people, clones? You see what I mean?”
“No,” said Becker who understood but wanted to encourage the man to speak.
Chaney took an impatient breath. Laymen were slow, no two ways about it. He was leading Becker down a lengthy corridor toward the actuary pool.
“People are different,” said Chaney. “We aren’t Paramecium, we aren’t lab mice or fruit flies all grown from the same egg fertilized in a petri dish. We have to expect the random in all of us. An average is just what you get when you cut off the heads of the tallest and put the shortest on stools. It’s an arithmetic construct. You follow? No one is really average. Just as no one could really be as bland as Dyce seemed to be. No matter how vanilla pudding he was on the outside, I knew there had to be something going on inside, some quirk to make him human. What did he do, exactly?”
Becker looked down on Chaney’s shaven head. The stubble on the sides of his skull where he still had hair was growing dark. A five-o’clock-shadow on the head, Becker thought. The ridge atop the skull was pronounced, almost pointed.
“This is just a routine investigation, for background purposes primarily.”
“Sure,” said Chaney. “That’s why the boss is all over himself to get me to cooperate. Come on, you can tell me. What did the little bastard do?”
“We’re not sure he did anything,” said Becker. “That’s why we’re investigating.”
Chaney tilted his head and gave Becker a knowing smirk as they paused outside the actuarial office. Becker wondered if everyone else had the same urge to rap the man’s parietal bone with his knuckles.
“He hated me, of course,” said Chaney. “Might as well get that on the record in case he talks about me.”
“Why is that?”
“Jealousy. You probably don’t know this, but actuaries are actually a pretty unorthodox bunch. We’re the artists of the insurance business, you might say. Perhaps you didn’t know that, if you get your information from herd movies and the like, but we’re all rebels.”
“I’d heard that about actuaries.”
“You’re joking, of course, officer, but it’s true. Insurance people as a whole are not very colorful; that’s a demand of the business. People want to think they’re being insured by someone as sober and conservative as a U.S. President. Not overly bright, but foursquare, you know? But actuaries are a different breed.”
He plucked at the gray cardigan sweater he wore. It looked to Becker as if it had earned its grayness from incessant wear, but Chaney was clearly proud of it. It was an emblem of his independence.
“You don’t see executives in any other department out of suit and tie.”
“And this is why Dyce was jealous of you?”
“Not the sweater, the attitude. A little dash, a little style. He always wore a suit and tie. He was senior to me, you know. Oh, yeah. I went right over his head and he hated me for it, I’m sure. Not that he ever let on. He never let on to anything.”
Chaney pushed open the door as if it were the gates of a castle.
“Here’s the guts of the industry,” he said. “Or a better analogy would be the brains. Without us, the insurance industry would be working blind.”
“That would make you the eyes,” said Becker, but Chaney appeared not to hear.
The actuarial pool was a large room crowded with people at computer screens. Accordion piles of computer printouts sat by each desk, and everyone seemed to be either reading the printouts or tapping buttons on the consoles. At first glance there was nothing to distinguish it from the work warrens of many other industries, nor anything to verify Chaney’s claim of a wild and crazy breed of workers. Becker noted that it appeared to be a singularly male calling. There were only three women among the more than thirty employees.
“Dyce worked here,” said Chaney, switching on the computer at the empty desk. “He was doing some of the basic research on the Steinkraus file. Under my direction, of course.”
Becker went carefully through the desk drawers, searching without expectation. He was not disappointed to find nothing beyond the essentials of office work.
“You know Steinkraus Industries, of course. The holding company? It’s my baby.”
Chaney nodded toward the screen where columns of figures meaningless to Becker vibrated ever so slightly as if waiting their turn to dance.
“Quite a job,” said Becker. Chaney grinned proudly and nodded. “Was Dyce working on anything else?”
“Not at the moment. Not officially at any rate.”
“And unofficially?”
“I could look at his files,” Chaney said, pushing a key and summoning up the contents of Dyce’s computer.
“Treat me as a computer illiterate,” Becker said.
“Well… he was working on a lot of things, or had been in the past. It would take awhile to figure out just what. Some of it is here, and some of it-see that symbol there? — that means he was accessing other computers to get more data. It will take a little doing to find out what exactly is in there.”
“But you could do it?”
“Of course I could do it.”
“Sounds pretty complicated.”
“Oh, please. I could get this done in a couple of days.”
“How about by tonight?”
Chaney hesitated, his eyes scanning the busy room as if counting up the hours he would need.
“I can bring some agency experts in to help,” said Becker innocently.
“I doubt they’d really understand it all, don’t you? No offense.”
“You don’t offend me,” said Becker. “ I don’t understand any of it. Computers are a complete mystery to me, not to mention actuarial science. That’s why I rely on someone with your expertise. I suppose there is someone else around here I could ask if you’re too busy.”
“No one who can do it the way I can.”
“By tonight?”
Chaney sniffed and squared his shoulders under the cardigan.
“Check back by eight,” he said. “I’ll be able to tell you what Dyce ate for breakfast.”
“I know what he ate,” said Becker. “I want you to tell me why.”
They pulled off the thruway exit ramp as the sun was setting behind the snaggle-toothed silhouette of the Bridgeport skyline. Dyce talked calmly but incessantly as he directed Helen toward the water, seeking by instinct the poor and then poorer sections of the battered city. When he had her pull into the empty lot of a warehouse, the sun was creeping into the greasy waters of Long Island Sound.
Helen seemed to have slipped into a kind of trance induced by terror and Dyce’s chatter, and he continued to drone on to sustain it.
“That’s very good, Helen, very good. This is not a bad place, is it? A little paint, a little elbow grease, but you know what neighborhoods like this are like. It’s hard to find anyone who cares anymore; people will live just anywhere. Now, Helen, I have a plan. What we’re going to do is protect you from the police.”
He gripped her right arm and she jerked involuntarily, then calmed. Through the windshield she could count the windows on the warehouse. They were cast high up under the eaves, serving for light and ventilation, not vision. Helen counted the windows, then the number of panes in each window, then the number of panes on the whole building, then the number of broken panes. On the highway she had done it with cars, cars passed, cars passing. It seemed to stretch the time; with each car counted, she was alive that much longer.
Dyce ran his fingers up and down the underside of her exposed arm. “This is not my idea,” he said. “They’re making me do it. That man who was at your house, it’s his idea. I mean, he’s responsible for this. I want you to know this; this is definitely not my idea.” He sounded disgusted.
A pigeon fluttered through one of the broken panes and entered the warehouse, safely home for the evening. Helen wondered if the birds ever cut their wings on the broken glass. She felt the cold of Dyce’s knife against her arm; but she didn’t feel it. She saw him holding it there; but she didn’t see him. She heard him but only the tone, which was soft, almost a lullaby- the words made no sense. She clung to his voice, which had been nonstop for the last half hour. As long as she heard him, she was still alive.
