Death Claims by Joseph Hansen Page A

the insurance we need." 
    "The death-claims division," Dave said. "It's about a former patient of his. A man who drowned." 
    "Oh?" She frowned, but she stopped moving the door. She turned and spoke into the room. "Phil?" 
    The chair De Kalb unfolded from faced the television set, but he hadn't been watching. He'd been reading. The book was in his hand. Gray and heavy. A medical text. He kept a finger in it as he came to the door. He looked young, but he walked old, a stoop to his shoulders. He was tall and lanky, a towhead like his wife and kids. His eyes were Delft too but hidden under a bony thrust of brow. His ears stuck out. They didn't look adaptable to a stethoscope. 
    "Thanks," he told his wife, and she gave him a smile that was brief but real and led the little girl away, and he asked Dave, "What's the problem?" 
    Dave gave him a card. "It's about John Oats." 
    "Ah." De Kalb winced and shook his head. "That was tragic, damn it." He stepped back. "Come in." 
    The room he led Dave to was down steps and out of range of the television gunshots. Desk and coffee table were deal. Easy chair and couch were tawny corduroy. The walls were knotty pine and crowded with glittering sports trophies on wooden brackets, sports photographs in frames. A few were team pictures — baseball, basketball. But most were of De Kalb solo. Younger but unmistakable. Head thrown back, muscles strained like wires, face twisted in agony, chest snapping a track-meet tape. Leaping straight as an exclamation point to slam back a high drive on a tennis court, packed bleachers in the background. Jackknifed in mid-air over a tourney swimming pool. No wonder he walked old. He laid the book on the desk, dropped into the easy chair, nodded at the couch. 
    "I don't understand it," he said. "John was doing just fine. Considering the extent and severity of his burns, he'd come back very well. No sign of liver dysfunction, which is what you really fear in these cases. He was a happy man the last time I saw him. Why would he kill himself?" 
    "Did he?" Dave sat and lit a cigarette. "The coroner's jury called it accident." 
    "Hah. They never swam with him." De Kalb stretched a long arm, rattled open a drawer of the desk, brought out an ashtray. "Scars and all, he could outlast me." 
    It was a little glass square, the kind non-smokers keep. A redand- black ad for an unpronounceable drug product was stenciled on its bottom. Dave set it on the couch arm. "Where?" he asked. 
    "Arena Blanca. He asked me there for drinks and dinner, Christmas week. After sundown, we swam. Before, we sailed. With a friend of Peter's. His boat? I don't know. Catboat, twentyfooter. Very pleasant. That's a pretty bay, sheltered by those hills. Calm." 
    "Do you remember the friend's name?" "I wouldn't have, but I've run into him since. Jay McPhail. He works nights and weekends at the drugstore in that new shopping center. On the coast road. Not far from the turnoff to Arena Blanca. Yup. Some developer will make a packet off all that white sand and blue water, once the rich old widows who own those rickety places die off." 
    "One of them did. April Stannard's mother." 
    "Nice girl." De Kalb frowned. "That's another thing. Why would he kill himself when he had a lovely girl like that? She really cared about him. She was at that hospital — " 
    "Night and day," Dave said. "Eve Oats told me. She also told me to ask you if he was still in pain." 
    De Kalb stared. "Pain? Certainly not." 
    "Then why was he on morphine?" 
    De Kalb sat up sharply. "What?" 
    "You weren't at the inquest?" 
    "No. I was in New York. For a meeting of dermatologists." Bleak smile. "Also for the Indoor Track and Field Champion- ships. Took off from L.A. International that same night. The night John died. Didn't know that then, not till I got back. But flying you remember the weather. And it was raining, yes, but you couldn't really call it a storm. No wind to speak of. The bay wouldn't have been