But what about it? He was insured. He’s dead. You pick up the tab. Looks cut and dried to me. I figure he cost me fifty to seventy-five thousand, depending on when and if I might have got hurt in the natural course of events, playing. And now he’s cost you a hundred grand. That’s a pretty good night’s work for one souse, but I don’t see what either of us can do about it now unless maybe we send out for a box of Kleenex and have a good cry.”

“I’d just like to ask you a few questions. If you don’t mind.”

I shrugged. “Go ahead. But I don’t see how there can be much room for doubt he’s dead. He was buried while I was there in the hospital.”

“I know. Just say we’re still a little curious as to how he died.”

I stared at him. “Don’t you read the papers?”

“Only the funnies. And today’s horoscope.”

“Everybody knows how he died. He was killed in the wreck when he sideswiped me and knocked me off the road.”

“Sure. I know. I read the Highway Patrol report. I talked to the officers. I talked to the doctor. I talked to the other witnesses that were there when they untangled him from the wreck. I talked to you in the hospital. Now I’m talking to you again. It’s a living.”

“You don’t believe he was killed in the wreck?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Why else?”

“Routine, Harlan. Any time a policy-holder dies violently, without witnesses right at the scene—”

“Bat sweat,” I said. “Five months after it happened, and you’re still poking around in it. Why?”

“We never close a case until we’re sure.”

“Well, look. He must have been alive when he passed me. I never heard of a corpse driving a car, even the way he was driving it. And when they took him out of it he was dead, with his head caved in. What, else do you want?”

“I don’t know,” he said.