Don Winslow - While Drowning in the Desert

“Neal,” Graham said, “somebody else probably saw him standing by the road and picked him up. Silverstein’s probably halfway home by now.”

“You think?”

“Sure,” Graham said. “Listen, leave the cops my number. Then you drive to Palm Desert. Check the rest stops as you go, in case someone dropped him off and he’s trying to call. Check in with me every two hours.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll probably get to his house and find him in his living room watching Wheel of Fortune.”

I started to feel better. Silverstein was probably sitting at home watching Wheel of Fortune. He was fine. Bored, but fine.

Thank God.

“Unless-” Graham said.

“‘Unless’?”

“Unless,” Graham said, “there’s a reason Silverstein doesn’t want to go home…”

A reason?…

Not wanting to go home?

What would make Graham think that Nathan doesn’t want to go home? Just because he disappeared yesterday, wouldn’t get on the airplane, wouldn’t get in the Jeep, wouldn’t get in a Toyota, a Mazda, a Nissan, a BMW or a Mercedes, then took the car, drove off, dumped the car and disappeared…

“You think he was stalling?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

“Why wouldn’t he want to go home?” I asked.

I asked Karen this question when I called her up.

“Before you say anything about sperm or hostility or knitting or anything,” I said when she answered, “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m listening.”

I told her the entire odyssey (so far) of my experience with Nathan and finished with the question, “Why wouldn’t Nathan want to go home?”

“Let me see,” Karen said. “In Las Vegas he has booze, a girlfriend, and an audience. And chocolate cake. In Palm Desert he has

… television, I guess. The more interesting question is, why would he want to go home?”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“Neal, he’s a lonely old man who had some fun and company in Las Vegas,” she said. “Then you hurt his pride so he decided he’d show you. And he did.”

Yes, he did.

She said, “So go find him, apologize, and then talk to him about getting a nice condo in Las Vegas.”

“Karen, my job is to get him home, not take care of him forever.”

“Neal, life puts things in your way for a reason.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

This is a big difference between Karen and me. She thinks that life is a fated journey of challenges and discoveries. I think it’s a random sequence of arbitrary occurrences. I also thought that she was veering dangerously close to the baby thing. If Karen decided that having a child right now was fate, I was doomed.

“I’m glad you’re not mad at me anymore,” I said.

“I didn’t say that I wasn’t mad at you,” she said. “You said that you needed to talk. Now, when I tell you that I need to talk, which is about once a week, you listen, right? So when you tell me that you need to talk, which is once about every eight months or so, I’m going to listen because I love you. But I’m still royally pissed at you.”

“Royally pissed?”

“Royally.”

“Jesus.”

“Damn straight.”

She broke the silence by saying, “So go find Nathan Silverstein, get him settled, then come home and knock me up.”

Click. Dial tone.

First things first, I thought. First find Nathan, then get him home.

Sigh. Then find out if he’d really rather live in Las Vegas. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince Friends to get him organized with a nice little condo in Vegas. Maybe somewhere near the Great Hope White, so they could do whatever it was they did together. Then Nathan could happily totter around, smoke cigarettes, drink vodka, ogle women, eat chocolate cake, and perform impromptu stand-up routines in cocktail bars. Karen and Graham were right. What was I so worried about?

Where to begin, where to begin…

There’s a lot of talk these days about the learning curve. learning curve. You know, you’re “ahead of the curve,” you’re “behind the curve,” etcetera. Well, on the issue of why Nathan didn’t want to go back to his condo in Palm Desert, I wasn’t ahead of the curve or behind the curve.

I was standing flat-footed and stupid on the curve and the car was speeding around the curve right at me.

In my defense, I didn’t know then what I know now. At the time, I headed west through the desert on I-15 looking for the Nathan I knew nothing about…

Listen, it ticked me off when I found out about it. I mean, when I finally had a chance to look at the following documents I thought something along the order of, “Sure, now. Why didn’t you show me this when it could have done me some good?”

I don’t want you thinking the same thing, so:

Craig D. SchaefferAttorney-at-Law3615 MontereyPalm Desert, CA

Ms. Pamela A. HolmstrumClaims SuperintendentWestern States Insurance Co. 801 Flower StreetLos Angeles, CA

17 July 1983

Dear Ms. Holmstrum,

Pursuant to your request that I evaluate the coverage situation vis-a-vis the fire that occurred to your insured, Mr. Heinz Muller, on 30 May, I undertook the following activities: I reviewed the fire inspector’s reports and spoke with Captain MacKenzie of the Coachella Valley Consolidated Fire Department; I took recorded statements of Mr. Muller and his tenant, Mr. Abdullah; I reviewed various financial records of both Mr. Muller and Mr. Abdullah; I attempted to contact potential witnesses to the fire; and I reviewed the applicable statutory and case law relevant to the insurance coverage issues. (Please refer to Appendix A for a discussion of the applicable case law.)

Based on this preliminary investigation I offer the following thoughts:

It seems clear that the fire which destroyed the insured’s house at 1385 Hopalong Way, Palm Desert, California, was incendiary in nature-that is, an arson fire. Sheriff’s investigators found trace elements of incendiary material-to wit, gasoline-in the flooring and subflooring. Additionally, traces of wicks-in this case bed sheets twisted and laid out in various strings throughout the house-were also found. Also, sheriff’s investigators state that this was a “hot” fire, a comment which might seem a redundancy on the surface, but which is actually a piece of jargon that refers to the relative temperature of the combustion, a “hot” fire being indicative of arson.

In English, Ms. Holmstrum, your insured’s house went up like a torch.

Equally suspicious is the fact that your insured’s tenant, Mr. Sami Abdullah (also your insured, as he has a rental policy with Western States Insurance Company), was out of town on a long weekend when the fire occurred. Mr. Abdullah states that he was in Las Vegas, but cannot remember the “precise name” of the hotel in which he stayed.

Mr. Muller, who resides in nearby Rancho Mirage, also seems to have been away that whole weekend. Mr. Muller states that he was in Big Bear, and offered hotel and restaurant receipts to validate this assertion.

As to Mr. Muller’s claim for policy limits benefits under his homeowner’s insurance policy, while we should by all means continue to investigate, I am afraid that, in the absence of any proof of Muller’s involvement in the fire, you will owe such benefits. While it is true that Mr. Muller has been trying to sell the house at 1385 Hopalong Way, it does not appear that he has any apparent financial difficulties that would be a motive for arson. In fact, Mr. Muller seems, as much as we can determine from his complex financial records, to be doing rather well in the international import/export market. Furthermore, he seems to have an airtight alibi for the time of the fire.