The Kings Of Cool s-1

by Don Winslow

  That’s why when one of his CIs-that’s “Confidential Informants,” and D has given a whole new meaning to the “Confidential”-tells him about this isolated little ranch house way the fuck out in East County near Jamul, he goes by himself.

  The Lone Ranger

  Or “the Lone Stranger,” as he’s known in the office.

  (Undercovers are natural loners-they don’t trust anybody-paranoia is a survival strategy.)

  Sans Tonto, as Paqu might say, recalling that she’s in her French phase.

  To check it out.

  Solo Surveillance.

  Dennis has balls-big, clanging brass-so he drives out into the dark desert all by his lonesome, parks his vehicle on a ridge overlooking this ranch, and trains his nightscope on the house.

  It’s a cash dump.

  (There’s a phrase, huh?)

  What’s happening is that the dealers are bringing their cash there to be counted, sorted, and stacked for the relatively short dash down across the border. On any given night, there’s going to be hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in that house.

  Dennis takes one look at this and knows it’s the bust that could Put Him Over.

  Because what he also sees through that scope is

  Filipo Sanchez.

  Number Three in the Baja Cartel.

  73

  The night is eerie green.

  Through Chon’s night goggles.

  Monster-movie green.

  He rolls out of the APC

  (Armored Personnel Carrier) behind his team and rushes toward the compound of two-story concrete buildings where the CIA boys said the AQ honchos are holed up.

  Pressing the butt of the M-14 rifle to his shoulder, he keeps it at firing position as the C4 charges blow the gate off its hinges and the team goes in.

  Chon has a photo of the AQ asshole that is Target Number One burned into his memory pan.

  Mahmud el-Kassani.

  Where are you, Mahmud?

  74

  Dennis knows Filipo-hells yes, he does, he has Filipo’s picture pinned up on the bulletin board in his office. He knows the names of Filipo’s wife and kids, knows what futbol team he follows, knows that Filipo subscribes to the Padres games on satellite TV. This must be an important cash dump for Filipo to chance coming over the wire, so he must be up there checking up on things, making sure that all of the money goes south and none of it gets lost and wanders toward other points on the compass.

  While Dennis would normally keep this house under surveillance for a couple of weeks and then turn it over to his superiors so they could get the credit, now he’s thinking about playing leapfrog. The San Diego SAC is looking at retirement, and a pop like this could put Dennis’s ass into his empty chair.

  So this is totally a cowboy move, highly discouraged by the Powers That Be, but Dennis knows that he has a justification-he can always say that he had to take the chance-who knew when and if Filipo would ever come back, be on this side of the border, and there’s a federal trafficking warrant on the guy, anyway, so He clips his badge onto his jacket, finds his DEA cap in the backseat, pulls his weapon, and goes in.

  75

  Chaos in the compound

  (foxes in the henhouse) as women shriek, children scream, goats bleat.

  No chaos for the team-they know exactly where they are and where they’re going: up some stairs to the second floor.

  Bullets zip past them as the AQ fight back.

  Chon moves the rifle around smoothly Target, shoot

  Target, shoot

  Target, shoot

  He makes it to the door and heads up the stairs.

  One of the AQ shot out the lightbulbs at the sound of the explosion and it’s black and tight in there.

  Chon feels someone come out of a doorway beside him and he swings the rifle to take him out and sees it’s a kid, can’t be twelve in the traditional vest the waskath

  (from which Chon knows we got the word “waistcoat”) and skullcap big black eyes

  Shoot every male is the order but Chon isn’t going to follow that order so he shoves the kid back in the room and moves up the stairs into a room that becomes a charnel house as the team shoots everyone inside and Chon sees

  Mahmud.

  Who doesn’t want to become a martyr this night.

  He puts his hands up to surrender.

  Chon drills him twice through the chest because

  Chon wants him to be a martyr.

  (Paradise is Paradise, but it’s also expensive.)

  76

  Yeah, they might try to slug it out with him.

  In which case he’s dead.

  More likely they’re just going to bolt

  In which case most of them will make it

  But it’s Worth the Risk.

  Nailing Filipo Sanchez? Come on.

  So Dennis charges down there in his Jeep like a movie cowboy on his horse. There’s no fence, no gate, because the narcos don’t want to call attention to the house and Dennis just drives right up, slams the brakes, and jumps out, badge in one hand, pistol in the other, and announces, “DEA! This is a raid! Nobody fucking move!”

  Dennis has balls.

  Three gunmen are just standing there, open-mouthed, staring at him, clearly trying to figure out what to do. And this is the moment when, if they were going to shoot him, they would.

  In the Jerry Bruckheimer version they do just that-they whip out the weaponry and let fly, missing almost every shot while Dennis guns them all down and-hit in the shoulder-bursts into the house and has a shoot-out with Filipo.

  Roll credits, sweep up the popcorn.

  Except a multi-billion-dollar poly-drug cartel doesn’t get to be a multi-billion-dollar poly-drug cartel because they have a lot of stupid people working for them. And while this isn’t your typical DEA raid with the typical cast of characters, it’s still a DEA raid and these guys know that killing a federal agent on American soil — is going to cost a lot more money in the long run than is in the house

  — subjects them to the needle instead of fifteen to thirty, and — even Filipo Sanchez is expendable.

