Unfit to Practice (11 page)

8

O
N HER WAY OUT
of Tahoe again on Monday morning in the white subcompact the insurance company had laid on her, Nina drove past the lot on Highway 50 where the Vangs' Blue Star Market had once conducted business: ragged wooden fencing, a chipped construction sign, and disturbed dirt had reclaimed their space, as though the dreams of the Vang family had never existed. On both sides of this neat emptiness, small businesses—a hair salon, a video store—carried on as though arson and death didn't exist and the world remained a just and benign place.

She had an appointment to meet Dr. Mai at the Strawberry Lodge, a half hour from Tahoe on the highway to San Francisco, a meeting place that would preclude the worst part of his drive. The Vangs wouldn't be there, he had explained on the phone when she called him at his home in Fresno on Sunday night. She became insistent. He became gruff. No Vangs. He would drive up to meet her alone. She would have to take what she could get on this Monday morning: the Vangs' elderly adviser.

Just before Echo Summit, at the famous place in the road where the cliff drops a couple of thousand feet and tourists coming the other way catch their first glimpse of the lake, she pulled over at the lookout and stood by the edge, wind whipping her hair, a few drops of rain hitting sideways. September snow had fallen the night before on the granite summits all around the lake, which appeared only as a vague gray line far away. From her seven-thousand-foot vantage, she looked down at Christmas Valley, a solid green forest with a hint of the single main road that snaked through it. Eighty miles west in the San Joaquin Valley where Dr. Mai lived, people would be complaining about the heat of late summer, but up here she needed her warm jacket.

Nina had first met Kao Vang about a month before, in early August. He came into her office for a free consultation.

He and his family had fled from the middle hills of Laos as refugees in the early eighties. Nina had never heard of his hill people. Later, after she took the case, she read up on the subject, learning that the Hmong were an ancient people who had supported the U.S. during the Vietnam War. For this assistance, the Communists punished them after taking over the country in 1975. Every year, the Hmong came before the U.N. to request that observers be sent to the remaining refugee camps to investigate reports of systematic arrests, beatings, and murders, but with so many trouble spots in the world, this was a backwater that had receded into history.

Still, in recent years life had improved for the Hmong, and many longtime refugees returned to their homeland. The lucky ones returned with American money in hand for themselves and their extended families, which went a very long way.

What Nina saw on that first day was a small, slight, youngish man in new jogging shoes who spoke very little English and didn't crack a smile. Kao Vang's shy wife, slightly built, with bright, intelligent eyes, sat lightly on the edge of the chair beside him. Her name was See, she told Nina, but after that she didn't speak at all. Their young son, Boun, and another fellow had come with them, a gnarled older man wearing some sort of tribal vestments, who said he was from Kao's church.

Later she learned that Dr. Mai, the older man, had connections to no church and no normal medical practice. He was some sort of shaman. The culture was simply so different that they had tried to put her at ease by presenting themselves in terms she could understand.

They arrived early for their appointment and sat up straight in the client chairs, speaking in low tones to one another. Sandy went back to her filing. The Hmong language sounded very, very foreign. When Nina came out to greet them, she felt the hesitation before her hand was grasped by the older man. She brought them into her office and shut the door. They emanated a simplicity and formality that made small talk impossible.

Dr. Mai talked. Often he asked Kao a question and translated Kao's response. See Vang listened, her hands in the lap of her long skirt, crossing and recrossing delicate feet that ended in rubber thongs.

Nina looked over her sheet. The Vangs wanted to consult her about “insurance.” Kao had given no street address, listing his residence just as South Lake Tahoe. No phone either. Nina insisted and explained that the address, along with the entire conversation, would remain confidential. Finally Dr. Mai gave her the address of an apartment near the casino district.

In answer to her first questions, Dr. Mai told her that the Vangs owned a convenience store in the tiny shopping center anchored by the Grand Auto Store, about a mile from Nina's office. He showed her a lease made out to Kao and See Vang. She had never been in there, but something tugged at the edges of her memory.

“How long have you been in the U.S.?” she asked Kao.

“Twelve years,” answered Dr. Mai. “Very difficult. No money. Two children. These are very hard workers. Work all day and night.”

