by Don Winslow
Or Mother is dead and the children are next.
He calls the number Karpotsov gave him.
“I have an offer to make,” Nicky says.
“I hope it’s a good one.”
“It’s a very good one.”
A piece of the biggest insurance company on the West Coast.
“A good faith payment,” Karpotsov says. “Today.”
“You’ll get it,” Nicky says. “I have money coming in this morning.”
So it’s all right, he tells himself. It’s cool. Tratchev is dead. Azmekian is dead. Gordon is dead. Two Crosses is out, KGB is in, that’s all. A simple swap. Money coming in. Money to ransom Mother. Everything will be all right—
The phone rings.
Jack starts reading off the inventory. Finishes off the last item, then says, “Yup, it’s all here.”
Nicky says, “Where are you?! If you have my furniture, where is it?”
“I thought your furniture was burned up in the fire,” Jack says. “Of course, if you’d like to withdraw that claim …”
“You don’t know—”
“If you now say that your furniture’s been stolen, I suggest you call the police right away.”
“—who you’re—”
“Or submit a claim on the theft,” Jack says. “It shouldn’t be too hard. I think we already have the inventory.”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“Porfirio Guzman,” Jack says.
“What?”
“That name ring a faint bell with you?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jack says. “You had him killed twelve years ago. I understand that’s a long time to remember a little thing like that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I have a million bucks’ worth of stuff which is also enough evidence to connect you to the arson and your wife’s murder,” Jack says. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
Silence for a second. Then Nicky says, “I’m prepared to be reasonable.”
“I’m not.”
“One hundred thousand dollars,” Nicky says. “Cash.”
“That’s cheap, Nicky. I’m surprised at you.”
“One-fifty.”
“Nickel and dime.”
“Two hundred thousand,” Nicky says.
“No.”
“Make your offer.”
“Drop your lawsuit,” Jack says.
“Would that do it for you?”
“No,” Jack says. “Drop your claim.”
“If I had the furniture back …”
“You can get it back …”
“Good.”
“After you confess that you burned the house and killed your wife.”
Long sigh from Nicky.
“We can still make a deal,” he says.
“I already told you,” Jack says.
I don’t do deals.
Nicky says, “I’ll be coming for you.”
Jack says, “Bring your lunch.”
And hangs up.
Nicky slams his hand on the counter.
He feels someone behind him.
Little Michael is standing there.
“Is Grandma gone?” he asks.
“Yes,” Nicky says. “But—”
“Is she all burned up, too?” Michael asks. “Like Mommy?”
Nicky freaks.
126
The sun starts burning off the marine layer.
So the world is coming clear and sharp as Jack steps out of the old rec hall.
He checks the load in Teddy’s pistol.
Six shots left.
Should be enough.
When they come, they’ll come through the old gate. He’ll hear it creak open and then he’ll hear their steps. Nicky won’t come alone. He’ll have his hitters.
Enough to take me out.
But not before I kill him.
Jack slips the pistol in his waistband and waits.
127
Letty del Rio checks the load in her weapon and slips it back into the holster.
This is a tricky operation with one hand.
Trickier still to drive, but she’s going to do it.
Show up at Nicky’s door like a bad-news Avon lady.
Ding-dong.
She finesses her coffee cup to the floor below her feet and starts the engine. Wondering where the hell Jack is. Why didn’t he show up?
Never mind.
Time to go see Nicky.
Ding-dong.
128
The gate creaks open.
Jack hears it scrape against the ground.
One set of footsteps coming up the path.
Let it be Nicky, Jack thinks.
He holds the pistol at his side.
Pulls the hammer back and raises the gun.
Gets a whiff of something in the wind.
The smell of a burning cigarette.
Goddamn.
He tucks the pistol back under his shirt.
Goddamn, Billy.
129
They stand there not looking at each other for a minute or so.
Jack had forgotten how beautiful the view was from up here. The palm trees, the bougainvillea and jacaranda, the wide stretch of white beach that sweeps up to the big rock at Dana Head.
Has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Worth saving.
Worth killing for.
“It ain’t too late,” Billy says.
“For what?”
“For you to walk away,” Billy says. “Forget about what you seen here.”
Jack nods.
“It’s too late,” he says. “How long have you been on their payroll?”
“A long time.”
“Since the Atlas Warehouse?”
Billy nods. “Nobody was supposed to die. Just a price buildup and a sale to the insurance company.”
“Why, Billy?”
“Money,” Billy says. “You bust your ass for this company for dog bones while the agents make the big money and the underwriters take payoffs and the judges take bribes and the lawyers rake it in, and we old dogs are just supposed to roll over for the table scraps? The hell with that.”
“You set me up,” Jack says. “You gave them my files, you tipped them off to every move. You jerked me like I was on a leash. You knew everything to do, everything to say to keep me pushing. You let me walk deeper and deeper into the trap, Billy, and you didn’t say a word.”
