California Fire and Life (41 page)

“I’m going to go in to the office,” he says, “and clean out my desk.”

“You think they’re really going to fire you?”

Jack says, “If they don’t, I’m going to quit anyway.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she says.

“Yeah I do.”

They sit and look out the window. It’s pretty out there, Jack thinks. The trees and the pasture. Mountains in the background.

After a few minutes she asks, “So what are you going to do?”

“Dunno.”

A few minutes later she says, “You could come here.”

“You don’t have to—”

“The house needs a remodel,” she says. “You could be doing that. You know, fixing things—”

“Sleeping in your bed …”

“Well, that would be a bonus.”

“For me.”

“How gallant.”

More coffee, more silence, more window gazing. Then she says, “It’s a serious offer.”

“Serious?”

“Sincere,” she says, looking into her coffee cup. “And sudden. But look, how often do you get a second chance? I mean, me as well.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Same.”

Thinking, you romantic bastard.
Same
. Nice going.

“Yeah?” she asks. Looks up at him now.

“Oh yeah.”

“So,” she says. “It’s a serious sincere offer.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Can I think about it?”

Because he knows she’s offering the whole package. Like this instant life—the home, the woman—and he knows she hasn’t given up on the
kids
yet. Which is bad, because she should.

“Letty?”

“Jack?”

“You’re not going to get the kids,” he says. “It’s over.”

“For you maybe,” she says. She gets up and starts to clean off the counter.

“Letty—”

“Look, you took your best shot and you lost,” Letty says. “I’m not
blaming
you for anything, okay? I’m not calling up what you did twelve years ago and saying that cost me the kids. All I’m saying is that I owe those kids
my
best shot, even if you think it’s a loser. I’m going to find a lawyer who’ll take this in front of a judge, and if I lose I’ll find another lawyer and another judge, and if I lose …”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she says. “I gotta go to work. You want to come back here tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, you heard me? Or, yeah, you want to.”

“Yeah, I want to.”

They stand there looking at each other.

“So this is probably the moment when we kiss,” she says.

“Yeah.”

So they do kiss and then hold on to each other for a minute and he says, “What I did twelve years ago? It was the wrong thing to do. I should have just dropped the case.”

“Probably.”

“I mean that old man was more important than the case.”

“I know that’s what you meant.”

She walks him out to the ’Stang and he takes off.

Back to California Fire and Life.

Jack goes out to Billy’s office.

Hotter than hell out there in the cactus garden.

“You ain’t fired,” Billy says. “They can’t fire you until they fire me.”

“See you on the unemployment line.”

“Shit, I’d just
retire,”
Billy says. Gives this private little smile. “Fade into the sunset.”

“I’m quitting, Billy.”

“Nah, don’t do that.”

“They gonna pay the demand?”

Billy says, “Probably.”

“Then I quit.”

“Shit,
Jack
—”

Billy snuffs out the cig and struggles to light another one. Has to turn against the wind and cup his hands to do it. Sucks down the first drag and says, “Just let it go.”

“Can’t.”

Phone rings inside Billy’s office. He says, “That’s probably Herlihy
again. I got Claims, Agency, Underwriting and SIU all banging on me about this claim.”

“You better go talk to them, then.”

“Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’ll sit out here until the vultures take me away.” Jack takes the files off the chair and sits down.

Letty sits in the front seat of her car getting a last sip of her coffee.

She’d rather be doing something else than hiking up some trail in Cleveland Forest to meet a Vietnamese punk teenage chop shop artist to get the word about two of his missing homeboys.

Although I guess I asked for it, Letty thinks as she sets her cup on the floor below the driver’s seat. I put the heat on him.

Since busting him in the chop shop, she’s cranked up the DA, the Orange County Anti-Gang Task Force and the little moke’s probation officer. Plus she’s popped three more chop shops, a gambling room and a massage parlor to get Uncle Nguyen wound up. So she wasn’t all that surprised when she got the call.

She gets out of the car and walks uphill, up the hiking trail, where she can already see Tony Ky standing there doing the Snitch Hop.

