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"Wherever the hell that is," Wally said

I reached Fordyce He sounded gruff and co "I could try calling him this afternoon," he said, "but I can't see why I'd have any better luck than you did Be more effective if I walk in unannounced"

He called the next day around noon I was out at the tie on ot someone who said she'd beep hi and it was him

"Slippery little prick," he said "I made a couple of calls yesterday just to find out who I was dealing with, and what I learned about Gary Garrison didn'twith hi with this viatical shit is legiti about the whole deal that e citizen want to puke"

"I knohat you mean"

"And Garrison himself has a checkered past He sold penny stocks for a while and got sued a few ties on two occasions Charges dropped both ti he's squeaky clean"

"No"

"There's been soulate the shit out of the a hell of a business, and his end of it's higher than a s they want to regulate"

"I figured he was ht for hi publicity because itto keep a low profile for fear that the regulators are going to regulate hiht out of business And even if this particular operation's honest, thea crook, so it's second nature for hi a direct question"

"One of nature's noblemen," I said

"Oh, he's a prince I let hiht have forency I didn't get around to naot real cooperative He's done business with your William Havemeyer three times in all The transactions involved policies with three different insurance coave me names and addresses and dates and numbers In addition to Byron Leopold, the men in whose lifespan William Havemeyer had a vested interest included a San Franciscan naon, resident named John Wilbur Settle Phillips was insured by Massachusetts Mutual, while Settle's coverage ith Integrity Life and Casualty

"Life and casualty," I said

"Yeah, they go hand in hand, don't they? I regret to say I don't knohat's becoentlemen Garrison can't say if they're alive or dead He doesn't follow up Once the policy's changed ownership and the transaction's completed, it's out of his hands"

"It won't be hard to find out the rest of it"

"Just ht"

He toldto cost me, and said he'd put a bill in the h, and certainly ca there myself I told him as much and thanked him for his efforts

"Any ti at here? Is your boy Have them off?"

"That's the way it feels," I said "But it all depends on what I learn from the insurance companies"

"That's a point If Phillips and Settle are still alive and taking nourishment, that'd weaken the theory soot excited at first I had a line on a serial murderer, I knew his name and where he lived, and nobody else in the world even suspected he existed I got a rush right in the old ego When I broke this one I'd have the ain, and this story would be national, not just local Maybe, I thought, instead of slipping out the service entrance I ought to ht head-on Maybe I should welco what a ive it half a chance In less ti on Letter a ca across the table fros of the cri around the country on a book tour before it struck me that the deaths of Harlan Phillips and John W Settle weren't quite enough to get William Havemeyer indicted for murder

Because they were supposed to die They'd had AIDS, both of them, and it had been sufficiently advanced as to meet the medical criteria established by the viatical transaction brokers Just because they were dead didn't mean Havemeyer killed them Mother Nature could have beaten him to the punch

So I made so to h choice between "Inside Edition" and "Hard Copy" Harlan Phillips had died in a hospice in the Mission District, two years and eight nosed with AIDS, and just short of a year after assigning his Mass Mutual policy to Willia himself to a trip abroad, no doubt with the windfall that blew his hen Havehty-four people drohen a Norwegian passenger ferry caught fire, burned, capsized, and sank in the Baltic Sea

I rereat deal of attention to it at the time I went to the library and determined that the fire had broken out as a result of a failure of the ship's electrical systehtly in excess of its legal capacity, and that many of the everybody was drunk Rescue efforts were delayed as a result of a communications snafu, but were nevertheless reasonably successful, with over nine hundred passengers and crewOf an even dozen Americans aboard, three were casualties, and the paper of record dutifully supplied their names They were Mr and Mrs D Carpenter, of Lafayette, Louisiana, and Mr J Settle, of Eugene, Oregon

So off to Oslo, then sneaking aboard the SS Magnar Syversen and crossing a couple of wires in the engine room Nor could I picture hi out IVs, say, or pressing a pillow over a ravaged face

I left the library and just walked for a while, not really payingIt was cold out and the wind had a nasty edge to it, but the air was fresh and clean the way it gets when there's a north wind blowing

When I got hoe on the machine Marty McGraw had called and left a number I called him back and he said he just wanted to keep in touch What was I working on these days?