California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

131

  Jack doesn’t know that.

  He’s still in the building and it’s on fire. The gas pours out of the can, spreading accelerant all over the floor and fumes in the air and the fumes ignite like WHAM and a column of flame shoots upward.

  Flame and smoke and darkness and Jack loses sight of Nicky Vale.

  All Jack can see is Goddamn Billy heading not for the door but farther into the rec hall, in toward the old kitchen, and Jack’s thinking, Get out of here but he’s also thinking, Get Billy out of here, too, so he goes after him.

  Which is like stupid, Jack tells himself. Which is like dumb because all the old wood is igniting, then the covers on the furniture ignite, and the fucking furniture ignites. The fire is free burning, there are flames everywhere, the place is filling up with smoke and that son of a bitch Billy was going to set you up anyway so why are you going after him?

  Because you’re a dog and that’s what a dog does. A dog doesn’t leave.

  Jack drops down and stays low, down where the air is, and makes his way after Billy.

  Into the kitchen.

  The old kitchen where they used to cook up hamburgers and hot dogs and big pots of chili.

  And there’s Goddamn Billy standing by the old stainless-steel counter.

  Lighting a cigarette.

  “Come on!” Jack yells. “We can get out of here!”

  Maybe.

  The ceiling’s on fire, the roof’s involved.

  “We can get out of here!” Jack repeats.

  “No,” Billy says.

  Puts the stick to his lips and takes a long drag.

  “Billy, I can get us out of here!” Jack shouts. “If we go now!”

  His eyes are starting to tear up. Tear up and burn and he can feel the smoke scorching his throat. Looks behind him and sees the flames. Looks up and sees little tongues of flame start to lick the kitchen ceiling.

  “Can’t do it, Jack.”

  Jack starts to cry. Goddamn it, Billy. It could be seconds to flashover. Seconds till the fairies start flying and flashover happens and everything ignites.

  We can’t wait any longer, Billy.

  “I CAN CARRY YOU!”

  Screaming because the noise of the fire is unbelievable. The starving alligator in a feeding frenzy, crunching on the old house.

  Billy shakes his head. “I CAN’T FACE IT, JACK!”

  “I’LL LIE FOR YOU, BILLY! I’LL SAY YOU HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT! COME ON!”

  Tiny balls of flame dance in the air.

  The fairies flying.

  “IT’S NO GOOD, JACK!”

  To hell with arguing, Jack thinks. I’ll knock the stubborn old fucker out if I have to.

  He starts toward Billy.

  Billy shakes his head and pulls his old .44 from out of his jacket.

  Points it at Jack.

  Then says, “Goddamn it.”

  Puts the barrel to his head and pulls the trigger.

  As the fairies fly.

  Flashover.

  132

  Outside the fire spreads quickly.

  The wind picks up the flame like it’s been waiting for a lover and sweeps it across the dry grass.

  Into the trees and onto the roofs.

  The whole sky on fire.

  The sun setting over the ocean a ball of fire.

  The ocean ablaze in reflected flame.

  On land the sky a red-and-orange glow from the fire that’s spreading, blowing north from Dana headlands up toward the Ritz and Monarch Bay.

  The fire sweeps across the headlands, over the grass and brush, then ignites the juicy eucalyptus trees, which crackle and pop and it sounds like a million firecrackers going off. The fire races on and ignites the trees that flank the Ritz, encircles the gates of the resort like a besieging army while another arm of the fire races across the top of Salt Creek Beach, pushing on toward Monarch Bay.

  Where it doesn’t stop at the gate. Doesn’t wait for the guard to buzz it in. The wind pushes the flames through, into the trees, into the expensive landscaping, burning up the trees, building up the heat to ignite the roofs.

  Natalie and Michael stand in their room, looking out the window and watching the fire come toward them. They can’t see the flames from where they stand; what they see is an orange sky turning blood red as the sun sets. They can smell the smoke, the acrid burning sensation in their eyes and noses, and they’re scared.

