California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

Jack’s out on the water, watching the dawn.

  When the sun hits his face it’s personal. Like, good morning, wake up, dream time is over.

  Right behind the sun is the wind.

  Blowing wild as a Miles Davis break.

  Jack knows it’s going to be a hot day in Southern California.

  79

  Doesn’t take long.

  Three hours later, Paul Gordon’s standing in Tom Casey’s conference room, pointing down at Jack, shouting and red in the face. Jack thinks that Paul Gordon is maybe going to be the first-ever witnessed event of self-combustion.

  Which would be okay.

  There’s not a claims dog in California who wouldn’t like to see Paul Gordon go up in a ball of flame. Paul Gordon ignites, your basic claims guy is going to spring up and write a letter to the Fire Department to get over there right away.

  They used to say that Paul Gordon sits at the right hand of God. Then the lawyer hit Fidelity Mutual Insurance for $40 million in punitive damages on a bad faith suit. Now they say that God sits at the right hand of Paul Gordon.

  Gordon has the looks for it, too. Tall, silver hair, ice-blue eyes, craggy features. He’s standing by the window in Casey’s office, he’s got Newport Beach Harbor as a dramatic backdrop and he’s telling Jack, Tom and Goddamn Billy that he’s going to take Cal Fire and Life down for the biggest punitive damages award in the entire history of bad faith litigation.

  Man’s gonna break his own record.

  “… make the Fidelity Mutual verdict look like a church bingo pot!” is part of what he’s screaming.

  “What he did … what he did …,” Gordon’s saying, pointing at Jack, “he told my client—one day after his wife’s funeral—that he thought my client killed his wife and burned the house down around her! Then he came to my client’s home to hand deliver a denial letter!”

  “Did you do that, Jack?” asks Goddamn Billy.

  “Yup.”

  “Why?”

  Billy instantly regrets asking this because Jack turns to Nicky, who’s sitting there with this little smile on his face, and says, “Because he killed his wife and then burned the house down around her.”

  “SEE?! SEE?!!!??” Gordon yells. “He’s doing it again!”

  “Jack, keep your mouth shut, please,” Casey says. He’s sitting in his chair sipping coffee and acting like they’re all just hanging out discussing the Dodgers’ chances of winning the division.

  Here’s a story about Tom Casey.

  Casey goes to a settlement conference with Goddamn Billy, and he has draft authority for $100,000 in his pocket. Plaintiff’s attorney comes in and asks for five grand. Casey stands up, slams his fist on the table and yells, “What do I look like, Santa Claus?!” The plaintiff settles for two thousand.

  So even though Casey has Paul Gordon, the biggest, baddest plaintiff’s attorney in Southern California in his office yelling about Armageddon, Casey is not exactly pissing his pants. This is because Casey is the biggest, baddest, defense attorney in the Southern Bear Flag Republic.

  What you got here—if you’re a connoisseur of multimillion-dollar bad faith litigation—is you have the heavyweight championship of the world.

  Gordon v. Casey.

  You could make a mint from the pay-per-view rights just selling to attorneys who’d watch it in the hopes that they’ll actually kill each other.

  Funny thing is they’re in the same office complex.

  Both Casey and Gordon have their offices in the “Black Boxes,” a marvel of modern architecture, black glass and hubris that sits astride the Newport Beach greenway. They’re called the Black Boxes because that’s exactly what they look like, except the bottom right corner of each building is cut away, so they look like black boxes that are about to topple over. Which is where the marvel of modern architecture bit comes in.

  Casey calls them the “There Isn’t Going to Be Any Fucking Earthquake” buildings, because one good temblor and you got to believe that these babies are coming down, precariously balanced as they appear to be. So you got Casey in one, and Gordon in the other, both on the twelfth floors, and they actually face each other. If they have their curtains open they could exchange friendly morning waves, which is just about as likely as O.J. and Fred Goldman sitting down over a fondue.

  Anyway, Casey says, “Jack’s conduct was inappropriate, no dispute, Paul.”

