by Don Winslow
Three hundred, easy.
Just sayin’.
Anyway, history shows that
They bought the wrong Jew.
116
Ben is not going to make the same mistake.
Ben is a careful consumer—O can tell you stories about Ben driving her crazy spending weeks trying to decide which flat-screen TV to buy, debating the relative merits of Samsung and Sony—but there is no Consumer Reports on Drug Cops.
He knows he has to trump the county level. The next obvious choice would be a state cop, but Ben takes the long view—if he comes up with a state cop he leaves room on the board for OGR to jump him.
(“King me.”)
So what he needs is a fed.
Not easy, not easy.
For one thing, the feds are notoriously honest.
(Chon would object to the pairing of “notoriously” with “honest,” but he’s in Afghanistan, so fuck him.)
Two, the feds are also notoriously paranoid—
(clears with Chon)
always checking on each other, and
Three, Ben has no clue how to approach a fed, or
Four
Which fed to try.
He’s walking on the beach pondering this dilemma when he sees a fisherman jam a small fish on his hook and then cast it deep in the water.
117
You can Google anything.
You can even Google a federal drug agent.
What Ben does is he goes on Google and enters
“Federal Drug Busts+California”
and gets
three million twenty thousand hits.
Your tax dollars at work.
He scrolls through, rejects most of them, and then he hits
“Massive Marijuana Seizure in Jamul.”
Sees a photo of triumphant narcs standing beside bales of ditch weed and a story about this being a massive blow against the Sanchez-Lauter Cartel, the “massive blow” quote coming from a DEA agent named Dennis Cain, who has a particular look of triumphalism (“Mission accomplished”) on his grille.
Dennis, Ben decides, looks like a candidate.
Ambiguity intentional.
So—
118
Ben gets on a pay phone and waits for Special Agent Dennis Cain to answer. When he does, Ben says simply, “5782 Terra Vista in Modjeska Canyon. Grow house. Premium hydro.”
“Who is this?”
“You want it or not?”
“Can you repeat the information?”
“Come on. The call is recorded.”
Ben clicks out.
Then he calls his grower at 5782 Terra Vista in Modjeska Canyon.
“Bail.”
“What?”
“Bail,” Ben repeats. “Take as much of the good shit as you can get into your car and leave the rest. Do it now, Kev.”
119
Dennis listens to the recording, doesn’t recognize the voice.
He’s not big on anonymous sources.
Usually it’s a practical joke, someone trying to harass an exgirlfriend or wife, or it’s a new player. Tracking the call, he finds out it came from a pay phone at John Wayne Airport. He thinks about giving it to the OC Task Force, let them waste their time, but it’s a slow day so he decides it’s worth a ride up to Orange County to check it out. Always a nice drive along the ocean up through Camp Pendleton, and he feels like getting out of the office, so what the hell.
The anonymous source proves to be pure gold.
Well, pure marijuana.
120
Ben waits for ten days and then hits him again, this time from the Amtrak station in downtown San Diego.
“Who are you?” Dennis asks.
“The guy who’s going to get you your next promotion,” Ben answers. “Unless you keep asking me who I am.”
“Let’s meet.”
“Let’s not.”
“I can guarantee your security,” Dennis says. “No surveillance, no wires.”
“Trust you?”
“You absolutely can.”
“You want this tip or you don’t?”
Dennis does.
121
Ben mixes it up next time.
Sends Dennis a typed letter with a fake return address—
“Orange County Register—Classified Ads—Houses for Rent—You’ll figure it out.”
Dennis figures it out—there aren’t that many houses for rent, and only two that have the potential to be grow houses. One turns out to contain a retired couple, the other turns out to be a grow house.
Dennis is falling in love.
But who with?
It’s kind of fun having a Secret Admirer; at the same time he’s a little sick of the flirtation. So far the guy has given him product, but no people.
Confiscations, not arrests.
He’s getting dope off the street, but no dealers.
He tells this to Ben the next time he calls.
122
INT. DENNIS’S OFFICE – DAY
DENNIS is on the phone with BEN.
DENNIS
Look, I know you’re getting your rocks off moving a federal agent around like your personal sock puppet, but that game is over. I’m not your right hand—go jerk yourselfoff.
BEN
Hold on—I have to set the phone down.
DENNIS
It’s that little skinny thing in your shorts. I’ll wait.
BEN
Jesus, what has your panties in a wad?
DENNIS
Let me lay this out for you, you can tell me if I’ve got it right. You have some beef against a dope operation. I don’t know—they’re not paying you enough, they canned you, the boss fucked your girlfriend in the ass and she never let you, who cares. Doesn’t matter. You decide to get even, you want to fuck the man, but you don’t want to hurt your old friends and coworkers. So you give me the grow houses and then phone in a warning. How am I doing?
