California Fire and Life

by Don Winslow

  Daz knows that her standards are high because she herself is so beautiful. Her face is perfectly formed porcelain, her hair a black-satin sculpture, her neck so long and elegant and white, her manners refined, her intelligence sparkling … How Father could leave her he cannot understand.

  And he obeys her. He is first in most of his classes. He wins the prize in English, in history, in literature, in math. Not only that, he’s a sneaky, mean, underhanded, intimidating little bastard, so he catches the attention of the local talent spotters from the old state security bureau.

  And the bit about Afghanistan is true, except Daz doesn’t go as some slog-ass foot soldier, a reluctant warrior in someone else’s war. Daz goes as a KGB officer attached to a military intelligence unit, his job to interrogate the villagers to find where the mujahedin are hiding.

  For the first few weeks Daz goes about this job in a civilized way, even though that gets him nowhere. However, after he has found out about the third Russian soldier lying naked, skinned alive with his genitals stuffed in his mouth, Daz takes a different approach. His best routine is to have three villagers trussed up like hogs, cut two of their throats and then offer the blood-spattered survivor a cup of tea and a chance for meaningful conversation. If his hospitality is spurned, Daz usually orders an enlisted man to douse the holy warrior with petrol. Then when Daz is done with his tea he lights a cigarette and tosses the match and warms his hands on the blazing fire. Then he has his unit torch the whole village.

  Waits a day or so for word of the incident to filter to the next village and then goes there to ask questions. Usually gets some answers.

  All the time, Mother is frantic, sick with worry that her son will be killed in this stupid, futile war. She writes him every day and he writes back, but the Soviet mail system being what it is, there are brutal, endless days of no mail when she is convinced that he is dead. The next day’s mail brings a letter, and with it, a torrent of tears of relief.

  Daz finishes his tour.

  Spends his leave with Mother in a state dacha on the Black Sea, his reward for a good war. There they go out for an evening to a fine restaurant on the shore. A table on the veranda, and the moon sparkles on the water. They have an eight-course meal and the conversation sparkles like the water.

  Back in the dacha that night she tutors him how to be with a woman.

  He needs an assignment and the KGB has one for him.

  Back in Moscow his handler, a KGB colonel named Karpotsov, takes him on a stroll through Gorky Park. Karpotsov is quite a number, with a broad Slavic face, silver hair greased straight back on his head, an easy way with the vodka and an easier way with women. A real charmer, Karpotsov is, a word painter, and he works his brush on Daz.

  Karpotsov knows talent when he sees it and he sees it in young Valeshin. Valeshin is a ruthless, sociopathic, smart little wiseass who would probably torch his own mother, if that’s what it took, and that’s just the kind of sociopath Karpotsov’s looking for. So he walks Daz around the park for a while, looking at women and talking about nothing of any great importance, and then Karpotsov buys two ice creams and sits Daz down on a bench.

  And says, “How would you like to go to America?”

  He sticks out his broad tongue and takes a lick of the ice cream that is almost obscene. Smiles a Mephistophelian smile.

  “I think I would like that very much,” Daz says.

  Having just been offered a chance at heaven.

  “The United States,” Karpotsov says—he continues the lecture between licks of ice cream—“is waging economic warfare against the Soviet Union. Reagan knows—and we know—that we can’t compete. We can’t continue to build missiles and submarines at this pace and still maintain the economy required for a workers’ paradise. The ugly truth, Daz, is that they can win the cold war simply by outspending us.”

  He stops and stares off at the park as if at any moment it is going to disappear along with the Soviet way of life.

  He collects himself and continues, “We need cash—hard currency—and the Soviet economy is incapable of generating any. It is simply not to be found here.”

  “Then where?”

  “America,” Karpotsov says. “Our expatriate Russian criminals in New York and California are sucking dollars out of the American system like milk from a cow. These are gangsters, mind you, and we have to believe that if common criminals can do this, well …”

  What could a cadre of KGB-trained agents do?

