Unfit to Practice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “The same man?”

  “Yes. Back again.”

  This time Kao was ready. When the man pulled out a gun, Kao already had his hand on his own gun. No time to think. He pulled out his gun and shot the robber point-blank in the chest.

  This time Kao punched in 911. Then he called his family.

  “Yes,” Nina said. “I remember this story.”

  The Tahoe police detectives made out the report, clapped Kao on the shoulder, and recommended no further action. The dead man had thirteen previous felony convictions including two assaults with a deadly weapon in the course of a robbery. But the police also took away Kao’s gun. Two days later he got his first E-mail. The one-word message, a sort of declaration of war, came in his own language. “Revenge,” it read. Family or friends of the robber probably wrote it.

  Dr. Mai said, “Kao couldn’t sleep anymore. His jaw hurt all the time. He was afraid to leave his wife alone in the store. He didn’t know what to do.”

  Nina wrote all this down. She looked up to see Kao adjusting his jaw again as though it had slipped off its track. Dark, intense eyes studied her. When his hand came down she noticed that his jaw was not symmetrical.

  “Kao and his family came to me. We decided he must continue. Friends came to the store to help. Kao worked hard.”

  The July fourth holiday brought tourists and heat to Tahoe. Kao woke at four o’clock the next morning to a phone call from a fire marshal who yelled that his store was on fire. By the time they got there, the interior of the store had been gutted by quick and successive plagues of flame, smoke, and the rescuers’ water and foam.

  Everything was ruined. All the Vangs’ stock had been reduced to rubble. Cash register, counters, display shelves, bottle glass, melted candy pieces, and ashes jumbled together in blackened heaps.

  “Destroyed,” said Dr. Mai, putting a finger to the bridge between his glasses and pushing delicately upward. “So much hard work for nothing.”

  “I am sorry,” Nina said, moved, knowing her words were inadequate. She felt the urge to apologize for all Kao’s bad experiences in America.

  Kao said something curt. “But this is America,” Dr. Mai translated. “Kao had a small-business loan.”

  Nina nodded. “So he was required to carry casualty insurance,” she said.

  Now Kao nodded. “Casualty insurance,” he repeated.

  “No one knew,” Dr. Mai said. “No one thought of this when they destroyed Blue Star Market. Kao was supposed to crawl away. But he brought me the policy. And I wrote a letter to the insurance company.” Dr. Mai laid two much-handled documents in front of Nina. She picked them up but did not look at them yet.

  “When was this?”

  “I wrote the letter on July twelfth and sent it certified.”

  Almost a month ago.

  “They sent me this letter quick.” The letter bore a July 18 postmark and the imprint of Heritage Insurance’s office in Reno. The company was sorry to hear of his loss. Kao had ninety days from the date of the event to file a claim.

  Nina flipped open her calendar. “Today is August eighth. October third would be the deadline. We have plenty of time. Good.”

  “Kao and his wife would like to know if you wish to help them.”

  “Yes,” Nina said. “Yes, I wish to help.”

  “No one must know of the claim.”

  “No one will know. But why does it matter?”

  “If anyone learns that Kao is not destroyed-that he will have some money even-then his family will be in very great danger again.”

  Nina said, “Why? Who is threatening Kao? Are the police being told everything?”

  Dr. Mai consulted with Kao. “There are no suspects.”

  “If you know who these people are,” Nina said, “you have to tell the police.”

  “You don’t understand. Kao does not want revenge. He does not want justice. He wants his family to live. Kao wants to take his family back to Laos. For that he needs the insurance money. Whatever you can obtain for him.”

  Nina wanted to tell the Vangs to stay here, fight the good fight awhile longer, do it our way, put ’ em away. Again her eyes met Kao’s. Maybe now she understood better what she saw in them. Kao was brave for himself, but he was afraid for his family. He had no fight left in him. He wanted only a dignified retreat.

  “Okay,” she said. “All right.”

  Dr. Mai nodded. “Thank you. Also I do not know what is charged for these services.”

