by Don Winslow
Big John’s eyes opened.
“You touch me again,” Chon said, “I’ll wait until you’re asleep and splatter your brains all over the wall.”
Big John blinked.
Chon pulled back the hammer.
“Unless you want me to do it right now,” he offered.
Big John slowly shook his head.
Chon eased the hammer down, put the gun back in the drawer, and went to his room.
His father never laid a hand on him again.
179
So John smirked when he heard Chon’s story about snapping the quarterback’s arm.
“Still defending damsels in distress,” he said. “So what do you want from me?”
“You have lawyers.”
“I do?” John asked, smiling. “Why would you think I have lawyers?”
Chon looked him straight in the eyes. “Because you’re a drug dealer.”
“Was,” John corrected. “I was a drug dealer. I paid my debt to society, as they say. Now I put roofs on people’s houses.”
“Right.”
John got himself a beer and offered one to Chon, who refused. John shrugged and said, “If you’re man enough to get yourself in this kind of trouble, Chon, you’re man enough to get yourself out. You want some advice about how to get by in the joint, I can give you that: never accept a favor or a gift because you’ll end up paying with your ass.”
“Personal experience?” Chon asked.
John said, “Here’s what you do, kid—you go join the navy, get your ass out of town. There, I helped you.”
Chon left and found Ben.
Ben drove him down to San Diego.
180
Now, in bed, O tells Chon all about her plan to find her father.
Chon listens to the whole thing, then asks, “What good will it do?”
“What do you mean?”
Chon shrugs. “I know my father, and I wish I didn’t.”
181
The call comes in the morning.
Ben detaches his arm from beneath Kari’s brown shoulder and picks up the phone.
Hears.
“You reading the New York Times?”
Ben, sleepy: “Not yet.”
“Well, try the Orange County Register instead, Mr. Untouchable.”
182
Ben doesn’t get the Register
(too Republican).
Runs down the street to a news rack, inserts his quarters, and pulls out a paper.
Front page, above the fold:
TWO FOUND DEAD IN MISSION VIEJO
There’s a photo of a blood-stained car.
A Volvo.
Frantically, Ben reads—“Names are being withheld pending notification . . .”
But he thinks he recognizes the car.
He gets his phone out and hits Scott Munson’s number. It rings six times, then Scott’s voice comes on. “You know the drill. Leave a message. Later. Scott.”
For the first time in his life, Ben feels absolutely terrified. Worse, he feels helpless. He doesn’t leave a message, just clicks off.
His phone rings again.
“Scott?” Ben asks.
“That’s sweet.”
“What did you do?!”
“No,” OGR says. “What you should be asking yourself is—what did you do?”
Good question.
Then OGR posits an even better question to him.
What are you going to do?
183
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Chon asks after Ben has laid it all out for him.
“What were you supposed to do about it from Afghanistan?” Ben asks. “Then from a hospital bed?”
“We’ve always told each other everything,” Chon says. “That was the deal.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I’m guilty, too.” He tells Ben about Brian and the Boys. “That guy was testing us, seeing how we’d react. The second I left, he moved in on you.”
Ben is worked. Two people dead because of him. It’s wrong, Ben says, just flat-out fucking wrong to let them literally get away with murder.
Ben just can’t let it happen.
And won’t let it happen.
184
“Glad to hear you say it,” Chon says.
“You’re not going to be glad to hear me say this,” Ben answers. “We’re not going ‘drug war.’ No ‘eye for an eye.’”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I’m going to the cops.”
“Which cops?” Chon asks. “Theirs?”
“Not every cop is dirty.”
What Ben can’t seem to get through his head, Chon thinks, is that the justice system is set up for the system, not the justice. The drug laws make usout laws. Outside the protection of the law. The only protection we have is self-protection, and you cannot go Gandhi on that, you just can’t lie down in the street, because the other side will be happy to run you over and then throw it in reverse and do it again.
“I’m not asking you to do it,” Chon says, “I’m just asking you to step aside and let me do it.”
Ben says—
185
No.
186
The power of no is absolute
Ben has always believed.
A refusal to participate
In wrong,
In evil
In injustice.
You don’t have to do it.
You just say no.
187
INT. BEN’S APARTMENT – DAY
BEN and CHON glare at each other.
CHON
The fuck you mean, “no”?
BEN
I mean, no. I mean I won’t step aside and “let” you murder people.
CHON
You think you have choices here?
BEN
I think there are always choices, yes.
