California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  “It was 10:15,” she says, with a hint of disapproval.

  It’s a hint, but Nicky picks up on it like it fell on his head.

  “Summertime,” he says. “They have no school to get up for, so I’m afraid I’m a bit lenient …”

  She says, “Children need a routine.”

  Jack asks, “What did you after the children went to bed?”

  “I am an American now, too.” Nicky laughs. “I watched television. A movie on HBO.”

  “Cinemax,” Mother corrects.

  “Cinemax,” Nicky says with a look at Jack that says, Mothers.

  “Do you recall what the movie was?”

  “Something with John Travolta,” Nicky says. “About stealing an atomic weapon. Very post-cold war.”

  “Did you watch the whole thing?”

  “It was quite suspenseful.”

  “That’s a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack turns to Mother.

  “Did you watch it with him?”

  “Am I under suspicion of something?” she asks.

  “No one’s under suspicion of anything,” Jack says. “It’s just the rules.”

  You have a $2 million claim, I have to ask the questions.

  Mother says, “I was reading a book while Daziatnik watched the film, but I was, yes, in the room with him.”

  “Did you go to bed after the movie?” Jack asks Nicky.

  “Yes.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About 12:30, I suppose.”

  “No,” Mother says. “You went out for a swim and then sat in the spa.”

  Nicky smiles. “She’s right. I took a brandy out with me.”

  “So you went to bed around …?”

  “One-thirty, it must have been.”

  “How about you, Mrs. Valeshin?” Jack asks. “Did you go to bed after the movie was over?”

  She answers, “Yes. I turned the light out at 1 o’clock.”

  So much for the prelims, Jack thinks. He asks Nicky, “When did you get up?”

  “When the telephone rang.”

  “That was the—”

  “The authorities calling to inform me of the … of my wife’s death.”

  “I’m sorry to have to—”

  “No, you are performing your job,” Nicky says. “I asked you to come do just that, didn’t I? Your next question is, Do I recall the time? Yes, I do. When I heard the phone ringing I looked at the clock. You know, what fool is calling at this hour? It was 6:35. I am quite certain. This is not the sort of thing you forget.”

  “I understand,” Jack says.

  “Then I went and woke up Mother,” Nicky says. “I told her and we discussed how to tell the children. We decided to let them sleep for a while longer. I believe it was around 7:30 when we woke them up to tell them.”

  “So you were in bed from roughly 1:30 to 6:30,” Jack says.

  “That’s correct.”

  “No,” Mother says. “You got up to check on the children. Michael was crying and I was about to get up when I heard you. That was at—”

  Let me guess, Jack thinks. That was at 5 o’clock.

  “—four forty-five.”

  Okay, close.

  “Mother is, as usual, right,” Nicky says. “Now that she mentions it, I recall that I got up to check on Michael. He was back asleep, of course, by the time I got to their room. I probably stopped to use the toilet on my way back to bed, Jack.”

  Jack asks some more questions then tells Nicky that he’ll need tax returns and bank statements.

  “Why?” Nicky asks.

  Because I want to see if you have a financial motive for burning your house down.

  “Just part of the process,” Jack says.

  “Do you think I had the house burned down?” Nicky asks. “A case of ‘Jewish lightning,’ as I’ve heard said?”

  “I don’t think anything,” Jack says.

  Under the gaze of Nicky’s blue eyes.

  Mother says, “Daziatnik, why don’t you go get the children?”

  Daziatnik goes to get the children.

  Mother gives Jack her iciest smile and says, “Perhaps I should reconsider the room and board.”

  “That’s between you and your son, Mrs. Valeshin.”

  He watches while she thinks for a few seconds.

  Then she says, “Perhaps three thousand …”

  Jack can’t wait to go surfing. Let a violent ocean pound his body and clean his soul.

  “Do you have children, Mr. Wade?” she asks.

  “No,” Jack says. “No wife, no kids.”

  “Why not?”

  Jack shrugs. “Too selfish.”

  I work, I surf, I work on my longboards in my garage.

  Sunday nights I do laundry.

