Don Winslow - The Kings Of Cool

“I’ll hold off a little bit,” Duane says.

“To think, ” Dennis says. “Exactly. So while you’re thinking, think about this-”

“One, you’re not the only player in the game,” Dennis says. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Hennessy now, and if he rings the bell first

… fuck you. So don’t take too long to think, but do think about

…

“Two-a question, to wit…

“Are the guys you want to be loyal to going to be loyal to you?” Dennis asks. “Or, if and when they do find out you’re looking at thirty to life, are they going to decide it’s not worth the risk and have you clipped anyway? In which case, your loyalty to them is moot. And so I return to my original theme…

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Dennis 4:16.

“I don’t want to go to jail for the rest of my life,” Brian says.

Dennis laughs at him. “Who gives a flying fuck about what you want? This is only about what I want. And you’d better start thinking real hard about what it is that I want. One, two, three, go.”

It’s painful watching Brian try to string his thoughts together to form one line of cause and effect.

Dennis runs out of patience.

“Let me be the local news,” he says, “and tell you what’s happening in your world. You think you don’t want to spend the rest of your life behind bars? Your buddy Crowe really doesn’t. In fact, I just left him because I needed to get a new box of Kleenex, he’s been crying and snuffling and sniffling so much in there. Are you ready for this? He’s trying to give me you for the Munson murders.”

Because, for all his corruption, Dennis is a man of his word.

He promised Ben Leonard that he’d try. And one look at Brian’s eyes, Dennis knows it’s true. He and Crowe killed the Munson kid and the girl.

“What?!” Brian yelps.

“Yup,” Dennis pushes. “He says you pulled the trigger. He’s got the needle pointed right at your fucking arm.”

“No way. He-”

Brian stops short.

“We know it was one of you,” Dennis says. “The question is, which?”

Neglecting to mention that it doesn’t fucking matter who actually pulled the trigger. But if Brian doesn’t know that, tough shit. Ignorance has its costs. If you’re going to be a criminal-know the fucking law, asshole.

“I don’t think it was you,” Dennis says. “You don’t strike me as the type who’d kill a girl. You just don’t. I think it was Duane, but he’s in there sobbing that he watched you do it… he has nightmares… ‘Brian just blew her brains out. He was laughing as he did it.’ Juries love that shit, Brian.”

Brian gets this look of feral cunning on his face.

“Wouldn’t I be guilty anyway, though?” he asks. “Even if I was just there? Which I wasn’t, but if I was?”

Goddamn it, Dennis thinks. If there’s anything he hates it’s a half-intelligent skell with a little information. Law amp; Order has totally fucked up the interview room.

“True,” Dennis says. “But there are distinctions in terms of sentencing. One of you gets life, the other gets the cocktail. Which you’re not going to think is a big distinction until they strap you down, and then you’re going to think it is, because Duane will still be eating meals and taking shits and jerking off, and you… well, they say it’s painless, but they say a lot of things, don’t they?”

Brian toughens up. “I don’t know anything about those killings.”

“That’s too bad,” Dennis says, “because now you can’t give me what I want.”

He starts out the door, then stops and turns.

“If you haven’t already figured this out,” Dennis says, “Duane and the boys can’t risk keeping you around.”

“You’re saying they’re going to kill me?”

“No, they’re going to give you a pony,” Dennis says. “What the fuck you think they’re gonna do?”

Dipshit.

Lado has kept one of them alive.

To watch the dissection of his friends and learn.

The man is naked and chained to a wall, and now Lado takes the point of the bloody knife and presses it into the man’s stomach, just enough to draw blood.

“Tell me now,” Lado says.

“Anything,” the man sobs.

“Which guero?”

“What?”

Lado presses the knife a little harder. “Which American agreed to the assassination of Filipo Sanchez?”

The man gives it up.

Raised in the slums of Tijuana, Lado found many of his childhood meals in the garbage dumps that rose in his barrio like Mayan temples. When his father had work, it was as a carnicero, a butcher, and when the family got meat, it was usually a cabra, a goat.

So he knows the sound of a goat when you slash its belly, and that’s what the man sounds like as Lado lifts the knife through his guts.

INT. HOLDING CELL — NIGHT

CROWE sits at the table as DENNIS comes in.

DUANE

I want a lawyer.

DENNIS

Bad call, but yours to make.

DUANE

Right.

DENNIS

I know who you’re going to call-I think I have him on speed dial-but before you do, you need to know that evidence isn’t going to disappear, the chain of custody isn’t going to get fucked up. Maybe this guy can get ten years chopped off, but so what?

DUANE

I want a lawyer.

DENNIS

Then let’s get you a phone, loser.

“What did you give them?” Chad Meldrun asks, sitting across the table.

“Nothing,” Crowe says.

“Don’t jerk me,” Chad says. “I need to know.”

Yeah-Duane knows who needs to know.

It’s been the deal forever. You get busted with serious weight, you’re allowed to play certain cards-you can give up locations of stashes, safe houses. You just tell the lawyer, who tells the boys so they can move the stuff.

What you can’t use to trade your way out are people. You do that, it’s a problem.

“I gave them shit,” Duane says.

“Go ahead and give them something,” Chad says.

Duane shakes his head. “They don’t want it. They just want the guys.”

“And you didn’t do that.”

“How many times you need to hear it?”

“Okay, we’re good,” Chad says.

“No, you’re good,” Duane says. “I’m fucked. This was a setup. The fucking fed is in bed with Leonard. Leonard set us up.”

“If you knew that, why did you do the deal?”

“I fucked up,” Duane says. “I thought he was, you know, cowed. And thirty-five cents on the dollar… shit.”

“Okay, okay,” Chad says. “What about Hennessy? Will he hold up?”

Duane shrugs.

“We have another lawyer coming for him,” Chad says. “He’ll get Hennessy out on bail.”

“Fuck him,” Crowe says. “Get me the fuck out of here.”

“I’m going to do my best, cowboy.”

“I’m not a cowboy,” Duane says irritably. “You see boots and a dumbass hat?”

Cowboy…

Fuck.

“Your Honor, given the potential severity of the likely sentence,” Assistant DA Kelsey Ryan says, “the defendant is most definitely a flight risk. We ask that bail not be set.”

The DA is a looker.

Pretty, blonde, blue-eyed.

And a killer.

Verrrry ambitious.

Dennis would like some of that.

Chad Meldrun stands up.

Very interesting that Chad showed up, Dennis thinks. Either Duane’s bosses are backing him up big-time, or they want him out of lockup where they can kill him.

“Your Honor,” Chad says, smiling like he’s about to say that night tends to be darker than day, “Mr. Crowe has no prior drug arrests, never mind convictions, he has ties to the community, and he owns a business. You and I both know that this case doesn’t even belong in federal court-this is the government throwing its weight around-and, in fact, I’m preparing a motion to have the case removed to the jurisdiction of the State of California, where it belongs. As we both know, that motion has an excellent chance of success. I’m going to request that you do grant bail, and set it at a reasonable amount, so that my client can continue to make a living and also fully participate in his own defense.”