“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.