  “It’s a brilliant idea, really,” Karpotsov says. And it should be—he thought of it. “It has a double benefit—it takes from them and gives to us. Every dollar we make is a dollar they lose. Where better to attack a capitalist system than at its capital?”

  “So my assignment would be in the realm of economic sabotage.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Karpotsov says. “Another would be to say that your assignment is to steal. And steal, and steal.”

  Daz cannot believe his ears. He’s frozen his ass off in that Afghanistan moonscape, and winter is coming so he’ll be freezing his ass off in a Soviet Union that is clearly headed down the drain and the best he can hope for is sharing a one-bedroom with Mother forever, and maybe one week a summer at a dacha on the Black Sea, and part of him knows, I must get away from her and this is my chance, and the other part screams, This is my chance to give her the life she deserves, and now they offer him a transfer to America for the expressed purpose of making a fortune.

  So what’s the catch?

  “Of course you’ll have to become a Jew,” Karpotsov says.

  “A Jew?” Daz asks. “Why a Jew?”

  “How else can we get you in?” Karpotsov asks. “Christ, the Americans are always screaming at us—‘Release some Jews, release some Jews.’ Fine, we’ll release some Jews, along with them a few of our agents trained in—how did you put it—economic sabotage.”

  “But to become a Jew …”

  “It’s a sacrifice, I understand,” Karpotsov says. “Perhaps too great a sacrifice to ask …”

  “No, no, no, no,” Daz says quickly. For a heart-stopping second he sees his chance slipping away. “No, of course I accept the assignment.”

  Karpotsov finishes his ice cream and grins.

  “Mazel tov,” he says.

  So Daz goes to “Jew school.”

  This is a little course the KGB sets up where Jewish prisoners teach the Torah, the Diaspora, the Holocaust and the whole catalog of Russian outrages against the Jews. Daz studies Zionist history, the history of Israel, Jewish culture and tradition. Jewish artists, writers, composers.

  For graduation they do a Passover seder.

  And Daziatnik’s like, Done that. Hand me my airline ticket.

  But Karpotsov is like, Not so fast, Jewboy—first there’s a little matter of prison.

  “Prison?” Daziatnik asks. “You didn’t say anything about prison.”

  “Well, I’m saying it now,” Karpotsov tells him on another stroll through the park. “Daz, we need you to infiltrate the mob, the Organizatsiya. They’re the people who are sucking the money out of the States. Without being a member, you’d frankly be quite useless. And sadly, the qualification for membership is a stay in the system. To establish your bona fides, as it were.”

  Daz is furious, at Karpotsov and at himself, because he has let the man lure him into a trap, step by step.

  “Can’t you just create a criminal record for me?” Daz asks.

  “We will,” Karpotsov says. “But that by itself woudn’t be safe for you. No, there is knowledge and experience—and connections—that you can only get in prison.”

  “How much time?” Daz asks.

  “Not a long stretch,” Karpotsov says. “Eighteen months or so for petty theft. I could order you, but I don’t want to do that.”

  Daz’s mind is reeling. A year and a half in prison?

  “I don’t know, Colonel …”

  “And who knows?” Karpotsov asks. “Perhaps we could
arrange exit papers for your mother?”

  Karpotsov is a slick piece of shit. Like every other piece of shit who handles agents, he knows exactly what buttons can be pushed, and when to push them.

  Daz says, “How bad could a few months in jail be?”

  Uh-huh.

  52

  Daz is in the system for maybe ten minutes before a huge old zek called Old Tillanin jams him into the corner, shoves the sharp point of a shiv against his ribs and by way of foreplay demands his blanket and his next meal.

  Daz is in the system for maybe ten minutes and .00025 seconds before he jams a finger strike into Old Tillanin’s left eyeball, which hits the filthy concrete floor about one full second before Old Tillanin does.

  He’s rolling around, howling in pain, trying to reach out and grab his eyeball before someone in the crowded cell steps on it. As if they’re going to send a team of crack surgeons to reattach it.

  Daz is in the far corner of the cell before the guards can get over to see who performed the eyeballectomy, and most of the other zeks only get from hearsay that it’s the new guy, Daz.

