The Dettweiler Solution Read online

  The Dettweiler Solution

  Lawrence Block

  Copyright © 2013, Lawrence Block

  All Rights Reserved

  A Lawrence Block Production

  SOMETIMES YOU JUST can’t win for losing. Business was so bad over at Dettweiler Bros. Fine Fashions for Men that Seth Dettweiler went on back to the store one Thursday night and poured out a five-gallon can of lead-free gasoline where he figured as it would do the most good. He lit a fresh Philip Morris King Size and balanced it on the edge of the counter so as it would burn for a couple of minutes and then get unbalanced enough to drop into the pool of gasoline. Then he got into an Oldsmobile that was about five days clear of a repossession notice and drove on home.

  You couldn’t have had a better fire dropping napalm on a paper mill. Time it was done you could sift those ashes and not find so much as a collar button. It was far and away the most spectacularly total fire Schuyler County had ever seen, so much so that Maybrook Fidelity Insurance would have been a little tentative about settling a claim under ordinary circumstances. But the way things stood there wasn’t the slightest suspicion of arson, because what kind of a dimwitted hulk goes and burns down his business establishment a full week after his fire insurance has lapsed?

  No fooling.

  See, it was Seth’s brother Porter who took care of paying bills and such, and a little over a month ago the fire-insurance payment had been due, and Porter looked at the bill and at the bank balance and back and forth for a while and then he put the bill in a drawer. Two weeks later there was a reminder notice, and two weeks after that there was a notice that the grace period had expired and the insurance was no longer in force, and then a week after that there was one pluperfect hell of a bonfire.

  Seth and Porter had always got on pretty good. (They took after each other quite a bit, folks said. Especially Porter.) Seth was forty-two years of age, and he had that long Dettweiler face topping a jutting Van Dine jaw. (Their mother was a Van Dine hailing from just the other side of Oak Falls.) Porter was thirty-nine, equipped with the same style face and jaw. They both had black hair that lay flat on their heads like shoe polish put on in slapdash fashion. Seth had more hair left than Porter, in spite of being the older brother by three years. I could describe them in greater detail, right down to scars and warts and sundry distinguishing marks, but it’s my guess that you’d enjoy reading all that about as much as I’d enjoy writing it, which is to say less than somewhat. So let’s get on with it.

  I was saying they got on pretty good, rarely raising their voices one to the other, rarely disagreeing seriously about anything much. Now the fire didn’t entirely change the habits of a lifetime but you couldn’t honestly say that it did anything to improve their relationship. You’d have to allow that it caused a definite strain.

  “What I can’t understand,” Seth said, “is how anybody who is fool enough to let fire insurance lapse can be an even greater fool by not telling his brother about it. That in a nutshell is what I can’t understand.”

  “What beats me,” Porter said, “is how the same person who has the nerve to fire a place of business for the insurance also does so without consulting his partner, especially when his partner just happens to be his brother.”

  “Allus I was trying to do,” said Seth, “was save you from the criminal culpability of being an accessory before, to, and after the fact, plus figuring you might be too chickenhearted to go along with it.”

  “Allus I was trying to do,” said Porter, “was save you from worrying about financial matters you would be powerless to contend with, plus figuring it would just be an occasion for me to hear further from you on the subject of those bow ties.”

  “Well, you did buy one powerful lot of bow ties.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Something like a Pullman car full of bow ties, and it’s not like every man and boy in Schuyler County’s been getting this mad passion for bow ties of late.”

  “I just knew it.”

  “I wasn’t the one brought up the subject, but since you went and mentioned those bow ties—”

  “Maybe I should of mentioned the spats,” Porter said.

  “Oh, I don’t want to hear about spats.”

  “No more than I wanted to hear about bow ties. Did we sell one single damn pair of spats?”

  “We did.”

  “We did?”

  “Feller bought one about fifteen months back. Had Maryland plates on his car, as I recall. Said he always wanted spats and didn’t know they still made ’em.”

  “Well, selling one pair out of a gross isn’t too bad.”

  “Now you leave off,” Seth said.

  “And you leave off of bow ties?”

  “I guess.”

  “Anyway, the bow ties and the spats all burned up in the same damn fire,” Porter said.

  “You know what they say about ill winds,” Seth said. “I guess there’s a particle of truth in it, what they say.”

  WHILE IT DIDN’T do the Dettweiler brothers much good to discuss spats and bow ties, it didn’t solve their problems to leave off mentioning spats and bow ties. By the time they finished their conversation all they were back to was square one, and the view from that spot wasn’t the world’s best.

  The only solution was bankruptcy, and it didn’t look to be all that much of a solution.

  “I don’t mind going bankrupt,” one of the brothers said. (I think it was Seth. Makes no nevermind, actually. Seth, Porter, it’s all the same who said it.) “I don’t mind going bankrupt, but I sure do hate the thought of being broke.”

  “Me too,” said the other brother. (Porter, probably.)

  “I’ve thought about bankruptcy from time to time.”

  “Me too.”

  “But there’s a time and a place for bankruptcy.”