  Nina considered this. To take a percentage of the Vangs’ recovery seemed wrong to her, like another nick at them, and it would probably result in an overpayment to her. She adjusted her sliding scale lower than she had in a long time and said, “I would charge forty dollars per hour for this work.” She drew a retainer agreement out of the drawer.

  Another short consultation. This time, See Vang spoke to Dr. Mai, too, although she said only a few words in a soft voice. “That is fair,” Dr. Mai said.

  That same night, at her second office on her bed at home, Nina read the documents Dr. Mai had laid in front of her, three different sets of police reports, news accounts, medical bills, the insurance policy, the loan documents, and the lease agreement for the store. Every detail matched. For her, the sad and notable reality was how little attention had been paid to Kao’s tragic experience. The Tahoe Mirror buried the incidents in single-paragraph back-page items: “Shopkeeper Shot in Robbery.” “Police Seek Arsonist.” Nina wondered if the lack of coverage reflected public apathy about poor, foreign people and their worries, or if it reflected a bigger picture-such grievous events had become frequent enough to be commonplace and therefore unworthy of newsprint.

  A determination grew in her to have one thing go right for Kao. The family, traumatized, wanted to return to Laos. So be it. She would help them get the insurance money. They had followed the rules, paying the premiums each month. Examining the policy again, she saw that the maximum insurance payout could go as high as $250,000.

  The next day she called Heritage, locating the adjuster assigned to the claim, a woman named Marilyn Rose, who seemed startled to hear that the Vangs had hired a lawyer. Nina gave her an overview of the situation and promised to submit a detailed claim shortly. She tried to communicate the urgency of the Vangs’ problems by going on at some length about their difficult adjustment to a new country, how hard they had worked, and what their trials had cost them personally. She felt she connected. Her contact at Heritage sounded sympathetic by the end of the conversation.

  A few days later, on a hot mid-August Sunday, Kao, his wife, his son, and Dr. Mai returned to her office. They brought every business-related scrap of paper they possessed with them in white plastic trash sacks.

  They all sat down on the beige carpet in the outer office and started making piles. The documentation consisted of hundreds of paper scraps-mimeographed, penciled, faded, half-legible, in the writings of half a dozen Southeast Asian languages-and most of it was legally irrelevant. Many of the actual receipts, the inventory list, the bills, had burned in the fire. This would be no ordinary insurance claim.

  “Many times no receipt,” Dr. Mai explained. “Mrs. Vang went to Salvation Army, houses of friends, farmers’ market in Fresno to buy items for Blue Star. Paid cash. Many items burned up with no receipts.”

  “Can we get a list of those items?”

  Dr. Mai spoke to Mrs. Vang, who first shook her head and then shrugged.

  “Things came from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. Refugee items. Records burned up. Wrong language anyway.” Dr. Mai squatted comfortably on the floor. They all drank Sprites. Although Kao’s wife looked much younger than he did and was more traditional-looking with her turquoise bracelets and black braid, she too bore the careworn look of premature age. She could have been twenty-five or forty.

  “Don’t worry,” Nina said.

  “But we cannot-we just cannot prove all the lost items.”

  “Just make me a list. In English. Everything you remembe
r. Can you help with that, Dr. Mai?”

  “But-we do not know the money paid.”

  “Estimate. Here.” Nina made a heading on a fresh legal pad and picked up a scrap. “What does this say?”

  “Four pairs sneakers. No amount.”

  “What kind of sneakers?”

  Shrugs all around. Kao’s shoulders sagged. He and See looked at each other.

  They could have been Chinese and worth five bucks a pair. They probably were Chinese.

  But they could have been Nikes.

  “Estimate forty dollars a pair,” Nina said. “We’ll make sure the insurance company knows it’s only an estimate.”

  At the end of the week the family trekked back to the office. This time Nina managed to persuade them to accompany her to Sato’s for dinner. Dr. Mai wore his usual oxford-cloth shirt and sandals. Kao somehow managed to look debonair in spite of everything. Boun, their son, came, too. Their daughter, Dr. Mai explained, was ill and couldn’t come. See smiled here and there, and Nina got the feeling that she had a sunny disposition in better times and understood English fairly well. After dinner, Dr. Mai presented Nina with the list. Estimated $54,000 in inventory lost.

