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.”