  “Well, the place is all right. No better place for bankruptcy than Schuyler County.”

  “That’s true enough,” said Seth. (Unless it was Porter.) “But this is surely not the time. Time to go bankrupt is in good times when you got a lot of money on hand. Only the damnedest kind of fool goes bankrupt when he’s stony broke busted and there’s a depression going on.”

  What they were both thinking on during this conversation was a fellow name of Joe Bob Rathburton who was in the construction business over to the other end of Schuyler County. I myself don’t know of a man in this part of the state with enough intelligence to bail out a leaky rowboat who doesn’t respect Joe Bob Rathburton to hell and back as a man with good business sense. It was about two years ago that Joe Bob went bankrupt and he did it the right way. First of all he did it coming off the best year’s worth of business he’d ever done in his life. Then what he did was he paid off the car and the house and the boat and put them all in his wife’s name. (His wife was Mabel Washburn, but no relation to the Washburns who have the Schuyler County First National Bank. That’s another family entirely.)

  Once that was done, Joe Bob took out every loan and raised every dollar he possibly could, and he turned all that capital into green folding cash and sealed it in quart Mason jars which he buried out back of an old pear tree that’s sixty-plus years old and still bears fruit like crazy. And then he declared bankruptcy and sat back in his Mission rocker with a beer and a cigar and a real big-tooth smile.

  “IF I COULD think of anything worth doing,” Porter Dettweiler said one night, “why, I guess I’d just go ahead and do it.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Seth said.

  “But I can’t,” Porter said.

  “Nor I either.”

  “You might pass that old jug over here for a moment.”

  “Soon as I pour a tad for myself, if you’ve no objection.”

>   “None whatsoever,” said Porter.

  They were over at Porter’s place on the evening when this particular conversation occurred. They had taken to spending most of their evenings at Porter’s on account of Seth had a wife at home, plus a daughter named Rachel who’d been working at the Ben Franklin store ever since dropping out of the junior college over at Monroe Center. Seth didn’t have but the one daughter. Porter had two sons and a daughter, but they were all living with Porter’s ex-wife, who had divorced him two years back and moved clear to Georgia. They were living in Valdosta now, as far as Porter knew. Least that was where he sent the check every month.

  “Alimony jail,” said Porter.

  “How’s that?”

  “What I said was alimony jail. Where you go when you quit paying on your alimony.”

  “They got a special jug set aside for men don’t pay their alimony?”

  “Just an expression. I guess they put you into whatever jug’s the handiest. All I got to do is quit sendin’ Gert her checks and let her have them cart me away. Get my three meals a day and a roof over my head and the whole world could quit nagging me night and day for money I haven’t got.”

  “You could never stand it. Bein’ in a jail day in and day out, night in and night out.”

  “I know it,” Porter said unhappily. “There anything left in that there jug, on the subject of jugs?”

  “Some. Anyway, you haven’t paid Gert a penny in how long? Three months?”

  “Call it five.”

  “And she ain’t throwed you in jail yet. Least you haven’t got her close to hand so’s she can talk money to you.”

  “Linda Mae givin’ you trouble?”

  “She did. Keeps a civil tongue since I beat up on her the last time.”

  “Lord knew what he was doin’,” Porter said, “makin’ men stronger than women. You ever give any thought to what life would be like if wives could beat up on their husbands instead of the other way around?”

  “Now I don’t even want to think about that,” Seth said.

  You’ll notice nobody was mentioning spats or bow ties. Even with the jug of corn getting discernibly lighter every time it passed from one set of hands to the other, these two subjects did not come up. Neither did anyone speak of the shortsightedness of failing to keep up fire insurance or the myopia of incinerating a building without ascertaining that such insurance was in force. Tempers had cooled with the ashes of Dettweiler Bros. Fine Fashions for Men, and once again Seth and Porter were on the best of terms.

  Which just makes what happened thereafter all the more tragic.

  “WHAT I THINK I got,” Porter said, “is no way to turn.”

  (This wasn’t the same evening, but if you put the two evenings side by side under a microscope you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart each from the other. They were at Porter’s little house over alongside the tracks of the old spur off the Wyandotte & Southern, which I couldn’t tell you the last time there was a train on that spur, and they had their feet up and their shoes off, and there was a jug of corn in the picture. Most of their evenings had come to take on this particular shade.)

  “Couldn’t get work if I wanted to,” Porter said, “which I don’t, and if I did I couldn’t make enough to matter, and my debts is up to my ears and rising steady.”

  “It doesn’t look to be gettin’ better,” Seth said. “On the other hand, how can it get worse?”

  “I keep thinking the same.”

  “And?”

  “And it keeps getting worse.”

  “I guess you know what you’re talkin’ about,” Seth said. He scratched his bulldog chin, which hadn’t been in the same room with a razor in more than a day or two. “What I been thinkin’ about,” he said, “is killin’ myself.”

  “You been thinking of that?”

  “Sure have.”

  “I think on it from time to time myself,” Porter admitted. “Mostly nights when I can’t sleep. It can be a powerful comfort around about three in the morning. You think of all the different ways and the next thing you know you’re asleep. Beats the stuffing out of counting sheep jumping fences. You seen one sheep you seen ’em all is always been my thoughts on the subject, whereas there’s any number of ways of doing away with yourself.”

