Don Winslow - The Kings Of Cool

She gets the job done.

“That’s what I mean,” he says. “If we had a kid, we’d have to grow up, right?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, I’ve never pictured myself as a, you know, mother. Can you really see yourself as a father?”

Funny fucking thing is, all of a sudden he can.

With Doc gone…

He’s not the kid anymore; maybe he’s ready to be the father.

“Let’s get married,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s what real people do, isn’t it?” John asks. “They grow up, they get married, they start families?”

It’s what they do.

Isn’t always what they should.

But it’s what they do.

Stan can’t sleep.

(Macbeth hath murdered sleep.)

The guilt is ferocious and yet he has to admit that he feels a little titillated.

Powerful.

Giving, if not the order, the permission.

He rolls to his side and pushes against Diane’s warm ass. Reaches around and strokes her until she stirs and wiggles back into him.

She’s wet enough and he pushes into her.

Into it now, she cooperates and rolls her hips.

He’s harder than usual and she feels it.

“Baby,” she says.

It’s the best sex they’ve had in years. She arches her neck and pushes her ass back against his hips.

“You’re so deep,” she murmurs.

“I know.”

She comes before he does. Reaches back and touches his face when he comes, deep inside her.

A seminal fuck.

John paddles out with what’s left of Doc’s friends at Brooks Street, paddles out and joins the circle they form with their boards. The guys look at each other guiltily, not wanting to read each other’s eyes because they know what they’re going to see there.

Relief.

Pretty much the same emotion that permeated the funeral.

Everyone sat there on wooden folding chairs and stared at a closed casket with this smiling photo of Doc staring back at them while some minister intoned some bullshit that Doc didn’t believe in and felt guilty relief that

(a) they didn’t have to deal with Doc anymore, and

(b) they didn’t have to do what they were thinking about doing because

(c) Doc did it for them.

“I just can’t believe that Doc killed himself,” Diane said at one point.

Hard not to believe, though-the cops found Doc in his car with a pistol in his hand and most of his brains on the window.

“Did he leave a note?” Diane asked. “Give a reason?”

“Cocaine is its own reason,” Stan said.

But as they were leaving he pulled John aside and asked, “Did he really kill himself?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” John said. “He killed himself. Leave it at that.”

Everyone will feel better if we — leave it at that.

Especially me.

Same thing at the paddle-out.

Some surfer-cum-minister says some lame shit and then they each float wreaths out onto the tide.

Aloha, Doc.

Surf on, dude.

John looks back to the shore and there’s cops standing on the stairway.

Cops taking pictures like it’s the Godfather wedding or something.

An Association family portrait.

Thanks, Doc.

Time to shut it down for a while, John thinks. Let the cops get bored and move on to the next thing. He has enough money stored up, enough investments to go into hibernation for a while, manage the rental properties, sell the restaurant.

Live the life of a quiet, successful young businessman. Let the rest of these boys figure out who’s going to be the next King.

The crown is a cop magnet.

Three weeks after the paddle-out John and Taylor have a small service at the gazebo overlooking Divers Cove. A few friends-most of them Taylor’s-come, and they have a reception back at the house before flying off to honeymoon in Tahiti.

They stay for a month, and when they come back John sells the house on Moss Bay and moves to more modest but still comfortable digs up in Bluebird Canyon. He keeps the Porsches in the garage and drives a BMW instead.

Good thing he does.

It takes the cops about six months before they roll up the Association like an old carpet. Turns out Doc gave them a lot of names before he couldn’t take the guilt and “killed himself.”

Bobby, always the smartest one, took off and vanished, leaving behind only a legend.

But Mike, Duane, Ron-one by one they go off to double-digit sentences in federal lockups.

Not Stan, not Diane.

Not Kim.

John and Taylor clean up their act. Taylor gets off the blow and their baby is born healthy.

They name him John.

He’s three months old when the feds indict John for drug trafficking.

Chon stands in the doorway, leaning on a cane.

O does her happy dance and then throws her arms around him.

“Chon’s home,” she chants. “Chonny’s home, Chonny’s home, yay, yay, yay, Chonny’s home!”

“Easy,” he says, just maintaining balance on the cane.

“What are you doing here?” Ben asks.

“I’m a civilian now,” Chon says. He walks O back over to the couch and sets her down. “Honorably discharged. Physically unfit for duty.”

“Morally unfit,” Ben says. “Ethically unfit, psychologically unfit, but physically unfit, no.”

“What I told them, but…”

Ben peels O off him and hugs him.

“Welcome home, bro.”

“Good to be back.”

“What do you need?”

“Cold beer,” Chon answers. “Hot shower. In-N-Out.”

O trots to the fridge and gets him a Dos Equis.

“I’ll take it into the shower,” Chon says. “I’m going to be in there awhile.”

Chon lets the hot water pound him and the cold beer slide down his throat and can’t decide which is better.

Then he remembers he doesn’t have to choose.

Doesn’t have to watch his back.

Doesn’t have to listen for the sound of an IED going off or the whistling of a mortar round coming in.

Doesn’t have to wash a buddy’s blood off his hands.

Doesn’t have to kill anyone tonight.

Tonight he can close his eyes.

There’s no war here.

Scott Munson drives to the pull-off on the Ortega Highway that winds through the hills east of San Juan Capistrano.

The customer’s already there.

For three pounds of Ben and Chon’s best boo.

He’s a new customer, and delivering this kind of weight to a newbie is a violation of Ben and Chon’s rules, but three pounds is $12,000-a profit of $2,400-and if the newbie turns into a regular-which he will once his customers get a taste of this shit-Scott is looking at a new income stream.

Which he needs because he wants to give Traci a ring for her birthday-speaking of violations of Ben and Chon’s rules, Traci is a ride-along on this delivery Strictly verboten.

(“Another word for ‘passenger,’” Chon has lectured the sales force, “is ‘witness.’ Another synonym is ‘snitch.’

“You don’t want to put your friends and loved ones in a morally impossible situation,” Ben added, “in which they have to choose between their loyalty to you and their freedom. Just don’t do it.”)

Yeah, fair enough, but you try to tell Traci she isn’t coming for a ride.

Shoulder-length auburn hair, tight rack, almond eyes, and the sweetest personality in South Orange County. Let Chon tell her she has to sit at home while you drive out to East Jesus More B amp;C Rules: