California Fire and Life (8 page)

“Jack, you’ve neglected to pay me for my spoons.”

“I didn’t neglect to pay you for your spoons, Mrs. Hathaway,” Jack says. “Your spoons were not stolen.”

“Of course they were, Jack.”

“Right, they were stolen fourteen times.”

She sighs, “The neighborhood is not what it used to be, Jack.”

“You live outside of Disneyland.”

Like,
Be on the lookout for a large rodent carrying spoons. Suspect is approximately five feet tall with large circular ears and white gloves
.

“I need you to pay me for my spoons,” Olivia says.

“Your spoons have been paid for thirteen times.”

She thinks she has him. “But they have been stolen
fourteen
times.”

“Mrs. Hathaway,” Jack says. “Are you asking me to accept that on thirteen prior occasions the spoon thieves have returned your spoons to you? And that they’ve been stolen again … and again and again and again … No, please don’t haul out the cookies.”

But she does.

She always does.

She always sits there looking lovely, smiling, speaking softly, never raising her voice, and she always brings a Ziploc bag of sugar cookies.

“I know how you like these, Jack.”

“I can’t take any cookies, Mrs. Hathaway.”

“Now,” she says, reaching into her handbag and coming out with a stack of photographs, “little Billy has gone to junior college to study computer programming …”

Jack lowers his head and thumps it repeatedly on the table as Olivia continues her recitation of the daily lives and personal development of each and every child, grandchild, great-grandchild and their spouses.

“… Kimmy is living—
in sin
—with a motorcycle repairman from Downey …”

Thump … thump …

“Jack, are you listening?”

“No.”

“Now, Jack, you’ve neglected to pay me for my spoons.”

“I didn’t
neglect
to pay you for your spoons; your spoons were not stolen.”

“Of course they were, dear.”

“Right, they were stolen fourteen—I thought Kimmy was living with an electrician.”

“That was
last
month.”

“Oh.”

“Cookie?”

“No thank you.”

“Now, about my spoons …”

It’s forty-five more agonizing minutes of the Olivia Hathaway Water Torture (drip … about my spoons … drip … about my spoons … drip …) before he can get rid of her and head out to Vale’s mother’s house in Monarch Bay.

Monarch Bay.

Aptly named.

Absolutely primo real estate location on the south coast.

Monarch Bay sits on the border between the towns of Laguna Niguel and Dana Point and went through Bosnia-esque civil strife as to which town it would belong to. To most people’s surprise, the residents chose Dana Point over the more tony Laguna Niguel, even though Dana Point in those days was just the harbor and a bunch of fast food joints, surf shops and cheap motels on a strip of the PCH.

The Dana Point that Jack loved.

The choice pissed a lot of people off, especially the owners of the Ritz-Carlton/Laguna Niguel just down the beach, who never changed the resort’s name, even though it’s technically in Dana Point and not Laguna Niguel.

This is fine with Jack, who doesn’t particularly want to be associated with the beautiful resort people. As far as Jack’s concerned, the resort is basically a place for the young surf bums to work as waiters and supplement their meager incomes by screwing the rich wives that they’ve otherwise serviced at lunch. More than a few of whom live in the exclusive gated community of Monarch Bay.

You roll up to the gates of Monarch Bay in a Ford Taurus, you’d better be there to clean something. You’d better have some ammonia and rags in the backseat.

Otherwise, this is a gate for Mercedes and Jags and Rollses.

Jack does feel a little uncool in the Taurus, but he switched to a company car because somehow it just didn’t feel right to go to a house where people have lost a loved one and show up in a ’66 Mustang with a Hobie on top.

Feels disrespectful.

Getting the company car was a hassle.

To get a company car, you have to go to Edna.

Edna has those glasses with the little metal-bead chain hanging around her neck.

Jack says, “Edna, I need a car.”

“Are you asking or telling?”

“Asking.”

“We don’t have any with surfboard racks on them.” Jack smiles.

“It was my last call of the day. Three Arch Bay, so, you know …”

“I do know,” Edna says. “I saw the crew vacuuming the sand out.”

What Jack doesn’t tell Edna is that he left two six-packs with the pool car crew for the inconvenience. Something he always does. The guys in the crew love Jack. They’d do anything for Jack.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Company cars are
not
for pleasure,” Edna says, pushing the keys at him.

