California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  And shuts the door behind him.

  She says, “I told you that we were going to monitor this file.”

  “You didn’t tell me that you were going to tip Vale off to every move I was going to make.”

  “You’re paranoid, Jack.”

  Yeah, Jack thinks, I’m paranoid.

  Fucking A, I’m paranoid.

  He says, “Vale knew every move I made.”

  “Then you’d better get some new moves.”

  “He wants $50 million now.”

  “You should have settled it before.”

  She goes back to shuffling papers.

  “He’s mobbed up, isn’t he?” Jack asks.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Jack says, “He intimidated three witnesses and did a magic act with his money. He set me up, and you guys helped him, and I want to know why.”

  “You had your chance to play,” Hansen says. “Too late now.”

  Jack slams his hand on her desk. “I’m not playing!”

  “That’s my point.”

  Jack sighs. “Okay, what do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything now,” Hansen says. “You can’t give me anything now. Before, I wanted you to back off. You wouldn’t. Now they’re going to make you back off, so you have nothing to trade.”

  “Give me what you got on him, Sandra,” Jack says. “I’m dying.”

  Hansen shrugs.

  Says, “We didn’t give Vale any information. And we don’t have any information on Vale to give you.”

  “He killed his wife.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  “And burned the house down.”

  “That’s your version,” Hansen says. “Another version is that you’ve got an ancient hard-on for the sister and that she sold you a bill of goods along with the chucha. And you are going to back off now, Jack. You’re going to lie down like a good dog and die.”

  “You gonna make me, Sandra?”

  “That’s right.” She pulls some papers from her drawer and lays them on the desk. “A sworn statement from a restoration contractor claiming that he paid you to recommend him to policyholders. Here’s another from a homeowner admitting that he gave you a kickback to look the other way on an overcharge. The DA will give them both immunity. It’s up to you, Jack: I can stick them back in my desk or I can send them up to Mahogany Row.”

  “Why don’t you stick them in your ass and then take them up to Mahogany Row?”

  “Same old Jack,” she says. “You know what they’re going to put on your tombstone, Jack? ‘He Never Learned.’ ”

  “So how much is Nicky paying you, Sandra?”

  “As usual, you’re a hundred and eighty degrees wrong.”

  “I hope it’s enough to retire on,” Jack says, “because I’ll never quit on this.”

  “Quitting is the last of your worries,” Sandra says. “Is there anything else I can help you with, Jack, or can you just haul your dumb ass out of here now?”

  Jack hauls his dumb ass out of there. Pauses just long enough to exchange a bad look with Cooper, then heads back to his cubicle.

  Now knowing two things for sure.

  One, Nicky Vale is mobbed up.

  Two, Sandra Hansen’s on the take.

  One more thing, Jack thinks.

  Unless I take a dive on the Vale file—

  —I’m finished at California Fire and Life.

  83

  Which is pretty much what Casey is telling Goddamn Billy.

  He’s got him on the horn and he’s saying, “It might have been nice if someone over these past twelve years had told their old friend Tom about a perjury conviction.”

  “Jack Wade’s a good man.”

  “Jack Wade is a good man,” Casey says. “Which makes it all the more of a shame that he’s going to get fucked.”

  Jack walks into the office and Billy flips the phone to speaker.

  So Jack gets to hear Casey say, “If Gordon wins on the Vale case—and he will win on the Vale case—then he’ll tie that tail to Cal Fire and Life and use it on the next case. And the next and the next. He’ll dig up every claim Jack ever denied—every arson, every fraud—and he’ll find a judge who’ll let him bring them to trial.

  “Except now he not only has Jack’s testimony to use forever, he also has the example of the Vale trial. He’ll tell the next jury that Cal Fire and Life has already been hit for x million, and that didn’t change their ways so you’d better hit them for x-plus. And so on and so on—the tail just keeps getting longer—until the company either buys all the cases or goes out of business.

