California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  At one of them he meets Pamela.

  56

  Incendiary origin, opportunity and motive.

  Also known as the Tripartite Proof.

  Whatever it’s called, you need these three elements to prove arson by an insured in court. And if you deny a claim based on arson, you’d better be able to prove it in court.

  Same with the murder, Jack thinks. To deny the life insurance claim, I need to prove that it was a homicide, and that Nicky had motive and opportunity.

  Incendiary origin is just a fancy way of saying that someone intentionally set the fire. What you need to satisfy this one are such things as traces of accelerants, the remnants of an incendiary device, maybe a timer. You also want the indicators of a hot, fast-moving fire: big V-pattern, alligator char, deep char on the floor, crazed glass, a pour pattern.

  Most important of all these is traces of accelerants, and now he has them. Dr. Bambi will come into court and testify that he found heavy traces of kerosene in the flooring and the floor joists. He’ll show the jury his charts and graphs and the jury will go back into the room believing that someone poured kerosene around that bedroom.

  So Jack checks off incendiary origin and pushes it out of his mind. Opportunity—that is, did the insured have a chance to set the fire or cause to have it set? It goes a little deeper than that. The actual standard is “exclusive opportunity”—was the insured the only party to have access to the house during the critical time when the fire was set?

  Opportunity is a tricky mother. It’s why you look to see if doors and windows were locked. It’s why you talk to neighbors to see what—and whom—they might have seen. It’s why you take recorded statements to pin the insured down to where they were at the time of the fire.

  It’s elusive.

  One reason being that arsonists—unless they’re really stupid—tend to use timing devices. For one thing, there is a matter of getting out of the place without setting yourself on fire. You pour some gasoline around and strike a match, you stand a good chance of becoming a human torch. What a lot of amateurs don’t know is that it’s the fumes that ignite, not the liquid. So they pour the gas, step back, toss the match and then run out flaming into the night.

  For another thing, a good timing device gives you the time to establish an alibi. You were somewhere else at the moment of ignition so you didn’t have the exclusive opportunity to set the fire.

  A timing device can be very simple or very sophisticated. As simple as a series of twisted sheets tied together to form a giant wick, which gives you the chance to light it and get away by the time it hits the big pool of gas and goes PHWOOM. Or it can be a simple timer wired to strike a spark into a well of accelerant at a certain time, and that gives you even more space.

  Jack’s personal all-time favorite for a sophisticated timer, though, was on the file where the couple was definitely in Las Vegas the weekend their house burned down. They had receipts and eyewitnesses for a fifty-some-odd-hour period and there were no remnants of timers found in the house.

  But the fire was sure as hell of “incendiary origin” because it had all the indicators and someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make the house fire-ready. Holes had been punched in the walls to improve circulation (fire eats oxygen), windows had been left open (same) and floor samples tested positive for accelerants.

  The security system was intact and there were no signs that anyone had come into the house.

  So how was the fire set?

  Jack puzzled over it, hell, agonized over it, for weeks. He visited the site again and again. Finally, he found a hot spot on the floor in the upstairs family room. Right below the charred remnants of the VCR.

  Jack’s favorite all-time timing device: a videocassette timed to eject and tip over a burner into a pool of accelerant.

  The couple got away with it, of course, but Jack was relieved to have figured it out.

  Anyway, all this is to say that generally speaking, opportunity has to do with time, which often has to do with some kind of timing device.

  This is true even if the insureds have hired the arson out. Jack’s experience is that this is more often the case in commercial fires, because it really takes a pro to burn a warehouse down. But there have been cases where homeowners have hired an arsonist and then gone off on vacation to establish an alibi, but Jack doesn’t think that Nicky hired this one out.

  You burn up your wife in your bed, it’s personal.

  So Jack asks himself, Did Nicky have the opportunity to go into the house, kill his wife and set the fire? Not if his mother’s story is true, but Jack thinks that Mother’s story is bullshit. Then Jack considers the question: Given opportunity, did Nicky have the exclusive opportunity to set the fire? Well, the doors were locked, the windows were cracked open. There were no signs of forced entry. So who besides the owner had access to the house?

  But it’s tricky, it’s weak, and unless he can catch Nicky in a lie, proving the opportunity issue is going to be tough.

  Which brings Jack to the subject of motive.

  57

  There are three basic motives for arson: insanity, vengeance and money.

  And the greatest of these is money.

  Take insanity first, though. Here you’re talking about your storied pyromaniac, that specific-type freak who is simply and hopelessly enamored of fire. The sad fact is that there is a striking coincidence between childhood sexual abuse and pyromania. There is something about the all-consuming heat that is evocative of sexuality and at the same time cleansing. It both brings up the heat and makes it go away.

  This kind of fire, though, doesn’t come up much in insurance fraud anyway, because pyromaniacs tend to burn other people’s stuff and they tend to get caught doing it. So you pay the claim and move on.

