Authors: Perri O'Shaughnessy
“Okay,” she said. “All right.”
Dr. Mai nodded. “Thank you. Also I do not know what is charged for these services.”
Nina considered this. To take a percentage of the Vangs' recovery seemed wrong to her, like another nick at them, and it would probably result in an overpayment to her. She adjusted her sliding scale lower than she had in a long time and said, “I would charge forty dollars per hour for this work.” She drew a retainer agreement out of the drawer.
Another short consultation. This time, See Vang spoke to Dr. Mai, too, although she said only a few words in a soft voice. “That is fair,” Dr. Mai said.
That same night, at her second office on her bed at home, Nina read the documents Dr. Mai had laid in front of her, three different sets of police reports, news accounts, medical bills, the insurance policy, the loan documents, and the lease agreement for the store. Every detail matched. For her, the sad and notable reality was how little attention had been paid to Kao's tragic experience. The
Tahoe Mirror
buried the incidents in single-paragraph back-page items: “Shopkeeper Shot in Robbery.” “Police Seek Arsonist.” Nina wondered if the lack of coverage reflected public apathy about poor, foreign people and their worries, or if it reflected a bigger picture—such grievous events had become frequent enough to be commonplace and therefore unworthy of newsprint.
A determination grew in her to have one thing go right for Kao. The family, traumatized, wanted to return to Laos. So be it. She would help them get the insurance money. They had followed the rules, paying the premiums each month. Examining the policy again, she saw that the maximum insurance payout could go as high as $250,000.
The next day she called Heritage, locating the adjuster assigned to the claim, a woman named Marilyn Rose, who seemed startled to hear that the Vangs had hired a lawyer. Nina gave her an overview of the situation and promised to submit a detailed claim shortly. She tried to communicate the urgency of the Vangs' problems by going on at some length about their difficult adjustment to a new country, how hard they had worked, and what their trials had cost them personally. She felt she connected. Her contact at Heritage sounded sympathetic by the end of the conversation.
A few days later, on a hot mid-August Sunday, Kao, his wife, his son, and Dr. Mai returned to her office. They brought every business-related scrap of paper they possessed with them in white plastic trash sacks.
They all sat down on the beige carpet in the outer office and started making piles. The documentation consisted of hundreds of paper scraps—mimeographed, penciled, faded, half-legible, in the writings of half a dozen Southeast Asian languages—and most of it was legally irrelevant. Many of the actual receipts, the inventory list, the bills, had burned in the fire. This would be no ordinary insurance claim.
“Many times no receipt,” Dr. Mai explained. “Mrs. Vang went to Salvation Army, houses of friends, farmers' market in Fresno to buy items for Blue Star. Paid cash. Many items burned up with no receipts.”
“Can we get a list of those items?”
Dr. Mai spoke to Mrs. Vang, who first shook her head and then shrugged.
“Things came from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. Refugee items. Records burned up. Wrong language anyway.” Dr. Mai squatted comfortably on the floor. They all drank Sprites. Although Kao's wife looked much younger than he did and was more traditional-looking with her turquoise bracelets and black braid, she too bore the careworn look of premature age. She could have been twenty-five or forty.
“Don't worry,” Nina said.
“But we cannot—we just cannot prove all the lost items.”
“Just make me a list. In English. Everything you remember. Can you help with that, Dr. Mai?”
“But—we do not know the money paid.”
“Estimate. Here.” Nina made a heading on a fresh legal pad and picked up a scrap. “What does this say?”
“Four pairs sneakers. No amount.”
“What kind of sneakers?”
Shrugs all around. Kao's shoulders sagged. He and See looked at each other.
They could have been Chinese and worth five bucks a pair. They probably were Chinese.
But they could have been Nikes.
“Estimate forty dollars a pair,” Nina said. “We'll make sure the insurance company knows it's only an estimate.”
At the end of the week the family trekked back to the office. This time Nina managed to persuade them to accompany her to Sato's for dinner. Dr. Mai wore his usual oxford-cloth shirt and sandals. Kao somehow managed to look debonair in spite of everything. Boun, their son, came, too. Their daughter, Dr. Mai explained, was ill and couldn't come. See smiled here and there, and Nina got the feeling that she had a sunny disposition in better times and understood English fairly well. After dinner, Dr. Mai presented Nina with the list. Estimated $54,000 in inventory lost.
