Savages (10 page)

Alex looks puzzled.

“Windmills and shit like that,” Jaime says.

“Oh.”

Alex looks puzzled.

“And solar,” Ben adds.

“Green,” Jaime says.

“There you go.”

“Couldn’t you do both?” Alex asks.

“Again,” Ben answers, “don’t want to.”

He walks out, Chon behind him.

They look down at Aliso Creek Beach.

The water is a deep, cold blue.

“You don’t want to work for these guys, do you?” Ben asks.

“No,” Chon says. “Let me rephrase that—fuck no.”

“Then we don’t,” Ben says. “I mean, they can’t
force
us to grow herb.”

He appreciates the irony, though, that the Mexicans basically want to turn them into field workers. Plant, grow, and harvest their crop for them. He digs the reverse colonialism of it, but it just isn’t his thing.

Chon looks back at the suite. “We could just kill them both. Get this party started.”

“Buddha would be so pissed.”

“That fat Jap.”

“Fat Indian.”

“I thought he was Japanese,” Chon says. “Or Chinese. Some ‘ese.’”

“Indianese.”

They walk back to the room.

Ben’s fucking had it.

Reached the limits of his hydrocrisy.

Goes off on a rant:

Let’s cut the shit, shall we? You guys are here at the behest of an organization that cut off seven people’s heads, and you’re talking like you’re from Goldman Sachs? You represent a regime that murders and tortures and you sit here and lecture me about my business practices? You’re going to increase profits by coercing me to sell at a low price—that’s all, that’s your genius “business plan”—and now you want me to eat your shit and call it caviar? You can put a thug in an expensive suit and what you get is a well-dressed thug, so let’s not pretend that this is anything other than what it is, extortion.

Nevertheless—

You want our marijuana business? You got it.

We can’t fight you, don’t want to fight you. We surrender.

Hasta la.

Vaya con.

AMF.

(
Adios
, motherfuckers.)

Alex turns to Chon. “What do
you
have to say?”

Oh come on.

Come
onnnn.

We
know
what Chon has to say.

We’ve covered that already.

It’s the baditude.

His beatitude.

O is at—

South Coast Plaza.

The Mecca and Medina of SOC consumerism where retail pilgrims pay homage at a multitude of shrines:

Abercrombie & Fitch, Armani, Allen Schwartz and Allen Edmonds, Aldo shoes, Adriano Goldschmied, American Eagle and American Express, Ann Taylor and Anne Fontaine

Baccarat, Bally, Balenciaga, Bang & Olufsen, Bank of America, Banana Republic (you can’t make this shit up)

Bloomingdale’s, Borders, Brooks Brothers, Brook
stone
, Bulgari

Caché, (speaking of which) Cartier, Céline, Chanel, Chloé, Christian Dior

Claim Jumper

De Beers, Del Taco (what the fuck is
that
doing in there), the Disney
Store, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana

Emilio Pucci, Ermenegildo Zegna, Escada

Façonnable, Fendi, Fossil, Fresh (no, seriously)

Godiva, Gucci, Guess

Hermès, Hugo Boss

J.Crew, J. Jill, Jimmy Choo, Johnston & Murphy, Justice (uh-huh)

La Perla, Lacoste, Lalique, Limited (sans irony)

Louis Vuitton

Macy’s, McDonald’s (see Taco, Del), Miu Miu (what the fuck?), Montblanc

New Balance, Nike, Nordstrom

Oilily, Optica, Origins, Oscar de la Renta

Piaget, Pioneer, Porsche Design, Prada, Pure Beauty (yup)

Quiksilver (surfing sells out; ambiguity intentional)

Ralph Lauren, Rangoni Firenze, Restoration Hardware, Rolex, Room and Board (again, without irony)

Saks, Salvatore Ferragamo, Sassoon, Sears (Sears?), Smith & Hawken, Sony, Sunglass Hut, Sur La Table, Swatch

Talbots, Teen Vogue, The Territory Ahead, Tiffany, Tinder Box (no shit, the fire
this
time)

Valentino, Van Cleef, Versace, Victoria’s Secret, Victoria’s Secret
Beauty

Wahoo’s Fish Taco (see “surfing sells out”), Williams-Sonoma, Wolfgang Puck

Yves Saint Laurent

Zara

And a score of lesser saints.