  “When you have children,” she says, “you will understand life. When you have grandchildren, you will understand eternity.”

  Mrs. Valeshin, Jack thinks, I don’t know if I could stand it if I understood life, never mind eternity.

  Nicky comes in with the kids.

  22

  Heartbreakers.

  Jack takes one look at them and hears this cracking sound in his chest.

  Seven-year-old Natalie and four-year-old Michael.

  They stand, one under each paternal hand, picture perfect. The little girl has her father’s blue eyes, red and puffy now from crying. Black hair done in a single braid. A little skirt outfit of yellow and plaid. The boy’s eyes are brown. And enormous. He’s also dressed for company, a little sky-blue polo shirt and white tennis shorts.

  Museum pieces, Jack thinks.

  “Say hello to Mr. Wade,” Mother tells them.

  They mumble a hello and Jack feels embarrassed that they even have to say hello to a stranger on the same day their mother dies. All he can think of to say is, “I brought Leo. He’s fine.”

  The kids start to smile and then stop.

  Jack adds, “He’s outside.”

  They don’t move.

  Not a muscle, not an inch.

  And it isn’t Daddy’s hands on their shoulders, Jack sees. It’s Grandma’s eyes.

  They are Doing What’s Expected, Jack thinks.

  Except it isn’t what I’d expect. I’d expect them to go tearing out that door to go hug and kiss and make a big deal over that little dog.

  But they’re as still as statues.

  “We’re having tea,” Mrs. Valeshin says. “Tea for the adults, lemonade for the children.”

  She gets up and comes back a minute later with a tray. A pitcher of iced tea, another of lemonade, and five glasses. She sets the tray on the coffee table, pours the glasses and sits back down.

  Natalie and Michael sit next to Jack on the sofa. He notices that they’re doing the same thing he’s doing, sitting on the very edge of the cushion, their butts barely touching the fabric.

  Looking straight ahead.

  The tea is sweet, Jack notices. Strong and sugary.

  And they all sit in silence. Like it’s some sort of weird summer sacrament, Jack thinks. The First Sip, or something.

  Until Mrs. Valeshin says, “I’m raising your rent, Daz.”

  Like it’s some wonderful joke.

  “Oh, Mother.”

  “Well,” she says, “why should the insurance company get off lightly? Right, Mr. Wade?”

  “We pay what we owe, Mrs. Valeshin.”

  “And what company are you with?”

  “California Fire and Life.”

  “Perhaps I should consider switching to you,” she says. “I’m with Chubb now.”

  “They’re a fine company,” Jack says.

  He imagines trying to adjust a claim in this house and decides he’d rather spoon a can of Drāno down his throat.

  Then Michael spills his lemonade.

  Lifts the glass and just misses his mouth, and the lemonade goes down his shirt, his shorts and onto the sofa. Nicky yells, “Michael!” and the boy drops his glass on the carpet
.

  Pandemonium.

  Cool Nicky loses it.

  Totally.

  He screams at Michael, You stupid boy! Michael sits there, paralyzed, in a pool of lemonade, while Natalie laughs hysterically. Shut up! Nicky screeches at her. Raises his hand and the girl stops laughing.

  Mother yells, Resolve! and it takes Jack a second to realize she’s talking about carpet cleaner, not some moral exhortation, then she and Nicky hustle into the kitchen. Yelling at each other like the house is on fire, Jack thinks, then feels bad because it’s a poor choice of words.

  Michael gets up, walks to one of the wingback chairs, bends straight over at the waist and starts to sob.

  Jack doesn’t know what the hell to do, then he sets down his papers and goes to the boy.

  Jack picks him and holds him.

  Michael sobs against his chest and holds him tight.

  “Next time?” Jack says to him. “Ask for grape juice.”

  Natalie looks up at Jack and says, “Daddy says Mommy is all … burned … up.”

  In a singsong voice.

  All burned up.

  23

  Hector Ruiz has done this a couple of dozen times, so it’s no big deal.

  Another day at the office.

  He’s driving an Aerostar van with six people in the back, following Martin up the Grand Avenue entrance ramp onto the 110. He checks his rearview mirror. Octavio’s right behind him—smack where he’s supposed to be—in a shit-brown ’89 Skylark, which is good because Octavio is the crucial dude in this gig.

