California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

Michael’s birth is also easy.

  Pamela, Nicky thinks, is made to be a mother. She is inseparable from the children. He has to cajole her to get a sitter and go out even once a week. He feigns annoyance, but secretly it pleases him.

  That his American wife is a homebody. Content to be with her children. To take them on long walks, play with them in the backyard gym that he has constructed. She paints when they take naps. In the little studio he has built for her beside their bedroom. She stands by the easel and looks out the window and paints watercolor seascapes.

  Her paintings are not very good, but she’s happy.

  And it leaves him free to fuck around.

  He has a wife, now he starts collecting mistresses. He still finds Pamela attractive, but now that she is a mother she has lost a certain erotic edge. He seeks it elsewhere, finds it everywhere. Pam is all curves and bosom and hips—he goes for sharp edgy women at the tennis club. Takes them to the Laguna Hills Resort or the Ritz for sweaty postmatch sex. Pamela is sweetness and Goodnight Moon—he picks up hard cocktail waitresses and gives them coke and fucks them sometimes on top of the car hood parked at Dana Strand Beach. He takes an especially perverse delight in seducing her friends, not that the seduction is generally a difficult matter, thank you—so while Pamela is committing her mild offenses against art in the sunny room while the children sleep, he is in one of her friend’s bedrooms, in one of her friends, in point of fact, and they seem to delight in asking, Does Pam do this for you? Does Pam do this for you? And then doing this and this and that and the other thing and then one of Pam’s friends decides to have the ultimate thrill and tell her all about it.

  He arrives home that evening and all is well until she puts the kids to bed and then she walks up to where he’s sitting and slaps him across the face.

  “And that would be for?” he asks.

  “Leslie,” she says. “If you ever do it again, I’ll divorce you and take the children.”

  He grabs her by the wrist, forces her to her knees on the floor and patiently explains that there have been, are, and will be a lot of Leslies—and Leslie again if he has a stirring in that direction—and that she will most definitely not divorce him.

  “Here is the deal,” he says. “You have the house, the children and all the money and luxuries you could want. All this comes with your position as my wife. Enjoy it. Be happy. Listen to me: There will never be a divorce. You will never take my children. You will be their mother and my wife and my lover. And I will have other women as I wish.”

  “How about me?” she asks angrily. “Do I get to have other men?”

  Which is the first time he hits her.

  A ringing slap across the face.

  Then he tells her to go up to the bedroom, change into something sexy and be in bed when he gets there. He sits and looks at a furniture catalog for a while and then goes up. She’s on the bed, as he told her, in a blue corset, as he told her, looking almost defiantly sexual.

  Stunningly beautiful, truly. Black hair shining on her white shoulders. Her neck long and inviting. Her breasts pushed up and glowing white in the soft light. Her black pubic hair naked for him.

  As if she could take him back with pure sexual power.

  Like, Have your other women, you’ll never have anything like this.

  And that beautiful face with those violet eyes shining with anger and fear and defiance …

  He lifts her up and flips her over. Places her hands on the headboard and then takes her in the way he saw convicts take the scared young zeks in prison.

  Does Pam do this for you?

  Pam does what I tell her.

  Pam starts drinking shortly after that.

  72

  And things fall apart.

  They thought the boom would last forever.

  In the land of sunshine and blue water where only good things happen to beautiful people.

  But the real estate market slows, then comes to a halt, and Nicky is leveraged to his eyeballs. Nothing is selling, nothing is even renting. Nobody is investing and the creditors want their cash.

  Which Nicky doesn’t have.

  He’s gambled it all on the come and it isn’t coming.

  Condo complexes, apartment buildings, raw land.

  All sitting as still as a dead summer day.

  And the other business, well, every business needs tending, and Nicky’s been neglecting the organization. The two units are pretty much operating on their own, sending a share of their profits up to Nicky and skimming a little more off his share every day. Schaller, Rubinsky and Tratchev are conspiring to do just the thing that Nicky had intended to do for them before the recession shut down his cash pipeline—leave Nicky’s organization and become independent.

  And there are grumblings: Nicky’s not putting anything back into the business, Nicky’s gotten sloppy, Nicky’s gotten soft.

  Nicky has gone American.

  Dani and Lev try to warn him. Dani tells him to take back control while there’s still time. Give his security force something to do, keep them sharp, keep the weapon honed. Nicky tells them no.

  Things will turn around. The economy will bounce back. To this extent they’re right in what they’re saying about him—he has gone soft. He doesn’t relish a return to the gun and the knife and the chicken chop.

  He sends good money after bad.

  Scrapes up what money he can to make the loan payments but it’s never enough. Month after month the market spirals down.

  He has empty condos, empty apartments. Hell, he has two aparment buildings under construction that he doesn’t have the money to complete because he’s shifted funds to pay the loans on other properties.

  He starts doing more and more coke. It makes him feel better. He buys art he can’t sell and can’t afford to keep, because it makes him feel better and it keeps up appearances. He spends cash on women who six months ago would have balled him for free. He gives them coke, he gives them art. They get him hard and he feels powerful again for a few minutes.