O is one of the worshippers.

Would be a daily communicant if she had the cash. Did we say the girl loves to shop? Did we say that the girl maybe
lives
to shop? We’re not slamming O; she’d tell you so herself.

“I shop,” she said to Ben one time after maxing out her card, “because there is nothing else to do. I have no job, no serious interests, no purpose in life, really. So I buy stuff. It’s something that I can do and it makes me feel better.”

“You’re filling the internal void with external things,” Ben said.

(Sanctimonious Baddhist.)

“There you go,” O said. “I don’t adore myself, so I
adorn
myself.”

“You can’t replace your absent father’s love or gain your suffocating mother’s approval with material acquisitions,” Ben said.

(Annoying child of two psychotherapists.)

“That’s what the
paid
shrink said,” O responded. “But I can’t seem to locate the Absent Father’s Love and Suffocating Mother’s Approval Boutique. Which one is it?”

“All of them,” Ben answered.

O changes therapists like some people change hairstyles. Well, like O changes hairstyles. And she’s covered the whole fucking thing with all the shrinks—how Paqu feels guilty for not having provided her little girl with a stable home so tries to make up for it by supporting her and at the same time crippling her by enabling her blah blah; how Paqu is appalled by the idea of getting old and so has to keep her daughter a dependent child because having a truly adult daughter would mean that she is old blah blah blah, so—

“It’s Paqu’s fault,” O told Ben.

“It’s Paqu’s fault,
your
responsibility,” Ben answered.

(Patronizing moralist.)

He’s tried. He’s offered to set O up in her own small business, but O isn’t interested in any business. He said he’d support her trying art, photography, music, acting, film, but O doesn’t have a passion for any of that. He even invited her to join him overseas doing aid work, but—

“That’s you, Ben. Not me.”

“It’s immensely satisfying, if you can tolerate the absence of creature comforts.”

“I can’t.”

“You could learn.”

“Maybe,” O said. “How’s the shopping in Darfur?”

“Shitty.”

“See …” O looked at her reflection in the store window. “I’m the person a person like you should
hate
, Ben. But you don’t because I’m so lovable. I have a great twisted sense of humor, I’m loyal like a dog, I have a cute face, small tits but I’m a freak in bed, and you’re a loyal dog, too, B, so you love me.”

Ben had no argument.

It was all accurate.

Another time, O did hit on something she could do.

As a career.

“Cool,” Ben said. “What?”

The freaking suspense killing him.

“Reality TV show star,” O said. “I could have my own reality TV show.”

“What would the show be about?”

“Me,” O said, like, duh.

“Yeah, I know, but what would you
do
on the show?”

“Do,” like, as in a verb.

“The cameras just follow me around my day,” O said. “Me being me. It would be like the Really Real Laguna Beach. A Girl Trying Not To Become A Real Housewife of Orange County.”

(O has more than once suggested they do a show about her mother
and friends,
The Real Cunts Of Orange Housewifies
.)

“But what do you do all day?” Ben asked. He knew, for one thing, that said camera crews wouldn’t be complaining about early calls, anyway.

“You’re a real buzzkill, Ben.”

Among other things, I do
you
, don’t I.

“Okay, what’s the show called?”

Again—

Duh—

O
.

Now O whips out Paqu’s black plastic and spanks it like a male dancer in a Madonna concert. Then she cruises over to José Eber and uses Mom’s name to get an appointment for a cut, color, and styling. After that, it’s off to the spa for a facial, then a redo on the makeup situation.

A One-Woman Stimulus Package.

Ben and Chon go to the volleyball nets at Main Beach, right by the old Hotel Laguna.

Figure it will feel good to bat the ball around a little. Alleviate their anger, clear their heads, help them decide what to do.

Your basic Fight v. Flight moment.

Guess who goes for which?

“I say we send Alex and Jaime back in a cereal box,” says Chon, if you haven’t guessed.

Set, spike, kill.

“I say we just go away for a while.”

Volley.

“Where can we go where they can’t reach out?”

