“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.