California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  Dani tells him stories of convicts who ran knives down their own faces, who sewed their own eyelids shut, stitched their own lips together, to intimidate the guards out of beating them. There is even a story about one spectacularly tough convict who nailed his scrotum to a workbench and waited for the guard to arrive.

  The guard was impressed.

  Dani tells Daz these stories and then he and Lev sit back to watch.

  Daz waits for the guard to come on shift. He borrows a nail and a cell-made “hammer” and sits on the end of the bench by the cell door. When the guard comes to give him his beating, Daz stares at him, takes a deep breath and drives the nail through his hand between the index finger and thumb and into the bench.

  Sits there sweating, jaws clenched, staring at the guard.

  That night Lev and Dani initiate him into the Vory v Zakone.

  The Brotherhood of Thieves.

  53

  Not that there’s one Brotherhood of Thieves.

  In Russia there are about five thousand—maybe three hundred of which are serious players—but the one that Lev and Dani belong to is as good as any, and they all subscribe to the same basic code of conduct—the Vorovskoy Zakon.

  Vorovskoy Zakon—the Code of Thieves—makes most of the usual demands you’d expect of a criminal code. It has the Russian version of omerta—you keep your mouth shut, you never help the authorities, you never ever rat on another thief—and it has a Mafia-like provision that allows a panel of brothers to convene to settle disputes and punish, if need be, the transgressor.

  But it also has a couple of unique features. One is a sort of Catholic priest deal because, strictly speaking, the code forbids marriage. You can have girlfriends, boyfriends and pets. You can date barnyard animals, if you want, but if it turns out to be a love connection, you can’t marry one.

  Then there’s an almost Jesuit-like commandment that demands a purity of effort, a single-minded devotion to crime, because the Vorovskoy Zakon forbids a member from making an honest living.

  These are the points that Dani and Lev instruct Daz in as they tend to his wounds and give him two new ones. One is a jailhouse tattoo behind the left knee. Using a pin, some ink and some smuggled grain alcohol, Lev carefully etches two attached crosses with Stars of David hanging from the crosspieces.

  The rationale of the Two Crosses gang being that while Christ was the headliner on that Friday in Jerusalem, there were two nameless zeks stuck up beside him, both Jewish thieves.

  Then they cut his wrist, likewise open up old scars on their own wrists and touch them together as Daz recites, “I will obey the demands of the Vorovskoy Zakon: I will help other thieves whenever possible. I will always come to the aid of my brothers, I will never betray my brothers, I will submit myself to the authority of my older brothers, I will submit all disputes to a convocation of my brothers and abide by its decision, I will carry out the punishment of transgressors if my brothers ask me to do so, I will never cooperate with authorities …”

  Somewhat melodramatic, Daz thinks, but whatever it takes.

  “I will forsake my own family,” Dani intones, “I will have no family but the Two Crosses …”

  Daz balks.

  Dani repeats, “I will forsake my own family. I will have no family but the Two Crosses …”

  Forgive me, Mother, Daz says to himself. I will make it up to you someday.

  “I will forsake my own family. I will have no family but the Two Crosses …”

  “If I transgress against Vorovskoy Zakon, may I burn in hell.”

  For the rest of his stretch no one lays a hand on him. Having kicked Old Tillanin off the top the heap, Daz is firmly entrenched in his place, especially with Dani and Lev as his bodyguards. There’s not a zek in the cell that wants to take this trio on, knowing that (a) you are far less likely to kill than to be killed, and (b) even if you should incredibly luck out somehow and take out all three of them, you’ll eventually have to deal with the three hundred Two Crosses gang members who will either find a way to whack you in prison or whack you the second you step out into the sweet, brief sunshine of freedom.

  It’s just not something that anyone with any brains wants to fuck with.

  So Daz gets some breathing room.

  A little living space.

  And living large by Russian prison standards.

  Gets himself a little extra gruel, an extra blanket, the odd cigarette, a little homemade vodka brewed from potato skins in a back room distillery. He’s even offered the exclusive use of one of the prison fags, who with a little makeup in dim light bears a passing resemblance to something female.