  Gordon nods with some satisfaction but he knows a punch is coming in here somewhere.

  Casey throws it. “But Paul, do you think that if a jury concludes that your client is an arsonist and a murderer, it’s going to give a rat’s ass about some dumb thing Jack did?”

  “The jury won’t conclude anything of the kind, Tom.”

  “Maybe not,” Tom says, shrugging. “But just to add a jalapeño to the chili, I will tell you right now, if you push this to a trial, I will make sure that it’s monitored by the federal prosecutor’s office to consider potential criminal charges against your client.”

  Casey turns to smile at Nicky and explains, “Arson can be considered a federal crime, at the discretion of the U.S. Attorney.”

  Nicky shrugs an exact imitation of Casey’s patented shrug.

  Like, you can stick your U.S. Attorney up your ass.

  And waddle.

  Nicky says, “You have no evidence.”

  “Mr. Vale, to use a technical term,” Casey says, “I have evidence up the wazoo.”

  Lays it all out for him.

  Incendiary origin.

  Motive.

  And opportunity.

  Especially opportunity, because he has him in a lie on his whereabouts that night.

  “The guard has you coming in at 4:45,” Casey says.

  “So?”

  Oh-so-cool Call Me Nicky.

  “So you’re hosed,” Jack says.

  Seeing if he can, you know, set Paul Gordon off.

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  He does.

  Gordon goes totally off.

  It takes Casey a good ten minutes to get him to sit down. What Casey does is he sends an intern racing to the trendy little coffee shop downstairs to fetch a cappuccino grande with low-fat milk and a dash of nutmeg.

  “Decaf,” Casey stresses to the intern.

  It’s well known among the greater legal community of Southern California that Gordon has a serious cappuccino jones, that in fact he keeps an associate whose entire job consists of making sure that the attorney has two of them on the table before any meeting begins.

  So Gordon’s sitting in Casey’s office huffing and puffing, face all red, little droplets of sweat bubbling on his forehead.

  It’s beautiful.

  And Casey gets a clue as to how he’ll take Gordon in the courtroom if it comes to that: whip him into a froth and let the jury see it.

  The decaf cap arrives, Gordon takes a long, soothing sip and then says to Nicky, “Go ahead.”

  Jack’s like, Go ahead and what? Go ahead and jump out the window?

  It isn’t what Nicky has in mind.

  Nicky just lays his cool look on Jack and says, “As to one of my employees picking up Pamela’s prescription, that’s ridiculous. As to this alleged statement by the gate guard, I don’t know with whom you talked, or whether you talked to anyone. All I can tell you is that I was home with my children and my mother that entire evening and morning, just as I told you on the recorded statement.”

  Gordon lays a document on the table. “This is the signed and notarized affidavit from Mr. Michael Derochik, the guard who was on duty the night of the fire, in which he affirms that he did not see Mr. Vale leave or enter the gate after 8:30 that evening.”

  Jack starts getting this feeling that Nicky’s not going out the window.

  It’s Opportunity that just went out the window.

  Nicky continues, “As to my finances, I advised Mr. Wade that because I am in an international business, there is great flux in the liquidity of my assets. The tide, as it were, ebbs and flows. If Mr. Wade
would bother to check my accounts today, he will see that I have the money to meet both my personal and commercial responsibilities. As for losing my home, my mortgage payments are current, and I have ample funds to meet the upcoming payment on my home.”

  Motive is on the ledge.

  But I still have Incendiary Origin, Jack thinks. Long as this is an arson fire, everything else follows. And I still have IO.

  For about five seconds.

  “Your samples that showed traces of accelerants?” Gordon asks. “Deputy Bentley took samples and sent them to the state crime lab, and the samples came up negative. Oh, there’s traces of a little Class O combustible—which is probably the turpentine you’d expect from pine flooring—but kerosene? Now, I don’t know where Mr. Wade got his so-called samples, but it wasn’t from the Vale house, I can tell you that.”

