California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  He turns around in the doorway and looks at them for a minute.

  Shakes his head.

  “This company used to stand for something,” he says. “Now it’ll stand for anything.”

  Shakes his head again and says, “Any goddamn thing.”

  He turns and leaves.

  “Well …” Casey says.

  “We pay the fifty,” Bourne says. “We’re going to the Insurance Commission for a rate hike in ninety days anyway—this will add nicely to the debit side when we argue that we need it.”

  Casey has stopped listening.

  It’s a done deal.

  93

  Jack busts the Mustang south.

  Blows right past the exit to California Fire and Life, passes the exit to his condo and shoots down to the Ortega Highway, where he turns east.

  You take the Ortega east, what you’re letting yourself in for is a series of downhill switchbacks that is like guaranteed to make your Labrador throw up in the backseat. You’re going over the top of the mountains in the Cleveland National Forest, so you’re cruising through some barren, rock-strewn hills—the “forest”—and all of a sudden you’re pitching downhill toward the town of Lake Elsinore, and it’s like falling off the edge of the fucking earth. Which it is, which you’d know if you’ve ever actually been to Lake ’Snore.

  This stretch of road is not where you want to fuck up. You slip on the kozmic banana peel coming down these switchbacks you are suddenly Lost in Space, man. You are Rocky the Flying Squirrel, you are airborne. You may have your four-wheel-drive sports utility vehicle—but you can have eighteen-wheel-drive and it won’t matter, if all those wheels are in the sky. What you don’t have is wings, or a parachute, which is what you’re going to need if you screw up the distinction between centrifugal and centripetal force on one of these curves.

  Like, bikers have done space launches off this mountain and the Highway Patrol can’t even find them; they’re in their own little bomb craters six hundred feet below.

  You lose the edge on these curves, it’s just AMF.

  Jack’s into it.

  Jack’s working out his rage on the road; he and the Mustang are taking the Ortega like it’s a Nebraska farm road, like What curves? We don’t see no stinking curves. Jack’s doing the gas, brake, shift, gas number, cranking on that wheel like he’s on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

  As for Jack, well, it isn’t exactly the Death Ride of Jack Wade. It’s not like he’s necessarily trying to kill himself, it’s just that he’s not trying real hard not to.

  Because what’s the difference? Jack’s thinking.

  The job’s gone.

  And I don’t have a life outside the job.

  Unless you count the daily surfing ritual at Dana Strand.

  Which will be gone soon.

  Into the Great Sunsets.

  His adrenaline’s a little jacked when he has to slow down to figure out where Letty’s place is.

  In the middle of nowhere.

  He finally finds it about a hundred yards down a dirt road that runs between two pastures. There’s a stand of trees with several buildings hidden in it and when he pulls up the sign says DEL RIO.

  He sits in the car wondering why the hell he’s there, decides it’s for no good reason at all, and he’s just about to put the ’Stang in reverse when he sees lights come on in the house.

  He turns off the engine and gets out of the car.

  She comes out, she’s wearing a T-shirt over jeans and she’s barefoot.

  Hair tussled.

  Stands in her gravel driveway looking at him.

  Like, What are you doing here?

  “It’s over,” he finally says. “I blew it. We lost.”

  She thinks about it for a few seconds, then says, “You drove out here to tell me that?”

  It’s a minute at least before he hears himself speak.

  “I have nothing in my life.”

  Feels like he’s standing a long way away, hearing himself say that.

  She goes to him and takes him by the arm and leads him into her house.

  94

  Later, when she takes him into her bedroom, she pulls her T-shirt over her head and steps out of the jeans and gets under the sheet. Jack gets undressed and lies down beside her. She reaches out for him and her skin is white and warm, and they kiss and she presses against him and he pulls the sheet down. When he reaches down to touch her she’s moist and warm. He strokes her, feeling her get wetter, feeling her flow to his hand and get hotter, and then she says, Baby, and when she reaches for him he’s hard and with her open hand she strokes him up and down.

  They stroke each other, she starts to move against his hand, she presses up and her eyes get wide as if she’s surprised. And her skin is hot and she arches her back and reaches her other hand for his and holds it tight as she cranes her neck back and comes.