Volley.

“I know places.”

Volley.

Ben does. There are dozens of villages in the remote Third World where they could hide and have a good time doing it, but what he really has in mind is this sweet little village on an Indonesian island called Sumbawa.

(Where they could be vewy vewy quiet.)

Clean beaches and green jungles.

Sweet people.

Chon says, “You start running you never stop.”

Kill.

“Bad movie clichés notwithstanding,” Ben counters, “running is fun and good for the cardiovascular system. You
should
never stop.”

Volley.

Chon isn’t ready to give it up. “There are some guys around from my old team. Some other guys I know. It would take some money …”

Volley.

“And only prolong the inevitable,” Ben says. “They can’t force us to do anything if we’re not here and they can’t find us. We go away for a while. By the time we’re tired of traveling they’ll probably have all killed each other off and we’ll have a new set of people to deal with.”

Kill.

Chon leaves the ball in the sand.

Ben will never get it.

He thinks he’s being Ben-evolent when in fact he’s not doing enemies a favor, he’s really hurting them. Because—

—lesson learned in I-Rock-and-Roll and Stanland—

If you let people believe that you’re weak, sooner or later you’re going to have to kill them.

The
patron
of the Baja Cartel agrees with Chon on this.

Except the
patron
of the BC is actually the
matron.

When Elena Sanchez Lauter first took over leadership of the Baja Cartel, a lot of the men assumed that, being a woman, she was weak.

Most of those men are now dead.

She didn’t want to kill them, but she had to, and for this she blames herself. Because she allowed the first man who disrespected her to get away with it. And the second, and the third. Rebellions, fighting, and internecine warfare broke out soon after. The other two cartels—Sinaloa and the Gulf—started to intrude on her territory. She blamed all of them for the burgeoning violence.

It was Miguel Arroyo, “El Helado,” who set her straight.

Lado told her candidly, “You have let people think that it’s all right to defy you, that nothing will happen.
You
are therefore responsible for the bloodshed and the chaos. If you had displayed that first man’s head on a stake, you would be feared and respected.”

She knew that he spoke the truth. She accepted her responsibility. “But what do I do now?” she asked him.

“Send me.”

She did.

The story goes that Lado went straight to a bar in Tijuana owned by a
narcotraficante
called “El Guapo.” Lado sat down at a table with his old buddy and drank half a beer before saying, “What kind of men are we, we let a woman be in charge?”

“
You
, maybe,” El Guapo said. He looked around at the eight or so of his bodyguards. “But that
puta
can suck my cock.”

Lado shot him in the stomach.

Before the shocked bodyguards could react ten men armed with machine guns came through the door.

The bodyguards dropped their guns to the floor.

Lado took a knife from his belt, leaned over the writhing El Guapo,
pulled down his blood-soaked trousers, and asked, “
This
cock,
cabrón
?”

A swift swipe of the blade, then Lado asked the room, “Anyone else want their cocks sucked?”

No one did.

Lado stuck it in El Guapo’s mouth, paid for his beer, and left.

That’s the story, anyway.

True, partly true, apocryphal, whatever—the point is that people believed it. What is recorded fact is that within the next two weeks seven more bodies were found with their genitals stuffed in their mouths.

And Elena got a new name.

Elena La Reina.

Queen Elena.

It’s a shame, though, she thinks now, that—

Men teach you how they must be treated.

The bitch of it (yeah, yeah) is, she didn’t want this.

Elena never wanted to head the cartel.

But as the only Lauter left standing it was her duty, her responsibility.

You want to see a busy woman, check out Elena Sanchez Lauter on the Day of the Dead, because she has to leave gifts on a lot of graves. A husband, two brothers, five nephews, uncounted cousins, friends beyond number, all killed in the Mexican drug wars.

Two other brothers in prison, one in Mexico, the other just over the border in a federal prison in San Diego.

The only male left was her then twenty-two-year-old son, Hernan,
an engineer by training and profession, who would come to the throne by virtue of his mother’s family name. Hernan was willing, in fact eager, to assume control, but Elena knew that he wasn’t suited for it, didn’t have the ambition, the ruthlessness—let’s face it—the brains for the job.