CHON
Such as?
BEN
I have a plan.
CHON
Your last plan got two people killed. If we’d taken out these guys the first time they made threats—
BEN
Like you did?
CHON
You’re right—my mistake, leaving them alive.
BEN
Always your answer, isn’t it?
CHON
There are bad people in the world, Ben. You’re not going to change them, or persuade them, or make them listen to reason. You get rid of them—they’re toxic waste.
BEN
Nice world.
CHON
I didn’t create it, I just live in it.
BEN
No, you just kill in it.
CHON
You’re just like the rest of this fucking country, B—you don’t want to know what it takes to keep any more buildings from falling on your head. You want to sit here and talk about “peace” and watch Entertainment Tonight and let other people do your killing for you.
BEN
I didn’t ask you to kill for me—
CHON
Too late, Ben.
BEN
And I’m telling you not to kill for me now. I’ll deal with this in my own way.
CHON
Which is what, exactly?
188
Ben gets on the phone and says,
“You win.”
189
Perhaps Elena’s greatest sorrow is that Magda will always associate her birthday with her father’s death.
A harsh fact for a girl who loved her papa so much.
Elena sits and looks at the closed casket, white, draped in flowers.
Armed men stand in the back of the room and at the doors, waiting for an attack that could very well come.
She had to tell Magda that she could not attend her own father’s funeral tomorrow.
Too dangerous.
In a world bereft of decency.
Are the armed men sentries or vultures, she wonders, ready t
o pounce on the carcass of the Sanchez-Lauter family? They are all wondering what she is going to do.
Still beautiful, still relatively young, she could go away to Europe, find a new husband, a new life. Certainly the option is attractive—she has enough money to live well forever, and raise her children in peace and comfort.
Or will she step into her dead brothers’ and husband’s shoes and take charge of the family?
A woman.
There is already grumbling about it; she has heard it. How they will not serve under a woman.
Do you have a choice? she thinks.
A woman is all that’s left.
She lifts a black-gloved hand and Lado appears at her side.
Lado, the policeman now openly in her employ.
A killer—his black eyes as cold as the obsidian blades the Aztec priests used to disembowel their sacrificial victims.
“Lado,” she says. “I have a job for you.”
“Sí, madrone.”
She’s decided.
190
Chon tosses his cane on the sand and limps toward the water.
Swimming is the best exercise to get him back in shape. Stretches his muscles, breaks up his scar tissue, improves his cardio, but puts no weight on the wounds.
The water is cold, but he doesn’t wear a wetsuit.
Not sure he could even pull one on, and anyway, he likes the pain of the sharp cold.
He starts swimming with easy overhead strokes, not pushing it.
Rhythmic, strong.
Peace lasted exactly one night.
Now it’s back to war.
191
EXT. STAIRCASE – TABLE ROCK BEACH – DAY
BEN and DUANE stand on a landing halfway down the long set of stairs. Waves smash against Table Rock.
Duane pats Ben down to make sure he’s not wearing a wire. Satisfied—
DUANE
What do we have to talk about?
BEN
I need to have a going-out-of-business sale.
DUANE
You just don’t fucking learn, do you?
BEN
Look, I have all this inventory—
DUANE
Your problems are your problems.
BEN
My problems are your opportunity.
DUANE
Speak.
BEN
I’ll sell cheap. Fifty cents on the dollar. To you.
DUANE
Why the fuck would you do that?
BEN
I wouldn’t, except what choice do I have? I can’t find a fucking buyer, they’re all too scared they’re going to end up dead in their cars.
DUANE
(smiling)
I wouldn’t know anything about that.
BEN
Yeah, okay. Look, the point is—you win. Just give me a chance to get some of my money out.
Ben watches anxiously as Duane considers this.
DUANE
Let me think about it.
BEN
Think quick. I’m dying here.
192
Chon follows Old Guys Rule away from the meeting.
OGR gets into his four-door Dodge Charger and heads north on the PCH, back up toward Laguna, turns south onto Arroyo and then onto Lewis up into Canyon Acres. Eventually he pulls into a driveway.
I could do him now, Chon thinks.
The VSS Vintorez sniper rifle—with a scope he doesn’t need and a sound suppressor he does—rests under a blanket on the passenger seat. It would be a simple matter of rolling down the window, waiting until OGR gets out of the car, and putting two in his head.
