California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  Pretty simple, Jack thinks.

  Letty calls Bentley, Bentley calls Vale, Vale calls his lawyer.

  “So anyway,” Letty says, “that ends any chance of interviewing Vale. I mean, I’m about ready to bring him in anyway, then my boss calls me in. He’s been getting his ass chewed on by Bentley’s boss, and my boss tells me, Sorry, I don’t have the stroke right now to take on the Sheriff’s. I’m like, The fire inspector blew it, and he’s, I know the fire inspector blew it, but Bentley already filed his report that says accidental, and the Sheriff’s isn’t going to put its guy on the stand and make him eat his own report.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing, Jack,” Letty says. “That’s it. Major Crimes won’t take over the file, and I get assigned to a Missing Persons on two Vietnamese punks with about thirty-seven priors each. Get thee out and find Tranh and Do. Teach me a lesson.”

  Jack knows the lesson. The lesson is you don’t make another deputy look bad.

  “So you called me,” Jack says.

  “Bentley said you’d been fucking around over there.”

  “And you knew I’d pursue it.”

  Letty shrugs. “He killed her, Jack. I know he did.”

  Jack takes her by the hand. Says, “Your sister died from an overdose of pills and alcohol. I saw the ME’s report.”

  Letty shakes her head.

  “She didn’t drink.”

  Say what? Jack thinks.

  Say what?

  36

  “I mean she quit,” Letty says. “Had quit. Like, over a year ago.”

  They’re sitting outside at a table at Harpoon Henry’s, down at Dana Point Harbor. Their table overlooks the channel, so they can sit in the sun and watch the sailboats and sportfishing boats come in and out. Jack had heard that the yellowtail were running like crazy and so they’re fresh and that’s why he takes her here.

  Letty says, “She, you know, went to rehab. That famous place where they make you take your own garbage out. Like that’s a big deal. Anyway, she came out, she was clean. Doing the meetings and all that.”

  “Maybe she had a slip that night,” Jack says.

  “She didn’t have a slip,” Letty says. “She was doing great.”

  They stop talking because the waitress comes with food: grilled yellowtail tuna with roast potatoes and yellow and red peppers. A minute later Bob, the owner, is at the table to say hello to Jack.

  “How’s the surf?” he asks.

  “Pretty good,” Jack says. “The water’s warm.”

  “I think that’s why we’re hitting the yellowtail.”

  “Trunk water,” Jack says.

  “Trunk water,” Bob agrees.

  “Bob, this is Letty …”

  “It’s still del Rio,” Letty says.

  “I’m Bob. How’s your meal?”

  “It’s great,” she says.

  “Well, let me know if you need anything,” Bob says. He smiles at Jack and takes off.

  “Bob’s your buddy?” Letty asks.

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “He always come around to get a look at who you’re fucking?”

  “Hey, Letty …”

  “Sorry,” she says. “What’s trunk water?”

  “It’s water that’s so warm you don’t need a wet suit,” Jack answers. “You can go in wearing just your trunks.”

  “So you’re still surfing?” she asks.

  Jack answers, “Work to live and live to surf.”

  He says, “There’s a purity to the ocean. A cleanliness. It’s an absolute.”

  “Wow,” she says, only half making fun of him. “An absolute.”

  Jack says, “The ocean’s going to do what it’s going to do—what it has been doing for millions of years—with you or without you. So if you go into the ocean you just deal with its … absolute power. Which I find soul cleansing.”

  She says, “Good for you it’s a big ocean.”

  Which makes them both laugh, and they eat in silence for a while and look out at the boats and then he gets the guts to say, “Letty, isn’t it possible that she was having a real rough night and hit the bottle and the pills again?”

  “No.”

  “Letty …”

  She shakes her head. “You’d have to know her.”

  “Tell me,” Jack says.

  Tell me about Pam.

  37

  She wanted to be a princess.

  Is what Letty tells him.