She gave it back and said they must have missed a lot.
By the following week the loss amount topped $175,000. Nina had gone over almost every item. Almost twenty pages long, with several hundred paper scraps pasted onto ink-jet paper as exhibits, the list had been generated out of thin air, the same thin air that the inventory had burned into.
Nina spent a whole office day, phone off and door shut, dictating the claim letter. She gave a lengthy summary of the violent events and attached all the documents she had along with photographs of Kao's face after the first shooting, creating a package both heartrending and intimidatingly thick. A solid week passed before she and Sandy had all the exhibits organized completely to her satisfaction. Kinko's had to keep the package overnight to make the copies, and the final hefty original had to be carried in a box.
After completing all this labor, Nina drove the claim over to Heritage personally, staying for a long chat about the need for discretion and speed with Marilyn, who did not overreact to the large claim amount and continued to flash hints of a beating heart.
Sandy took the first call from the insurance company on the first Tuesday morning in September. She came into the office, where Nina was stuffing pleadings into her briefcase for court, and said, “Heritage's first offer is in. They're starting at a hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
“Glory be,” Nina said.
“It's like the miracle of loaves and fishes.”
They experienced a rare moment of perfect harmony. Sandy approved. Nina was elated. Sandy liked Nina to win for the less powerful in the community, and Nina liked to imagine that occasionally she actually helped to alleviate some human suffering, her way of giving back to the planet. Even more important, she felt that justice would be served. Wrongs would be compensated. The system was working.
“They've decided to work with us,” Nina said. “Call the court and tell the judge's clerk I'll be a few minutes late.” Picking up her own line, she called the adjuster, thanked her, and refused the offer.
“But we can't even read the receipts. As you well know,” Marilyn Rose said.
“Did you see the medical photos?” Nina said. “It makes me ashamed. They come all the way here to start a new life in the land of freedom and—”
“All right already. I'll get back to you.”
Thursday brought another call. “Two hundred ten thousand,” said Marilyn. “That's the best I can do.”
“What's the point?” Nina said. “Why not pay out the limit?”
“Because that puts some new procedures in place with some different oversight. Trust me, you don't want to go for the limit. Look, you've probably only got about sixty thousand that actually meets our documentation standards. This is it, Nina. I'm not holding back a nickel of what I got approved.”
“I'll get back to you tomorrow. Thanks.” Thrilled, Nina called Dr. Mai and the Vangs and told them about the offer. “I think we should sleep on it,” she said. “Maybe I can squeeze out another ten thousand.”
“It is wonderful. Wonderful,” Dr. Mai said. “Kao calls me every day. He never expected so much, I know.”
“Does the family still plan to return to Laos?”
Dr. Mai hesitated. “It is complicated. Everything in Kao's life is complicated.” He seemed unwilling to explain further. Again Nina had the feeling that no amount of reading about Hmong culture would give her much useful insight into the family's American experience. Dr. Mai seemed unnaturally restrained to her, as if he felt shy about sharing the extent of the family's suffering.
Maybe they were just the kind of people who disliked having to ask for help of any kind. Or perhaps Dr. Mai's reluctance arose out of embarrassment that the people who had snuffed out Kao's livelihood and who would come after any money he might possess came from his own hills and his own culture.
“I will call you tomorrow,” she said.
That last call to Dr. Mai had occurred on Thursday, September 6, four days earlier.
And that night, that ill-starred night, wanting to take one more look through her notes to decide whether to try for a larger claim or just shake hands with the princess of generosity who had adjusted the claim, Nina had taken Kao Vang's file home in the Bronco. The file had been right on top in Nina's briefcase in the backseat—not the enormous claim file, which was safe, but the client-intake file with her notes of her interviews with Kao and the notes regarding negotiations.
Just the notes that could tell Kao's enemies just how much money was involved, and contained her speculations that he knew exactly who they were.
And the Vangs' home address, which they hadn't wanted to give her. Gone.
