Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unfit to Practice

A few days later, on a hot mid-August Sunday, Kao, his wife, his son, and Dr. Mai returned to her office. They brought every business-related scrap of paper they possessed with them in white plastic trash sacks.

They all sat down on the beige carpet in the outer office and started making piles. The documentation consisted of hundreds of paper scraps-mimeographed, penciled, faded, half-legible, in the writings of half a dozen Southeast Asian languages-and most of it was legally irrelevant. Many of the actual receipts, the inventory list, the bills, had burned in the fire. This would be no ordinary insurance claim.

“Many times no receipt,” Dr. Mai explained. “Mrs. Vang went to Salvation Army, houses of friends, farmers’ market in Fresno to buy items for Blue Star. Paid cash. Many items burned up with no receipts.”

“Can we get a list of those items?”

Dr. Mai spoke to Mrs. Vang, who first shook her head and then shrugged.

“Things came from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. Refugee items. Records burned up. Wrong language anyway.” Dr. Mai squatted comfortably on the floor. They all drank Sprites. Although Kao’s wife looked much younger than he did and was more traditional-looking with her turquoise bracelets and black braid, she too bore the careworn look of premature age. She could have been twenty-five or forty.

“Don’t worry,” Nina said.

“But we cannot-we just cannot prove all the lost items.”

“Just make me a list. In English. Everything you remember. Can you help with that, Dr. Mai?”

“But-we do not know the money paid.”

“Estimate. Here.” Nina made a heading on a fresh legal pad and picked up a scrap. “What does this say?”

“Four pairs sneakers. No amount.”

“What kind of sneakers?”

Shrugs all around. Kao’s shoulders sagged. He and See looked at each other.

They could have been Chinese and worth five bucks a pair. They probably were Chinese.

But they could have been Nikes.

“Estimate forty dollars a pair,” Nina said. “We’ll make sure the insurance company knows it’s only an estimate.”

At the end of the week the family trekked back to the office. This time Nina managed to persuade them to accompany her to Sato’s for dinner. Dr. Mai wore his usual oxford-cloth shirt and sandals. Kao somehow managed to look debonair in spite of everything. Boun, their son, came, too. Their daughter, Dr. Mai explained, was ill and couldn’t come. See smiled here and there, and Nina got the feeling that she had a sunny disposition in better times and understood English fairly well. After dinner, Dr. Mai presented Nina with the list. Estimated $54,000 in inventory lost.

She gave it back and said they must have missed a lot.

By the following week the loss amount topped $175,000. Nina had gone over almost every item. Almost twenty pages long, with several hundred paper scraps pasted onto ink-jet paper as exhibits, the list had been generated out of thin air, the same thin air that the inventory had burned into.

Nina spent a whole office day, phone off and door shut, dictating the claim letter. She gave a lengthy summary of the violent events and attached all the documents she had along with photographs of Kao’s face after the first shooting, creating a package both heartrending and intimidatingly thick. A solid week passed before she and Sandy had all the exhibits organized completely to her satisfaction. Kinko’s had to keep the package overnight to make the copies, and the final hefty original had to be carried in a box.

After completing all this labor, Nina drove the claim over to Heritage personally, staying for a long chat about the need for discretion and speed with Marilyn, who did not overreact to the large claim amount and continued to flash hints of a beating heart.

Sandy took the first call from the insurance company on the first Tuesday morning in September. She came into the office, where Nina was stuffing pleadings into her briefcase for court, and said, “Heritage’s first offer is in. They’re starting at a hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

“Glory be,” Nina said.

“It’s like the miracle of loaves and fishes.”

They experienced a rare moment of perfect harmony. Sandy approved. Nina was elated. Sandy liked Nina to win for the less powerful in the community, and Nina liked to imagine that occasionally she actually helped to alleviate some human suffering, her way of giving back to the planet. Even more important, she felt that justice would be served. Wrongs would be compensated. The system was working.

“They’ve decided to work with us,” Nina said. “Call the court and tell the judge’s clerk I’ll be a few minutes late.” Picking up her own line, she called the adjuster, thanked her, and refused the offer.

“But we can’t even read the receipts. As you well know,” Marilyn Rose said.

“Did you see the medical photos?” Nina said. “It makes me ashamed. They come all the way here to start a new life in the land of freedom and-”

“All right already. I’ll get back to you.”

Thursday brought another call. “Two hundred ten thousand,” said Marilyn. “That’s the best I can do.”

“What’s the point?” Nina said. “Why not pay out the limit?”

“Because that puts some new procedures in place with some different oversight. Trust me, you don’t want to go for the limit. Look, you’ve probably only got about sixty thousand that actually meets our documentation standards. This is it, Nina. I’m not holding back a nickel of what I got approved.”

“I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Thanks.” Thrilled, Nina called Dr. Mai and the Vangs and told them about the offer. “I think we should sleep on it,” she said. “Maybe I can squeeze out another ten thousand.”

“It is wonderful. Wonderful,” Dr. Mai said. “Kao calls me every day. He never expected so much, I know.”

“Does the family still plan to return to Laos?”

Dr. Mai hesitated. “It is complicated. Everything in Kao’s life is complicated.” He seemed unwilling to explain further. Again Nina had the feeling that no amount of reading about Hmong culture would give her much useful insight into the family’s American experience. Dr. Mai seemed unnaturally restrained to her, as if he felt shy about sharing the extent of the family’s suffering.

Maybe they were just the kind of people who disliked having to ask for help of any kind. Or perhaps Dr. Mai’s reluctance arose out of embarrassment that the people who had snuffed out Kao’s livelihood and who would come after any money he might possess came from his own hills and his own culture.

“I will call you tomorrow,” she said.

That last call to Dr. Mai had occurred on Thursday, September 6, four days earlier.

And that night, that ill-starred night, wanting to take one more look through her notes to decide whether to try for a larger claim or just shake hands with the princess of generosity who had adjusted the claim, Nina had taken Kao Vang’s file home in the Bronco. The file had been right on top in Nina’s briefcase in the backseat-not the enormous claim file, which was safe, but the client-intake file with her notes of her interviews with Kao and the notes regarding negotiations.

Just the notes that could tell Kao’s enemies just how much money was involved, and contained her speculations that he knew exactly who they were.

And the Vangs’ home address, which they hadn’t wanted to give her. Gone.

Nina hadn’t called Marilyn Rose at Heritage that Friday. She had waited until now to meet with Dr. Mai. Today she had to tell him. Taking a deep breath of cool mountain air, she strapped herself back into the rental car and drove on.

The Strawberry Lodge was a big, beat-up, green-roofed, barnlike edifice alongside the highway. Usually you could stop for a cup of coffee there, and the place bustled on weekends, even in fall. In winter there was cross-country skiing and sledding down the hill, but today, an off-season Monday, the weekend fun-lovers had deserted. A few rebel stragglers had parked SUVs out front. She parked the rental and went inside.