Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

Can't see a thing.

She lifts the slinged hand up and turns the doorknob. Then kicks the door open and bursts out onto the deck in the shooting position. Swings right — nothing. Swings left The raccoon scrambles down the steps.

"Shit," Letty says.

Puffs a long sigh and gets her breath back.

Then she laughs at herself and makes a note to get bungee cords for the garbage cans.

Shuts the door and starts to go back to bed.

But her arm's hurting so she goes into the bathroom, turns on the light, and takes a couple more Vikes.

Turns off the light and goes back to bed.

Lev's pressed against the corner of the house.

He watches the light come on and then go off again.

Nicky watches Paul Gordon walk out of the Starbucks with a cappuccino in his hand. Arrogantly oblivious to the possibility that the world might injure him.

The driver trails him across the almost empty parking lot toward the bank where Gordon walks up to the automatic teller, rests his cappuccino on the ledge, puts in his card, and taps his foot while the machine hums.

Nicky watches from the backseat as Dani lowers the front passenger window and rests the machine pistol on the edge.

Gordon gets his cash, grips his two hundred bucks in one hand and his coffee in the other, and turns into the spray of bullets that smash into his chest. The cappuccino splashes all over his bloodstained shirt as he falls to the hot asphalt.

"You're fired," Nicky says.

Teddy Kuhl's doing the smart thing.

He's running.

Since motherfucking Deputy Dawg's parting shot that Teddy sang like a bird, Teddy knows it's only a matter of time before one of his tightest buddies rats him out to the Russians.

Teddy knows that he is just cash on the hoof.

So, hurting as he is, he nuts it up, packs a few things, gets on his bike and heads east until this shit cools off. He's thinking maybe Arizona.

He is doing a very smart thing.

Then he does a very stupid thing.

He stops for a beer.

Stupider than that, he stops for a beer at a bikers bar called Cook's Corner, out by Modjeska Canyon. Teddy's thinking he needs a beer, maybe, and this is the last good beer spot for many dry and lonely miles.

The beer tastes so good to him he goes for another.

Gets laughing with some buddies and ends up having five.

Doesn't even notice one of his boys on the phone.

Beer number seven, he decides it's time to hit the road and get out of Dodge, but he needs to take a piss first. Beer bladder pressing down on him like a fifty-pound weight.

So he slides off the stool, pushes the metal door into the men's room, and steps up to the stainless-steel trough.

All by his lonesome in there.

George Thorogood song blaring from inside the bar — Teddy's kind of rocking to it as he unzips his fly and lets loose.

"Aaaaaahhhhh."

Hitter steps out from a stall, puts the pistol to the back of Teddy's head and pulls the trigger.

Teddy dies with what's left of his face in the urinal.

Right next to that little white sponge thing.

Judge John Bickford gets an anonymous phone call at home, informing him that his years of devoted service to the plaintiff's bar have been duly noted. That an informant has in fact duly noted it to the California Attorney General's office, and that a story will appear in tomorrow's Orange County Register linking him to a murdered Paul Gordon and Paul Gordon to the Russian Mafia.

Bickford says goodbye to his wife and drives to a motel in Oceanside where he tranquilizes himself with twelve-year-old scotch and Valium and, in the small hours of the morning, slashes his wrists.

The newspaper story never appears.

Retired Justice Dennis Mallon gets a similar phone call and catches a flight to Mexico with a connection to Grand Cayman. He has a home there.

Dr. Benton Howard steps off a curb into an oncoming car. His injuries are so real that he dies of them.

Word hits the street by morning that Howard was an informant working with the Anti-ROC Task Force.

Which is working like a mother.

In what will become known in law enforcement circles as the St. Petersburg Day Massacre, Young's troops roll up Tratchev's brigade like it's the freaking Republican Guard.

Tratchev's guys are caught flat-footed. They're grabbed in bars, they're grabbed in their homes, they're grabbed in bed with their girlfriends.

Viktor Tratchev is having a quiet evening at home watching Cops on the Fox network when the door comes crashing in and Special Agent Young comes through with a shotgun in his hands like he's Robert Stack. Tratchev is annoyed because he thought he had guards out there, but the guards now have their hands behind their backs and plastic ties around their wrists, so technically speaking they're not really guards anymore.

"Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do?"

Tratchev reaches for his glasses.

Which is a mistake, because one of Young's troops puts two rounds into his chest before Young can scream, "What the fuck are you doing?!" but the fact is that the agent knows exactly what the fuck he's doing.

He's getting in position for a big payday from Nicky Vale is what he's doing.

"What you gonna do when they come for you?"

Jimenez's boys are romping in L.A.

Up and down Fairfax, they're crashing in doors, they're jamming cars into curbs, they're blocking off alleys and side streets. They're scooping up car thieves, drive-down artists, extortionists, drug dealers — the whole first and second All-Star Team of Rubinsky's and Schaller's best moneymakers.

They get Rubinsky and Schaller, too.

Rubinsky's in bed with his wife when Jimenez gives him a wake-up call with a pistol barrel to the back of his neck. Schaller's playing poker with some buddies when the game comes to a sudden halt.

The sweep misses Kazzy Azmekian.

He's not at home.

He's twenty nautical miles off Rosarita on his forty-foot Sportscraft for an overnight fishing trip.

Turns out he can't swim, because when his trusted bodyguard launches him over the side, Kazzy just sort of goes glug-glug and then disappears into the darkness.

Anyway, between tragic accidents like this and the task force sweep, Nicky Vale's self-reinvention as a legitimate businessman is pretty much complete.

But not quite.

The noise on the deck wakes Letty up.

Rattling of garbage cans.

"Damn raccoons," she says as she gets out of bed.

Stumbles for the door and this time doesn't bother to take her weapon. It's not like she's going to shoot the damn thing.

Lev waits by the corner of the deck.

Make it look like a rape, is what the pakhan said. Then tear her up with the knife. Just another psycho-sex murder in the Southland. Film at eleven.

He poises the knife in his left hand.

Hears her footsteps.

Hears her open the door. Sees her step out.

" Vamos!" Letty yells as Lev starts forward. Something stops him.

A tight cord around his neck pulls him back and down the steps.

Letty hears the raccoon run off and closes the door. Locks it and goes back to bed. Whatever the sound was, it's gone now.

Mother Russia finally gets the children to sleep.

Truth be known, she'll be happy when Daziatnik rebuilds his own house and moves back in, because while she loves having little Michael with her, the girl, Natalie, favors her mother and is a real little bitch.

Quite hopeless, really, genetics being what they are.

Michael — Michael will be a little prince.

With some work.

But Natalie…

Mother Russia goes into the bathroom, brushes her teeth, scrubs her face, then takes a brush to her hair.