257
INT. JOHN’S HOUSE — NIGHT
SOUND OF CHON’S PHONE RINGING.
He doesn’t answer it.
CHON
I’ve never asked you for anything.
JOHN
But you’re going to now. What do you want?
CHON
A pass for Ben Leonard.
John shakes his head.
JOHN
Walk away from him.
CHON
I’m not that guy.
John laughs.
JOHN
You going to tell me who you are and who you’re not? I know who you are.
CHON
You don’t know a fucking thing about me.
JOHN
Your mother wanted to flush you down a sink. I know that.
CHON
Yeah, she told me.
JOHN
She would. (Beat) I wouldn’t let her do it. I dunno, I was feeling sentimental, I guess.
CHON
I’m supposed to, what, thank you?
JOHN
You’re the one asking for the favor.
CHON
You going to do it, or not?
JOHN
The fuck you owe this Leonard guy, anyway?
CHON
He’s family.
John takes this in-seems to hear the truth of it. He doesn’t have an answer.
CHON (CONT’D)
This isn’t about me and Ben-it’s about me and you. I’m asking you for something. You want to give it to me, great. You don’t…
JOHN
What?
CHON
We go a different route.
JOHN
I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. I don’t mean I “won’t,” I mean I can’t. I can do this for you-I can tell you walk away. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I wish I’d walked away twenty years ago. You still can.
CHON
You go after Ben, you have to come through me.
JOHN
Then we have a problem, kid.
John reaches under the sofa cushion and pulls out a pistol and points it at Chon.
258
“I’m not a kid anymore,” Chon says.
“You never were.”
“I can rip that gun out of your hand and shove it down your throat before you can blink.”
“Yeah, I forgot, you’re Superman,” John says. “You’re a cold enough little prick to kill your own father, I’ll give you that, but you think I’m the top of this thing? You think this is as high as it goes?”
Chon’s tiring. The world starts to dance a little in his eyes.
“Anything happens to me,” John says, “the order is already out. Your buddy Ben is dead.”
Leveling the pistol at Chon, he gets up. “Outside. We’re going someplace.”
He moves Chon out the door.
259
The gunmen come up from Mexico, but they aren’t Mexican.
Schneider and Perez are as American as apple pie, trained veterans of their country’s wars, underemployed and so working for the Berrajanos.
Now they’re on loan-out to John McAlister back at home.
Walking up the beach, hoodies over their heads, they look like druids in the mist.
They’ve come for Ben.
260
They get in the backseat with one of the gunmen.
He looks to Chon like a refrigerator.
Or a cop.
And he says to Chon, “I don’t care whose fucking kid you are. You try anything, I’ll put two in your head.”
“Easy, Boland,” John says.
“Just so he knows,” Boland says.
“Where are we going?” Chon asks. “A ball game? Chuck E. Cheese?”
“Mexico,” John answers.
261
Mexico, Chon thinks.
Because you can only dump so many bodies in South Orange County before the cops really get fed up and come after you.
The OC is very strict on littering.
Mexico?
Not so much.
262
Ben’s doorbell rings.
Please let it be Chon, he thinks.
He goes to the door.
263
Lado is walking across the gravel parking lot to his car when Magda steps out of the shadows and grabs his elbow.
“Lado,” she says, “do something for me, please?”
264
It’s O.
Standing in the rain.
Her hair wet, water running down her neck.
Tears in her blue eyes.
“Can I-”
“Come in,” Ben says.
265
“I don’t have anyplace,” O says.
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t have anyplace to go.”
“It’s all right,” Ben says. “You can be here.”
He pulls her into his arms and holds her.
266
They come to the border.
(Yeah, well, everyone does, sooner or later.)
“Don’t be an asshole,” John says.
A little late for fatherly advice, Chon thinks, but he knows what John means. If there was a moment to make a break for it, this would be it-start yelling at the checkpoint, staffed with heavily armed Border Patrol agents, and there’s not a damn thing John or the two thugs could do about it.
“Your buddy Ben is still alive,” John says. “Get stupid here and he won’t be.”
That’s my dad, Chon thinks.
A real Boy Scout.
Always prepared.
267
O says, “It turns out that Patterson isn’t my father.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, it gets better.” She takes a pull on the joint, holds in the smoke, and exhales with, “My real father was a guy called-you’re going to love this-‘Doc Halliday,’ and-get ready for it-he killed himself while I was baking in the oven.”
“Jesus, O, that’s terri-”
Then he does the math.
His parents said that Halliday committed suicide in 1981, but O couldn’t have been born until “What’s your birthday?”
“August twenty-eighth, why?”
“What year?”
“1986. Ben-”
But he’s already punching the phone.
268
The BP agent asks them why they’re going to Mexico.
“Boys’ night out,” John says.
“Don’t come back with anything,” the agent advises.
“We won’t,” John says.
After they pass through the checkpoint, Chon hears John mumble, “The end of America.”
269
Dennis picks up the phone.
“What do you want?”
“Have you ever heard of a guy named Doc Halliday?” Ben asks.
“I’m a DEA agent,” Dennis answers. “Have baseball players heard of Babe Ruth? Have gunfighters heard of Wyatt Earp? Of course I’ve heard of Halliday. Why?”
Ben tells him.
270
Looong drive down through Tijuana.
Short on conversation.
What’s there to talk about, really?
Old memories?
Good times?
Chon is more focused on something his father said back at the house. I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. I don’t mean I “won’t,” I mean I can’t.
Why not, Pops?
271
Down the old highway into Baja.
Past Rosarito, Ensenada, the old surfers’ run.
South into the empty country.
Moonlit night.
Sagebrush and the eyes of coyotes glowing green in the headlights.
They could do it anywhere here, Chon thinks, by the side of the road in any ditch.
A seminal fuck and a terminal shot.
Two bursts in the back of the head
The Lord giveth and He taketh away
The old Bill Cosby joke-“I brought you into this world, and I can damn well take you out of it.”
You just disappear and that’s all.