“I promise I won’t have any pleasure in it.”

All of a sudden Edna has these images of twisted carnal goings-on in the backseat of one of her cars and her hand pauses on the keys.

“
Tell
me you boys don’t—”

“No, no, no, no,” Jack says, taking the keys. “Not in the
backseat
, anyway.”

“Slip 17.”

“Thank you.”

So Jack takes a Taurus to Monarch Bay.

Where the guard gives the car a long look, just to make a point, and then asks, “Is Mr. Vale expecting you?”

Jack says, “He’s expecting me.”

The guard looks past Jack on the front seat and asks, “You’re what? The dog groomer?”

“That’s right. I groom the dog.”

The house is a mock-Tudor mansion. The lawn is as manicured as a dowager’s hand and a croquet set has been meticulously measured out on the grass. A rose garden edges the north wall.

Hasn’t rained in three months, Jack thinks, and the roses are dripping with moisture, fresh as a blush.

Vale meets him in the driveway.

He’s one good-looking man. He’s about six-three, Jack guesses, thin, with black hair cut unfashionably long except somehow it looks
perfectly
stylish on him. He’s wearing a beige pullover over faded jeans and Loafers. No socks. Wire-rim John Lennon glasses.

Very cool.

He looks younger than forty-three.

The face is movie-star handsome and mostly it’s the eyes. They have a slight upward slant and they’re the gray-blue color of a winter sea.

And intense.

Like when Vale looks at you he’s trying to make you do something.

Jack has the feeling that most people do.

“Would you be Jack Wade?” Vale asks.

There’s the slightest trace of an accent, but Jack can’t work out what it is.

“Russian,” Vale explains. “The actual name is Daziatnik Valeshin, but who wants to sign all those checks that way?”

“Sorry to meet you under these circumstances, Mr. Vale.”

“Nicky,” Vale says. “Call me Nicky.”

“Nicky,” Jack says. “Here’s Leo.”

“Leonid!” Nicky yells.

The little dog goes nuts, starts twirling around and stuff. Jack opens the door and Leo jumps out and leaps into Nicky’s outstretched arms.

“Again,” Jack says, “I’m sorry about Mrs. Vale.”

“Pamela was young and very beautiful,” Nicky says.

Which is definitely what you want to be, Jack thinks, if you’re going to be married to a rich guy and live in a house overlooking the ocean. “Young and beautiful” is the baseline qualification. You aren’t young and beautiful, you don’t even get to fill out the application.

Still, it’s a weird thing to say at a time like this.

Jack says, “I know she did a lot of work for Save the Strands. I know you both did.”

Nicky nods. “We believed in it. Pamela spent a lot of time in the Strands—painting, walking with the children. We’d hate to see it ruined.”

“How are the children doing?” Jack asks.

“I believe the expression is ‘As well as can be expected.’ ”

One odd fucking dude, Jack thinks.

He must see it on my face, Jack thinks, because Nicky says, “Let’s cut through the pretense, Jack. Obviously you know that Pamela and I were separated. I loved her, the children loved her, but Pamela couldn’t decide which she loved more—her family or the bottle. Still, I had every hope of a reconciliation. We were working toward one. And she
was
young, and very beautiful, and under these circumstances that is what I seem to bring to mind. A protective reflex of the mind, I suppose.”

“Mr. Vale … Nicky—”

“In all honesty, I don’t know exactly what I am supposed to be feeling right now, or even what I
do
feel. All I know is that I need to to put
my children’s lives in order, because they have been in chaos for quite some time, all the more so this morning.”

“I wasn’t—”

Nicky smiles and says, “You weren’t saying anything, Jack, you are too polite. But inside you are offended by my apparent lack of grief. I grew up as a Jew in what your news readers like to call ‘the former Soviet Union.’ I learned to watch men’s eyes more than their mouths. I’ll bet that in your world, Jack, people lie to you all the time, don’t they?”

“I hear some lies.”

“More than
some,”
Nicky says. “People can get money from you and so they lie to get it. Even otherwise honest people will exaggerate their loss just to cover the deductible, am I right?”