  Mommy is all burned up.

  Daddy is gone again.

  Even Grandma is nowhere to be seen.

  There’s nobody there but the men that Daddy has around and they’re busy spraying water on the roof and they’re paying no attention and the sirens are screaming and people are yelling and voices from unseen loudspeakers are commanding in stern voices to “evacuate” and there’s a yell from a dozen voices as a wood-shake roof ignites, and Natalie struggles to remember if she knows what “evacuate” means as Leo hops and twirls and barks. The fire crackles in the tree outside the window like a voice from a bad dream, and what Natalie is thinking is, This is how Mommy died.

  Out on the street Letty tries to get in but a cop stops her at the gate and tells her no entry to civilian vehicles, and she yells, I have children in there! but they won’t let her through so she gets out and leaves the car there and heads in on foot.

  Toward the house.

  She runs toward the house as the trees hiss and pop over her head. People in cars and on foot stream the other way past her. Here and there a house has gone up now, the smoke is thick, it would be dark but for the flames, and then she’s at the house.

  It’s on fire.

  Flames dance on the roof.

  “Natalie! Michael!”

  A fireman stops her from rushing in. She fights him, screaming, “There are two children in there!”

  “There’s no one in there!”

  “There are two children in there!”

  She wrests herself free and runs toward the front door.

  Inside it’s all smoke, heat and darkness.

  133

  Jack’s crawling through hell.

  On his stomach on the floor, down where there’s a little air, below where the fire’s burning on the counters, he crawls. Feels his way on the walls, praying he remembers where the door is. The smoke, the noise, the heat …

  Then he feels the doorway.

  It has to be an exterior door.

  It has to be because if it isn’t, when he opens it the fire will blast back and blow him away, but there isn’t a choice so he pushes it open and then he’s outside.

  The grass is on fire.

  Shit, it seems like all of California is on fire.

  Through the smoke he can just make out a figure.

  Nicky running down the bluff.

  Jack runs after him.

  Coughing, struggling for breath, Jack chases him down to the beach, runs after him along the beach. He can feel his heart pounding, hear the surf pounding almost in rhythm. Nicky’s starting to slow down and then Jack catches him.

  Nicky whirls and throws a finger strike at Jack’s eye.

  Jack turns his head and the strike catches him off the side of his left eye, opening a gash, and for a second Jack can’t see but he lunges for where Nicky’s neck should be and throws Nicky down into the surf.

  Lands on top of him, holds on to Nicky’s throat and pushes him under.

  A wave comes in, breaks close to shore and sends a rush of swirling white water into Jack but he holds on. He feels Nicky’s hands around his wrists, pulling and jerking. Nicky’s legs kick out and up, trying to get away, but Jack has him by the throat and isn’t letting up, even as another wave breaks and smashes into him. He holds on, holds Nicky under. Nicky’s bucking and thrashing as Jack thinks about the Atlas Warehouse fire and Porfirio Guzman and the two dead teenagers and George Scollins and his own fucked-up life. And he pushes Nicky down harder until he can feel Nicky’s back hit the rocks rolling in the trench. The white water recedes and Jack can
see Nicky’s face, can see his eyes bulge, and Jack hears himself yelling, “You want a deal, Nicky?! Here’s your fucking deal!”

  Hears himself yell that.

  Hears himself.

  And lets up.

  Drags Nicky out of the water by the back of his neck and drops him on the beach. Nicky coughing and sputtering and gasping for air.

  And Jack swears he can hear a damn dog barking.

  He looks up the beach where the Monarch Bay community juts out from the coastline.

  The trees are on fire.

  Chimneys going up.

  Jack starts running.

  134

  Natalie holds Michael tight.

  Keeping him warm.

  Shielding him from the cold salt spray coming off the waves.

  Evacuate, the voice had said. Evacuate, she remembered, meant to get out, so she grabbed Michael and got out of the house even before the fire had spread from the tree to the roof.

