Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

“No, guess not.” I told Doc to give my regards to Dave, went out to my car and steered her for American General Finance Company, the address of which led me down Jefferson Avenue, the main drag where all three of my dead clients had met their end.

The building that housed American General Finance Company was squat and cheaply modem. It sat at the back of a blacktopped parking lot between a shoe store and a barbershop. It hadn’t rained for three days, but puddles still stood on the lot in mute testimony of the ineptitude of its designers.

Inside, a three-hundred-pound secretary whose name — so help me God — was Miss Little, took my card between two fingers the size of frankfurters and examined it. She read it, put it on her desk and looked up at me. “Well.”

“I represent International Underwriters,” I said. “I’d like to speak to your office manager.”

She darted me with her flat, brown eyes, waved a pudgy hand at a row of chairs that looked like Goodwill rejects. “Have a seat.”

I had a seat.

Reminding me of the hippo in Disney’s Fantasia, she plucked the phone from its cradle, dialed two digits, said into the mouthpiece: “Say, Charlie. There’s a guy out here wants to see you. I don’t know... Wait a minute.” She looked at the card I had given her, read it off to him.

“Representing International Underwriters,” I offered.

Miss Little frowned at me, gave that information to Charlie, replaced the phone. “He’ll see you in a moment. Make yourself comfortable.” It sounded like a direct order.

I watched as she flipped my business card into the already overfilled trash can to the right of her desk, and she watched me watch her do it. She had a smile like a razor slash.

“Got to keep it tidy,” she said with hardly any inflection at all.

I looked around the reception room. Cracked plaster showed at its edges, cobwebs decorated the corners and there was a half inch of dust sticking out from the wall. The ashtray urn to my left had enough cigarette butts in it to give Missouri lung cancer.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Nothing like tidiness.”

The hippo smirked, went to shuffling papers on her desk. After awhile her phone lit up. She clutched if in her chubby paw, said, “Okay,” into the instrument, then said to me, “All right, Charlie — Mr. Fredrickson — will see you now. Go on back.”

I stepped into an office of tasteless luster. A rotund man with a whisky-veined hose, blue-pin-stripe suit and a three-dollar maroon tie greeted me from across the desk with an extended hand and hundred proof breath. I fought the urge to peek and see if he was wearing white socks.

I took the clammy hand and shook. “Charlie Fredrickson,” he said as if that explained everything. “Sit down, Mr... Sorry, what was it again?”

“Hunter,” I said. “Leif Hunter.”

I dropped in the chair across from his desk. He sat down behind his desk, twisted in his swivel chair like a nervous cobra.

“Now, Mr. Hunter. What can I do for you?”

I explained who I represented, and gave him a brief rundown of the coincidences that bothered International Underwriters. He listened passively.

“And how may I help?” he asked with an expansive spreading of his hands. The left hand just missed knocking his coffee cup off the desk and his right rocked a bottle of Bug Off Roach Spray.

I nodded at the roach spray. “Interesting paperweight.”

Fredrickson offered me an embarassed smile. “Roaches are bad in this building. Constant war.”

“I bet.”

Fredrickson gave me a cold stare. “Now, you were saying...?”

“First,” I said, “you can let me speak to the employees who wrote up the agreements with my three clients.” I named them again for him.

Fredrickson leaned back in his chair, cupped his hands together over his stomach. “Do you suspect wrong-doing?”

“I don’t suspect anyone of anything, yet. But I suspect everyone.” Someone had said that corny line in a movie once and I had been saving it for just such an occasion.

“Well,” Fredrickson said, “we’re a small company. I mean there isn’t anyone else except myself and Miss Little.”

“You wrote the agreements then?”

“That is correct, Mr. Hunter. Uh, would you care for a cup of coffee? I have some cups in my desk drawer here.” He made a gesture for the bottom, right hand drawer.

“No thanks. Doesn’t it strike you odd that three people would come to you for a loan, sign you as beneficiary for their insurance and all three die of a coronary in the same area? And why were you named as beneficiary? Any idea?”

“Yes, I do, Mr. Hunter. All three clients you named were credit risks. The younger of the three, Dravek, had a good solid job, but he was an alcoholic. You know how that is?”

I didn’t know, but I nodded.