The Kings Of Cool s-1
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“Do you know what happens to girls who go to parties with boys they don’t know?” Paqu asked.
“They get knocked up and have daughters like me,” O answered, “who go to parties with boys they don’t know and get knocked up and have daughters like me. It’s le circle de la vie.”
Paqu was nonplussed.
Then again, it is very hard to pluss Paqu.
“I married your father,” she said.
Briefly, O thought.
“Anyway,” she argued, “I know him. He’s a junior and he’s going to be the starting quarterback next year.”
Paqu heard that-she understood status. Still, Ophelia was only a freshman, and the boy was a junior. She forbade O to go to the party, but then went to a party of her own and O simply left the house and went down to the beach, where she found the party around a bonfire and also found Quarterback, who soon took her away from the party and down the beach where they could be alone.
Anyway, O was small and Quarterback was big and all weight room, protein powder, supplements, maybe testosterone the way he was acting-anyway, he was strong and wouldn’t let go and she couldn’t rip her wrist away so she was thinking Fuck me.
Not, like, wanting him to.
Like, wanting him not to.
Quarterback offered her an alternative. “At least blow me.”
He started to push her down to her knees.
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Your nuts can’t lift weights.
Okay, maybe they can, maybe you’re that guru who nut-lifts five-pound stones from the Ganges, or you’re that guy who wins the Darwin Award on YouTube and becomes an eRoom legend, but as a rule there are no reps you can do to strengthen your junk against a well-placed knee delivered with bad intent.
Which O had.
Which O did.
She just cocked that knee back and let fly and then Quarterback was on the sand on his knees and O should have walked away right there, but she paused to admire her handiwork and Quarterback lunged and cracked her one in the side of the face.
O was stunned.
He grabbed her by the front of her shirt, took her down, and fell on top of her. His junk was hurting way too much for him to focus on his original intent, but now he was in a rage-all he wanted to do was hurt her, and he pressed her down into the sand and pummeled her ribs. She could hardly breathe, her head was still whirling, and she knew she was in big trouble.
Except not.
Because suddenly she felt the weight literally being lifted off her and this one guy had QB by the neck and another was pulling her to her feet.
Ben asked, “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” O answered.
Ben said that she didn’t.
“Did this guy hit you?” Chon asked.
They didn’t recognize each other. It had been years since the school in the canyon. O just vaguely recognized them as seniors.
“Yeah.”
Chon shook his head at QB and said, “Not cool.”
QB was jacked up and a little overconfident from the gym and the fact that five of his boys rolled in just now to back him up so he actually said, “Mind your own fucking business, asshole.”
Then he grabbed O by the front of her shirt like he was going to haul his property away.
Chon’s kick came up and snapped QB’s elbow like a Popsicle stick.
QB went down screaming.
None of his boys wanted any piece of Chon after that, so they picked QB up and carried him down the beach.
Chon stood there, breathing, coming down from the adrenaline.
“Do you have a name?” Ben asked the girl.
“O.”
“O.”
“It’s really Ophelia,” O admitted.
“I’m Ben. This is Chon.”
Yes, O thought.
Yes it is.
My magic boy.
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Yeah, except the magic boy was fucked.
Not enough voodoo in the world to pull him out of this shit.
The starting quarterback wasn’t gonna start-not next season, maybe not ever with that broken wing-and his family had considerable swag in Orange County. You put that up against the son of a dope dealer with a bad track record of his own and Chon was going to jail.
Maybe prison, because he’d just turned eighteen.
O wanted to stick up for him. Said she’d press charges against QB-for sexual assault, battery, her mom knew lawyers who would help him, but Chon told her not to.
A survivor of the high school experience, he knew what she couldn’t-as a freshman, her high school life was already going to be miserable. If she took his side in this thing the whole school was going to make her into the slut, the cocktease who got the star QB injured, who ruined the season. It was going to be bad enough as it was; there was no sense in making it worse.
He told her to let it go as just a fight on the beach.
Ben talked him into going to see his dad.
Here’s why this was maybe not Ben’s best idea.
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Here’s a story about Chon and his dad:
Chon’s mom took off the day John came home from prison, but she came back a few days later on the pretext of picking up her juicer but really just to bust balls.
Bad timing, because John was coked up and pissed off and the two of them got into a fight. Not an argument-a fight — and John pushed her up against the wall and raised his hand.
Fourteen-year-old Chon stepped in.
Shoved his dad aside and yelled, “Leave my mom alone!”
John smirked. “What? You a man now? You the man?”
Chon stood his ground.
Which was a mistake because John hit him with a closed fist, right in the face. Chon’s head snapped back with the impact. Chon put his hands up and rushed forward, but, as Taylor screamed, John beat the uncouth piss out of his kid. Pushed him backward over the arm of the sofa and punched him in the face, the head, and the body. Rolled him onto the floor and kicked him a few times. And when Taylor tried to pull him off he turned on her.
Chon tried to get up off the floor but couldn’t, and finally his mom ran out the door. John came back, loomed over Chon, and said, “Don’t you ever raise your hand to me again. You give me respect.”
Chon didn’t call the cops or Child Protective Services. What he did was, he waited for his old man to pass out that night, then quietly opened his father’s bureau drawer, found his. 38, and pressed the barrel into John’s temple.
Big John’s eyes opened.
“You touch me again,” Chon said, “I’ll wait until you’re asleep and splatter your brains all over the wall.”
Big John blinked.
Chon pulled back the hammer.
“Unless you want me to do it right now,” he offered.
Big John slowly shook his head.
Chon eased the hammer down, put the gun back in the drawer, and went to his room.
His father never laid a hand on him again.
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So John smirked when he heard Chon’s story about snapping the quarterback’s arm.
“Still defending damsels in distress,” he said. “So what do you want from me?”
“You have lawyers.”
“I do?” John asked, smiling. “Why would you think I have lawyers?”
Chon looked him straight in the eyes. “Because you’re a drug dealer.”
“Was,” John corrected. “I was a drug dealer. I paid my debt to society, as they say. Now I put roofs on people’s houses.”
“Right.”
John got himself a beer and offered one to Chon, who refused. John shrugged and said, “If you’re man enough to get yourself in this kind of trouble, Chon, you’re man enough to get yourself out. You want some advice about how to get by in the joint, I can give you that: never accept a favor or a gift because you’ll end up paying with your ass.”
“Personal experience?” Chon asked.
John said, “Here’s what you
do, kid-you go join the navy, get your ass out of town. There, I helped you.”
Chon left and found Ben.
Ben drove him down to San Diego.
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Now, in bed, O tells Chon all about her plan to find her father.
Chon listens to the whole thing, then asks, “What good will it do?”
“What do you mean?”
Chon shrugs. “I know my father, and I wish I didn’t.”
181
The call comes in the morning.
Ben detaches his arm from beneath Kari’s brown shoulder and picks up the phone.
Hears.
“You reading the New York Times?”
Ben, sleepy: “Not yet.”
“Well, try the Orange County Register instead, Mr. Untouchable.”
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Ben doesn’t get the Register
(too Republican).
Runs down the street to a news rack, inserts his quarters, and pulls out a paper.
Front page, above the fold:
TWO FOUND DEAD IN MISSION VIEJO
There’s a photo of a blood-stained car.
A Volvo.
Frantically, Ben reads-“Names are being withheld pending notification…”
But he thinks he recognizes the car.
He gets his phone out and hits Scott Munson’s number. It rings six times, then Scott’s voice comes on. “You know the drill. Leave a message. Later. Scott.”
For the first time in his life, Ben feels absolutely terrified. Worse, he feels helpless. He doesn’t leave a message, just clicks off.
His phone rings again.
“Scott?” Ben asks.
“That’s sweet.”
“What did you do?!”
“No,” OGR says. “What you should be asking your self is-what did you do?”
Good question.
Then OGR posits an even better question to him.
What are you going to do?
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“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Chon asks after Ben has laid it all out for him.
“What were you supposed to do about it from Afghanistan?” Ben asks. “Then from a hospital bed?”
“We’ve always told each other everything,” Chon says. “That was the deal.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I’m guilty, too.” He tells Ben about Brian and the Boys. “That guy was testing us, seeing how we’d react. The second I left, he moved in on you.”
Ben is worked. Two people dead because of him. It’s wrong, Ben says, just flat-out fucking wrong to let them literally get away with murder.
Ben just can’t let it happen.
And won’t let it happen.
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“Glad to hear you say it,” Chon says.
“You’re not going to be glad to hear me say this,” Ben answers. “We’re not going ‘drug war.’ No ‘eye for an eye.’”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I’m going to the cops.”
“Which cops?” Chon asks. “Theirs?”
“Not every cop is dirty.”
What Ben can’t seem to get through his head, Chon thinks, is that the justice system is set up for the system, not the justice. The drug laws make us out laws. Outside the protection of the law. The only protection we have is self — protection, and you cannot go Gandhi on that, you just can’t lie down in the street, because the other side will be happy to run you over and then throw it in reverse and do it again.
