wasn’t ready yet.
Lindsey held down the rewind button on the Answermate and listened to the message again. The caller had given his name at the end of his message. At least he’d got that much right. Lindsey jotted it down. Terry Patterson. Unfortunately he hadn’t left any number. That was typical, Lindsey thought. The greeting on the machine clearly states: leave your name, organization, time of call, and your number, and we’ll call you back as soon as we can. But they never follow instructions. Half the forms the office sends out aren’t filled out right, and that means they’ll have to be done again. That’s the modern world for you!
Besides, Lindsey really shouldn’t have to take the calls off the machine. That was part of Ms. Wilbur’s job. Ms. Wilbur! But that’s the way it is, the responsible executive arrives at his desk early! That had always been his philosophy, and he was not about to change it. Not after eleven years of faithful service to International Surety.
He snorted in exasperation and surveyed the office. It wasn’t much, for all that the building was one of the shiny modern structures that were taking over downtown Walnut Creek. International Surety didn’t believe in pampering its employees, and the furniture was functional at best. There was a waist-high partition around Lindsey’s desk, there was a coat rack, and a couple of undistinguished prints which were supposed to be decorative. The computer was the only thing in the office that got any kind of pampering!
Lindsey wondered if he was ever going to get any recognition from management. How many years did it take to get noticed?
He shook his head.
He would have got to the office still earlier but he’d had to wait at home for Mrs. Hernández. He couldn’t leave Mother alone, and Mrs. Hernández simply couldn’t arrange her mornings to reach the house before seven-thirty, no matter how many times Hobart asked her and no matter how many times she promised to look into it.
“I really try, Meester Leensley,” she always said. “I try, but my hosban’ he gets home so late, I har’ly ever get to see heem.”
Even so, Lindsey arrived before Ms. Wilbur. Half the time he had to open the office himself—he’d tried to get a capable girl who was able to arrive punctually, but without success.
This morning Lindsey had looked over the mail—routine—and had put six spoons of decaffeinated Maxwell House in the Mr. Coffee. He’d tried to get Harden at Regional to authorize a new model so they could put in the grinds and water the night before and set it on automatic but Harden had said the old one was perfectly good, so that was that.
There was still the Contra Costa Times to be scanned. The usual scandals and disasters. There was an interesting piece on crime statistics that compared felony rates in various cities in the Bay Area. Oakland and San Francisco and Richmond, as usual, were in a hot race for the dubious honor of most felonies per capita. Especially murders! The little island town of Alameda, as usual, came in dead last. One homicide in the past six months: a retired navy man had apparently surprised a burglar in his living room and paid for it with his life. No clues, also as usual.
Once the coffee was brewing, Bart tossed aside the newspaper and sat down in front of the Answermate. The counter showed three calls overnight. Bart monitored the tape. Mrs. McMartin chattering and jabbering over a fender-bender, old Mr. Candliss, whose wife had passed away, and then the call from Terry Patterson.
First things first. Lindsey returned the calls in order. He phoned Mrs. McMartin and told her to get three estimates and submit them to the office. The usual. Then he looked at the Candliss file. Mr. and Mrs. had full life policies in matching amounts. Mr. Candliss would get about enough to bury her if he did it on the cheap. Lindsey jotted a note to Ms. Wilbur to send Candliss a set of claim forms.
And then the call from Terry Patterson. Lindsey ran the tape again. “This is terrible! They cleaned us out, they took everything! I’m ruined, ruined. Oh, my God, call me back right away, please!”
Well, yes, but Lindsey wanted a look at Terry Patterson’s policy first. Forewarned is forearmed. Knowledge is power. It all sounds corny, but that’s the way to get ahead.
Cleaned out. Ruined.
A household policy? Young married, burglary?
Lindsey queried the computer but there was no household policy in Terry Patterson’s name.
Automobile? Some upwardly-mobile high-techie? They liked to buy expensive cars, BMWs and Nissan 300ZXs, and load them with fancy stereos, tape decks, and CD players.
Nothing.
Lindsey sighed and called up the data base. If Patterson wasn’t the policyholder, it was probably a commercial policy. He told the computer to search for Patterson’s name as responsible party.
Ms. Wilbur arrived.
Lindsey looked up from the display screen, noted the time and waited for the usual explanation about traffic.
Ms. Wilbur said, “I’m sorry I’m late, Bart, I couldn’t help it.” She opened the closet, took off her jacket and hung it inside. She walked over to Mr. Coffee and smiled faintly. “Smells good.”
At least she called him Bart, not Hobo. His mother had named him Hobart, one of the worst names invented in the annals of Man. He’d given up long ago trying to get Ms. Wilbur to call him Mr. Lindsey, but at least she used the preferred version of his first name. He hated Hobo almost as much as he hated Hobart.
She poured herself a cup and sat at her desk.
She rewound the cassette on the Answermate and started through the calls again. “Oh, poor Mrs. Candliss died,” she said. “Don’t you want to handle this yourself, Bart?”
He told her he’d have handled it himself if he’d wanted to handle it himself. Ms. Wilbur sniffed and picked up the phone, presumably to call Mr. Candliss. Well, certainly they were supposed to be warm and human and caring, that’s what the training courses teach and that’s what International Surety’s ad campaigns emphasize. All right. But there’s such a thing as professionalism, too. And if there’s one thing Lindsey took pride in, it was his professionalism.
“Do you know a Terry Patterson?” he asked Ms. Wilbur.
Ms. Wilbur frowned and started murmuring condolences into the phone. Good gosh, the man was going to collect. Let the relatives offer handkerchiefs, International Surety was going to send money.
Without putting down the phone, Ms. Wilbur scribbled Comic Cavalcade on a memo slip and shoved it toward Bart.
Lindsey started to get annoyed. Then he realized that it wasn’t a comment, it was the account that Patterson had called about.
Lindsey looked back at the glowing display. The computer had found Terry Patterson, and the account information appeared on the monitor screen. It was a store called Comic Cavalcade. Terry Patterson was listed as sole proprietor—he hadn’t even incorporated, in this day and age!
There was an address in Berkeley and a phone number. Berkeley! Bart found himself hoping he could settle this pipsqueak claim without having to go to Patterson’s place of business. A comic book store in Berkeley! Lindsey hated comic books and everything to do with them. And Berkeley, well, everyone knows that town and what it’s filled with. Drug pushers, hippies, rich university students, yuppies, homosexuals, and Communists. And then there are the bad guys!
He
