, and then he used a small key to unlock a lower desk drawer. After rifling through it for a few moments, he withdrew a single sheet of paper and handed it across the desk to me.

It was a copy of a letter from Wetterau sent to their insurance company. It expressly stated that Wetterau, Chief Financial Officer of Pickup on South Street, wished to cancel the HMO coverage of all employees, including himself. At the bottom, he'd signed it.

Ray Dupuis said, "The insurance company sent that to me when I filed a claim on David's behalf. They refused to pay a dime. I came up with what I could, Karen came up with what she could before she stopped coming up with anything at all, and the bill keeps growing. David had no family, so ultimately, I guess, the state will pay for it, but Karen and I were both afraid he'd end up warehoused in some s.h.i.+tty facility, so we tried to get him first-cla.s.s care for a while, but it was just too much for two people ultimately."

"Did you know Karen well?"

He nodded several times. "Sure."

"What'd you think of her?"

"She's the girl the hero gets at the end of the movie. You know the one? Not the hot, s.e.xy babe who ultimately turns out to be trouble, but the good girl. The one who'd never write you a Dear John if you were off at war. The one who's always there, you just have to be smart enough to see it. Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo Vertigo, if only Jimmy Stewart had been smart enough to see past her gla.s.ses."

"Yeah."

"It was kinda surreal."

"How so?"

"Well, they don't make women like Karen except in the movies."

"Are you saying it was an act?"

"No. I was just never sure when I was with Karen if she knew who she was. If she'd worked so hard at becoming an ideal that she lost the person inside of her."

"And once David was hurt?"

He shrugged. "She held on for a while, and then she cracked, man. I mean, it was horrible to see. She'd come in here, and I'd want to ask for her license to make sure I was dealing with the same person. She was drunk mostly, high. She was a f.u.c.king mess. It was like-what happens to you when you live your whole life like a movie, and the movie ends?"

I didn't say anything.

"It's like those child actors," he said. "They play a part as long as they can, but they're fighting a battle against hormonal evolution and they can't win. One day they wake up, they're no longer kids, they're no longer movie stars, there're no parts out there for them, and they drown."

"So, Karen?"

His eyes filled for a moment and he blew air out through his mouth in a loud push. "Oh, Christ, she broke my heart. All our hearts. She lived for David. Anyone who saw them for two seconds knew that. And when David was hurt, she died. It just took her body four months to follow."

We sat in silence for a bit, and then I handed him back the letter to the insurance company. He held it lightly in his hands and stared down at it. Eventually he smiled bitterly.

"No 'P,'" he said, and shook his head.

"What's that?"

He turned the letter in his hands so I could see it. "David's middle name was Phillip. When we started this company, all of a sudden he signed his name with a big 'P' in the middle. Only on company doc.u.ments and company checks, never anything else. I used to say the 'P' was for 'pretentious,' rag his a.s.s a little bit about it."

I looked at the signature. "But there's no 'P' there."

He nodded, then dropped the letter in the drawer. "I guess he wasn't feeling particularly pretentious that day."

"Ray."

"Yeah?"

"Could I have a copy of that and something you have with his signature that does does have the 'P'?" have the 'P'?"

He shrugged. "Sure." He found a memo David had written and signed with a wide, looping "P."

I followed him to a grimy Xerox machine, and he placed the letter under the lid.

"What're you thinking?" he asked me.

"I'm not sure yet."

He pulled the copy out of the tray and handed it to me. "It's just a 'P,' Mr. Kenzie." He made a copy of the memo, gave it to me.

I nodded. "You got something with your signature on it?"

"Of course." He led me back to the desk, handed me a memo he'd written and signed.