California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  Whines like a stuck pig to old Natan Shakalin. Valeshin went outside the organization. Valeshin went to the Armenians. Valeshin set up his own operation. Most of all, Valeshin made a bundle and didn’t give me any.

  Shakalin listens to all this, nods his wrinkled head, then says while Lerner is an honored and valued old member of the organization—blahsky blahsky blahsky—this Valeshin boychick is a producer, a hotshot moneymaker, so lay off and give the kid his shot.

  In fact, he’s going to make Valeshin a brigadier.

  Lerner about shits. It’s instantly obvious now that Valeshin has just bypassed him and laid a pile of money directly on Shakalin and bought his promotion. Which is not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to work like an Amway distributorship, and you just don’t bypass a stone on the pyramid.

  Lerner is so pissed he thinks for a second about taking on old Natan himself, except the ancient fuck is sitting there flanked by his two bodyguards straight from the old country and the new talent has a serious reputation as very nasty people.

  Handy with the old chicken chop.

  So Lerner bides his time, and they bring Daz in and Lerner gives Daz his blessing and they kiss and hug and all that happy crap and make a vodka toast to their eternal friendship and mutual prosperity.

  Well, the friendship is total bullshit, but as for the prosperity …

  Daz gets his own brigade and the money rolls in.

  Like waves on the California shore.

  It’s not enough.

  Daziatnik wants something more.

  Wants something different.

  He’s living in Fairfax, in the middle of thousands of other Russian immigrants, and it might as well be Leningrad with palm trees. He speaks Russian, he works with Russians, he eats with Russians, he sleeps with Russians.

  He makes his money and gives most of it to Russians—to Shakalin and Karpotsov—so they’re happy, but Daz is wondering when he gets his piece of Paradise.

  Daziatnik reads so he knows his history.

  The Irish, the Italians, the Jews.

  The grandfathers—gangsters. The grandsons—lawyers.

  And bankers and politicians and judges.

  And businessmen.

  It’s a three-generation turnaround, but Daziatnik wonders why.

  Why not one generation?

  Why not?

  If a man can go from spy to zek, to driving a limo, to stealing cars, to running a chop shop, to insurance fraud, to brigadier in four short years, why can’t he make the leap to legitimate businessman in as short a time?

  In this land of opportunity.

  In this floating cloud of a land where a man can invent and reinvent himself. Can burn the pages of his history behind him and then his past disappears into the blue California sky like so much smoke.

  Daz has a plan to do it.

  He knows it’s out there, that ineffable thing, the open arms and legs of California, and that’s what he wants. He wants freedom, and style, he wants away from his grim émigré comrades—the dull, the stupid, the boring, the mind-numbing soul-stunning sameness of it.

  He wants to become Nicky.

  So he looks for the opportunity. Which isn’t hard. The opportunity is so blatant, so transparent, so clear it would take an idiot not to see it.

  The sweet, heavy, ripe pear virtually dropping from the tree.

  Real estate.

  Any fool could see that in California in the mid-’80s real estate is the golden stream. Put money in real estate and watch your investment turn around, sometimes literally overnight. Diversify with longer-term investments: apartment buildings and condo complexes. All the more profitable if you could use your mob outreach to cut a corner here or there—cheaper materials, quicker construction. It was rare they had to twist or even bend an arm: everyone was in a hurry in those days. Get them up, get them sold, get your money into the next one.

  His real estate investments make money and that gives him the freedom to stretch the code out even more. He leaves the tight ethnic community in L.A. and moves south to the gold coast. Where he can reinvent himself as Nicky Vale.

  Daz changes his name. Daziatnik Valeshin is just too heavy a moniker to carry around. To sign on all the real estate papers. Too hard for customers to remember when they have a good deal and are looking for investors to phone.

  Call me, Daz says.

  In fact, call me Nicky.

  That’s his next break with the code, but Nicky says he isn’t leaving, he’s colonizing. Taking the business down to the lucrative gold coast. Going where the money is. Where there’s virgin ground for development. Where, dig this, people enter a lottery to determine who gets a chance to buy a condo in the new complexes.

