299
Lado stands over Doc’s body.
Then bends over, slices the dead man’s stomach open, pulls out his intestines, and carefully forms them into the word
“P-A-P-A”
Magda’s request.
300
Sitting in the chopper before it takes off, Chon says, “Give me your phone.”
John gives it to him.
Chon punches in Ben’s number.
Ben answers first ring.
“Thank God,” Ben says.
“You okay?”
“I’m good,” Ben says. “You?”
“Yeah, good,” Chon answers. “O?”
“She’s here with me. What the-”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Chon says, “when I see you.”
He clicks off.
301
“I wanted him alive,” Dennis says, looking down at Doc’s body. “Biggest bust of my career.”
Lado shrugs.
“So you’re on the cartel’s payroll,” Dennis says.
Lado looks at him.
Says, “Just like you.”
Five hundred K for a walkaway, and Filipo had it all on tape.
“You work for us now,” Lado says. “I’m moving north. With my family. I want a green card and a CI designation.”
Dennis nods.
Granite countertops aren’t cheap.
302
INT. HELICOPTER — DAY
JOHN
Just so we’re clear-this doesn’t change anything between us.
Didn’t think it did.
You do your thing, I do mine. We see each other on the street, we nod, go our separate ways.
CHON
Sounds about right.
They sit and watch as DENNIS climbs into the chopper and supervises the loading of Doc’s corpse in a body bag.
JOHN
We let the past stay in the past.
303
Okay with Chon.
But he knows
The past isn’t the past.
It’s always with us.
In our history.
Our minds, our blood.
304
July Sky.
Bright-blue sunny California.
Happy tourists.
Like, this is the California you pay for. This is the California you saw on TV and in the postcards. This is more like it.
Ben, Chon, and O sit in the Coyote and watch Dennis’s press conference on the television above the bar.
It’s genius.
Dennis-rock star-poses beside a blown-up photo of Doc taken back in the sixties.
“Doc Halliday,” he says, “was killed resisting arrest as he tried to flee across the border. This represents the final breakup of one of America’s oldest and most powerful drug rings, one with connections to the vicious Mexican cartels.”
“You okay?” Ben asks O.
“Absolutely crunchy,” she says, looking at her guys.
Knows you get two chances at a family-the one you’re born into and the one you choose.
She has hers.
Her dad was always dead to her.
Now Dennis’s mouth twists into a somber frown. “Sadly, a corrupt policeman, William Boland, was involved in the ring and also killed. Two others, Duane Crowe and Brian Hennessy, apparently killed each other in a gunfight. Both are believed to have been involved in the murders of Scott Munson and Traci McDonald.”
Karma, Ben thinks, is a bitch.
