California Fire and Life (27 page)

“What am I supposed to say to that, Billy?”

Because it’s true.

Jack stands there with the wind blowing into his face, blowing the green-gray mudge from the cars on the 405 into his eyes and nose.

Billy says, “Just take care of the claim. The claim is your business.”

“The claim is wrong.”

“Prove it!”

“I need
time
to prove it!”

“You ain’t
got
the time!”

Two old friends standing in the middle of a mock desert screaming at each other. They realize it. Billy sits down.

Says, “Shit.”

“Sorry.”

“Billy,” Jack asks, “can you take my back on this one?”

Billy blows out a puff of air and says, “Yeah. For a while. For a
while
, Jack, because I’m telling you—I’m getting heat.”

“Thanks, Billy.”

“And don’t you
ever
talk to an insured like that again,” Billy says. “And keep adjusting the claim.”

Another bad-faith-phobia demand. The California Fair Claims Practices Act demands that an insurance company has to keep adjusting the claim while at the same time it’s investigating. The reason is that if the company spends months investigating without adjusting, and
then
decides to pay the claim, the payment to the insured is unfairly delayed. “Right,” Jack says. “I’ll start working up an estimate.”

Meaning that he’ll do a “scope”—determine what was damaged or destroyed—then a “comp”—an item-by-item estimate of what it will take to replace and repair.

Just what he’d do if he thought this was a righteous claim.

“Just do your goddamn job,” Billy says.

“If I have enough evidence,” Jack says, “I’m going to deny the claim.”

“It’s your call,” Billy says. “Just do it right.”

Which is what Billy’s counting on.

Jack hates golf.

But the old links are where you want to be if you want to find an insurance agent. Depends on the time of day, of course. Between seven and eleven in the morning, you check the golf course. Lunchtime you check the country club. Early afternoon after lunch, you check the links again, late afternoon you don’t check anywhere unless you want to be a witness in a divorce case.

Jack’s on the course to buy himself some time.

He finds Roger Hazlitt on the seventeenth hole.

In a foursome with two doctors and a real estate developer.

See, you don’t get to be a millionaire insurance agent selling individual policies to Mom and Pop. You get to be a millionaire insurance agent by selling policies to condo complexes, gated communities and the occasional wealthy individual homeowner like Nicky Vale.

Which of course is what Jack wants to talk about.

Roger Hazlitt is less enthused.

You sell a boatload of insurance and the house burns and the wife dies, it completely fucks your loss ratio for the entire year. Not that it’s Roger’s money—it isn’t—but if you’re in the top forty on loss ratios at the end of the year Cal Fire and Life sends you and your wife to Rome or Hawaii or Paris or someplace and Roger hates missing those trips.

And he’s not all that thrilled to see Jack Wade come striding over the green in his cheap blue blazer and khaki slacks and white shirt and tie, because the two doctors and the real estate developer are putting up a massive condo complex in Laguna Niguel and Roger figures that all he has to do is tank eighteen and blow a putt and he has the policy and 10 percent commission on the premiums.

But he puts on a big smile and pumps Jack’s hand and says, “Guys, meet Jack Wade, best damned insurance adjuster in this great land of ours and that is no shit.”

Jack, he’s thinking that it’s all shit, but he smiles and shakes hands as that asshole Roger Hazlitt says, “God forbid, guys, that something should happen with your buildings, but if it does, you know you can call Jack personally and it will get handled. Right, Jack?”

Now Jack feels like an asshole but he says, “You bet.”

“Didn’t you bring your clubs, Jack?”

I work for a living is what Jack wants to say but what he says instead is, “A quick word with you, Roger?”

“Tell you what,” Roger says. “Let me hit my tee shot and then while these guys are in the rough looking for their balls we can have a chat, okay?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“There we go.”

Roger has a sweet swing, which he should, because he plays maybe seven times a week plus lessons with his pro, so he hits a long ball and then takes Jack aside.

“I’m going to lose five hundred bucks to these jamokes,” he says, “then make a couple hundred K on their premiums, so let’s keep this quick, Jack. What are you doing out here? Couldn’t you have come to my office?”

“You’re never in your office.”

“Well, isn’t this something one of the gals could handle?”