  You couldn’t, Nicky recalls, put the things up fast enough.

  Nicky keeps buying up land, putting up buildings.

  Leveraging it all like hell, but who cares?

  The market outgrows the debt.

  And Nicky flourishes.

  New house, new clothes, new style, new persona.

  Nicky Vale: real estate player.

  It’s Daz’s next violation of the code, of the Vorovskoy Zakon, which states in no uncertain terms that making money in legitimate enterprise is like, outsky, right? Strictly nyet. And some of Daz’s soldiers do grumble about it. He tells them to shut their mouths, make money and be happy. Lerner sees his shot and gets on the horn to Shakalin to rat Daz out, telling the old boy that Daziatnik has gone American and is pissing all over Vorovskoy Zakon.

  Shakalin agrees.

  The ties are loosening too much.

  Like the Soviet Union, Two Crosses could crumble apart. It is time to make an example of “Nicky Vale.”

  55

  He’s strapped to a wooden chair.

  The whole ruling body sits in a semicircle in front of him: the brigadiers, several lieutenants, old Natan Shakalin and his bodyguards, one of whom holds a silenced automatic pistol and the other of whom brandishes a chain saw.

  Looking at the saw, Nicky can feel his balls tighten.

  Lerner gets up and recites a litany of Nicky’s transgressions against the code: Nicky’s been doing legitimate business, he’s been withholding profits from the organization. In short, “Nicky Vale” has broken faith with his brothers.

  He’s broken the Vorovskoy Zakon.

  Nicky’s still not too worried. He points to the corruption in the real estate business—the subpar materials, the payoffs to inspectors, the tax dodges, the occasional arson scheme. His basic response to that is, Legit, hell. As to not paying his share, Nicky offers to make restitution. It is just an accounting problem; as soon as the books are straight, he will pay his due.

  “Perhaps,” Lerner says, “the reason that you cannot pay the money you owe is that you send so much to your bosses in KGB.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Major Valeshin?”

  Oops.

  Now Nicky’s worried.

  He can practically hear the chain saw warming up.

  It’s not pleasant, this chicken chop. First they cut off your hands, then your arms, then your feet, then your legs, then your privates—and even though you’re probably dead by then, they cut off your head just for a sense of aesthetic unity.

  “It is major now, isn’t it,” Lerner says. “Congratulations. Mazel tov. Our brothers inside KGB informed us of your promotion.”

  Lerner demands the death penalty.

  Fire up the old McCullough.

  Shakalin gets to his feet.

  He stands in front of Nicky and says, “Years ago, you took an oath to the Two Crosses. The Two Crosses protected you, nurtured you, took you from a miserable zek to riches beyond your knowledge. You came here as nothing and now you are a rich man.

  “How do you thank us?

  “You cheat us. You turn your back on us. You spit on our traditions and laws. You think you are too good for the Two Crosses, now that you are ‘Nicky Vale.’

  “And then
we learn that you are a traitor. An informer.”

  He spits in Nicky’s face.

  Without turning around he asks the board for its verdict.

  Guilty.

  A huge surprise, Nicky thinks, seeing as they already have the chain saw out.

  And realizes, Jesus, sweat is pouring down my back like a river. Shakalin asks what punishment should be rendered.

  Death, death, death, death, death, death—right down the line.

  Death by dismemberment.

  “I validate the verdict and the sentence,” Shakalin says, staring down at Nicky. “Burn in hell, Daziatnik Valeshin.”

  He calls back to his bodyguard, “Execute the sentence.”

  Lev starts up the $95 Home Depot Special of the Week and slices it through Shakalin’s neck. His head topples to the floor just as Dani puts three silenced rounds into Tiv Lerner’s face. Dani holds the gun on the rest of them as he unstraps Nicky. Lev puts the chain saw to one of the brigadiers’ necks as Nicky says, “All in favor of my becoming pakhan, please raise your hands.”

  He’s unanimously elected.

