Free Death Benefits by Thomas Perry

out,” prompted Stillman. “What did she tell you?”
    He needed an answer, and he was stuck with the lie that he had only taken her out once. He settled on the first time, at the Italian restaurant. He would answer questions about that. “As I remember, I guess she talked mostly about the future.”
    “That’s what I wanted to hear,” said Stillman. “We seem to be in it, so I’d like to know what the hell it is.”
    Walker tried to bring it back. “She had a kind of overall strategy. She was convinced that a woman in a big company like McClaren’s had to make things happen, or they wouldn’t.”
    “Are we talking about endearing ourselves to upper management? Dirty old men my age?”
    “If we were, I didn’t get it. What she said was that she had to be patient. Getting herself into the San Francisco office would put her into competition she couldn’t beat.”
    “Like who?”
    Walker shrugged. “Men, I guess. I think she mentioned Kennedy as an example. People who went to better colleges, and were just as bright and worked just as hard as she did.”
    “Who else?”
    “Well . . . me,” he said uncomfortably. “But it was just because if she hadn’t said that, she probably thought I would have been uncomfortable. She wanted to be in one of the branch offices, but a particular kind. She said she didn’t want to insure ship’s cargoes or satellite launches or something, because the customers are the sort of men who wouldn’t take her seriously. She said cute and perky weren’t qualities they looked for.”
    “It sounds like something that might be true. But what about the tone? When she said it, what was her voice like? Bitter? Angry?”
    “Not really. She figured that things were improving for women, but the time wasn’t right yet. She said if there were layoffs at McClaren’s, she’d be safer in an office with four people than in one with four hundred. She would concentrate on family stuff: life insurance gets bought by men, but the survivors are widows, and the minute there’s a payoff, they’re women with more money than their husbands had the day they died. There’s no tax on it, either. But the tax kicks in hard for the next generation, so she would sell them life insurance to pay that for the kids, and probably long-term-care insurance because they were alone now, and if the money was big enough, she’d convince them to let the company manage it.” He shrugged. “She figured that who she was and the way she looked would give her an edge.”
    “What did you think?”
    “The numbers add up the way she thought they did—actuarial tables on male-female longevity, and so on. I don’t know if the rest of it does. There are too many intangibles. It seemed smart at the time—she
is
cute and perky, and maybe that’s the audience for it. Almost any plan seems smart to you if you don’t have a plan.”
    “So she ended up in Pasadena. Did she plan that too?”
    “She said that was one of her choices. There was Pasadena, some place in Orange County, Scottsdale in Arizona, Palm Beach in Florida, a couple of others. The idea was to be in a place where the demographics work out—income level, age of population, and so on.” He let his drink swirl around, listening to the ice on the glass.
    Stillman looked at him speculatively. “She must have sold a lot of insurance to make assistant manager in a year and a half. That’s a rank above the rest of you, right?”
    Walker nodded. “She said that would happen—that promotions come more quickly on the front lines. And she must have made something on commissions. If she made a dollar, it’s more than an analyst gets.”
    “But what was the point of it—the end?”
    Walker smiled. “I got the impression that in twenty years, when the rest of us have become permanent drudges in our cubicles, and some have killed each other off in main-office politics, she expects to come back. If present trends play out, in those twenty years the status