Don Winslow - The Kings Of Cool

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 your self is-what did you do?”

Good question.

Then OGR posits an even better question to him.

What are you going to do?

“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.

“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 us out 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.”

No.

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.

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?

Ben gets on the phone and says,

“You win.”

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 to 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.”

“Si, madrone.”

She’s decided.

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.

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.

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.