The Kings Of Cool s-1

by Don Winslow

  “He’s mobbed up now,” John says. “They sent a guard dog named Frankie Machine. Even if we could find someone to… you can’t get near him.”

  Hire this job out to some gangbanger, all you’re going to get is a dead gangbanger.

  Only one who can get next to Doc these days is a close trusted friend.

  157

  John drives back down to Dago.

  Has a need for sausiche.

  158

  “My appointment’s tomorrow,” Taylor reminds John.

  “Okay.”

  “You’re still taking me, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And bringing me back.”

  “Round-trip, Taylor.”

  “Where are you going?”

  John’s slipping into a light jacket.

  “Out.”

  “It’s two in the morning!”

  “Yeah, I know what time it is, Taylor.”

  159

  The lights are pretty down in the harbor, bobbing gently with the boats moored in their slips. John eases the pistol from his jacket pocket and holds it low beside the seat.

  Doc pulls a vial of coke out of his pocket and pours two lines out on the dash. Leans down and snorts them right into his nose.

  John pulls the hammer back.

  Doc shakes his head to knock the coke down, looks at John, and says, “I did all right, huh? Snorting blow from a Lamborghini Countach? Doesn’t get much better than that, does it?”

  “Hey, Doc,” John says, “remember when you used to buy me tacos?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Doc says. “Seems like a long time ago now.”

  He looks out the window, down at the pretty lights.

  “Goodbye, Doc.”

  Guys out fishing on the stone jetty will later say that they saw the muzzle flash.

  They didn’t see John get out of the car and get into a black Lincoln that pulled up.

  160

  “The job get done?” Frankie Machine asks him.

  “Yeah,” John answers.

  The job got done.

  Frankie drops him a block from the house.

  161

  “I want the baby.”

  “What?” Taylor asks.

  She’s sleepy. It’s three o’clock in the morning and John woke her up.

  “I want the baby,” John says.

  “It’s not a baby,” she says, “it’s a fetus.”

  “It’s a human being.”

  “What are you, like, Catholic all of a sudden?” she asks. “We can’t have a baby, John-we are babies.”

  You have to hand it to Taylor, John thinks.

  She ain’t honest often, she ain’t real often, but when she is Bang.

  She gets the job done.

  “That’s what I mean,” he says. “If we had a kid, we’d have to grow up, right?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, I’ve never pictured myself as a, you know, mother. Can you really see yourself as a father?”

  Funny fucking thing is, all of a sudden he can.

  With Doc gone…

  He’s not the kid anymore; maybe he’s ready to be the father.

  “Let’s get married,” he says.

  “What?”

  “It’s what real people do, isn’t it?” John asks. “They grow up, they get married, they start families?”

  It’s what they do.

  Isn’t always what they should.

  But it’s what they do.

  162

  Stan can’t sleep.

  (Macbeth hath murdered sleep.)

  The guilt is ferocious and yet he has to admit that he feels a little titillated.

  Powerful.

  Giving, if not the order, the permission.

  He rolls to his side and pushes against Diane’s warm ass. Reaches around and strokes her until she stirs and wiggles back into him.

  She’s wet enough and he pushes into her.

  Into it now, she cooperates and rolls her hips.

  He’s harder than usual and she feels it.

  “Baby,” she says.

  It’s the best sex they’ve had in years. She arches her neck and pushes her ass back against his hips.

  “You’re so deep,” she murmurs.

  “I know.”

  She comes before he does. Reaches back and touches his face when he comes, deep inside her.

  A seminal fuck.

  163

  John paddles out with what’s left of Doc’s friends at Brooks Street, paddles out and joins the circle they form with their boards. The guys look at each other guiltily, not wanting to read each other’s eyes because they know what they’re going to see there.

  Relief.

  Pretty much the same emotion that permeated the funeral.

  Everyone sat there on wooden folding chairs and stared at a closed casket with this smiling photo of Doc staring back at them while some minister intoned some bullshit that Doc didn’t believe in and felt guilty relief that

  (a) they didn’t have to deal with Doc anymore, and

  (b) they didn’t have to do what they were thinking about doing because

  (c) Doc did it for them.

  “I just can’t believe that Doc killed himself,” Diane said at one point.

  Hard not to believe, though-the cops found Doc in his car with a pistol in his hand and most of his brains on the window.

  “Did he leave a note?” Diane asked. “Give a reason?”

  “Cocaine is its own reason,” Stan said.

  But as they were leaving he pulled John aside and asked, “Did he really kill himself?”

  “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” John said. “He killed himself. Leave it at that.”

  Everyone will feel better if we — leave it at that.

  Especially me.

  Same thing at the paddle-out.

  Some surfer-cum-minister says some lame shit and then they each float wreaths out onto the tide.

  Aloha, Doc.

  Surf on, dude.

  John looks back to the shore and there’s cops standing on the stairway.

