The Kings of Cool

by Don Winslow

Ben had ethical concerns, Chon had security concerns, but they came to the same conclusion—do not make the grow house look like a grow house.

  Chon did his due diligence as to what cops look for:

  Condensation on the windows, or—

  —the windows covered with black plastic or newspaper.

  Sounds of an electric hum or constant fans.

  Bright interior lights left on for long hours.

  Local power failures.

  (You cause a brownout while the wife next door is TiVo-ing The Bachelorette, she’s going to turn your ass in.

  “I would,” O affirmed.)

  Smell—a thousand marijuana plants smell like a Bard College dorm on a Friday night.

  Residents in the home only occasionally.

  People coming in and out at odd hours and staying only a few minutes.

  “This is all handle-able,” Ben said.

  First they put in the solar panels to supplement the energy. Then they soundproofed the walls in the basement to cover the noise from the generator.

  Then they went CGE. This came from Ben’s research and it meant

  Closed Growing Environment.

  “I like the ‘Closed’ part,” Chon said.

  Indeed.

  What CGE does is basically control the flow of air in and out of the grow room. It ain’t cheap—they had to install aluminum and sheet metal vent pipes connected to a five-ton air-conditioning system fitted to forty-gallon coconut carbon charcoal filters.

  “So the neighborhood is going to smell like coconuts?” O asked.

  “It won’t smell like anything,” Ben said.

  O was a little disappointed. She thought it would be fun to have a neighborhood that smelled like suntan lotion and drinks with umbrellas in them.

  It’s an article of faith with Ben that problems generate solutions, which generate more problems, which generate more solutions, and he labels this endless cycle “progress.”

  In this case, the five-ton AC unit solved the cooling and odor problem, but created another.

  AC units are cooled by either air or water, and a lot of it.

  If it’s the former, it’s pulling the air out of . . .

  . . . well, the air . . .

  and it makes a lot of noise.

  If it’s water, the water bill goes way up and you have the same utility-company-as-snitch problem.

  The boys pondered this.

  “A swimming pool,” O suggested. “Put in one of those aboveground pools.”

  Genius.

  A swimming pool is full of . . .

  . . . water . . .

  justifies the water bill, and besides . . .

  “We could collect the condensation, pump it back into the pool, and recycle,” added Ben.

  Of course.

  “Plus we could go swimming,” O said.

  In addition to the house renovation—

  —and they hadn’t even gotten to the rewiring—

  they had to buy—

  —metal halide lamps, high-pressure sodium lamps, thousand-watt bulbs, sixteen-inch oscillating fans, grow trays, reservoir trays for the nutrient mixture, the nutrient mixture, hundreds of feet of piping and tubing, pumps, timers for the pumps—

  “And pool toys,” O said. “Can’t have a pool without toys.”

  They hadn’t sold an eighth yet and they were already looking at a $70,000 outlay for start-up costs.

  That was for one house, but they did it. Took Ben’s savings, Chon’s combat-pay bonuses, and then hit the volleyball courts in search of suckers to hustle. Fortunately, P. T. Barnum was right, and they raised the money in a few months of game, set, and match.

  Grew primo product and reinvested the small profit into another house, then another and another, making Craig Vetter a very happy surfing Realtor.

  Now they have five grow houses and are working on a sixth.

  It costs money.

  Which is why Chon doesn’t let people rip them off.

  Much less lay a violent hand on their people.

  28

  Now Chon, consumed with self-loathing because he feels a little winded after trashing four guys, gets back in the Mustang and drives home.

  Grabs the bat, gets out of his car, and runs smack into

  His father.

  It happens every once in a while. Laguna is a small town and you run into people.

  People you want to.

  People you don’t.

  Chon’s dad falls into the latter category, and the feeling is mutual. There’s a seminal connection (see above), but that’s about it. Big John was 404 for a lot of Chon’s childhood, and when he wasn’t Chon wished he was.

  Ben and O both know that Chon’s father is a subject Not To Be Discussed.

  Ever.

  They’re aware, of course, that “Big John” was once a big-time Laguna dope dealer, a member of the storied “Association,” that he went to prison and now is some kind of roofing contractor, but that’s about it.

  Big John looks startled to see his son.

  And not very happy.

  It’s . . .

  . . . awkward.

  Big John, heavy shoulders, brown hair receding, a little jowly now, breaks the silence first.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Okay. You?”

  “Okay.”

  Big John looks at the bat, smirks, and asks, “You playing softball now or something?”

  “Hardball.”

  That’s it. They stand there looking at each other for a second, then Big John says, “Well, okay . . .”

  And walks away.

  29

  Duane Crowe finds a seat at the bar at T.G.I. Friday’s (Thank God It’s Friday’s) and takes it.

  T.G.I. Friday’s is practically a club for fortysomething divorced guys. You get a burger, a beer, I don’t know, some nachos, and kill time trying to find a fortysomething divorced woman who’s as lonely and horny as you are. Which is a dubious proposition to begin with.

  It ain’t a great life, but it’s the one he’s got.

