Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

"What did Nicky do with the furniture?"

"What furniture?"

"Shit, where did I put my matches?"

"I don't know nothing about no fucking furniture!"

Teddy isn't lying. Teddy is too scared to be lying.

"Give me something, Teddy," Jack says. "Something I can use."

Teddy's thinking it over. Jack can see that Teddy's weighing relative fears. His fear of Nicky Vale against his fear of burning alive. Jack knows he's going to win because the flame is immediate and the other is still abstract and Teddy doesn't have a good grasp of the abstract.

"Westview," Teddy says.

"What?"

"What I got to give you," Teddy says. "I just hear Kazzy talking about something called Westview. Something he's got going on with Nicky Vale."

Jack pushes the button and the garage door opens.

Teddy's boys are standing there with guns pointed. Three shotguns, two pistols, and a Glock.

"Good idea," Jack says. "Let's have a blazing gun battle. Barbecue Teddy Cool."

"Put 'em down! Put 'em down! Put 'em down!" Teddy screams.

Jack walks through them to his car. Gets inside, opens the window and says, "He sang like a little girl. What can I say, guys? He's still my bish."

Starts the car and drives away.

Wondering, what the hell is Westview?

Nicky looks across the desk at Paul Gordon, who's sniffing the top of his cappuccino to make sure that it's nutmeg and not cinnamon.

That important task done, Gordon looks up at Nicky like, I'm ready for you now.

For his part, Nicky will be glad to leave the man's ego behind.

"Ready?" Nicky asks.

"I'm all yours."

"Tomorrow morning," Nicky says, "Tom Casey will call to offer $50 million to settle my claim."

Gordon freaks. In his wildest imagination he never dreamed that Cal Fire would go for the $50 million. He was counting on them turning it down. What the fuck good is Cal Fire if it suddenly gets smart?

"Don't worry," he says. "I'll turn it down. I'll find a pretext."

Nicky shakes his head.

"You'll accept that offer."

Gordon turns white.

"That's not the plan."

"It is now."

"The hell it is," Gordon says. "I've spent years setting up these suits. I've got the cops, I've got the judges. You can't bail on me now."

Nicky shrugs.

Gordon's voice gets shrill. "Nicky, what the fuck are you thinking about?! We can ride Jack Wade for hundreds of millions of dollars! Don't settle for the short money now!"

"Jack Wade has played his role," Nicky says.

Wade's on his way out.

Then Gordon gets it.

"You son of a bitch," he says. "You cut your own deal."

"Accept the offer," Nicky says. "You'll get your fee."

"Fuck you," Gordon says. "We're taking it to trial. We're taking all of them to trial."

"In that case," Nicky says, "you're fired."

Gordon laughs. "You can't fire me, you jumped-up little hood. You need me. Without me, they'll eat you alive. You think you can stand down Cal Fire and Tom Casey without me?!"

Actually, yes, Nicky thinks. I think I can.

In fact, I know it.

He stands up. Says, "You're fired."

Gordon flips out.

Follows Nicky down the hallway yelling, "You think you're the only heavy hitter in town?! You need me, I don't need you! I'll have Viktor Tratchev in this office in five minutes! Maybe he has the brains, he has the vision! Or Kazzy Azmekian! He has the balls to see this through! He's not going to let you crash this, you jumped-up little greasy Eurotrash hood! You can't fire me!"

A very tawdry scene, Nicky thinks as he gets in the car. And Gordon should not have played the Tratchev card. Or the Azmekian one. Very self-indulgent. Very uncool.

Two cards he should have held close to the chest.

And "jumped-up little greasy Eurotrash hood"? One might be tempted to take that personally.

Oh, well.

He leans back into the seat.

Almost there, he thinks.

A couple of steps to safety.

And the turnaround inside one generation.

Fifty million dollars tomorrow.

Fifty million dollars of squeaky-clean money.

But there's work to be done first.

"Ritz-Carlton," he tells Dani.

Take the first step.

Dani waits out in the car while the pakhan has his meeting.

Uncle Nguyen's head is throbbing.

He's just had to tell Tommy Do's distraught mother that her idiot son is probably not coming home for dinner.

Ever.

So there's a lot of wailing and sobbing and other irritating noise — this woman has a piercing shriek that goes through Uncle Nguyen's head. She completely drowns out the Angels game and won't settle down until Uncle Nguyen promises her vengeance.

He finally gets rid of her with that promise and goes down into the basement where he has Tony Ky hanging by his wrists, and just to improve his mood he gives Tony a couple of two-handers across the back with a bamboo rod, which elicits a satisfying grunt of pain, and then he says to Tony, "Tell me who these Russians were."

And Tony tells him — tall skinny Russian, tall fat Russian.

He doesn't know their names so Uncle Nguyen takes a Jim Edmonds swing at his back — like good for a three-bagger in any park in America — and asks him who they were working for.

"Tratchev," Tony says.

Uncle Nguyen has a tough time with this.

He's been doing business with Viktor Tratchev for years and it's always been a good and mutually profitable relationship. So he gets Tratchev on the phone and asks, "What is this shit all about?"

"What shit?"

"Two of your people hired two of my boys for an errand and the boys haven't come back."

"Which of my people?"

Uncle Nguyen describes them.

Tratchev is very happy to hear this description. The last thing in the world he needs right now is a beef with the Vietnamese. First thing he needs right now is an ally against Nicky Vale, so he says, "You're talking about Dani and Lev."

"You had better send Dani and Lev over for a chat."

"They're not mine."

"Whose are they?"

Tratchev tells him.

Uncle Nguyen asks, "Do you have a problem if I do what I need to do?"

Go figure, Tratchev doesn't have a problem.

Jack walks back into the office, they're all looking at him like they're seeing a ghost.

Jack hears the whispers as he walks down the narrow aisle through the cubicles. Fired… perjury… kickbacks… crooked cop…

"I'm baa-aack!" Jack sings out.

Some of the dogs turn around in their cubicles, bury their faces in their monitors. Except one who picks up her phone, cups her hand around the receiver and starts whispering.

So Hansen has released a Be on the Lookout For and this babe can't wait to drop the dime. But it'll take them some time to work out how to handle it. There'll be calls up and down, calls to Billy, calls to Mahogany Row…

So you have time but not a lot of time.

He sits down and starts banging the computer.

Gets into the California Secretary of State's database and types in "Westview."

Which is not the happiest name to be researching if you happen to be located on the West Coast.

The screen brings up a couple of hundred of them.

Westview Travel, Westview Realty, Westview Retirement, Westview Recreational Vehicles, Westview Condominium Association…

Westview Ltd.

Jack goes with Westview Ltd.

A limited partnership will only show the general partners, not the shareholders. They're anonymous until you can get your hands on the actual limited partnership agreement, which would have to be subpoenaed.

So it's a good vehicle to play the ownership shell game.

Jack double-clicks on Westview Ltd. and requests an LP1 statement, which lists the general partners.