Jack nods.

“And I will probably try to do the same,” Nicky laughs. “Big deal—I’ll come up with a number, then you’ll come up with a number, and we’ll negotiate. We’ll make a deal.”

“I don’t make deals,” Jack says. “I just carry out the policy.”

“Everyone makes deals, Jack.”

“Not everyone.”

Nicky puts his arm around Jack’s shoulders.

“I think we can work together, Jack Wade,” he says. “I think we can do business.”

Nicky invites him in.

“I don’t want to intrude,” Jack says.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to,” Nicky says. He gives Jack a smile that makes him a co-conspirator. “Mother made tea.”

Well, Jack thinks, if Mother made tea …

Mother is beautiful.

A small, perfect gem.

Sable hair pulled back tight against the whitest skin Jack’s ever seen. She has Nicky’s blue eyes, only darker. The color of deeper water.

Head up, spine sergeant major straight.

No, not sergeant major, Jack corrects himself, ballet instructor.

She’s wearing August-appropriate white. A midlength summer dress edged in gold. She doesn’t shop in Laguna, Jack thinks—too funky and too many gays—but in Newport Beach. Come Labor Day, no matter how hot, she’ll lose the whites and go to beige and khaki. The first of November she’ll switch to black.

Jack starts, “Mrs. Vale—”

“Valeshin.”

“Mrs.
Valeshin
,” Jack says. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I understand that she was smoking in bed,” Mother says. She has more of an accent and there’s this slight edge, like Pamela
deserved
to choke to death in the dark, Jack thinks. Like she had it coming.

“That’s the preliminary finding,” Jack says.

“And
drinking?” Mother adds.

“There’s some indication that she might have been drinking,” Jack says.

“Won’t you come in?” she asks.

Now that I’ve paid admission, Jack thinks.

The inside of the house is a museum.

No
DO NOT TOUCH
signs, Jack thinks, but they’re not needed. You just
know
, like,
DO NOT TOUCH
. The place is immaculate. The floors and furniture shine. No dust would dare settle.

Dark, too, like a museum.

Dark-stained hardwood floors with Persian carpets. Oak doors, moldings and window frames.

Big old dark fireplace.

In contrast, the living room furniture is white.

White sofa, white wingback chairs.

White like a
challenge
white. White like nobody spills here, or dribbles, or drops. White, like a statement that life can be clean if everyone just maintains discipline and pays attention and tries.

Furniture, Jack thinks, as ethic.

Nicky motions for Jack to sit down on the sofa.

Jack tries to sit without leaving an indentation.

“You have a beautiful home,” Jack says.

“My son bought it for me,” she says.

“You’ve been to the house?” Nicky says.

“Just for a preliminary look.”

“Is it a total loss?” Nicky asks.

“Most of the structure is still there,” Jack says, “although there’s a lot
of smoke and water damage. I’m afraid the west wing is going to have to be torn down.”

“Since the coroner called,” Nicky says, “I’ve been trying to steel my nerves to go over there and see … And of course the children are terribly upset.”

“Sure.”

Nicky waits for what he feels is a decent interval, then asks, “How do we proceed with the claim?”

Like, we’ve done our sensitive moment, let’s get down to business.

Jack runs it down for him.

The life insurance claim is simple. Jack requests a death certificate from the county and once he gets it, bang, he writes a draft for $250,000. The fire claim is a little more complicated because you’re looking at three different “coverages” under the policy.

Coverage A is for the structure itself. Jack needs to examine the house in detail and come up with an estimate of what it’s going to cost to rebuild. Coverage B is for personal property—furniture, appliances, clothing—and Nicky will need to fill out a Personal Property Inventory Form, to tell the company what he lost in the fire.

“I see you also have a bunch of special endorsements added to your Coverage B,” Jack says.

Which is a
humongo
understatement, Jack thinks. Special endorsements to the tune of three-quarters of a million bucks.

And nice fat premiums for California Fire and Life.

The perpetual circle jerk, Jack thinks.

“My furniture,” Nicky says. “I collect eighteenth-century English. Mostly George II and III. I collect, I sell, I buy. I’m afraid the bulk of my collection was in the west wing. Is there …?”

Jack shakes his head.