  She gave it back and said they must have missed a lot.

  By the following week the loss amount topped $175,000. Nina had gone over almost every item. Almost twenty pages long, with several hundred paper scraps pasted onto ink-jet paper as exhibits, the list had been generated out of thin air, the same thin air that the inventory had burned into.

  Nina spent a whole office day, phone off and door shut, dictating the claim letter. She gave a lengthy summary of the violent events and attached all the documents she had along with photographs of Kao’s face after the first shooting, creating a package both heartrending and intimidatingly thick. A solid week passed before she and Sandy had all the exhibits organized completely to her satisfaction. Kinko’s had to keep the package overnight to make the copies, and the final hefty original had to be carried in a box.

  After completing all this labor, Nina drove the claim over to Heritage personally, staying for a long chat about the need for discretion and speed with Marilyn, who did not overreact to the large claim amount and continued to flash hints of a beating heart.

  Sandy took the first call from the insurance company on the first Tuesday morning in September. She came into the office, where Nina was stuffing pleadings into her briefcase for court, and said, “Heritage’s first offer is in. They’re starting at a hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Glory be,” Nina said.

  “It’s like the miracle of loaves and fishes.”

  They experienced a rare moment of perfect harmony. Sandy approved. Nina was elated. Sandy liked Nina to win for the less powerful in the community, and Nina liked to imagine that occasionally she actually helped to alleviate some human suffering, her way of giving back to the planet. Even more important, she felt that justice would be served. Wrongs would be compensated. The system was working.

  “They’ve decided to work with us,” Nina said. “Call the court and tell the judge’s clerk I’ll be a few minutes late.” Picking up her own line, she called the adjuster, thanked her, and refused the offer.

  “But we can’t even read the receipts. As you well know,” Marilyn Rose said.

  “Did you see the medical photos?” Nina said. “It makes me ashamed. They come all the way here to start a new life in the land of freedom and-”

  “All right already. I’ll get back to you.”

  Thursday brought another call. “Two hundred ten thousand,” said Marilyn. “That’s the best I can do.”

  “What’s the point?” Nina said. “Why not pay out the limit?”

  “Because that puts some new procedures in place with some different oversight. Trust me, you don’t want to go for the limit. Look, you’ve probably only got about sixty thousand that actually meets our documentation standards. This is it, Nina. I’m not holding back a nickel of what I got approved.”

  “I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Thanks.” Thrilled, Nina called Dr. Mai and the Vangs and told them about the offer. “I think we should sleep on it,” she said. “Maybe I can squeeze out another ten thousand.”

  “It is wonderful. Wonderful,” Dr. Mai said. “Kao calls me every day. He never expected so much, I know.”

  “Does the family still plan to return to Laos?”

  Dr. Mai hesitated. “It is complicated. Everything in Kao’s life is complicated.” He seemed unwilling to explain further. Again Nina had the feeling that no amount of reading about Hmong culture would give her much useful insight into the family’s American experience. Dr. Mai seemed unnaturally restrained to her, as if he felt shy about sharing the extent of the family’s suffering.

  Maybe they were just the kind of people who disliked having to ask for help of any kind. Or perhaps Dr. Mai’s reluctance arose out of embarrassment that the people who had snuffed out Kao’s livelihood and who would come after any money he might possess came from his own hills and his own culture.

  “I will call you tomorrow,” she said.

  That last call to Dr. Mai had occurred on Thursday, September 6, four days earlier.

  And that night, that ill-starred night, wanting to take one more look through her notes to decide whether to try for a larger claim or just shake hands with the princess of generosity who had adjusted the claim, Nina had taken Kao Vang’s file home in the Bronco. The file had been right on top in Nina’s briefcase in the backseat-not the enormous claim file, which was safe, but the client-intake file with her notes of her interviews with Kao and the notes regarding negotiations.

