The Kings of Cool

by Don Winslow

  “It’s all there for you, John,” Roger says quickly. “It’s been earning interest, performing nicely.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty-two grand.”

  “The next words out of your mouth better be ‘April Fool’s,’ motherfucker.”

  “You think pardons are cheap?” Roger asks. “Check it out with Meldrun, he’s logged every fucking hour. Not to mention judges, congressmen. Everyone has their hand out. And Taylor? You think she doesn’t come around every other week? I’ve never seen her in the same dress twice, by the way. Christ, I thought my wife could shop. And you have a kid, John, in a private elementary school—”

  “Yeah, well, that’s going to stop.”

  “Whatever,” Roger says. “I’ve done my best for you. We all have. You’re free. Enjoy your life.”

  “Cash me out.”

  “John, you don’t want to—”

  “Cash me out.”

  275

  John moves to a smaller house and puts “Chon” into public school.

  Then he looks up an old buddy and goes back into the marijuana business and reaches out to another former associate to leverage thirty grand into three hundred g worth of product.

  It takes time to lay that much off, though.

  Time to get back in the market.

  John was back in the dope trade for about three weeks when Chon was walking down Brooks Street, a car rolled up, and a guy told him to get in. They drove him to an old ranch out in Hemet and kept him there until John paid what he owed.

  Three hundred K.

  Chon was out there for a month, having a pretty good time looking at Penthouse magazines, sneaking roaches, and driving an ATV around the place, then Big John came to pick him up personally.

  “See how much I love you?” Big John asked when they were in the car.

  “See how much I care?” Chon answered, holding up his middle finger.

  Big John slapped him across the face.

  Hard.

  Chon didn’t fucking flinch.

  A week later, John’s walking down the street when a car pulls up, they tell him to get in, and they drive him down to Mexico.

  276

  Way the fuck down past TJ, Rosarito, and Ensenada, down along the Baja Peninsula.

  John is thinking he’s going to get a bullet in the back of the head, but then they pull up this hill, then over the top, and there’s a big house surrounded by an adobe wall, and they pull through the gate into the compound.

  Doc comes out the door.

  No shirt, baggy khaki cargo shorts, huaraches.

  Hugs John like his long-lost son.

  “You could have just called me,” John says.

  “Would you have come?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Doc looks good for a dead man. A few strands of white in the hair, which has retreated off his forehead a few inches. John hasn’t seen him in over ten years, not since the faked suicide and Doc’s disappearance into the “program.”

  “I thought you’d be selling aluminum siding in Scottsdale,” John says.

  “Fuck that shit,” Doc says. “I bailed the first chance I got, came down here. Freedom is precious, my son.”

  “Tell me about it,” John says. “You ratted me out, Doc.”

  Doc shakes his head. “I protected you. Bobby, those other pricks, they were going to kill you. I took you out of it, somewhere safe.”

  “Ten years, Doc. My wife is gone, my kid is a stranger—”

  “You never wanted either of them in the first place,” Doc says. “Be honest.”

  “What do you want, Doc?”

  “I want to help you,” Doc says. “Make it up to you.”

  “How?”

  “You kept the faith, Johnny,” Doc says. “You’re like my own blood. I want to bring you in on something. Shit, I need to bring you in on something.”

  277

  You’re fucking up, Doc tells him, doing it the same old way. That’s how we got busted, how we got jammed.

  It’s a loser’s game, it always ends the same.

  We don’t want to be in the drug business.

  We want to be in the turf business.

  278

  “What do you need me for?” John asks after Doc lays it out for him.

  “I need someone I can trust up there,” Doc says. “Someone to run the day-to-day. I mean, I can’t come el norte, I’m freaking Napoleon down here.”

  “I have a record,” John says.

  “As John McAlister,” Doc says. “Get a new ID. Get five of them, who cares? It’s easy enough to do. Set up a shell business, look gainfully employed, and fly under the radar. John, we’re talking real money.”

  “And how do I move the money to you?” John asks. “I can’t be running down to Mexico without attracting attention.”

  “The system’s all set up,” Doc says. “There’ll be sort of a board of directors, you know, some of the old ‘gang,’ for major decisions. But you’ll be the CEO. It’s all set up. All you have to do is plug in.”

  John plugs in.

  279

  As soon as John’s car leaves, Kim comes out of the house. She’s beautiful in a white caftan with embroidered flowers, her hair long, her feet bare.

  “What did he say?” she asks Doc.

  “What do you think?” Doc asks.

  Kim shakes her head.

  “What?”

  “I don’t like him,” Kim says. “I never have.”

  “I love him,” Doc says. “He’s like a son to me.”

  “You have a child.”

  “That I never see.”

  “I’m not living in Mexico,” Kim says. “I’d go insane.”

  “I’d like to see her sometime.”

