California Fire and Life (30 page)

Letty del Rio knows that by the time she’s back in her car gobbling Excedrin that Uncle Nguyen will be twanging people’s wires. Letty del Rio is smart enough to know that Nguyen was not going to tell her word one. The purpose of her visit was to light a firecracker under his smug butt and then watch what happens.

Give
him
a headache for a change.

Jack pulls into the Monarch Bay Shopping Plaza and looks for a drugstore. There’s only one, so it’s easy, and a minute later he’s at the pharmacist’s counter.

“I’m here,” Jack says, “to pick up a prescription for Pamela Vale?”

Asks this with a question mark at the end because that’s the Southern California way of being polite while making a demand. Sort of an unspoken If it’s okay with you.

“Are you a family member?” the pharmacist asks.

She’s young and pretty and her shiny red hair looks great against her white lab coat. The tag on her chest says her name is Kelly.

“I’m kind of a personal assistant,” Jack says.

“Hold on,” Kelly says, and she consults the computer monitor behind the counter. Then she asks, “Which prescription is it?”

“Sleeping pills?”

“Valium,” Kelly says. “But that prescription has already been picked up.”

“Really?”

“Three days ago,” she says. “And that was the last refill.”

“Whoops,” Jack says.

“Sorry,” Kelly says. “Is she going to be pissed?”

“She’s not going to be happy.”

Kelly gives him an empathetic frown, then asks, “Has she tried melatonin?”

“What’s that?”

“Over-the-counter. Puts you right out and it’s totally natural.”

“Cool.”

“You should try it,” Kelly says.

“Me?”

“Sure.”

Jack shakes his head. “I sleep like a baby.”

“That must be so
cute
.”

Then Kelly says, “I don’t want to bum you out, but I don’t think you’re her only personal assistant.”

“No?”

Kelly leans across the counter. “The last guy was hunkier than you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“But not as good-looking.”

Which doesn’t describe Nicky Vale, Jack thinks. Nicky Vale is a lot better-looking than me.

Kelly adds, “Real big shoulders and he wore this dorky Hawaiian shirt? The kind you get at, like, every store in Catalina? He looked like a florist shop with hair. Had a foreign accent.”

“What kind of accent?”

Kelly asks, “Do you watch the Cartoon Network?”

“I think it’s on when I work.”

“No, it’s on twenty-four hours.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway,” Kelly says. “On the Cartoon Network they have this show? Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

“It was on when I was a kid,” Jack says.

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“So you know the two bad guys?” Kelly asks. “Boris and Natasha? They always wear black and he has this stiff little mustache?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s what the guy talked like. Like,
Oooh, I’m going to get that moose and squirrel
. Like that.”

“That’s a pretty good imitation.”

“Thank you.”

Jack says, “Well, I’d better get going.”

Kelly shrugs.

Like, whatever.

Like, personal assistants come in here all the time.

The Mustang can
move
.

It ain’t Nicky’s Porsche, of course, but then again you ain’t gonna be doing a hundred and forty on the PCH either. Not on the stretch between Monarch Bay and Dana Point, so the classic ’66 is doing just fine, thank you.

See, what Jack does is he drives down to Monarch Bay, ignores the guard and does a U-turn at the gate. Comes to a complete stop.

He checks his watch.

Says, “Go.”

Stomps on the gas pedal and leaves a satisfying streak of rubber behind him. Pulls out on the PCH, takes a right and heads south toward Dana Point. Hits the red light at Ritz-Carlton Drive (fuck you, Ritz-Carlton, you get your own friggin’ traffic signal), then stomps on it again. Makes it clear down to where the PCH South splits and becomes Del Prado, and turns right on Blue Lantern. Takes Blue Lantern to the top of Harbor Drive and takes another right and bingo, he’s at the Vale driveway, 37 Bluffside Drive.

Eight minutes, fifteen seconds.

Jack sits back and takes a little breather.

“Go.”

The reverse route. Left onto Harbor. Left on Blue Lantern. Wait for the light and then left onto the PCH. A straight shot back to the gate.

Nine minutes flat.

The guard comes out of the kiosk this time.

“May I help you, sir?” is what he
says
. What he means is What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

“Maybe,” Jack says. “Hi, I’m Jack Wade, California Fire and Life.”