  All the while his own wife is drinking like a fish, taking pills and causing scenes at parties. (“How many people here have fucked my husband? A show of hands, please.”) They get into fights, he knocks her around. His kids start looking at him like he’s some sort of monster. He hits them once or twice. (“Don’t you ever open your mouth to me.”) He spends more and more nights away from home.

  None of this escapes the attention of Tratchev, Rubinsky and Schaller.

  You listen closely at night, you can hear the wolves circling.

  Pam goes to rehab and comes back a raving bitch.

  Sober, and the first time Nicky lays a mitt on her she goes to the authorities and lays a TRO on him.

  Gets his name in the court system.

  I have stolen millions of dollars in this country, Nicky thinks. I have robbed and killed and stolen millions and this is the first time my name appears in court. And my wife does that to me.

  My own wife.

  Not for long.

  Pam files for divorce.

  “I told you I would kill you,” Nicky says. “I mean it.”

  “I don’t care,” Pam says. “I can’t live this way.”

  “If you leave, you leave the way you came. With nothing but some cheap dress on your ass.”

  “I don’t think so,” Pam says. “I’ll take the children and the house and half of everything. I’ll even take your precious furniture, Nicky.”

  It could happen, Nicky thinks. In this godforsaken country where a man has no rights. They’ll give the drunken bitch the kids, they’ll give her the house, they’ll launch a fishing expedition through my finances that could prove not only costly but dangerous.

  It would endanger the plan.

  A plan of such simple elegance, such balanced design, such perfect symmetry that it only confirms in him his own sense of genius.

  Crime as artful construction.

  A plan that, if it works, will achieve his goal of the turnaround in one
generation.

  And Pamela could stop it.

  Take his dream and his identity with it.

  In a particularly cruel argument one night she snaps, “My son will not be a gangster.”

  No, he will not, Nicky thinks.

  In despair, he goes to Mother.

  Goes into her room in the small hours of the morning, sits on her bed and says, “Mother, I could lose—we could lose—everything.”

  “You have to do something, Daziatnik.”

  “What?”

  “You know, Daziatnik,” she says. She takes his face into her hands. “You know what you have to do.”

  Yes, I know, Nicky thinks as he lies back.

  I know what I have to do.

  Take back control of my organization.

  Protect my family.

  He’s at home, taking a walk on the lawn when it hits him. He’s looking down at Dana Strands, he’s thinking about Great Sunsets, and the idea comes to him.

  The perfect symmetry of it.

  The beautiful balance.

  Perfectly structured poetry, like the finest furniture.

  Everything, all, in a master stroke.

  He watches the sun set over Dana Strands.

  73

  More likely than not.

  Is the phrase that’s running through Jack’s head as he sits in his cubicle.

  More likely than not.

  “More likely than not” is the phrase that applies to the standard of proof in civil cases. In criminal cases the standard of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt” and the distinction is important to Jack’s consideration of the Vale file.

  If I deny the claim, Jack thinks, we will—far more likely than not—get sued. At the end of the trial the judge will instruct the jury as to the burden of proof, and he’ll tell the jury that the critical question is, “Is it more likely than not that Mr. Vale either set the fire or caused the fire to be set?”

  That’s the way the law reads.

  In reality it’s far more complicated.

  The civil burden of proof is “more likely than not,” so technically, if it’s even 51 percent to 49 percent that your guy did it, the jury should come back and find for the insurance company. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but Jack knows that’s not the way it does work.

  How it does work is that the jury is perfectly aware that arson is a crime. No matter what the judge instructs them, they are not going to apply the civil standard, “more likely than not,” as the burden of proof. They’re going to apply the criminal standard—“beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  So Jack knows that if you’re going to deny a claim based on arson you had better be damn sure that you can persuade a jury that your insured set the fire or caused it to be set … beyond a reasonable doubt.

  So Jack asks himself, Is it more likely than not that Vale set the fire or caused it to be set?

  Yes, it is more likely than not.

  Beyond a reasonable doubt?

  Jack takes out a piece of legal paper and a ruler and draws two straight lines down the paper, creating three columns. At the top of the columns he writes: INCENDIARY ORIGIN, MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY.

  Nicky’s up to his ears in debt. He’s about to lose the house. He has a balloon payment coming up and no apparent resources to pay it. He owes money to the feds and to the state. His companies are in trouble, too. He sells his beloved boat at a loss to try to get some cash. He has a bundle sunk into antique furniture, and, according to Vince Marlowe, he can’t sell the furniture he wants to sell. But he doesn’t even try to sell the pieces he’s attached to. His wife is about to divorce him and that would split his meager resources at least in half.

  Motive, Jack thinks, is a dead solid lock.

  So motive is a win, opportunity is a push, incendiary origin is a comer.

  Unless Accidentally Bentley hangs in with his cig-in-the-vodka theory.

  Jack draws a dotted line down the center of each column, then alternates plus and minus signs so that each category of proof is divided into pros and cons.

  When he finishes the chart, it looks like this:

  Jack thinks about the chart for a few minutes, then draws a horizontal line across the bottom, subtitles the new section MURDER and starts again.