“I am curious as to why you came to see me,” Nina said with a smile. “There are many lawyers.”

“You were recommended.”

“By whom?”

“By others in our community.” He gave no names.

Nina felt absurdly flattered. Apparently her recent notoriety was paying off. She picked up her pen. “How can I help you today?”

Dr. Mai talked with Kao for a moment, then said, “An insurance claim. A business policy. You can help with this?”

“Is it in litigation? Has someone been sued?”

“No. This is—this is private.”

Kao launched into a short speech, talking to Dr. Mai rather than Nina. Energetic and quick-moving, he was what some people might call the mercurial type. A big Fossil watch, sunglasses peeking from his pocket. All-American in some ways. Nina had trouble reading his mood. Was he nervous? Worried? Afraid? Anyway, smiles were miles away.

“Kao would like to know if you would be able to work quickly. Can you begin immediately?”

“I have some time, I'm not in trial at the moment. But how much is the claim amount?”

“He doesn't know yet. You will help him decide.”

“What is the reason for the claim?” She began her habitual note-taking, copying down fragments of sentences, making a few of her own observations.

“A fire.”

“You brought the policy?”

“And other papers. Police reports also.” Ah, Nina thought. Police reports equal a crime. Again, memory nagged at her. A crime involving a liquor store. She had overheard one of the deputy D.A.'s talking about it. She couldn't pull it back into consciousness. But the emotional content of the memory remained. Something chilling.

She pushed back her chair, crossed her legs, balanced the pad across her lap, and said, “Tell me about it.”

Their story was all the more wrenching because of the matter-of-fact way in which Dr. Mai spoke.

Kao and his family had worked and saved for a number of years to earn the start-up expenses to open a store. When they had found a well-placed business for sale eighteen months earlier, they were overjoyed. The purchase took everything they had. After much happy discussion, they named their new venture the Blue Star Market.

Their original plan called for a grocery store, but liquor sold better, so they stocked liquor, but they also sold imports from Southeast Asia—canned food, spices, toys, candy, clothing and hats, magazines and newspapers from Thailand and Vietnam. The store had been modestly successful from the start. People came from Reno and Fresno, where over twenty thousand Hmong lived, to find familiar items unavailable outside San Francisco otherwise. Tourists from all over enjoyed stopping in to look at the exotic items and usually left with something.

Their twelve-year-old boy, Boun, worked there after school with See Vang. Their daughter did not, for unexplained reasons. Kao worked two shifts, from ten to two in the midday and again from seven to midnight.

Dr. Mai explained that the Northern California refugee community viewed Kao Vang as a big success story. The family bought a Jetta. All the Hmong people in the area knew about the store.

One night, about a year earlier, a man—“A Hmong man?” Nina asked, but got no answer—entered the store. Waiting until the other customers had gone, he put a six-pack of Budweiser on the counter, pulled out a gun, and told Kao to open the cash register. As this story unfolded, Kao sat tensely beside Dr. Mai. Now Dr. Mai paused and Kao spoke his first English words: “I say, ‘Go to hell!' I reach to take gun—” He spoke in a thick, garbled voice.

The robber shot Kao in the face and sauntered out, leaving Kao bleeding but still conscious on the floor behind the counter. Showing unusual presence of mind, the robber had hung the
CLOSED
sign and locked the door behind him.

Kao came close to dying. But minutes later, Boun found him and called 911. While they waited for the medics, the boy wrapped his father's head in his shirt and held it gently in his lap.

Immediate surgery took care of the initial repairs to Kao's shattered jaw. Some weeks later, surgeons inserted pins. Two months after that, he underwent further surgery designed to rehabilitate his speech. Unfortunately, that didn't work very well, but at least now Kao could make himself understood.

Then Kao went back to work. But he had a new attitude.

“Could you identify the robber?” Nina asked. “Did they make an arrest?”

Dr. Mai shook his head impatiently. “No identification,” he said. Nina wrote on her pad, “Knows the guy? But closed society, these people don't want to go outside.” She was guessing. She couldn't tell what Dr. Mai was thinking or how a Hmong would handle being shot in the face.