Yeah, except it doesn’t necessarily solve anything, Chon thinks. It does get justice for the murders, and it definitely sends a message that we’re not to be fucked with, but OGR is more the gofer type, not the boss.
OGR gets out of the car and goes in.
It’s a nice house—California bungalow—small and well maintained. But nothing about it says “kingpin.” Nothing about it says the owner is taking a “licensing fee” from every successful dope dealer in the OC and San Diego.
Unless, Ben thinks, OGR is just a guy who has a cop buddy and they thought they’d do a shakedown on a gullible pot grower.
The other possibility is that OGR is a big player who’s smart enough to lie low. Live under the radar until he has enough stowed away to pull out and go to some island paradise.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, he thinks.
Just take the next step, like get OGR’s name.
He puts in a call to an old buddy from the Stan.
193
Ben answers his phone.
Hears OGR say, “We’ll take your shit off your hands, but at thirty cents on the dollar.”
“You sure you don’t want to fuck me in the ass, too,” Ben asks, “while you’re at it?”
“You say one more word, it’s twenty-five.”
“Thirty-five,” Ben says. “Come on, don’t be a dick—you’re making huge money on this.”
“What kind of weight we talking?” OGR asks.
“Jesus, on the phone?”
“I’m clean,” OGR says. “Hey, if you’re not . . .”
“One twenty, give or take.”
“Pounds?!”
“No, gallons, dickwad.”
“Watch your fucking mouth.”
“We on, or not?”
“I’ll get back to you with a time and place,” OGR says.
“Bring cash,” Ben says.
194
Chon’s buddy—late of the SEALs, now with the Oceanside PD—calls him back.
“I ran the address.”
His name is Duane Alan Crowe, forty-eight years old, occupation: roofing contractor.
“You want me to ask around?” Chon’s buddy asks. “See if he’s on anyone’s radar?”
Chon tells him no thanks. Last thing he wants is to let anyone in OC know there’s interest in Crowe.
“Hey, I owe you.”
Chon pulled him out of the shit in Helmand one time.
“You owe me nothing.”
Friends look out for friends.
Way it is.
195
Chon watches Crowe come out of his house, a big briefcase in his hand, and get into his car.
11:30 at night
About fucking time.
Chon is used to sitting still waiting to spring ambushes, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it.
He follows Crowe as he drives off.
196
Guy is standing out front, waiting for OGR to pick him up.
Brian Hennessy is wearing a short jacket, and Chon can see the gun bulge underneath.
Sloppy prick, he thinks.
Brian gets into Crowe’s car.
Chon follows them out to the 405.
197
Californians can have entire conversations using mostly numbers.
“The 133 to the 405 to the 5 to the 74” being fairly typical.
Crowe turns east on the 74 and drives up into the range of hills that flank the coastal plain.
No-man’s-land.
Surprisingly rural for this part of the world. Lots of switchbacks, dirt roads, little meadows hidden in oak groves.
That’s where Crowe’s headed now, and it freaks Chon out.
If he’s going to meet Ben, which is a real possibility—
—to do whatever the fuck it is that Ben thinks he’s doing.
Chon thinks he knows the place they’re headed—a little picnic area they’ve used to make exchanges before.
He pulls his car over, grabs the rifle, gets out, and starts trotting through the oak trees, hoping he can get there in time.
198
Miguel Arroyo, also known as Lado, leads a caravan of Suburbans through the streets of Tijuana and pulls up outside of the nightclub. His black-clad men pour out of the trucks, their M16s carried at high port, and surround the concrete block building, a hangout of the Sanchez-Lauter fac
tion that went over to the Berrajanos.
Then Lado leads a squad through the front door.
“Police!” Lado yells.
There are about a dozen men in the club, with their girlfriends or their segunderas.
“Police!” Lado yells again. A few of the men start for their weapons but quickly realize they’re outgunned and raise their hands.
Lado’s men relieve them of their weapons and line them up against the wall.
Then they step back and, at Lado’s curt nod, open fire.
199
Ben pulls the van into the picnic area and waits. The back of the van holds one hundred and twenty pounds of his best hydro, plastic-wrapped into quarter-pound packages in twenty-pound bales.
$120K at normal street value, but this is a
fire sale
at
$42K.
Cocksuckers.
He also has a couple of little surprises wrapped up in two of the bales.
Finally a car pulls into the parking lot. After a few seconds OGR and another guy get out.
Ben does the same.
OGR shines a big flashlight onto the van.
“You come alone?” he asks.
“Like you said.”