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.
There are a few bumps in the fast lane: a security guard dies in the fire, and then it turns out that there's a witness, and the fire inspectors call it an arson, and the insurance company denies the claim. But the bumps get smoothed out and Kazzy Azmekian gets an unexpected bonus when he settles his bad faith suit, and now that they know where the potential problems are they won't make those mistakes again.
And Daz, he takes in a cool $200,000.
Which he doesn't share with Lerner.
Lerner gets word of it — Daz makes sure he gets word of it — and Lerner screams, Where is my fucking cut? and Daz pulls the Vorovskoy Zakon on him.
'If you have a grievance,' he tells Lerner, 'call a convocation. Take it to the pakhan.'
Lerner would whack him right there on the spot, except that this Valeshin piece of shit is a brother, so he needs permission. Lerner goes before the pakhan and the other brigadiers.
Whines like a stuck pig to old Natan Shakalin. Valeshin went outside the organization. Valeshin went to the Armenians. Valeshin set up his own operation. Most of all, Valeshin made a bundle and didn't give me any.
Shakalin listens to all this, nods his wrinkled head, then says while Lamer is an honored and valued old member of the organization — blahsky blahsky blahsky — this Valeshin boychick is a producer, a hotshot moneymaker, so lay off and give the kid his shot.
In fact, he's going to make Valeshin a brigadier.
Lerner about shits. It's instantly obvious now that Valeshin has just bypassed him and laid a pile of money directly on Shakalin and bought his promotion. Which is not the way it's supposed to work. It's supposed to work like an Amway distributorship, and you just don't bypass a stone on the pyramid.
Lerner is so pissed he thinks for a second about taking on old Natan himself, except the ancient fuck is sitting there flanked by his two bodyguards straight from the old country and the new talent has a serious reputation as very nasty people.
Handy with the old chicken chop.
So Lerner bides his time, and they bring Daz in and Lerner gives Daz his blessing and they kiss and hug and all that happy crap and make a vodka toast to their eternal friendship and mutual prosperity.
Well, the friendship is total bullshit, but as for the prosperity…
Daz gets his own brigade and the money rolls in.
Like waves on the California shore.
It's not enough.
Daziatnik wants something more.
Wants something different.
He's living in Fairfax, in the middle of thousands of other Russian immigrants, and it might as well be Leningrad with palm trees. He speaks Russian, he works with Russians, he eats with Russians, he sleeps with
