by Don Winslow
(Which is clearly why they slaughtered the Christians so easily.
Come on-grubbing, guzzling, and boinking versus playing the harp?)
But if you didn’t die with your sword in your hand you were basically fucked.
So Chon is a rehab animal.
The rehab techs have to force him to slow down, back off, but it’s a challenge because Chon is determined not to be one of the wounded. He has a medical board coming up.
He’s going out with his sword in his hand.
Speaking of which, he got a card from O.
Her (sort of) wearing (parts of) a Candy Striper uniform.
Sword, meet hand.
128
INT. PAQU’S HOUSE — LIVING ROOM — DAY
O and PAQU stare at each other.
O
I’m going to find him.
PAQU
I don’t want you doing that.
O
I don’t care. I’m going to.
Paqu’s jaws tighten.
PAQU
Don’t do it, Ophelia.
O
Why not? Just tell me. Why not?
Don Winslow
The Kings Of Cool
129
He left when I was pregnant with you
Paqu tells her.
That’s the kind of man he is.
That’s the man you want to meet.
130
Ben goes to Chad’s office and leaves a briefcase.
$35K.
In Monopoly money.
Don Winslow
The Kings Of Cool
131
“Cock sucker. ”
Duane says when he gets the word from Chad.
Decides it’s time to go see
The Powers That Be.
132
The Powers That Be
Are powers because they’ve figured it out.
Specifically You don’t want to be in the drug business, you want to be in the turf business.
You get cops, judges, lawyers, muscle and charge a fee for people to sell drugs on your turf. You don’t own a stall in the market, you own the market and take a percentage of everybody else’s stall.
The marijuana stall, the cocaine stall, the heroin stall, the methamphetamine stall, the whatever-the-fuck-as-long-as-it’s-illegal-to-sell stall, you get your piece.
And it’s not just the dealers-you get a referral fee from the lawyers and money launderers you send them to.
In the great movie franchise that is the illicit drug trade, you aren’t actors or writers or even directors or producers.
You’re CAA.
Look at it this way: if you take 15 percent of the top ten dealers in your area, you are the biggest dealer in the area.
Without ever touching a drug.
Low profile, high profit.
You can’t be busted.
The actual drug dealers take all the risks and bring in money every day.
If they don’t And at some point you hope they don’t, because then you
Lend them the money to make the payments.
Of course, this requires no monetary outlay on your part; you simply extend their payments while charging interest in the form of late fees.
Dig it-now you’re your own credit card company.
They can never catch up-at some point you own their entire business and they become your employees-and you let them make enough money to eke out a living until you bust them out and then Somebody else volunteers to take their place. The suckers stand in line to take a number and get fucked because even owning 85 percent of themselves they can make a lot of money if they don’t fuck it up.
It’s a beautiful thing, being
The Powers That Be.
133
So Crowe goes to report that one more idiot is trying to jump off the conveyor belt.
Get him in line is the answer.
Because if one clown thinks he can dance solo, they’ll all think it.
Then you don’t have a business anymore.
134
Crowe finds Ben in his usual spot, usual time, sipping a latte and reading the New York Times online.
Duane pulls out the chair across from him and sits down.
Ben looks over the computer top. “Good morning.”
“No, it isn’t,” Duane answers. “It’s going to be a very bad morning. Monopoly money?”
Ben smiles.
“If you didn’t have the money this month,” Duane says, “you should have just said so. We could have worked out a payment plan.”
“I have a payment plan,” Ben says. “My plan is not to make any more payments.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Ben says, “I’m not paying anymore.”
“Then you’re out of business.”
Ben shrugs.
“We’ll put you under the jail,” Crowe says. “All those charges can be reinstated. And we’ll just bust you over and over and over again.”
Ben says nothing.
His version of passive resistance.
He calls it “Verbal Gandhism.”
(“The other guy can’t play tennis,” Ben explained to Chon one time, “if you don’t hit the ball back.”
“He can’t play tennis,” Chon answered, “if you shoot him in the head, either.”)
Duane stares at Ben for a second, then gets up and walks out.
Verbal Gandhism works.
135
So do symbiotic relationships.
Dennis walks into the Orange County Task Force office, flashes his fed-creds, and demands to see the boss.
Commander Roselli looks like he just swallowed hot piss, that’s how happy he is to have a fed on his turf, trodding on the flowers, making the dogs bark. But he summons Boland upstairs and makes the introductions.
“Deputy Boland, Special Agent Dennis Cain, DEA.”
Boland nods at the fed. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“You have an op going against a Benjamin Leonard?” Dennis asks.
Boland hesitates, looks at Roselli.
Roselli says, “Go ahead.”
“Boss-”
“I said go ahead.”
Boland turns back to Dennis. “Yeah, I do.”
“No, you don’t,” Dennis says. “Whatever you had going, shitcan it. Now.”
