He nodded, and turned away. Then he paused. "I didn't mean to bawl you
out for that phone call, Tom," he said. "Just tell her about the rule,
will you?"
"Sure. Oh, one thing." He waited. I coughed. "This girl, Rena. I don't
know much about her, you know. Is she, well, someone you know?"
He said, "Heavens, no. She was making a pest out of herself around
here, frankly. She has a claim, but not a very good one. I don't know
all the details, because it's encoded, but the machines turned it down
automatically. I do know that she, uh--" he sort of half winked--"wants
a favor. Her old man is in trouble. I'll look it up for you some time,
if you want, and get the details. I think he's in the cooler--that is,
the clinic--up at Anzio."
He scratched his plump jowls. "I didn't think it was fair to you
for me to have a girl at dinner and none for you; Susan promised to
bring someone along, and this one was right here, getting in the way.
She said she liked Americans, so I told her you would be assigned to
her case." This time he did wink. "No harm, of course. You certainly
wouldn't be influenced by any, well, personal relationship, if you
happened to get into one. Oh, a funny thing. She seemed to recognize
your name."
_That_ was a jolt. "She what?"
Gogarty shrugged. "Well, she reacted to it. 'Thomas Wills,' I said.
She'd been acting pretty stand-offish, but she warmed up quick. Maybe
she just likes the name, but right then is when she told me she liked
Americans."
I cleared my throat. "Mr. Gogarty," I said determinedly, "please get
me straight on something. You say this girl's father is in some kind
of trouble, and you imply she knows me. I want to know if you've ever
had any kind of report, or even heard any kind of rumor, that would
make you think that I was in the least sympathetic to any anti-Company
groups? I'm aware that there were stories--"
He stopped me. "I never heard any, Tom," he said definitely.
I hesitated. It seemed like a good time to open up to Gogarty; I
opened my mouth to start, but I was too late. Susan called him off for
what she claimed was an urgent phone call and, feeling let-down, I
watched him waddle away.
Because it was, after all, time that I took down my back hair with my
boss.
* * * * *
Well, I hadn't done anything too terribly bad--anyway, I hadn't _meant_
to do anything bad. And the circumstances sort of explained it, in a
way. And it was all in the past, and--
And nothing. I faced the facts. I had spent three solid weeks getting
blind drunk, ranting and raving and staggering up to every passer-by
who would listen and whining to him that the Company was evil, the
Company was murderous, the Company had killed my wife.
There was no denying it. And I had capped it all off one bleary
midnight, with a brick through the window of the Company branch office
that served my home. It was only a drunken piece of idiocy, I kept
telling myself. But it was a drunken piece of idiocy that landed me in
jail, that had been permanently indorsed on every one of my policies,
that was in the confidential pages of my Company service record. It
was a piece of idiocy that anyone might have done. But it would have
meant deep trouble for me, if it hadn't been for the intercession of my
wife's remote relative, Chief Underwriter Defoe.
It was he who had bailed me out. He had never told me how he had found
out that I was in jail. He appeared, read the riot-act to me and got
me out. He put me over the coals later, yes, but he'd bailed me out.
He'd told me I was acting like a child--and convinced me of it, which
was harder. And when he was convinced I had snapped out of it, he
personally backed me for an appointment to the Company's school as a
cadet Claims Adjuster.
I owed a considerable debt of gratitude to my ex-remote-in-law, Chief
Underwriter Defoe.
* * * * *
While I still was brooding, Gogarty came back. He looked unhappy.
"Hammond," he said bitterly. "He's missing. Look, was he drunk when
you left him last night?" I nodded. "Thought so. Never showed up for
work. Not at his quarters. The daily ledger's still open at his office,
because there's no responsible person to sign it. So naturally I've got
to run out to Caserta now, and what Susan will say--" He muttered away.
I remembered the file that was buried under the papers on my desk, when
he mentioned Susan's name.
As soon as he was out of the office, I had it open.
And as soon as I had it open, I stared at it in shock.
The title page of the sheaf inside was headed: Signorina Renata
dell'Angela. Age 22; daughter of Benedetto dell'Angela; accepted to
general Class-AA; no employment. There were more details.
But across all, in big red letters, was a rubber stamp: _Policy
Canceled. Reassigned Class-E._
It meant that the sad-eyed Rena was completely uninsurable.