  “I’d take a certain satisfaction in it,” Seth said, more or less warming to the subject. “What I’d leave is this note tellin’ Linda Mae how her and Rachel’ll be taken care of with the insurance, just to get the bitch’s hopes up, and then she can find out for her own self that I cashed in that insurance back in January to make the payment on the Oldsmobile. You know it’s pure uncut hell gettin’ along without an automobile now.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “Just put a rope around my neck,” said Seth, smothering a hiccup, “and my damn troubles’ll be over.”

  “And mine in the bargain,” Porter said.

  “By you doin’ your own self in?”

  “Be no need,” Porter said, “if you did yourself in.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “What I figure is a hundred thousand dollars,” Porter said. “Lord love a duck, if I had a hundred thousand dollars I could declare bankruptcy and live like a king!”

  Seth looked at him, got up, walked over to him, and took the jug away from him. He took a swig and socked the cork in place, but kept hold of the jug.

  “Brother,” he said, “I just guess you’ve had enough of this here.”

  “What makes you say that, brother?”

  “Me killin’ myself and you gettin’ rich, you don’t make sense. What you think you’re talkin’ about, anyhow?”

  “Insurance,” Porter said. “Insurance, that’s what I think I’m talking about. Insurance.”

  PORTER EXPLAINED THE whole thing. It seems there was this life insurance policy their father had taken out on them when they weren’t but boys. Face amount of a hundred thousand dollars, double indemnity for accidental death. It was payable to him while they were alive, but upon his death the beneficiary changed. If Porter was to die the money went to Seth. And vice versa.

  “And you knew about this all along?”

  “Sure did,” Porter said.

  “And never cashed it in? Not the policy on me and not the policy on you?”

  “Couldn’t cash ’em in,” Porter said. “I guess I woulda if I coulda, but I couldn’t so I didn’t.”

  “And you didn’t let these here policies lapse?” Seth said. “On account of occasionally a person can be just the least bit absentminded and forget about keeping a policy in force. That’s been known to happen,” Seth said, looking off to one side, “in matters relating to fire insurance, for example, and I just thought to mention it.”

  (I have the feeling he wasn’t the only one to worry on that score. You may have had similar thoughts yourself, figuring you know how the story’s going to end, what with the insurance not valid and all. Set your mind at rest. If that was the way it had happened I’d never be taking the trouble to write it up for you. I got to select stories with some satisfaction in them if I’m going to stand a chance of selling them to the magazine, and I hope you don’t figure I’m sitting here poking away at this typewriter for the sheer physical pleasure of it. If I just want to exercise my fingers I’ll send them walking through the Yellow Pages if it’s all the same to you.)

  “Couldn’t let ’em lapse,” Porter said. “They’re all paid up. What you call twenty-payment life, meaning you pay it in for twenty years and then you got it free and clear. And the way Pa did it, you can’t borrow on it or nothing. All you can do is wait and see who dies.”

  “Well, I’ll be.”

  “Except we don’t have to wait to see who dies.”

  “Why, I guess not. I just guess a man can take matters into his own hands if he’s of a mind to.”

  “He surely can,” Porter said.

  “Man wants to kill himself, that’s what he can go and do.”

  “No l
aw against it,” Porter said.

  Now you know and I know that that last is not strictly true. There’s a definite no-question law against suicide in our state, and most likely in yours as well. It’s harder to make it stand up than a calf with four broken legs, however, and I don’t recall that anyone hereabouts was ever prosecuted for it, or likely will be. It does make you wonder some what they had in mind writing that particular law into the books.

  “I’ll just have another taste of that there corn,” Porter said, “and why don’t you have a pull on the jug your own self? You have any idea just when you might go and do it?”

  “I’m studying on it,” Seth said.

  “There’s a lot to be said for doing something soon as a man’s mind’s made up on the subject. Not to be hurrying you or anything of the sort, but they say that he who hesitates is last.” Porter scratched his chin. “Or some such,” he said.

  “I just might do it tonight.”

  “By God,” Porter said.

  “Get the damn thing over with. Glory Hallelujah and my troubles is over.”

  “And so is mine,” said Porter.

  “You’ll be in the money then,” said Seth, “and I’ll be in the boneyard, and both of us is free and clear. You can just buy me a decent funeral and then go bankrupt in style.”

  “Give you Johnny Millbourne’s number-one funeral,” Porter promised. “Brassbound casket and all. I mean, price is no object if I’m going bankrupt anyway. Let old Johnny swing for the money.”

  “You a damn good man, brother.”

  “You the best man in the world, brother.”

  The jug passed back and forth a couple more times. At one point Seth announced that he was ready, and he was halfway out the door before he recollected that his car had been repossessed, which interfered with his plans to drive it off a cliff. He came back in and sat down again and had another drink on the strength of it all, and then suddenly he sat forward and stared hard at Porter.

  “This policy thing,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s on both of us, is what you said.”