The Snitch Hop is this very distinctive two-step—a little double bounce on one foot, then shift the weight and a double bounce on the other—hands in pockets, shoulders scrunched up, head rhythmically turning from side to side. Letty sees this performance of the Snitch Hop, she knows with some satisfaction that the kid is nervous as hell.

Good, Letty thinks. Serves him right. Maybe he’ll get so freaked he’ll give it up and get a real job. Yeah, right.

Tony
is
nervous. The kid is definitely not used to meeting with cops to give them information, even if it is about two friends who have dropped off the screen. And Tony has had a brutal week. First there’s the bust in the chop shop—which Uncle Nguyen was not happy about. But Tony figures he’s still going to cruise through it. Then the DA starts cracking on him about two other chop shops, trying to connect him to some sort of
conspiracy
, then the anti-gang guy is in his face mumbling something about RICO, then his probation officer says he don’t have to
wait for a conviction to violate, just him being in the presence of other felons …

Then, like things weren’t shitty enough, Uncle Nguyen reaches out
personally
with the word that if he knows anything about the disappearance of imbecile Tranh and idiot Do, he had better get his mouth in gear immediately if not sooner, and when Uncle Nguyen hears that Tranh and Do were last seen doing errands for the Russians, the old bastard like
freaks
. And then tells him to do something totally whacked, which is like call this police bitch and tell her. And Tony is like,
What?
and Uncle Nguyen is like,
Do what I tell you, haven’t you caused me enough headaches already, I want this cop off my back
, so the kid makes the call.

Which would be okay—weird but okay—except that the Russian dude shows up again and asks like,
You been talking to the cops?
And Tony is like,
No, man, I don’t talk to cops
, and the Russian dude is like,
Well you’re going to, you’re going to set up a meet
, and Tony is like,
What?

And the Russian dude is like,
Your head: use it or lose it
.

All of which is to say that, yes, the kid is a little jumpy standing out there on some dirt path in the country waiting for a cop.

Billy comes back out and says, “They’re going to pay tomorrow morning, with me or without me.”

“So which is it?” Jack asks.

“Gotta think about that,” Billy says.

“That’s fair.”

“How ’bout you?”

“I’m gone.”

“Jack,” Billy says, “you’re not going to find another claims job anywhere in the industry.”

“I don’t want one.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Jack says. “Maybe remodeling.”

Billy frowns. Fights the wind to light another cig and says, “Sleep on this, goddamn it. Take some sick days.”

“Fuck it, Billy. These days, they’re
all
sick days.”

And walks out.

Muy
disgusted.

In the lobby the receptionist juts her chin at the waiting bench and says, “Olivia Hathaway for you.”

“Not now.”

“She’s
here
, Jack.”

“I don’t work here anymore,” Jack says. “She’s somebody else’s headache now.”

“Jack?”

She’s standing right behind him now.

“Mrs. Hathaway.”

“A moment of your time?”

“Not now, Mrs. Hathaway.”

“Just one moment,” she says.

She’s holding a plate of cookies.

“I really don’t have the time right now, Mrs. Hathaway.”

Two minutes later Jack’s sitting across a table from her in Room 117.

Jack starts, “Mrs. Hathaway, I don’t have time for this today. I’m in a very bad mood. So, for the last time, I’m not paying for your spoons. Not now, not ever—”

“I didn’t come about my spoons.”

Say what?

“Then why—”

“I came because a lawyer came to see me,” Olivia says. “A Mr. Gordon?”

“Paul Gordon?”

“Do you know him?”

“Sort of.”

“Anyway,” Olivia says, “he came to ask me to join in a suit against you. A class suit.”

“A class action suit?”

“That’s right,” Olivia says. She takes out her knitting and goes to work. “He said that he had at least twenty other people that you’ve cheated that are going to join together and sue you for bad faith and punitive damages. He said that we could stand to share millions of dollars.”

“Did he tell you who the others were?”

“I don’t remember them all,” Olivia says. “There was a Mr. Vale, a Mr. Boland, a Mrs. Vecch …”

“Veccharrios?”

“Yes,” Olivia says. “And a Mr. Azmekian.”

“A Mr. Azmekian?” Jack asks.