  He’s scoping the place out for possibilities when he sees Boland squeeze his way into the crowded bar. “Squeeze,” because Bill Boland is built like a refrigerator and is one of the reasons that 24 Hour Fitness is open twenty-four hours.

  Boland takes the stool next to Crowe and says, “Nice T-shirt. ‘Old Guys Rule.’”

  “My niece gave it to me for my birthday,” Crowe says. “You get Hennessy straightened out?”

  “He won’t be waltzing through TSA anytime soon,” Boland says. “They put a pin in his arm. Guy did a number on him.”

  They had worked dumbass Brian and his crew into ripping off one of Leonard’s dealers to see what he’d do.

  Now they knew.

  Something else they know: before they make another move on Leonard, the other guy has to go.

  “You get an ID?” Crowe asks.

  “Working on it,” Boland says. “Word is he’s some kind of Special Forces stud. SEALs or Green Berets or something.”

  “Green Berets? They still got them?”

  “I think.”

  The other reason they meet in T.G.I. Friday’s is because it’s crowded and loud. Television up high, people yapping—you get a mike on this place, all you’re going to pick up is noise. And if someone’s wearing a wire it’s more likely to get some guy lying to a chick about his job than something a grand jury is going to get geeked about.

  “What do the Powers That Be say?” Boland asks.

  “What they always say,” Crowe answers. “‘Deal with it.’”

  Deal with it and send us our fucking money. The Powers That Be don’t eat in franchises, they own them.

  “This Leonard kid?” Crowe says. “He’s a piece of work—a real cocky asshole. Get on him, see if he slips on the banana peel.”

  Boland looks at the menu. “You had the burgers here?”

  Crowe surveys the
line of divorcées at the bar.

  “I’ve had everything here.”

  30

  When Chon gets to his apartment, O is there.

  She has a key because she looks after the place when he’s gone.

  Waters the single plant.

  (No, not that kind of plant. Some innocuous plant, like a ficus or something.)

  “I hope it’s okay I let myself in,” O says.

  “Sure.”

  She gives him this weird, un-O-like vulnerable look. “Chon?”

  “O?”

  “Don’t you think I’m sort of . . . Bambi-esque?”

  31

  “O,” Chon says, buying time. They’re pals, buddies. “We’ve known each other since we were kids.”

  “Maybe that will make it better,” O says. “And I’m nineteen now.”

  Not a kid anymore.

  “O—”

  “Look, if you think I’m, like, hideous or something—”

  “It’s not that,” Chon says. O is the opposite of hideous—whatever that is. “I think you’re beautiful.”

  He means it.

  “And you love me,” she says.

  He nods.

  “And I love you, so . . .”

  He shakes his head, smiles stupidly. “O . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Chon,” she says, “you’re going away . . . and I don’t know if . . . and it’s my fault—”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  32

  O’s first conscious memory was of a boy pissing on marigolds.

  “Ophelia” then—it would be years before she dropped the “phelia” and became just “O”—sat in the playground of the little school and watched the older boy water the plants.

  The school in Laguna Canyon was one of those neo-one-room schoolhouses—kindergarten through eighth grade—that operated under the theory that children learn best when not arbitrarily separated into rigid grade groups but allowed to find their own levels among kids of various ages.

  This was during one of Paqu’s progressive phases, so every day she hauled her four-year-old daughter from their seven-digit home in gated Emerald Bay to the funkier environs of the canyon. The house and the money for the private school came from her settlement with O’s father, who divorced her in the sixth month of her pregnancy.

  Even the teachers at the school thought that Ophelia was too young to start kindergarten.

  “She’s precocious,” her mother answered.

  “But still four,” the principal said.

  “She’s an old soul,” the mother countered. Her psychic had told her that her daughter had had many previous incarnations and that her astral age wasn’t four, but four thousand, which made her older than her mother by a good seven hundred years. “In very real ways, I’m actually her daughter.”

  The principal decided that Ophelia would probably benefit from getting out of the house for a few hours a day, and besides, the little girl was such a darling, already so beautiful, and so smart.

  “I think we made a huge mistake sending you to that school,” Paqu would say years later when O was flunking virtually every class at Laguna High.

  By that time, Paqu was in one of her conservative phases. And, by that time, Ophelia had changed her name to O and had started calling her mother Paqu.

  But that was all later, and right then O was watching the boy water the flowers. At first she thought it was just like the gardener at home, but then she observed that the boy wasn’t holding a hose, but something else; then she heard a short, sharp shriek and a teacher ran over and grabbed the boy.

  “John,” the teacher said. “Our private parts are what?”

  John didn’t answer.

  “Private,” the teacher answered for him. “Now zip up your jeans and go play.”

  “I was just watering the flowers,” John said.

  O thought that was very fun, that this magical boy could water the plants all by himself.

  “What’s that boy’s name?” she asked when the teacher came over to her.

  “That’s John.”

  “Chon,” O mispronounced, and then got up to go look for the magical boy who, penis safely returned to his jeans, had wandered around toward the back fence searching for an escape route.

