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.
121
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.
122
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.
A hundred strokes, every morning and every night, and that is what will keep it beautiful and full, the way Daziatnik so admires it.
She finishes brushing it and stands back to admire her look in the mirror.
That's when she sees the man behind her.
It must be one of the new guards.
But the nerve, to come into her bedroom "What-" she starts to snap.
Then the man's hand is over her mouth.
A cloth over her nose.
Then blackness.
123
Nicky lights up a joint.
Savors the sweet musky scent, takes a deep hit, lets it swirl around in his lungs, and then releases it. Feels all the tension go out with the smoke.
All problems dissolving into the night air.
Tratchev dead.
His troops locked up.
Rubinsky and Schaller swept up with their troops.
The late Dr. Benton Howard's reputation as a police informer firmly established.
Paul Gordon fired.
Kazzy Azmekian is flotsam. Or is it jetsam? Nicky can never remember. Doesn't matter.
He takes another toke, slips out of his clothes, and lets himself ease into the Jacuzzi's steaming water.
Fifty million dollars coming his way tomorrow. The turnaround in one generation.
A very good night, and some very good boo.
He feels a small twinge of anxiety. Lev hasn't returned yet, to report that the problem of the sister is no more. Nicky does another hit and lets the problem fly from his mind. What Lev sets out to kill, Lev kills. He'll be back soon.
So Nicky's having a very good night. He has the whole thing working for him, Tratchev dead, a big payday coming up on the morrow and life is way cool. He shuts his eyes and stretches out, and then feels something round against his toes.
He's like annoyed, because he has told Michael not to kick his soccer ball around the pool and the Jacuzzi.
Nicky goes to pick the ball up and screams.
Falls backward against the side of the Jacuzzi and cowers there.
And just stares at Lev's severed head bobbing up and down in the bubbling water.
Nicky's going fetal when Dani gets there.
Dani plucks Lev's head up by the hair and just howls in pain.
There's a ribbon around Lev's neck.
Something written on it, but even if they weren't so freaked, they couldn't read it.
It's written in Vietnamese.
Nicky runs into the house.
To Mother's room.
Her door is ajar and he can see the flickering silver light of the television.
He opens the door without knocking.
"Mother-"
A man sits on the bed watching television. He casually swings his silenced pistol in Nicky's direction.
"Hello, Daz," Karpotsov says. "I'm sorry – it's Nicky now, isn't it?"
"Colonel."
"It's General now," Karpotsov says.
Nicky is like freaking, but Nicky stays cool.
"Congratulations," he says.
"Thanks," Karpotsov says. "Is this HBO?"
"Cinemax."
"I like it."
"I'm glad," Nicky says.
"Well," Karpotsov says, "congratulations, Nicky. I understand that you have quite the deal in the works. Well done, your country is proud. You were going to cut us in, weren't you, Nicky? Or did you think I was dead?"
"I had hopes in that direction," Nicky says. "Where is my mother?"
"She'll be staying with us for a while."
"How long is a while?"
"Well, let me put it this way," Karpotsov says. "We want our fucking money."
Dude.
We want our piece.
Of California Fire and Life.
124
The sun comes up enough to make out shapes.
That early-morning hour when everything is in shades of gray.
Jack starts up the ravine that cuts into the bluff. He climbs until he comes to the old fence. Ducks under it, just the way he did when he was a kid, and he's in the old trailer park.
Very weird, very strange being here knowing it belongs to Nicky Vale. That Nicky's planning on turning it into a tract of condos and town houses. That he killed his wife by way of raising the capital.
Jack picks his way through the eucalyptus and pine trees. He walks past old trailer pads and then a Dumpster.
He opens the lid of the Dumpster, shines the light in, and jumps back.
Two charred, cracked skulls.
Exploded from the inside out by intense heat.
Tommy Do and Vince Tranh.
Jack closes the lid.
Moves on toward the old, decrepit rec hall he used to run around in. When he was eight it was a fort. When he was ten it was a rock 'n' roll hall. When he was fifteen it was make-out heaven.
The old hall is in bad shape. Some boards ripped out, shingles stripped, but the two wide old doors are still intact.
And there's a shiny new padlock on them.
A combination lock.
Jack finds a rock and smashes the hasp.
The door swings open like it's been an exhausting effort to stay shut.
First thing Jack sees is the bed.
He pulls up a dustcover and there it is.
The Robert Adam four-poster canopied bed with the castle on top. Incredibly beautiful with its silk and fabrics and intricately carved coat of arms. The video didn't do it justice.
The freaking room is filled with furniture. All draped in cloth dust covers, they look like monuments, like ghosts. Jack goes around turning back the covers.