  “And it won’t be just Paul Gordon, either. Every shark in town will smell the blood and swarm in for the feeding frenzy. Every plaintiff’s attorney in California we ever beat in court will be coming in asking for a retrial, claiming that there’s at least a chance that Cal Fire lied and cheated in their case. I’ll file a truckload of motions to stop it, but some judge in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica will think it’s his ticket to the Supremes, and seeing how the Ninth Circuit is basically made up of politburo members anyway, we’ll get hammered on the appeal.

  “And Jack will be everyone’s favorite witness. He’ll get called to recite a litany of his sins in every bad faith trial for the next ten years. They’ll run him right out of the state: I bet he’ll leave California, he’ll get so tired of being subpoenaed. Of course, if they move a case into federal court, he’s screwed nationwide. You along with him, because they’ll put you on the stand right behind him to confess how you knowingly hired a corrupt cop.

  “Fifty million is a cheap price to stop the bleeding. And save Jack’s ass.”

  “I don’t want my ass saved,” Jack says.

  “Well, I want your ass saved, Jack,” Casey says. “There is no point dying in a battle you can’t win.”

  “We can win it,” Jack says.

  “You’re going to beat Paul Gordon on the stand?” Casey asks. “With no evidence and your baggage? Come on.”

  “Give me some time to get the evidence,” Jack says.

  “We don’t have the time,” Casey says. “Mahogany Row’s already banging on me to settle. They have rate hearings coming up. They don’t want a high-profile bad faith case. Especially one they can’t win. They want to settle.”

  “They can’t settle without me, goddamn it.”

  Company rules. The regional director of Claims—in this case Billy Hayes—has the last word on a claim. This is to save the corporate mucks from being subpoenaed to testify in every bad faith case. The director makes the call, he takes the fall.

  Only this director ain’t going down easy.

  “They’ll take you out if they have to,” Casey says.

  “They’re blowing smoke,” Billy says.

  “Where there’s smoke …”

  “They know about Jack’s checkered past?”

  “I haven’t told them,” Casey says. “I was hoping I’d get your agreement to just lay the Green Poultice on this, then nobody has to know.”

  All wounds, Billy has said, can be healed with the Green Poultice.

  “I don’t want it to go away,” Jack says.

  “You don’t have the choice, Jack,” Casey says.

  “I do,” Goddamn Billy says. “And we ain’t paying this cocksucker a dime.”

  “Let me offer ten,” Casey says. “They’ll have a hard time walking away from ten.”

  “Not a goddamn dime.”

  “Billy, why—”

  “Because he did it and we know he did it.”

  “You think you can persuade a jury of that?” Casey asks.

  “Yes,” Jack says.

  Walking right into it, because Casey answers, “You got yourself a deal. We’ll do a focus group tonight—rent-a-judge, jury, the whole nine yards. You testify, Jack, and I’ll cross-examine you.”

  “When did you schedule this, Tom?” Billy asks.

  “This morning,” Casey says. “The deal I
made with Mahogany Row, trying to save your asses. It’s winner take all. You win, we don’t settle, you can investigate all the way up to the trial. You lose, we start settlement negotiations first thing in the morning. It’s the best deal I could get, guys.”

  A terrific deal, Jack thinks.

  Death.

  Death by Focus Group.

  84

  “We’re dead.”

  Translated from Russian, this is basically what Dani is telling Nicky.

  They’re taking a walk out on the lawn of Mother’s house.

  As far from the house as they can get, because the scene in the house is driving Nicky crazy.

  It’s the kids, it’s the dog, it’s Mother. Actually it’s an unholy troika of the kids, the dog and Mother because the kids love the dog and Mother doesn’t. The kids want the dog in the house and Mother doesn’t, the dog wants to jump up on the couch and Mother has a stroke, the dog wants to sleep with the kids and the kids want to sleep with the dog but Mother wants the dog to sleep outside, which is the same as Mother saying she wants the dog dead—which she does. And last night Nicky experienced the sheer absurdity of making Leo sleep in a doghouse outside and then posting an armed guard by the doghouse so the kids would stop crying and so that little Michael wouldn’t, as threatened, sleep in the doghouse with his rubber knife to protect Leo from the coyotes.