Nina hadn't called Marilyn Rose at Heritage that Friday. She had waited until now to meet with Dr. Mai. Today she had to tell him. Taking a deep breath of cool mountain air, she strapped herself back into the rental car and drove on.
The Strawberry Lodge was a big, beat-up, green-roofed, barnlike edifice alongside the highway. Usually you could stop for a cup of coffee there, and the place bustled on weekends, even in fall. In winter there was cross-country skiing and sledding down the hill, but today, an off-season Monday, the weekend fun-lovers had deserted. A few rebel stragglers had parked SUVs out front. She parked the rental and went inside.
Dr. Mai waited for her on the wooden deck outside the coffee shop in back. In the near distance, the American River, low in September, more like a creek in this spot, swished along. Dr. Mai wore the same suit, a bit thin at the knees, the same shirt, the same dusty sandals, and that somber visage, the look of the priest who can't understand how the world could have sunk so low. She wondered for a moment what his story was, what persecutions he had endured, what had driven him from his homeland.
No time to find out today.
Sitting across from him at a rustic table, drinking from a glass of water, she gazed out at the scruffy dry grass and trees beyond. “I need to speak with Kao,” she said. “He is my client. I'm concerned about confidentiality.”
“I am his agent and adviser in all legal matters,” Dr. Mai said, not moving.
His demeanor toward her had changed indefinably, and she felt even more uncomfortable, but she had no choice. The information had to be conveyed today.
“You have accepted the offer?” he asked. “The money will be available when?”
“I haven't called the company back yet. The offer is still on the table. Dr. Mai, I—I'm afraid another matter has come up.”
Dr. Mai unfolded a piece of paper in English with the signature
Kao Vang
and a date. “Kao Vang instructs you to accept the offer immediately,” he said. “This is what you call a power of attorney. I can sign for them.”
“Kao Vang didn't write this himself,” Nina said. The paper appeared to have been copied by hand from a legal form book and was correct in form.
“He asked me to write it. He signed. He dated.”
“All right. We'll get back to this in a moment. May I please speak to you about the matter about which I contacted you?” They had moved somehow to a very formal basis.
Dr. Mai pushed up his glasses. “Speak, then,” he said.
“Kao Vang's file has been stolen,” she said. Keeping the story short and straight, she explained the circumstances. As she spoke, not sparing herself, Dr. Mai's face fell into a grimace of pain and disappointment.
“I am very sorry. I want to say that directly to Mr. and Mrs. Vang,” she said.
He waved a hand at her, his face still screwed up with that awful expression.
“What is wrong?” she said.
“Sad how one ill leads to another,” Dr. Mai said.
“Where is Kao?”
Dr. Mai closed his eyes.
“Where is he? What's going on?”
“Just get the money to me,” Dr. Mai said. “As soon as possible. Kao cannot talk to you right now. Just do what you have promised.”
“Does someone know about the insurance? Please tell me.”
“I love this family,” he said. “Kao is my wife's nephew. My wife died in one of the camps. Kao is all the family I have left. I must support him, but it is sad.” He looked out the window, and she caught the same weary expression that she had seen in Kao's eyes.
“Dr. Mai?” She reached over and touched his hand. “Dr. Mai!”
He turned his head toward her and said, “We mean nothing to you. Nothing at all. Just get the money.”
“It's not true. I do care. And—and I fear I have—from your reaction I am very concerned. I must know if the Vangs are safe.”
“Just get the money. Please do your job. Get the money. Have your secretary call me when you have the money. That is all I have to say.”
“Let me help to protect the Vangs. I have a friend—”
“No more of your help.” He walked out on her, shaking his head.
9
N
INA PICKED UP A SANDWICH
in Meyers at the deli and ate it while driving, wondering how long a long Monday could last. A margarita might have temporarily eased her own misery, but that would only lead to more trouble, so she settled for a V8. Although Dr. Mai's reaction had not been entirely unexpected, his vehemence unsettled her. To prep herself for her next appointment with the girls from the campground, she turned into the Starlake Building parking lot, mentally rehashing the meeting she had hosted in her office with Brandy and Angel four days before, on Thursday.