  My little sister Pam always wanted to be a princess. She would make crowns from construction paper, and gowns from whatever old stuff was laying around the attic, and she would talk me into pulling her around in the wagon like she was Cinderella and we had to get back before midnight or the wagon would turn into a pumpkin. Which would have been about the only thing to grow on the place.

  We’re growing up on a shit-poor farm outside Perris; what my stepfather is mostly growing is withered lettuce, withered corn and a few withered tomatoes because he doesn’t have the money to irrigate. We have a few cows, some sheep, and “Dad” even tried raising goats for the milk products but the dairy equipment is too expensive so that goes bust, too.

  I’m the tomboy and Pam’s the princess. I want the Chuck Taylor high-tops and she wants the glass slippers. I want to dunk, she wants to dance.

  Stepfather drinks and mi madre works: a workaholic and an alcoholic and it’s sort of a dysfunctional trickle-down theory: I catch the work thing but the taste for the booze trickles down to Pam.

  But I loved her, Letty tells him, and this you must understand, Jack: Pam was a wonderful person.

  A loving, giving, dear and wonderful person.

  When Dad and Mom would fight, like eight nights a week, I’d be upstairs in our bedroom trying to block out the noise and Pam would come up and tell me stories to get me out of there, you know? It’s like I took care of her physically, she took care of me emotionally. She’d tell the greatest stories about princes and princesses and fairyland and monsters and dragons and wizards and handsome knights. As we got older the details changed but the basic plots stayed the same. She’d say how we were going to go off to college and join the same sorority and meet these totally wonderful guys and get married.

  We’d get out of Perris and come here—Letty waves a hand around the harbor and the ocean—to the gold coast, where the money and the good times are, and we’d have money and good times.

  And looking at her, you’d believe her. For one thing, she was drop-dead gorgeous—have you seen any pictures of her? She was so beautiful, Letty says. The kind of striking looks that made you think she could come out here and get guys. Guys with looks and money.

  And she did, Jack says.

  She did, Letty agrees.

  She’s seventeen when she splits. A junior in high school. I’m already with the Sheriff’s when she takes off. For a long time I blamed myself, because I got my own apartment and left her alone out on that farm.

  Anyway, she can’t take it anymore so without a word to anyone she splits for L.A.

  Gets herself a shitty little place in Santa Monica she shares with four other girls and gets a job serving drinks at some yahoo bar. Gets hit on a thousand times a night but she’s not about to go out with—never mind go to bed with—the young guys who take turns buying pitchers.

  She saves every cent she can and buys one good bathing suit, one good day dress, one good evening dress and then she hits the beach. She has that jet-black hair and Liz Taylor eyes and the big boobs and little butt and she goes out trolling for the A-list guys. She’s on the beach in this little black number and she gets attention, she gets invited to parties and if she likes the address, she goes.

  Pretty soon she’s hitting so many parties she cuts her work nights down to three a week, and no weekends, thank you very much. All she needs is rent money, really, because she’s eating at the parties, she’s going out to lunch, she’s going out to breakfast.

  She’s hitting parties in Hollywood, in B
rentwood, in Beverly Hills. She’s sailing to Catalina, she’s doing day trips on fishing boats, she’s cruising down for dinners in Newport Beach and Laguna.

  And the girl’s not putting out.

  You gotta get this, Jack. Pam’s not giving it up, for anyone. And the guys put up with it, they’re so smitten. She has the face and the body and the personality. And she’s funny and warm, she has the whole package, so they keep chasing.

  And she’s not getting caught.

  Pam’s waiting for the real thing.

  She wants the whole Cinderella deal. She wants the prince, and the money, and she wants love.

  She’s not a gold digger, Jack. She has plenty of opportunities, but she tells me, I have to love him, Letty. I have to love him.

  She’s at a party at Las Brisas in Laguna Beach when she meets Nick. The restaurant sits on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The jacarandas are in full scented bloom, lanterns glow from trees, a Mexican guitar plays love songs, and the moonlight sparkles on the water.