  Next, Nicky thinks, I’ll be stringing barbed wire around the living room sofa.

  And Mother will not get off little Michael’s back. Natalie she ignores completely. Looks right through the girl as if she were a ghost, but Michael she suffocates with attention. Most of it negative. Poor little Michael cannot do anything right. All day it’s Michael, use the napkin not your sleeve, Michael, it’s time to do your scales, Michael, a little gentleman walks with his head up.

  A broken record, Nicky thinks. An oldie but goodie, as the American DJs would say.

  Driving the boy crazy.

  Driving me crazy.

  So it’s good to get away from that scene.

  Take a walk on the lawn even if it is to hear that you are, more likely than not, dead.

  “Tratchev is demanding a meeting,” Dani says. “For tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “They don’t want us to have time to get ready,” Dani says.

  “But they’ll be ready.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him no.”

  “Then we’re at war.”

  “So we’re at war.”

  Dani shakes his head. “Given our present strength compared to his, we can’t win the war.”

  Nicky can hear the unspoken rebuke in Dani’s voice.

  And it’s deserved.

  In my obsession to be a California businessman, I let things deteriorate. To a point where now we are in mortal danger.

  Very uncool.

  “So we meet,” Nicky says.

  Dani shakes his head again.

  “At this meeting,” he says, “they’ll kill you.”

  Tratchev is selling it to the others and it’s an easy sale. Nicky Vale is taking my business—he’ll take yours next. Unless we stop him, and soon.

  “Tratchev will accuse you of looting the obochek,” Dani says. “A serious violation of Vorovskoy Zakon. And this meeting won’t be like the last. They’ll be ready.”

  Nicky takes a moment to inhale the scent of bougainvillea. The luminescent color of the fuchsia. The bright blue of the ocean and sky.

  Beautiful.

  “All I ever wanted was this,” he says.

  “I know,” Dani says.

  “I’ll go to the meeting,” Nicky says. “Alone.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why should we all die?”

  “Pakhan—”

  Nicky puts up his hand. Enough.

  I will do what has to be done.

  I will deal with Tratchev and all the rest.

  Dani says, “There’s something else.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “The sister.”

  “What about her?” Nicky asks.

  “She’s been asking about the two Vietnamese.”

  “What?” Nicky asks. “How do you know this?”

  “She’s been making a noise in Little Saigon,” Dani says. “Putting real heat on.”

  “How did she make that connection?”

  You think you’re safe. You think you’ve used all your skill and cunning to steer through the rapids and the shoals and then this cunt of a sister …

  “We’ll do what we have to do,” Nicky says.

  “She’s a cop.”

  “I know that.”

  “An honest cop.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “It’s too much for a coincidence,” Dani says. “Two sisters—”

  “Goddamn it, will you do as I say?!”

  I know it’s a risk. It’s all a risk. But I didn’t kill my beautiful Pamela and make my children motherless just to lose everything anyway.

  We will do what we have to do—however regrettable—and we will do it soon. And the day after tomorrow we will have our share of $50 million, more than enough to start again.

  From ashes come new shoots of grass.

  Life from death.

  85

  The ritual sacrifice of Jack Wade starts with peanut M&M’s.

  Jack stands in the “observation room” behind the one-way mirror, gobbling peanut M&M’s and watching the “jury” file in. Jack’s been in a couple of dozen focus group facilities and it seems like whatever else they have or don’t have, they always have bowls of peanut M&M’s.

  For nervous chomping.

  They always serve dinner, too, except Jack’s too edgy to enjoy the lasagna bubbling in the heater trays. The meals at these things are usually pretty good, but tonight it’s really good—in addition to the lasagna there’s roast basil chicken, fettuccine Alfredo, a Caesar salad and profiteroles for dessert. Also, real plates, real silverware and linen napkins.