  Cops taking pictures like it’s the Godfather wedding or something.

  An Association family portrait.

  Thanks, Doc.

  Time to shut it down for a while, John thinks. Let the cops get bored and move on to the next thing. He has enough money stored up, enough investments to go into hibernation for a while, manage the rental properties, sell the restaurant.

  Live the life of a quiet, successful young businessman. Let the rest of these boys figure out who’s going to be the next King.

  The crown is a cop magnet.

  Three weeks after the paddle-out John and Taylor have a small service at the gazebo overlooking Divers Cove. A few friends-most of them Taylor’s-come, and they have a reception back at the house before flying off to honeymoon in Tahiti.

  They stay for a month, and when they come back John sells the house on Moss Bay and moves to more modest but still comfortable digs up in Bluebird Canyon. He keeps the Porsches in the garage and drives a BMW instead.

  Good thing he does.

  It takes the cops about six months before they roll up the Association like an old carpet. Turns out Doc gave them a lot of names before he couldn’t take the guilt and “killed himself.”

  Bobby, always the smartest one, took off and vanished, leaving behind only a legend.

  But Mike, Duane, Ron-one by one they go off to double-digit sentences in federal lockups.

  Not Stan, not Diane.

  Not Kim.

  John and Taylor clean up their act. Taylor gets off the blow and their baby is born healthy.

  They name him John.

  He’s three months old when the feds indict John for drug trafficking.

  Laguna Beach 2005

  I watched the world float to the dark side of the moon,

  After all I knew it had to be something to do with you.

  — 3 DOORS DOW
N, “KRYPTONITE”

  164

  Chon stands in the doorway, leaning on a cane.

  O does her happy dance and then throws her arms around him.

  “Chon’s home,” she chants. “Chonny’s home, Chonny’s home, yay, yay, yay, Chonny’s home!”

  “Easy,” he says, just maintaining balance on the cane.

  “What are you doing here?” Ben asks.

  “I’m a civilian now,” Chon says. He walks O back over to the couch and sets her down. “Honorably discharged. Physically unfit for duty.”

  “Morally unfit,” Ben says. “Ethically unfit, psychologically unfit, but physically unfit, no.”

  “What I told them, but…”

  Ben peels O off him and hugs him.

  “Welcome home, bro.”

  “Good to be back.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Cold beer,” Chon answers. “Hot shower. In-N-Out.”

  O trots to the fridge and gets him a Dos Equis.

  “I’ll take it into the shower,” Chon says. “I’m going to be in there awhile.”

  Chon lets the hot water pound him and the cold beer slide down his throat and can’t decide which is better.

  Then he remembers he doesn’t have to choose.

  Doesn’t have to watch his back.

  Doesn’t have to listen for the sound of an IED going off or the whistling of a mortar round coming in.

  Doesn’t have to wash a buddy’s blood off his hands.

  Doesn’t have to kill anyone tonight.

  Tonight he can close his eyes.

  There’s no war here.

  165

  Scott Munson drives to the pull-off on the Ortega Highway that winds through the hills east of San Juan Capistrano.

  The customer’s already there.

  For three pounds of Ben and Chon’s best boo.

  He’s a new customer, and delivering this kind of weight to a newbie is a violation of Ben and Chon’s rules, but three pounds is $12,000-a profit of $2,400-and if the newbie turns into a regular-which he will once his customers get a taste of this shit-Scott is looking at a new income stream.

  Which he needs because he wants to give Traci a ring for her birthday-speaking of violations of Ben and Chon’s rules, Traci is a ride-along on this delivery Strictly verboten.

  (“Another word for ‘passenger,’” Chon has lectured the sales force, “is ‘witness.’ Another synonym is ‘snitch.’

  “You don’t want to put your friends and loved ones in a morally impossible situation,” Ben added, “in which they have to choose between their loyalty to you and their freedom. Just don’t do it.”)

  Yeah, fair enough, but you try to tell Traci she isn’t coming for a ride.

  Shoulder-length auburn hair, tight rack, almond eyes, and the sweetest personality in South Orange County. Let Chon tell her she has to sit at home while you drive out to East Jesus More B amp;C Rules:

  Your customers never come to your house, you go to them

  You make your meets in remote areas between nine PM and six AM, because cops don’t like to work those hours. three out of four ain’t bad, and what B amp;C don’t know won’t hurt them, so you let her come along because it’s a long drive and you like to smell her hair.

  “Just wait in the car,” Scott tells her as he pulls over. “This will only take a minute.”

  “Cool.”

  He leaves the battery on so she can listen to the radio and gets out.

  166

  “There’s a chick in the car,” Brian says.

  “Bad luck,” answers Duane.

  “Maybe we should call it off.”

  “You got twelve grand on you?”

  He opens the car door and gets out.

  167

  Scott bends over to take the bags from the trunk.

  Duane pulls the pistol from the back of his jeans and shoots him in the back of the head.