  Then there’s revenge. A little more common but still unusual, because generally people who are really pissed these days just shoot the object of their pissed-offedness. But there are white supremacist nut jobs who like to lob Molotov cocktails at synagogues, and there’s the occasional fired (no pun intended) cleaning lady who cleans the floor with charcoal starter and a match, and there’s the husband about to lose his house to the ex-wife and who burns it to the ground by way of saying “Live in this, bitch.’ ”

  So there’s revenge, and there is something about a fire that’s cathartic, no question, but it’s not a choice that most people make.

  So there’s insanity and revenge, but they both pale compared to the numero uno motive for arson—may I have the envelope please—

  Money.

  Money, honey.

  To the tune of some $8 billion a year nationally.

  Jack knows that there are about eighty-six thousand arson fires a year. That’s about one for every hour of the day and the motive for most of them is money.

  Or more properly, the lack of it.

  Fire makes all things new again.

  A fire in nature burns off the old to make way for the new. Same thing in business—it burns off the old investment to make way for the new. It’s an ancient cycle, and the fact is that the incidence of arson directly corresponds to the economic cycle. In boom times, arson goes down. In a recession it goes up. In boom times, people buy a lot of stuff on credit because they’re making the money to service the debt. Then the recession hits, the money ain’t coming in like it was, but the debt is the same.

  It’s the same thing with homes. Most people buy more house than they can afford. They buy the house when things are fat, thinking they’re going to stay fat forever. Then things get lean but the mortgage is still fat. The mortgage doesn’t go on any damn diet.

  Most people walk away from the house, say goodbye to their equity and try to start over.

  Others say, like, fuck that, and get proactive.

  Let their insurance company pay off the mortgage.

  It happened a lot in Orange County, Jack thinks. In the Reagan years everyone was fat. The whole economy was betting on the income. T
hen reality hit, and what everyone bought on credit during the Reagan years they burned down during the Bush administration. The Orange County treasurers got caught on the slide and the county went bankrupt. So the real estate market collapsed, the building trades went down the chute and the only industry that was booming was the arson business.

  Out with the old, in with the new.

  Nature’s eternal cycle.

  Sometimes nature does it on her own.

  It’s weird to contemplate, but Jack knows the reality is that the eventual Southern California economic recovery was fueled by disasters, first fire then earthquake.

  It’s 1993 and the economy sucks. The real estate market and building trades are moribund and everything else comes to a standstill with them. Then the fires hit. Laguna, Malibu, Thousand Oaks. Big out-of-control fires that rise up out of the dry ground and the hot dry wind and burn thousands of acres and hundreds of houses. A lot of people are burned out of their homes and the insurance companies pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits.

  Which is where the economic recovery comes in, because the fires restore the building trades. The insurance companies provide the cash to rebuild the burned homes. Contractors get hired, they hire workers, they buy materials from the suppliers, the suppliers start hiring people, the people take their salaries and buy stuff …

  The cycle goes on an upswing.

  Then the earthquake hits.

  Nature comes to the rescue because it forces the insurance companies to lolly up billions. Billions of dollars of new money gets pumped into the So-Cal economy and it gets things started again.

  So sometimes nature touches off the cycle.

  More often, though, it’s people.

  Touching off their own economic renewal with a match.

  And Jack wonders if that’s what Nicky Vale did.

  Strictly speaking, you don’t always need motive to prove arson. The textbook example Jack learned in fire school was: Suppose a person sets fire to his building at noon on Main Street in front of a hundred witnesses, five of whom videotape the event. In that case, you don’t need to establish motive, because you have ample direct evidence that your man did the fire.

  Jack thinks this example is very useful, because in his experience nothing like this has ever ever happened and it’s never ever going to happen.

  The closest Jack has come to that slice of heaven was the case of the husband who is coming home from work and sees a plume of smoke rising from his town house complex. Fire trucks roar past him, sirens wail, the whole nine yards. The husband pulls up to the security gate only to see his wife sitting on the lawn—a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a gasoline can in the other, and she looks up at him and says, “I always hated that damn house.”

  That is what is known in the claims business as a slam dunk, and Jack has always retained an awed sense of admiration for the husband’s honesty, because it was the husband who told Jack the story.

  “So I guess I’m fucked on my claim,” the husband says after relating the story to Jack. They’re standing beside the charred ruins of what had been the man’s very nice $375,000 town house.

  “I’m afraid so,” Jack says.

  Jack almost wants to pay the claim, he feels so bad for the guy, who was, after all, honest about what happened. But the law says that if any permanent resident of the house intentionally sets the fire, the homeowner is shit-out-of-luck.

  But Jack offers a suggestion.

  “You can try saying that your wife is mentally ill and therefore her actions can’t be intentional,” Jack says.

  “You think that would work?”

  “Hey, it’s California.”

  To his credit, the guy doesn’t try it.

  He does file for divorce, though.

  Anyway, absent that kind of rare event, you need motive.

  Today is Motive Day.

  As to the murder, well, in a weird way the murder piggybacks the arson. The motive and the opportunity are the same. The homicide version of incendiary origin comes with the coroner’s report proving that she died before the fire. Then if the fire was intentional … well, it’s virtually impossible to conclude that the death was accidental.

  Prove it.

  You bet your ass, Nicky.

