When they come, they'll come through the old gate. He'll hear it creak open and then he'll hear their steps. Nicky won't come alone. He'll have his hitters.
Enough to take me out.
But not before I kill him.
Jack slips the pistol in his waistband and waits.
127
Letty del Rio checks the load in her weapon and slips it back into the holster.
This is a tricky operation with one hand.
Trickier still to drive, but she's going to do it.
Show up at Nicky's door like a bad-news Avon lady.
Ding-dong.
She finesses her coffee cup to the floor below her feet and starts the engine. Wondering where the hell Jack is. Why didn't he show up?
Never mind.
Time to go see Nicky.
Ding-dong.
128
The gate creaks open.
Jack hears it scrape against the ground.
One set of footsteps coming up the path.
Let it be Nicky, Jack thinks.
He holds the pistol at his side.
Pulls the hammer back and raises the gun.
Gets a whiff of something in the wind.
The smell of a burning cigarette.
Goddamn.
He tucks the pistol back under his shirt.
Goddamn, Billy.
129
They stand there not looking at each other for a minute or so.
Jack had forgotten how beautiful the view was from up here. The palm trees, the bougainvillea and jacaranda, the wide stretch of white beach that sweeps up to the big rock at Dana Head.
Has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Worth saving.
Worth killing for.
'It ain't too late,' Billy says.
'For what?'
'For you to walk away,' Billy says. 'Forget about what you seen here.'
Jack nods.
'It's too late,' he says. 'How long have you been on their payroll?'
'A long time.'
'Since the Atlas Warehouse?'
Billy nods. 'Nobody was supposed to die. Just a price buildup and a sale to the insurance company.'
'Why, Billy?'
'Money,' Billy says. 'You bust your ass for this company for dog bones while the agents make the big money and the underwriters take payoffs and the judges take bribes and the lawyers rake it in, and we old dogs are just supposed to roll over for the table scraps? The hell with that.'
'You set me up,' Jack says. 'You gave them my files, you tipped them off to every move. You jerked me like I was on a leash. You knew everything to do, everything to say to keep me pushing. You let me walk deeper and deeper into the trap, Billy, and you didn't say a word.'
'I had no choice, Jack,' Billy says. 'I had no goddamn choice.'
'Everyone has a choice.'
'So make a good one for yourself,' Billy says. 'I'm here to offer you a deal, Jack. You can still get on the boat.'
'With you and Nicky?'
Billy laughs, 'You still don't get it, Jack. It ain't Nicky. It's Mahogany Row. All the VPs and the president. They all got shares.'
Jack feels like the world is spinning.
'Shares in what?'
Billy gestures all around them. 'In this, Jack. Great Sunsets. We own it.'
Like the world's falling out from under him.
'California Fire and Life?' he asks. 'Owns Great Sunsets? Owns the Strands?'
'Mahogany Row, me, and some others,' Billy says. 'We all have shares.'
'Nicky Vale?'
'Partners.'
Genius.
Sheer freaking genius, Jack thinks.
'The company's been taking a goddamn pounding,' Billy says. 'Between the fires and the earthquakes and the fraud and the goddamn lawsuits, the company was about to go belly up. So instead of giving it all to the damn lawyers and the other crooks we decided to get a piece of it ourselves. We made some deals — started paying on some of the drive-downs, the phony thefts, the medical buildups, the arsons, and taking our cut on the other end. Pay out the money, get it back in the form of shares in dummy companies.'
The perfect way to loot your own company, Jack thinks. Pay bogus claims to yourself. Route the money through policyholders who then invest back into your dummy companies.
Very slick.
And it works both ways. The Russian mob can put dirty money into real estate, suffer a 'loss,' then get clean money back through the insurance company.
Everybody wins.
Except the legit policyholders who pay the premiums.
And dumb-ass honest claims dogs.
And the occasional victim like Pamela Vale.
It's just a beautiful scam.
So they took it to the next level.
Why dick around with little claims payments when you can hit the California Litigation Lottery? Set your own claims people up for bad faith suits, and then force yourself into settlements? An easy thing to do from Billy's position. A bad decision here, a fucked-up file there. He'd know where all the weaknesses were, or he'd put them there.
