The Hunt Club

4
2001

When all the administrative hearings and appeals ended, the bottom line was that I could stay with the CPS if I accepted a formal letter of reprimand they wanted to include in my personnel file. There was nothing else even remotely negative in that file, and I'd done nothing wrong in the Nunoz case. No power on earth was going to get me to take any part of the hit for Mayhew's betrayal and the incompetence and dishonesty of his protégés. I realized that the price for my refusal to accept the reprimand letter was my career at CPS.

So be it.

For ten years I've lived in a rent-controlled, barn-size warehouse south of Market, essentially in the shadow of the 101 Freeway. When I'd first moved in, it was empty space with a twenty-five-foot ceiling. I'd drywalled off and enclosed a little over a third of the three thousand square feet, and within that area, I'd put down industrial carpet and further subdivided it into three discrete units-a living room/kitchen, my bedroom, and the bathroom.

Five months after I quit, I was on my futon reading the final pages of The Last Lion, the great second volume of Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill. When I finished, I put the book down and sat for a while, contemplating the life of the man about whom I'd just been reading. Brilliant military leader, mesmerizing public speaker, superb watercolorist, Nobel Prize-winning author, prime minister of England and-oh, yeah-savior of the Western world. His personal trials between the two world wars, when he was discredited and vilified by enemies and friends alike, put my setback with Mayhew and the CPS into some sort of perspective.

Which isn't to say I didn't have some issues with rage. Mostly I'd been working those issues off by windsurfing for a couple of hours nearly every day down at Coyote Point. I was also in two men's basketball leagues where elbows got thrown. I jogged the Embarcadero a lot. Plugged in my Strat and nearly blew the windows out of the warehouse. With Devin Juhle, several times a month, I'd stop by Jackson's Arms in South City and shoot a few hundred 9 mm rounds at what I imagined to be Wilson Mayhew's head. Amy Wu, a sympatico lawyer in town I'd met through CPS, was a good platonic drinking buddy with a light-handed knack for keeping in check my temper, always hair-trigger and worse since I'd quit work.

But as I say, I was working on it.

I got up and went to check the contents of my refrigerator. Standing barefoot in my kitchen area, the crud under my feet made me realize that I hadn't done a stem-to-stern clean of my rooms in a while, and without thinking too much about it, I grabbed a mop. When I'd finished with the floor, I emptied my hamper into the washing machine off my bedroom, added detergent, and set it for a heavy load. I wiped down the counters in the bathroom and kitchen, then scoured the corners for cobwebs and dust. Next, I ran the dishes that I'd been stacking rinsed in the dishwasher for the past week or so-mostly coffee mugs, a few utensils, and small plates.

Now I was undressed, ready for bed. My clothes spun, thumping in the dryer. The counters and floors were clean enough to eat off. The dishwasher was silent. My bedroom, like the living room, featured windows high in the wall facing Brannan Street, and because of the streetlights outside, my quarters were almost never entirely dark. With all of my own lights off, as they were now, the rooms and the warehouse in general retained about the brightness of moon glow.

The telephone rang and I picked it up. "French Laundry," I said.

"If this is really the French Laundry," a female voice said, "I'd like to make a reservation."

"I'm sorry. We don't do reservations."

"I thought if you called precisely two months to the day before you wanted to eat, exactly at nine A.M., you could get one."

"That's only if there's a free table and if the phone's not busy, which it always is."

"But not now."

"No, but it's not nine A.M. So I'm sorry."

"Is there any way I could get a reservation now?"

"Are the first three letters of your last name m-r-l?"

"Those aren't the first three letters of anybody's last name. Besides, my last name has only two letters."

"Then I'm sorry, we can't fit you in."

"You don't take people with two-letter last names?"

"Only very rarely." But we'd played that out as far as it would go. I asked Wu if she were looking for a partner to drink with tonight.

"Afraid not. I'm working."

"Still?" I looked at my watch. "At ten thirty?"

"Billable hours wait for no one, Wyatt. They're here, I jump on 'em." She paused for a beat. "You want to guess whose name just came across my desk?"

"Winston Churchill."

"Good guess but wrong. Wilson Mayhew. Ring a bell?"

"Vaguely."

"Have you heard anything about him recently?"

