Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

Eight minutes, fifteen seconds.

Jack sits back and takes a little breather.

"Go."

The reverse route. Left onto Harbor. Left on Blue Lantern. Wait for the light and then left onto the PCH. A straight shot back to the gate.

Nine minutes flat.

The guard comes out of the kiosk this time.

"May I help you, sir?" is what he says. What he means is What the fuck do you think you're doing?

"Maybe," Jack says. "Hi, I'm Jack Wade, California Fire and Life."

"Mike Derochik."

"Mike," Jack asks, "were you on duty last Wednesday night?"

"I came on at midnight," the guard says.

"Did Mr. Vale go out at anytime during the night?"

The guard says, "We don't discuss the comings and goings of our residents."

Jack hands him his card.

"If Mr. Vale came out of here during those hours," Jack says, "it was probably to kill his wife. You probably knew her, too, right? Nice woman with two little kids? Think it over, huh? Give me a call?"

Derochik puts the card in his pocket.

Jack's about to drive off when the guard says, "I didn't see him go out."

"Okay."

It was worth a try.

"But I saw him come in."

Whoa.

"What time?" Jack asks.

"About a quarter to five," the guard says.

Gotcha, Call Me Nicky.

Caught you in a lie.

Incendiary origin.

Motive.

Now opportunity.

Now if I can just buy a little more time.

Jack's waiting in the parking lot of Cal Fire and Life.

Waiting for Bill Reynolds, the executive from Underwriting who okayed a million bucks in coverage for the Vales' personal property, to leave for the day.

Jack's waiting in the parking lot because he doesn't want to go to Bill's office and embarrass the guy or get the gossip going. Jack doesn't want to hurt Bill Reynolds, he just wants the time to finish his investigation.

Reynolds comes out of the building. Tall guy, has to go six-six, and heavy — in fact, overweight. Wearing an underwriter's gray suit and carrying a briefcase. Guys from Underwriting take work home.

Jack steps up.

"Bill? I'm Jack Wade from Claims."

"Bill Reynolds."

Reynolds has a What the hell is this look on his face as he peers through his glasses down at Jack.

"Bill, you okayed some personal property coverage for Roger Hazlitt on the Vale risk?"

"I'd have to look in the file."

Jack lays the Vale policy on the hood of Reynolds's blue Lexus.

"Come see me in my office," Reynolds says. "I'm not standing out here in the parking lot… It's 103 degrees…"

"You don't want to do this in your office."

"There are channels-"

"You don't want me to go through channels," Jack says.

You're taking bribes from agents, "channels" is not the way you want to go.

Reynolds looks down at him, both literally and figuratively.

"What are you, an M-3?" he asks, citing pay rankings.

"M-4."

"M-4," Reynolds says. "I'm an M-6. You don't have the weight to throw around."

Jack nods. "Roger says he slipped you a thousand bucks to okay this coverage."

Which might add to the weight quotient a little bit.

"Get away from my vehicle."

"Is it true?"

"I said get away from my vehicle."

"Look, typically you'd lay some of that risk off, wouldn't you?" Jack asks. "Work with the customer to get one or two other carriers to pick up some of the coverage? Isn't that the way you'd normally do it if the risk was too high but you wanted to keep the customer?"

"Those are Underwriting decisions."

"Which is why I'm asking you."

"You don't understand the business."

"Educate me."

Reynolds takes off his glasses. Looks down at Jack for a long time before he says, "I don't have the time to explain to you things that you don't have the education to understand. So leave it alone."

"Can't."

"What's your name again?"

"Jack Wade. Large Claims."

"That's Billy Hayes's unit?"

"You know it is," Jack says. "You had your boss on the phone banging at him first thing this morning."

"Well, Jack Wade from Large Claims," Reynolds says. "I'm going to tell you once: drop this. Understand?"

"I don't have the education," Jack says. "And that's twice you've told me."

"Well, I'm not going to tell you again."

"Good, because I was getting bored."

"You won't be bored tomorrow morning, I can tell you that."

"You gonna make some more calls, Bill?"

"Get away from my vehicle."

"You gonna bring the heat down?"

Reynolds squeezes himself into the driver's seat and starts the engine. Jack takes the papers off the hood.

The car window rolls down with a soft electric hum.

"Pay the claim," Reynolds says.

"No."

"Pay the claim."

"Everyone's telling me that."

"Everyone's right."

"Let me tell you about some basic laws of physics," Jack says. "Before heat can go down, it goes up. Heat rises. So don't drop any more heat on Billy Hayes, because I'll send some up your way, from M-4 to M-6."

The window rolls up.

Reynolds disappears behind blue tinted glass.

Smoked glass, Jack thinks.

The parking lot's a rough place today.

Jack's walking into the building when he sees Sandra Hansen heading toward him.

"Sandra," Jack says.

"Jack."

Jack knows this conversation can only be trouble, because Sandra Hansen is the So-Cal head of Cal Fire and Life's SIU. SIU stands for Special Investigative Unit, which means it's the fraud unit. Every big insurance carrier has one, a unit that specializes in handling potentially fraudulent claims. Cal Fire's SIU functions as more of an intelligence organization — it doesn't bother with the small shit; its major job is to track fraud rings, the specialized rip-off operations that suck millions of bucks a year in phony claims.

As a former cop, Jack would have been a perfect candidate for SIU, except Jack doesn't want to be a cop of any kind anymore, even a pseudo-cop.

Another reason he's not interested is because SIU also functions as the company's internal affairs unit. You got a Claims guy taking kickbacks for recommending a contractor, or an auto adjuster splitting overcharges with a body shop, or, say, an underwriter taking money from an agent to write bad book, that's SIU's turf.

And Jack would rather be a dog than a rat.

"Were you staking me out, Sandra?" Jack asks her.

"As a matter of fact I was," Hansen says. "Jack, you have a file we're interested in."

"Olivia Hathaway?" Jack asks.

Hansen doesn't think it's funny. She gives Jack her professional SIU hard look and says, "The Vale file."

Surprise, surprise, Jack thinks.

"What about it?"

"We want you to back off it."

"Who's we?"

"SIU."

Like I'm supposed to get all watery in the knees, Jack thinks. Fucking SIU thinks it's the CIA and the FBI except it doesn't have to answer to anybody.

Well, fuck that.

"Why?" Jack asks. "Why does SIU want me to back off the file?"

"Does it matter?"

"To me."

Hansen's pissed. Generally speaking, she says lay off a file, the adjuster lays off it.

"You're walking into something," Hansen says. "You don't know where you're walking."

This is true, Jack thinks.

This is really interesting.

"Tell me," Jack says. "Your guys have something here, for God's sake tell me, Sandra. I could use the help."

"You're going to trip over-"

"So shine me a light," Jack says. "Seriously, show me the way."

"— shit that's too big for you to handle."

Jack says, "Maybe I should decide what's too big for me to handle."

Sandra pulls out the big gun. "Don't make me take this file away from you."

Fucking SIU, they can do that. They can walk in and take the handling of a file.