“Yes.”

“Kazzy
Azmekian?”

“No,” she says. “I think it was Kazimir.”

Jack sits there while she recites a litany of various claims Jack has turned down for the past seven years. It’s like the old lady is reading off his freaking inventory.

And the only way, Jack thinks, that Paul Gordon could go trolling for these clients is that he’s had access to all my files.

Jack hears Olivia saying, “So Mr. Gordon wants me to join in this suit against you. He even offered me shares in the Westview,” Olivia says.

“In the what?”

“In the Westview Company, my dear. Very confidentially, of course.”

What the hell?

“What did you tell him?” Jack asks.

Olivia looks up from her knitting.

“I told him to go fuck himself. Cookie?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’d like a cookie,” Jack says.

Her blue eyes look at him very seriously.

“I know a scam when I see one,” she says. “Sugar—your favorite.”

“A great cookie.”

“Now, about my spoons …”

“So?” Letty asks.

“So what?” Tony says.

Still doing the Snitch Hop.

Kid’s dressed up in the official Vietnamese gangsta uniform—black Levi’s, black high-tops. Black leather jacket, and it’s what, 70 degrees out? Black leather jacket in August …

Letty doesn’t feel like it. “
You
called
me
.”

“Tranh and Do.”

“No kidding.”

Tony whispers, “They were doing a job for some Russians.”

“Okay,” Letty says. Like this is telling her something.

“No,” Tony says, “they were doing a job for some
Russians
.”

Which gets Letty’s attention in a hurry.

“How did they get hooked up with the ROC?”

“Maybe we do some cars …” Tony says.

“Is that right?”

“Anyway,” he says, like he’s not here to engage in bigger issues, “Tranh and Do were running an errand for the Russians. These two guys came and said they needed some guys and a truck.”

“For what?”

“Boost a truck, pick some stuff up at a house, take it somewhere, lose the truck.”

“What
stuff
?” Letty asks. “What house? Take it where?”

Tony says, “They talk with my boys, they call later and leave an address.”

“What address?”

“Thirty-seven Bluffside Drive.”

Which rocks Letty.

The night Pamela is murdered, two missing Vietnamese gang-bangers are taking “stuff” out of the house.

Tony says, “So they lift a truck. From Paladin Unpainted Furniture. Go over there that night, they don’t come back. Now you know everything I know, so lighten up on me.”

“What two guys?”

“I don’t know,” the kid whines. “Two new guys, not the usual guys.”

“You got usual guys?”

“We got guys who bring cars,” Tony says. “We got guys come for the money. These were not the guys.”

“Would you recognize these guys if you saw pictures?”

Tony shakes his head. “No way, lady. No fucking way do I give up these guys. You don’t
have
enough weight make me do that.”

“Describe them.”

“Tall skinny guy. Big fat guy. No style.”

“Have you seen them since?”

Tony shakes his head.

Too fast, too hard, Letty thinks.

“
Heard
from them since?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, you little shit.”

“I’m not lying!”

“And don’t whine, either,” she says. “It annoys me. What did they say to you, ‘Keep your stupid fucking mouth shut’?”

“Something like that,” Tony mumbles. “Don’t tell Uncle Nguyen.”

“Do they know I’ve been bringing the heat on you?”

“They know,” the kid says, resentful. “
Every
one knows.”

“You’re in a tough spot.”

“You put me there.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Letty says. “Come on in. Bring me those guys.”

Tony thinks about it for a second. “See how it plays,” he says.

“Yeah, see how it plays,” Letty says.

The kid already knows how it’s going to play. How it’s going to play is this gash is about to get whacked, is how it’s going to play.

So he says, “Give me a couple of minutes’ head start. I don’t want to be seen with no cop.”

“Out here?” Letty laughs.

There’s nothing out here but hills, dry grass and rocks.

“Out anywhere,” Tony says. He heads back down the trail.

Letty’s mind is racing. She has the Tranh and Do disappearance hooked in with Pamela’s death and the fire. She has Nicky Vale connected somehow with ROC. She has a truckload of stuff leaving the Vale house the night of the fire.