“That must have been very painful,” she said gently to Kao. Dr. Mai translated. Giving his injured jaw a smack with his own hand, Kao shrugged to show his obliviousness to pain. Nina wrote, “Brave guy.”

“Go on,” she said.

For the sake of his wife and son, Dr. Mai said, Kao bought a gun to keep under the counter. Several months passed. In early June, just before closing, a man came into the store, keeping his face hidden under a cap. But Kao Vang, alone behind the counter, knew immediately who he was.

“The same man?”

“Yes. Back again.”

This time Kao was ready. When the man pulled out a gun, Kao already had his hand on his own gun. No time to think. He pulled out his gun and shot the robber point-blank in the chest.

This time Kao punched in 911. Then he called his family.

“Yes,” Nina said. “I remember this story.”

The Tahoe police detectives made out the report, clapped Kao on the shoulder, and recommended no further action. The dead man had thirteen previous felony convictions including two assaults with a deadly weapon in the course of a robbery. But the police also took away Kao's gun. Two days later he got his first E-mail. The one-word message, a sort of declaration of war, came in his own language. “Revenge,” it read. Family or friends of the robber probably wrote it.

Dr. Mai said, “Kao couldn't sleep anymore. His jaw hurt all the time. He was afraid to leave his wife alone in the store. He didn't know what to do.”

Nina wrote all this down. She looked up to see Kao adjusting his jaw again as though it had slipped off its track. Dark, intense eyes studied her. When his hand came down she noticed that his jaw was not symmetrical.

“Kao and his family came to me. We decided he must continue. Friends came to the store to help. Kao worked hard.”

The July fourth holiday brought tourists and heat to Tahoe. Kao woke at four o'clock the next morning to a phone call from a fire marshal who yelled that his store was on fire. By the time they got there, the interior of the store had been gutted by quick and successive plagues of flame, smoke, and the rescuers' water and foam.

Everything was ruined. All the Vangs' stock had been reduced to rubble. Cash register, counters, display shelves, bottle glass, melted candy pieces, and ashes jumbled together in blackened heaps.

“Destroyed,” said Dr. Mai, putting a finger to the bridge between his glasses and pushing delicately upward. “So much hard work for nothing.”

“I am sorry,” Nina said, moved, knowing her words were inadequate. She felt the urge to apologize for all Kao's bad experiences in America.

Kao said something curt. “But this is America,” Dr. Mai translated. “Kao had a small-business loan.”

Nina nodded. “So he was required to carry casualty insurance,” she said.

Now Kao nodded. “Casualty insurance,” he repeated.

“No one knew,” Dr. Mai said. “No one thought of this when they destroyed Blue Star Market. Kao was supposed to crawl away. But he brought me the policy. And I wrote a letter to the insurance company.” Dr. Mai laid two much-handled documents in front of Nina. She picked them up but did not look at them yet.

“When was this?”

“I wrote the letter on July twelfth and sent it certified.”

Almost a month ago.

“They sent me this letter quick.” The letter bore a July 18 postmark and the imprint of Heritage Insurance's office in Reno. The company was sorry to hear of his loss. Kao had ninety days from the date of the event to file a claim.

Nina flipped open her calendar. “Today is August eighth. October third would be the deadline. We have plenty of time. Good.”

“Kao and his wife would like to know if you wish to help them.”

“Yes,” Nina said. “Yes, I wish to help.”

“No one must know of the claim.”

“No one will know. But why does it matter?”

“If anyone learns that Kao is not destroyed—that he will have some money even—then his family will be in very great danger again.”

Nina said, “Why? Who is threatening Kao? Are the police being told everything?”

Dr. Mai consulted with Kao. “There are no suspects.”

“If you know who these people are,” Nina said, “you have to tell the police.”

“You don't understand. Kao does not want revenge. He does not want justice. He wants his family to live. Kao wants to take his family back to Laos. For that he needs the insurance money. Whatever you can obtain for him.”

Nina wanted to tell the Vangs to stay here, fight the good fight awhile longer, do it our way, put 'em away. Again her eyes met Kao's. Maybe now she understood better what she saw in them. Kao was brave for himself, but he was afraid for his family. He had no fight left in him. He wanted only a dignified retreat.