“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.
180
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.”
182
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?
183
“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.
184
“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.”
185
No.
186
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?
188
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.