I drew a breath. “This isn’t easy to ask, but your son was listed on the policy.”
Her look scorched me. “My son, my son died. It was because of him we went after a bigger policy, thinking to leave him a little something besides our funerals, Mr. Sommers’s and mine. Muscular dystrophy, our boy had. And in case you’re thinking, Oh, well, they cashed the policy to pay his medical bills, let me tell you, miss, Mr. Sommers worked two shifts for four years, paying those bills. I had to quit my job to take care of my son when he got too sick to move anymore. After he passed, I worked two shifts, too, to get rid of the bills. At the nursing home where I was an aide. If you’re going to pry into all my private details you can have that one without charging my nephew a nickel for it: the Grand Crossing Elder Care Home. But you can go snooping through my life. Maybe I have a secret drinking vice—you’ll go ask them at the church where I became a Christian and where my husband was a deacon for forty-five years. Maybe Mr. Sommers gambled and used all my housekeeping money. That’s the way you plan on ruining my reputation, isn’t it.”
I looked at her steadily. “So you won’t let me ask you any questions about the policy. And you can’t think of anyone who might have cashed it in. You don’t have other nephews or nieces besides Mr. Isaiah Sommers who might have?”
Again her gaze turned to the wall. On an impulse, I asked her who the other boy was in the picture of Alderman Durham with her son.
“That’s my nephew Colby. And no, you’re not getting a shot along with the cops to pin something on him, nor yet on the alderman’s Empower Youth Energy organization. Alderman Durham has been a good friend, to my family and to this neighborhood. And his group gives boys something to do with their time and energy.”
It didn’t seem like the right time or place to ask about the rumors that EYE members hustled campaign contributions with a judicious use of muscle. I turned back to the papers in front of us and asked about Rick Hoffman.
“What was he like? Can you imagine him stealing the policy from you?”
“Oh, what do I know about him? Except, like I said, his leather book that he ticked off our names in. He could have been Adolf Hitler for all I know.”
“Did he sell insurance to a lot of people in this building?” I persisted.
“And why do you want to know that?”
“I’d like to find out if other people who bought from him had the same experience you did.”
At that she finally looked at me, instead of through me. “In this building, no. At where Aaron—Mr. Sommers—worked, yes. My husband was at South Branch Scrap Metal. Mr. Hoffman knew people want to be buried decent, so he came around to places like that on the South Side, must have had ten or twenty businesses he’d hit on Friday afternoon. Sometimes he’d collect at the shop yard, sometimes he’d come here, it all depended on his schedule. And Aaron, Mr. Sommers, he paid his five dollars a week for fifteen years, until he was paid up.”
“Would you have any way of knowing the names of some of the other people who bought from Hoffman?”
She studied me again, trying to assess whether this was a soft sell, and deciding finally to take a chance that I was being genuine. “I could give you four names, the men my husband worked with. They all bought from Hoffman because he made it easy, coming around like he did. Does this mean you understand I’m telling the truth about this?” She swept a hand toward my documents, still without looking at them.
I grimaced. “I have to consider all the possibilities, Ms. Sommers.”
She eyed me bitterly. “I know my nephew meant it for the best, hiring you, but if he’d known how little respect you’d have—”
“I’m not disrespecting you, Ms. Sommers. You told your nephew you’d talk to me. You know the kinds of questions this must raise: there’s a death certificate with your husband’s name on it, with your name on it as the presenter, dated almost ten years ago, with a check made out to you through the Midway Insurance Agency. Someone cashed it. If I’m going to find out who, I have to start somewhere. It would help me believe you if I could find other people this same thing happened to.”
Her face pinched up with anger, but after sitting in silence while the clock ticked off thirty seconds, she pulled a lined notepad from under the telephone. Wetting her index finger, she turned the pages of a weather-beaten address book and finally wrote down a series of names. Still without speaking, she handed the list to me.
The interview was over. I picked my way back along the unlit hall and down the stairs. The baby was still wailing. Outside, the men were still huddled over the Chevy.