Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

Woman's lying in bed and the bed's on fire. She doesn't wake up.

Flame licks at her thighs like a lover and she doesn't wake up. Just down the hill the Pacific pounds on the rocks. California fire and life.

George Scollins doesn't wake up, either.

Reason for this is that he's lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck.

It's easy to see how this might have happened — Scollins's little Laguna Canyon house is a freaking mess. Tools, wood, furniture lying all over the place, you can hardly walk across the floor without tripping on something.

In addition to the tools, wood and furniture, you have paint cans, containers of stain, plastic bottles full of turpentine, cleaning rags…

This is also the reason the house is a bonfire.

Not surprising, really.

Not surprising at all.

California fire and life.

Two Vietnamese kids sit in the front of a delivery truck.

The driver, Tommy Do, pulls it off into a parking lot.

"Middle of freaking nowhere," says Tommy's buddy, Vince Tranh.

Tommy doesn't give a shit, he's happy to be getting rid of the load, a truck full of hot stuff.

Tommy pulls over by a Caddy.

"They love their Caddies," Tranh says to him in Vietnamese.

"Let 'em," Tommy says. Tommy's saving for a Miata. A Miata is cool. Tommy can see himself cruising in a black Miata, wraparound shades on his face, a babe with long black hair beside him.

Yeah, he can see that.

Two guys get out of the Caddy.

One of them's tall. Looks like one of those Afghan hounds, Tommy thinks, except the guy's wearing a dark blue suit that has got to be hot standing out there in the desert. The other guy is shorter, but broad. Guy wears a black Hawaiian print shirt with big flowers all over it, and Tommy thinks he looks like a jerk. Tommy has him tabbed as the leg breaker, and Tommy is going to be glad to get his money, unload and get the fuck back to Garden Grove.

As a general rule, Tommy doesn't like doing business with non-Vietnamese, especially these people.

Except the money this time is too good.

Two grand for a delivery job.

The big guy in the flowered shirt opens a gate and Tommy drives through it. Guy closes the gate behind them.

Tommy and Tranh hop out of the truck.

Blue Suit says, "Unload the truck."

Tommy shakes his head.

"Money first," he says.

Blue Suit says, "Sure."

"Business is business," Tommy says, like he's apologizing for the money-first request. He's trying to be polite.

"Business is business," Blue Suit agrees.

Tommy watches Blue Suit reach into the jacket pocket for his wallet, except Blue Suit takes out a silenced 9mm and puts three bullets in a tight pattern into Tommy's face.

Tranh stands there with this oh-fucking-no look on his face but he doesn't run or anything. Just stands there like frozen, which makes it easy for Blue Suit to put the next three into him.

The guy in the flowered shirt hefts first Tommy, then Tranh, and tosses their bodies into the Dumpster. Pours gasoline all over them then tosses a match in.

"Vietnamese are Buddhists?" he asks Blue Suit.

"I think so."

They're speaking in Russian.

"Don't they cremate their dead?"

Blue Suit shrugs.

An hour later they have the truck unloaded and the contents stored in the cinder block building. Twelve minutes after that, Flower Shirt drives the truck out into the desert and makes it go boom.

California fire and life.

Jack Wade sits on an old Hobie longboard.

Riding swells that refuse to become waves, he's watching a wisp of black smoke rise over the other side of the big rock at Dana Head. Smoke's reaching up into the pale August sky like a Buddhist prayer.

Jack's so into the smoke that he doesn't feel the wave come up behind him like a fat Dick Dale guitar riff. It's a big humping reef break that slams him to the bottom then rolls him. Keeps rolling him and won't let him up — it's like, That's what you get when you don't pay attention, Jack. You get to eat sand and breathe water — and Jack's about out of breath when the wave finally spits him out onto the shore.

He's on all fours, sucking for air, when he hears his beeper go off up on the beach where he left his towel. He scampers up the sand, grabs the beeper and checks the number, although he's already pretty sure who it's going to be.

California Fire and Life.

The woman's dead.

Jack knows this even before he gets to the house because when he calls in it's Goddamn Billy. Six-thirty in the morning and Goddamn Billy's already in the office.

Goddamn Billy tells him there's a fire and a fatality.

Jack hustles up the 120 steps from Dana Strand Beach to the parking lot, takes a quick shower at the bathhouse then changes into the work clothes he keeps in the backseat of his '66 Mustang. His work clothes consist of a Lands' End white button-down oxford, Lands' End khaki trousers, Lands' End moccasins and an Eddie Bauer tie that Jack keeps preknotted so he can just slip it on like a noose.

Jack hasn't been inside a clothing store in about twelve years.

He owns three ties, five Lands' End white button-down shirts, two pairs of Lands' End khaki trousers, two Lands' End guaranteed-not-to-wrinkle-even-if-you-run-it-through-your-car-engine blue blazers (a rotation deal: one in the dry cleaners, one on his back) and the one pair of Lands' End moccasins.

Sunday night he does laundry.

Washes the five shirts and two pairs of trousers and hangs them out to unwrinkle. Preknots the three ties and he's ready for the workweek, which means that he's in the water a little before dawn, surfs until 6:30, showers at the beach, changes into his work clothes, loops the tie around his neck, gets into his car, pops in an old Challengers tape, and races to the offices of California Fire and Life.

He's been doing this for coming up to twelve years.

Not this morning, though.

This morning, propelled by Billy's call, he races to the loss site — 37 Bluffside Drive, just down the road above Dana Strand Beach.

It takes him maybe ten minutes. He's pulling around on the circular driveway — his wheels on the gravel sound like the undertow in the trench at high tide — and hasn't even fully stopped before Brian Bentley walks over and taps on the passenger-side window.

Brian "Accidentally" Bentley is the Sheriff's Department fire investigator. Which is another reason Jack knows there's been a fatal fire, because the Sheriff's Department is there. Otherwise it would be an inspector from the Fire Department, and Jack wouldn't be looking at Bentley's fat face.

Or his wavy red hair turning freaking orange with age.

Jack leans over and winds down the window.

Bentley sticks his red face in and says, "You got here quick, Jack. What, you carrying the fire and the life?"

"Yup."

"Good," Bentley says. "The double whammy."

Jack and Bentley hate each other.

That old thing about if, say, Jack was on fire, Bentley wouldn't piss on him to put it out? If Jack was on fire, Bentley would drink gasoline so he could piss on Jack.

"Croaker in the bedroom," Bentley says. "They had to scrape her off the springs."

"The wife?" asks Jack.

"We don't have a positive yet," Bentley says. "But it's an adult female."

"Pamela Vale, age thirty-four," Jack says. Goddamn Billy gave him the specs over the phone.

"Name rings a bell," Bentley says.

"Save the Strands," Jack says.

"What the what?"

"Save the Strands," Jack says. "She's been in the papers. She and her husband are big fund-raisers for Save the Strands."