The two women had shown up at Nina's office for an emergency appointment late in the afternoon. Although they refused to say why they needed to see her so hastily, Sandy squeezed them in before leaving to run an errand. “The girl that called sounded scared. Terrified.”
“An abusive husband?” Nina asked. Sad that that would be her first thought, but experience taught unhappy lessons.
“I don't think so.”
One wore her peroxided hair short in rough layers, the other had swinging shoulder-length brown hair, but Nina needed only one look at their wide gray eyes. “You're sisters,” she said, rising to greet them.
“Angelica Guillaume and Brandy Taylor,” the blond said, shaking her hand. “Call us Angel and Brandy. Thanks for seeing us on such short notice.”
They flopped into the orange client chairs, but Nina could see their casual ease was a pose. The muscles in their identically wiry legs remained tense, as if ready to propel them right back out the door. To give them a minute to orient themselves and calm down, Nina waited while they commented on her view of Lake Tahoe and admired the Washoe baskets on the wall. Nina quickly figured out that the blond, Angel, acted as leader. Twenty-three to Brandy's nineteen, she wore a hip-hugging skirt and a tiny black cotton shirt that stopped just below the rib cage. Her face was in sharp focus: red lips, each lash carefully highlighted with mascara. Brandy, considerably taller and vaguer, wore a cotton floral skirt and loose sweater. She drooped behind her sister.
“What can I do for you?” Nina asked.
“Brandy saw a murderer,” Angel said.
Nina pulled out the legal pad. She took notes while they told their story in fits and starts with constant sisterly interruptions. The trouble had started right before Labor Day weekend, the week before.
“Brandy. You can't just leave Bruce and run away to our house every time you have a fight,” Angel's husband, Sam, said. “If you're going to marry the guy, you've got to learn to work things out—”
“This wasn't a fight. It's over.”
The phone rang, Bruce again. Sam wanted to talk to him but Brandy snatched the phone away, slamming it into the cradle. “This is none of your business!”
“Like hell it isn't!”
At that point, baby Jimmy and two-year-old Kimberly began to bawl. Sam, heading for the bathroom, the Tahoe cabin's only refuge, tripped on a bag of groceries and let loose with a string of shouted curses. The children cried louder.
Angel turned off the kitchen faucet and saved the day, bustling in and plopping the kids in front of cartoons with crackers.
“We haven't had a minute to talk, Angel,” Brandy complained. “I have nowhere else to go. I'm sorry if I'm getting on Sam's nerves, but I'm hurting!”
“Don't worry about Sam. He likes you, but he gets cranky when we're all crammed in here like this. Listen, Bran, let's do like we used to when Mom and Dad got weird on us,” Angel said. “Let's split. It's a long weekend. Just give me an hour to arrange the kids and someone to cover me at the salon.”
Unfortunately, by the time they had located two musty sleeping bags and properly provisioned themselves with graham crackers, chocolate, wine, marshmallows, and sweet rolls from Raley's, the campgrounds at Richardson's, D. L. Bliss State Park, and Nevada Beach were full. The ranger advised them to try the Campground by the Lake, right smack in the middle of South Lake Tahoe.
“Damn,” Brandy said. “Why didn't we think of this? It's Labor Day weekend, the worst time in the world for camping. We're stuck in the center of town—unless you want to drive some more?”
“We're not likely to find any vacancies for miles around here and it's actually a really nice campground. Let's see if we can find something. I'm sick of driving around and we still have to put the tent up.”
They amused themselves surfing the radio until they got to the campground at the corner of Rufus Allen Boulevard and Highway 50, finding it also full. “Let's take a look anyway,” Angel said.
“Oh, forget it. It's getting so late. Let's just go back to your place and try again in the morning. Shoot. Sam's going to hate it if we come back tonight. Did you see what he did when we drove away?”
“He has got a silly way of waving good-bye.”
“That was his victory salute, Angel.”
“He's just kidding. He loves me madly,” Angel said. “I'm so hot he couldn't do anything else. Watch this.” She leaned out the car window and gave the ranger on duty at the entrance a sexy smile and a long look down the front of her tank top and they were through the gate without paying the day-use fee in about a second, giggling like when they were kids.