  Daz is like, Thanks but no thanks on this. Figures that for eighteen months he can keep his sexuality and self-respect inside and intact. Saves himself for one of his fantasy I-wish-they-all-could-be-California-girls. So he takes a pass on the surrogate and soothes his frustrations with the cigs, vodkas and other little perks he gets from being connected and the King of the Heap.

  Daz sees zeks drop from exhaustion and just lie there. Just left to lie there and die, and he’s seen zeks drop and the guards beat them half to death and then leave them for the weather to finish off.

  Daz sees this and swears it’s never going to happen to him. Not to him or to Dani or Lev, because they are brothers and if one drops the others will pick him up. And if the guards don’t like it, fuck the guards—they’ll have to kill us all before they kill one of us. But Daz isn’t thinking about dying.

  He’s thinking about living, and he keeps Dani and Lev thinking that way too. Daz knows it’s not just your body you have to keep alive—you have to keep your head and your soul alive, too. So at night he tells them stories. Stories from the films and magazines he’s seen. Stories about eternal sunshine and fast cars and beautiful homes and even more beautiful women.

  I will take you to a new life, he whispers to them.

  I promise you, my brothers …

  You will join me in Paradise.

  54

  The scene with Mother is pure hell.

  Daz finishes his stretch and applies for an exit visa, which Karpotsov shoots through like a bullet. There’s no stroll in the park this time—the two men don’t meet at all. Those days are over—it just wouldn’t do for Daz to be seen with a KGB colonel. Could cause the Two Crosses to have him chopped like a chicken. So Daz gets his instructions through dead drops and the orders are clear: Go forth and prosper, go forth and steal. Here’s where and how you send the money.

  Now go make.

  Mother watches Daz pack his few belongings.

  She screams and cries, she wails, she holds him pressed against her, she whimpers, “You said you would take me.”

  “I can’t. Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  He can’t tell her. That he is a sworn member of the Two Crosses. That they would kill him for transgressing the code. Or uncover him as a fraud, and either way he is dead and so is the dream of America.

  So he just repeats, “I’m sorry. I can’t just now.”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “I do love you.”

  She lays her neck against his.

  “How can you leave me?”

  “I will send for you.”

  “Liar.”

  “I will.”

  “Liar. Ingrate.”

  She throws herself on the couch and sobs. Refuses to look at him as he tries to say goodbye. The last he remembers of her is her white neck stretched out on a small black pillow.

  Then Palm trees.

  Daz spots them from the plane as it comes down at LAX and thinks, This is it.

  California.

  He steps out of the terminal onto the baked concrete of the sidewalk and into a phone booth. He has the number of Tiv Lerner, a “brigadier” in the U.S.A. (West Coast) franchise of the Two Crosses, and he has references, and twenty-five minutes later a taxi drops him off at Lerner’s home in L.A.’s Fairfax district.

  Lerner sits Daz do
wn in the tacky living room of his tacky house and over shots of vodka explains that the organization is set up just like in the old country: The pakhan rules over four separate subgangs run by brigadiers. The subgangs are broken down into “cells” which operate various scams like loan-sharking, extortion, fraud and just plain theft. Each cell has a number of street operators who do the actual crimes. In addition to the “brigades,” the pakhan has an élite group of advisers who help him rule, and a separate “security cell” made up of the heaviest hitters to protect him.

  “You’ll start at the bottom,” Lerner says, “and work your way up. The American way.”

  “Sure,” Daz says.

  “I’m your brigadier,” Lerner tells him. “You’ll go to Tratchev’s cell.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Theft,” Lerner says. “You steal. Half of what you earn goes to Tratchev. Ten percent goes into the obochek.”

  The Russians are like Mormons in this sense: they tithe. Ten percent of their earnings goes into the obochek, the fund that every pakhan maintains as a pool for bribes and payouts. Technically it’s not his money, it belongs to the gang—it’s there for the gang’s safety and welfare. It’s there to pay off cops, lawyers, judges, politicians—whoever needs to be greased. The obochek is an inviolable fund—the holy of holies—because without the obochek the gang’s financial welfare and physical safety can’t be maintained. The gang would be left floating without a life raft in a hostile sea.