  Out onto the lawn and then the street, and all the people were headed out toward the highway, the Pacific Coast Highway, but Natalie decided that all the people were wrong, because they seemed to be heading into the fire.

  So Natalie stopped and thought about it for a few seconds and decided that the safest place to be in a fire would be by water, by the ocean, and that way even if the fire burned all the way down to the beach, they could always jump into the ocean and swim until the fire went out.

  So she took Leo under her arm and Michael by the hand and led them down toward the beach. Down the steps toward Salt Creek Beach where Aunt Letty had taken them Boogie boarding and they had gone for picnics and looking for crabs and snails in the tidal pools.

  Because Aunt Letty will be looking for us, Natalie thinks, and she will know to come here.

  Jack’s running along the beach, the bluffs above him on fire, the peninsula of Monarch Bay smoking, and the smoke is thickening. It’s hard to see and he doesn’t know how he’s going to find Michael and Natalie and he’s just hoping that they got out of there, and then he hears this dog yipping.

  The kids recognize him.

  Go to him because he’s an adult they know here.

  “Where’s my daddy?” Michael asks.

  Black eyes big and full of tears.

  Natalie asks, “Where’s Aunt Letty?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack says. “Has she been here?”

  Natalie does a little pirouette of anxiety.

  Of course she’s here, Jack thinks. She’s here for the same reason I’m here. Oh, God, I hope she didn’t go to the house.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Jack says, holding them. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Because people will lie.

  Their mom is dead.

  Their dad killed her.

  And the last person who loved them is maybe looking for them where they aren’t—namely, in another burning house.

  And waiting in the wings is Mother Russia.

  But Jack repeats, “It’s going to be all right.”

  He heads up for the house.

  It’s on fire.

  He goes in. Hard to see, hard to breathe. The house is filling with smoke.

  “Letty! Letty!”

  He makes his way up the stairs to the kids’ room.

  She’s facedown on the bed.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  He turns her over.

  “Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.”

  She’s unconscious but still breathing. He picks her up and carries her down the stairs.

  Which are on fire.

  Too many flames, too much smoke.

  And she might not have the time.

  So he plunges through it.

  Comes out the other side, comes out the door into the smoky air and lays her down.

  “Please don’t die. Please don’t die.”

  She starts to cough. Cough and then breathe and then her eyes open. When she can speak she asks about the kids.

  He picks her up again and carries her down the point to the beach.

  When they get there, Nicky is standing with his kids, his arms wrapped protectively around them.

  Jack leans in to him, whispers something into his ear.

  Let’s do a deal.

  135

  The next afternoon.

  The sun is high and hot over a landscape burned black. Ashes still float in the mild breeze.

  Jack sits waiting in the front seat of a used pickup in the parking lot of Dana Strand Beach. Letty sits beside him. She chews on a broken fingernail.

  “He’ll be here,” Jack says.

  She nods and goes back to chewing her nail.

  Five long minutes go by, and then Jack sees the black Mercedes snake around the curve of Selva into the parking lot. “Here they come,” he says.

  The Mercedes pulls alongside. Dani gets out, nods, and then Nicky gets out of the car. Jack gets out of the truck. They meet between the two cars.

  “We have a deal?” Nicky asks.

  “You have your money, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we have part of a deal.”

  Nicky nods.

  Then he hands Jack the signed papers terminating his parental rights over Natalie and Michael. Tom Casey drew up the papers, so Jack is confident they’re airtight. He checks Nicky’s signature and says, “Looks okay to me.”

  Nicky walks back to the Mercedes. The door opens and the kids come out, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Natalie has Leo under her arm. Nicky puts his arms around their shoulders and says, “Daddy’s going to be very busy for the next little while so you’re going to stay with Aunt Letty for a few months, all right?”

  They nod and hug him and there are a few tears.

  Letty comes over and Nicky ushers the children over to her.

