57
There are three basic motives for arson: insanity, vengeance, and money.
And the greatest of these is money.
Take insanity first, though. Here you're talking about your storied pyromaniac, that specific-type freak who is simply and hopelessly enamored of fire. The sad fact is that there is a striking coincidence between childhood sexual abuse and pyromania. There is something about the all-consuming heat that is evocative of sexuality and at the same time cleansing. It both brings up the heat and makes it go away.
This kind of fire, though, doesn't come up much in insurance fraud anyway, because pyromaniacs tend to burn other people's stuff and they tend to get caught doing it. So you pay the claim and move on.
Then there's revenge. A little more common but still unusual, because generally people who are really pissed these days just shoot the object of their pissed-offedness. But there are white supremacist nut jobs who like to lob Molotov cocktails at synagogues, and there's the occasional fired (no pun intended) cleaning lady who cleans the floor with charcoal starter and a match, and there's the husband about to lose his house to the ex-wife and who burns it to the ground by way of saying 'Live in this, bitch.''
So there's revenge, and there is something about a fire that's cathartic, no question, but it's not a choice that most people make.
So there's insanity and revenge, but they both pale compared to the numero uno motive for arson — may I have the envelope please Money.
Money, honey.
To the tune of some $8 billion a year nationally.
Jack knows that there are about eighty-six thousand arson fires a year. That's about one for every hour of the day and the motive for most of them is money.
Or more properly, the lack of it.
Fire makes all things new again.
A fire in nature burns off the old to make way for the new. Same thing in business — it burns off the old investment to make way for the new. It's an ancient cycle, and the fact is that the incidence of arson directly corresponds to the economic cycle. In boom times, arson goes down. In a recession it goes up. In boom times, people buy a lot of stuff on credit because they're making the money to service the debt. Then the recession hits, the money ain't coming in like it was, but the debt is the same.
It's the same thing with homes. Most people buy more house than they can afford. They buy the house when things are fat, thinking they're going to stay fat forever. Then things get lean but the mortgage is still fat. The mortgage doesn't go on any damn diet.
Most people walk away from the house, say goodbye to their equity, and try to start over.
Others say, like, fuck that, and get proactive.
Let their insurance company pay off the mortgage.
It happened a lot in Orange County, Jack thinks. In the Reagan years everyone was fat. The whole economy was betting on the income. Then reality hit, and what everyone bought on credit during the Reagan years they burned down during the Bush administration. The Orange County treasurers got caught on the slide and the county went bankrupt. So the real estate market collapsed, the building trades went down the chute, and the only industry that was booming was the arson business.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Nature's eternal cycle.
Sometimes nature does it on her own.
It's weird to contemplate, but Jack knows the reality is that the eventual Southern California economic recovery was fueled by disasters, first fire then earthquake.
It's 1993 and the economy sucks. The real estate market and building trades are moribund and everything else comes to a standstill with them. Then the fires hit. Laguna, Malibu, Thousand Oaks. Big out-of-control fires that rise up out of the dry ground and the hot dry wind and burn thousands of acres and hundreds of houses. A lot of people are burned out of their homes and the insurance companies pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits.
Which is where the economic recovery comes in, because the fires restore the building trades. The insurance companies provide the cash to rebuild the burned homes Contractors get hired, they hire workers, they buy materials from the suppliers, the suppliers start hiring people, the people take their salaries and buy stuff…
The cycle goes on an upswing.
Then the earthquake hits.
Nature comes to the rescue because it forces the insurance companies to lolly up billions. Billions of dollars of new money gets pumped into the So-Cal economy and it gets things started again.
So sometimes nature touches off the cycle.
More often, though, it's people.
Touching off their own economic renewal with a match.
And Jack wonders if that's what Nicky Vale did.
Strictly speaking, you don't always need motive to prove arson. The textbook example Jack learned in fire school was: Suppose a person sets fire to his building at noon on Main Street in front of a hundred witnesses, five of whom videotape the event. In that case, you don't need to establish motive, because you have ample direct evidence that your man did the fire.
Jack thinks this example is very useful, because in his experience nothing like this has ever ever happened and it's never ever going to happen.
The closest Jack has come to that slice of heaven was the case of the husband who is coming home from work and sees a plume of smoke rising from his town house complex. Fire trucks roar past him, sirens wail, the whole nine yards. The husband pulls up to the security gate only to see his wife sitting on the lawn — a bottle of Jack Daniel's in one hand and a gasoline can in the other, and she looks up at him and says, 'I always hated that damn house.'
That is what is known in the claims business as a slam dunk, and Jack has always retained an awed sense of admiration for the husband's honesty, because it was the husband who told Jack the story.
'So I guess I'm fucked on my claim,' the husband says after relating the story to Jack. They're standing beside the charred ruins of what had been the man's very nice $375,000 town house.
'I'm afraid so,' Jack says.
Jack almost wants to pay the claim, he feels so bad for the guy, who was, after all, honest about what happened. But the law says that if any permanent resident of the house intentionally sets the fire, the homeowner is shit-out-of-luck.
But Jack offers a suggestion.
'You can try saying that your wife is mentally ill and therefore her actions can't be intentional,' Jack says.
'You think that would work?'
'Hey, it's California.'
To his credit, the guy doesn't try it.
He does file for divorce, though.
Anyway, absent that kind of rare event, you need motive.
Today is Motive Day.
As to the murder, well, in a weird way the murder piggybacks the arson. The motive and the opportunity are the same. The homicide version of incendiary origin comes with the coroner's report proving that she died before the fire. Then if the fire was intentional… well, it's virtually impossible to conclude that the death was accidental.
Prove it.
You bet your ass, Nicky.