  We’re in America now, Daziatnik kindly explains when they’re done pissing their pants. California, and things are different here. Different from Russia or Brighton Beach. Look outside and see the sunshine. Feel the warmth. Contemplate Natan Shakalin’s head on the floor. Dig it, men, real estate is the Main Chance. Against the code, true, but the heart of the code is in making money, da?

  Da.

  And this KGB accusation is nonsense, but who cares anyway? Fuck the KGB. In case you missed it, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no more. The cold war is over. They’re not the enemy anymore because they’re out of business.

  Which seems to be true. Nicky tested it out. Stopped sending money to Karpotsov. Stopped answering messages. Stopped sending messages. Just completely went off the radar screen. And what happened?

  Nothing.

  Nothing happened.

  The vaunted KGB is impotent.

  It’s a new world order.

  “You are all reborn in me,” Nicky tells them over the buzz of the saw as Lev chops Lerner’s body into readily disposable pieces. Nicky makes his speech. He’s into it. Dude thinks he’s Pacino in The Godfather. “I will remain pakhan for seven years, after which each brigadier will be free to start his own independent organization. I will use that time to completely legitimize my enterprise. I would recommend that you do the same, but that is your business.

  “Parts of the old code are good and we will keep them. Other parts have served their purpose in the past but are now obsolete. I will have a family. I will have a wife. I will have children to inherit what I’ve worked for. How can we have a dynasty without heirs? Do we work to establish an empire that goes to the grave with us? That is foolishness. If anyone disagrees, speak now.”

  There is no sound but the saw.

  “Then we’re agreed,” Nicky says. “I am restructuring the organization. Tratchev, seeing as how Tiv Lerner is no longer capable of performing his duties, you’re promoted to the command of his brigade. You will do auto accident fraud exclusively. Rubinsky, your brigade will be auto theft. Schaller, arson and extortion. And brothers, reach out to other ethnic groups, the Mexicans, the Vietnamese, the white trash. Make them your operators. Insulate yourselves. I do not want to read about the ‘Russian Mafia’ in the papers or see your faces on television.

  “I will keep my security cell. I loaned them to the late Natan Shakalin for a while—for purposes that should be apparent—but now I am taking them back. You will report to them, not to me. You will pay 20 percent—not 50—to me and 10 percent to the obochek, which I will maintain and control. Make money and invest it in the economy. Your sons will be senators.”

  Nicky likes this last line. Came up with it when he was rehearsing this speech. Going over it and over it to maintain his nerve as he hoped that his plan would pay off. That his foresight in persuading Karpotsov to give exit visas to Dani and Lev would work the way they planned it. That Dani and Lev would stay faithful to the vows they had made to each other in prison.

  You will join me in Paradise.

  There is another promise to keep.

  He sends for Mother.

  In collapsing, cash-poor Russia, her exit is easier to arrange than a table at Wolfgang Puck’s.

  Their reunion is cold at first.

  She’s hurt, she’s angry, she’s bitter at the six years of separation. She barely speaks on the limo drive from LAX to Dana Point. She starts to brighten when they arrive at the gates of Monarch Bay and the guard trips over himself welcoming them in. She starts to positively warm when she sees the house.

  “Daziatnik, it is barely furnished,” she says.

  “I thought you would like to do that, Mother,” he says. “And I count on your taste. Anyway, it is yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “Although I have kept a room for myself. If you find that acceptable.”

  She kisses him on both cheeks and then fleetingly on the mouth.

  “It is acceptable to me.”

  Nicky separates himself from the Two Crosses. Except for his security cell, he never sees his lieutenants. Lets them run their operations, kick in the money to him. He’s satisfied to manage the obochek and run his real estate investments.

  And collect his furniture. He goes to his first auction with some of his new friends, just as a way to kill a cloudy January Saturday. Ends up falling in love. Not with any of the rich, svelte women he sees there, but with a George II dressing table that calls out to him, I’m yours.

  More than that.

  Calls out to him, I’m you.

