California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  Jack thinks she sounds like Jackie Kennedy giving a tour of the White House.

  The mirror’s estimated at $28,000.

  It goes on and on.

  “This side table is circa 1730 and is clearly inspired by the Italian Renaissance with its carved gilded wood and gesso motifs. But also note that the carved acanthus leaves on the curved legs point toward the neoclassical.”

  $30,500.

  “These are a pair of George I gilt chairs.”

  $25,000.

  “This is a George I card table.”

  $28,000.

  “This is one of our real treasures,” Pamela says. “A rare bombé-based red-lacquered and japanned bureau-cabinet from about 1730. It has clawed and hairy paw feet. Also, serpentine-shaped corners with attenuated acanthus leaves. A very rare piece.”

  True enough, Jack thinks. Fifty-three grand worth of rare.

  The camera lingers over the cabinet, and Jack has to admit that he admires the workmanship. It’s all fine furniture, lovingly and carefully built.

  To last.

  The tour goes on.

  A pair of mahogany George II armless chairs.

  $10,000.

  A 1785 Hepplewhite with Prince of Wales feathers.

  $14,000.

  A 1745 gilded Matthias Lock rococo console table.

  $18,000.

  Jack’s scribbling notes and prices and he’s also noting what he should find when he does the sift.

  He should find, he thinks, handles from the cabinets. Maybe some remnants from the thickest part of the wood furniture—from the balled and clawed feet and bases. Some fragments should have survived and should be found in the deep char.

  Back to the tape.

  Georgian furniture, even in the bathroom.

  A George II dressing table. A bargain at $20,000.

  A George III silent valet. A gimmick for $1,500.

  The cabinetry in and around the twin sinks done in walnut to match the period. Expensive tiled cabinet tops in mock marble. The freakin’ towel racks done in scrolled acanthus walnut.

  Then back to the bedroom for the pièce de résistance.

  The bed.

  Outrageous.

  Calling it a four-poster, Jack thinks, is like calling the Great Wall of China a fence. This bed has four posts all right, but each post has a gilded walnut base with royal-blue inlays. The bases support cylindrical posts of gilded mahogany leading up to rectangular walnut pedestals with carved angels on top. The top pedestals themselves are sheathed in heavy white silk with the coat of arms of what Jack figures had to be some duke or lord or something. The four posts support a frame from which hang two layers of heavy, draped gold fabric, very old and delicate. Judging from the video, there must have been supports across the top of the frame, because a cupola of sorts sits on top of the bed. The cupola is ringed with carved gilded eagles and topped off with a carved castle tower which grazes the ceiling. The bed canopy is tied off to each of the posts.

  All of which, Jack thinks, would explain why the top part of Pam Vale’s body wasn’t burned in the fire. Doubtless the canopy burned early and dropped down on top of her, smothering the flames and protecting the top part of her body.

  At the head of the bed is a panel painted with the coat of arms.

  This is a very serious bed.

  Pamela Vale describes it: “This is the pride of our collection, a neoclassical bed designed by Robert Adam in 1776. It is all the original piece—except for the mattress and box spring, because we need some creature comforts, you know—and some of the fabric, which has been replaced. This piece …”

  Jack flips through the inventory to find the price.

  $325,500.

  For a bed which is now mostly char.

  All that old wood, all that gilding, all that fabric …

  … would go up like a torch.

  Maybe it would blow a hole in the roof.

  But it would also fill Pamela Vale’s lungs full of smoke.

  As would the rest of Nicky Vale’s fine furniture. Even the stuff that’s in the other two wings is going to be smoke- and maybe water-damaged, but right now Jack’s interested in what’s totally lost.

  He punches the values of the destroyed items into the calculator.

  $587,500.

  And change.

  Jack checks the date handwritten on the label: June 21, 1997.

  On June 21, Jack thinks, Nicky Vale videotapes an inventory of all his precious belongings. Less than two months later they’re all burned up.

  Including his wife.