  So Daz doesn’t mind kicking in to the obochek, but this 50 percent to Tratchev … well, that ain’t gonna last for long. Daz knows that a big chunk of that gets booted up to Lerner and then to the pakhan and that’s where the serious money is. Ronald Reagan notwithstanding, the cash doesn’t trickle down, it pours up, and that’s where Daz intends to be.

  “Who’s our pakhan?” he asks.

  Lerner smiles. “You don’t need to know that.”

  Daz nods, but he’s thinking, I do know that, you arrogant cocksucker. Colonel Karpotsov—speaking of arrogant cocksuckers—ran it all down: the pakhan out here is Natan Shakalin, one of the original émigrés.

  Daz has seen the whole file—Shakalin’s photo, criminal record, the whole bit.

  Lerner laughs and says, “Maybe when you’re a brigadier you’ll meet the pakhan.”

  Which is going to be sooner than you know, Daz thinks.

  Now that he’s on the Main Chance.

  Next afternoon he starts as a limo driver in Lerner’s fleet, making runs back and forth from the airport. Daz says something like, “Hold on, didn’t I take an oath not to do legit work?” To which Lerner answers, “Grow up, kid.”

  The gig is that Daz picks up businessmen at their homes and chats them up on the way to the airport. Finds out if they’re single, or living alone, or if they have a family, what the family’s schedule is. Then he tries to book a round-trip (“When are you coming back, mister? I can pick you up. Be there when you step off the plane, guaranteed”). Also guaranteed that now he knows the businessman’s address and when the house will be empty and he gives that info to one of Lerner’s stooges and, go figure, the businessman’s house gets robbed.

  And they toss Daz a cut of the take.

  Daz does this for a couple of months but knows that his cut from some cheap B&Es is going to neither destabilize the American economy nor make him rich, so he talks Lerner into letting him go on some car boosts. Daz spends his days driving to and from the airport and his nights boosting Mercedes and Beemers. After a couple of years old Lerner lets him buy in and Daziatnik gets his own chop shop. Cuts up the Mercedes and Beemers and ships the parts back to Russia, where the KGB provides the market outreach and the protection.

  Daz is starting to make some good jack doing this, but his real genius shines when he figures out that you can sell the same car twice: once to the parts buyers and once to the insurance company. Just prearrange the theft with an owner who is behind on his payments. The owner parks the car at a ball game, an amusement park, a concert, and when he comes out—surprise—it’s gone. The car is chopped up within hours. Shipped abroad within days. The owner gets out from under. Daziatnik takes a commission from the insurance settlement and the price of the parts.

  He kicks money to Tratchev, who kicks it to Lerner, who kicks it to Shakalin.

  Daz brings in the bucks and gets rewarded with his own unit in Lerner’s brigade, which pisses Tratchev off. But Daz isn’t through.

  Because it’s a simple step from car theft fraud to car accident fraud.

  Daz nicknames the collective insurance indus try “the Big Cow,” because you just keep milking it and milking it and milking it …

  So many nipples from which to suck.

  Daz becomes the impresario of staged accidents.

  Learns that soft tissue injuries mean hard cash from phony medical bills and accident settlements. Learns how easy it is to buy a doctor, a chiropractor, a lawyer, a judge. Suck on the Big Cow for workmen’s comp, pain and suffering compensation (“I hope you got insurance, man”) and medical bills: tests, physical therapy, consultations, chiropractic visits. The doctors bill the insurance company and then kick a cut back to Daz in cash.

  Then Daz takes the next logical step.

  He figures out that you can make even more money if the treatments, therapy and consultations never even happen. You just have the doctor sign the documents. The doctors bill the insurance company and then kick a bigger cut back to Daz.

  Daz in turn kicks to Lerner, who kicks to Shakalin. Daz also kicks back to Karpotsov, so the KGB is finally getting a taste from the dairy. All this kicking means that Daz is basically drawing the salary of a KGB major (having been promoted in absentia), but that’s okay with him on the short term.

