The Kings of Cool

by Don Winslow

1. A Republican National Committee Fund-raiser

  2. Dollywood

  3. Wines R Us

  4. A Monster Truck Show

  5. Rush Limbaugh’s Small Intestine

  6. Anywhere

  Ben fucking reels.

  Turns and walks away.

  The truth always comes home, but not to

  his home.

  234

  When Brian comes to, he’s duct-taped to a chair.

  Chon sits across from him.

  “What did I tell you?” Chon says. “What did I tell you I’d do if you laid another hand on one of our people?”

  Brian remembers the answer. “Don’t. Please.”

  “Say it—what did I tell you?”

  “That you’d kill me.”

  “Did you think I was kidding?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think I’m kidding now?”

  “No. Please. Jesus.”

  “I’m going to give you one motherfucking chance,” Chon says. “One. To tell me the truth. If you lie, I’ll know it and I’ll kill you. Tell me you understand, Brian.”

  “I understand.” His legs are shaking.

  “Who pulled the trigger on Scott Munson and that girl?”

  “Duane.”

  “Duane Crowe.”

  Brian nods.

  “What did you tell the cops?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” Chon says. “You’re going to call Crowe, tell him you want to meet.”

  “He won’t come.”

  “Tell him he comes or you tell the feds everything,” Chon says. “What’s his number?”

  Brian tells him.

  Chon takes Brian’s phone, punches in Crowe’s number, and holds it up to Brian’s mouth.

  235

  “I meant ‘sperm donor’ not as in ‘would you give me some sperm, please,’” O says, “but would you be the man who made a sperm deposit with, or rather within, my mother that resulted in, well, me?”

  Paul Patterson recovers his poise quickly and says, “Come in, please.”

  He ushers O into a beautifully furnished living room that looks, well, old.

  Old Newport Beach money.

  Photos of sailboats on the wall. Wooden models of boats in glass cases.

  “Do you sail?” O asks.

  “I used to,” Patterson says. “Before I got . . . well, before I got too old.”

  He is older than he was in her fantasy.

  In her fantasy he was in his late forties maybe, handsome, of course, with just a streak of silver in the temples of his otherwise jet-black hair. In her fantasy he was athletic, he’d kept himself in shape, maybe he was a tennis player or a surfer or an iron-man triathlete.

  The real man is in his early sixties.

  His hair is wispy, a weird kind of yellow and white.

  And he looks frail. His skin is translucent, like thin paper.

  Her father is dying.

  “Please sit down,” he says, pointing to an upholstered, wing-backed chair.

  She sits and feels uncomfortable.

  Small.

  “Would you like something to drink?” he asks. “Iced tea or some lemonade?”

  O loses it

  totally

  blows.

  All that pent-up emotional lava just freaking explodes.

  236

  INT. PAUL PATTERSON’S HOUSE – DAY

  O

  Iced tea? Lemonade? That’s it?! After nineteen fucking years, that’s it? No hug, no kiss, no it’s so wonderful to finally meet you, I’m so sorry I abandoned you before you were born and broke your heart and totally fucked up your life?

  Patterson looks sad. Even sadder as he answers—

  PATTERSON

  My dear Ophelia . . .

  237

  Patterson goes Counter Darth Vader on it—

  “I’m not your father.”

  238

  Ben pulls into the driveway of his parents’ house in the canyon, gets out of the car, walks up to the door, takes a deep breath, and rings the bell.

  What the fuck do they have to do with all this, Ben wonders. For all their goofy, reconstructed-hippie bullshit, they’re essentially kind, loving people. Caring therapists, good if overbearing parents.

  It feels like it takes forever, but his mother finally answers the door.

  She looks shaken.

  “Ben—”

  Stan walks up behind her. Puts his hands on her shoulders and says, “Ben, what are you involved in?”

  “What am I involved in?” Ben asks. “What are you involved in?”

  239

  They pull into the parking lot.

  A warehouse complex in the canyon.

  Old C trains scattered around.

  Empty. Quiet.

  Crowe’s Charger is already there.

  Chon lies on the floor of the van behind Brian. He pushes the shotgun barrel into the back of the seat. “You feel that, Brian? It will go right through this seat into your spine. The best you can hope for is a helper monkey.”

  “I feel it.”

  “Pull up beside him and get out.”

  Chon feels the van slow and then stop.

  The door opens.

  Brian gets out.

  Crowe rolls down his window

  And shoots Brian in the head.

  240

  “I was aware,” Patterson says, “that your mother married me for my money. I was in my forties, she was in her twenties and beautiful. I knew—everybody knew. I married her anyway.”

  O sits and listens.

  Patterson continues, “I knew that I was her second husband but wouldn’t be her last. It was all right with me—I was happy just to borrow her beauty for a few years.”

  Borrow, O wonders, or rent?