The “gals” being the women who work in Roger’s office.

“You’re Nicky Vale’s agent,” Jack says.

“Guilty.”

“You sold him a shitload of special endorsements,” Jack says. “Art, custom furniture, jewelry …”

“So?”

“
Way
over guidelines, Roger.”

“Underwriting okayed it,” Roger says, starting to get defensive. Starting to sweat now.

“Who at Underwriting?”

“I don’t know,” Roger says. “Ask Underwriting.”

“Come on, Roger,” Jack says. “That kind of overage, you must have a sweetheart in Underwriting.”

“Fuck you, Jack.”

Jack puts his arm around Roger’s shoulders.

Says into his ear, “Roger, I don’t begrudge you a living. You go get as much money as your greedy little hands can grab. I know you have a wife, three kids and two girlfriends to support. Plus business expenses.”

Roger is like
Mister
Community. For the annual Dana Point Festival of the Whales parade, Roger rents the elephant. In the annual Festival of the Tall Ships, one of the tall ships flies a flag that says Hazlitt Insurance Agency on it. These things cost money. So do tennis bracelets and cosmetic surgery.

“So I know,” Jack continues, “that you need to be bringing it in.”

“That’s goddamn right, Jack.”

“Cool,” Jack says. “And I don’t give a rat’s ass that you have to give a taste to someone in Underwriting to okay an overage now and then. I don’t care, Claims doesn’t care. Unless, you know, I need to go digging and rooting through Underwriting, and then maybe even Mahogany Row might wake up and hear about it.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Or should I go over to the guys there,” Jack says, nudging his chin at Roger’s golf partners, “and tell them that by all means they should buy their insurance from you now—today—while you still have your license.”

“A real fucking asshole.”

“Just give me a name,” Jack says. “Someone I can talk to. I don’t give a damn about the money, Roger.”

“Yeah, you do,” Roger says. “All you Joe Lunchbuckets from Claims, you’re jealous. How much do you clear, Jack? Thirty-five? Forty-five? Maybe fifty? I shake that much off my dick at the urinal, Jack.”

“Good for you, Roger.”

But it’s true, Jack thinks. All us Joe Lunchbuckets from Claims, we are jealous about the money.

“Bill Reynolds,” Roger whispers.

“A black guy?”

“Black guys don’t need money?” Roger says. “I kicked him a grand.”

“How can you make—?”

“I
don’t
make on the endorsements. I make on the home, on the life, on the cars …”

“See, this is why you’re rich, Roger.”

Roger says, “I had to write the endorsements or Vale wouldn’t give me his business on all the other shit. You know what those commissions stack up to, year after year? Plus Vale owns three apartment buildings, I get the policies on those, plus I get to solicit the tenants on their renter’s insurance and their auto. You know how much money that is?”

“I don’t want to know,” Jack says. “I’d only get jealous.”

“It’s serious money.”

Jack looks down on the green. Roger’s partners are standing there looking back at the tee. I guess they found their balls, Jack thinks. He asks, “Are you and Nicky like
buddies
or something?”

“Screw
buddies
,” Roger says. “I don’t have time for
buddies
. Maybe we have a drink now and then. Lunch … Okay, maybe once or twice I go out on his boat with him for some blow and some babes. Don’t look at me like that, Jack.”

“I think your buddy killed his wife, Rog,” Jack says. “For the insurance benefits. And he burned his house. For the insurance benefits. So fuck his boat and his blow and his babes. And Roger, don’t you be making any more calls to my boss or your boss or
anybody’s
fucking boss to get this claim paid.”

“Just keep me out of this, Jack.”

Yeah, you make the bucks and
now
you want out of it. When there’s the mess and the dead bodies and the hell to pay.

“Then you just
stay
out of it, Rog,” Jack says. “You stick your dick in Claims again I’ll see that it gets cut off.”

So shake that.

Jack drops in at Pacific Coast Mortgage and Finance.

Two-room office shares a building with a swimwear store and an erotic novelty shop on Del Prado in Dana Point. Big glossy photographs of ocean scenes dominate the walls. Handsome guys and sleek girls windsurfing, flecks of ocean spray flying off their bodies, glistening in the sun. Big beautiful sloops cutting through eight-foot swells. A gang of surfer dudes and wahinis carrying their boards against the background of a fiery sunset.

