He watched me utterly without expression, and then he shook his head again. “You’re a screwed duck.”

“That’s news?” I asked.

“No jury in the world would give you a nickel, even if you hadn’t already signed a waiver. Take a look at yourself. You got any idea how far you’d get trying to look smashed-up and pathetic to twelve average Joes with pots and fallen arches? They’d laugh like it was the Berle show.”

“You just came over to cheer me up, is that it?” I said. “I know all that. And I have signed the release, or waiver, or whatever you call it—”

“What did they give you?”

“Five thousand,” I said. “And the hospital bills.”

“You took the short end, pal.”

“In another year or two I might have figured that out myself. Look. The leg had healed perfectly. I was up and walking. Not even a limp. The medics said it was as good as ever—”

“And when you reported for practice, it wasn’t? You’d slowed down?”

“It’s not measurable,” I said. “The only way you can tell it is by trying to run through eleven pros who haven’t slowed down. You can figure it out then while they’re walking around on your face five yards back of where you should have been. It’s nothing you could prove to anybody. X-rays wouldn’t show it.”

He nodded, and moved his hands. “Motion is a thousand signals, and a thousand movements, linked. One square corner anywhere, and you break it up and the flow is gone. You’re not a professional athlete any more; you’re just another taxpayer with two arms and legs. There’s no shortage.”

“So why keep kicking it around?” I asked. “The whole thing was settled months ago.” Then I thought of something. “What’s the name of your outfit again?”

“Old Colony Life.”

“Hell, that wasn’t the company—”

“No. Of course not. I thought you understood that. We didn’t have anything to do with the liability he carried on the car. That was some California company.”

“Then what’s the angle? How’d you get in the act?”

“Life insurance. About a hundred thousand worth.”

I stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

He sighed. “Cannon was insured with Old Colony—”

“I read you,” I said. “That far.