BEN
Not even close.
DENNIS
Yeah? Then how come every time I pop one of your tips, it’s a neutron bomb? The stuff is there, but all the people are gone.
BEN
I don’t know. Maybe you make a lot of noise going in.
DENNIS
You know what else makes a lot of noise going in? A hollow-point into your brain. Which is what you’re going to get when these people figure out it’s you, which they probably already have. You need protection, which I can’t offer you unless you give me a meet. You need to put these people behind bars. I’m trying to save your life here.
BEN
You’re trying to make cases.
DENNIS
So call it a symbiotic relationship.
123
symbiosis (n.) A close and often long-term relationship between different biological species.
For example—narcs and drug dealers.
Truth is, neither can live without the other.
Ben agrees to meet Dennis.
124
O comes through the door; Paqu is in the kitchen.
“Have you been out looking for a job?” Paqu asks.
“I want to meet my father.”
125
Ben sets a lot of conditions—
He’s not coming into the freaking DEA office in Dago. They’ll meet at a place of Ben’s choosing.
Dennis comes alone—no partners, no surveillance.
It’s off the books—Dennis doesn’t open a CI (Confidential Informant) file.
Ben will never testify, never appear in court.
Dennis agrees to all of it, because—
Why not?
End of the day, he’ll do what he wants and the CI can’t do shit about it.
126
Dennis drives slowly back and forth across the Cabrillo Bridge in San Diego’s Balboa Park.
On his third pass, a young man opens the passenger door and gets in.
“This is where gays meet,” Dennis says by way of
introduction, “to suck cock.”
“I’m disturbed you know that,” Ben says. “Drive down to the airport.”
Dennis takes Laurel Street down through Little Italy to Lindbergh Field, where Ben has him park in the cell phone lot.
“So talk,” Ben says.
He isn’t who Dennis was expecting. Most marijuana types are scruffy retro-hippies—this guy looks like he could have stepped out of an Up with People rehearsal.
“Right up top,” Dennis says, “if you won’t testify, I can’t offer you immunity.”
“This isn’t Survivor,” Ben answers. “I’m not asking for immunity.”
“Got it. I’m just obligated to tell you.”
“You need me to sign a release form?”
“Maybe down the road,” Dennis answers. “You have a name?”
“Ben.”
“I need arrests, Ben.”
Ben shakes his head. “That’s not your problem.”
“What is my problem?”
“Self-absorption,” Ben answers. “You haven’t asked me what I need, Dennis.”
“That’s fair, Ben. What do you need?”
Ben tells him.
Symbiosis.
127
Wounded.
Chon hates the word.
wounded: Simple past tense and past participle of “wound.”
1. Suffering from a wound, especially one acquired in battle.
2. Suffering from an emotional injury.
I am wounded (2) that I am wounded (1), Chon thinks.
He is of course aware that the word comes from the Old English “wund,” from the Saxon “wunda,” the Norse “und.”
The Norse.
The Vikings, who believed that if you died with your sword in your hand you went straight to Valhalla to join your fallen brothers in perpetual feasting, drinking, and fucking.
(Which is clearly why they slaughtered the Christians so easily.
Come on—grubbing, guzzling, and boinking versus playing the harp?)
But if you didn’t die with your sword in your hand you were basically fucked.
So Chon is a rehab animal.
The rehab techs have to force him to slow down, back off, but it’s a challenge because Chon is determined not to be one of the wounded. He has a medical board coming up.
He’s going out with his sword in his hand.
Speaking of which, he got a card from O.
Her (sort of) wearing (parts of) a Candy Striper uniform.
Sword, meet hand.
128
INT. PAQU’S HOUSE – LIVING ROOM – DAY
O and PAQU stare at each other.
O
I’m going to find him.
PAQU
I don’t want you doing that.
O
I don’t care. I’m going to.
Paqu’s jaws tighten.
PAQU
Don’t do it, Ophelia.
O
Why not? Just tell me. Why not?
129
He left when I was pregnant with you
Paqu tells her.
That’s the kind of man he is.
That’s the man you want to meet.
130
Ben goes to Chad’s office and leaves a briefcase.
$35K.
In Monopoly money.
131
“Cocksucker.”
Duane says when he gets the word from Chad.
Decides it’s time to go see
The Powers That Be.
132
The Powers That Be
Are powers because they’ve figured it out.
Specifically—
You don’t want to be in the drug business, you want to be in the turf business.
