California Fire and Life (40 page)

The veeps look at him like
Fuck you, Casey
, but Casey doesn’t care. Let ’em be pissed. What are they going to do, fire him? They have that collective
We’re the big-dick guys from corporate, cowboy, so watch yourself if you want to stay on the ranch
look in their collective eye, so Casey gives them his favorite John Wayne line, from the old
Stagecoach
movie.

“ ‘You may
need
me and this Winchester, Curly,’ ” he drawls. “ ‘I saw some ranches burning last night.’ ”

Phil Herlihy turns his wrath on Goddamn Billy, who’s sitting there sucking on a cig like there aren’t ten
WE THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING
signs in the room. (To which Goddamn Billy’s standard response is, “Well, now they don’t have to thank me.”) Anyway, Herlihy turns to Billy and just about screams, “How the hell could you hire that guy?! What the hell were you thinking about?!”

“I was thinking,” Billy says, “that he’d be a damn good claims dog. And he has been.”

“One of the best,” Casey says. “
The
best.”

Herlihy pretends he doesn’t hear Casey. Any sane person who watched the cross-exam wouldn’t want to get in a debate with Casey.

“Fire him,” Herlihy says to Billy. “Tomorrow. Tonight if you can get hold of him.”

“I ain’t firing him,” Billy says.

“I just told you to!”

“I heard you.”

The Trial Science Inc. geek walks in. The geek is like white, and his hands are shaking. The verdict forms in his hand rattle like ghosts in the attic.

“Yes?” Casey says. He’s still smiling. Tomato sauce looks like blood on his lips.

The TSI geek says, “Two hundred million.”

“What?!” Herlihy yells.

“They’d award $200 million in compensatory and punitives,” the geek says. “Actually we had to push them to give a dollar figure. What they really wanted to do was put the company’s management in jail. One of them wanted to hang you.”

“Settle it,” Herlihy says.

“Concur,” says Reinhardt.

“Absolutely,” says Bourne.

“Settle this file now,” Herlihy says. “What’s the demand?”

“Fifty million,” Casey says. “If the real jury goes the way this one does, that’s a savings of $150 million. Not counting court costs and, of course, my exorbitant fees. And these days, juries are usually hip enough to figure the plaintiff’s attorney’s cut into their judgment …”

“We lose,” Goddamn Billy says. “We appeal.”

“On what grounds?” Reinhardt snaps.

“Admissibility,” Casey says. “You argue that Wade’s background is irrelevant and prejudicial.”

“Motions
in limine
?”

“Sure,” Casey says. “I’d try to keep Jack’s background out before the trial, but I doubt I’d win. We could also instruct him to not answer any questions about his background in deposition, but that would start a discovery battle …”

“No discovery battles,” Reinhardt says.

Discovery battles have a way of getting out of hand. Subpoenas for documents tend to get broader and broader, and if a judge got annoyed and let Gordon go on a fishing expedition … Well, that just can’t happen.

“This file is over,” Herlihy says. He says to Casey, “Start settlement negotiations tomorrow. See if you can work this down. But you have $50 million settlement authority.”

“Hold on,” Billy says. “That’s not your call to make.”

“You need executive authority for anything over a million,” VP Claims says.

“If I want it,” Billy says. “I ain’t said I want a dime yet.”

“We’re going to settle this case.”

“That is
my
call to make, goddamn it.”

“Then make it,” Reinhardt says.

“I ain’t ready to make that call,” Billy says.

“I’ll make it,” Reinhardt says. “I have the authority to settle a lawsuit against the company.”

“Yeah, you do,” Billy says. “But there ain’t no lawsuit yet. There’s just a threat of a suit. So it’s still in Claims, and I’m Claims.”

“I can put an end to that,” Herlihy says.

“Well, goddamn it, why don’t you just do that?”

“Don’t think I won’t!”

“Go ahead! I don’t give a fuck.”

“You boys want to take this outside?” Casey asks. “We have some serious issues to resolve in here. Let me propose a compromise. We settle the case and Jack Wade keeps his job.”

“Jack Wade is history,” Herlihy says.

“Hold on,” Casey says. “If this doesn’t go to trial, there’s no reason to fire Jack.”

“Until the next time,” Reinhardt says.

