Insurance Noire

A big, blond, blue eyed drink of water walked into his life…

Originally published in the zine Blue Eyes and Blue Jeans 2 in 1996 by Linda McGee, Kath Moonshine, and Mary Louise Fisher, under the name, Idiot Triplets Press.

My name’s Dave Starsky. I sell insurance.

I’ve been selling insurance for a long time now, ever since John Blaine, the insurance salesman next door, showed me what a lucrative profession it can be. He’d been my mentor, getting me my job at the Bay City Insurance company when I was just out of high school. I owe him a lot.

I’m in auto insurance: collision & liability. I’ve perfected my own method of drumming up business: when I see a house with a car parked in the driveway, I knock on the door and ask the lady of the house if her car’s insured. Nine times out of ten it is, but that tenth time usually gets me a sale, not to mention a cup of coffee and sometimes a doughnut.

That day I was following my usual pattern. I was out in Venice, trolling for customers. The first house I came to was a small one, with a snazzy red coupe parked in the drive. I thought they might need insurance—not just liability for the owner of that car, not with a dream machine like that. No, these folks were the kind to go for the works. I knocked on the door.

The woman who answered the door was as dangerous as she was beautiful, as fast and lethal as the car parked in her driveway. Her sultry amethyst eyes probed you, searching out that soft spot in a man where she could rip out his soul and have it for an aperitif. She was the kind of a woman who would tear the wings off a parakeet just because she was out of cigarettes and needed something to do with her hands. I’d seen her type before; they always needed insurance, to clean up the messes they left behind.

“Dave Starsky,” I said, handing her my business card. “I sell insurance. I noticed you have a car and I thought you might need some.”

She stepped closer to me; I could smell her perfume, like a cloud of opium, enveloping me. “I do need some,” she purred, “but that’s my husband’s car. Won’t you come in?”

I entered the expensively furnished house. She poured us each a drink. “My husband feels we have all the insurance we need,” she murmured. “He’s in insurance himself.”

“Really?” I asked. “What company?”

“Venice Casualty & Life. His father founded the company.”

“You’re married to Ken Hutchinson?”

“Yes, I am. And as I say, he thinks we have all the insurance we need, but I’m a little concerned. I’d like to take out a policy on him myself. Sort of as a surprise. For his birthday. Just a little something, just in case. A little added security. You understand.”

I didn’t know what to say. I could feel her hot breath on my neck, her cigarette smoke in my nose. “I don’t use high pressure tactics,” I said.

“I do,” she said. “What do you know about accidental death & dismemberment?”

“I know they’re not good for you,” I answered. “And I only handle auto insurance.” I was trying to imagine how I’d explain to my boss, Harold Dobey, that I’d sold a collision policy on a human being—especially another insurance salesman. It wouldn’t look good.

“Don’t you think you should try branching out?” she whispered. “Expand your horizons? Tell your boss you’re ready to try new things.” It was almost as if she was hypnotizing me.

“I’ve been selling auto insurance for seven years. Suddenly wanting to branch out… and what if something happened to your husband…”

“What if it did?”

“Don’t you think they’d be suspicious?”

She laughed coolly. “I’d be on the beach in Santa Catalina. And they could be just as suspicious as they like.”

She was trouble, with a capital T—I could smell it.

“Anyway, nothing’s going to happen to my husband. He’s young, he’s healthy, he works out at the gym, eats healthy, gets plenty of rest, never takes chances—he doesn’t even smoke or drink.” She threw back another Singapore Sling. “He’s the all-American boy. The most danger he’s ever in is when he bench-presses a little more weight than usual.”

“Sure,” I sneered. “A few extra weights, or a faulty brake line—or maybe a blowout, going eighty down the Pacific Coast Highway. These things happen—but you don’t think we really believe they’re accidents, do you?”

She lowered her chin and looked up at me through her thick black lashes. “Please, Dave. Please. I need your help. Do it for me. Write me a policy.”

A man would have to be a fool to try to resist a woman like her. “I can’t do it,” I said, and I got out of there as fast as I could.

* * * *

Driving around the neighborhood, one thought kept nagging at me; there are millions of insurance salesmen in Southern California and that doll back there had access to ’em all. One of ’em would take her up on her offer—and soon. And then, Ken Hutchinson would be totaled.

I couldn’t just sit back and let it happen. She might be the hottest thing ever to walk into my boring life, but I couldn’t let her do it.

I drove to Venice Casualty & Life and asked to speak to Ken Hutchinson.

* * * *

He stood up from behind his desk, all blond and glowing like a shiny new headlight on a dark deserted road, and I knew I’d been wrong: she wasn’t the hottest thing ever to walk into my boring life—he was.

“Ken Hutchinson, may I help you?” he asked, offering his hand. I took it, not wanting to let go. I wanted to put my shades back on, to shield my eyes from his incredible blond glow. I wasn’t sure I could even speak coherently. But it was a matter of life and death—his. I closed the door behind me.

“Mr. Starsky, what can I do for you?”

The sound of my name on his lips made my knees weak. “I work for the Bay City Insurance Company.”

“That’s a fine company,” he said pleasantly, “but of course I have all the insurance I need—I get it here at work.”

“I met your wife this morning.”

He stiffened immediately. It was a sight to see. Apparently just the mention of her name had the same effect on him it did on every other man who’d crossed her path.

“My wife?” he said sharply.

“Yes. I tried to sell her some auto insurance.”

“My car is fully insured.”

“She told me that.”