  “It’s better this way,” Kim says. “I have to get back soon. Shall we go in?”

  They go into the house and upstairs to the bedroom. The shades are pulled and the thick walls keep it relatively cool.

  Still, they are sleek with sweat as they make love.

  Baja, Mexico

  2005

  Well, Papa, go to bed now, it’s getting late,

  Nothing we can say will change anything now.

  —BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, “INDEPENDENCE DAY”

  280

  The room is big and perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean.

  Spotlights illuminate the beach and the breakers.

  A foot trail runs from the compound down to the beach, and John sees a quiver of long-boards leaning against the wall of the deck.

  Doc wears a Hawaiian shirt over an old pair of khaki shorts and huaraches. A ball cap even though it’s night.

  He’s vain, John thinks, covering up the receding hairline.

  “How’s life?” John asks.

  “Life is the same,” Doc says. “Luxurious exile. I surf, I fish, I grill the fish, I watch shitty Mexican TV, I go to bed. I get up at least once in the night to piss. I’m not going to ask how life is with you.”

  “Things have gotten a little out of hand.”

  “No shit?” Doc asks.

  Doc has a deep tan that looks darker against his snow-white hair. It hangs down to his shoulders, but it’s still white. Deep lines in his face, deep lines under his eyes from squinting into the sun. He looks like an old surf bum.

  “I’ve got enough fucking agita down here right now,” Doc says. “This whole thing with the cartel.”

  “I still think siding with the Berrajanos was a mistake.”

  “They’re going to win,” Doc says, “and I have to live down here, whoever’s on the fucking throne. You want a soda? I got Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke.”

  “I’m good.”

  “When did people start saying that?” Doc asks, going to the refrigerator and taking out a Diet Coke.” ‘I’m good,’ instead of ‘No, thanks.’”

  John doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.

  Doc pops open the can and takes a long drink. Then h
e sits down on the couch and says, “We had us some times, didn’t we, Johnny?”

  “Yeah, we did, Doc.”

  “Those were some days,” Doc says, shaking his head, smiling. “Good times. Your kid, what do they call him . . .”

  Chon.

  281

  “‘John’ wasn’t good enough for him?” Doc asks.

  “You remember the sixties?” John asks. “Everybody was ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Moonbeam.’”

  “This ain’t the sixties,” Doc snaps. “It’s two-thousand-and-fucking-five, and whatever the hell your kid’s name is, he’s a problem. Let me tell you something—I’m spending my last years sipping a drink on the beach and watching the sun go down, not in some cell in Pelican Bay.”

  “I told him to back off.”

  “He killed two of our guys tonight,” Doc says. “That sound like backing off?”

  “He saved us the trouble.”

  “They were still our guys,” Doc says. “We can’t let people think it’s okay to do that.”

  He finishes his soda, crumples up the can in his big hand, and tosses it into a little blue plastic wastebasket with the recycling logo on it. “You know what has to happen here.”

  “We’re talking about my kid, Doc.”

  “Why I wanted to talk with you,” Doc says. “Get a sense of, you know, where you are with this.”

  “What do you want, my permission?”

  “I don’t need your permission, Johnny,” Doc says, fixing him with a stare. “It’s going to happen. The only question is whether it happens to just him and his buddy, or to you, too.”

  John just looks at him.

  “We’re not asking you to pull the trigger,” Doc says.

  John stares at him for a few seconds, then he gets up. “I’m not even that sure he’s my kid.”

  He walks out the door.

  282

  Of all the corkers God pulled off in the Old Testament, the real howler was Abraham and Isaac.

  Had the angels rolling on the floor

  Moaning

  Stop. My ribs. Stop.

  283

  John opens the passenger door and says, “Someone wants to talk to you, see if we can work something out.”

  He takes Chon into the house.

  Boland goes in with them.

  284

  To Chon, Doc Halliday looks like any middle-aged geezer hanging around the beach hoping against hope to pick up a young chick.

  “I thought you were dead,” Chon says.

  Doc grins, looks at John, says, “He’s so much your fucking kid.”

  John nods.

  “I want my friend left alone,” Chon says. “He can’t hurt you.”

  Doc walks up close to Chon. Looks for a long time into his eyes and then says

  285

  INT. DOC’S MEXICAN HOUSE – NIGHT

  DOC

  Look, kid, I brought you down here to try to talk some sense into you because I love your father. When he hurts, I hurt, do you understand that?

  Chon doesn’t answer.

  DOC (CONT’D)

  So if you can look me in the eye and promise me—that you’ll walk away and let this go—then vaya con dios.

  CHON

  What about Ben?

  DOC

  What about who?

  Chon stares at him.

  DOC (CONT’D)

  So, do we have a deal? I’m giving you the gift of life here, kid.

