Their motive was simple greed, a principle that in the age of Reagan was celebrated as a positive virtue as long as you didn’t get caught. The cash generated from the sale of the bogus policies inflated Confederation’s profitability which, in turn, made it attractive to investors who snapped up its shares, driving them up on the stock exchange. When the shares reached their apex, company insiders, who were compensated in part by stock, sold them and reaped millions. Now, as the dust began to settle, there were losers everywhere: the other insurance companies stuck with the fabricated policies, the investors holding Confederation’s worthless stock and Confederation’s legitimate policy holders who had paid their premiums for years, decades, on policies that would never pay out.

For me, however, the most gruesome aspect of the fraud was what I encountered when I began to review the policies that Ruth Fleming had given me. Brendan Scott had written more than half of them for men who had already died from AIDS, one of them my rehab mate, Tom Rustin. His forged signature appeared on a policy for life insurance issued by Confederation Insurance two weeks after he had died. It was then I remembered the gay paper on Scott’s desk opened to the obituaries and realized he had been trolling for victims for his scam.

I was so incensed that without telling Fleming or seeking her approval, I marched down to Scott’s agency, past his protesting secretary and into his office.

“We need to talk,” I said.

Scott was too seasoned a salesman to be more than momentarily startled by my unexpected appearance. He quickly composed himself, put a friendly grin on his face, and said, “You know, I remember you work for Western States, but sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Henry Rios,” I said.

The grin broadened. “Right, right. Henry. You were in here asking about poor Bill Ryan. What can I do you for?”

I tossed a sheaf of photocopies of obituaries across his desk. “You can explain to me how these men signed up for life insurance with you after they were dead.”

He thumbed through the pages, glanced up, shrugged and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I tossed him the signature pages of the applications he had filled out and signed for the dead men. “Maybe these will refresh your memory. You signed them, under penalty of perjury, attesting that all the information in the applications was true. But every one of these applicants was already dead. Perjury is the least of your problems.”

He wasn’t grinning anymore. “Close the door and sit down.”

I shut the door, sat down and watched him examine the signature pages with a furrowed brow. When he finished, he looked up and said, “Where did you get these?”