“So take him off fires,” Casey says. “Give him slip-and-falls, dog bites, broken pipes …”

“Or we could just shoot him,” Billy says.

“You’re not helping me, Billy.”

“Well, goddamn it!” Billy explodes. He gets to his feet. “All Jack Wade did was his job! Tell you something else: all he was doing when he set up that fucking Teddy Kuhl and that fucking Kazzy Azmekian was his goddamn job! They were as guilty as sin and everybody goddamn knew it! ‘Perjury’ my fucking ass!
Truth
was, those cocksuckers
did
set that fire! And so did Nicky Vale!”

“Billy—”

“Shut up, Tom, I’m talking,” Billy says. “I been in this business coming on thirty years, and I can tell you this: if it walks like a dog, barks like a dog, wags its tail like a dog and lifts its hind leg to
pee
like a dog, it’s a goddamn
dog
! And Jack Wade knows that—and Tom Casey, you know that—even if these fools don’t! And you can bang on your goddamn machines and your goddamn laptop computers all goddamn night and this fire is still a goddamn arson, and Nicky Vale set it, and he murdered his wife, and I ain’t paying that motherfucker one goddamn cent and I ain’t firing Jack Wade and if you boys don’t like it you can just goddamn fire me. I don’t goddamn care!”

There’s your basic hushed silence as he heads for the door.

He turns around in the doorway and looks at them for a minute.

Shakes his head.

“This company used to stand for something,” he says. “Now it’ll stand for anything.”

Shakes his head again and says, “Any goddamn thing.”

He turns and leaves.

“Well …” Casey says.

“We pay the fifty,” Bourne says. “We’re going to the Insurance Commission for a rate hike in ninety days anyway—this will add nicely to the debit side when we argue that we need it.”

Casey has stopped listening.

It’s a done deal.

Jack busts the Mustang south.

Blows right past the exit to California Fire and Life, passes the exit to his condo and shoots down to the Ortega Highway, where he turns east.

You take the Ortega east, what you’re letting yourself in for is a series of downhill switchbacks that is like
guaranteed
to make your Labrador throw up in the backseat. You’re going over the top of the mountains in the Cleveland National Forest, so you’re cruising through some barren, rock-strewn hills—the “forest”—and all of a sudden you’re pitching downhill toward the town of Lake Elsinore, and it’s like falling off the edge of the fucking earth. Which it is, which you’d know if you’ve ever actually
been
to Lake ’Snore.

This stretch of road is
not
where you want to fuck up. You slip on the kozmic banana peel coming down
these
switchbacks you are suddenly Lost in Space, man. You are Rocky the Flying Squirrel, you are
airborne
. You may have your four-wheel-drive sports utility vehicle—but you can have eighteen-wheel-drive and it won’t matter, if all those wheels are in the sky. What you don’t have is wings, or a parachute, which is what you’re going to need if you screw up the distinction between centrifugal and centripetal force on one of
these
curves.

Like, bikers have done space launches off this mountain and the
Highway Patrol can’t even
find
them; they’re in their own little bomb craters six hundred feet below.

You lose the edge on these curves, it’s just AMF.

Jack’s into it.

Jack’s working out his rage on the road; he and the Mustang are taking the Ortega like it’s a Nebraska farm road, like
What curves? We don’t see no stinking curves
. Jack’s doing the gas, brake, shift, gas number, cranking on that wheel like he’s on the bridge of the starship
Enterprise
.

As for Jack, well, it isn’t
exactly
the Death Ride of Jack Wade. It’s not like he’s necessarily
trying
to kill himself, it’s just that he’s not trying real hard
not
to.

Because what’s the difference? Jack’s thinking.

The job’s gone.

And I don’t have a life outside the job.

Unless you count the daily surfing ritual at Dana Strand.

Which will be gone soon.

Into the Great Sunsets.

His adrenaline’s a little jacked when he has to slow down to figure out where Letty’s place is.

In the middle of nowhere.

He finally finds it about a hundred yards down a dirt road that runs between two pastures. There’s a stand of trees with several buildings hidden in it and when he pulls up the sign says
DEL RIO
.

He sits in the car wondering why the hell he’s there, decides it’s for no good reason at all, and he’s just about to put the ’Stang in reverse when he sees lights come on in the house.

