Dead Secrets

Humphrey lay in his cot asleep. The hot afternoon sun burnt a shadow onto the wall beside him. The head of a large man bent through the light. A hand touched Humphries on the shoulder, and shook him awake.

“Hey Humphrey?” said the man, “Wake up, I need to talk to you.”
“What’s that,” groaned Humphrey.
“Name’s Stevens, I’m an investigator for the Alliance Insurance Company of Cincinnati. You are the beneficiary of an insurance policy, from one…” He pulled the policy document out of his pocket and held it in the light and read, “James Parker, late of Santa Monica.”
“Who?” says Humphrey.
“James Parker. Don’t you know him?” asks Stevens.

Humphrey struggled to get his mind to work; he screwed his eyes up and gathered the grimy sheets around his rotunda, hot, sticky body.
“James Parker, you say,” said Humphrey, pulling himself up. “Yeah, I know that name.
Who wants to know?” He reached for a cigarette, lit it and blew smoke through the ray of light, and stared defiantly up at Stevens....