  58

  So the money first.

  Cherchez la buck.

  As simple as picking up a phone.

  Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you got a name and a Social Security number and you can find out whether someone’s servicing debt and for how much.

  Jack punches in the number, gets put on hold and tries not to listen to the elevator music coming over the phone. Three annoying minutes later he has an answer, though.

  Nicky’s maxed out on every piece of plastic in his wallet.

  He’s on the verge of having his card jerked by the next person who says, “Hi, my name is Diane and I’ll be your server today.” Like, Nicky has Karl Malden telling him, “Don’t leave home with it.”

  Nicky Vale’s credit rating is in the Realm of Suck.

  Call Me Nicky owes $18,000 plus to the credit card companies.

  That ain’t all.

  Nicky has another creditor.

  Uncle Sam.

  There’s a lien on the Bluffside Drive property for $57,000.

  Next Jack hits the Internet.

  Gets a service called AmeriData, punches in Nicky’s Social Security number and date of birth and in a matter of seconds he gets a rundown on everything Nicky owns.

  There’s the house on Bluffside, of course—mortgaged to Pacific Coast Mortgage and Finance.

  Mother Russia’s house is also in his name, also mortgaged to Pacific Coast.

  He has five cars. Three bought for cash, two with payments in arrears.

  No airplanes.

  No boats.

  But he had a boat, Jack remembers. What happened to the boat and when?

  He makes a note to check it out.

  Gets off the Net to take a look at Nicky’s bank balance.

  Nicky is tapped out.

  He has a few thou in the account, enough to make your everyday living expenses, not enough to keep current with the bigger bills.

  Back to the computer. Tap in a few numbers and hook in to the California Secretary of State’s office database. Does the old name-SS#-DOB drill again and then comes out with a list of any corporation in which Nicky is a principal.

  Sees what he expects to see.

  Nicky is president and CEO of Vale Investments.

  Which must be his real estate development operation, Jack thinks.

  There’s also ValeArt.

  The precious furniture.

  And that’s it.

  Jack taps out of the state database, then taps in to the county’s.

  Types in “Vale, Nicky DBA” and comes out with three partnerships and two limited partnerships: South Coast Management, Cote D’Or Management and Sunset Investment; TransPac Holding and TransNat Holding.

  Jack jots down the names and then hits Dun & Bradstreet and Moody’s and also does a credit check.

  It all comes out the same.

  Nicky Vale’s businesses are drowning in the Red Sea.

  Nicky as a business entity is about to go down for the third time and there is no life raft in sight. He has apartment buildings that are half-empty, buildings that are under construction with no funds to complete them, and creditors howling at the door.

  Motive.

  Jack’s about to head over to Pacific Coast Mortgage and Finance when Carol buzzes him and tells him to get into Billy’s office.

  59

  “Goddamn it, Jack!” Billy yells.

  “What?” Jack asks.

  Like he doesn’t know.

  They’re standing in Billy’s cactus garden outside the office. Billy’s sucking on a cigarette like it’s an oxygen mask.

  “The Vale file, that’s what,” Billy says. He tosses the butt on the ground and lights another
. Has to cup his hand to get it lit because the wind is blowing like crazy. This puts him in an even worse mood. “You have a little chat with the insured last night?”

  Well, that didn’t take long, Jack thinks.

  “I wanted to see his reaction,” Jack says.

  “And?”

  “He’s a cool customer.”

  “Well, let me tell you about his reaction,” Billy says. “Vale called his agent—”

  “Roger Hazlitt?”

  “Yes, and rattled his cage about you. Hazlitt took time from his busy day humping his secretary to call his Agency manager, who called the VP for Agency, who called me and rattled my cage.”

  “Vale’s personal property coverage is way over guidelines, Billy. So are his endorsements.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying his personal property coverage is way over guidelines and so are his endorsements.”

  “Don’t try to wind me up over Agency, Jack.”

  Like most insurance companies, Cal Fire and Life is organized into three basic divisions: Agency, Underwriting and Claims. In theory, the three divisions are equal—each has a vice president who reports to the president—but in reality, it’s Agency that swings the big hammer. Every guy who plunks his butt down in the executive dining room upstairs on Mahogany Row has come out of Agency. Every suit on the board of directors has come out of Agency.

  Because it’s Agency that brings in the money, Jack thinks.

  You’re not going to make money from Claims, Jack knows. All Claims does is pay money out. And you’re not going to see any money from Underwriting. The best Underwriting can do is try to set the rates so that you charge the right amount of premiums to make a profit.

  But Agency, that’s the golden goose, man. That’s the pipeline. You have this force of agents out there—selling life, selling auto, selling fire. Taking their commissions—10 percent on fire and auto, 15 percent on life.

  That’s serious money.

  And it regenerates itself. The agent sells the policy once, and all he has to do is keep the policy and he gets his commission every year on renewal. So he wants to keep that customer and he doesn’t really care what Claims has to pay out. If that customer has a loss, the agent wants Claims to pay it. Just pay it, baby. Because the money doesn’t come out of the agent’s pocket or his commission.