  That’s just the truth, that’s just life in the vida narco. Money is just money-they lose it all the time. Same with people-they go to jail, they come out-it’s the chance you take. That even applies to Filipo-royal family or no royal family-it happens and the family goes on.

  So what happens is they do freeze, and Dennis strides right past them into the house, where Filipo Sanchez looks up from a folding table stacked with cash and looks mildly surprised. And calmly says, “There’s five hundred and fifty thousand dollars on this table for you if I go out that door.”

  77

  Back down the stairs now.

  Mission accomplished.

  Everyone gets to go home, drink a beer, watch a DVD.

  Women are already mourning, keening, ululating, but Chon no longer hears that.

  White noise.

  He’s almost down the stairs when the kid steps out again.

  Chon sees the kid’s innocent black eyes and says,

  “Oh, fuck” as the kid reaches inside the waskath and detonates the bomb strapped to his body.

  The green world goes red.

  78

  Few people ever have to find out

  What they would do when their whole life has been based on one thing and then they’re offered the other.

  Dennis knows that he can bust Filipo, and five other Filipos will kill each other trying to take the job vacancy. Knows that the job vacancy will be filled because the money is just too good. Knows he should bust him, anyway, cuff him, and read him his rights.

  Filipo is showing no signs that he’s going to resist or run.

  Maybe if Filipo had been your Cineplex-stereotype Frito-Bandito Mexi-cowboy in an embroidered black shirt and bright-green lizard-skin boots it might have been a simple choice. But Filipo wears a tailored gray sports coat over a white button-down shirt, an expensive pair of jeans,
and black loafers. Slightly tinted bifocals, short-cut black hair with flecks of silver. Very understated, muted, soft-spoken.

  Not a trace of threat in his voice or smirk on his face.

  Just business.

  An exchange of value for value.

  Money for freedom.

  A lot of things go through Dennis’s mind in a hurry. Things that just the day before probably wouldn’t have occurred to him, like $550K is

  Granite countertops, is

  His kids’ education, is

  Fuck the coupons.

  He thinks about his pension down the road, how maybe it buys an RV that you stencil some name like “Buccaneer” on and drive across the country every other year. $550K invested wisely over those years buys you A place in Costa Rica, on the water.

  Trips to Tuscany.

  Granite countertops.

  It would be just this once, he thinks, one time and one time only, and never again.

  Except Dennis knows that’s not true, even as he’s telling it to himself. He knows that a soul isn’t for rent, only for sale. But, to save face, he says, “This doesn’t change anything.”

  Filipo nods, but allows just the suggestion of a smile to show on his face because they both know this changes everything.

  The river of time is tough that way.

  Sometimes the current is so strong that you can never go back to who you used to be, even for a visit, but

  Dennis just nods.

  Filipo goes out the door, taking

  A big chunk of Dennis with him.

  79

  Who knows if faith cracks or erodes, the river of time eating away at its banks until it just crumbles.

  Looks sudden.

  Isn’t.

  80

  Chon hears the ululations of mourning.

  Lying on his back, he feels cold air rush over him.

  Then nothing.

  Don Winslow

  The Kings Of Cool

  Laguna Beach

  1976

  Cocaine,

  Runnin’ all ’round my brain.

  — RED ARNALL, “COCAINE”

  81

  Doc pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

  Except it ain’t no rabbit and it ain’t no hat-Doc pulls a glassine envelope out of John’s surfboard.

  Magic.

  John just got home from a surfing trip with Doc to Mexico.

  It wasn’t Third Reef Pipeline or anything like that, but it was fine and they had a couple of girls with them and everyone had a good time. Except now they’re unloading their gear in John’s driveway in Dodge City and Doc takes one of John’s boards and busts it open and John is like, what the hey?

  “It’s the future,” Doc answers.

  John is pissed-for one thing, it’s one of his favorite boards. Two, he’s twenty-four now and eligible for adult felony time. If Doc wants to take crazy chances, why doesn’t he do it with his own board?

  Except Doc is like a god to him.

  And now God speaks.

  “You think there’s money in grass?” Doc says. “Grass is Junior Achievement. Coke is Wall Street. The hippie thing is over-peace, love, stick it up your ass. Jimi-dead. Janis-dead. It’s Sympathy for the Devil now.”

  The future is in money and the money is in coke. Stockbrokers do coke-movie producers, music executives, doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs-they do coke, not grass.

  Grass is a house in Dodge City-coke is a place on the beach.

  Grass is a new van-coke is a leased Porsche.

  Grass is hippie chicks and patchouli oil-coke is models and Chanel.

  John gets it.

  John goes with it.

  It’s 1976, it’s the BuyCentennial.

  82

  She stares into the mirror and slowly, meticulously draws the eyeliner pencil under her eye.

  The eyeliner is perfect, the mascara is perfect, the subtle blue eye shadow is perfect, the slight blush that highlights her porcelain cheekbones is perfect. She brushes her straight, lush blonde hair to a perfect shine.