  Two zeks actually witness the action, though. One is a barrel-shaped mugger from Moscow named Lev, the other a tall skinny extortionist from Odessa named Dani, and they’re pretty impressed that a new zek is either brave enough or stupid enough to take on Old Tillanin, who is the King of the Heap in this cell.

  The word on Lev is that he has a way with a chain saw that you don’t want to see up close. Lev has a reputation for his skill at performing the “chicken chop,” which is Organizatsiya’s favored method of execution and is just what it sounds like: not to put too fine a point on it, they take a chain saw and cut you into parts. And this is Lev’s hobby. He likes it.

  The story on Dani is that back in Odessa his own brother ratted some guys out to the cops, and the local mob boss—the pakhan—wanted to job out the hit but Dani said no sweat, I’ll do him myself.

  Dani gutshot his own brother.

  Dani is such a mean fucker he’s doing guys in prison. The guards come in in the morning and one or two zeks are tapped out, their necks snapped or their intestines lying on the floor and Dani’s standing there with his bowl waiting for his breakfast gruel.

  Dani is cold.

  When Lev and Dani see the new zek take out Old Tillanin like that, they mark him as a guy to, well, keep an eye on.

  Anyway, one of the guards asks who did it. He’s no more expecting an answer than he’s expecting fucking Princess Anastasia to descend through the ceiling on a trapeze, and he’s dead right about that because even Old Tillanin keeps his mouth shut.

  So the guard grabs up Dani, figuring that mean little fuck had to have a hand in any piece of violent nastiness in the cell, and he’s hauling him out into the corridor to give him a going-over with the baton when this new zek—a petty thief from Leningrad named Valeshin—yells, “I did.”

  “What?” the guard asks.

  “I did it.”

  Which is just about the stupidest thing the guard ever saw any zek do in a population that is already subpar in the intelligence quotient. The guard is so annoyed by this honor-among-thieves bit that he takes a belt and straps this Valeshin moron to the top of the cell door and whales at him with a piece of rubber hose until the dumb-fuck dickhead passes out. The guard gives him a few more shots to the ribs for good measure, unties him and kicks him back into the cell, there being no point in taking him to the infirmary because (a) they don’t have any doctors there, and (b) Old Tillanin’s comrades are just going to kill him anyway.

  Which is true. Daz is lying unconscious in the cell, and what three of Old Tillanin’s buddies are waiting for is a little decent cover of darkness so they can hack him to death before he can wake up and do that finger strike number on one of them.

  Small chance of that. Even if he were conscious, Daz couldn’t lift his hands past his bruised ribs, and even if he could it would have the force of a noodle, so Daz is pretty much on the short-stay program. If he doesn’t die of the beating—a very real possibility—Old Tillanin’s friends are going to kill him. And if they don’t get him, prison life will, because he’ll be too weak for the foreseeable future to fight for his food, or his blanket—which, in fact, has already been snatched up—or for his own body, for that matter.

  He’ll freeze, starve and get raped to death, and that’s only if he makes it through the night.

  When he comes to, he’s wrapped in two blankets, his head in Dani’s lap. He can feel the tightness of bandages around his wounded ribs, and a few minutes later Dani, tender as a Madonna, coaxes some tea down his throat. Where he got the wrappings, tea and hot water Daz will never know. What he does know is that Dani and Lev spend the next three weeks nursing him back to a condition where he has a chance to survive.

  Which also means guarding him around the clock.

  Daz doesn’t know it at the time, but Old Tillanin’s comrades make three attempts on him. Three stabs at it, if you will. The first comes as Dani and Lev drag Daz into their corner of the cell and wrap him up in Dani’s blanket.

  “If you want him, Jewboy,” one of Old Tillanin’s crew warns, “you take all of him.”

  Meaning the obligations that Daz has accrued in wounding Old Tillanin.

  “That’s fine,” Lev says.

  He head-butts the guy, smashing his nose, then shoves the guy’s face down as he brings his own knee up. Which ends the first attack.