  So there it is. Jack thinks that if he looks out the window to the ground, he’ll see the smashed remains of Incendiary Origin, Motive and Opportunity lying on the sidewalk.

  “I’m filing suit today,” Gordon adds. “Breach of contract, failure to reasonably investigate and bad faith. If you’d like to settle, come with $50 million in your pocket or don’t come.”

  “Fifty goddamn million?!”

  Gordon smiles and nods. “Over and above what you owe on the policies.”

  “That’s just goddamn extortion, is all that is.”

  “Like a church bingo pot,” Paul Gordon tells Casey.

  “You’ll have your witnesses, we’ll have ours.”

  They’re standing out by the elevator when Gordon says, “Oh. Just to add a jalapeño to the chili? As to this story about Dr. Ng trying to contact my client and being rebuffed by an attorney—we have a signed statement from Dr. Ng denying that anything of the sort ever happened. So I don’t know where Mr. Wade got his information, but you can bet that we’ll sure as hell ask him under oath.

  “But seeing as how Mr. Wade is a convicted perjurer with a history of planting evidence … well, Mr. Wade, you be thinking now about which you’d rather be, the husband or the wife.”

  Gordon starts to get into the elevator but does a dramatic about-face instead.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he says. “Mr. Wade is sleeping with Ms. del Rio, who stands to gain insurance benefits if they’re denied to my client. We have investigator’s photographs of them leaving his condominium together rather early in the morning. Which smacks of collusion to me. We also know how to make prosecutors aware of testimony in a civil trial.

  “Fifty million to settle,” Gordon says. “Over and above, of course, the claim itself. The offer is good for forty-eight hours, gentlemen. Give you some time to get the money together.”

  Gordon steps into the elevator. Has to push the Hold button, though, because Nicky Vale stops and puts his arm around Jack’s shoulders.

  Whispers into Jack’s ear, “You should have learned the last time.”

  Which is when Jack realizes he’s been set up.

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  Big time.

  Is what Jack’s thinking as he races back to the Vale house, hoping he’s not too late.

  The setup. Nicky Vale wasn’t happy just to collect on the claim. Nicky wanted the big bucks, the winning ticket to the California Litigation Lottery, so he put out just enough bait to lure you into denying the claim and then snap.

  The hook.

  And reeled you right in.

  You are very stupid, Jack Wade.

  He is too late.

  They bulldozed it.

  Jack pulls up to the house, he can see that the west wing is down.

  The only thing standing there in its place is Accidentally Bentley.

  With a uniformed deputy.

  “Thought you might show up, Jack,” Bentley says.

  “When did this happen?”

  “This morning,” Bentley says. “I advised Mr. Vale that the burned portion of the house represented a safety hazard and that he needed to take care of it. You wouldn’t want a liability claim, would you, Jack?”

  So the evidence is gone, Jack thinks. The holes in the flooring, the splash patterns on the joists.

  He says, “I have two sets of photos and videotape, you asshole.”

  “Yeah, you have samples, too,” Bentley says. “Get out of here, Jack. You’re trespassing.”

  “Where’d you get your samples?”

  “From the house,” Bentley says. “Before you came.”

  “How much is Nicky paying you?”

  “Get out, Jack. Before I arrest you.”

  “No, what’s your cut?” Jack asks. “How much pension do you get off the dead woman?”

  “Walk away now, Jack.”

  “You set me up, Brian.”

  “You set yourself up,” Bentley says. “You always do. I tried to tell you, don’t dick around with this thing. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

  “This isn’t over.”

  “Believe me, Jack. It’s over.”

  Jack gets back in the ’Stang and drives over to Monarch Bay.

  Pulls up to the gate.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Where’s Derochik?”

  “Guy who usually works this shift?”

  “Yeah,” Jack says. “Do you know where he is?”

  “No, do you?” the guard asks. “He just calls up, says he isn’t working anymore. Puts us all in a jam.”

  “Do you know where he lives, where I could get hold of him?”

  “You find out, you let me know.”