  Who in terms of cold cash is worth another $250,000.

  So before we even talk about the structure and the rest of the personal property, we’re looking at $837,500.

  No wonder Nicky’s in a hurry to settle his claim.

  We’re talking major bucks here.

  32

  Hector Ruiz is pulling a rare doubleheader.

  Or a double rear-ender, to be more precise, because he has a new old van in position on the Katella on-ramp onto the 57 in Anaheim. New fake license, new cargo of wetbacks, Octavio behind him, Martin in front of him, Dansky on the freeway.

  A doubleheader is rare because two of these things are hard—not to mention tiring, ese—to pull off in one day, but Hector and his wife are moving into a new apartment and she has her eye on this bedroom set, so …

  And Hector has never been afraid of work.

  He checks his speedometer and eases it down to thirty.

  Sees Martin kick up his Dodge Colt to hit the highway.

  Just as Dansky’s Camaro swerves into the merge lane.

  Dansky hits the horn.

  Martin slams on the brakes.

  Hector hits his own brakes, cranks the wheel to the right and just nicks Martin’s right rear bumper.

  I am sooo good, Hector thinks.

  Looks into his rearview and here comes Octavio.

  Hector blinks and looks again because it isn’t Octavio, it’s a gas tanker and he’s got to be doing sixty-five and the driver is standing on the brakes and you can hear those big truck brakes compressing down but they ain’t gonna make it, man.

  “It’s show time,” Hector says to himself about a half-second before the fuel tanker crashes into the van and both vehicles explode in a fireball that reaches high into the soft California night.

  Channel 5 Eyewitness News gets lucky and has a helicopter out there doing traffic so they get a SkyCam picture of the multiple-fatality crash and lead with it on the 11 o’clock news.

  It makes a hell of a teaser.

  Blue Suit leans over in his chair and asks, “Is that one of ours?”

  “Could be one of ours.”

  When they see Jimmy Dansky out there explaining to some blond reporter that there was “this flash in the sky and I’m just lucky to be alive,” they know it’s one of theirs.

  Standing near the wreckage, the reporter says something about at least eight people dead, all appear to be Mexican Americans.

  Flower Shirt looks at the burning van and says, “Hey. Refried beaners.”

  “You’re disgusting,” Nicky Vale says to him.

  33

  The funeral’s a riot.

  It starts off well enough.

  Jack’s sitting in the back of the Surf Jesus Episcopal Church, which is not the real name, of course, but it’s what the locals call it because the steeple is a curved sweep of white stone that resembles a topping wave—like, Jesus is hip, Jesus is cool, Jesus can tube a twelve-foot point break in his sleep.

  Pray for surf.

  And surf Jesus.

  Jack’s a little surprised they’re holding the service at a Christian church, but then he finally figures out that while Nicky’s Jewish, Pamela was a shiksa, which is probably another reason the mother-in-law was not exactly transported with joy when her son married Pam.

  The turnout’s decent. The church isn’t packed—it’s a big church—but there’s enough people that the place doesn’t
look empty. The mourners are mostly South County money. They look healthy and prosperous in that way that shows that they work at looking healthy and prosperous. They have health club bodies and tennis tans, and they all know each other, Jack thinks as he watches them greet each other and catches bits of subdued conversations.

  … a shame about Pamela …

  … into spinning now …

  … graphite handle …

  … and I’ve lost twelve pounds …

  … Nicky is devastated …

  … reclining bicycle, which doesn’t put so much stress on the knees, so …

  … at least there won’t be a custody fight now …

  … save the kids that agony, anyway …

  … cardio-kickboxing …

  There’s fair turnout from Save the Strands. Jack knows this because a number of the mourners sport “Save the Strands” buttons, which Jack thinks is very freaking weird at a funeral.

  There are times when you just, you know, give it up.

  The family comes in from a side door at the front of the sanctuary. Nicky, Mother Valeshin and the kids. All dressed in black, the color, Jack thinks, of fire.

