Jack gets on the phone and calls number eleven, Fidelity Mutual, and it turns out that an old buddy named Mel Bornstein handled the claim.
"Did you do a PLR?" Jack asks.
"Yup."
"And you saw the priors?"
"Yup."
"Why did you pay?"
Mel laughs like hell and hangs up.
Jack tracks down adjusters number nine, ten, and thirteen, and they're each pretty much in helpless hysterics when they hang up the phone.
Three long years later Jack understands why they paid an obviously phony claim.
But he doesn't back then. Back then he's in a quandary. He knows what he should do: by law, in fact, he's obligated to report the fraud to the NICB (National Insurance Crime Bureau), cancel her policy, and deny the claim. But he just can't bring himself to turn her in and leave her without insurance (What if there was a fire? What if someone slipped and fell on her sidewalk? What if there was a real burglary?), so he just decides to deny the claim and forget about it.
Right.
Two days after he sends her the denial letter she shows up at the office. They have the same conversation roughly twice a month for the next three years. She doesn't write letters, she doesn't go over his head, she doesn't complain to the Department of Insurance, she doesn't sue. She just keeps coming back, and back, and back, and they always have the same conversation.
"Jack, you've neglected to pay me for my spoons."
"I didn't neglect to pay you for your spoons, Mrs. Hathaway," Jack says. "Your spoons were not stolen."
"Of course they were, Jack."
"Right, they were stolen fourteen times."
She sighs, "The neighborhood is not what it used to be, Jack."
"You live outside of Disneyland."
Like, Be on the lookout for a large rodent carrying spoons. Suspect is approximately five feet tall with large circular ears and white gloves.
"I need you to pay me for my spoons," Olivia says.
"Your spoons have been paid for thirteen times."
She thinks she has him. "But they have been stolen fourteen times."
"Mrs. Hathaway," Jack says. "Are you asking me to accept that on thirteen prior occasions the spoon thieves have returned your spoons to you? And that they've been stolen again… and again and again and again… No, please don't haul out the cookies."
But she does.
She always does.
She always sits there looking lovely, smiling, speaking softly, never raising her voice, and she always brings a Ziploc bag of sugar cookies.
"I know how you like these, Jack."
"I can't take any cookies, Mrs. Hathaway."
"Now," she says, reaching into her handbag and coming out with a stack of photographs, "little Billy has gone to junior college to study computer programming…"
Jack lowers his head and thumps it repeatedly on the table as Olivia continues her recitation of the daily lives and personal development of each and every child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and their spouses.
"… Kimmy is living – in sin – with a motorcycle repairman from Downey…"
Thump… thump…
"Jack, are you listening?"
"No."
"Now, Jack, you've neglected to pay me for my spoons."
"I didn't neglect to pay you for your spoons; your spoons were not stolen."
"Of course they were, dear."
"Right, they were stolen fourteen – I thought Kimmy was living with an electrician."
"That was last month."
"Oh."
"Cookie?"
"No thank you."
"Now, about my spoons…"
It's forty-five more agonizing minutes of the Olivia Hathaway Water Torture (drip… about my spoons… drip… about my spoons… drip…) before he can get rid of her and head out to Vale's mother's house in Monarch Bay,
18
Monarch Bay.
Aptly named.
Absolutely primo real estate location on the south coast.
Monarch Bay sits on the border between the towns of Laguna Niguel and Dana Point and went through Bosniaesque civil strife as to which town it would belong to. To most people's surprise, the residents chose Dana Point over the more tony Laguna Niguel, even though Dana Point in those days was just the harbor and a bunch of fast food joints, surf shops, and cheap motels on a strip of the PCH.
The Dana Point that Jack loved.
The choice pissed a lot of people off, especially the owners of the Ritz-Carlton/Laguna Niguel just down the beach, who never changed the resort's name, even though it's technically in Dana Point and not Laguna Niguel.
This is fine with Jack, who doesn't particularly want to be associated with the beautiful resort people. As far as Jack's concerned, the resort is basically a place for the young surf bums to work as waiters and supplement their meager incomes by screwing the rich wives that they've otherwise serviced at lunch. More than a few of whom live in the exclusive gated community of Monarch Bay.
You roll up to the gates of Monarch Bay in a Ford Taurus, you'd better be there to clean something. You'd better have some ammonia and rags in the backseat.
Otherwise, this is a gate for Mercedes and Jags and Rollses.
Jack does feel a little uncool in the Taurus, but he switched to a company car because somehow it just didn't feel right to go to a house where people have lost a loved one and show up in a '66 Mustang with a Hobie on top.
Feels disrespectful.
Getting the company car was a hassle.
To get a company car, you have to go to Edna.
Edna has those glasses with the little metal-bead chain hanging around her neck.
Jack says, "Edna, I need a car."
"Are you asking or telling?"
"Asking."
"We don't have any with surfboard racks on them."
Jack smiles. "It was my last call of the day. Three Arch Bay, so, you know…"
"I do know," Edna says. "I saw the crew vacuuming the sand out."
What Jack doesn't tell Edna is that he left two six-packs with the pool car crew for the inconvenience. Something he always does. The guys in the crew love Jack. They'd do anything for Jack.
"Sorry," he says.
"Company cars are not for pleasure," Edna says, pushing the keys at him.
"I promise I won't have any pleasure in it."
All of a sudden Edna has these images of twisted carnal goings-on in the backseat of one of her cars and her hand pauses on the keys.
" Tell me you boys don't-"
"No, no, no, no," Jack says, taking the keys. "Not in the backseat, anyway."
"Slip 17."
"Thank you."
So Jack takes a Taurus to Monarch Bay.
Where the guard gives the car a long look, just to make a point, and then asks, "Is Mr. Vale expecting you?"
Jack says, "He's expecting me."
The guard looks past Jack on the front seat and asks, "You're what? The dog groomer?"
"That's right. I groom the dog."
The house is a mock-Tudor mansion. The lawn is as manicured as a dowager's hand and a croquet set has been meticulously measured out on the grass. A rose garden edges the north wall.
Hasn't rained in three months, Jack thinks, and the roses are dripping with moisture, fresh as a blush.
Vale meets him in the driveway.
He's one good-looking man. He's about six-three, Jack guesses, thin, with black hair cut unfashionably long except somehow it looks perfectly stylish on him. He's wearing a beige pullover over faded jeans and Loafers. No socks. Wire-rim John Lennon glasses.
Very cool.
He looks younger than forty-three.
The face is movie-star handsome and mostly it's the eyes. They have a slight upward slant and they're the gray-blue color of a winter sea.
And intense.
Like when Vale looks at you he's trying to make you do something.
Jack has the feeling that most people do.
"Would you be Jack Wade?" Vale asks.
There's the slightest trace of an accent, but Jack can't work out what it is.