  Jack knows he’ll try to find out but he also knows that he’s not going to find Mike Derochik. Derochik is probably in another state already.

  Jack drives over to the Monarch Bay Shopping Plaza, to the drugstore. He already knows what he’s going to find.

  Or what he’s not going to find.

  Which is Kelly.

  There’s another chemist behind the counter.

  “Is Kelly here?” Jack asks.

  The woman smiles at him. “Another broken heart. No, Kelly quit. Very suddenly.”

  “Do you know where she went? Where I could get hold of her?”

  “Yes and no,” the woman says. “Yes, I know where she went—no, I don’t know how you could get hold of her.”

  Jack’s not in the mood for games.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sorry,” the woman says. “It’s just that I’ve had my fill of Kellys. If you were smart, so would you. Kelly flew off to Europe last night. Met a ‘great guy’ who’s going to give her the world. So unless you can give her the world, I think you’re out of luck, Kelly-wise.”

  I don’t think luck has anything to do with it, Jack thinks.

  They knew every move.

  Every move I made.

  He drives over to Pacific Coast Mortgage and Finance.

  He’s not even out of the car when Gary comes bopping out.

  “Hey, Nicky came through,” Gary says. “Paid the balloon early.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, dude, we were worried for nothing.”

  Yeah, dude.

  Like very fresh.

  Surf on.

  Jack finds Ng at home.

  A nice tract house on a cul-de-sac in Laguna Niguel. The house newly painted a pale blue. Basketball hoop bolted to the garage at the end of the driveway.

  The medical examiner comes to the door in a T-shirt and pajama pants.

  “I was sleeping, Jack,” he says.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Why not?”

  Jack follows him into the house. Ng leads him into a small room that must be the doctor’s study. Antique wooden desk. Walls lined with bookshelves more full of books than knickknacks. Ng sits at the desk chair and motions for Jack to sit down in a big leather chair by the window.

  “Anyone else home?” Jack asks.

  “Wife’s at work,” Ng says. “Kids are at school. What do you want?”

  “You know what I
want.”

  Ng nods. He reaches under the green blotter on the desk. Pulls out a small stack of Polaroid pictures and hands them to Jack.

  Two Asian kids walking out of a playground. A boy and a girl. Each in their little soccer uniforms. You don’t need an Ident-A-Kid packet to know that they’re Ng’s children.

  Jack hands the pictures back.

  “He killed his wife,” he says.

  “Probably.”

  “And he’s going to get away with it.”

  “Probably.”

  And he’s going to make $50 million doing it.

  Jack stands up and says, “Okay.”

  Ng nods.

  Back in his car Jack knows that road is closed. Knows that the blood and tissue samples are already parked at a hazardous waste disposal somewhere.

  It isn’t just money, because if money wants to intimidate a coroner, money sues the coroner, or calls his boss or otherwise leans on him. Money doesn’t threaten to hurt his kids.

  No, that’s a gangster thing.

  Jack goes back to Cal Fire and Life, does the whole computer and phone run again and it’s the same story.

  Nicky’s accounts are solid.

  Credit card payments up to date.

  Money in the business accounts.

  And I am one dumb claims dog, Jack thinks.

  Nicky set me up. Left evidence out there, waited for me to deny the claim and then jerked the evidence.

  Set me and California Fire and Life up for a gigantic bad faith suit.

  And he knew every move I was going to make.

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  Jack pushes in the door marked NO ADMITTANCE.

  He blows right past the sign that says AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and one of the SIU guys lays a hand on Jack’s shoulder to stop him. Jack brushes him aside and shoves open the door to Sandra Hansen’s office.

  She’s sitting behind her desk.

  Jack leans over it.

  “You been reading my file, Sandra?”

  Most of the SIU guys are ex-cops and this one—a slab of meat named Cooper—asks her, “You want me to take him out of here, Sandra?”

  Jack doesn’t turn around as he says, “Yeah, why don’t you take me out of here?”

  “It’s all right,” Sandra says.

  She gestures for Cooper to leave.