  “We didn’t have a prenuptial agreement,” Patterson says. “My family was furious, my lawyers more so, but Kim wouldn’t hear of it. I knew what I was doing, but money has never been my problem in life. One agreement that we did have, however, is that there would be no children.”

  O winces.

  “I was too old,” Patterson says, “and didn’t want to cut that ridiculous figure of the middle-aged father trying to keep up with a toddler. But there was more to it. I knew the marriage would never last and, as a child of divorce myself, I didn’t want to inflict that on another child.”

  But you did, O thinks.

  “I knew that she was unfaithful,” Patterson says. “She would be gone for long, unexplained hours. She would take little trips. I knew but I didn’t want to know, so I never pressed the issue. Until she informed me that she was pregnant.”

  “With me,” O says.

  Patterson nods.

  241

  Ben follows them into the study, the walls lined with bookshelves filled with psychology texts, sociological studies, economic histories, evidence of their belief that the truth of the world is contained in books, if only you could read enough of them, and the right ones.

  Now Ben wants a truth that can’t be found in books and says, “Please, I need to know.”

  “We came here in the fresh bloom of our idealism,” Diane explains. “We thought we would change the world.”

  Ben’s about to object to the whole “Diamonds and Rust” monologue he senses is coming, but then his mother starts talking about a guy giving away tacos.

  242

  Chon watches Crowe get out of the car and stand over Brian’s body, making sure.

  There’s not a lot of doubt. Brian’s lifeless eyes stare up at the moon and a pool of blood forms beneath his head.

  Chon slides the van door open and drops to the ground. Belly-crawls around until he sees Crowe swinging his gun at the sound.

  Crowe sees him and fires.

  But Chon has already dropped into a low crouch. Can’t shoot the man, can’t take a chance on killing him, so he drops the shotgun, lunges, and tackles Crowe at the waist, driving him into the sand.


  Fifty-eight thousand fucking times he practiced on the sand south of here, down on Silver Strand, but he’s weak now, and rusty, so he lets

  Crowe’s gun hand come around as he tries to jam the gun barrel into Chon’s head and the shot

  is deafening, a roar like a big wave going off and Chon feels the burn and his head roaring as he gets his knee up and drives Crowe’s arm to the sand and traps it there, but Crowe is

  big and strong and he pounds his left fist into Chon’s ribs, then the side of his head, bangs his hips up and bridges his back, trying to buck Chon off, but Chon

  slides up and gets his other knee on Crowe’s left forearm and now he kneels on the man’s arms, feels the blood running hot down his face, his pulse slamming in his neck and he takes his thumbs and presses them into Crowe’s eyes.

  Chon’s forearms quiver with exertion, he’s trying to hold it until Crowe screams and drops the gun and yells, “Enough!”

  Chon grabs Crowe’s pistol and gets off him, holding the gun on him.

  Crowe rolls onto his stomach, presses his palms into his eyes, and moans, “I can’t see, I can’t see.”

  Chon walks over to his shotgun and picks it up. He feels blood seeping out of his left leg where the wounds have opened up from the fight. When he comes back, Crowe is on his knees, trying to get up.

  Chon kicks him back down.

  Presses the shotgun barrel into his neck.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “They’ll kill me.”

  “They’re not your worry right now,” Chon says. “I am. Who do you work for?”

  Crowe shakes his head.

  Chon’s out of wind and his leg starts to throb. He says, “They wouldn’t die for you.”

  Crowe gives him a name.

  It hits Chon like a blow to the chest.

  He leans over and says, “Tell me the truth. Did you kill those two kids?”

  Crowe nods.

  Chon pulls the trigger.

  Sorry, Ben.

  He drags Crowe’s body over by Hennessy’s, then puts the shotgun in Hennessy’s hands and lays the pistol by Crowe’s.

  Justice or revenge.

  Either way.

  Taking his knife, Chon cuts a strip off his shirt and presses it against the open wound on his leg.

  Then he notices that it’s raining.

  243

  “What happened?” Ben asks when Diane finishes her story.

  244

  Chon starts to run.

  A steady, disciplined trot.

  It’s only six or seven miles.

  Nothing to it.

  The rain grows heavier now.

  Thick, heavy drops fall on his shoulders, run down his side and his leg.

  The blood mixes with the water.

  245

  John 14:2

  “In my Father’s house there are many mansions—if it were not so I would have told you.

  “I go to prepare a place for you.”

  246

  What happened? Stan repeats.

  To us?

  To the country?

  What happened when childhood ends in Dealey Plaza, in Memphis, in the kitchen of the Ambassador, your belief your hope your trust lying in a pool of blood again? Fifty-five thousand of your brothers dead in Vietnam, a million Vietnamese, photos of naked napalmed children running down a dirt road, Kent State, Soviet tanks roll into Prague so you turn on drop out you know you can’t reinvent the country but maybe you reimagine yourself you believe you really believe that you can that you can create a world of your own and then you lower that expectation to just a piece of ground to make a stand on but then you learn that piece of ground costs money that you don’t have.