  Octavio fucks up, it could get ugly.

  But Octavio, he don’t fuck up.

  Octavio is a player.

  So is Jimmy Dansky, who for an Anglo anyway is pretty trustworthy. Dansky’s cruising—or better be, anyway, in the right-hand lane on the 110 South—in a black ’95 Camaro, and Dansky is one terrific driver, which is a happy thing because the timing on this is tricky.

  Hector checks his speedometer and eases it down to thirty.

  Sees Martin kick up his Toyota Corolla to hit the highway.

  Just as Dansky’s Camaro swerves right, into the entrance lane.

  Dansky hits the horn.

  Martin slams on the brakes.

  Hector stands on his own brakes, cranks the wheel to the right and just nicks Martin’s right rear bumper.

  Looks into his rearview and here comes Octavio.

  Brakes squealing.

  And BAM.

  Octavio’s so good, man.

  Octavio is the only dude Hector ever wants to make his play with, man, because Octavio makes this sound like the big bang but only hits them at about ten miles per hour. Octavio leaves skid marks like an F-16 landing on a flight deck but the impact is like, minimal.

  Like, I’ve been kissed harder.

  The two cars look like shit, though. This is because Hector and Octavio smacked the bumpers up pretty good in the garage before putting them back on the cars. Matched the paint jobs and everything, but then again, they’re pros.

  Hector hollers into the back, “It’s showtime!”

  Hector slides out of the car, starts screaming in Spanish at Octavio, who’s screaming back. Six dudes from Sinaloa in the back of the Aerostar moaning, Oh my neck, Oh my back, Oh my neck.

  Doctor will diagnose soft tissue injuries and treat them for months. Refer them to physical therapy, man, and bill for ultrasound and massage and chiropractic sessions and all that shit that never happens except on paper.

  Hector yells at Octavio, “You better be insured, man!”

  “I’m insured!” Octavio yells back.

  “Who’s your insurance company?!”

  Octavio whips out his insurance card.

  Like American Express, only better, because you don’t have to pay the bill.

  “California Fire and Life!” Octavio yells.

  Just like they’ve done it a couple of dozen times before.

  Just another day at the office.

  24

  Mommy is all burned up.

  Jack’s so bummed he doesn’t know whether to drive the car or suck on it.

  The totally downer picture of Pamela Vale’s death smacks him in the face: marriage fucked up, kids off at nightmare grandma’s house, a lonely woman hits the vodka and the cigs and gets a longer oblivion than she was looking for.

  Tough shit, he thinks. So what? She’s not the only person who died today.

  So, why do I care?

  It’s just the whole damn thing, he decides. It’s drunk Pam Vale burning herself up in her bedroom, it’s Bentley taking about ten minutes to call her death an accident, it’s the grieving husband hustling to the phone to ask about his money, it’s the All-Star Anal Retentive Mother from Hell charging her widowed son and motherless grandchildren bust-out retail for room and board.

  And it’s the kids, with their alkie mother and their shifting-cloud father and a grandmother who’s about as warm as a steel ruler, and it’s Daddy says Mommy is all burned up.

  And there’s this thing—this feeling, this suspicion, this paranoia, this sick thing—smoldering in the back of his cynical brain. The sooty glass, the dog outside, the blood-red flame, the black smoke …

  Daddy says Mommy is all burned up.

  Call Me Nicky, Jack thinks.

  Call you a sick twist.

  Telling your kids that.

  Be honest, Jack tells himself. The main reason you don’t like Nicky is because he’s a real estate developer. One of those classic ’80s schlock artists who made the big quick dollar throwing up shit all over the south coast. Shaving off the hillsides, pounding out building pads on bad soil, tossing up condos and apartment buildings with cheap materials and shoddy construction.

  That’s your fucking California, Call Me Nicky. You invent your own California and ruin mine. Reinvent yourself and invent me out.