You get cops, judges, lawyers, muscle and charge a fee for people to sell drugs on your turf. You don’t own a stall in the market, you own the market and take a percentage of everybody else’s stall.
The marijuana stall, the cocaine stall, the heroin stall, the methamphetamine stall, the whatever-the-fuck-as-long-as-it’s-illegal-to-sell stall, you get your piece.
And it’s not just the dealers—you get a referral fee from the lawyers and money launderers you send them to.
In the great movie franchise that is the illicit drug trade, you aren’t actors or writers or even directors or producers.
You’re CAA.
Look at it this way: if you take 15 percent of the top ten dealers in your area, you are the biggest dealer in the area.
Without ever touching a drug.
Low profile, high profit.
You can’t be busted.
The actual drug dealers take all the risks and bring in money every day.
If they don’t—
And at some point you hope they don’t, because then you
Lend them the money to make the payments.
Of course, this requires no monetary outlay on your part; you simply extend their payments while charging interest in the form of late fees.
Dig it—now you’re your own credit card company.
They can never catch up—at some point you own their entire business and they become your employees—and you let them make enough money to eke out a living until you bust them out and then—
Somebody else volunteers to take their place. The suckers stand in line to take a number and get fucked because even owning 85 percent of themselves they can make a lot of money if they don’t fuck it up.
It’s a beautiful thing, being
The Powers That Be.
133
So Crowe goes to report that one more idiot is trying to jump off the conveyor belt.
Get him in line is the answer.
Because if one clown thinks he can dance solo, they’ll all think it.
Then you don’t have a business anymore.
134
Crowe finds Ben in his usual spot, usual time, sipping a latte and reading the New York Times online.
Duane pulls out the chair across from him and sits down.
Ben looks over the computer top. “Good morning.”
“No, it isn’t,” Duane answers. “It’s going to be a very bad morning. Monopoly money?”
Ben smiles.
“If you didn’t have the money this month,” Duane says, “you should have just said so. We could have worked out a payment plan.”
“I have a payment plan,” Ben says. “My plan is not to make any more payments.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Ben says, “I’m not paying anymore.”
“Then you’re out of business.”
Ben shrugs.
“We’ll put you under the jail,” Crowe says. “All those charges can be reinstated. And we’ll just bust you over and over and over again.”
Ben says nothing.
His version of passive resistance.
He calls it “Verbal Gandhism.”
(“The other guy can’t play tennis,” Ben explained to Chon one time, “if you don’t hit the ball back.”
“He can’t play tennis,” Chon answered, “if you shoot him in the head, either.”)
Duane stares at Ben for a second, then gets up and walks out.
Verbal Gandhism works.
135
So do symbiotic relationships.
Dennis walks into the Orange County Task Force office, flashes his fed-creds, and demands to see the boss.
Commander Roselli looks like he just swallowed hot piss, that’s how happy he is to have a fed on his turf, trodding on the flowers, making the dogs bark. But he summons Boland upstairs and makes the introductions.
“Deputy Boland, Special Agent Dennis Cain, DEA.”
Boland nods at the fed. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“You have an op going against a Benjamin Leonard?” Dennis asks.
Boland hesitates, looks at Roselli.
Roselli says, “Go ahead.”
“Boss—”
“
I said go ahead.”
Boland turns back to Dennis. “Yeah, I do.”
“No, you don’t,” Dennis says. “Whatever you had going, shitcan it. Now.”
“You can’t just walk in here and—”
“Yeah, I can,” Dennis said. “I did.”
“Leonard is dealing marijuana in our jurisdiction,” Boland argues.
“He could be selling enriched uranium to Osama bin Laden outside the teacup ride at Disneyland,” Dennis says, “and you will stay the fuck away from it.”
“What,” Boland asks, “you want the bust for yourselves?”
“He’s a federal CI, idiot,” Dennis snaps. “You keep fucking around, you’re going to jeopardize an operation that is so far above you, you’d need a ladder to sniff its asshole. You burn this guy, you’re going to be on the phone to the AG—that’s the attorney general—of the United States, dipshit—explaining why.”
Roselli says, “You’re running an op on our turf, you should have let us know.”
“So it could leak to our target?” Dennis asks.
“Fuck you,” Roselli says.
“Okay, fuck me,” Dennis answers. “Who you don’t fuck is Leonard. Dicks out, hands off. Him, his friends, his family, his dog if he has one. There is a force field around him that you don’t get near unless you want to get zapped. Do we understand each other?”
They do.
They don’t like it, but they understand.
Ben Leonard is untouchable.