Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

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 migrs.

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 amp;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 industry "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 this kid's plan is that it's not a big moneymaker, 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.