Don Winslow: The Kings Of Cool

“Don’t be an asshole,” John says.

A little late for fatherly advice, Chon thinks, but he knows what John means. If there was a moment to make a break for it, this would be it-start yelling at the checkpoint, staffed with heavily armed Border Patrol agents, and there’s not a damn thing John or the two thugs could do about it.

“Your buddy Ben is still alive,” John says. “Get stupid here and he won’t be.”

That’s my dad, Chon thinks.

A real Boy Scout.

Always prepared.

O says, “It turns out that Patterson isn’t my father.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, it gets better.” She takes a pull on the joint, holds in the smoke, and exhales with, “My real father was a guy called-you’re going to love this-‘Doc Halliday,’ and-get ready for it-he killed himself while I was baking in the oven.”

“Jesus, O, that’s terri-”

Then he does the math.

His parents said that Halliday committed suicide in 1981, but O couldn’t have been born until “What’s your birthday?”

“August twenty-eighth, why?”

“What year?”

“1986. Ben-”

But he’s already punching the phone.

The BP agent asks them why they’re going to Mexico.

“Boys’ night out,” John says.

“Don’t come back with anything,” the agent advises.

“We won’t,” John says.

After they pass through the checkpoint, Chon hears John mumble, “The end of America.”

Dennis picks up the phone.

“What do you want?”

“Have you ever heard of a guy named Doc Halliday?” Ben asks.

“I’m a DEA agent,” Dennis answers. “Have baseball players heard of Babe Ruth? Have gunfighters heard of Wyatt Earp? Of course I’ve heard of Halliday. Why?”

Ben tells him.

Looong drive down through Tijuana.

Short on conversation.

What’s there to talk about, really?

Old memories?

Good times?

Chon is more focused on something his father said back at the house. I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. I don’t mean I “won’t,” I mean I can’t.

Why not, Pops?

Down the old highway into Baja.

Past Rosarito, Ensenada, the old surfers’ run.

South into the empty country.

Moonlit night.

Sagebrush and the eyes of coyotes glowing green in the headlights.

They could do it anywhere here, Chon thinks, by the side of the road in any ditch.

A seminal fuck and a terminal shot.

Two bursts in the back of the head

The Lord giveth and He taketh away

The old Bill Cosby joke-“I brought you into this world, and I can damn well take you out of it.”

You just disappear and that’s all.

The crows take your eyes and the peasants take your shoes and commend your soul to God, but who can say with any certainty that crows don’t pray over carrion flesh? They are the smartest of birds; perhaps sensitivity comes with intelligence, maybe they feel for the dead that sustain them.

He’s trained for this moment, of course.

Escape and Evade School, a name so redolent with irony it makes him want to weep. The second they open the door to take him out his muscle memory will take over, but he knows that he’s still weak from his wounds, freshly injured by his fight with Crowe-his chances are bad, but he’ll take the chance-the opportunity-to bring more meat with him to the crows.

I can damn well take you with me.

The car turns off the highway onto a dirt road, and Chon feels his muscles stiffen and forces them to relax.

The old man has a gun, which will be mine in the half second it takes to grab it. Shoot the gunman through the back of the seat, then the driver, then John.

He runs this film clip through his mind until it’s smooth and perfected and his body has memorized the sequence.

The car pulls off onto a narrower road, and Chon sees the glow of lights that must come from a house. As they bounce up the rocky road to the top of a hill he sees that it’s more accurately a compound.

A high adobe wall snakes up and down the hillside.

Shards of broken glass on top of the wall reflect off the spotlights.

Two armed guards, machine pistols slung over their shoulders, stop the car in front of a wooden gate. The driver says something to one of the guards in what sounds to Chon like an eastern European language, and the car goes through into the compound.

The house is large, two-story, of very basic rectangular Mediterranean design. The west windows look out over the bluff onto the ocean.

John gets out of the car.

“Don’t try any of your Special Forces chop-sake bullshit,” he says to Chon. “It’s Mexico. You don’t have anywhere to go.”

Chon isn’t so sure about that.

He isn’t so sure he couldn’t kill the two guys in the car, make it over the wall, and walk the hundred or so miles through the Baja desert.

The bigger problem is Ben.

Effectively a hostage.

Maybe O, too, if she’s with him.

He watches his father walk into the house.

“Leonard,” Dennis says, “does your boy Chon have a cell phone?”

Ben doesn’t answer.

“Jesus Christ,” Dennis says, “for once in your life, trust somebody-even a narc. Does he have a cell phone?”

Ben doesn’t name names.

He names numbers.

Another guard opens the door for John.

John steps into the foyer as

Doc comes down the stairs.

Yeah, Doc.

Laguna Beach 1991

John walks down Ocean Avenue toward the beach and feels strange.

Strange to see the ocean, strange to walk outside and not see coils of barbed wire and guard towers, strange to not think about who is walking behind him and what they might want.

Ten years in the federal lockup in Indiana, and now he’s back in Laguna.

A free man.

Ten years of a fourteen-year sentence before the pardon came through, but now he’s out-no parole officer bullshit. No one to report to every time he wants to drain a beer or take a dump.

He walks over to the lifeguard tower, then up the boardwalk.

Roger Bartlett is already there.

“Hi, John,” Roger says. “Welcome home.”

“Yeah.”

“And thanks for meeting me here,” Roger says, “instead of in the office.”

Yeah, John thinks, banks are morally sensitive.

John snorts. “We’ve put money in every bank in Newport, Laguna, Dana Point, you name it. Shit, I was fifteen I was delivering bags of cash to you assholes. Nobody complained. Wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t have the funds to lend to anyone.”

We built this city on rock-and-roll bull shit.

They built a good chunk of this city on dope. Cash that went into the banks and came out as mortgages for houses, stores, businesses. Built it up pretty good during the ten fucking years he spent in the hole for selling something somebody wanted to buy.

Comes home, there’s a ten-year-old stranger sitting on the couch, Taylor tosses him the keys, says He’s your kid now, and walks out the door. Hasn’t been back since and it’s been two weeks.

He looked at the kid and said, “Hello, John.”

Kid answered, “My name is Chon.”

Fuckin’ little asshole.

And thanks for all the cards and letters and visits, Chon.

Of course, he puts that on Taylor. Divorced him eighteen months into his stretch. He signed the papers-what difference did it make?

Now he looks at Roger, who seems a little nervous, a little edgy, and says, “I want my money.”

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