Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

"I'm not saying anything, Jeff."

"And I hear you, Jack," he says. "I have to go sell some boats."

"Thanks for your time."

"Thanks for the lunch."

They start to leave but hang out chatting with Marsha for a while.

Talking about progress.

Dr. Benton Howard.

Dr. Howard slides into a red-upholstered banquette at Hamburger Hamblet in Westwood. Already sitting there is a skinny guy with a bad haircut and an equally bad blue suit.

"I asked for nonsmoking," Howard says.

Dani shrugs and sips his iced tea.

Howard says, "I'm a doctor, after all."

Just barely, thinks Dani. He takes another drag of his cigarette and blows it toward the doctor's face. Howard coughs dramatically and waves his hand through the air.

"That stinks," Howard says.

And you stink, he thinks but doesn't say. He wants to give Dani the name of his dry cleaner but he's afraid to. But, Jesus, the suit needs cleaning badly. It smells — no, stinks — of stale sweat and old cigarette smoke and whatever the hell it is that Dani puts on his greasy hair.

Some sort of Russian bear grease, Howard decides.

He signals the waitress for an iced tea.

"I was expecting a different person," Howard says.

Viktor Tratchev, who, although somewhat rough, at least has a basic appreciation for personal hygiene.

"You'll be meeting with me from now on," Dani says.

"Is that all right with Viktor?" Howard asks.

"Sure," Dani says.

Or at least it will be, Dani thinks, when Tratchev finds out about it. And if it isn't, fuck him anyway.

"You have money for me?" Dani asks.

"Fifteen thousand," Howard whispers. "In the briefcase."

Dr. Benton Howard is forty-seven years old and has had a medical career you might charitably describe as undistinguished. Second-to-last in his class on Grenada, he did his residency at a county hospital in Louisiana and then went into private practice in "sports medicine." Dr. Howard's practice kept him very busy, mostly in court defending himself against malpractice suits, because unfortunate things tended to happen to Dr. Howard, not to mention his patients. X rays got reversed, for instance, resulting in the removal of cartilage from the wrong knee, or reconstructive surgery on an ankle that was already perfectly constructed. Then there were a couple of unfortunate incidents involving disc surgeries (missed it by that much), and Dr. Howard is that close to delicensing and bankruptcy when the Russians seek him out.

Howard's sitting in his office one day dodging subpoena service when the Russian fellow comes in and suggests that Dr. Benton Howard set himself up in a subspecialty.

Soft tissue injuries.

The wonderful thing about treating soft tissue injuries, Howard discovers, is that he doesn't have to actually see any patients, never mind treat them, which is, after all, where all his problems came from in the first place. No, all Dr. Howard has to do is meet Viktor in restaurants, sip iced tea and sign diagnoses, treatment reports and recommendations for chiropractic treatment, massage, therapy and rehabilitation therapy.

Not that the patients don't come to his office; they do. They come straight from a lawyer's office to Howard's office, sit in the lobby and read magazines until the nurse calls their name, then they go into a treatment room and read magazines until Howard comes in and tells them to go home. Or to the chiropractor, masseur, or rehabilitation specialist.

And the money rolls in. And all his problems go away. The malpractice suits are settled or dropped, the bill collectors quit leaning on his doorbell, his wife fires her lawyer and crawls back into his bed.

All because of soft tissue injuries.

As long as Howard signs reports that verify that Patient X is suffering from severe pain and moderate to complete disability from a five-mile-per-hour rear-ender fender-bender, the money train makes regular stops at Howard's station.

And it's so easy; because someone else has already written the reports, all Howard has to do is slip into a banquette in a dark restaurant and sign until his wrist gets sore.

Dr. Benton Howard actually receives honest-to-goodness physical therapy — that actually occurs — for carpal tunnel syndrome from signing so many forms.

Which is what's happening today. Dani pulls out a stack of medical reports and Benton starts signing. They have a real system going, a factory. These guys can poop out medical reports like a Xerox machine, they're that slick.

In fact, they're going so fast (Benton is in a hurry to get away from Dani's offensive odor) that he unwittingly signs treatment reports for seven people who are dead, killed when a fuel tanker slammed into a van on a highway on-ramp.

Howard doesn't realize it, of course, neither does Dani, but it's a potentially ugly fuckup.

Even Benton Howard would have a tough time explaining why he prescribed three months of neck massages for a man who is not only deceased, but actually incinerated.

Jack heads over to Laguna Beach.

The fifteen-minute trip south along the Pacific Coast Highway is one of Jack's favorite drives. Skirting the edge of the coastal plateau, the PCH is a mild roller coaster that takes you past Dana Strands and Salt Creek Beach and the Ritz-Carlton, past Monarch Bay and then up a hill that eventually drops you again by Aliso Pier — if you walk out onto the concrete structure around dusk you'll see a spectacular sunset — and Aliso Creek Beach. Then it climbs up another hill into South Laguna, where the hotels and restaurants and art shops really kick in, and you can see the roofs of expensive houses tucked away on the streets that lead down to the ocean.

A few more minutes of this and you hit Laguna Beach.

Laguna Beach got its start in life as an artists' colony.

Bunch of painters and sculptors fled L.A. back in the '20s and came down to the then-pristine bay and put up their artists' bungalows and painted seascapes and carved wooden statues of the fishermen who still lived around there.

It was a great choice for an artists' colony, because Laguna Beach is truly beautiful. Shaped around a crescent of coastline which rises to bluffs and cliffs, a narrow plateau where the town sits and then up to the steep, green Laguna hills. The whole thing madly lush with palm trees and bright flowers and an array of aloes, and when you look at it from a height it brings to mind a painter's palette.

So the artists settled there.

And a few tourists would come down and buy a few paintings and sculptures, so the artists set up some open-air markets where they could put up stands and still paint and carve while they waited for the customers to drift in.

It was a natural step from open-air stands to galleries, from galleries to restaurants, from restaurants to hotels, and after about fifty years the town became a tourist destination. It boomed with everything else in the '80s, got overbuilt, got perhaps a little yuppie, but never quite lost touch with its bohemian origins.

When south coast locals think of Laguna Beach they still think of painters and sculptors, coffee shops and bookstores (and, before it got trendy, bookstores with coffee shops), writers and poets, Hare Krishnas and gay men.

Laguna Beach being the primary locus of gay life on the south coast.

Which is why — and it is no less true for being stereotypical — the service in the restaurants is so friendly and so good. And the zoning is vicious. And the town has a style you won't find elsewhere on the south coast.

Laguna has its own certain sensibility, which is why Jack, like most other old-time locals, treasures the town.

So it was particularly heartbreaking when the fire swept through it.