  What happened?

  Altamont, Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate, Son of Sam, Mark Chapman we saw a dream turn into a nightmare we saw love and peace turn into endless war and violence our idealism into realism our realism into cynicism our cynicism into apathy our apathy into selfishness our selfishness into greed and then greed was good and we

  Had babies, Ben, we had you and we had hopes but we also had fears we created nests that became bunkers we made our houses baby-safe and we bought car seats and organic apple juice and hired multilingual nannies and paid tuition to private schools out of love but also out of fear.

  What happened?

  You start by trying to create a new world and then you find yourself just wanting to add a bottle to your cellar, a few extra feet to the sunroom, you see yourself aging and wonder if you’ve put enough away for that and suddenly you realize that you’re frightened of the years ahead of you what

  Happened?

  Watergate Irangate Contragate scandals and corruption all around you and you never think you’ll become corrupt but time corrupts you, corrupts as surely as gravity and erosion, wears you down wears you out I think, son, that the country was like that, just tired, just worn out by assassinations, wars, scandals, by

  Ronald Reagan, Bush the First selling cocaine to fund terrorists, a war to protect cheap gas, Bill Clinton and realpolitik and jism on dresses while insane fanatics plotted and Bush the Second and his handlers, a frat boy run by evil old men and then you turn on the TV one morning and those towers are coming down and the war has come home what

  Happened?

  Afghanistan and Iraq the sheer madness the killing the bombing the missiles the death you are back in Vietnam again and I could blame it all on that but at the end of the day at the end of the day

  we are responsible for ourselves.

  What happened?

  We got tired, we got old we gave up our dreams we taught ourselves to scorn ourselves to despise our youthful idealism we sold ourselves cheap we aren’t

  Who we wanted to be.

  247

  Paqu lies on the sofa.

  Bottle of gin, bottle of pills on the coffee table.

  The effects on her face, in her eyes. She sees O come in and says, “You look uncharacteristically nice.”

  “Where’s Four?”

  “That’s very amusing,” Paqu says, her words a little slurred. “Four is gone.”

  “I went and saw Paul.”

  “I told you not to.”

  “I know.”

  “But you did it anyway.”

  “Obviously.”

  Paqu sits up, pours the last of the bottle into her glass, and says, “And are you happier now? Did you gain an epiphany? One that might propel you from this perpetual adolescence of yours?”

  “He said he wasn’t my father.”

  “The man is a liar.”

  “I believe him.”

  “Of course you do,” Paqu says. “You believed in the tooth fairy until you were eleven. I considered having you tested.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Who was who?”

  “My father,” O says.

  Just tell me.

  248

  He knows his old man.

  Knows him in the way that only blood can.

  The shared secret code hidden deep in deoxyribonucleic acid.

  DNA.

  Fathers and sons are really brothers

  Twins of the double helix

  Fates twisted around each other

  Inseparable

  Inextricable

  He knows his father

  would not have come unprepared to this feast

  because he wouldn’t

  Knows that his father

  cannot let it end here

  Because he couldn’t

  Knows that he now has to do

  The one thing

  That will cost him more than he can pay

  And that he would never do for anyone

  Not even himself

  But will do

  For Ben

  Go to his father’s house

  And ask

  For mercy.

  249

  INT. PAQU’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT

  PAQU takes a long sip of her drink
and looks over the glass at O, who stands there, furious and determined.

  PAQU

  Look at you, my little girl, all forceful and resolute. You look ridiculous. Do you want your face to freeze that way?

  O says nothing, just holds her glare.

  PAQU (CONT’D.)

  I wish you were this determined to find a job.

  Same.

  Paqu is really out of it now—the effects of the alcohol and pills have hit her.

  PAQU (CONT’D.)

  Of course, I should talk. I’ve done absolutely nothing with mine. Nothing. Except give birth to you. And, no offense, please don’t take this personally, but you’re such a . . . disappointment. Very well. You want to know who your father is? Who he was?

  250

  Elena sips a sherry and watches the evening news.

  A small pleasure before dinner at an empty table, as Magda refuses to come out of her room, leaving Elena to dine with memories and might-have-beens.

  She is just finishing her drink when her guards let Lado in.

  “I heard there was a slaughter at the Revolución Club,” she says.

  “I heard the same thing.”

  “A terrible thing,” she says. “We live in terrible times.”

  “Someone whispered a name to me,” Lado says.

  “Whispered or screamed?”

  She looks out the window into the courtyard, where she still expects Filipo to pull up in his car and twirl her in his arms.

  “Buen viaje,” she says.

  Have a nice trip.

  251

  “This guy John,” Ben asks. “What did he look like?”