  Coldly, objectively, critically, Kim decides that she is perfect.

  Getting up from the stool, she steps over to the full-length mirror attached to the door of her tiny room in the double-wide down in the flats of San Juan Capistrano near the strawberry fields.

  Kim straightens the classic little black dress and checks that it shows enough-but not too much-thigh, and enough-but not too much-cleavage. The dress represents months of waiting tables at the Harbor Grill in Dana Point for shitty tips and sidelong glances because Kim is a looker who doesn’t look seventeen.

  She decides that the dress is perfect.

  So is the black bra that pushes her breasts into the perfect globes she sees in Vogue, Cosmo, and even Playboy, which she studies to discover what men think a woman should be, and Penthouse to learn what men think a woman should do.

  Kim doesn’t otherwise know because she’s never had a boyfriend, never gone out on a date-she isn’t going to get into the backseat, she isn’t even going to get into the car.

  She is Kim the Ice Maiden, Kim the Frigidaire, and she doesn’t care what they say about her-she isn’t going to waste herself on high school boys who can’t do anything to make her life better or give her what she wants, which is

  Something better-much better-than the series of crappy apartments and mobile homes that her mother has worked her ass off to provide, better than the series of bedmates that her mother brings home and urges to leave early before her daughter wakes up.

  Kim has been saving herself, keeping herself to herself.

  Watching, watching

  Waiting, waiting for her body to grow into her soul, for it to be

  Perfect, and

  Perfectly irresistible

  Because you use what you have.

  The world didn’t give her money, or family, or position, but it gave her beauty

  And now she sees that she’s ready to go looking- hunting, really for a better life.

  Kim has a plan.

  83

  She’s been working on it for months.

  Okay, all her life, but this particular plan came to her months ago as she scanned the social pages of the Orange County Register that customers at the diner left on the table with their spare change.

  An annual fund-raiser for cancer at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

  She studies the photographs of the rich-their happy, perfect smiles, their coiffed hair, beautiful, stylish clothes, confident tilts of the head away from the camera. She sees their names, the Mr. and Mrs., Dr. and Mrs., and thinks I am one of them.

  They just can’t see it because

  They can’t see me.

  Kim takes the society pages home, clips the photos, and pins them to the cork bulletin board above the small desk in her room. Studies them harder than she studies algebra or chemistry or English, because those subjects will get her nowhere and one day on her way home from work-her pink uniform dress smudged with grease stains and coffee spots-she stops at a fabric store and buys a dress pattern. Three weeks later, she buys black fabric.

  There’s a problem, though She doesn’t know how to sew and anyway they don’t have a sewing machine, so the next morning she gets up, takes the pattern and the fabric, walks across the gravel “lawn,” knocks on the door of Mrs. Silva’s trailer, and asks,

  “Can you help me?”

  Mrs. Silva is in her early sixties. Her husband goes back and forth to Mexico and is often gone for weeks at a time, and Kim can hear her sewing machine from inside her room.

  Mrs. Silva smiles at the pretty guera.

  “Are you going to the prom?” she asks.

  “No. Can you help me?” Kim shows Mrs. Silva one of the society page photos. “It needs to look like this.”

  “ Sonrisa, that’s a thousand-dollar dress.”

  “Except I want the neckline to be more like-”

  She draws her index finger from left to right in a diagonal line across the chest.

>   “Come in. We’ll see what we can do.”

  For the next two months, Kim spends every spare moment beside Mrs. Silva at the sewing table. Her new tia shows her how to cut, how to sew. It’s difficult, complicated, but Mrs. Silva is a good seamstress and a wonderful teacher, and Kim learns.

  “You have an eye for fashion,” Mrs. Silva tells her.

  “I love fashion,” Kim confesses.

  She knows that she’ll need more than the dress.

  There’s a newsstand at the corner of Ocean and the PCH where the owner likes to look at her legs so he’ll let her stand there and browse and not buy anything while she goes through Vogue and Cosmo and WWD and takes notes.

  The makeup she sees is expensive, but she saves as much of her pay as she can (what doesn’t go to help her mother with rent and food) and all her tips, and she is so careful, so careful, about her selections, so when she takes the bus to the mall and goes to Nordstrom she knows exactly what to buy-and nothing more-for the effect she wants to achieve.

  The calendar is not her friend.

  As Kim crosses off the days to the fund-raising event she does the unforgiving mathematics of time, her income, and what she still needs to buy.

  $2.30 per hour.

  Times twenty hours.

  Plus $15-$20 a shift in tips

  Times five…

  Minus $60 a week to her mother for household expenses…

  It’s going to be tight.

  At one of the (many) dress fittings with Mrs. Silva Tia Ana, now Tia Ana says, “The dress is coming along, but the dress without the proper foundation is nothing.”

  Kim doesn’t know what she means.

  Tia Ana is frank. “You have beautiful breasts, but they need the proper bra to make the dress look just so. An expensive dress with cheap undergarments? It is a beautiful house with a cracked foundation.”