“Munich RE is the largest firm in Germany. A friend of mine, Philipp Dietrich, is head of their claims adjustment department. It so happens he’s looking for a new claims investigator. An adjustor. And it strikes me you’d be very good at that.”
“It’s true I know plenty about risks—I’ve been taking them all my life—but I know nothing about insurance, except that I don’t have any.”
“‘Claims adjustor’ is just a polite way of describing someone who’s paid to find out if people are lying. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what you used to do at the Alex? You were a seeker after the truth, were you not? You were good at it, too, if memory serves.”
“Best leave those memories alone. If you don’t mind. They belonged to a man with a different name.”
“The splash around the Alex was that for a while you were the best detective in the Murder Commission. An expert.”
“I certainly saw a lot of murders. But take my advice, if you’re looking for truth, don’t ask an expert on anything. What you’ll get is an opinion, which is something very different. Besides, cops and detectives aren’t experts, Max, they’re gamblers. They deal in probabilities, just like that French fellow Pascal. This guy is probably guilty and this guy is probably innocent, and then we leave it to you lawyers. The only people who will always say they’re telling you the truth are priests and witnesses in court, which gives you a pretty good idea of what truth is worth.”
“Working for MRE has more of a future than working in a mortuary, I’d have thought.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Max. We’re all going to end up there sooner or later.”
“I’m serious. Look, give me a few days to speak to Dietrich about you. And let me stake you to a new suit. Yes, why not? For an interview. It’s the least I can do after what you’ve done for me. Tell me that you’ll consider this. And give me an answer in the morning. But don’t leave it any longer than that. Like the saying goes, the morning has gold in its mouth.”
“All right, all right. Just as long as you stop being so damned grateful to me. Kindness might seem like the golden chain that holds society together but it breaks me up. I can’t take it. Not anymore. I know just where I am when people are cruel or indifferent. That never disappoints. But for Christ’s sake don’t be kind to me. Not without a parachute.”
TEN
–
A short walk from the English Garden, Munich RE was headquartered on Königinstrasse, close by the German Automobile Club, in an ochre-colored four-story building of some antiquity that was the size and shape of a small university, with an Ionic colonnade and lots of trompe l’oeil stucco. The rusticated wooden doors and tall iron railings looked like an insurance man’s dream with all security risks covered: a Gypsy parliament couldn’t have broken into the place. One of the two wings at either side of a paved courtyard was being renovated and several gardeners were sweeping the snow away from the main door, probably in case anyone slipped on it and fell and made a claim. Most of the cars parked out front were new Mercedes-Benzes or BMWs, without so much as a scratch on any of them. Clearly there were some very careful drivers in that part of Munich, unlike the rest of the city, and all of them insured. If you’d told me the building was the police headquarters or the central criminal court or an archbishop’s palace I’d have believed you; and from the ritzy look of the place I concluded that it had been a while since they’d paid out on a suspect policy.
I went along to the side entrance on Thiemstrasse. Above another robust-looking door was the stone head of a woman badly scarred by flying shrapnel, like many others in Munich. Inside the door was a reception area where tradesmen were welcome and that was almost true; it was staffed by two women who were just as stone-faced as the one outside. Behind them were two fire extinguishers, a bucket of sand, a fire hose, and a substantial fire alarm. Just being in that building felt as if it was going to add at least a year to my life.
Herr Dietrich came down and fetched me up to his second-floor office himself, which was decent of him. He was tall and substantially overweight and like everyone else in there—me included, thanks to Max Merten—he wore a granite-gray suit that, I soon learned, reflected his attitude to insurance claimants. He had very large ears and walked in a neat, girlish way, with his wrists pointed at the ground as if balancing on a tightrope or—and more likely—as if he’d been told to walk and not run in case his gray bulk caused an accident. In his modern office overlooking the extensive back gardens, he offered me a seat and then served me his entire worldview along with a cup of good coffee and a glass of water on a little steel tray.
“Insurance is all about statistics,” he said. “And in this department, those statistics are, more often than not, little more than crime figures, on account of how a great many customers are crooks. Not that Herr Alzheimer likes me to come right out and say as much. Herr Alzheimer is the chairman of Munich RE and diplomatic, to say the least. It’s bad business to mention all the crooks we insure. But my job is to call a spade a spade even when most people will argue that it’s a heart or a diamond. They don’t seem to realize that by putting in a false insurance claim they’re committing a serious fraud. But that’s what it is. And it happens every day. If I told you half
