B is for Burglar

Pam is petite, a bristly little chihuahua of a human being. She's the only woman I ever met who claims to be ten years older than she actually is so that everyone will tell her how young she looks. On that basis, she swears she's thirty-eight. Her face is small, her skin dusky and she applies pancake makeup in varying shades in a vain attempt to add "planes" to her cheeks. I got news for her. There's no way to disguise the bags under your eyes by the skillful use of "cover." From most angles anybody with a brain can see the bags sitting right there, only looking phantom white instead of gray. Who's fooled by this? Why not go for the dark circles and at least look exotic and worldly-wise… Anna Magnani, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret perhaps. Pam had also taken lately to a permanent wave, so her pale brown hair looked frizzy and unkempt, a style apparently billed as "the bedroom look." That afternoon she was done up in a little hunting outfit: a hacking jacket, brown knickers, pink hose and low heels with buckles. The only hunting she did was in singles bars, bagging one-night stands as though the season were nearly over and her license about to expire. Well, wait a minute here. I can see I've been unfair about this. I don't like Pam any more than she likes me. Every time I see her, it makes me feel petty and mean-not my favorite way to experience myself. Maybe she avoids me for the same reason.

Her cubicle is near the front-a status symbol, I think. She caught sight of me and busied herself with papers and files. By the time I'd made my way over to her desk, she was on the phone. She must have been talking to a man because her manner was flirtatious. She touched herself everywhere as she talked, rolling a lock of hair around her finger, checking an earring, stroking the lapel of her jacket. She wore a series of gold necklaces and those got a workout too. Sometimes she'd rub her chin with a loop of gold chain, uttering a carefree, trilling laugh she must have practiced late at night. She glanced at me, feigning surprise, holding up a palm to indicate that I'd have to wait.

She turned away from me in her swivel chair, completing the telephone exchange with a murmured intimacy of some sort. On top of a stack of files on her desk, I could see a copy of Cosmo, offering articles on the G spot, cosmetic breast surgery, and social rape.

Pam hung up at long last and swiveled back, all the animation leaving her face. No point in wasting the whole show on me. "Something I can help you with, Kinsey?"

"I understand you wrote a couple of policies for Leonard and Marty Grice." "That's right."

I smiled slightly. "Could you tell me the status of the paperwork at this point?"

Pam broke eye contact, going through another quick digital survey: earring, hair, lapel. She took up a loop of gold chain, running her index finger back and forth on it until I worried she'd saw right through the skin. She wanted to tell me Leonard Grice was none of my business, but she knew I did occasional work for California Fidelity. "What's the problem?"

"No problem," I said. "Vera Lipton's wondering about the claim on the fire loss and I need to know if there were any other policies in effect."

"Now, wait a minute. Leonard Grice is a very dear man and he's been through a terrible six months. If California Fidelity intends to make trouble, Vera better deal directly with me."

"Who said anything about trouble? Vera can't even process the claim until the proof of loss is in."

"That goes without saying, Kinsey," she said. "I still don't see what this has to do with you." I could feel my smile begin to set like a pan of fudge. I leaned forward, left hand flat on the desk, right hand resting on my hip. I thought it was time to clarify our relationship. "Not that it's any of your business, Pam, but I'm in the middle of a big investigation adjunctive to this. You don't have to cooperate, but I'm just going to turn around and present a court order to the supervisor here and somebody's going to come down on you like a ton of bricks for all the trouble it'll cause. Now is that how you want to proceed on this or what?"

Under the pancake makeup, she began to show signs of sunburn. "I hope you don't think you can intimidate me," she said.

"Absolutely not." I shut my mouth then and let her assimilate the threat. I thought it sounded pretty good.

She took up a stack of papers and rapped them on the desk, aligning the edges. "Leonard Grice was insured through

California Fidelity Life and California Fidelity Casualty Insurance. He collected twenty-five hundred dollars for the life insurance and he'll get twenty-five thousand for the structural damage to the house. The contents were uninsured."