“You can’t just walk in here and-”
“Yeah, I can,” Dennis said. “I did.”
“Leonard is dealing marijuana in our jurisdiction,” Boland argues.
“He could be selling enriched uranium to Osama bin Laden outside the teacup ride at Disneyland,” Dennis says, “and you will stay the fuck away from it.”
“What,” Boland asks, “you want the bust for yourselves?”
“He’s a federal CI, idiot,” Dennis snaps. “You keep fucking around, you’re going to jeopardize an operation that is so far above you, you’d need a ladder to sniff its asshole. You burn this guy, you’re going to be on the phone to the AG-that’s the attorney general-of the United States, dipshit-explaining why.”
Roselli says, “You’re running an op on our turf, you should have let us know.”
“So it could leak to our target?” Dennis asks.
“Fuck you,” Roselli says.
“Okay, fuck me,” Dennis answers. “Who you don’t fuck is Leonard. Dicks out, hands off. Him, his friends, his family, his dog if he has one. There is a force field around him that you don’t get near unless you want to get zapped. Do we understand each other?”
They do.
They don’t like it, but they understand.
Ben Leonard is untouchable.
136
No one is untouchable.
What Duane gets told.
For example
137
What do the following have in common?
(a) Sonny Corleone
(b) Bonnie and Clyde
(c) Filipo Sanchez
The answer is:
138
Nevertheless, Filipo Sanchez sits in the back of the black Humvee, the seat piled high with presents for his daughter’s birthday.
Elena is going to be angry, he thinks. She believes he spoils Magda, but what’s a daughter for if her papa can’t spoil her? Elena says they have already spent more than enough on the party itself-and threatened to flay him alive if he was even ten minutes late-and that Magda doesn’t need more things, but a girl can never have too many pretty things.
He’s looking forward to the party, to seeing his daughter’s face light up.
Filipo lives for these moments.
He glances down at the ridiculous blue lizard boots that his bodyguard insists on wearing. Filipo keeps trying to tell Jilberto that they live in the city now, in the very best colonia in Tijuana, not out on some Sinaloan backwater, but he won’t listen.
They come to a traffic signal.
The light is about to turn yellow.
“Run it,” he tells his driver.
He must not be late for this party and risk Elena’s wrath.
But the Humvee stops.
“I said-”
Jilberto opens the door and gets out.
The driver flattens onto the seat.
Dios mio.
Three men appear in front of the car, AK-47s in their hands.
Filipo reaches for his gun as he starts to get out, but Jilberto kicks him in the chest, sending him back into the car.
Then Jilberto raises his Uzi and lets loose.
The three men open fire through the windshield.
The bullets shred Filipo and, with him, all the presents in their pretty wrappings.
139
Duane Crowe cracks an egg on the side of the cast iron skillet and carefully squeezes it into the hot canola oil.
He used to cook his eggs in bacon but his doctor busted his balls about his body-fat percentage, so it was either the beer or the bacon and Crowe chose the beer.
He tried turkey bacon, but… it’s turkey bacon.
Crowe has one of those one-cup coffeemakers that even he sees the sad symbolism of. A one-cup coffeemaker is what you get when you’ve had two marriages go south, and now even if you have a woman stay the night, it’s easier to take her out for breakfast because that way she’s, well… out.
Last thing in the world he needs is another divorce settlement taking half of what the last two wives left him, not to mention child support.
Two kids he rarely sees, and Brittany is already applying for college (shit, where does it go?) and she’s a really bright kid-a great kid-with good grades.
Last time she called she was looking at Notre Dame.
Crowe gets a percentage from Chad Meldrun for every client he sends through the door. It sounds like a lot of money, but he has to kick 20 percent up to the Powers That Be, so every dollar coming in means something, and every dollar lost means more.
He scoops the eggs onto a plate, shakes pepper and salt (fuck the doctor) on them, sits down at the breakfast counter, and turns on the news.
The talking head is chirping about “drug violence in Mexico” (This is news? Crowe wonders), and then a still photo of Filipo Sanchez comes on the screen.
Apparently, he’s now the late Filipo Sanchez.
Crowe is surprised, but not surprised.
Filipo has developed a nasty habit of not paying his fees. Maybe it was him trying to prove his chops to the Lauter family, trying to show them that he could do more than just marry Elena, but Filipo was on a campaign to cut the Powers That Be out of the payment loop. Always bitching about the money, trying to negotiate the rate downward, missing payments, a real pain in the culo.
Crowe didn’t blame him-you do what you can do-but Filipo’s rebellion was unwise given the Lauters’ ongoing war with the Berrajanos. He just became too much of a pain in the ass, and the Powers That Be decided to switch sides. It’s not that they whacked Filipo, they just signed off on the Berrajanos’ doing it.
