Don Winslow - The Kings Of Cool

It only takes a little kerosene and a match.

The fire this time.

“Your boyfriend is pretty ripped,” Doc says to Kim.

She looks over and sees Brad slumped on a sofa, his eyes glassy from coke and booze. He’ll be out cold any second.

“My fiance,” she corrects.

“You’re going to marry that stiff?” Doc asks.

“For a while,” she answers.

“Come on,” Doc says, taking her hands.

“Where are we going?”

“You know.”

In his bedroom he says, “Take them off, Kim.”

“Take what off?”

“The pretty clothes.”

She does and stands in front of him.

Pirouettes.

“My God,” Doc says.

He admires her perfect body for several seconds and then lays her down on the bed.

“Look at that, ” he says.

She puts her hand over herself and says, “No, Doc, if you want this, you’ll have to-”

He laughs.

Long time coming, this rendezvous.

She wraps her arms around his broad back.

Remembers lying in a cave hearing him with her mother.

Soon it’s like she’s tumbling over a waterfall, and she holds him tighter.

Turns her head and sees the Charles Jourdans.

Her pretty shoes.

John pulls on his slacks and walks back into the living room.

He’s fucked out.

Taylor wasn’t a ride, she was the whole amusement park.

Six Flags.

Magic Mountain.

Knott’s Pussy Farm.

That girl Kim, the mule, is on the couch next to a life-size Ken doll who looks like he just had his head handed to him.

She’s sitting there like there isn’t a drug-crazed orgy going on all around her, like there’s not a pistol on the coffee table at her demure knees. Like she’s about to answer questions from Miss America judges and then twirl fire batons while singing a medley from Oklahoma! but whatever, because speaking of fire there is one.

Outside, the sky is on fire.

The Bread and Marigolds Bookstore is, as they say, engulfed in flame.

They all stand across the street and watch as the fire department pretty much lets it go, trying only to contain the fire and keep it from spreading to buildings they don’t consider a public nuisance.

Their faces red in the reflection of flame, they stand and watch Doc

Kim

John

Stan and Diane, arms around each other’s shoulders

Doc asks, “Anyone have marshmallows?”

They laugh, even Stan.

They are

Stardust

Golden

Caught in the devil’s bargain.

The sun comes red over the Laguna hills.

Ben strides to Chon’s apartment.

Knocks on the door.

Waits.

A sleepy O, clad in one of Chon’s T-shirts, opens the door, sees the look on Ben’s face, and screams

Nooooooooooooo!

He’s all right, Ben tells her as he walks her to the bed and makes her sit down.

He’s wounded, some shrapnel, they got most of it out, he’s in the hospital, he’s going to be okay.

“God.”

Ben allows himself a slight smile. “He called-classic Chon-and said-”

“I fucked up.”

“Is he coming home?” O asks.

“No,” Ben says. “Also classic Chon. He’s hoping they can ‘put him back together’ enough so he can go back to his team.”

“Jerk,” O says. When Chon calls her a couple of hours later she asks, “They didn’t shoot your dick off, did they?”

“No, it’s still there.”

She feels good hearing him laugh. She says, “Okay, I’m going out and buying a nurse’s uniform…”

He laughs again. “ A Farewell to Arms. ”

“Is that some kind of sick joke?”

“No, it’s a book.”

“Yeah, I don’t do books,” she says. “Okay, ‘Navy Nurse’ or ‘Candy Striper’?”

“Candy Striper. Definitely.”

Ben walks back to his place.

He was going to tell Chon about being shaken down, but now he can’t.

No way he piles on with this.

So he needs to handle it himself.

He needs a plan.

That leaves Chon out of it.

Chon hangs up and relishes the thought of O for a few minutes, and then moves off it because a real nurse comes with his meds.

Sanitized word for drugs

Which there’s a war on. And there’s also a War on Terrorism and they’re connected, Chon contemplates as the meds take hold-the politicians either are on drugs or should be.

A bunch of religious fanatics mostly from Saudi Arabia fly planes into buildings and we invade…

Iraq.

It’s a generational thing, Chon muses.

Bush Sr. goes to war against Saddam Hussein and puts troops in Saudi Arabia (which was bin Laden’s reason for going to “war” against America), and Hussein tries to kill Bush Sr., and then Bush Jr.-faithful son, loyal son-uses bin Laden’s attack as an excuse to get payback for Hussein’s attempted hit on his dad.

41 as Brando

43 as Pacino and featuring Saddam Hussein as Virgil “The Turk” (near miss there) Sollozzo. And the U.S.A. as a collective, credulous Diane Keaton

Just this once, Kay, I’m going to let you ask me about my business

Shut the fucking door in her face and get on with it, lock yourself up with the Cabinet and the Congress and

Guzzle the Kool-Aid.

No, Chon decides, the problem with the politicians is not that they’re on drugs, it’s that they’re not.

The drugs they have for bipolar, schizophrenic paranoid delusions are so good now.

They work.

Problem is, they work so well that the patients think they’re cured and stop taking them and get sick again and do crazy shit like invade Iraq in the delusional belief it’s going to make their fathers love them.

So please, Mr. President

Chon thinks as he floats into a drug cloud of his own

Please

Don’t go off the meds.

Drug Warrior Dennis Cain

Gets up in the morning feeling no different, which is almost a disappointment after making a Faustian deal for his soul.

I mean, you think you’d notice, right? Something different.

Yeah, not so much.

He makes his coffee, drinks his orange juice, kisses his wife on the cheek, makes two scrambled eggs and eats them while exchanging sleepy early-morning talk with his girls, says to his wife,

“Those countertops? I’ve been thinking. We can afford them.”

“Really? You sure?”

“Yeah, why not? You only live once.”

He finishes his breakfast, says goodbye, gets into his car, says hi to the neighbor who is getting into his car, and joins the other pilgrims in the commuter-hour snarl on I-15 South.

It’s a pisser.

You sell your soul and no one even notices.

Not even you.

Judas took the thirty pieces of silver, but

Would Jesus?

If he’d been made the offer?

And if Judas was worth thirty, Jesus had to be worth, what Three hundred, easy.

Just sayin’.

Anyway, history shows that

They bought the wrong Jew.

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.