Time to get back in the market.
John was back in the dope trade for about three weeks when Chon was walking down Brooks Street, a car rolled up, and a guy told him to get in. They drove him to an old ranch out in Hemet and kept him there until John paid what he owed.
Three hundred K.
Chon was out there for a month, having a pretty good time looking at Penthouse magazines, sneaking roaches, and driving an ATV around the place, then Big John came to pick him up personally.
“See how much I love you?” Big John asked when they were in the car.
“See how much I care?” Chon answered, holding up his middle finger.
Big John slapped him across the face.
Hard.
Chon didn’t fucking flinch.
A week later, John’s walking down the street when a car pulls up, they tell him to get in, and they drive him down to Mexico.
276
Way the fuck down past TJ, Rosarito, and Ensenada, down along the Baja Peninsula.
John is thinking he’s going to get a bullet in the back of the head, but then they pull up this hill, then over the top, and there’s a big house surrounded by an adobe wall, and they pull through the gate into the compound.
Doc comes out the door.
No shirt, baggy khaki cargo shorts, huaraches.
Hugs John like his long-lost son.
“You could have just called me,” John says.
“Would you have come?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Doc looks good for a dead man. A few strands of white in the hair, which has retreated off his forehead a few inches. John hasn’t seen him in over ten years, not since the faked suicide and Doc’s disappearance into the “program.”
“I thought you’d be selling aluminum siding in Scottsdale,” John says.
“Fuck that shit,” Doc says. “I bailed the first chance I got, came down here. Freedom is precious, my son.”
“Tell me about it,” John says. “You ratted me out, Doc.”
Doc shakes his head. “I protected you. Bobby, those other pricks, they were going to kill you. I took you out of it, somewhere safe.”
“Ten years, Doc. My wife is gone, my kid is a stranger-”
“You never wanted either of them in the first place,” Doc says. “Be honest.”
“What do you want, Doc?”
“I want to help you,” Doc says. “Make it up to you.”
“How?”
“You kept the faith, Johnny,” Doc says. “You’re like my own blood. I want to bring you in on something. Shit, I need to bring you in on something.”
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You’re fucking up, Doc tells him, doing it the same old way. That’s how we got busted, how we got jammed.
It’s a loser’s game, it always ends the same.
We don’t want to be in the drug business.
We want to be in the turf business.
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“What do you need me for?” John asks after Doc lays it out for him.
“I need someone I can trust up there,” Doc says. “Someone to run the day-to-day. I mean, I can’t come el norte, I’m freaking Napoleon down here.”
“I have a record,” John says.
“As John McAlister,” Doc says. “Get a new ID. Get five of them, who cares? It’s easy enough to do. Set up a shell business, look gainfully employed, and fly under the radar. John, we’re talking real money.”
“And how do I move the money to you?” John asks. “I can’t be running down to Mexico without attracting attention.”
“The system’s all set up,” Doc says. “There’ll be sort of a board of directors, you know, some of the old ‘gang,’ for major decisions. But you’ll be the CEO. It’s all set up. All you have to do is plug in.”
John plugs in.
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As soon as John’s car leaves, Kim comes out of the house. She’s beautiful in a white caftan with embroidered flowers, her hair long, her feet bare.
“What did he say?” she asks Doc.
“What do you think?” Doc asks.
Kim shakes her head.
“What?”
“I don’t like him,” Kim says. “I never have.”
“I love him,” Doc says. “He’s like a son to me.”
“You have a child.”
“That I never see.”
“I’m not living in Mexico,” Kim says. “I’d go insane.”
“I’d like to see her sometime.”
“It’s better this way,” Kim says. “I have to get back soon. Shall we go in?”
They go into the house and upstairs to the bedroom. The shades are pulled and the thick walls keep it relatively cool.
Still, they are sleek with sweat as they make love.
Don Winslow
The Kings Of Cool
Baja, Mexico 2005
Well, Papa, go to bed now, it’s getting late,
Nothing we can say will change anything now.
— BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, “INDEPENDENCE DAY”