Filipo didn’t want to pay the fees, the Berrajanos did.
That simple.
Crowe hopes that this Ben Leonard also saw the news and took a lesson from it.
He finishes his breakfast and heads out.
Should be an interesting day today.
A real popcorn movie.
The Empire Strikes Back.
140
Ben walks back to his place Dennis Cain is out front waiting for him.
“Uhhh, what the fuck, Dennis?”
In front of my apartment? Where I live? (Where my wife sleeps and my children play with their toys?)
“It’s time for your monthly contribution to the Dennis Cain Promotion Campaign,” Dennis says.
Ben already knows this.
“But you don’t want to be seen with me,” Dennis says. “Most of my snitches like to meet on neutral ground, but every once in a while I like to show up in their native habitat so they don’t get to feeling too secure.”
“Let’s go inside,” Ben says.
They go inside.
“You want anything?” Ben asks.
“You got Diet Coke?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want anything.”
Dennis sits down on the sofa. “So what have you got for me? And before you answer, don’t even start with a grow house or a van full of dope.”
Ben looks at him-that’s exactly where he was going to start.
“I know who you are and I know what you’ve been doing,” Dennis says. “You grow top-grade hydro and you’ve been giving me your own factory seconds. I look like the outlet mall to you, bunkie? You pull off the freeway and sell Dennis a shirt with one sleeve longer than the other?”
“I have a lead on some high-grade-”
“You read the papers, watch the news?”
“Sure.”
“Then you should know I’m a rock star,” Dennis says, “and I don’t want any green M amp;Ms in my dressing room. My last hit on the Baja Cartel went platinum, and the last thing I need is any more boo. I get any more marijuana I’ll have to lay it off on eBay.”
Ben is stretched out between the rock and the hard place and he has nowhere else to go.
Dennis likes the situation.
Arrogant Ben Leonard has his head caught in a vise, and Filipo Sanchez is never going to be in a position where he can testify about making a payoff to a certain federal agent.
Someone El Norte gave the nod to Filipo’s assassination and is forming a new partnership with the Berrajanos. If it’s true, the Sanchez-Lauters are in big trouble. Not only are the American partners changing sides, but Filipo was the last male in the royal line-there’s no one to head up the family.
Dennis wonders if Filipo’s guts spelled anything as they spilled out of him.
Narco Sesame Street.
Today is brought to you by the letter “F.”
Fuck you, Filipo. And fuck you, Ben Leonard.
“So what do you want?” Ben asks.
“We’ve been over this,” Dennis says. “Arrests of human beings. Growers-better yet, buyers-wholesalers, preferably. It’s time for you to name names, Benny boy.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Ben says.
“Look,” Dennis answers, “I pulled you out of the shit, I can drop you right back in. It takes one phone call, and I can have an assistant make it. ‘You want Ben Leonard? Take his ass. He isn’t producing anymore.’”
“Nice.”
“You want ‘nice,’ get into another business,” Dennis says. “Sell teddy bears, Candygrams. Puppies, kittens, they’re ‘nice.’ I’m in the arrest business-and you’re in that business with me.”
You’re going to name names, you’re going to wear a wire, you’re going to help make cases, Dennis tells him.
“You want me to keep the heat off you,” Dennis concludes, “you’d better wake up every morning asking yourself the following question: What can I do today to make D
ennis happy?”
141
Dennis ain’t gonna be happy.
Because Ben isn’t going to name names.
He comes from a family for which the McCarthy hearings were living history. Discussed around the dinner table as if they were in that day’s news. And the worst of his parents’ scorn was reserved for those witnesses who named names.
They’re worse than the freaking Mafia in that regard, Stan and Diane, with their leftie omerta, and Stan still refuses to watch On the Waterfront because Kazan named names.
You were blacklisted back in the day, and do the math, Stan and Diane were infants; it was a badge of honor. You were one of the Hollywood Ten, you were a hero, I’m telling you John Gotti is going to name names before Ben does.
He doesn’t know the solution to Cain’s demand, he just knows what he’s not going to do.
He also knows that he’s caught between the grinding wheels of two machines-the Orange County machine and the federal machine.
Big Government and Bigger Government.
It’s enough, Ben thinks, to make a Republican out of you.
142
O goes to the library.
First she has to find it, and is pleasantly surprised to discover that they keep the thing right downtown and she’s walked past it, like, five hundred and fifty-seven thousand times.
She could get on her computer at home, but Paqu is on the warpath, in “high dudgeon” O heard that phrase in a movie and always liked it, even though she doesn’t know what a dudgeon is and Chon isn’t around to enlighten her and not talking to her, which usually comes as an intense relief to O, except this time Paqu isn’t talking to her while coming around every five seconds to glare at her, and she also suspects that Paqu has implanted spyware on her laptop in the completely justified paranoia that O uses her credit card to access online porn.