  The muzzle flashes light up the car.

  Duane walks around and opens the passenger door.

  The pretty girl’s hands grip the dashboard, she stares straight ahead, her mouth wide open in terror.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Duane whispers in her ear. Her hair smells nice, like she just washed it with some expensive shampoo. “Just close your eyes while we get back into the car. Don’t open them until you’ve heard us drive away, okay?”

  She nods, unable to speak.

  Then she closes her eyes tight, like a child trying not to remember a bad dream.

  Duane strokes her hair with the back of his hand.

  Then he steps back and shoots her.

  168

  “I want to do it,” Chon says.

  “Go for it,” Ben says, smiling.

  Chon leans out the window and talks into the speaker.

  “Two double-doubles,” he says, “with everything, and a chocolate shake.”

  He’s been waiting a long time to say that.

  Good to be home.

  In California.

  169

  “The name California is most commonly believed to have derived from a fictional paradise.”-Wikipedia

  170

  “Too bad about the chick,” Brian says.

  “You’d rather, what,” Duane answers as they drive away, “she flashes those beautiful browns to a jury while she points at you?”

  Not that there’s much chance of that.

  They’ll chuck the gun into the ocean and the car they boosted down in Dago, so if the cops do the CSI tire-tread thing they’ll come up with some clueless beaner gangbangers.

  Still, you don’t leave witnesses.

  Not even ones you’d like to fuck.

  “I’m just saying,” Brian mutters.

  I’m just saying.

  171

  Chon finishes his burgers and smiles.

  “Better than sex?” O asks.

  “No,” Chon says.

  But close.

  172

  But as the saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and certain presidential elections.

  Chon lies in bed in his apartment-fighting jet lag and residual pain-when the door opens and O comes in.

  He watches her slip out of her clothes.

  Her body pale in the moonlight that comes through the window.

  She gets onto the bed and carefully straddles him.

  “Don’t think I’ve missed you or I love you,” she says, “or that I’m not pissed at you for turning me down the last time. This is just a mercy fuck for a wounded vet.”

  “Got it.”

  “A patriotic gesture,” she says, bending down, amazingly supple for a girl for whom exercise is anathema. “Like tying a yellow ribbon around something.”

  She takes him in her mouth, makes him hard(er), then straightens up and hovers over him.

  “Just lie there and let me do all the work,” she says.

  “O?”

  “Chon?”

  “Don’t hurt me.”

  173

  But she does.

  Small as she is, slight as she is, she hurts him as she rocks on him, tries to be gentle, tries to be soft, but it feels so fucking good she can’t stop and she sees he’ll trade the pain for the pleasure as he grabs her hips and starts to move not slower but faster not softer but harder and she thinks Chon is in me and she grips him tighter and sinks into it with a poem and a prayer Your skin is my skin, your scars mine, your hurts mine

  I’ll heal them with my cunt

  Silvery, slippery warm

  Take you inside where there is no pain or fear you can cry when you come come in me a chalice for you my friend my lover my magic boy.

  174

  “Holy fuck,” Chon says.

  She runs a finger up and down his chest.

  “Who knew?” he asks.

  I did, she thinks.

  Always have.

  Since the night you rescued me.

  The night that started all this


  175

  That night

  She was fourteen and

  The quarterback was really agg.

  Aggressive.

  And he wanted to fuck O.

  Not even subtle about it-the boy’s idea of technique, of charm, was to get her down the beach away from the party and say “I want to fuck you.”

  “Yeah, no.”

  O would come to a time in her life when she was pro-fucking-her friend Ash would say that O handled more packages than UPS-but not with this jerk, not, like, ten minutes after he handed her a beer and thought that was his ticket to the show, and plus She was fourteen years old.

  “I’m going back,” she said. Meaning back to the beach party they walked away from, the party Paqu didn’t want her to go to.

  “After,” Quarterback insisted. He was seventeen and next year’s starting quarterback, and they were already talking USC and the NFL draft so he was getting used to getting what he wanted.

  He grabbed her by the wrist.

  O was, like, small. Petite, her mother called her, gamine. Whatever the fuck that meant, because Paqu was in a French phase, probably because she was doing this wine importer from Newport Beach and kept yapping about moving to Lyon because Paris would be cliche, n’est-ce pas?

  Yeah, right, O thought-Paqu is going to leave Orange County about the time Michelle Kwan or some other anal-retentive anorexics do their triple axels in hell. Paqu is never going to get more than a ten-minute drive from her gyms, her spas, her plastic surgeons, shrinks, gardeners, or her OC (that’s Orange County, but yes, Obsessive Compulsive works, too) pals, not even for Marcel or Michel or whatever the hell he appelles himself, it just ain’t gonna happen, but what really had O angry about the situation she was currently in is that it was exactly the situation Paqu warned her about if she went to parties with boys she didn’t know.