Twelve Red Herrings Read online

  David scribbled his signature on three separate documents between two penciled crosses. His final act was to print Pat’s name in a little box Marvin had indicated with his stubby finger. “As your sole dependent,” the broker explained, “should you pass away before September 1, 2027—God forbid. Are you married to Pat?”

  “No, we just live together,” replied David.

  After a few more “my friends” and even more “you’ll never live to regret its,” Marvin left the apartment, clutching the forms.

  “All you have to do now is keep your nerve,” David told Pat once he had confirmed that the paperwork had been completed. “Just remember, no one knows me as well as you do, and once it’s all over, you’ll collect a million dollars.”

  When they eventually went to bed that night, Pat desperately wanted to make love to David, but they both accepted it was no longer possible.

  The two of them traveled to New York together the following Monday to keep the appointment David had made with Geneva Life’s senior medical consultant. They parted a block away from the insurance company’s head office, as they didn’t want to run the risk of being seen together. They hugged each other once again, but as they parted, David was still worried about whether Pat would be able to go through with it.

  A couple of minutes before twelve, he arrived at the surgery. A young woman in a long white coat smiled up at him from behind her desk.

  “Good morning,” he said. “My name is David Kravits. I have an appointment with Dr. Royston.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Kravits,” said the nurse. “Dr. Royston is expecting you. Please follow me.” She led him down a long, bleak corridor to the last room on the left. A small brass plaque read “Dr. Royston.” She knocked, opened the door and said, “Mr. Kravits, doctor.”

  Dr. Royston turned out to be a short, elderly man with only a few strands of hair left on his shiny sunburned head. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and had a look on his face that suggested that his own life insurance policy might not be far from reaching maturity. He rose from his chair, shook his patient by the hand and said, “It’s for a life insurance policy, if I remember correctly.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Shouldn’t take us too long, Mr. Kravits. Fairly routine, but the company does like to be sure you’re fit and well if they’re going to be liable for such a large amount of money. Do have a seat,” he said, pointing to the other side of his desk.

  “I thought the sum was far too high myself. I would have been happy to settle for half a million, but the broker was very persuasive …”

  “Any serious illness during the past ten years?” the doctor asked, obviously not interested in the broker’s views.

  “No. The occasional cold, but nothing I’d describe as serious,” he replied.

  “Good. And in your immediate family, any history of heart attacks, cancer, liver complaints?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Father still alive?”

  “Very much so.”

  “And he’s fit and well?”

  “Jogs every morning and pumps weights in the local gym on weekends.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Doesn’t do either, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she outlives him comfortably.”

  The doctor laughed. “Any of your grandparents still living?”

  “All except one. My dad’s father died two years ago.”

  “Do you know the cause of death?”

  “He just passed away, I think. At least, that was how the priest described it at his funeral.”

  “And how old was he?” the doctor asked. “Do you remember?”

  “Eighty-one, eighty-two.”

  “Good,” repeated Dr. Royston, ticking another little box on the form in front of him. “Have you ever suffered from any of these?” he asked, holding up a clipboard in front of him. The list began with arthritis and ended eighteen lines later with tuberculosis.

  He ran an eye slowly down the long list before replying. “No, none of them,” was all he said, not admitting to asthma on this occasion.

  “Do you smoke?”

  “Never.”

  “Drink?”

  “Socially—I enjoy the occasional glass of wine with dinner, but I never drink spirits.”

  “Excellent,” said the doctor and ticked the last of the little boxes. “Now, let’s check your height and weight. Come over here, please, Mr. Kravits and climb onto these scales.”

  The doctor had to stand on his toes in order to push the wooden marker up until it was flat across his patient’s head. “Six feet one inch,” he declared, then looked down at the weighing machine and flicked the little weight across until it just balanced. “A hundred and seventy-nine pounds. Not bad.” He filled in two more lines of his report. “Perhaps just a little overweight.

  “Now I need a urine sample, Mr. Kravits. If you would be kind enough to take this plastic container next door, fill it about halfway up, leave it on the ledge when you’ve finished, and then come back to me.”

  The doctor wrote out some more notes while his patient left the room. He returned a few moments later.

  “I’ve left the container on the ledge,” was all he said.

  “Good. The next thing I need is a blood sample. Could you roll up your right sleeve?” The doctor placed a rubber pad around his right bicep and pumped until the veins stood out clearly. “A tiny prick,” he said. “You’ll hardly feel a thing.” The needle went in and he turned away as the doctor drew his blood. Dr. Royston cleaned the wound and fixed a small circular plaster over the broken skin. The doctor then bent over and placed a cold stethoscope on different parts of the patient’s chest, occasionally asking him to breathe in and out.

  “Good,” he kept repeating. Finally he said, “That just about wraps it up, Mr. Kravits. You’ll need to spend a few minutes down the corridor with Dr. Harvey so she can take a chest X-ray and have some fun with her electric pads, but after that you’ll be through and you can go home to”—he checked his pad—“New Jersey. The company will be in touch in a few days, as soon as we’ve had the results.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Royston,” he said as he buttoned up his shirt. The doctor pressed a buzzer on his desk and the nurse reappeared and led him to another room with a plaque on the door that read “Dr. Mary Harvey.” Dr. Harvey, a smartly-dressed middle-aged woman with her gray hair cropped short, was waiting for him. She smiled at the tall, handsome man and asked him to take off his shirt again and to step up onto the platform and stand in front of the X-ray unit.

  “Place your arms behind your back and breathe in. Thank you.” Next she asked him to lie down on the bed in the corner of the room. She leaned over his chest, smeared blobs of paste on his skin and fixed little pads to them. While he stared up at the white ceiling, she flicked a switch and concentrated on a tiny television screen on the corner of her desk. Her expression gave nothing away.

  After she had removed the paste with a damp flannel she said, “You can put your shirt back on, Mr. Kravits. You are now free to leave.”

  Once he was fully dressed, the young man hurried out of the building and down the steps and ran all the way to the corner where he and Pat had parted. They hugged each other again.

  “Everything go all right?”

  “I think so,” he said. “They told me I’d be hearing from them in the next few days, once they’ve had the results of all their tests.”

  “Thank God it hasn’t been a problem for you.”

  “I only wish it wasn’t for you.”

  “Don’t let’s even think about it,” said David, holding tightly onto the one person he loved.

  Marvin rang a week later to let David know that Dr. Royston had given him a clean bill of health. All he had to do now was send the first installment of $1,100 to the insurance company. David posted a check off to Geneva Life the following morning. Thereafter his payments were made by wire transfer on the first day of each month.

  Nineteen d