  CHON

  Keep it.

  286

  Doc turns to John, shrugs, and says, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he isn’t your kid.”

  “No, he is.”

  He pulls the pistol and shoots Doc square in the forehead.

  287

  In the words of Lenny Bruce—

  “Into the toilet—for good, this time.”

  288

  Doc totters for a second.

  A statue pushed off a plinth

  Then falls

  And as he topples

  Boland swings his Glock up to blow John off the earth.

  And would, except

  The room goes suddenly black

  And there is only

  Darkness and chaos.

  289

  chaos (n., from the Greek kaos) The formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe.

  290

  Highly trained Baja state policemen who know their work, Lado’s men blow the generator, plunging the compound into darkness, the only light now coming from the lamps on their helmets and the night-vision scopes on their rifles as their teammates blast a hole in the compound wall.

  Then they make small, tight, leapfrogging rushes toward the house, one team covering the other as they move.

  This is not a war in which prisoners are taken, this is a war in which prisoners’ entrails are used as message boards, so while the Berrajano men defending the compound couldn’t give a shit about Doc, they do give a shit about their own lives and so they fight like hell.

  And they’re good.

  All are veterans of Mexico’s long drug wars, and some fought in Bosnia, Congo, Chechnya. They are, in short, survivors, and now they fight to survive, to get through another night to eat another breakfast, smoke another cigarette, fuck another woman, hug their children, drink a beer, watch a fútbol match, feel the sun on their faces, just get out of this dark cold night.

  Lado has other ideas.

  Other orders.

  Kill the man called Doc who approved the assassination of Filipo.

  Slaughter the Berrajanos who guard him.

  Leave a message.

  He gives terse commands but knows they are superfluous—his men know their job, they have performed dozens of these missions, they move forward in small knots, firing short, efficient bursts, and the trained ear can distinguish the two sides by the firing patterns as some of the Berrajanos fire from the wall and slip over to the outside to try to make their way through the chaparral to safety, while others retreat into the house and fire from the windows, hoping to make the house a fort where they can make a stand.

  Lado has no intention of allowing that. He’ll take no unnecessary casualties but he will take necessary ones, and now he sends men rushing to the main door with a satchel charge. Two fall in the exposed space in front of the door but one makes it, leaves the satchel, and crab-scuffles away, flattening himself to the ground as the charge goes off and shatters the heavy wooden door.

  It hangs on its hinges like a drunk man leaning in the doorway as Lado’s next team surges forward into the house.

  291

  Schneider and Perez come up the stairs at Brooks Street and find Ben’s apartment.

  Perez sends Schneider around the back and then goes to the door.

  Holding his pistol behind his back, he rings the bell.

  292

  Chon belly-crawls across the floor.

  Focusing his eyes fifteen degrees to the left cuts off the cones that try to distinguish colors and lets him see a little better in the dark, just well enough to make out the form of Boland lying on the floor, his hands on his machine pistol.

  Chon reaches him, throws one leg over the man as if mounting a horse, and then rolls so that he’s lying on his back with Boland on his back on top of him. Chon gets his forearm across Boland’s throat, his other hand locked behind his neck. He wraps his feet around Boland’s ankles like a snake, then arches his own back, stretching Boland out as if on a rack.

  Then he chokes him.

  Chon’s muscles strain and quickly tire as Boland bucks and thrashes and tries to tear his arms away, but Chon holds on until Boland’s sphincter and bladder let loose and what was a man becomes a corpse.

  Chon takes the Glock and feels better now that he’s armed, but armed against what? Against whom? Bullets zip over his head he hears them thunk into wood and plaster he hears shouts and groans and it’s all so familiar but he’s used to being on the other end of this lethal equation on the outside coming in
not on the inside trapped like a civilian a collateral casualty in a war between unknown adversaries. He doesn’t know a Berrajano from a Lauter, they’re all Mexicans to him he’s in the dark figuratively as well as literally he only knows that this darkness gives him the chance to get the fuck out of there except he remembers that he isn’t alone in this chaos and he makes out his father lying face-first on the floor his forearms covering his head against the splinters of wood shards of glass flying around the pistol still in his right hand his finger reflexively tightening pulling the trigger shots going off at random the muzzle flashes bolts of red lightning Chon thinks for a second his old man might kill him after all accidentally and he crawls over, wrenches the gun from his hand, sticks the barrel into the side of his father’s head, and says—

  293

  “Call it off.”

  John fumbles in his pocket and pulls out his phone.

  Funny these days how life or death can come down to cell phone service.

  294

  Ben opens the door and a guy is standing there with a cell phone in his hand.

  “Hi,” Ben says.

  “Hey,” the guy says. “I must have the wrong place. I’m looking for Jerry Howard?”

  “I think you do have the wrong place.”

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No worries.”

  295