“Then why are you here?”

“She wanted me to sell her some other insurance—insurance on you.”

“I have plenty of insurance.”

“She was talking about accidental death & dismemberment.”

“I thought you said you sold auto insurance.”

“I do. It was your wife who brought up the insurance on you—and she was very persistent. She seemed to think it was likely you’d have an accident at your gym—lifting weights. To be honest, Mr. Hutchinson, I feel your life may be at risk. I got the idea your wife’s the kind of woman who’s used to getting what she wants. I don’t want the death of a good insurance salesman on my conscience.”

He was very pale. “Mr. Starsky, could we go somewhere and talk?”

* * * *

Over lunch he told me about his first meeting with the exquisite Vanessa. She was married and he’d just started working in his father’s insurance company. She’d come on to him, hot and heavy, and just after he sold her husband a policy, the man had been killed in a freak skiing accident. They’d honeymooned in Santa Catalina.

“She used me,” he said dully. “She used me and now she’s using you to get rid of me.”

It was a business lunch, so we could write it off.

* * * *

I went back to my one room apartment and turned on the desultory fan. The night was hot—or maybe it was just me. Dobey’d chewed me out for not selling any policies that day. How could I tell him that my mind just wasn’t on business, it was on a blond who set my soul aflame?

The phone rang. It was Mrs. Hutchinson. “You went to see my husband today.” Her voice was cold enough to freeze the wires. She was like the dark side of the sun.

“We talked some business,” I agreed.

“You told him,” she accused.

I had to switch the receiver to my other ear—the one that wasn’t frostbitten. “I know your type,” I said. “I know the kind of game you play. Get some sap to fall for you, hook him, get him to sell you an insurance policy on your husband, kill your husband, marry the sap, then when you get tired of him, you push him in a meat grinder and while we’re picking up the hamburger patties, you’re sunning yourself on the beach at Santa Catalina. Isn’t that how this game’s played?”

“It’s how I always played it before you came along,” she admitted. “But this time it’s different. This time I don’t just want the money; this time I want you.”

“Lady, I’m not for sale. Not to you, anyway.”

“My husband’s divorcing me.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Really?”

“Yes. He’s moved out.”

“Where’s he staying?” I asked. She could hear the hunger in my voice.

“Do you really think I’d tell you? Do you really think he could be interested in someone like you after he’s had someone like me?”

I didn’t answer. I knew what kind of life he led—it was something someone who’d never sold insurance could never possibly understand. “You’re no insurance salesman’s wife,” I told her. “You don’t understand the long, hot days peddling insurance door to door, the long, cold nights of writing policies.”

She laughed contemptuously. “That kind of work is for suckers. When this is over, I’m going where the real money is. I’m going to marry a cop.”

The line went dead.

* * * *

I drove to Venice Casualty & Life. The light was on in his office. I went in. He sitting at his desk, his head in bis hands. I knocked softly on the open door and he looked up at me. “What do you want?” he asked with that unmistakable I-just-found-out-today-that-my-wife-wants-to-kill-me tone I knew so well.

“I heard from your wife again. I understand you need a place to stay.”

“I’ll be staying at my club.”

“Kind of impersonal, isn’t it? Not to mention, sweaty.”

“They have showers, Mr. Starsky.”

“You could use my shower, Ken. We could stay up all night, talking.”

“I’m not really in the mood to discuss insurance.”

“We could talk about anything you want. We wouldn’t have to talk at all. Why don’t you come home with me?” I stepped closer to him; I could feel his warm breath on my forehead and smell his expensive aftershave.

“You’re a real pal. You could be quite an asset to this company.”

“I’ve got a job. John Blaine was my mentor.”

Ken looked impressed. “You knew John Blaine? My father talks about him all the time—he was the best insurance salesman this side of the Rockies. I can see why you feel a loyalty to your company—”

“It isn’t that. It’s you, Ken. I don’t think I could work with you, day in and day out, spend 75% of my time with you—”

“That would just be in the beginning, while I was training you.”

“You don’t understand, Ken. I want you. I have to have you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When I met your wife, I thought she was the hottest thing ever to walk into my boring life. But when I met you, I knew I was wrong—you’ve set me on fire, Ken. You’re the only one who can put out the flames.”

“We don’t sell fire insurance,” Ken said, a bit dazed.

Suddenly I couldn’t stand it anymore. I slammed his office door closed and threw him down onto his desk, tearing his shirt open and biting his neck. “I want you,” I whispered in his ear. I don’t know if it was the mention of his wife or my hand between his legs, but he was hard as a rock. All that mattered was the throbbing yearning I felt there. I didn’t know if his struggles were in protest or in excitement and I didn’t care. I took him right there on the desk.

It was the hottest sex I’d ever had; it was as if we had melted together into one person. We moved together like the tide in a tsunami—raging, uncontrollable, yet completely in sync. We didn’t speak—we didn’t need words; our bodies understood everything there was to know.

“David,” he whispered, stroking my cheek. “Your name is David?” he asked.

It took me a moment to answer. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” At that moment he could have called me Shirley and I’ve answered to it.

“David,” he repeated, and then again, “David.” Everything there was to be said was encompassed in the way he said my name.

* * * *

We didn’t sell any policies for the rest of the week, and Dobey was furious when I left BCIC, but I didn’t care. Ever since that night Ken and I have been partners in every sense of the word.

* * * *

Just after their divorce was final I read in the society page that Vanessa had married Chief of Police James Marshall Gunther.