San Diego Noir

“You could go devious too,” Molly suggested. “Send something that’s allegedly a gift from somebody else. Like, oh, say, some really high-end sex toys delivered at a sanctimonious holy-roller church to the holier-than-thou preacher. As a thank-you gift for marital counseling from”—she hesitated for a moment—“some tight-ass lady who sings soprano in the choir. Labeled Open immediately when you know the guy is out of town for a week.”

Adam laughed so hard that he choked at that one. “Let’s not forget the Internet,” he said, “and everybody’s best friend, Photoshop. Start with a cold cybertrail that dead-ends in Eastern Slobbovia, and you could put together websites that would cause lots of problems for people. Eternal problems, since of course the Internet is forever. Blogs full of intimate revelations and confessions. Political stuff that’s the polar opposite of what the person really believes. Horrible financial information offered as ‘insider tips’ from somebody who ought to know better and will definitely get in trouble with the SEC for it.”

That got accountant Kenny’s attention. “If you were willing to take your time about it and make a nonrefundable financial investment,” he said slowly, “there are all kinds of ways you can cause trouble for somebody down the road. Get enough personal information to set up dummy accounts that would appear to be direct conflicts of interest, for instance. It would be a little complex and require a bit of research, naturally.”

“But for somebody with your skill set,” Molly noted, “no particular problem.”

“I hate to think I’m becoming a cliché,” Molly said at one point, “but I believe this is giving me reason to live.”

It was all terribly hypothetical, of course. But since it was hypothetical, people kept bringing up not-so-hypothetical names. Objects of Attention, we called them. OoAs.

The woman who got the huge bonus from Western Health because she had cancelled coverage for the most insureds who had “lied” on their applications. The cancellations usually occurred right when the customers most needed assistance, and the purported lies often involved a forgotten yeast infection or ingrown toenail.

The health care executives who tried to enlist the aid of doctors in ferreting out similar application omissions so they could cancel coverage. Proactivity 101: Watch the Hippocratic Oath Circle the Drain. We were willing to bet that idea was a nonstarter, though, most doctors being unable to handle the paperwork they were already supposed to produce.

The bozos in San Diego County—elected officials for the most part—who managed to keep medical marijuana unavailable to those entitled to receive it for fifteen years after it was approved in a statewide vote. This wasn’t a problem for Molly or these guys, since the young can always find private suppliers, but it hardly seemed fair to the general public, older people who might not have the savvy or resources to get up to L.A. or Orange County.

But then Katherine pointed out that those San Diego obstructionists also had support from the feds. So we rolled in everybody else attached to this mean-spirited daisy chain—a wretched and misguided mishmash of government lawyers, elected officials, antidrug zealots with personal agendas, and the horses they rode in on.

And some Objects of Attention were more personal.

Like the employer who laid off Sheryl Masterson in a way that she lost her medical benefits through some cockeyed application of the law which maybe wasn’t even legal. This was a long time ago, when I was in high school, and Sheryl was a good friend of my mother’s. She lost her job and her insurance and her husband was already long gone. So she toughed it out through increasingly serious symptoms until by the time she finally saw a doctor, her ovarian cancer had cobwebbed throughout her entire abdomen.

Sheryl died rather quickly after her diagnosis, in terrible pain. I wished I knew the names of the doctors who refused to give her enough morphine for fear that she’d become addicted, so I could add them to the OoA list. Her former employer, who advertised his carpet cleaning service county-wide, would be easy enough to find.

On a more immediate and prosaic note, Katherine nominated a jerk at her pharmacy who bellowed information about her prescriptions and possible unsavory side effects to her entire zip code, even as she begged him to stop.

Making these lists was like eating M&Ms, or chips and salsa. Satisfying, simple, and tough to stop.

“Do you think,” Molly inquired mildly when we were together again a week later, “that perhaps we’ve taken this far enough?”

When we had all arrived earlier and settled around the fire ring on her patio, Molly pulled out and fiddled with her iPod. Moments later John Lennon warned from speakers hanging in nearby trees that instant karma was gonna get us, putting one and all in a relatively jolly mood. For once everyone was present and even feeling reasonably good.