I wasn't entirely able to hide the jolt of excitement. "What do you know, Wu? Tell me it's bad news. He's not dead, is he? That would be too fair."

"No, he's not dead. But apparently he is hurt. Or at least he says he's hurt."

"What kind of hurt?"

"Terrible, fully debilitating, work-induced, stress-related back pain."

"Wow. Those are a lot of adjectives."

"Yes, they are."

"So what do they all mean? That somehow it's not physical?"

"No. The pain is real pain if, in fact, he feels it. But the exact physical diagnosis can be difficult."

"So how did you find out about Mayhew? Is he your client somehow?"

"No. But one of our biggest single clients is the California Medical Insurance agency, which handles workers' comp benefits for state workers. But we also have a section that specializes generally in exposing medical fraud."

"Okay."

"Okay. Well. Have you ever heard of Chief's Disease?"

"No. Does Mayhew have it?"

The question slowed her down. "Actually, that may not be a bad call. Do you know what it is?"

I had never heard of it and she filled me in. Evidently each one of the previous six directors of the California Highway Patrol had filed workers' comp claims for disability in the final months of their respective terms in office, and every one of them was now drawing over one hundred thousand dollars a year in disability payments on top of their regular pension from their retirements. One of the ex-chiefs, she went on, whose inability to continue working at the Highway Patrol had been caused by a diagnosis of stress-induced hypertension, had taken over as the director of security at the San Francisco International Airport, a post that paid over one hundred fifty thousand dollars per year. Between his full pension from the Highway Patrol, the disability, and the new job, this hardworking law-enforcement officer was making nearly four hundred thousand dollars, much of it tax-free, all from taxpayer funds.

"That's a good job," I said.

"It's a great job," she replied. "And we've been hired to see that he gets a chance to lose it or at least the disability-pay part of it."

"And how do you find that out?"

"Mostly legal stuff. We depose witnesses who work or worked with the guy, subpoena medical records, demand reexamination with our own doctors, check his medications, like that. But we also use private investigators to follow these people around, see for example if they forget to wear their neck brace when they go waterskiing and think nobody's looking. Or, in the case of our airport security director, if he still pursues the low-stress sport of bungee jumping with his son."

"You're kidding."

"We haven't caught him red-handed yet, but we've got hearsay witnesses. We'll find out one way or the other. But the point-the reason I called you-isn't Mr. Airport Security. It's Wilson Mayhew."

"You're reviewing his claim."

"No flies on you," she said. "We got the latest batch of paperwork from CalMed this afternoon, and I was doing my pro forma review of red-flagged claims, and I recognized Mayhew's name from our many fascinating talks."

"As well you should, Ames. So what happened? Wilson got flagged?"

"Yes, he did. But don't get your hopes up too far about that, Wyatt. It's automatic for all permanent, full-disability claims. Beyond that, it's any claim over a hundred grand a year. Then also Mayhew's claiming stress-related, nonspecific injury-back pain is the classic-where there's no immediate and apparent physical cause. He didn't fall down an elevator shaft and break his back, for example. He doesn't have a herniated disk or anything else we can see in the X-rays or pick up on the MRI. Evidently, he was helping one of his employees lift something at work, and he felt a bad tweak and went down. The next morning, he couldn't get out of bed, although apparently he's semi-ambulatory now." She took a breath. "So he gets flagged on all counts."

"He's lying."

"He may be. Although I have seen claims like his that turned out to be legitimate."

"I know the guy," I said, "and there's no way he helped somebody try to lift anything bigger than a paper clip."

She said, "You want to try to prove that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, help us determine if his claim is legitimate."

"How would I do that?"

"Any way you could."

A hole opened in the conversation. Finally, I found a voice. "Haven't you got a bunch of private investigators you use for that kind of work?"

"Not a bunch, but some, yes."

"Then I don't get it. Why me?"

"Well, licensed, gun-toting PIs are expensive, at least if they're any good. Usually the firm does a preliminary investigation before we make the determination to bring in one of our PIs. We normally like to think there's some reason to suspect fraud before we send somebody out to make sure. Otherwise, we'd just be fishing on all our claims, and we'd have to go into the investigation business full-time, which we're not prepared to do. We're a law firm."

I sat with that for a moment. "That answers the general question of why, Amy. But not the 'Why me?' part."

