California Fire And Life

9

Goddamn Billy Hayes strikes a match, cups his hands against the breeze, and lights his cigarette.

He's sitting on a metal folding chair in the cactus garden outside his office at California Fire and Life, claim files in his lap, reading glasses on his nose, and a Camel in his lips.

The cactus garden was Billy's idea. Since the People's Republic of California banned smoking in the workplace, Billy has been the company chairperson of COSA, the California Outdoor Smokers Association. He figured since he spent most of his time out in the courtyard anyway, it might as well be someplace he liked, so he had it rebuilt as a cactus garden.

If you need to talk to Billy and he isn't in his office, he's outside sitting on his folding chair, working on his files and sucking on a stick. One time Jack came in on a Sunday night and moved Billy's desk out there. Billy thought that was just about as amusing as filtered cigarettes.

Billy came from Tucson twenty years ago to head up Cal Fire and Life's Fire Claims Division. He didn't want to come, but the company said it was "up or out," and up meant coming out to California. So here he is, sitting out among the ocotillo and barrel cactus and the sand and the rocks amidst the aroma of sage, tobacco, and carbon monoxide coming oft the traffic streaming by on the 405.

Goddamn Billy Hayes is a small man – five-six – and so thin he looks like one of those dolls where there's just wire under the little clothes. Got a sun-shriveled tan face, a silver crew cut, and eyes as blue as Arctic ice. He wears good blue suits over cowboy boots. Used to keep a. 44 Colt holstered on his belt – back when he had a few arson losses on some mob-owned buildings in Phoenix, and the Trescia family intimated that if he didn't pay up maybe he'd have an "accident."

Here's how Billy handles that.

Goddamn Billy walks into young Joe Trescia's real estate office with the. 44 in his hand, pulls the hammer back, sticks the barrel up under young Joe's nose and says, "I'm about to have me one hell of a goddamn accident here."

Five wise guys standing there – scared too shitless to reach for their own hardware because it's clear this little nut ball would splatter Joe Jr.'s brains all over the wall. Which would make Joe Sr. very unhappy, so they just stand there sweating and saying silent prayers to St. Anthony.

Young Joe looks up the blue steel barrel at those blue steel eyes and says, "I've decided to look elsewhere for our insurance needs."

But that was the old days, and they don't let you do that kind of thing anymore, especially not in California, where it would be deemed inappropriate. ("I mean, goddamn it," Billy said, relaying the story to Jack one night over Jack Daniel's with beer chasers, "in a state where they won't let you smoke, you know they ain't gonna let you splatter some greaseball's brains all over the wall.") So the pistol now sits on the top shelf of Billy's bedroom closet.

What we got now instead of guns, Billy thinks, is we got lawyers.

Not as fast, but every bit as lethal and a hell of a lot more expensive.

Only thing more expensive than having lawyers is not having lawyers, because what insurance companies do these days – in addition to selling insurance and paying claims – is they get sued.

We get sued, Billy thinks, for not paying enough, paying too slow, paying too fast, but especially for not paying at all.

Which is what you got to do when you got an arson, or a phony theft, or a car accident that didn't really happen, or even a dead insured who isn't really dead but who's slurping pina coladas in Botswana or some such goddamn place.

You gotta deny those claims. Say, Sorry, Charlie, no money; and then of course they sue you for "bad faith."

Insurance companies are scared shitless of bad faith lawsuits.

You end up spending more on lawyers and court costs than you would have just to pay the goddamn claim, but goddamn it, you just can't go around paying money you don't owe.

Another Goddamn Billy dictum: "We don't pay people to burn their own houses down."

Unless, of course a judge and/or jury disagrees with you.

Finds that you "unreasonably" denied the claim or paid less than you should. Then you're in bad faith and you're also neck deep in a downwardly swirling shifter, because they hit you with not only the "contractual damages," but also "compensatory damages," and – if they really hate you – punitive damages.

Then you do pay your insureds to burn their own house down, and you also pay them compensatories for the pain and anguish you caused them, and you pay a few million in punitive damages if the scum-sucking, bottom-feeding goddamn plaintiff's attorney has managed to whip the jury into a froth about how mean and nasty you were to the poor insureds who burned their own goddamn house down in the first place.

So it's entirely possible – possible, shit, it's happened – to deny a $10,000 theft claim and get popped for a cool mil in a bad faith judgment.

You get the right lawyer, the right judge and the right jury, the very best thing that can happen to you in your whole life is that your insurance company denies your claim.

Which is why Billy sends Jack Wade out on the Vale loss, because Jack is the best adjuster he's got.

Goddamn Billy's thinking these thoughts while he's looking through the Vales' homeowner's policy and what he sees is that this loss is a beaut: a million-five on the house itself; $750,000 on personal property, propped up with another $500,000 in special endorsements.

Not to mention a dead wife.

With a $250,000 life policy on her.

All of which is why he handed this one to Jack Wade.

He knows Jack, so he knows that whatever else happens, Jack is going to do the job.