Like, life is beautiful.

Life is short.

Borrow money and get yourself a taste of it before you croak.

Guy sitting behind the desk is a young cool dude with Pat Riley slicked-back hair, a pink polo shirt and a blue blazer. It’s like one of those finance-can-be-cool deals—you know, let’s get the paperwork over with and go surfing, dude. Nameplate on the desk reads
GARY MILLER
.

Jack introduces himself and shows him the authorization form that Nicky had signed.

Jack asks, “You’re carrying the paper on the Vale house?”

Which is just pro forma—the name of the mortgage company is on the declaration page of the policy and the loss report—but Jack wanted to say it to see if Gary’s eyes lit up.

They do.

You can see right in those inane baby blues that the boy is carrying a ton of paper on the Vale house and the payments haven’t been coming in. Guy is sphincter-gripping on the paper and now he sees a shot that the insurance company might ride into town and save his ass, man.

Like God bless California Fire and Life.

“Something happen?” he asks, trying to keep the hopeful note out of his voice.

“It burned down,” Jack says.

“No shit?”

“And Mrs. Vale was killed,” Jack adds.

“What a shame,” Gary says.

He’s not an
evil
guy. He does feel bad about Pamela Vale, who
seemed very nice and was one of the most completely righteous babes he had ever seen. On the other hand, it does seem like Nicky Vale is tapped out and California Fire and Life has some deep pockets.

“Yeah,” Jack says. “A shame.”

“What happened?” Gary asks. He doesn’t want to come right out and ask the, sorry,
burning
question he has on his mind: Was it a total loss?

Please let it be a total, he thinks.

A total loss would pay off the whole loan.

Jack says, “The official report is that Mrs. Vale was smoking in bed.”

Gary shakes his head. “A nasty habit.”

“Very uncool,” Jack agrees. “Would you show me the paper, please?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

The paper is heavy.

This is not paper you would like to carry across, say, Death Valley.

But Nicky was carrying it. What Nicky had done was he originally bought the house for cash.
Who the hell
, Jack thinks,
has $2 million in cash?
Turns out Nicky really didn’t, because six years later he mortgages the house with Pacific for $1.5 million. He’s carrying a six-K-a-month payment.

“He’s missed, uh, three payments,” Gary volunteers.

He just can’t help himself. Somewhere inside burns the ember of a hope that Jack is just going to whip out the old checkbook and say, “Oh, well,
here
.”

If the Vale loan goes down the shitter Gary goes down after it.

“Three payments?” Jack asks. “We looking at foreclosure?”

“It’s a consideration,” Gary says. “I mean, you know, we don’t
want
to.”

“No.”

“But what are you going to do?”

You’re going to try to carry the guy, Jack thinks. At least until the real estate market improves. Otherwise you eat the loan and you have a house you maybe can’t sell. And even if you can, you’re going to take a bath on it.

Jack asks, “Six K is a little light for that kind of balance, isn’t it?”

“Read on.”

Jack reads on.

Doesn’t take long before he sees what he’s looking for.

Prima facie motive for arson.

A $600,000 balloon payment.

Due in six weeks.

No wonder Nicky was in a hurry to start the claim.

“Did
you
write this loan, Gary?” Jack asks.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gary says.

“Different times,” Jack says.

He has this image of cool Gary on Nicky’s boat—blowing coke, getting some
chucha
, chatting a little business with Nicky. What’s a mil and a half between friends?

Party
on
.

“So what do you think?” Jack asks. “Is he going to make the balloon? I mean, if you were a betting man.”

Gary laughs. “I
am
a betting man.”

“That’s no shit.”

“Hey, maybe I covered,” Gary says. Eyes getting a little angry, a little Fuck you, now
you
gotta pay the loan.

“Yeah, well, before you get too skippy,” Jack says, “consider this—Nicky owes fifty-seven thou to the IRS and the California Department of Revenue.”

The blood drains from Gary’s face.

“Liens?” he asks.

“Oops,” Jack says.

“You make the drafts out to
us
,” Gary says.