  Nicky looks particularly—and there’s no other word for it, Jack thinks—elegant. Wide-shouldered, narrow-lapeled silk jacket over silk trousers. White collarless shirt, black suede shoes. It’s like Nicky has been flipping around in the special GQ Mourning Edition, “A New Look for Hip Young Widowers,” and taken the pages into the Armani store at Fashion Island.

  He has a benign, grief-stricken, but-I-have-to-be-brave-for-the-children expression on his face and he looks, Jack has to admit, just goddamn great.

  The dozen or so divorcees in the crowd are doing everything but actually moaning, Jack thinks, and if Nicky doesn’t get laid right after the coffee cake, Jack’s missed his bet.

  The kids look like something out of Masterpiece Theatre—perfectly costumed, exquisitely mannered, ineffably sad.

  The minister lays a kindly hand on the kids and then takes the pulpit. Waits for the organ music to fade and then smiles at the congregation.

  Jack thinks he recognizes him from television. He has the official television minister combed-back pompadour of silver hair, except this isn’t one of your cracker-southern greased-back jobs, this is a seventy-five-dollar styling from Jose Ebert. He has the official minister sky-pilot eyeglasses, the black robe edged in purple and the white collar that looks weirdly like Nicky’s.

  Anyway, he finishes smiling then says, “We’re here to celebrate a life …”

  Then gives the usual God is a great guy but your loved one died anyway and I have no explanation for the seeming contradiction so let’s not talk about death, let’s talk about life and didn’t Pamela have a wonderful life and a loving husband and two beautiful children and wasn’t she a wonderful wife and mother and life is beautiful and now Pamela is with my buddy God in a better place than even south Orange County and we’re going to scatter her ashes over the ocean that she loved so much, by the Strands that she loved so much, and every time we look at the ocean and the Strands we’ll think of Pamela, and Jesus loves her and God loves her and Jesus loves you and God loves you and we must all love each other every day because you never know when God is going to toss the banana peel under your foot and bang you out like that, and of course the minister doesn’t actually say that last bit; it’s what Jack is thinking.

  No, the good doctor what’s-his-name—I know I’ve seen him on the tube begging for bucks—goes on about how we must all form a community to help Nicky and the kids, it takes a village, and thank God they have a loving grandmother to help care for them and Jack’s looking in the rack in the pew in front of him for a barf bag and he hears the woman across the aisle from him sort of snort, and then the minister looks up at the tongue-and-groove red cedar ceiling and says, “Lord Jesus, we pray …”

  Followed by a long prayer for the soul of Pamela Vale, and that the healing process begin for Nicky and Natalie—and for the first time Jack realizes that’s Mother Valeshin’s first name—and the children, and then the organ plays some horror movie background piece and when Jack looks up Nicky is at the pulpit asking people to share memories of Pamela.

  And they do. One by one, about ten or so mourners stand up and tell about a day they spent with Pam at the beach, how Pam loved the sunset, how Pam loved her kids … One woman gets up to tell about a shopping spree she and Pam went on, and another about a whale-watching trip they went on …

  But nobody wants to tell about Pam drinking, about Pam throwing up at a party, about Pam driving the Lexus into the big pine tree by the driveway, about Pam so zonked on Valium they find her passed out in her car outside a garden party. Nobody wants to talk about the screaming fights she and Nicky had, about the flying goblets, about the time she threw her drink in his face at that party on the boat, about Nicky tapping every willing divorcee, bored wife and ambitious cocktail waitress on the south coast …

  All of that has faded into the sunset that Pam loved so much.

  So everything is going just skippy, Jack thinks, when there’s a lull and Nicky—misty-eyed but gently, bravely smiling—asks if there is anyone else who would like to say anything.

  Which is when a woman’s voice from behind Jack yells, “YOU KILLED MY SISTER, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

  This is pretty much when the riot starts.

  34

  “YOU KILLED MY SISTER!”

  Nicky’s jaw drops to where the collar would be on his collarless shirt and Jack thinks, Well, you asked.

