Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

Kerosene.

Six hours later he and his crew have run all the samples.

The kaleidoscope is always the same.

Kerosene.

He calls Jack with the results.

Maybe the best view on the south coast is the one from the patio bar at Las Brisas, with its view of Laguna Bay and Laguna town stretched out beneath you like some old Mediterranean city with its white buildings and terra-cotta-tiled roofs. Especially at sunset, with the sky turning from blue to lavender and the red summer sun starting to kiss the ocean horizon.

"Thanks for coming," Nicky says. He tilts his vodka collins in a salute to Jack.

"Thanks for the drink," says Jack, raising his beer bottle.

Nicky says, "Well, I wanted to thank you for intervening in that ugly situation in the church the other day."

"No," Jack says, "you wanted to find out what Letitia del Rio told me."

Nicky smiles. "That, too."

"She told me some disturbing things."

"No doubt she did," Nicky says. "I am sure that she concocted some wild and wonderful tales for you. I imagine at times she even believes them herself. Letty is a sick woman."

"Yeah?"

"Well, they came from the same dysfunctional family, didn't they."

"Letty says that Pam went to rehab."

"Yes." Nicky laughs. "Would you like to see those bills?"

"And?"

"She stayed sober for about two weeks afterwards, I think," Nicky says. "Not a bargain."

They sit and drink and watch the progress of the sunset, a spectacular Southern Californian light show gone from lavender to purple as the sky turns into a violent red.

"This might be Paradise," Nicky sighs. Then he says, "Think about this, Jack. The next beneficiary on the life insurance policy after me is Letty, in trust for the children, of course. It would be in her interest to make up stories, wouldn't it?"

Jack watches the bottom of the sun melt into the ocean.

"You know what I think?" Jack asks. He takes a long belt of his beer.

"I wouldn't presume to guess, Jack."

Easy, relaxed, maximum cool.

"What I think," Jack says, "I think that you killed your wife and burned the house down around her. That's what I think."

Grinning at Nicky, who turns pale.

Nicky stares at him for a long moment, then forces his face into a condescending smile. Looks Jack square in the eyes.

Says, "Prove it."

Jack says, "I will."

Behind Nicky the sun, the sky, and the ocean are on fire.

This beautiful inferno, Jack thinks.

This drop-dead gorgeous hell.

Here's the story on Nicky Vale.

Daziatnik Valeshin grows up in Leningrad, his father a minor apparatchik, his mother a teacher at the state gymnasium. She feels that she has fallen in the world — both her parents were professors and she did brilliantly at university. Were it not for one foolish, unguarded night she would doubtless have become a professor as well. But then, she had a child to raise — alone — as Daz's father splits early, a divorce while young Daz is still in the crawling phase.

Mother he sees.

Constantly, oppressively.

She's raising him to be something, most decidedly not a minor apparatchik. They go meatless for weeks to afford ballet tickets, the soup is thinned yet again for a Tchaikovsky recording. At a precocious age he reads his Tolstoy, of course, and Pushkin and Turgenev, and at bedtime she sits and reads Flaubert to him — in French. Not that he understands French, but it is Mother's firm belief that he will somehow absorb the meaning through the rhythm and tone.

Mother teaches him to appreciate the finer things-art, music, sculpture, architecture, and design. She teaches him manners — at the table, in conversation, with a woman. They sit and practice an evening out at a fine restaurant — sitting at the fold-up table in their cramped kitchen, she takes him through the various courses and scolds him into making conversation as if she were the young lady and he were the suitor.

She's as brutal about his grades as she is his manners. Nothing but a "first" will do. The moment he comes home she sits him down in front of his books, then has him review his work for her.

It must be perfect.

Otherwise, she tells him, you will end up like the rest of the proletariat, like your father. Stupid, unhappy, bored, and with no future but to be stupid, unhappy, and bored.

When he gets to the age where he's interested in girls, she chooses them for him. Or more often chooses against them for him. This one is too silly, that one too fat, this one too clever, that one a slut.

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 on 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.