WILLIE NORRIS’S OFFICE was located in what had once been a residence in a neighborhood about a mile from Drews’s bakery.
The young woman in the front room immediately rose to greet them when they walked in. She was polite, if a bit shy, though Decker could sense something guarded, almost anxious in her features. She wore faded boots, jeans, and a white cuffed shirt. The computer on her metal desk was at least ten years old. Paper files were scattered over the desk’s surface.
They had passed two cars in the driveway, a shiny black new Lexus convertible and a rusted-out ancient Ford pickup truck. Decker thought he knew which vehicle belonged to Norris and which one to his secretary.
A moment later Willie Norris walked into the room. He was short and portly with slicked-back graying hair. His chin was pointed, his nose as narrow and spiny as a mountain ridge, and his eyes were two bits of coal in fleshy sockets. He wore an ill-fitting three-piece gray suit. A cigarette dangled from one hand.
“Come on back, come on back,” said Norris, waving a flabby hand.
He shut the door behind them.
Decker looked around the room, which clearly had once been a bedroom. Where the closet had been was a built-in shelf filled with plastic binders. The man’s desk was an antique partner’s desk with elaborate moldings. A grimy square of rug was set under the furniture. On the wall were a series of framed certificates indicating membership in a variety of insurance organizations.
Norris sat down behind his desk and motioned to them to take seats opposite him. He took one final drag on his smoke and then ground it out in an overstuffed ashtray.
He smiled ruefully. “I wouldn’t even insure myself,” he said. “Obese, smoker, bad lungs, worse kidneys.”
“Never too late to start a new chapter,” said Jamison pleasantly.
“Think it’s a little late for me. But you folks looking for insurance?”
“For my sister, yes. She just lost her husband.”
“Overdose?” said Norris, a little too quickly.
“No, why would you think that?” asked Jamison.
“You must not be from around here. You’re young, so I assume your sister is too. And her husband. Young man dies around here, it’s either a DUI that went way bad, or it’s an overdose.”
“He died in an industrial accident.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Can you give me some information about the process of getting insurance?”
“Sure can.”
He pulled open a drawer, riffled through it, and handed Jamison a folder with some loose pages inside. “That will help her start the application process, but I can answer any questions you might have or she can set up an appointment to meet with me.”
Decker said, “I assume she’ll need to take a medical exam and go through some sort of background check, in addition to filling out the application?”
“Depends on how much coverage she wants. You got companies giving out small policies with no medical exam and no real due diligence. They’re just counting on the actuarial tables, but I don’t like to do business that way. Especially here.”
“Because of all the overdoses?” said Decker.
“That’s right. Young man, old man, don’t matter. One wrong pill, you’re dead.”
“How much life insurance can somebody buy?” asked Decker.
“Depends on the individual and what the underwriter will approve. If you want a policy for a ton of money that is out of whack for your personal situation, then that’s going to be a problem. Also depends on what you do for a living. If your job is working in a daycare that’s one thing. If you’re a police officer or a fireman that’ll be a factor. An underwriter may not write that policy, or the premiums would be higher. Or the policy might even exclude from coverage your dying from something related to your profession. So if you’re a cop and get shot in the line of duty, it won’t pay out.”
“My sister is thirty-three and in excellent health, and she’s a homemaker with a young daughter.” She glanced at the overflowing ashtray. “And she doesn’t smoke.”
“Okay, I can’t commit to anything based on that, of course, but how much insurance is she looking at?”
“A million, maybe more? I mean, how much is normal?”
“One person’s normal is another person’s abnormal,” said Norris, chuckling. “But there are basic parameters. Now, there are different types of life insurance. You have whole life and universal. They’re more like savings plans that actually build up cash value and that you can borrow against and such. Now, universal life insurance policies have some more flexibility than a whole life policy, but I think what you’re talking about is good old-fashioned term life insurance. It only pays out upon death. They come with fixed premiums for a certain period of time. Ten, twenty, or thirty years is typical. Now, you got a young kid who’ll need support for many years, you’ll want a higher policy amount. Or if the insured is a high earner, then you’ll want more to continue to support a certain lifestyle in the event they die, that sort of thing. Key man policies are often issued to cover the life of important executives, and the beneficiary is the business. But that’s obviously not your sister’s situation.”
“What would the premiums run for someone like my sister?”
“Don’t hold me to it, but for someone her age and healthy, generally speaking, for a twenty-year policy for a million bucks, you’re looking at four hundred bucks a year in premium payments. For a thirty-year term, a little over six hundred bucks a year. That’s strictly actuarial tables talking. Odds are she’ll live another fifty years or so. Of course, after, for example, the thirty-year term is up, she can keep paying the next layer of premiums. But then your sister would be close to her mid-sixties, and the premiums would be a lot higher, so she might just let the policy lapse. That way, the insurance company has collected twenty or thirty years’ worth of premiums from the insured and not paid out a dime.”
“Nice business, if you can get it,” noted Jamison.
“Selling insurance is a for-profit business, after all,” Norris said, with a laugh tacked on.
Jamison glanced at Decker and then said to Norris, “Thanks, I’ll give these materials to my sister and she can follow up with you.”
“Sounds good.”
Norris rose.
However, Decker remained sitting and said, “We were referred to you by Linda Drews.”
Norris slowly sat back down. “Oh, right.” He shook his head sadly. “That was tough. Her son dying like that. Broke my heart.”
“Yeah. She said he had hurt his back at work and was on painkillers.”
“Right.”
“That didn’t affect his ability to get life insurance?” asked Decker.
Norris eyed him keenly. “I’d love to keep jawing, but the fact is I’ve got an appointment to get to.” He stood. “Jenny can show you out.”
As they left the office and headed to their truck Jamison said, “You really spooked him.”
Decker nodded. “I think he knows we’re FBI.”
“Is this some sort of insurance scam?” she asked.
“Could be.”
“The premiums he quoted are pretty low. I doubt most people would need help to pay them.”
“Maybe not,” he said.
“You’re obviously thinking about something,” she said, staring at him.
“I’m remembering something Fred Ross told me.”
“What’s that?”
“That nothing in Baronville is really illegal.”