  Nick sees her and walks her outside.

  First words out of his mouth?

  You look like a princess.

  38

  His mother didn’t approve, Letty says.

  No kidding? says Jack.

  They’ve finished lunch and they’re walking along the marina. Hundreds of sailboats and motorboats bob with the outgoing tide.

  A twenty-two-year-old high school dropout? Letty says. From some farm? Mother Russia hated her. If you have to marry a shiksa, you can’t find a rich shiksa? From an established family?

  “Good thing she didn’t know Pam was half Mexican,” Letty says. “She would have had a stroke. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing …”

  Anyway, Mother Russia hated her.

  But Nick knows he’s holding the trump card.

  “Grandchildren,” Jack says.

  “You got it.”

  Nick is getting up there and Mother Russia is getting nervous that the family name will die with her bachelor son. And also, the usual rumors are going around: He’s thirty-five and unmarried?

  Anyway, Mother Russia summons Pam and Nick into the living room of the living dead and says, “My son is infatuated with you, but that’s just because he can’t get into your pants.”

  Pam says, “Mrs. Valeshin, if he ever does get into my pants, he’ll be more infatuated than ever.”

  This makes Mother choke on her tea and gives old Nick a woody that lasts at least until the honeymoon.

  Huge wedding, held outside at the House. They have a rabbi and a minister, who talk a lot about how they share a common cultural heritage and after all, Jesus was a Jew. It’s plain that Nick’s paid them not to step too hard on the religious thing, so they’re a little vague on the details but very heavy on the humanism. Anyway, Nick and Pam exchange rings and step on glasses and they’re pronounced man and wife.

  “Wait a second,” Jack says. “You were invited?”

  “As her friend,” Letty says. “I’m ashamed to tell you that I went. Mi madre had already worked herself to death, stepfather too drunk to give a damn. And I didn’t want to ruin it for her. She was happy. Christ, Mother Russia was freaked she wasn’t Jewish—if they’d found out she was half Mexican they would have annulled the marriage and made her do the dishes. Or half of them, anyway.”

  Splashy reception, of course, right there at Monarch Bay, and I was hoping for balalaikas and guys doing that dance where they squat and kick but there is none of that. This party is so Orange County money you could fall asleep standing.

  But Pam, she is a princess.

  To the manor born, like she’s taken lessons or something.

  What I kept hearing as I wend my numbed body around the party: Where did he ever find her?

  And it’s said in admiration.

  Envy.

  Pam’s a star.

  If the movie ends there, Letty says, you have fucking Sabrina.

  But the movie doesn’t end there, Jack thinks.

  It ends the way everything ends.

  In ashes.

  39

  Which the wind blows into their eyes.

  They’re standing in the driveway looking at the house. It’s against Jack’s better judgment, but Letty wants to see it and he figures it’s better if he’s along.

  “What they’re doing now?” Letty says. “They’re taking the boat out in the ocean to scatter her ashes. He doesn’t want any part of her around.”

  Which has been true for years, Letty tells him.

  After Michael was born.

  The son.

  A Valeshin.

  I thought I was a princess, Pam had told her. What I am is a broodmare.

  She’s still in the hospital with Michael when Nick nails a waitress at the Salt Creek Inn. She hears about it from a friend who comes with flowers and spite.

  Not to like stress you, darling, but …

  It doesn’t end there.

  Nick has God knows how much tied up in leveraged real estate. Balloon payments looming, then the bottom drops out. Orange County goes bankrupt and you can’t get a construction loan at any price. Even money can’t buy money.

  First real estate, then the furniture. People can’t make their mortgages, they’re not going to buy George II side tables, so what was an investment becomes a collection. Nick gets his ego wrapped up in it. The damn furniture become his possessions. Even on the rare occasions when he gets an offer, he won’t part with them.

  And they need the money, they’re so stretched out.