  The quality of the meal is a good news/bad news joke.

  The good news is that it’s a high-quality meal, the bad news is that the reason it’s a high-quality meal is because the muckety-mucks from Mahogany Row are there.

  Casey ordered the menu.

  Casey knows that the mucks tend to take their meals very seriously, so it’s prudent to at least feed them well. Especially when the bill’s going to be $50 million.

  Not counting the tip.

  Jack watches them eat.

  Half of freaking Mahogany Row bellied up to the trough. Twelve years with the company, and Jack’s never seen these guys in the flesh before, just on a few motivational closed-circuit TV presentations. The boys can eat.

  So there they are, VP Claims, VP Legal and VP Public Relations. Goddamn Billy runs it down for him.

  “Phil Herlihy, VP Claims,” Billy says, pointing to a sixtyish guy with a shock of white hair and a paunch. “Came out of Agency, of course. Doesn’t know a claim from a blow job. He’s an administrator.”

  Billy gestures at a tall, thin guy in his fifties. “Dane Reinhardt, VP Legal. Couldn’t buy a verdict in a goddamn courtroom, so now he’s telling us what to do.

  “Jerry Bourne, VP Public Relations,” Billy says, pointing to a short fortyish guy with curly red hair and a red nose. “Basically in charge of arranging hookers for the visiting firemen and hiding the bills in his expenses. He’s a fucking idiot, but at least he knows it. So’s Reinhardt, except he doesn’t know it. All he knows is it’s a lot safer to settle claims than to take one to trial and lose. Last thing that no-balls so-called lawyer wants to see is another courtroom. Herlihy’s the one to watch out for. He swings the big stick in the president’s office.”

  Herlihy looks over at them.

  “Billy,” he says, “aren’t you going to eat?”

  “I’m watching my figure.”

  Herlihy looks at Jack.

  “Are you this Jack Wade I’ve heard so much about today?”

>   “Guilty.”

  Herlihy says, “You Claims cowboys from So-Cal …”

  Like he’s so disgusted he can’t even finish.

  Jack figures it doesn’t require a real answer so all he says is, “Yippi-yi-yo-ky-ay” and walks away, which doesn’t score him a lot of points with Phil Herlihy, VP Claims, from the start of this thing.

  The observation room itself is shaped like a slice of a lecture hall. A bunch of desks bolted onto the floor slanted down toward the observation window. The dining table is off to the left on the five feet of flat floor by the window and the door. On top of the room, a videographer is getting his camera ready to record the whole mess for the boys at corporate who couldn’t make the live show. At the bottom, a table runs the width of the window. Seated at the table are two jury consultants with laptop computers and stacks of questionnaires.

  What the two jury consultants also have is a monitor that’s hooked up to each of twelve ProCon machines on the desk of each “juror.”

  The ProCon machines are simple little devices that measure how the juror is “feeling”—generally pro or vaguely con—at any given moment. It’s basically a joystick attached to a base and the juror is supposed to keep his or her hand on it at all times. The juror’s feeling con about something, he pushes the joystick down. A little con, a little down. A lot con, a lot down. Same with the pro feelings. A little pro, the juror pulls a little back on the joystick, a lot pro, she can whip that puppy all the way back.

  It’s basically a high-tech version of the old Roman thumbs-up/thumbs-down gladiator deal.

  What it does is it allows you to instantly measure the jury’s ongoing “instinctive” reaction on a scale from Negative 10 to Neutral to Positive 10 to any witness, question or answer. They’re carefully instructed that they don’t need a reason for their reaction—they should just react. If they’re feeling “bad” they should push the stick down. If they’re feeling happy, they should push it up.

  Jack knows this is only for the gut reaction, that they’ll get the rational response from the questionnaires and the actual decision from a “verdict,” but he also knows that the the jury will rationalize its gut reaction onto the questionnaire and then onto the verdict.

  Doesn’t matter what a lawyer or a judge says; any jury will decide a case on its gut reaction.