California Fire and Life (47 page)

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.”

The perfect way to loot your own company, Jack thinks. Pay bogus claims to yourself. Route the money through policyholders who then invest back into your 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,
“
God
damn
, 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.

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.

Jack doesn’t know that.

He’s still in the building and it’s on fire. The gas pours out of the can, spreading accelerant all over the floor and fumes in the air and the fumes ignite like WHAM and a column of flame shoots upward.

Flame and smoke and darkness and Jack loses sight of Nicky Vale.

All Jack can see is Goddamn Billy heading not for the door but farther
into
the rec hall, in toward the old kitchen, and Jack’s thinking,
Get out of here
but he’s also thinking,
Get Billy out of here, too
, so he goes after him.

Which is like stupid, Jack tells himself. Which is like
dumb
because all the old wood is igniting, then the covers on the furniture ignite, and the fucking furniture ignites. The fire is free burning, there are flames everywhere, the place is filling up with smoke and that son of a bitch Billy was going to set you up anyway so why are you going after him?

Because you’re a dog and that’s what a dog does. A dog doesn’t leave.

Jack drops down and stays low, down where the air is, and makes his way after Billy.

Into the kitchen.

The old kitchen where they used to cook up hamburgers and hot dogs and big pots of chili.

And there’s Goddamn Billy standing by the old stainless-steel counter.

Lighting a cigarette.

“Come on!” Jack yells. “We can get out of here!”

Maybe.

The ceiling’s on fire, the roof’s involved.

“We can get out of here!” Jack repeats.

“No,” Billy says.

Puts the stick to his lips and takes a long drag.

“Billy, I can get us out of here!” Jack shouts. “If we go now!”

His eyes are starting to tear up. Tear up and burn and he can feel the smoke scorching his throat. Looks behind him and sees the flames. Looks up and sees little tongues of flame start to lick the kitchen ceiling.

“Can’t do it, Jack.”

Jack starts to cry. Goddamn it, Billy. It could be seconds to flashover. Seconds till the fairies start flying and flashover happens and everything ignites.

We can’t wait any longer, Billy.

“I CAN CARRY YOU!”

Screaming because the noise of the fire is unbelievable. The starving alligator in a feeding frenzy, crunching on the old house.

Billy shakes his head. “I CAN’T FACE IT, JACK!”

“I’LL LIE FOR YOU, BILLY! I’LL SAY YOU HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT! COME ON!”

Tiny balls of flame dance in the air.

The fairies flying.

“IT’S NO GOOD, JACK!”

To hell with arguing, Jack thinks. I’ll knock the stubborn old fucker out if I have to.

He starts toward Billy.

Billy shakes his head and pulls his old .44 from out of his jacket.

Points it at Jack.

Then says, “God
damn
it.”