“I had no choice, Jack,” Billy says. “I had no goddamn choice.”
“Everyone has a choice.”
“So make a good one for yourself,” Billy says. “I’m here to offer you a deal, Jack. You can still get on the boat.”
“With you and Nicky?”
Billy laughs, “You still don’t get it, Jack. It ain’t Nicky. It’s Mahogany Row. All the VPs and the president. They all got shares.”
Jack feels like the world is spinning.
“Shares in what?”
Billy gestures all around them. “In this, Jack. Great Sunsets. We own it.”
Like the world’s falling out from under him.
“California Fire and Life?” he asks. “Owns Great Sunsets? Owns the Strands?”
“Mahogany Row, me and some others,” Billy says. “We all have shares.”
“Nicky Vale?”
“Partners.”
Genius.
Sheer freaking genius, Jack thinks.
“The company’s been taking a goddamn pounding,” Billy says. “Between the fires and the earthquakes and the fraud and the goddamn lawsuits, the company was about to go belly up. So instead of giving it all to the damn lawyers and the other crooks we decided to get a piece of it ourselves. We made some deals—started paying on some of the drive-downs, the phony thefts, the medical buildups, the arsons, and taking our cut on the other end. Pay out the money, get it back in the form of shares in dummy companies.”
Very slick.
And it works both ways. The Russian mob can put dirty money into real estate, suffer a “loss,” then get clean money back through the insurance company.
Everybody wins.
Except the legit policyholders who pay the premiums.
And dumb-ass honest claims dogs.
And the occasional victim like Pamela Vale.
It’s just a beautiful scam.
So they took it to the next level.
Why dick around with little claims payments when you can hit the California Litigation Lottery? Set your own claims people up for bad faith suits, and then force yourself into settlements? An easy thing to do from Billy’s position. A bad decision here, a fucked-up file there. He’d know where all the weaknesses were, or he’d put them there.
Brilliant.
“It had to stop sometime,” Billy says. “SIU digging around, and the goddamn task force … so we figured one last big payout.”
And I was the perfect setup for a huge bad faith settlement, Jack thinks. A whole big dog-and-pony show to justify paying out $50 million.
“So you hauled me out.”
“We was saving you up, Jack.”
“For twelve years?”
“Give or take.”
Billy drops his cigarette butt on the dirt, snuffs it out with his foot, lights another and says, “We dumped a lot of money into Great Sunsets over the years. But you assholes fought us to a standstill. ‘Save the Strands.’ Just about broke us. When we decided we had to shut down we knew we had to make this one pay off.”
“You lured Gordon into whipping up a class action so you could justify a huge payment to head it off,” Jack says. “Then pay the money to yourselves.”
“There you go,” Billy says. “Gordon’s dead. Nicky’ll get the $50 million this morning.”
And fifty million bucks will go into Great Sunsets and that’ll be more than enough to bribe the councilmen and the lawyers and the judges. Enough capital to do all that and put up their shitty condos and ruin what small part of the coast they haven’t already destroyed.
“How about Casey,” Jack asks. “He in on this?”
“Nah.”
“Sandra Hansen?”
Billy shakes his head. “Sandra Hansen is a true believer.
“So I need to know,” Billy says, “you in or out, Jack? I can offer you shares. You can get a condo here, maybe a town house. Surf all goddamn day.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Nothin’,” Billy says. “That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to do a goddamn thing. Just walk away.”
“That’s the deal?”
“That’s the deal.”
Jack looks around him. At the Strand, at the ocean.
“A woman’s dead,” he says.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Billy says.
“Nicky lost his temper?”
“I suppose,” Billy says. “So what’s it gonna be?”
Jack sighs, “Can’t do it, Billy.”
Billy shakes his head, “Goddamn, Jack.”
“Goddamn, Billy.”
They stand there looking at each other. Then Jack says, “I’ll let you go, Billy. I won’t make the call for a couple of hours. You can be in Mexico.”
“Well, that’s nice of you,” Billy says. “But you got it backwards. I’m all that’s keeping you alive right now. Shit, Jack, I begged them for the chance to come talk to you before …”
“Before what?”
Billy shakes his head and then whistles. A few seconds later Accidentally Bentley comes waddling up with his gun out.
Right behind him, Nicky Vale.
Carrying a gasoline can.
Bentley walks around Jack and takes the pistol from him.
“I told you not to go dicking around, didn’t I?” he says.
Jack shrugs as Bentley pushes him inside the building.
Nicky’s very wired.
Jabbering something about Afghanistan.
130
He goes into this riff about Afghanistan and mujahedin.
“They didn’t want to give it up, either,” he says to Jack. “But they did. Have you ever seen a whirling dervish? Wait until you set one on fire, you’ll see them whirl.”