Sure enough, around a bend toward the back, they found a family of five pulling up stakes on a large dome tent. “Ze miracle she is arrived,” Angel told Brandy, then, out the car window, “You leaving?”
“Sure are,” said the wife, tossing a picnic blanket and cooler into the back of an old blue minivan. The kids were stuffing bags of chips and cookies into brown bags, handing them off like a bucket brigade toward the car.
“Any chance we could grab your spot?”
The wife laughed. “Believe me, you don't want it.”
Angel put the car into park. She and Brandy both got out of the car and approached. “Why not? Is it haunted or something?”
“You could say that.” She jogged her head in the direction of the next camp over. “Coupla lowlife rowdies.”
“They come over here and cause you any trouble?” Brandy asked.
“No. Nothing like that. Drinking, carousing. Using foul language. People like that are trouble, just being alive.”
Brandy reached into her purse. “Here,” she said. “Here's thirty bucks for your campsite. You already paid, right?”
The woman's face brightened. “Yes, we did. Only for the one night. But not this much.”
“We'd be so grateful if you'd just let us camp here tonight.”
“Just so you know what you're getting into. You've been warned.”
While setting up the tent and bags, they had a good laugh over old farts who couldn't take a joke or a little profanity now and then. Luckily, setting up the tent turned out to be a snap. They saw no sign of the so-called troublesome neighbors and decided the people in the orange tent next to them must have zoned out early.
By ten o'clock, they had a fire crackling, had stuffed themselves full of sweet goodies, and started in on the wine. So fun! Trees and stars surrounding them like comforters, and all of it totally safe, just like summers at camp.
“I hate drinking wine after I eat. You waste the full effect,” Brandy said. “Harder to get to that pleasantly blurry, sentimental stage.”
“Hasn't stopped you. You have definitely reached that place.”
Brandy leaned back against a log and twisted her hair into a bun in back. “What a relief to be somewhere quiet. You know I love your kids,” she said, taking a swig from the bottle, “but it's nice to get away.”
Angel took the bottle. “I'll drink any chance I get, mainly because I never get any. Two kids put a crimp in your style. You have to be a grown-up all the time.”
“Hey, next week's sign for the salon! Don't put a crimp in your style!”
“I like it. Maybe you should try to get a job with that advertising agency you worked at while you were at college—”
“Out of business. I called before I left Bruce.”
“Ah, and so we arrive at the night's topic,” Angel said. “Why you left. What happened? He's got another girl?”
“Nope.”
“You've got another guy?”
“I never!”
“He works too much?”
“I don't mind that. He's trying to gather a nest egg for both our sakes.”
“Mom's driving you nuts with wedding plans?”
“Yes, but no.”
“So tell, before I slap you silly out of frustration.”
“I went off sex.”
“What?”
“I can't make love with him anymore,” Brandy said. “So how can I marry him?”
“Criminy, Bran. This is serious. Is he kinky? Does he want you to wear rubber strappies and a head thing with studs or something?”
“No. He's a little—old-fashioned. That's one big reason I fell in love with him, you know? It's simple with him. Roses, candles, naked bodies, beautiful music. All the love you want when you want it. You know, Angel, he's my real love. That's why this is so hard.”
“Well?”
“Let's just say it's me.”
“Did you see a doctor?” Angel asked, really concerned. “Maybe you could take testosterone shots or something. I've heard they make you horny.”
“You're the geezer. You're closer to running out of hormones than me.”
The flap over the door to the tent came loose in the wind and Angel got up to tie it back down. “Here I come out in the night and I'm forced to drink wine and eat chocolate and listen to insults from my punk sister. Life so sucks.” She walked back over to throw a log on the fire just as two faces peered out from inside the orange tent about fifty feet away—a yawning girl with long black hair and a man, unshaven and ragged-haired but a muscular hunk nevertheless. He said, “Get a fire going, woman,” but in an affectionate, relaxed voice.