  And now he gets Nicky’s involvement with Save the Strands. A fucking developer fighting development. Of course, the Vale house looks out over the Strands. It’s just a NIMBY thing—Not in My Back Yard. I got my million-dollar view—don’t fuck it up. I got my California.

  Shit.

  Like you’re any different.

  You’re the same guy without the money.

  It’s not Nicky Vale.

  It’s me, Jack thinks.

  My pathetic fucking excuse for a life, which mostly consists of sifting around in the ashes of other people’s lives, trying to put things back together again. Like that can happen, like that can ever happen.

  Putting ashes together again.

  “Christ, listen to yourself,” he says.

  Fucking pathetic, self-pitying, burned-out.

  Cold ashes.

  Jack, the ace fire guy, a burnout case.

  Now, that’s funny.

  The cell phone rings.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” the voice says.

  But …

  25

  The voice takes him back a long way.

  Back to the days when he graduates from fire school and goes back to the Sheriff’s Department and they put him in the Fire Inspector’s Unit.

  Jack is a comer, a real potential star.

  He works his ass off, takes every seminar offered, goes to fires that aren’t even his. The joke is that every firefighter in south Orange County is afraid to barbecue a burger because they’re afraid Jack will show up.

  Jack, he figures he has life just about dicked.

  He has a trailer across the PCH from Capo Beach, so he’s ten minutes from Trestles, ten minutes from Dana Strand, and twenty from Three Arch Bay, and he can always just go across the highway to surf Capo if he’s pressed for time. He’s got a primo ’66 Mustang that needed only a little Bondo, and he gets a yellow paint job on that hummer, wires the sound system himself and puts on a rack and he is rolling.

  Rolls out to a firebombing scene one day and everything else he could want in life is standing out in front of the Jewish Community Center waiting fo
r him.

  Letitia del Rio.

  It’s hard to look good in an Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputy’s uniform, but Letty gets it done. Black hair an inch longer than regulation, golden brown skin, black eyes in a face that is stunningly beautiful, and a body that is pure sex.

  “This shouldn’t be a tough one for you,” Letty says to Jack as he walks up. She juts her chin at a teenage skinhead being loaded into an ambulance. “Adolf Jr. over there threw a Molotov cocktail and set himself on fire.”

  “They think it’s the liquid,” Jack says, “not the fumes.”

  “That’s because they sleep through their classes,” she says.

  Jack shakes his head. “It’s because they’re morons.”

  “Well, that too.”

  Two minutes later he hears himself asking her out.

  “What did you say?” she asks.

  “I guess I asked you to dinner,” Jack says.

  “You guess?” she asks. “I’m not going out on a guess.”

  “Would you go out to dinner with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack blows out the savings account on a meal at the Ritz-Carlton.

  “You’re trying to impress me, huh?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good,” Letty says. “I’m glad you’re trying to impress me.”

  Next date, she insists on Mickey D’s and a movie.

  Date after that she cooks him a Mexican dinner that is only the best meal he’s ever had. He tells her so.

  “It’s genetic,” Letty says.

  “Did your parents come from Mexico?”

  She laughs. “My family was living in San Juan Capistrano when it was still part of Spain. Do you speak Spanish, white boy?”

  “A little.”

  “Well, I’ll teach you some more.”

  She does.

  She takes him into her bedroom and Jack thinks he learns not only a little Spanish but the entire meaning of life when she steps out of her jeans and unbuttons her white blouse. She’s wearing a black bra and black panties and her smile says that she knows it’s sexy and she looks down at the bulge in his pants and says, “I make you hard, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good,” she says. Then smiles and says, “What I’ve got for you, baby …”

  She’s not kidding.

  You can take all those classroom definitions of fire, Jack thinks, but you don’t know about heat until you have Letty del Rio swirling on you. He reaches up to touch her breasts but she grabs his hands and pushes them down on the bed and holds them down while she keeps moving on him. She’s focusing his attention to just where she wants it; it’s like, Once you’ve been in here, you’re never going to want to be anywhere else. You are home, baby. And when he’s about to come, she reaches underneath him and lightly strums—later she’ll call this her “Mexican guitar”—and while he’s coming she’s talking dirty in Spanish.