  And before he knows it, Nicky has his hand out and he’s plunking down fifteen K on a big piece of walnut.

  Which he loves.

  There is love that passes and love that lasts. There is love that satisfies the body and the heart, and which is passing, and there is love that nourishes the soul, and which is lasting.

  The furniture is the only thing that Nicky has ever found that nourishes his soul.

  At first it was a class thing.

  He bought it because he could buy it, because the ability to pay that kind of money symbolized his triumph over the ghetto. Because the purchase of art—as opposed to cars, or horses, for instance—gave him an entrée into the world of the beautiful people. It made him not just one more real estate tycoon, but a man of culture, polish and, yes, class.

  Nicky is too smart not to acknowledge to himself the truth of all that.

  But in time—and not much time at that—it became more than a status symbol.

  It became a true love.

  Was it, Nicky wonders, the art itself? But that somewhat begs the question, doesn’t it? Perhaps it was the purity of effort that a work of art represents, the genuine desire to create something that is truly beautiful. A purity of effort in such contrast to a corrupt world?

  Or is it the beauty itself? Could it be that simple, he wonders, that I am irresistibly drawn to possess beauty? Engaging again in cheap psychoanalysis (Ah, I have become an American), it is not difficult to imagine that a boy raised in poverty would wish to own beauty if he could.

  It has been, let us face it, for the first thirty or so years an ugly life. The dreary flat, the hideousness of Afghanistan, the horror of the jail cells. Dirty ice, dirty snow, mud, blood, shit and filth.

  He wakes up from time to time with nightmares from the war—a hateful stereotype that he finds embarrassing—and it helps to turn on the lights and sit for a while with a fine piece of art. To admire its beauty, study its form and design, to let it take him away from the images of bloated corpses, mutilated comrades, or the recurring dream of the mujahedin fighter hit by the flamethrower—staggering forward, on fire, literally a whirling dervish twirling in agony under the swirling flames.

  It helps Nicky at such times to look at his artworks.

  Other nights sleep takes him back to the jail cells, the filth-encrus
ted, freezing concrete floors. The stench of sweat and shit and piss, the smell of fear. The screaming psychos, the violent sodomites, the quick deaths by homemade blades or garrotes or simple beatings. Skulls cracked against walls, heads crushed onto floors, faces beaten to mush by club-wielding guards. Not an inch of space to call one’s own. Not a moment of privacy. Not a single instance of beauty to be seen anywhere at any price.

  Hell.

  So to stand in one’s own house—in the clean, lovely serenity of one’s own home—and contemplate beauty in the form of art, whenever and for however long one wishes … well, it nourishes a soul in need of nourishment.

  And it is passive, Nicky thinks. It is simply beauty there to be enjoyed. Once purchased it makes no other demands, has no other requirements except to be admired and enjoyed.

  And it tells him that he’s risen above it all. Risen above the cramped walk-up he shared with Mother, above the dirt, cold, blood and fire of Afghanistan. Far above the filth and stench and cold of the prison, above the monotonous kitsch of the Two Crosses.

  The cabinet tells him that he’s arrived. That he’s not even a parvenu new-money California real estate shark but a gentleman.

  He starts buying books, visiting dealerships, attending more and more auctions, and it’s not long before he’s a major collector of antique English furniture. He buys, he sells, he trades—he makes a new set of friends.

  He gets a new identity.

  Nicky Vale—real estate mogul and collector.

  The turnaround inside one generation.

  He makes the new friends that come with money, and from the friends he absorbs the south coast style. Discovers the shops at South Coast Plaza and becomes a regular at Armani, Brooks Brothers, Giuducce et al. Becomes a standard figure at the good parties in Newport Beach, Corona Del Mar and Laguna. Gets himself a boat and hosts his own parties out on the blue ocean.

  Daziatnik becomes Nicky, and everyone loves Nicky.

  Why not? He’s charming, rich and funny and has the most wonderful taste in art. He’s handsome, he’s exotic, and inside a year he’s on the A list for the best parties on the south coast.