California Fire And Life

6

Before the scene gets cold.

Literally.

The colder the scene, the less chance there is of finding out what happened.

In jargon, the "C amp;O" – the cause and origin – of the fire.

The C amp;O is important for an insurance company because there are accidents and there are accidents. If the insured negligently caused the accident then the insurance company is on the hook for the whole bill. But if it's a faulty electric blanket, or a bad switch, or if some appliance malfunctions and sets off a spark, then the company has a shot at something called subrogation, which basically means that the insurance company pays the policyholder and then sues the manufacturer of the faulty item.

So Jack has to dick around in there, but he thinks of it as dicking around with a purpose.

He pops open the trunk of his car.

What he's got in there is a folding ladder, a couple of different flashlights, a shovel, a heavy-duty Stanley tape measure, two 35-mm Minoltas, a Sony Hi8 camcorder, a small clip-on Dictaphone, a notebook, three floodlights, three folding metal stands for the lights, and a fire kit.

The fire kit consists of yellow rubber gloves, a yellow hardhat, and a pair of white paper overalls that slip over your feet like kids' pajamas.

The trunk is like full.

Jack keeps all this stuff in his trunk because Jack is basically a Dalmatian – when a fire happens he's there.

Jack slips into the overalls and feels like some sort of geek from a cheap sci-fi movie, but it's worth it. The first fire you inspect you don't do it, and the soot ruins your clothes or at least totally messes up your laundry schedule.

So he puts on the overalls.

Likewise the hardhat, which he doesn't really need, but Goddamn Billy will fine you a hundred bucks if he comes to a loss site and catches you without the hat. ("I don't want any goddamn workmen's comp claims," he says.) Jack clips the Dictaphone inside his shirt – if you clip it outside and get it full of soot, you buy a new Dictaphone – slings the cameras over his shoulder and heads for the house.

Which in insurance parlance is called "the risk."

Actually, that's before something happens.

After something happens it's called "the loss."

When a risk becomes a loss – when what could happen does happen – is where Jack comes in.

This is what he does for California Fire and Life Mutual Insurance Company – he adjusts claims. He's been adjusting claims for twelve years now, and as gigs go Jack figures it's a decent one. He works mostly alone; no one gives him a lot of shit as long as he gets the job done, and he always gets the job done. Ergo, it's a relatively shit-free environment.

Some of his fellow adjusters seem to think that they take a lot of shit from the policyholders but Jack doesn't get it. "It's a simple job," he'll tell them when he's heard enough whining. "The insurance policy is a contract. It spells out exactly what you pay for and what you don't. What you owe, you pay. What you don't, you don't."

So there's no reason to take any shit or dish any out.

You don't get personal, you don't get emotional. Whatever you do, you don't get involved. You do the job and the rest of the time you surf.

This is Jack's philosophy and it works for him. Works for Goddamn Billy, too, because whenever he gets a big fire, he assigns it to Jack. Which only makes sense because that's what Jack did for the Sheriff's Department before they kicked him out – he investigated fires.

So Jack knows that the first thing you do when you investigate a house fire is you walk around the house.

SOP – standard operating procedure – in a fire inspection: you work from the outside in. What you observe on the outside can tell you a lot about what happened on the inside.

He lets himself in through the wrought-iron gate, being careful to shut it behind him because there's that barking dog.

Two little kids lose their mother, Jack thinks, least I can do is not lose their dog for them.

The gate opens into an interior courtyard surrounded by an adobe wall. A winding, crushed gravel path snakes around a Zen garden on the right and a little koi pond on the left.

Or former koi pond, Jack thinks.

The pond is sodden with ashes.

Dead koi – once gold and orange, now black with soot – float on the top.

"Note," Jack says into the Dictaphone. "Inquire about value of koi."

He walks through the garden to the house itself. Takes one look and thinks, Oh shit.