She lived a few blocks from the Dan Ryan Expressway, in a rickety twelve-flat with a burnt-out building on one side and a lot with bits of masonry and rusted-out cars on the other. A couple of guys were leaning over the engine of an elderly Chevy when I pulled up. The only other person on the street was a fierce-looking woman muttering as she sucked from a brown paper bag.
The Sommerses’ doorbell didn’t seem to work, but the street door hung loosely on its hinges, so I went on into the building. The stairwell smelled of urine and stale grease. Dogs barked from behind several doors as I passed, briefly overwhelming the thin hopeless wail of a baby. I was so depressed by the time I reached Gertrude Sommers’s door that I was hard put to knock instead of beating a craven retreat.
A few minutes passed. Finally I heard a slow step and a deep voice calling to know who it was. I told her my name, that I was the detective her nephew had hired. She scraped back the three dead bolts holding the door and stood in the entrance for a moment, looking me over somberly before letting me in.
Gertrude Sommers was a tall woman. Even in old age she was a good two inches taller than my five-eight, and even in grief she held herself erect. She was wearing a dark dress that rustled when she walked. A black lace handkerchief, tucked in the cuff of her left sleeve, underscored her mourning. Looking at her made me feel grubby in my work-worn skirt and sweater.
I followed her into the apartment’s main room, standing until she pointed regally at the sofa. The bright floral upholstery was shielded in heavy plastic, which crackled loudly when I sat down.
The building’s squalor ended on her doorstep. Every surface that wasn’t encased in plastic shone with polish, from the dining table against the far wall to the clock with its fake chimes over the television. The walls were hung with pictures, many of the same smiling child, and a formal shot of my client and his wife on their wedding day. To my surprise, Alderman Durham was on the wall—once in a solo shot, and again with his arms around two young teens in his blue Empower Youth Energy sweatshirts. One of the boys was leaning on metal crutches, but both were beaming proudly.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Sommers. And sorry for the terrible mix-up over your husband’s life insurance.”
She folded her lips tightly. She wasn’t going to help.
I plowed ahead as best I could, laying the photocopies of the fraudulent death certificate and canceled insurance check in front of her. “I’m bewildered by this situation. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions about how it could have occurred.”
She refused to look at the documents. “How much did they pay you to come here and accuse me?”
“No one paid me to do that, and no one could pay me to do that, Ms. Sommers.”
“Easy words, easy words for you to say, young woman.”
“True enough.” I paused, trying to feel my way into her point of view. “My mother died when I was fifteen. If some stranger had cashed in her burial policy and then accused my dad of doing it, well, I can imagine what he would have done, and he was an easygoing guy. But if I can’t ask you any questions about this, how am I ever going to find out who cashed this policy all those years ago?”
She clamped her lips together, thinking it over, then said, “Have you talked to the insurance man, that Mr. Hoffman who came around every Friday afternoon before Mr. Sommers could spend his pay on drink, or whatever he imagined a poor black man would do instead of putting food on his family’s table?”
“Mr. Hoffman is dead. The agency is in the hands of the previous owner’s son, who doesn’t seem to know too much about the business. Did Mr. Hoffman treat your husband with disrespect?”
She sniffed. “We weren’t people to him. We were ticks in that book he carried around with him. Driving up in that big Mercedes like he did, we knew just where our hard-saved nickels went. And no way to question whether he was honest or not.”
“You think now he cheated you?”
“How else do you explain this?” She slapped the papers on the table, still without looking at them. “You think I am deaf, dumb, and blind? I know what goes on in this country with black folk and insurance. I read how that company in the south got caught charging black folk more than their policies were worth.”
“Did that happen to you?”
“No. But we paid. We paid and we paid and we paid. All to have it go up in smoke.”
“If you didn’t file the claim in 1991, and you don’t think your husband did, who would have?” I asked.
She shook her head, but her gaze inadvertently went to the wall of photographs.