  He keeps stroking, touching her where she’s now so wet but she moves his hand away and says, In me, I want you in me, and she guides him inside her and Jack is surprised at how good she feels, hot and ripply as she moves up and down against him, and her breasts flatten against his chest and she doesn’t close her eyes but she looks at him as he moves slowly in and out of her. Her black hair rippling on the pillow; he reaches out to grab it and clench it in his hand, bury his face and kiss her neck, lick her salty skin there. She clasps the back of his neck and pulls him close to kiss her. Her mouth is hot and her tongue is hot and her thighs feel fiery against his and he starts to move faster and harder because he wants to feel the heat of the core of her. He can feel it when he lunges hard deep into her. She can feel it too, because she jams herself against him and pushes him up deeper into her. He can feel the head of his cock touch this deep hot place inside her that touches some deep place in him, and she’s holding his neck and his ass and rocking with him and he’s gripping her neck and her ass and can feel her wet against the tips of his fingers there, and then it feels like inside there is this heat flowing, flowing, and she grips him harder saying, Yes, baby, it’s okay, as he moans and starts to move faster and harder. There’s this heat in him, he feels like he’s falling, he feels like he’s on fire and falling as she rocks him in and around her, there’s that heat so deep inside her, so lovely, inside her so lovely, her face so lovely, this falling like riding a wave of flame, Yes, baby, it’s okay, come in me, you can come in me, and then he is, it’s like falling off the world, like a wave of flame crashing, rolling him over and over under this unbearable wave of pleasure, not letting him up, he’s crying out, she’s cooing, Yes, baby, he’s under this ocean of pleasure, somewhere up above the water he hears his long scream, he feels his soul race out ahead of him, he’s drowning, she’s saying, Baby, and when finally he comes up it’s like he washes up on the white beach of her body, white neck and white breasts, her stomach slick, their sweat like smooth wet sand, and her face is flushed red and her eyes are wet. Black hair sweaty wet clings to her neck and he sees those eyes searching for his and then he finally breathes.

  Tears come. Drop from his eyes onto her neck, her chest, her breasts, she holds him tightly to her as he sobs, as he weeps twelve empty years.

  95

  Jack wakes up in Letty’s bed.

  At first he’s like, Where the hell am I, but then he smells the Mexican coffee and remembers. Rolls out of the rack and comes into the kitchen and she’s standing there by the toaster sipping on the strong coffee.

  “I don’t do the bacon-and-eggs thing,” she says. “But I can offer you toast and coffee.”

  “Sounds great.”

  He plops down on a stool by her curved kitchen counter and looks out the window. The land slopes down through big, old black oak trees to some open pasture. Across a fence, horses are out grazing.

  “Your horses?” Jack asks.

  “The neighbor’s,” she says. “I ride them sometimes. You ride?”

  “Just surfboards,” he says.

  “To each his own rid
e,” she says, handing him a plate of buttered toast. She sits on the stool next to his. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to go in to the office,” he says, “and clean out my desk.”

  “You think they’re really going to fire you?”

  Jack says, “If they don’t, I’m going to quit anyway.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she says.

  “Yeah I do.”

  They sit and look out the window. It’s pretty out there, Jack thinks. The trees and the pasture. Mountains in the background.

  After a few minutes she asks, “So what are you going to do?”

  “Dunno.”

  A few minutes later she says, “You could come here.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “The house needs a remodel,” she says. “You could be doing that. You know, fixing things—”

  “Sleeping in your bed …”

  “Well, that would be a bonus.”

  “For me.”

  “How gallant.”

  More coffee, more silence, more window gazing. Then she says, “It’s a serious offer.”

  “Serious?”

  “Sincere,” she says, looking into her coffee cup. “And sudden. But look, how often do you get a second chance? I mean, me as well.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Same.”

  Thinking, you romantic bastard. Same. Nice going.

  “Yeah?” she asks. Looks up at him now.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “So,” she says. “It’s a serious sincere offer.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “Can I think about it?”

  Because he knows she’s offering the whole package. Like this instant life—the home, the woman—and he knows she hasn’t given up on the kids yet. Which is bad, because she should.

  “Letty?”

  “Jack?”

  “You’re not going to get the kids,” he says. “It’s over.”

  “For you maybe,” she says. She gets up and starts to clean off the counter.

  “Letty—”

  “Look, you took your best shot and you lost,” Letty says. “I’m not blaming you for anything, okay? I’m not calling up what you did twelve years ago and saying that cost me the kids. All I’m saying is that I owe those kids my best shot, even if you think it’s a loser. I’m going to find a lawyer who’ll take this in front of a judge, and if I lose I’ll find another lawyer and another judge, and if I lose …”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I gotta go to work. You want to come back here tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, you heard me? Or, yeah, you want to.”

  “Yeah, I want to.”

  They stand there looking at each other.

  “So this is probably the moment when we kiss,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  So they do kiss and then hold on to each other for a minute and he says, “What I did twelve years ago? It was the wrong thing to do. I should have just dropped the case.”

  “Probably.”

  “I mean that old man was more important than the case.”

  “I know that’s what you meant.”

  She walks him out to the ’Stang and he takes off.

  Back to California Fire and Life.

  96

  Jack goes out to Billy’s office.

  Hotter than hell out there in the cactus garden.

  “You ain’t fired,” Billy says. “They can’t fire you until they fire me.”

  “See you on the unemployment line.”

  “Shit, I’d just retire,” Billy says. Gives this private little smile. “Fade into the sunset.”

  “I’m quitting, Billy.”

  “Nah, don’t do that.”

  “They gonna pay the demand?”

  Billy says, “Probably.”

  “Then I quit.”

  “Shit, Jack—”

  Billy snuffs out the cig and struggles to light another one. Has to turn against the wind and cup his hands to do it. Sucks down the first drag and says, “Just let it go.”

  “Can’t.”

  Phone rings inside Billy’s office. He says, “That’s probably Herlihy again. I got Claims, Agency, Underwriting and SIU all banging on me about this claim.”