“Mike Derochik.”

“Mike,” Jack asks, “were you on duty last Wednesday night?”

“I came on at midnight,” the guard says.

“Did Mr. Vale go out at anytime during the night?”

The guard says, “We don’t discuss the comings and goings of our residents.”

Jack hands him his card.

“If Mr. Vale came out of here during those hours,” Jack says, “it was probably to kill his wife. You probably knew her, too, right? Nice woman with two little kids? Think it over, huh? Give me a call?”

Derochik puts the card in his pocket.

Jack’s about to drive off when the guard says, “I didn’t see him go out.”

“Okay.”

It was worth a try.

“But I saw him come in.”

Whoa.

“What time?” Jack asks.

“About a quarter to five,” the guard says.

Gotcha, Call Me Nicky.

Caught you in a lie.

Incendiary origin.

Motive.

Now opportunity.

Now if I can just buy a little more time.

Jack’s waiting in the parking lot of Cal Fire and Life.

Waiting for Bill Reynolds, the executive from Underwriting who okayed a million bucks in coverage for the Vales’ personal property, to leave for the day.

Jack’s waiting in the parking lot because he doesn’t want to go to
Bill’s office and embarrass the guy or get the gossip going. Jack doesn’t want to hurt Bill Reynolds, he just wants the time to finish his investigation.

Reynolds comes out of the building. Tall guy, has to go six-six, and heavy—in fact, overweight. Wearing an underwriter’s gray suit and carrying a briefcase. Guys from Underwriting take work home.

Jack steps up.

“Bill? I’m Jack Wade from Claims.”

“Bill Reynolds.”

Reynolds has a
What the hell is this
look on his face as he peers through his glasses down at Jack.

“Bill, you okayed some personal property coverage for Roger Hazlitt on the Vale risk?”

“I’d have to look in the file.”

Jack lays the Vale policy on the hood of Reynolds’s blue Lexus.

“Come see me in my office,” Reynolds says. “I’m not standing out here in the parking lot … It’s 103 degrees …”

“You don’t want to do this in your office.”

“There are channels—”

“You don’t want me to go through channels,” Jack says.

You’re taking bribes from agents, “channels” is not the way you want to go.

Reynolds looks down at him, both literally and figuratively.

“What are you, an M-3?” he asks, citing pay rankings.

“M-4.”

“M-4,” Reynolds says. “I’m an M-6. You don’t have the weight to throw around.”

Jack nods. “Roger says he slipped you a thousand bucks to okay this coverage.”

Which might add to the weight quotient a little bit.

“Get away from my vehicle.”

“Is it true?”

“I said get away from my vehicle.”

“Look, typically you’d lay some of that risk off, wouldn’t you?” Jack asks. “Work with the customer to get one or two other carriers to pick up some of the coverage? Isn’t that the way you’d normally do it if the risk was too high but you wanted to keep the customer?”

“Those are
Underwriting
decisions.”

“Which is why I’m asking
you
.”

“You don’t understand the business.”

“Educate me.”

Reynolds takes off his glasses. Looks down at Jack for a long time before he says, “I don’t have the time to explain to you things that you don’t have the education to understand. So leave it alone.”

“Can’t.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Jack Wade. Large Claims.”

“That’s Billy Hayes’s unit?”

“You know it is,” Jack says. “You had your boss on the phone banging at him first thing this morning.”

“Well, Jack Wade from Large Claims,” Reynolds says. “I’m going to tell you once: drop this. Understand?”

“I don’t have the education,” Jack says. “And that’s twice you’ve told me.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Good, because I was getting bored.”

“You won’t be bored tomorrow morning, I can tell you that.”

“You gonna make some more calls, Bill?”

“Get away from my vehicle.”

“You gonna bring the
heat
down?”

Reynolds squeezes himself into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. Jack takes the papers off the hood.

The car window rolls down with a soft electric hum.

“Pay the claim,” Reynolds says.

“No.”

“Pay the claim.”

“Everyone’s telling me that.”

“Everyone’s right.”

“Let me tell you about some basic laws of physics,” Jack says. “Before heat can go down, it goes up. Heat rises. So don’t drop any more heat on Billy Hayes, because I’ll send some up your way, from M-4 to M-6.”