  Okay, Jack tells himself. Take the arson first. Start with incendiary origin. What are your three strongest points? (“The Rule of Three,” Billy says. “Always try to present your evidence in sets of three. It’s the way juries like to hear it. It’s always a minister, a priest and a rabbi in the rowboat.”)

  So what are my three strongest points? Well, the positive char samples make bullshit of Bentley’s cigarette-in-the-vodka hypothesis. So that would be number one. Number two? The pour pattern—there’s no way to reconcile that with an accidental fire. Number three? Multiple points of origin. Again, inconsistent with an accidental fire.

  Now, what are the points against?

  The counterargument is that certain contents in the room might have burned “hot,” leaving an erroneous implication of multiple points of origin. And Bentley’s point about the fuel load is correct as far as it goes. There was a lot of stuff in the bedroom, and it’s possible that the heavy fuel load burn could explain away the other indicators of an accelerated fire.

  It could provide reasonable doubt, anyway.

  But not with the positive samples.

  With a positive sample, Jack thinks, everything falls together.

  Motive.

  Dead-solid lock. The three strongest points? The balloon payment, the lack of income, the missed payments. It’s an embarrassment of riches—no reverse pun intended—and there’ll be no problem proving that Nicky had a motive to torch the house. The arguments against? There really aren’t any.

  Opportunity.

  Three strongest points? Locked doors and windows with no sign of forced entry, Leo the pooch outside and Derochik’s statement having Nicky coming in at 4:45.

  And now Nicky has lied. You have him on tape saying he never went out, that the phone call woke him up. And I guess that just fucks you.

  Arguments against? No witness to put Nicky on or near the actual fire scene. No snitch to connect him directly to the fire.

  Two: Mother Russia’s alibi—but Derochik’s statement is going to shoot that down.

  So, opportunity?

  A tougher call, but when you put it together with incendiary origin and motive, it plays.

  Move down to the murder, because it’s all connected. A jury will never believe the coincidence of a murder with an accidental fire. Conversely, they’ll never buy an accidental death with an intentional fire.

  We have a combo plate here, Jack thinks.

  Strongest points that Pamela Vale was murdered?

  One: She was dead in time proximity to an arson.

  Two: Her bloodstream showed alcohol and barbiturates, but witnesses will say that she wasn’t drinking, and someone else—probably an associate of her husband’s—picked up her Valium prescription.

  Arguments against?

  Primarily, there’s the ME’s conclusion of death by overdose.

  Second is Bentley’s call of CO asphyxiation accelerated by acute inebriation. The alcohol reduces the amount of oxygen in the lungs, making CO poisoning rapid and deadly.

  It’s possible, Jack thinks.

  If she was drinking.

  And if there was no accelerant.

  And if, Jack thinks, you hadn’t looked into Nicky’s eyes and just known that he killed his wife.

  And if the arrogant bastard hadn’t lied on tape.

  Jack goes in to see Goddamn Billy.

  74

  Viktor Tratchev is one très pissed gangster.

  “Valeshin wanted to be a real estate developer,” Tratchev says to his head enforcer, an obelisk of a human specimen known simply as Bear, “so he’s a real estate developer. Fine. What does he think, that he can just stroll in when he feels like it and be the boss again?”

  B
ear shrugs. Bear may not know the term “rhetorical question” but he knows one when he hears one.

  Tratchev’s working himself up.

  “What does he think?” Tratchev asks. “That I’m going to lie down and just take this shit? I’m supposed to lie down on my belly and let him fuck me?!”

  This is pretty much exactly what he’s supposed to do, actually, according to Dani and Lev, who drop by Tratchev’s house that afternoon for a glass of tea and some browbeating.

  “You’ve been shorting the pakhan on his share,” Dani explains.

  By about 100 percent, Dani’s thinking.

  “Bullshit,” Tratchev says.

  “Not bullshit,” Dani insists. “What do you think, you’re playing with children here?”

  “I—”

  Dani holds up a hand to stop him. “Don’t add insult to injury. Keep your lies inside your mouth. Listen, Viktor, between you and me, I’ll admit that things have gotten pretty loose. So you take advantage. All right, you take advantage. Human nature. Maybe the fault then is on both sides.

  “But I’m here to tell you today, Viktor Tratchev, that the free and easy days are over. The pakhan is the pakhan again. From now on, until trust is restored, we will take the payments and give you your proper share. You will run a tighter operation that doesn’t end up on the evening news. And Viktor Tratchev, if you cause any more problems, I will personally cut off your head and piss into your gasping mouth. Thank you for the tea.”

  They get up and leave and Tratchev is about to throw a rod.

  “I’ll kill him,” he says.

  “Dani?” Bear asks.

  “Him too,” Tratchev said.

  Who he has in mind is Nicky.

  He starts working the phones.

  75

  Tom Casey’s in with Billy.

  “Let me get this straight, Jack,” Casey says. “You want to deny a fire claim because a poodle had to take a piss.”

  “A Yorkie,” Jack says. “Because a Yorkie had to take a piss.”

  Casey turns back from the window and smiles at him with beatific menace.

  “Are you fucking with me, Jack?” he asks.