  On the longer term he has different plans. See, now that he has two of his own cells—car theft and insurance fraud—he’s bringing in serious money. But no matter how much he sends home it isn’t enough. Karpotsov is back in the old country, where the economy is going downhill in a barrel, so Karpotsov is always sending messages, the main thrust of which is more more more. It’s like Daz has to make more jack so the KGB can afford paper clips, so both he and Karpotsov are sick of having Lerner—never mind Shakalin—as a partner.

  Karpotsov is really putting the pressure on him, so Daz comes up with a new plan.

  Which he doesn’t share with Lerner.

  Daz is messing around with serious trouble because what he does is he goes outside the Two Crosses gang and contacts the Armenians. The Armenians are the biggest gang in California. They’re all over Hollywood and Glendale, shaking down Armenian merchants, loan-sharking Armenian immigrants, forcing legit Armenians into stealing their own merchandise and turning in insurance claims. Daz has his ear to the ground and knows that you have the same Armenian carpets being “stolen” five, six, seven times all over the west, so he has a sense that the Armenians might be receptive to an insurance scam.

  So he sets up a meeting where Daz basically says, Why are we busting our humps with this little shit? A piece here, a piece there? A car, a carpet, a whiplash? If we work together, we can take down the big chunks. We can hit the Main Chance.

  He and Kazzy Azmekian sit outside at a restaurant on Sunset, speaking Russian, and Daz has come there alone. If Azmekian would rather whack him than do business there’s nothing Daz can do about it and they both know, so the other thing that Azmekian knows is that the young Jew has big league balls. Kaz is drinking his coffee, looking at this newcomer and debating whether to snatch him and sell him back to Lerner, or kill him, or listen to him.

  Azmekian says, “What do you have in mind?”

  Arson.

  Is what Daz has in mind.

  Buy a warehouse, fill it with overstock, burn it, collect the insurance money.

  Azmekian’s response is a bored Been there, done that, and he’s seriously rethinking the kidnap option, except he’s not sure he wants to start a war with the Jews right now. The problem with thi
s kid’s plan is that it’s not a big monkeymaker, because you only gain on the inventory. The fire insurance just pays the value of the building, so you only break even on that.

  So Azmekian gestures the waiter “Check, please” as Daz starts to explain what’s nifty about his take on this old scam.

  “We set up investment companies,” Daz says. “Put them in other people’s names so they can’t be traced. My company buys a warehouse cheap. You buy it for more. Another one of my companies buys it from you. So on and so forth until the value of the building is inflated. Then you fill it with overstock, there’s a fire, and we split the profits on the overstock and the profit on the building.”

  “More coffee,” Azmekian tells the waiter. Then to Daz, “Why come to me? Why not your own people?”

  “Too inbred,” Daz says. “Too easy to track.”

  Plus, I don’t want to. I want to make the hit and present it as a fait accompli. And we do it outside L.A., Daz says. We break new ground. And we farm the arson out beyond our own organizations. So there are no connections. No traces.

  Azmekian’s into it.

  He and Daz set up their dummy companies and get ready to go.

  First building they buy is the Atlas Warehouse.

  There are a few bumps in the fast lane: a security guard dies in the fire, and then it turns out that there’s a witness, and the fire inspectors call it an arson and the insurance company denies the claim. But the bumps get smoothed out and Kazzy Azmekian gets an unexpected bonus when he settles his bad faith suit, and now that they know where the potential problems are they won’t make those mistakes again.

  And Daz, he takes in a cool $200,000.

  Which he doesn’t share with Lerner.

  Lerner gets word of it—Daz makes sure he gets word of it—and Lerner screams, Where is my fucking cut? and Daz pulls the Vorovskoy Zakon on him.

  “If you have a grievance,” he tells Lerner, “call a convocation. Take it to the pakhan.”

  Lerner would whack him right there on the spot, except that this Valeshin piece of shit is a brother, so he needs permission. Lerner goes before the pakhan and the other brigadiers.