"Well, frankly, don't be mad if I'm being presumptuous, but you've mentioned yourself that you were thinking about going back and looking for work. I thought you might be motivated about this, and besides, it might be good for you. Anyway, in the normal course of things, the firm would be spending a good deal of money over the next couple of weeks doing background on Mayhew's condition. We eventually might decide to put a tail on him, which will cost the firm more money, regardless of the outcome. But we may not, either. It depends on the preliminary findings."

"You want me to check."

She paused. "I've got to be clear that I'm not officially speaking for the firm, Wyatt. I'm not hiring you or even offering to hire you. I'm saying that in this case I'd be open to doing things a little bit backwards because it might save the firm considerable funds and man hours. If you told me you'd try to discover positive evidence of fraud in Mr. Mayhew's claim, I could be persuaded to put the preliminary legal steps on hold for a short while."

"And if I found something conclusive?"

"In that case, we could discuss some kind of reward contingency."

"I'll start tomorrow."

"Wow. Great. Just like that? You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"You won't change your mind?"

"I won't."

"Okay, then." She paused. "You ought to try to be a little more decisive, you know. Nobody likes a waffler."

"I'm working on it. Meanwhile," I said, "tell me what I need to know."

I graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1989 and both because I craved life experience and because I didn't have any better ideas of what I was going to do for the rest of my life, I joined the army to see the world. Shortly thereafter, I got caught up in Desert Storm and sent to Iraq, which wasn't the part of the world I'd had in mind. As an English major with no job skills except the ability to write in complete sentences with verbs and nouns and other parts of speech in more or less the right order, I got assigned to the criminal investigation division to write up administrative and disciplinary reports.

Boring as the reports were, my experience with the CID was my first adult exposure to humanity's dark side. It's not something the army liked to advertise, but because of the tension, brutality, fatigue, emotion, crowding, and trauma to the human psyche, theaters of war are fertile breeding grounds for serious criminal behavior-predominantly rape and its variants but also murder and mayhem, theft, and general depravity. This is not breaking news, but it was to me. After a while, I got promoted and started to interview suspects, to go out on investigations. For the first time in my life, work was important and exciting-a rush, sometimes with an actual element of danger.

In my years with the CPS, many of the calls to the homes of abused children provided a similar buzz, and I came to realize that in some sense this feeling was my fix. In the five months since I'd been forced to quit, between my revenge fantasies and my anger issues, I'd given a lot of thought to the kind of professional path I eventually wanted to put myself on if I ever got myself out of the personal Dumpster. And one trait stood out. No matter what the eventual new career turned out to be, it wouldn't feature a whole lot of time in an office.

After Amy's call, I'd considered my options and finally pulled out my Canon 35 mm and my telephoto lens. I also owned a Sony video camera, which I dug out of the back of my bedroom closet. Miraculously, since I didn't even remember the last time I'd used either of them, both cameras seemed to have working batteries and film, and I put both of them and the ancillary junk into a backpack by the entrance to the alley in back off the kitchen. Then, turning off the brain, I went to bed.

When I opened my eyes to darkness for the fifth time, I finally gave up trying to sleep. Rain pelted the roof as I pulled on sweats and a windbreaker. By a little before six o'clock, the approaching dawn still not much in evidence, I was thoroughly soaked and making the turn at Cost Plus in Fisherman's Wharf, a mile and a half in eleven minutes. This was slower than I'd been at thirty, but I consoled myself with the news that it was undoubtedly faster than I'd be at forty-five.

Back home, I showered, changed, and decided to emulate Churchill while there was still time by opening a cold split of Veuve Clicquot champagne to have with my scrambled eggs. Coffee is my breakfast drink of choice as a rule, but what's the point of having a rule if you're not going to break it sometimes?

As the first order of business, I thought I'd wake him up for fun. Since I still had his home number from the CPS directory, I called him directly, heard his voice after the second ring, and hung up, smiling. I drove out to the address on Cherry Street that Amy had given me, a one-block dead end that adjoined the south border of the Presidio. It was just past eight o'clock. Parking on the opposite side of the street and a few houses away, I noticed the black Mercedes with the vanity plates that read KIDSTUF, his cute little play on words about the work he did at CPS. So I was at the right place. I checked my cameras one last time, still uncertain about exactly what I was planning to do. Amy had described Mayhew as partially ambulatory, but she'd also told me that he was receiving a full-disability pension. So I more or less expected that ambulatory in his case meant he could get up out of his wheelchair to walk into the bathroom or something like that.