Brandy and Angel broke chunks of chocolate off their Ghirardelli bar as they watched the girl next door pile sticks haphazardly into the fire pit. She saw them watching and gave them a wave. They waved back. She started to sing. “She sounds like a sick cat,” Angel decided after they had a chance to listen for a few seconds.
“I did see a doctor a few weeks ago,” Brandy said a few minutes later. “A head doctor. He was such a dork. I felt like he didn't take me seriously.”
“Bran, don't you love Bruce anymore?”
The wine hit, or something, because Brandy started crying then, big jagged sobs. “That's what really stinks. I love him as much as ever. I just don't want him to, like, touch me.”
“Have you told him?”
“Are you kidding! I can't hurt him like that!”
“Aw, Bran, go on, cry awhile. Here, have some more wine.” And that was about it, Brandy polishing off the rest of the bottle and crying and saying she loved Bruce, who must be a quickie Dickie, that was Angel's instant speculation, but she was going to wait awhile to tell Brandy.
They went to bed shortly after, just as the fire next door got hot. After another half hour or so, loud music started up at the next site over. They peeked out, seeing a boom box and two floppy figures dancing by the fire.
“How nice for them,” Brandy groused, “but isn't the routine you dance first, then crawl into a sleeping bag together?”
“Oh, ease up. It's amore.”
Campers from across the way got involved at this point, telling the couple to please turn the music down. They did, and a temporary hush descended upon the campground. Then a motorcycle with an engine like a 747 pulled up. The biker joined the couple. The music went up again, as did, after some time, the voices. Back and forth, something about money paid out, money owed, money not paid out, love and sex and other personal realms. Angel and Brandy listened avidly. Other campers complained again, but gave up when the boisterous campers ignored them. After a good half hour of arguing, a fistfight started between the biker and the camper guy.
“You goddamn lying, cheating, scum-sucking piece of—”
Thwack.
“Where do you get off coming here with an attitude like that? Phoebe chose me, Cody, not you. C'mon, baby.”
“Phoebe's been two-timing them,” Brandy guessed. “I think the one who spent the evening tucked into the tent with her is named Mario.”
The thunk of a fist contacting skin was followed by a shoving match.
“Round Two, I guess,” Angel said wearily. “Well, we were warned. Should we do something? Get the ranger?”
“A hundred people are listening to this. Someone else will get him eventually.”
They sneaked a look through the netting, hiding in toward the edges.
“She looks scared,” Angel said. “You know what? I don't like the way this looks at all. We should do something.”
The studly camper, Mario, shoved by Cody, the biker with long hair, landed against their tent, almost crushing Brandy's leg. “That's it,” Brandy said, as he lurched back to the fray. “I'm going for the ranger!”
“They'll see you,” Angel said. “I don't want them to know anything about us. Use your mobile phone and call.”
Brandy dug around in her bag while the fistfight escalated into a free-for-all just a few feet from their tent. Incoherent screams and cries rent the night. Only Phoebe made any sense at all.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
After the ranger came to bust it up and Cody thundered away on his bike, things settled down at last, the dogs quit howling, and the kids stopped crying, but now neither Brandy nor Angel could sleep. They lay in their bags for the next couple of hours checking their watches and chatting quietly.
“I have to pee,” Brandy said.
“So, enjoy. You know where the bathroom is.”
“Come with me.”
“What?”
“C'mon, Angel. Don't make me go alone. Remember that story Sam told about the night the bears came to your cabin and broke into that refrigerator you keep in your garage?”
“There was only one bear and he was dinky.”
“Sam said that dinky bear knocked the refrigerator over, broke open the door, and ate all the frozen meat. When you came out in your nightgown to scare him off, he chased you across the yard. You screamed, too.”
“Oh, chill, Brandy. I haven't heard a peep from anything or anyone since the ranger came.”
“Please? I'm scared.”
They pulled on flip-flops and sweaters, examined the road carefully for shadows, and stepped outside into the stinging-cold night. Brandy waited for another latebird lady to finish washing up, then used the bathroom in private while Angel stomped the concrete to heat up her toes, keeping a watch outside for bears or strangers or anything at all, but the dark made it hard to see much except lights reflecting off the lake in the distance. Hard to believe they were right in the middle of the city of South Lake Tahoe.