  “You better go talk to them, then.”

  “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I’ll sit out here until the vultures take me away.” Jack takes the files off the chair and sits down.

  97

  Letty sits in the front seat of her car getting a last sip of her coffee.

  She’d rather be doing something else than hiking up some trail in Cleveland Forest to meet a Vietnamese punk teenage chop shop artist to get the word about two of his missing homeboys.

  Although I guess I asked for it, Letty thinks as she sets her cup on the floor below the driver’s seat. I put the heat on him.

  Since busting him in the chop shop, she’s cranked up the DA, the Orange County Anti-Gang Task Force and the little moke’s probation officer. Plus she’s popped three more chop shops, a gambling room and a massage parlor to get Uncle Nguyen wound up. So she wasn’t all that surprised when she got the call.

  She gets out of the car and walks uphill, up the hiking trail, where she can already see Tony Ky standing there doing the Snitch Hop.

  The Snitch Hop is this very distinctive two-step—a little double bounce on one foot, then shift the weight and a double bounce on the other—hands in pockets, shoulders scrunched up, head rhythmically turning from side to side. Letty sees this performance of the Snitch Hop, she knows with some satisfaction that the kid is nervous as hell.

  Good, Letty thinks. Serves him right. Maybe he’ll get so freaked he’ll give it up and get a real job. Yeah, right.

  Tony is nervous. The kid is definitely not used to meeting with cops to give them information, even if it is about two friends who have dropped off the screen. And Tony has had a brutal week. First there’s the bust in the chop shop—which Uncle Nguyen was not happy about. But Tony figures he’s still going to cruise through it. Then the DA starts cracking on him about two other chop shops, trying to connect him to some sort of conspiracy, then the anti-gang guy is in his face mumbling something about RICO, then his probation officer says he don’t have to wait for a conviction to violate, just him being in the presence of other felons …

  Then, like things weren’t shitty enough, Uncle Nguyen reaches out personally with the word that if he knows anything about the disappearance of imbecile Tranh and idiot Do, he had better get his mouth in gear immediately if not sooner, and when Uncle Nguyen hears that Tranh and Do were last seen doing errands for the Russians, the old bastard like freaks. And then tells him to do something totally whacked, which is like call this police bitch and tell her. And Tony is like, What? and Uncle Nguyen is like, Do what I tell you, haven’t you caused me enough headaches already, I want this cop off my back, so the kid makes the call.

  Which would be okay—weird but okay—except that the Russian dude shows up again and asks like, You been talking to the cops? And Tony is like, No, man, I don’t talk to cops, and the Russian dude is like, Well you’re going to, you’re going to set up a meet, and Tony is like, What?

  And the Russian dude is like, Your head: use it or lose it.

  All of which is to say that, yes, the kid is a little jumpy standing out there on some dirt path in the country waiting for a cop.

  98

  Billy comes back out and says, “They’re going to pay tomorrow morning, with me or without me.”

  “So which is it?” Jack asks.

  “Gotta think about that,” Billy says.

  “That’s fair.”

  “How ’bout you?”

  “I’m gone.”

  “Jack,” Billy says, “you’re not going to find another claims job anywhere in the industry.”

  “I don’t want one.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,�
� Jack says. “Maybe remodeling.”

  Billy frowns. Fights the wind to light another cig and says, “Sleep on this, goddamn it. Take some sick days.”

  “Fuck it, Billy. These days, they’re all sick days.”

  And walks out.

  Muy disgusted.

  In the lobby the receptionist juts her chin at the waiting bench and says, “Olivia Hathaway for you.”

  “Not now.”

  “She’s here, Jack.”

  “I don’t work here anymore,” Jack says. “She’s somebody else’s headache now.”

  “Jack?”

  She’s standing right behind him now.

  “Mrs. Hathaway.”

  “A moment of your time?”

  “Not now, Mrs. Hathaway.”

  “Just one moment,” she says.

  She’s holding a plate of cookies.

  “I really don’t have the time right now, Mrs. Hathaway.”

  Two minutes later Jack’s sitting across a table from her in Room 117.

  Jack starts, “Mrs. Hathaway, I don’t have time for this today. I’m in a very bad mood. So, for the last time, I’m not paying for your spoons. Not now, not ever—”

  “I didn’t come about my spoons.”

  Say what?

  “Then why—”

  “I came because a lawyer came to see me,” Olivia says. “A Mr. Gordon?”

  “Paul Gordon?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Anyway,” Olivia says, “he came to ask me to join in a suit against you. A class suit.”

  “A class action suit?”

  “That’s right,” Olivia says. She takes out her knitting and goes to work. “He said that he had at least twenty other people that you’ve cheated that are going to join together and sue you for bad faith and punitive damages. He said that we could stand to share millions of dollars.”

  “Did he tell you who the others were?”

  “I don’t remember them all,” Olivia says. “There was a Mr. Vale, a Mr. Boland, a Mrs. Vecch …”

  “Veccharrios?”

  “Yes,” Olivia says. “And a Mr. Azmekian.”