Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

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 cross-pieces.

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.

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 down 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 elite 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.