The Kings Of Cool

156

Yeah, okay, so he has the sign-offs, but

So what?

Getting permission is one thing, doing it another.

They’re Surfers Slash Dope Dealers

Not Killers

Not Gangbangers

Not one of them-not Ron, not Bobby- none of them has ever walked up to another human being and pulled the trigger. One thing to see it in the movies, something else to do it, and none of them can even contemplate it.

So they’ll have to sub it out.

Yeah, but to who?

Again, it seems to be an automatic in the movies-everyone seems to know someone who kills people-but in real life?

Laguna?

(To the extent it replicates real life.)

You have, what, respectably married middle-aged gay guys who run art galleries and do hits on the side? Murder followed by Brie, wine spritzers, and a soak in the tub?

You have some gangs up in the northern part of the county.

Mexicans in Santa Ana

Vietnamese in Garden Grove

But how do you approach them?

How do you go to them and say we want you to kill this guy

Our old friend Doc?

It doesn’t matter John explains to BZ

Out behind the break at Brooks Street.

“He’s mobbed up now,” John says. “They sent a guard dog named Frankie Machine. Even if we could find someone to… you can’t get near him.”

Hire this job out to some gangbanger, all you’re going to get is a dead gangbanger.

Only one who can get next to Doc these days is a close trusted friend.