The viatical purchases were legal, Billy said. Each woman had been paid for the transfer to an investment company. Some had brought the women large windfalls. But the purchase price was only a part of the policy's worth. When the women finally died, the investors would cash in the policies for the full amount and walk away with the profit.

"All legal?" I asked, looking down at the names.

"P-Perfectly."

"And the twist?"

"The tw-twist is that the longer the insured lives, the more p- premiums the investors have to p-pay. That is w-why they usually look for medical infirmities, which all these w-women had," Billy said.

"But they m-might have underestimated the t-toughness of these ladies. The longer they lived, the more it cut into the investor's p-profit."

Billy was looking east now. In between the high rises, out past the Intracoastal Waterway to the red tile roofs of the beachfront mansions and estates of Palm Beach. I let him stand in silence, the dark skin of his profile a silhouette against the hot glass.

"You don't think that's kind of a shaky motive for murder?" I finally said.

He turned his dark eyes on me.

"M-Max. Since when has greed been a shaky m-motive?"

4

We walked up Atlantic Boulevard for lunch. The breeze had pulled the temperature down into the mid-seventies. An early lunch crowd was mixing on the street with women in business skirts, office workers in pressed white oxfords and cinched ties, and tourists in shorts and tropical prints floating from one window display to the next.

As we walked Billy explained how he'd tried to slip his theory in through the back door of the Broward Sheriff's Office. His contacts were extensive, but his pleadings fell on deaf ears. Drug enforcement, computer crime, demands from every sector to keep kids safe.