Fifteen minutes into my first stakeout, the rain picked up again, falling in vertical sheets that partially obscured my view of the front door to Mayhew's large, two-story house, which was up twelve steps from the street level. My Lumina's windows, nearly closed against the precipitation, began to fog up. It dawned on me that if my target stayed indoors, confined to his bed or not, it was going to be a slow couple of weeks.

Not my idea of a good time.

Two options presented themselves: Call again, or knock on his door?

At CPS, the direct approach tended to produce the best results. So I waited for a slight break in the downpour, then let myself out of the car and jogged across the street and up the steps. It was still by most civilized standards a bit early for an unannounced visit, but he'd been awake enough to answer the phone an hour before, hadn't he? Compared to my half-contemplated plot to have the man murdered only a few weeks before, this interruption seemed nearly benevolent.

I rang the doorbell, waited, rang again. After another moment, I heard footsteps, and then the door opened. His wife, presumably. A well-preserved fifty, in a green housecoat. At this hour, she did not exude graciousness. "Can I help you?" She was brusque, no-nonsense. "It's rather early to be knocking on doors, don't you think?"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry, but I was hoping to talk to Mr. Mayhew."

"I'm afraid he's not available right now. He's not been well."

"I heard that, but this is very important. I won't take much of his time. I'm one of his former employees with CPS, Wyatt Hunt. I'm sure he'll want to see me."

Her mouth was a tight line. "I'm not so sure of that, but if you'll wait just a minute." She closed the door on me, and I did as she'd instructed. Waited.

More footsteps, heavier this time, and then I was looking at Mayhew. He was dressed for work, without the coat and tie. I doubted that his wife had rousted him from bed in those clothes, especially with the shoes on.

"Wilson." It was the first time I'd called him by his first name.

He hesitated, the unaccustomed informality throwing off his timing. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

I conjured up a chill smile. "I want my job back, but it's too late for that now, isn't it?"

"That wasn't me, Mr. Hunt. You made that decision yourself."

"What decision was that, Wilson?" I kind of liked pushing the first name. It shifted the dynamic.

"Not to accept the reprimand letter. That was your decision."

"Yes, it was. And you know why I made it?"

"No, I don't. Doing so was foolish, though, your only chance to hold on to your career, and you threw it away."

"Close, but actually a little off. I couldn't accept the reprimand because I didn't do anything wrong. And you knew this and lied about it."

"You're delusional," he said. He stepped back and started to close the door.

Rage had begun to swell like a tide within me as soon as I'd laid eyes on him, and by now I was riding it. The power of my emotions took me somewhat by surprise. Acting without any thought, I jammed my foot up against the door and leaned into it. "You're telling me to my face that you don't remember me stopping by your office to brief you about Nunoz?"

He pushed against the door forcefully, to no avail, and gave up. "It was to your face last time, too, as I recall, at the hearing. It didn't bother me then, either, because it was the truth then, too." He smiled. "In case you're wearing a wire." The face went dark. "Now get your foot away from the door, Mr. Hunt, or I'll be forced to call the police." Then he added, "The last time we had a disagreement that went to a third party for adjudication, you got rather the short end of it, didn't you? Are you sure you want to go through something like that again?"

"No," I said, "you're right." I moved back, left the door free. "It's got to be handled differently this time."

Placid, his head cocked in a show of curiosity, he said, "That sounds rather like a threat."

"Does it?"

"Well, in case it was, let me just say I shall make a police report later this morning, and the next time our paths should happen to cross, I will apply for-and I assure you I will get-a restraining order issued against you."

"Thanks for the warning."

"If I were you, I'd take it to heart and move on with my life. We're not in the same league, Mr. Hunt. I thought you'd have realized that by now." Nodding, he said, "Have a nice day," before he closed the door.