He stands in front of Jack, right in his face. Stares at him and says, “I’m a businessman. I tried to treat you like a businessman. I tried to do business with you but you wouldn’t do it. You had to be rigid, you had to be unreasonable. You’ve never seen the inside of a Russian prison. You’ve never lived in cold and filth. You’re a native Californian, you’ve never seen anything but the sunshine, and can’t you see that’s all I want, too, a little slice of sunshine?
“Jack, I need my things and I need the insurance settlement because I have to have that money. I owe it to some people who are going to kill me and my entire family if they don’t get it. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand how serious I am.
“Jack, what I’ve learned—what I think we both have learned—is that you can’t walk away from your history.
“But I’ve made mine work for me and your history can work for you, too, Jack. It can make you rich. It’s not too late to turn back from what you’ve done. We can reinvent ourselves again, Jack. Reinvent this moment. We can’t change the past but we can design the future. We can make each other rich. Choose the California life, not the fire, Jack. This doesn’t have to end in ashes.”
“It already has,” Jack says.
Nicky shakes his head. “All you have to do is tell me who, if anyone, you have told. Have you, for instance, told Tom Casey? Letty del Rio? Other police? The newspapers? Answer my fucking questions, Jack!”
“Don’t be an asshole, Jack.”
“Tell him, Wade.”
Nicky is cranked up.
Back on the rant. “You won’t be dead when the flames hit you, Jack. We’ll start with your feet—you wouldn’t believe the pain—the nerves down there. Then you’ll want to tell me, then you might still have your life but I wouldn’t think about getting on too many surfboards, Jack. This is so unnecessary but I’m desperate, Jack, I’m desperate. I am, as you would say, strung out. Lev is dead, they cut his head off and threw it into my mother’s home where my children live. Dani is back there guarding my children because they already took my mother, they’re going to kill her, they’re going to burn her if this falls through, so I need to know, Jack.
“I will do it, Jack. I’ll pour the—what do you like to call it—accelerant all over you and fling a match. You won’t die from smoke inhalation, you won’t die from carbon monoxide asphyxiation, you’ll die from the flames, from the fire swirling around you—”
“Like Pamela?” Jack asks.
“No, not like Pamela,” Nicky says. He looks to Bentley and says, “Open the lid. Let him smell the fumes.”
Jack smells them. Hard not to in the closed room.
“I loved her, Jack,” Nicky says. “I loved being inside her. I used to drink from her. She was sweetness and sunshine—my children came from inside her, my children. But she was going to take … that bitch was going to take everything from me. She was going to drain me, leave me with nothing. She was going to get up in court and say things about me: Nicky is a womanizer, Nicky is a druggie, Nicky is a crook, Nicky is a gangster. Nicky sleeps with his mother—which is not true, not the way she meant it. She was going to say those things, she told me that. I told her she would never divorce me, she would never take my possessions. My house, my money, my things, my kids, and she said that if she had to she would say all those things before she let my mother get her hands on the kids and fuck them up. That’s what she said, quote, fuck them up. But no, I didn’t burn her alive. I didn’t make her dance in flames, writhe on our bed like the bitch used to except this time in flames. I didn
’t do that, because I loved her. I just made her go to sleep. I made her drink and take pills and when she was asleep in our bed I climbed on top of her. She had the most graceful, whitest neck. I can remember the first time I kissed her neck. I can remember the first time she took me inside her and her black hair against her neck. Can you remember that incredible warmth, the ineffable heat, the first time inside a woman? I used to want her so badly it was like I was on fire, and the bitch knew that, she knew what she was doing. Cockteasing bitch should burn, she deserves it, but I don’t do that. I’m on top of her with a pillow—that’s amusing now that I recall it because she used to have me put a pillow under her ass so I could go deeper inside—I’m on top of her with the pillow over her mouth, she’s unconscious but her hips jerk and strain, her back arches up and then she goes quiet in my arms but I can’t finish. Cockteasing bitch to the last, I can’t finish, so I get up and then—and only then, Jack—do I pour the kerosene around our marital bed. Around and under and over the bitch. I can’t stand to pour it on that beautiful face, just the cockteasing part of her. I poured it there all right. She makes no more children she can fuck up. You cannot walk away from your history, Jack. The fire swirls around you and I have heard the screams echo for miles. Now tell me what I need to know. I’m out of time and out of patience and I will set you on fire, Jack, because I need my money and I need my things and they have my mother for God’s sake!!”
He gestures to Bentley.
Bentley raises the gas can.
“I haven’t told anyone,” Jack says.
Nicky smiles.
“But how can I believe you?” he asks. Turns to Bentley. “Do him.”
Bentley looks sick but he raises the can again.
“Goddamn it,” Billy says.
Takes out his old .44 and shoots Bentley square in the gut.
The flash ignites the fumes.
Which in turn ignite Bentley.
He’s on fire so he drops the can and the gas gurgles onto the floor and he forgets everything he learns in fire school and goes running out the door.
He’s a screaming, swirling ball of flame when he crumples onto the dry grass.
Which is how Accidentally Bentley sets the Great South Coast Fire.
Accidentally.