  The second comes later in the night when it looks as if Dani and Lev are asleep. Turns out they’re not, when Dani swipes his knife across the stomach of the lead attacker, giving him a deep wound that will get infected and turn fatal some six endless weeks down the line because he doesn’t have the price of a simple antibiotic that is for cash only at the infirmary.

  The third attack comes in that deadly hour before dawn (you can’t say sunrise—the sun doesn’t rise on this windowless basement hole), and this time it’s four of Old Tillanin’s gang at once. Lev and Dani shove Daz into the corner and just stand there and fight it out in front of him, using the corner walls to narrow the lane of attack that they have to defend.

  The first attacker lunges with a knife, but he isn’t quick enough and Dani grabs his arm and snaps it at the elbow, producing a sound like a tree branch breaking in the winter cold. Lev takes the second guy, who’s rushing him, and smashes him into the wall, using his own huge right hand to keep banging the guy’s head against the wall while with his left he jabs at the third attacker with his shiv. Dani drops down and shoves his knife upward into the fourth guy’s crotch, but Lev’s about to get done by number three, who’s reaching down into his shoe for his own shiv and is about to swing it up into Lev’s ribs, when somehow Daz grabs the guy’s hand and holds on for dear life.

  Or Lev’s dear life, but anyway, Daz has crawled between Lev’s legs and holds the shiv against the guy’s ankle, then bites the guy’s hand and won’t let go with his hands or his teeth even though his ribs are screaming and he’s bleeding inside.

  Finally Lev drops guy number two and raises his own hands like a club above his own head and brings them down on the third guy’s neck and Daz suddenly feels the life go out of the man.

  Which it has, because his neck is broken when the guards find the body in the morning.

  Anyway, the guy is dead and his blanket is now wrapped around Daz, and when Old Tillanin returns from the infirmary things have changed. He finds this out his first night back when his dreams are broken by a sharp pain in the chest which he at first attributes to a heart attack, which is not entirely mistaken, seeing as how there’s a sharpened spoon buried in his chest.

  Planted there by one of his own guys, because Old Tillanin isn’t the King of the Heap anymore.

  That would be Daziatnik Valeshin, but he doesn’t get to ascend to the throne right away, because when the guards come in and find Old Tillanin prepped for the dirt nap, they reasonably conclude that Valeshin was just finishing the job he had started and
haul him away. Old Tillanin, after all, had kicked in cash and goodies to the guards, so they at least have to make a pretense at investigating his death in case one of his henchmen becomes the new top dog.

  So they strip Daz—still sick and hurting from his beating—and toss him naked into a cold isolation cell and he spends the next two weeks freezing and starving, sitting in his own shit and piss, but he doesn’t talk. He’ll freeze and starve to death but he’s keeping his mouth shut.

  About all that keeps him going is the fantasy.

  America.

  Specifically, California.

  You’re KGB you’re privy to a few things—television, movies, magazines—so Daz has seen images of California. Seen the beaches and the sunshine and the palm trees. The sailboats, the surfers, the beautiful girls all but naked, lying in the sun as if they wish to be taken right there and then. He’s seen the sports cars, the highways, the homes, and it’s these images that keep him going.

  Two weeks later the guards decide that they’ve made their gesture and haul him out. Blind as a mole, naked and shivering, he limps back to the cell.

  Which is something of an improvement except his guard, a nasty piece of work from outside Gorky, tells him that he’s just going to beat him to death anyway, slowly, on a daily basis.

  “There is only one way to stop it,” Dani tells him. “You must show him that you can endure more pain than he can give out.”

  Dani tells him of the old days of Organizatsiya, back in Czarist days when it was known as Vorovskoy Mir—the World of Thieves. In those days, Dani tells him, the convicts were really tough. Knowing they had no recourse to revenge against the guards, their only choice was to intimidate them not through acts of aggression but through acts of endurance.

  “They showed the guards that they could inflict more damage on themselves than the guards could inflict on them,” Dani says.

  It makes a certain sense to Daz. In a country of such long and deep suffering, endurance is the ultimate power.