I got Devin Juhle on his pager, and he called me back about a half hour later. The rain had been coming and going in fits and starts all morning, but now the random spot of blue had begun appearing through the cloud cover, which I chose to interpret as a sign of better things to come. At the big home down the street, not a creature was stirring. If I hadn't seen with my own eyes the evidence that Mayhew was suffering about as much back pain as I was, his apparent lack of activity might have discouraged me. Instead, encouraged by the certainty that his workers' comp claim was in fact bogus, I spent the time working the logistics of how best to expose him. I thought I had a decent idea.

By this time, Devin knew every nuance of my history with Mayhew. When I told him in general terms what I was doing, he perked right up, game for a little extracurricular activity on my behalf if there was even a small element of payback involved. I assured him that his involvement wouldn't take long, and my plan was so beautiful it might make him cry.

In another good omen for the home team, Devin and his partner Shane Manning weren't exactly swamped with critical homicide investigatory work at the moment. February tended to be a slow month for murder, and they were only working two cases. Beyond that, both of them were supposed to be witnesses in court that morning. Because of that they'd left the day open, but the trial had been continued for some reason, and now they faced a long afternoon with no scheduled witness interviews and no other work of burning importance. It was either come out and have some fun or sit around all day in homicide and catch up on writing reports.

Tough call.

I gave Juhle the phone number and cautioned him to make sure the call he made about Mayhew's flat tire came from a pay phone where it couldn't be traced back to anyone. "Wow, good idea, Wyatt," he said with his patented heavy irony. "I never would have thought of that." But in spite of the sarcasm, he and his partner were in. So I now had a makeshift staff of three, including myself, and two-thirds of it were trained police inspectors. I dubbed us all the Hunt Club. It didn't exactly make me light-headed with confidence, but the odds looked good.

What flat tire? you might ask.

The one I gave him as I hunched out of sight of the house behind his car, unscrewing the valve cap on the back right tire, then releasing the air in a satisfying hiss until the wheel had settled all the way down onto its rim. I admit that this could be seen as puerile, immature vandalism, very much beneath the mature adult I had become. But I took consolation knowing that it was, in fact, kid stuff, advertised by Mayhew himself, and I thought this gave the act a kind of elegant symmetry.

Nevertheless, my nerves were raw as I jogged back to my own car to wait. Juhle was going to make the call when he got near enough, and given all the variables with his schedule and with traffic, that might take an hour or more. Fortunately, he and Manning must have been chomping at the bit to hit the streets, and it wasn't more than twenty minutes before Dev called on my cell phone and told me he'd made the call. I should be ready.

Checking my video camera one last time, I got out of my car and went around to the passenger side, where Mayhew wouldn't see me even if he looked. I rested the camera on the car's hood to steady it and hunkered down as out of sight as I could make myself behind the vehicle. Of course, there was still a chance that Mayhew would simply call AAA or that the charming Mrs. Mayhew might come down to survey the damage and maybe even fix the tire herself. But I knew that Mayhew was already up and dressed and probably going stir-crazy in the house. He would also want to confront me if he got out fast enough and had the chance.

It might not happen. I realized that Mayhew might be cautious enough about the scam he was running that he'd keep the profile as at least a semi-invalid. But I also knew something about his arrogance and guessed that he believed that his connections and his social status would protect him from too much scrutiny. If there was any investigation going on about his workers' comp claim, he'd hear about it long before it got close enough to touch him, and he'd get back on his guard.

Besides, I had a slick backup idea involving my own suicide if this one didn't draw him out. But as it turned out, I wasn't going to need it today.

Sometimes luck does smile on the good.

As I zoomed in on videotape, Wilson came out onto his porch and, with his face set in a scowl, peered perfunctorily up and down the street. No doubt after getting Juhle's anonymous call, he thought it was me who'd flattened his tire in a fit of pique and then lit out. Certainly I wouldn't be so foolish as to wait around and take credit for the nuisance. Apparently satisfied, shaking his head in anger, he started down his front steps with a firm tread. He didn't put a hand to his sore back. He didn't reach for the metal banister that ran along the steps.

Down in the street, he circled the car. When he saw the flat, he swore violently-audible back even where I was filming-and turned a quick and, I thought, rather athletic full circle one more time, checking for a perpetrator. Swearing again, he stood still for a while, hands on his hips. I thought I might have captured enough on video already, with him walking easily down his twelve front steps, but more would be better.

I waited.