The window rolls up.

Reynolds disappears behind blue tinted glass.

Smoked glass, Jack thinks.

The parking lot’s a rough place today.

Jack’s walking into the building when he sees Sandra Hansen heading toward him.

“Sandra,” Jack says.

“Jack.”

Jack knows this conversation can only be trouble, because Sandra Hansen is the So-Cal head of Cal Fire and Life’s SIU. SIU stands for Special Investigative Unit, which means it’s the fraud unit. Every big insurance carrier has one, a unit that specializes in handling potentially fraudulent claims. Cal Fire’s SIU functions as more of an intelligence organization—it doesn’t bother with the small shit; its major job is to track fraud rin
gs
, the specialized rip-off operations that suck millions of bucks a year in phony claims.

As a former cop, Jack would have been a perfect candidate for SIU, except Jack doesn’t want to be a cop of any kind anymore, even a pseudo-cop.

Another reason he’s not interested is because SIU also functions as the company’s internal affairs unit. You got a Claims guy taking kickbacks for recommending a contractor, or an auto adjuster splitting overcharges with a body shop, or, say, an underwriter taking money from an agent to write bad book, that’s SIU’s turf.

And Jack would rather be a dog than a rat.

“Were you staking me out, Sandra?” Jack asks her.

“As a matter of fact I was,” Hansen says. “Jack, you have a file we’re interested in.”

“Olivia Hathaway?” Jack asks.

Hansen doesn’t think it’s funny. She gives Jack her professional SIU hard look and says, “The Vale file.”

Surprise, surprise, Jack thinks.

“What about it?”

“We want you to back off it.”

“Who’s we?”

“SIU.”

Like I’m supposed to get all watery in the knees, Jack thinks. Fucking
SIU thinks it’s the CIA and the FBI except it doesn’t have to answer to anybody.

Well, fuck that.

“Why?” Jack asks. “Why does SIU want me to back off the file?”

“Does it matter?”

“To me.”

Hansen’s pissed. Generally speaking, she says lay off a file, the adjuster lays off it.

“You’re walking into something,” Hansen says. “You don’t know where you’re walking.”

This is true, Jack thinks.

This is really interesting.

“Tell me,” Jack says. “Your guys have something here, for God’s sake tell me, Sandra. I could use the help.”

“You’re going to trip over—”

“So shine me a light,” Jack says. “Seriously, show me the way.”

“—shit that’s too big for you to handle.”

Jack says, “Maybe I should decide what’s too big for me to handle.”

Sandra pulls out the big gun. “Don’t make me take this file away from you.”

Fucking SIU, they can do that. They can walk in and take the handling of a file.

So why hasn’t she already done it? Jack thinks. If she wants the Vale file so badly, why
doesn’t
she just take it? Nice big juicy arson file. Lotsa glory for SIU …

“I’m trying to do this nicely, Jack,” Sandra says. “I’m telling you: back off.”

“You’re saying pay the claim?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You’re working Vale already, aren’t you?” Jack says.

“Shut up, Jack.”

“You must have a blind file and Vale’s name has—”

“Don’t say another word.”

“—come up in there somewhere and you’re afraid I’m going to trip over it and blow your investigation.”

“SIU has no such file.”

“Come on.”

“I never said that,” Hansen says. “And this conversation never happened.”

Official-pronouncement-type voice.

“And you’re going to pay the claim,” Sandra says.

“I’m tired of everyone and his fucking dog telling me to pay this claim,” Jack says. “Agency, Underwriting, now SIU? What’s going on? Who is this Vale guy, the king?”

“Just pay his claim.”

“A woman was murdered.”

“This is bigger than that.”

Jack stands there and stares at her.

“You’re crazy,” he says.

“If you force us—”

“Totally whacked.”

“If you force us to take over this file,” Hansen says, “I promise you a world of trouble. The rest of your short career will be nothing but one long shit shower.”

She can do it, too, Jack thinks. All she has to do is get one contractor to say he gave me money and I’m out on my ass. She can do it and she would do it because Sandra Hansen is a tough cookie. Standing there in her white business suit with blond hair like a helmet. Attractive, sexy, a killer. Thirty-five or so and already the head of So-Cal SIU. Her career a bullet and I’m standing in the way.