Even the Wicked

"That would only make sense if there's a policy he took out recently. The clause that excludes suicide only applies for a certain amount of time."

"Usually a year, isn't it?"

"I think so. It's to prevent a person from deliberately bilking them by taking out a policy with the intent of killing himself. But when you've got a policy holder who's been paying premiums for twenty years, you can't weasel out of your obligation to him just because he got depressed and took a dive in front of the F

train."

"I don't know," he said. "We've done enough insurance work over the years to convince me they'll weasel out of anything they can. They're the worst when it comes to questioning items when we bill them for our services. Force of habit, it must be."

"Speaking of bills, if it turns out he did it himself—"

"What, I can bill the estate? We signed on to protect him and we couldn't even protect him from himself?

I'd rather eat it than try to collect it."

* * *

When there's enough media attention, you can't find a place to hide where somebody won't come after you. Will seemed to be managing so far, but Philip M. Bushing, M.D., didn't have an equal talent for concealment. He'd gone fishing in Georgian Bay, and some enterprising reporter had managed to track him down.

Bushing was Adrian Whitfield's physician, specializing in internal medicine—a term, Elaine pointed out, that you would think ought to cover just about everything but dermatology. He evidently confined doctor-patient privilege to those patients who were still breathing, and so felt free to disclose that he had diagnosed Adrian Whitfield's illness in the spring, and had had the sad task of communicating that fact to the patient.

Whitfield had taken it well, Bushing recalled, ultimately treating the physician as a hostile witness. He'd forced Bushing to admit that neither surgery nor chemotherapy offered any prospect of curing his condition, and got him to estimate how much time he had left. Six months to a year, Bushing told him, and referred him to an oncologist at Sloan-Kettering.

Whitfield called that man, a Dr. Ronald Patel, and made and kept an appointment with him. Patel confirmed Bushing's diagnosis and proposed an aggressive protocol of radiation and chemotherapy, which he felt might win the patient another year of life. Whitfield thanked him and left, and Patel never heard from him again.

"I assumed he wanted another opinion," Patel said.

If he wanted an opinion on anything, he was in the right town for it. Everybody had one, and by Tuesday morning I think I'd heard them all. The general consensus seemed to hold that Whitfield's death was suicide, and one authority on the topic described it as an opportunistic act of self-destruction. I knew what he meant, but it struck me as a curious phrase.

More than a few people were bothered by the method he chose, regarding it as showing little consideration for others—or, for that matter, for Whitfield himself. Cyanide brought an end that was a long way from painless. You did not drift off dreamily into that sleep from which there was no awakening.

All that was to be said for it, really, was that you went fast.

"Still," I told Elaine, "there aren't that many gentle paths out of this world, and a surprising number of

people pick a rocky road for themselves. Cops eat their guns with such regularity you'd think the barrels were dipped in chocolate."

"I think it makes a statement, don't you? 'I'm using my service revolver, therefore the job killed me.' "

"That fits," I agreed, "but by now I think it's just part of the tradition. And it's quick and it's certain, unless the bullet takes a bad hop.

And the means is close at hand."

A local television personality quoted Dorothy Parker: Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you

And drugs cause cramp;

Guns aren't lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful—

You might as well live.

This brought a rejoinder, predictably enough, from a spokeswoman for the Hemlock Society, who felt the need to point out just how far we'd come since Parker wrote those lines. There were, she was pleased to report, several carefree ways one could do away with oneself, and the two of which she seemed fondest consisted of gassing yourself in the garage with carbon monoxide or suffocating yourself with a plastic bag.

"Unfortunately," she said, "not everybody has a car."

"Sad but true," said Elaine, talking back to the television set.

"Fortunately, however, just about everybody has a plastic bag. 'Dad, can I borrow the car tonight? No? Well, can I borrow the plastic bag?"

The real victim, someone else maintained, was Kevin Dahlgren, who'd been subjected to no end of stress by virtue of the fact that Whitfield had been inconsiderate enough to drop dead in front of him.

At least one talk show included a psychologist and a trauma expert talking about the possible short- and long-term impact of the incident upon Dahlgren.