He did not disappoint. Opening the trunk, he leaned over (without bending his knees, I noticed) and rummaged a moment, then lifted out an apparently heavy bag of golf clubs, setting it down on the pavement. Another duck into the trunk produced the jack, and in under a minute, he had the thing in place, pumping with the tire iron, lifting the car.

I looked behind me at the corner and saw Juhle and Manning standing there, looking like a couple of guys taking a walk. We waved but stayed in place for another couple of minutes, watching as Mayhew undid the lug nuts. When he was just about finished, I stood up with the video camera and advanced, recording the whole way, getting to within about ten feet of him just as he pulled the tire from the wheel and stood up with it in his arms.

I kept the camera on him. I believe I may have been smiling. He half-turned, holding the tire, stepping toward the back of the car. Seeing me, he came to a shocked and abrupt stop.

"Yo, Wilson," I said. "How's the back?"

His eyes grew large and frightened as I lowered the camera and, pointing a finger gun at him, pulled the trigger. "Gotcha," I said.

That brought the bonus. Mayhew whirled halfway around, dropped the tire, and reached down for the tire iron that he'd used to lever up the jack. With an animal cry, he lunged at me as I danced away, capturing the Kodak moments as he continued to advance, swinging the iron as he came at me. If his back was hurting him, he didn't show much sign of it. But he was getting close now as I ducked and swirled away from another swing.

And then from behind me, Juhle's welcome voice: "Hold it right there! Police! Drop the weapon!"

The cavalry pulled up on foot and kept coming. Now nearly frothing at the mouth, Mayhew whirled on Juhle and Manning as they got him by the arms and tried to restrain him. He continued to resist them. The tire iron clanged to the street.

I caught it all on videotape. The steps, the golf clubs, pumping the jack, lifting the tire up, swinging at me with the tire iron, and-my personal favorite-the resisting of his arrest. This last guaranteed that the fraudulent back claim would now go all the way to the DA. Without resisting arrest, the DA might otherwise find himself tempted, coerced, or outright bought into forgetting about the fraud. With the assault on working homicide inspectors, he would then have to charge it all. Even Mayhew's connections would not be able to put a lid on the story once it came out that he had attacked two cops who just happened to be passing by and, witnessing an attack with a deadly weapon in progress, had charged in to restore order.

"Dismas Hardy," Amy said, "this is Wyatt Hunt."

We shook hands. Hardy was probably in his mid-fifties. He certainly looked good for the role of managing partner of one of the city's top law firms. He wore a gray suit with the thinnest of maroon pinstripes. Maroon silk tie, monogrammed silk shirt. High-end all the way, but he came across as one of the good guys. Plus, he'd had the good sense to hire Amy.

"Ms. Wu tells me you've made the firm some money this morning. We appreciate it."

"It was my pleasure. In fact, I can't remember when I've had more fun."

Amy spoke up. "As I mentioned to you when I first brought it up, Diz, Wyatt had a bit of history with Mr. Mayhew. I thought he'd be motivated."

"Still," Hardy said, "one day. That's impressive. Nobody does this stuff in one day." He nodded appreciatively. "I'm glad Amy thought of you."

"Me, too."

Hardy rested a haunch on the corner of his large cherry desk. "So now the question, Wyatt," he said, "is what can we do for you?"

I'd of course considered the payment issue, but it didn't rule my thoughts. Now I found myself saying, "Maybe this is one of those times when the work is its own reward."

Hardy grinned over at Amy. "This guy's too much," he said. Then, back to me, "Are you for real?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes it's not the money."

"In my experience, that's not as often as you'd think. Can I ask you a personal question? How long have you been out of a job?"

I shot a quick glance at Amy. She'd obviously had a somewhat substantive talk with Hardy before she'd invited me to look at Mayhew's case. "A few months, but I saved while I worked, and money's not a huge issue for me right now. I've kind of been trying to figure out what I wanted to do next."

"Well, if I'd just done what you did this morning, I'd be tempted to take it as some kind of sign. You ever think about becoming a private investigator?"

I laughed. "Not even once."

"Okay, but you deliver results like today, and within six months, you wouldn't be able to keep up with the work from this firm alone. I promise you."

Shaking my head, I still found the idea mostly amusing. "I don't have any idea how I'd even go about it."

"What's to know? You get a license, hang up a shingle, open your doors for business." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that."