  “Take good care of them,” Nicky says.

  “Kids, go wait in the car for Aunt Letty, okay?” she says.

  When they’re gone, she says, “In six months I adopt them.”

  “As you wish.”

  Letty looks hard at him.

  “What kind of man trades his own children?” she asks.

  “That’s what Mother asked me,” Nicky says. “She is devastated.”

  He pauses for a second, then adds, “But alive.”

  He walks over to Jack.

  Nicky laughs. “Our deal is concluded then? Jack Wade, who doesn’t do deals?”

  Nicky gets the $50 million. Jack and Letty agree never to seek or aid any prosecution. Jack agrees to walk away from everything he knows about Nicky, California Fire and Life and all the rest of it. Sandra Hansen gets her snitch.

  Olivia Hathaway gets paid for her spoons.

  “It was an accidental fire and an accidental death,” Jack says.

  “I just wanted to hear you say it,” Nicky says. “So, it’s over.”

  “It’s history,” Jack says. “As long as you never go back on any of it.”

  “You have my word.”

  He offers his hand.

  Jack says, “Go to hell.”

  “Are you so sure,” Nicky asks, “that I’m not already there?”

  Jack and Letty stand and watch the car drive away.

  She says, “And he gets away with murder.”

  “And two kids get a life,” Jack says. “That’s a deal you’d make every time, right?”

  “Yup.”

  Some deals, Jack thinks, you just have to make.

  Part of life, knowing when to settle.

  Letty asks, “Will you be coming out tonight?”

  “No.”

  “This weekend?”

  Jack shakes his head.

  Letty asks, “You aren’t coming, are you?”

  “Part of the deal,” Jack says. “They want me gone. Out of the state.”

  Out of the country, too. Past subpoena power. They want a little insurance for their part of the deal, Nicky and Cal Fire and Life. They get their money, they get my silence, the
y get back to business as usual.

  And I get gone.

  And if you really get honest, you know it’s for the best, Jack thinks. The kids are hurt and confused enough. They don’t need to deal with a new “Daddy” in their lives. They’re going to have a tough enough ride. They need Letty’s undivided attention and that’s what she’s going to want to give. They don’t need some Mommy-Daddy Insta-Kit laid on them.

  Letty says, “That’s a hell of a price, Jack.”

  “Worth it, though.”

  He nods toward Letty’s car.

  “Worth it,” she says.

  She squeezes his hand. “I love you, Jack.”

  “I love you, Letty.” She lets go.

  “Come tell them goodbye, anyway.”

  Jack walks over to Letty’s car. The kids are in the front seat, the dog stretched across their laps.

  “So you guys are going out to the country, huh?” Jack says. “Going to ride horses?”

  A couple of tearful nods. Brave smiles.

  “Well,” Jack says, “take care of your Aunt Letty for me, okay?”

  He gives Letty a peck on the cheek and a quick hug and gets into the truck. Starts it up and kicks it into gear before he has a chance to look back.

  Fires up a Dick Dale & His Del-Tones tape.

  Drives past the new sign set at the entrance to the Strands.

  PAMELA VALE MEMORIAL PARK.

  He points the truck south.

  136

  Dani pulls the car over on the dirt turnout above Dana Strand.

  Nicky asks, “What—”

  Dani shoots him through the groin. The bullet pierces Nicky’s spinal cord. But he’s conscious as Dani gets out, takes a can of gas from the trunk and pours it all around the car.

  Dani opens the back door.

  He’s crying as he rolls up Nicky’s pant leg, takes a knife and makes an incision above the Two Crosses tattoo behind Nicky’s knee. He slices the knife down and rips off the skin.

  Nicky can’t feel it.

  Tears stream down Dani’s face as he says, “If ever I transgress against Vorovskoy Zakon, may I burn in hell.”

  He closes the door, steps away and tosses the match.

  Then sticks his gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

  137

  Man’s sitting in a car and the car’s on fire.