  The minister looks frantically around to see if there are any reporters there, especially with cameras, as the woman yells again, “YOU KILLED MY SISTER, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

  Stands there in front of Surf Jesus and everybody and literally points the finger at Nicky.

  The other mourners freeze in their seats. They don’t try to stop her or calm her down or anything because this woman is clearly intent on mayhem and no one’s going to risk a ten-thousand-dollar nose job getting in her way.

  Two security guys do.

  Jack didn’t notice them before, these two guys in black suits who come down from the back of the church to like quell the situation. They reach the woman just before Jack does.

  “Get your damn hands off me!” the woman yells as one of the security guys lays a thick hand on her shoulder. She knocks his hand off her, and then both of them grab her and start to pull her into the aisle.

  The woman looks at the crowd in the church, points at Nicky again, and says, “HE KILLED MY SISTER! HE KILLED PAM!”

  The heavyset security guy clamps his hand over her mouth and locks his forearm across her neck.

  “Let her go,” Jack says to him.

  “The lady needs to leave.”

  Guy has a Russian accent.

  “She’s leaving,” Jack says.

  The other guy—tall, thin but wired—turns to Jack. “You want to get involved here?”

  Same accent.

  “Whatever,” Jack says.

  The guy wants to stroke him one, it’s in his eyes, but there’s something else that’s saying best behavior, so he backs down. Jack can see him memorizing his face, though, for future reference.

  Jack looks at the heavyset guy and repeats, “Let her go.”

  First guy nods and the other muscle releases his grip. Jack says to the woman, “Come on.”

  “He killed Pam.”

  “Everybody heard you.”

  He reaches out his hand and takes her arm.

  “Come on.”

  She comes with him.

  Jack can still hear the children in the background yelling for their aunt. Looks down there and sees Michael in tears. Mother Valeshin’s face set in stone. Nicky looking like he could kill.

  So does the boss muscle guy. He gives Jack a badass look.

  “Yeah, it’s okay with me,” Jack says.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack walks the wo
man out of the church.

  Into the front seat of his car.

  “Jesus, Letty,” Jack says. “You could have told me she was your sister.”

  I shouldn’t be telling you this but I thought someone should know, the autopsy showed no smoke in her lungs.

  35

  She’s still a looker, Jack thinks.

  Shiny black shoulder-length hair, dark Mexican eyes, a body that won’t quit. Makeup perfect, just enough jewelry, clothes perfect. It’s hotter than hell out but she’s wearing a white blazer over her jeans. Jack knows she wears the blazer to disguise the .38 clipped on her belt.

  He’s half-surprised she didn’t just shoot Nicky.

  “My half sister,” Letty says. “Same mother, different father.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a sister,” Jack says.

  “She wasn’t around much,” Letty says. “In those days she didn’t want to remember that she was half-Latina. Christ, I just lost it in there.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. I’m supposed to be a professional.”

  “Letty, you’re not working this, are you?”

  She shakes her head. “Ng finds no smoke in her lungs, he calls over to us and I’m catching. Lucky me. I get to the morgue and I’m like, Oh my God. It’s Pam. But I keep my mouth shut that she’s my sister because I want to stay on top of what happens.”

  “Jesus, Letty.”

  “You know Ng. Ng wants to go out and interview Vale right away. But we better contact the fire inspectors first so they don’t get their panties in a wad. He gets Bentley on the horn and—”

  “ ‘Don’t fuck up my fishing.’ ”

  “You got it,” Letty says. “Accidental fire, accidental death. I ask him how come there’s no smoke in her lungs and he says ‘superheated air.’ ”

  “Superheated air?” Jack asks. “What, he thinks she dropped her cigarette onto a hydrogen bomb?”

  “I guess,” Letty says. “Anyway, Ng is like, Fuck Bentley. He gets on the phone to Vale to tell him he’s coming over and Vale’s lawyer conferences in, says he’s representing.”