  “Chon! Chon! Chon!” O hollered, wandering around in search of him. “Chon, play with me!”

  The other kids quickly picked up the chant.

  “Chon! Chon! Chon!”

  The name stuck.

  O became his shadow, followed him around like a baby duckling, a real pest, but it wasn’t long before Chon learned to put up with her, to become her protector, even to like her a little. Chon wasn’t particularly social, he didn’t “play well with others,” preferred to be alone, so the teachers were glad to see him make a connection.

  O adored him.

  The problem was that he disappeared from time to time—sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week—and then he’d be back at school again.

  “Where you been, Chon?” she’d ask him.

  Chon would make up fantastic stories for her:

  He was out fishing and had been captured by pirates; elves who lived in the canyon took him for a trip to their secret world; aliens from another galaxy flew him into outer space and back again. Chon took the girl to China, to Africa, to Mars and the Mountains of the Moon, and he was her magic boy.

  Then, one day, he disappeared for good.

  When she realized that he wasn’t coming back, O cried all night.

  Her mother consoled her with the words “Men don’t stay.”

  O already knew that.

  33

  “So you’re saying, what?” she asks Chon now. “No?”

  “No, I’m saying not now.”

  “What a totally wussy answer,” she says.

  “I’m a total wuss.”

  She backs off.

  “Okay,” she says, “you missed your chance, Chonny boy. That was it.”

  Chon smiles. “Got it.”

  34

  It’s funny Chon doesn’t talk much, because he loves words and word origins.

  He even knows the etymology of the word “etymology.”

  (Google it.)

  But O gets that you protect what you love and hold it close. Defending his reticence one day, Chon posited a question to them—

  “Words,” he said, “are:

  (a) A means of communication

  (b) A means of miscommunication

  (c) Tools

  (d) Weapons

  (e) All of the above.”

  Ben answered (a), O answered (d)

  (she is her mother’s daughter),

  Chon answered

  (f) It doesn’t matter.

  Because there are things he will not talk about. Things he has seen, things he has done in IraqandAfghanistan. Things you don’t burden other people with, memories that you try to prevent from overwhelming your brain and your nervous system, but that you can still feel on your skin. Movies that your mind privately screens on the inside of your eyelids.

  These are things that you do not put into words.

  They are ineffable.

  Therefore, to fill the sad silence—

  —underscored by O’s chant of I hate this trip I hate this trip I hate this trip—

  —on the ride to John Wayne–Orange County Airport (you cannot make this shit up) Chon goes neo–Spiro Agnew on the subject of neo-hippies.

  35

  Chon thinks that neo-hippies are grungy, pasty-faced-from-vegan-diets (“Eat a fucking cheeseburger, Casper”), patchouli-oil-stinking, Birkenstock-wearing, clogging up sidewalks playing hacky sack (why don’t they save syllables and just call it a dirtbag), leaning their crappy single-gear bicycles against the doors of Starbucks, where they order Tazo green tea and borrow other people’s laptops to check their e-mail, sitting there for hours and never leave a freaking tip, doing semi-naked yoga in parks so other people have to look at their pale, emaciated bodies, pa
rasites.

  Chon wishes Southern California would secede from the rest of the state so it could pass a law sending any white guy with dreadlocks to a concentration camp.

  “Where would the camp be?” Ben asks him.

  This is known as “egging him on.”

  “I don’t know,” Chon mutters, still pissed. “Somewhere off the fifteen.”

  The problem (okay, one problem) with building concentration camps in Southern California, Ben thinks, is that contractors would trip all over each other trying to rig the barbed-wire bid. Also that you have a governor whose accent is, well . . .

  . . . uhhhh . . .

  “Of course,” Chon mumbles, “I suppose liberals would block it.”

  Chon also hates liberals.

  The only liberal he doesn’t hate is Ben.

  (This is known as the Ben Exemption.)

  Liberals, Chon will opine when he’s on a rant—and he’s on one now—

  —are people who love their enemies more than their friends, prefer anyone else’s culture to their own, are guilty of success but unashamed of failure, despise profit and punish achievement.

  The men are dickless, sackless, self-castrated eunuchs cowed into shame of their own masculinity by joyless, anger-filled shrews consumed with bitter envy at the material possessions, not to mention multiple orgasms, of their conservative sisters—

  (“You should have stopped him buying The Fountainhead,” Ben tells O.

  “Who knew he was in the fiction section?”)

  Liberals took a pretty decent country and

  Fucked It Up

  to the point where

  kids can’t read Huckleberry Finn or play dodgeball—

  —dodgeball, that perfectly Darwinian game meant to ensure the survival of the fittest because the others are too perpetually concussed to propagate—

  —and any dune surfer with a grudge feels he can fly planes into our buildings without fear of the Big One being dropped on Mecca like it should have been five seconds after the towers came down—

  (Nancy Reagan would have pressed her husband’s finger on the button for him and turned the Saudi peninsula into the glass factory it deserves to be)