“I’m not asking you to do it,” Chon says, “I’m just asking you to step aside and let me do it.”
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No.
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The power of no is absolute
Ben has always believed.
A refusal to participate
In wrong,
In evil
In injustice.
You don’t have to do it.
You just say no.
187
INT. BEN’S APARTMENT — DAY
BEN and CHON glare at each other.
CHON
The fuck you mean, “no”?
BEN
I mean, no. I mean I won’t step aside and “let” you murder people.
CHON
You think you have choices here?
BEN
I think there are always choices, yes.
CHON
Such as?
BEN
I have a plan.
CHON
Your last plan got two people killed. If we’d taken out these guys the first time they made threats BEN
Like you did?
CHON
You’re right-my mistake, leaving them alive.
BEN
Always your answer, isn’t it?
CHON
There are bad people in the world, Ben. You’re not going to change them, or persuade them, or make them listen to reason. You get rid of them-they’re toxic waste.
BEN
Nice world.
CHON
I didn’t create it, I just live in it.
BEN
No, you just kill in it.
CHON
You’re just like the rest of this fucking country, B-you don’t want to know what it takes to keep any more buildings from falling on your head. You want to sit here and talk about “peace” and watch Entertainment Tonight and let other people do your killing for you.
BEN
I didn’t ask you to kill for me CHON
Too late, Ben.
BEN
And I’m telling you not to kill for me now. I’ll deal with this in my own way.
CHON
Which is what, exactly?
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Ben gets on the phone and says,
“You win.”
189
Perhaps Elena’s greatest sorrow is that Magda will always associate her birthday with her father’s death.
A harsh fact for a girl who loved her papa so much.
Elena sits and looks at the closed casket, white, draped in flowers.
Armed men stand in the back of the room and at the doors, waiting for an attack that could very well come.
She had to tell Magda that she could not attend her own father’s funeral tomorrow.
Too dangerous.
In a world bereft of decency.
Are the armed men sentries or vultures, she wonders, ready to pounce on the carcass of the Sanchez-Lauter family? They are all wondering what she is going to do.
Still beautiful, still relatively young, she could go away to Europe, find a new husband, a new life. Certainly the option is attractive-she has enough money to live well forever, and raise her children in peace and comfort.
Or will she step into her dead brothers’ and husband’s shoes and take charge of the family?
A woman.
There is already grumbling about it; she has heard it. How they will not serve under a woman.
Do you have a choice? she thinks.
A woman is all that’s left.
She lifts a black-gloved hand and Lado appears at her side.
Lado, the policeman now openly in her employ.
A killer-his black eyes as cold as the obsidian blades the Aztec priests used to disembowel their sacrificial victims.
“Lado,” she says. “I have a job for you.”
“Si, madrone.”
She’s decided.
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Chon tosses his cane on the sand and limps toward the water.
Swimming is the best exercise to get him back in shape. Stretches his muscles, breaks up his scar tissue, improves his cardio, but puts no weight on the wounds.
The water is cold, but he doesn’t wear a wetsuit.
Not sure he could even pull one on, and anyway, he likes the pain of the sharp cold.
He starts swimming with easy overhead strokes, not pushing it.
Rhythmic, strong.
Peace lasted exactly one night.
N
ow it’s back to war.
191
EXT. STAIRCASE — TABLE ROCK BEACH — DAY
BEN and DUANE stand on a landing halfway down the long set of stairs. Waves smash against Table Rock.
Duane pats Ben down to make sure he’s not wearing a wire. Satisfied DUANE
What do we have to talk about?
BEN
I need to have a going-out-of-business sale.
DUANE
You just don’t fucking learn, do you?
BEN
Look, I have all this inventory DUANE
Your problems are your problems.
BEN
My problems are your opportunity.
DUANE
Speak.
BEN
I’ll sell cheap. Fifty cents on the dollar. To you.
DUANE
Why the fuck would you do that?
BEN
I wouldn’t, except what choice do I have? I can’t find a fucking buyer, they’re all too scared they’re going to end up dead in their cars.
DUANE
(smiling)
I wouldn’t know anything about that.
BEN
Yeah, okay. Look, the point is-you win. Just give me a chance to get some of my money out.
Ben watches anxiously as Duane considers this.
DUANE
Let me think about it.
BEN
Think quick. I’m dying here.
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Chon follows Old Guys Rule away from the meeting.
OGR gets into his four-door Dodge Charger and heads north on the PCH, back up toward Laguna, turns south onto Arroyo and then onto Lewis up into Canyon Acres. Eventually he pulls into a driveway.