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.
54
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.
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