  Just the notes that could tell Kao’s enemies just how much money was involved, and contained her speculations that he knew exactly who they were.

  And the Vangs’ home address, which they hadn’t wanted to give her. Gone.

  Nina hadn’t called Marilyn Rose at Heritage that Friday. She had waited until now to meet with Dr. Mai. Today she had to tell him. Taking a deep breath of cool mountain air, she strapped herself back into the rental car and drove on.

  The Strawberry Lodge was a big, beat-up, green-roofed, barnlike edifice alongside the highway. Usually you could stop for a cup of coffee there, and the place bustled on weekends, even in fall. In winter there was cross-country skiing and sledding down the hill, but today, an off-season Monday, the weekend fun-lovers had deserted. A few rebel stragglers had parked SUVs out front. She parked the rental and went inside.

  Dr. Mai waited for her on the wooden deck outside the coffee shop in back. In the near distance, the American River, low in September, more like a creek in this spot, swished along. Dr. Mai wore the same suit, a bit thin at the knees, the same shirt, the same dusty sandals, and that somber visage, the look of the priest who can’t understand how the world could have sunk so low. She wondered for a moment what his story was, what persecutions he had endured, what had driven him from his homeland.

  No time to find out today.

  Sitting across from him at a rustic table, drinking from a glass of water, she gazed out at the scruffy dry grass and trees beyond. “I need to speak with Kao,” she said. “He is my client. I’m concerned about confidentiality.”

  “I am his agent and adviser in all legal matters,” Dr. Mai said, not moving.

  His demeanor toward her had changed indefinably, and she felt even more uncomfortable, but she had no choice. The information had to be conveyed today.

  “You have accepted the offer?” he asked. “The money will be available when?”

  “I haven’t called the company back yet. The offer is still on the table. Dr. Mai, I-I’m afraid another matter has come up.”

  Dr. Mai unfolded a piece of paper in English with the signature Kao Vang and a date. “Kao Vang instructs you to accept the offer immediately,” he said. “This is what you call a power of attorney. I can sign for them.”

  “Kao Vang didn’t write this himself,” Nina said. The paper appeared to have be
en copied by hand from a legal form book and was correct in form.

  “He asked me to write it. He signed. He dated.”

  “All right. We’ll get back to this in a moment. May I please speak to you about the matter about which I contacted you?” They had moved somehow to a very formal basis.

  Dr. Mai pushed up his glasses. “Speak, then,” he said.

  “Kao Vang’s file has been stolen,” she said. Keeping the story short and straight, she explained the circumstances. As she spoke, not sparing herself, Dr. Mai’s face fell into a grimace of pain and disappointment.

  “I am very sorry. I want to say that directly to Mr. and Mrs. Vang,” she said.

  He waved a hand at her, his face still screwed up with that awful expression.

  “What is wrong?” she said.

  “Sad how one ill leads to another,” Dr. Mai said.

  “Where is Kao?”

  Dr. Mai closed his eyes.

  “Where is he? What’s going on?”

  “Just get the money to me,” Dr. Mai said. “As soon as possible. Kao cannot talk to you right now. Just do what you have promised.”

  “Does someone know about the insurance? Please tell me.”

  “I love this family,” he said. “Kao is my wife’s nephew. My wife died in one of the camps. Kao is all the family I have left. I must support him, but it is sad.” He looked out the window, and she caught the same weary expression that she had seen in Kao’s eyes.

  “Dr. Mai?” She reached over and touched his hand. “Dr. Mai!”

  He turned his head toward her and said, “We mean nothing to you. Nothing at all. Just get the money.”

  “It’s not true. I do care. And-and I fear I have-from your reaction I am very concerned. I must know if the Vangs are safe.”

  “Just get the money. Please do your job. Get the money. Have your secretary call me when you have the money. That is all I have to say.”

  “Let me help to protect the Vangs. I have a friend-”

  “No more of your help.” He walked out on her, shaking his head.