Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

It could provide reasonable doubt, anyway.

But not with the positive samples.

With a positive sample, Jack thinks, everything falls together.

Motive.

Dead-solid lock. The three strongest points? The balloon payment, the lack of income, the missed payments. It's an embarrassment of riches — no reverse pun intended — and there'll be no problem proving that Nicky had a motive to torch the house. The arguments against? There really aren't any.

Opportunity.

Three strongest points? Locked doors and windows with no sign of forced entry, Leo the pooch outside, and Derochik's statement having Nicky coming in at 4:45.

And now Nicky has lied. You have him on tape saying he never went out, that the phone call woke him up. And I guess that just fucks you.

Arguments against? No witness to put Nicky on or near the actual fire scene. No snitch to connect him directly to the fire.

Two: Mother Russia's alibi — but Derochik's statement is going to shoot that down.

So, opportunity?

A tougher call, but when you put it together with incendiary origin and motive, it plays.

Move down to the murder, because it's all connected. A jury will never believe the coincidence of a murder with an accidental fire. Conversely, they'll never buy an accidental death with an intentional fire.

We have a combo plate here, Jack thinks.

Strongest points that Pamela Vale was murdered?

One: She was dead in time proximity to an arson.

Two: Her bloodstream showed alcohol and barbiturates, but witnesses will say that she wasn't drinking, and someone else — probably an associate of her husband's — picked up her Valium prescription.

Arguments against?

Primarily, there's the ME's conclusion of death by overdose.

Second is Bentley's call of CO asphyxiation accelerated by acute inebriation. The alcohol reduces the amount of oxygen in the lungs, making CO poisoning rapid and deadly.

It's possible, Jack thinks.

If she was drinking.

And if there was no accelerant.

And if Jack thinks, you hadn't looked into Nicky's eyes and just known that he killed his wife.

And if the arrogant bastard hadn't lied on tape.

Jack goes in to see Goddamn Billy.

Viktor Tratchev is one tres pissed gangster.

"Valeshin wanted to be a real estate developer," Tratchev says to his head enforcer, an obelisk of a human specimen known simply as Bear, "so he's a real estate developer. Fine. What does he think, that he can just stroll in when he feels like it and be the boss again?"

Bear shrugs. Bear may not know the term "rhetorical question" but he knows one when he hears one.

Tratchev's working himself up.

"What does he think?" Tratchev asks. "That I'm going to lie down and just take this shit? I'm supposed to lie down on my belly and let him fuck me?!"

This is pretty much exactly what he's supposed to do, actually, according to Dani and Lev, who drop by Tratchev's house that afternoon for a glass of tea and some browbeating.

"You've been shorting the pakhan on his share," Dani explains.

By about 100 percent, Dani's thinking.

"Bullshit," Tratchev says.

"Not bullshit," Dani insists. "What do you think, you're playing with children here?"

Dani holds up a hand to stop him. "Don't add insult to injury. Keep your lies inside your mouth. Listen, Viktor, between you and me, I'll admit that things have gotten pretty loose. So you take advantage. All right, you take advantage. Human nature. Maybe the fault then is on both sides.

"But I'm here to tell you today, Viktor Tratchev, that the free and easy days are over. The pakhan is the, pakhan again. From now on, until trust is restored, we will take the payments and give you your proper share. You will run a tighter operation that doesn't end up on the evening news. And Viktor Tratchev, if you cause any more problems, I will personally cut off your head and piss into your gasping mouth. Thank you for the tea."

They get up and leave and Tratchev is about to throw a rod.

"I'll kill him," he says.

"Dani?" Bear asks.

"Him too," Tratchev said.

Who he has in mind is Nicky.

He starts working the phones.

Tom Casey's in with Billy.

"Let me get this straight, Jack," Casey says. "You want to deny a fire claim because a poodle had to take a piss."

"A Yorkie," Jack says. "Because a Yorkie had to take a piss."

Casey turns back from the window and smiles at him with beatific menace.

"Are you fucking with me, Jack?" he asks.

"I wouldn't fuck with you, Tom."

This is definitely true, because not only are Jack Wade and Tom Casey good friends, but Tom Casey is the Meanest Man in California.

This isn't just Jack's opinion; it's an official title Casey won by unanimous vote at a California Defense Bar Association meeting after he gave a now infamous lecture on the fine art of cross-examination.

Casey's lecture was a joke.

Literally. And it went something like this:

"This accountant goes to prison for embezzlement," Casey tells the audience, "and the second he gets to his cell, his cell mate, an enormous, wean-looking guy, says, 'Now, here in this prison we like to play House. Which would you rather be, the husband or the wife?'

"The accountant — who is terrified — doesn't want to be either, of course, but when he considers the various options, he decides he'd rather be the husband. So he manages to croak, 'The husband. I'll be the husband.'

'"Okay, Husband,' the cell mate says, 'now get over here and suck your wife's dick.'"

After the subsequent horrified gasp and burst of laughter, Casey tells the crowd, "And that joke tells you everything you need to know about cross-examination, to wit — when you get to the ultimate question, it shouldn't matter whether the witness says yes or no."

After which, Casey is officially named the Meanest Man in California.

"Goddamn it, Jack," Goddamn Billy Hayes says. He's irritable because Casey has insisted that they meet in the air-conditioned office and there's no smoking in there.

"Whatever the fuck kind of dog," Casey says.

Jack gazes on Casey's sartorial splendor. Today he's wearing a pearl gray Halbert amp; Halbert DB with a two-toned white shirt and red silk tie. Casey's famous for his clothes, especially his ties. The joke around the office is that you can actually take a tour of his walk-in closet at home, and that the bus stops for lunch at the shirt section before setting out for the shrine that is the tie rack.

He lifts his hands in his trademark shrug and asks Jack the same question he often asks (rhetorically) of juries, "I mean, am I missing something here?"

"You're missing a lot" Jack says.

"Enlighten me," Casey says, then he sits down and crosses his legs. His eyes widen in mock innocence. "Please, teach me."

Like, make your case.

Convince me and maybe you can convince a jury.

Don't convince me and I'll advise Goddamn Billy to pay the claim.

Jack knows the drill. He takes out the chart he made and lays it on Billy's desk.

"Bentley's whole overdose theory relies on Pamela Vale smoking in bed and drinking," Jack says. "I have eight witnesses who will swear that she was sober at least as of 10 p.m."

"That gives her half the night-"

"She didn't keep booze in the house."

"She bought-"

"Not anywhere in Dana Point."

"Go ahead," Casey says.

"The same witnesses will testify that Pam was terrified that night," Jack says. "That she told them Nicky was going to kill her."

"Hearsay."

"You can get it in."

Casey smiles. "Maybe."

"You'll get it in."

"Even if I do," Casey says, "so what? Pamela Vale was afraid and alone. Sadly, she fell off the wagon and went back to the one solace she had — the bottle. She drank herself into unconsciousness, the cigarette slipped from her hand, she died of CO asphyxiation or overdose before the flames hit her. A tragic accident."