California Fire And Life

120

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.