  He mortgages the house, at God knows what psychic cost.

  Prime interest and his balls.

  He takes it out in coke and fucking, Letty says. The money goes up his nose and out his dick.

  Pam becomes the quintessential lonely South County wife and starts to drink. First it’s liquid lunches; after a while she’s already primed by the time lunch rolls around. Sobers up in the afternoons for the kids, gets them dinner, bathes them, puts them to bed, then drinks herself to sleep.

  “Letty …,” Jack says.

  “I know,” Letty says. “But I’m telling you she was sober.”

  “Maybe not that night,” Jack says. “You know, Nick has the kids, he’s going to divorce her …”

  Letty shakes her head. “She was divorcing him.”

  “Oh.”

  Pam finally gets tired of it, Letty tells him. Tired of his fucking around, his coke, his lying, his smacking her when the real estate deal falls through or when she objects to him buying a five-thousand-dollar sculpture with money they don’t have.

  Tired of herself, too. Tired of the way she feels and looks. And horrified that she’s starting to see her kids through the long-distance smoked lens of pills and alcohol.

  So she checks herself into rehab.

  I don’t know what went on in there, Letty says, but Pam went in a faux princess and came out a real woman. She must have dealt with stuff there, because she comes out, she’s different. More real, somehow. Warmer.

  She starts calling, inviting me over. Even introduces me as her half sister. We speak Spanish together, which makes Nick crazy. I spend time with the kids—take them to the beach, take them to the country—

  “What do you know about the country?” Jack asks.

  “I live there now,” Letty says. “I bought a little place up along the Ortega Highway, Cleveland National Forest. Are we talking about me or Pam?”

  “Pam.”

  Pam comes out of rehab warmer.

  And strong.

  Gives Nick an ultimatum: Straighten up or the marriage is over.

  She hauls him into counseling. That works. Three weeks later she comes home to find him in their bed with some coke whore from Newport Beach. She tells Nick to pack his bags and get out.

  Nick storms out and comes back an hour later with a head full of blow and beats the crap out of her. Princess Pam would have taken it, but this Pam goes into court the next day and gets a restraining order, thro
ws his ass out.

  He runs to Mommy. She calls Pam and tells her that she’ll never, ever get the kids. She’s an unfit mother. The Vale lawyers will take her apart.

  You’ll take my kids, Pam says—get this, Jack—over my dead body.

  Set on fire, Jack thinks, melted into their bed, cremated again and scattered over the ocean.

  “He was terrified of a divorce,” Letty says. “He’s already up to his ears in debt and she’s going to take half. And the house, and the kids …”

  Daddy says Mommy is all burned up. “You have motive,” Jack says, “but—”

  “He told her he was going to kill her,” Letty says. “He’d break into the house when she was gone and take things. Leave her threatening notes. Call her on the phone late at night and tell her he was going to kill her.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “She called me the morning before she died,” Letty says. She starts to cry as she’s telling this.

  He came over to pick up the kids, Pam had said. And he whispered in my ear, I’m coming back tonight. I’m coming back and I’m going to kill you.

  “I begged her to come out and stay with me that night, but she wouldn’t,” Letty says. The tears pour down her face now. “I should have made her. I should have come and stayed with her. I should have—”

  “Letty—”

  “He has the kids, Jack,” she says. “That rotten bastard and that bitch are going to raise her kids.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Over my dead body,” Letty says.

  Then she starts to cry. Breaks down right there and would maybe collapse except he holds her. Asks her, “Do you want to come home with me?”

  She nods.

  As they’re pulling out of the driveway, Jack notices a car parked on the street.

  Two guys stand by the car.

  Same guys who were in the church.

  Nicky’s hired security.

  40

  Jack lives in your basic Southern California neofascist “gated community.” A walled-in cluster of tile-roofed condos and town houses sitting like a castle on a shaved-off hill on the corner of Golden Lantern and Camino Del Avion.