He turns off the engine and gets out of the car.

She comes out, she’s wearing a T-shirt over jeans and she’s barefoot.

Hair tussled.

Stands in her gravel driveway looking at him.

Like, What are you doing here?

“It’s over,” he finally says. “I blew it. We lost.”

She thinks about it for a few seconds, then says, “You drove out here to tell me that?”

It’s a minute at least before he hears himself speak.

“I have nothing in my life.”

Feels like he’s standing a long way away, hearing himself say that.

She goes to him and takes him by the arm and leads him into her house.

Later, when she takes him into her bedroom, she pulls her T-shirt over her head and steps out of the jeans and gets under the sheet. Jack gets undressed and lies down beside her. She reaches out for him and her skin is white and warm, and they kiss and she presses against him and he pulls the sheet down. When he reaches down to touch her she’s moist and warm. He strokes her, feeling her get wetter, feeling her flow to his hand and get hotter, and then she says,
Baby
, and when she reaches for him he’s hard and with her open hand she strokes him up and down.

They stroke each other, she starts to move against his hand, she presses up and her eyes get wide as if she’s surprised. And her skin is hot and she arches her back and reaches her other hand for his and holds it tight as she cranes her neck back and comes.

He keeps stroking, touching her where she’s now so wet but she moves his hand away and says,
In me, I want you
in
me
, and she guides him inside her and Jack is surprised at how good she feels, hot and ripply as she moves up and down against him, and her breasts flatten against his chest and she doesn’t close her eyes but she looks at him as he moves slowly in and out of her. Her black hair rippling on the pillow; he reaches out to grab it and clench it in his hand, bury his face and kiss her neck, lick her salty skin there. She clasps the back of his neck and pulls him close to kiss her. Her mouth is hot and her tongue is hot and her thighs feel fiery against his and he starts to move faster and harder because he wants to feel the heat of the core of her. He can feel it when he lunges hard deep into her. She can feel it too, because she jams herself against him and pushes him up deeper into her. He can feel the head of his cock touch this deep hot place inside her that touches some deep place in him, and she’s holding his neck and his ass and rocking with him and he’s gripping her neck and her ass and can feel her wet against the tips of his fingers there, and then it feels like inside there is this heat flowing, flowing, and she grips him harder saying,
Yes, baby, it’s okay
, as he moans and starts to move faster and harder. There’s this heat in him, he feels like he’s falling, he feels like he’s on fire and falling as she rocks him in and around her, there’s that
heat
so deep inside her, so lovely, inside her so lovely, her face so lovely, this falling like riding a
wave of flame,
Yes, baby, it’s okay, come in me, you can come in me
, and then he is, it’s like falling off the world, like a wave of flame crashing, rolling him over and over under this unbearable wave of pleasure, not letting him up, he’s crying out, she’s cooing,
Yes, baby
, he’s under this ocean of pleasure, somewhere up above the water he hears his long scream, he feels his soul race out ahead of him, he’s drowning, she’s saying,
Baby
, and when finally he comes up it’s like he washes up on the white beach of her body, white neck and white breasts, her stomach slick, their sweat like smooth wet sand, and her face is flushed red and her eyes are wet. Black hair sweaty wet clings to her neck and he sees those eyes searching for his and then he finally breathes.

Tears come. Drop from his eyes onto her neck, her chest, her breasts, she holds him tightly to her as he sobs, as he weeps twelve empty years.

Jack wakes up in Letty’s bed.

At first he’s like,
Where the hell am I
, but then he smells the Mexican coffee and remembers. Rolls out of the rack and comes into the kitchen and she’s standing there by the toaster sipping on the strong coffee.

“I don’t do the bacon-and-eggs thing,” she says. “But I can offer you toast and coffee.”

“Sounds great.”

He plops down on a stool by her curved kitchen counter and looks out the window. The land slopes down through big, old black oak trees to some open pasture. Across a fence, horses are out grazing.

“Your horses?” Jack asks.

“The neighbor’s,” she says. “I ride them sometimes. You ride?”

“Just surfboards,” he says.

“To each his own ride,” she says, handing him a plate of buttered toast. She sits on the stool next to his. “What are you going to do now?”