J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

“You going to do it?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but I might. I just might. I’m sixty-one and I’m tired. I’d like to spend time with my grandkids before I drop in my tracks. Marie and I could sell the house and get an RV, see some of the country and visit the clan. Keep making the rounds so we don’t wear out our welcome.” Mac and his wife had eight grown kids, all of them married with countless children of their own. He waved the subject aside, his mind apparently focused on something else. “Enough of that stuff. I got another month to decide. Meantime, something’s come up and I thought about you.”

I waited, letting him get around to the subject in his own good time. Mac always did better when he set the stage for himself. He took out a pack of Marlboros and shook a cigarette into view. He dried his lips with one knuckle before he put the cigarette between his teeth. He took out a pack of matches and lit up, extinguishing the match flame with a mouthful of smoke. He crossed his legs and used his pants cuff as an ashtray, leaving me to worry he’d set his nylon socks ablaze. “Remember Wendell Jaffe’s disappearance about five years back?”

“Vaguely,” I said. As nearly as I remembered, Jaffe’s sailboat had been found, abandoned and adrift, off the coast of Baja. “Run it by me again. He’s the guy who vanished out at sea, right?”

“So it appeared.” Mac seemed to wag his head, casting about for a quick narrative summary. “Wendell Jaffe and his partner, Carl Eckert, put together limited partnerships for real estate deals to develop raw land, build condominiums, office buildings, shopping centers, that kind of thing. They were promising investors a fifteen percent return, plus the return of their original investment within four years before the two partners would take a profit. Of course, they got in way over their heads, taking off big fees, paying huge ‘overhead’ expenses, rewarding themselves handsomely. When profits failed to materialize, they ended up paying old investors with the new investors’ money, shifting cash from one shell company to the next, constantly soliciting new business to keep the game afloat.”

“In other words, a Ponzi scheme,” I inserted.

“Right. I think they started with good intentions, but that’s how it ended up. Anyway, Wendell began to see that it couldn’t go on forever, and that’s when he went off the side of that boat. His body never surfaced.”

“He left a suicide note, as I recall,” I said.

“That he did. From all reports, the man was exhibiting all the classic symptoms of depression: low spirits, poor appetite, anxiety, insomnia. He finally goes off on his fishing boat and jumps overboard, leaving a letter to his wife. In it, he says he’s borrowed every cent he can, pouring it into what he now realizes is a hopelessly failing business. He owes everybody. He knows he’s let everybody down and he just can’t face the consequences. Meantime, she and his two sons were in a hell of a situation.”

“What ages were his kids?”

“I believe the older boy, Michael, was seventeen and Brian was about twelve. Jesus, what a mess. The scandal left his family reeling and forced some of his investors into bankruptcy. His business partner, Carl Eckert, ended up in jail. It looked like Jaffe jumped just before his house of cards collapsed. The problem was, there really wasn’t any concrete proof of death. His wife petitioned for a court-appointed administrator to manage his assets, or the few he had left. The bank accounts had been stripped and the house was mortgaged to the hilt. She ended up losing that. I felt sorry for the woman. She hadn’t worked in years, since the day she married him. Suddenly she had these two kids to support, not a cent in the bank, and no marketable skills. Nice lady, too, and it was rough on her. Since then, we’ve had five years of dead silence. Not a whisper of the man. Not a trace.”

“But he wasn’t dead?” I said, anticipating the punch line.

“Well, now I’m getting to that,” Mac said with a touch of irritation. I tried to silence my questions so he could tell it his way. “The question did come up. Insurance company wasn’t anxious to pay off without a death certificate. Especially after Wendell’s partner was charged with fraud and grand theft. For all we knew, he was a skip, taking off with the bucks to avoid prosecution. We never said as much, but we were dragging our feet. Dana Jaffe hired a private investigator who initiated a search, but never turned up a shred of evidence pro or con.” Mac went on. “Couldn’t prove he was dead, but you couldn’t prove he wasn’t, either. A year after the incident, she petitioned the court to have the man declared dead, citing the suicide note and his depressed mental state. Presented affidavits and whatnot, testimony from his partner and various friends. At that point, she notified CF she was filing a claim as his sole beneficiary. We launched our own investigation, which was fairly intense. Bill Bargerman handled it. You remember him?”