Savages (20 page)

O twists her head away but

He stands right over, breathes into her face, stares

Into her face with those

Cold black eyes

She

Cries she

Chokes on her panic she

Can’t turn it off.

Yeah, but you have to, girl, O tells herself.

She makes herself take a deep breath. Time to stop being girlie-girl about this. Time to cowgirl up, show some ovaries. She gets off the bed, walks to the door, and pounds on it.

“Yo!” she yells. “I want Internet access!”

Yes, she wants fucking Internet.

She wants Internet, a computer to
use
the Internet, she’s hoping like hell they have Wi-Fi wherever the fuck they are and not DSL or, God help them,
dial-up.
She wants all that plus she wants a TV, satellite TV—if I miss one more episode of
The Bachelorette
I’ll never catch up—an iPod and access to her iTunes account, and could they mix in
a
salad
every once in a while because if she keeps wolfing down these starches they’ll need a forklift to get her out of here and deliver her to some fat farm in La Costa, which would make Paqu very happy and speaking of her mother …

“You want to let me use the Internet,” she says through the door, “because if Moms doesn’t hear from me every twenty-seven minutes she
will
call the FBI and I think but I’m not sure that one of my stepfathers—Four, maybe?—anyway, it doesn’t matter, might have been in the FBI”—actually it was the FDIC but who fucking cares—“so she
knows
people, and, oh yeah, I want to contact my friends to let them know I’m all right, or at least some version of all right, and would it kill you to whip up a martini?”

Esteban comes into her room.

He doesn’t know what the fuck to say.

She snaps, “Okay, what’s your name?”

“Esteban.”

“Nice,” O says. “Okay, Esteban, I want—”

She repeats her demands.

Esteban agrees to go ask.

This gets kicked all the way upstairs.

From the boys running the house where they have the girl stored, to Alex, to Lado, then to Elena.

Who buys the Paqu argument.

The last thing she wants is a “hunt for the missing girl” drama all
over American television, so she says, yes, provide the girl a computer and supervised use of the Internet. See that she writes her mother—make sure she gives no clues as to where she really is—and let her write her friends, who are, after all, our business associates.

I already have one rebellious spoiled daughter, Elena thinks.

I need another one?

O writes Paqu:

Dear Mommy
,

Hello from Paris, or should I say bonjour from Paree. It’s very nice here, with the Eiffel Tower and all that. The pain au chocolat is awesome, but don’t worry, I’m not eating too much. All the French women are very skinny, the bitches. Talk to you soon.

Your daughter
,

Ophelia

The BC folks aren’t idiots—they route the e-mail through one of their affiliates in France so the “sent at” matches up.

Then O writes Chon and Ben:

Hi guys
,

Get me the fugh outta here.

143

O

“They could just be writing it,” Chon says.

“No, it’s her.”

“How do you know?”

“‘Fugh’?”

They write back, “We’ll bring you back.”

Then try to figure out how to make that the truth.

Problem with that is

The BC have relocated all their stash houses.

Fun and games, fun and games but

It’s the right move.

An ounce of prevention, pound o’ cure. Lado and Elena put their heads together on it and made the call—new houses, new routes should solve the cash car prob for a little while, anyway, hopefully long enough to find the leak.

So Ben and Chon are screwed for targets. They staked out the stash
houses in Dennis’s files and all the occupants are gone. Just moved out and abandoned the places.

Here today, gone tomorrow, or

In Chon’s experience

Hero today, gonzo tomorrow.

And while robbing themselves helps to throw off suspicion, you don’t make any money robbing yourself. With uninsurable items like dope and dope money, anyway. (“Hello, State Farm? What would the premiums be on a ton of Sweet Dreams and—hello, State Farm?”) Even that fucking gecko isn’t going to go for that, ditto the Neanderthal guys.

And, anyway, you want to mix it up. It’s the relentless cycle of guerrilla warfare, Chon knows. You act, the enemy adjusts. You adjust again, the enemy readjusts. And on and on and on.

“We could take them when they’re coming
in
for a dope pickup,” Ben says, because he’s, like, Butch Cassidy now. “But we’d get that money anyway, so what’s the point?”

“No point.”

But when they leave with the dope they just paid for …

Because dope is as good as money. Better, really, in this economy. Dope never slides against the euro.

So that’s the new new plan they come up with: sell the BC the dope, then rob them of the dope you just sold them.

Because once it leaves the store …

Reagan and Ford.

A Republican robbery.

Ben flat out refuses to wear the Reagan mask (for a half-ass Buddhist, Ben can hold a full-ass grudge) so Chon takes it. Ben puts on Ford and promptly bumps his head getting into the car.

“I’m a method hijacker,” Ben explains.

Chon doesn’t approve of the levity.

“It could get ugly this time,” he warns.

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” Ben agrees.

They sit in a stolen Volvo station wagon half a mile from the grow house back out in Ortega country.

Yes, a Volvo station wagon.

“A Volvo?” Ben asked when Chon came back with the work car. “Seriously?”

“These things are tanks.”

They handle for shit, but they crash beautifully.

So they sit in the Volvo and watch the BC van go in and then wait for the transaction to be completed and for the van to come back. There’s only one road in so they know that the van will come back the same way, loaded with a shipment of primo Ultra.

“Your seat belt buckled?” Chon asks when they hear the van coming.

“Tray table locked and seat in an upright position.”

“Ramming speed.”

Because everyone loves
Animal House.

They hit the van at a diagonal angle in the front right quarter panel. Chon is out of the driver’s seat before the car even stops. He shows the
startled van driver the shotgun and jerks him out of the seat. Ben gets the drop on the rider. The driver is flat on the ground, Chon starts to get in and then—

Shit doesn’t happen slo-mo the way it does in the movies.

It happens so freaking fast.

Sick fast:

Chon is hopping into the driver’s seat when—

The shot goes off

So loud

The rest happens in silence, well,

Not
silence
, there’s this weird sound of rushing water in Ben’s ears as—

Chon spins and tumbles backward and Ben—

—screams, then

Starts shooting into the back of the van, and—

—the van door slides open and this guy tumbles out, bullet holes all over him as

Chon straightens up and fires the shotgun—

—and this guy slams back against the van like a crash-test dummy.

Chon pulls the body aside, gets behind the wheel.

Ben jumps in and they head down the road.

Ben flips out.

“Easy,” Chon says. “Steady.”

“I killed someone!”

“And thank fucking God,” Chon says.

The first shot had just missed him. The second would have killed him if Ben hadn’t opened fire. He looks over at Ben, tears pouring down his cheeks, his face twisted in pain.

Brings it back.

The first time.

Popping that particular cherry.

No time for guilt then.

AQ all over the fucking place. Sniper fire coming from everywhere. Buddies going down to the
zip-zip
of bullets. Chon, flat on the ground, forced himself to look up, find a target, fire.

You killed one, pup? Kill more.

Now he tells Ben, “Chill.”

“I can’t.”

“What did you think it was going to be, Ben?”

And don’t you know it’s going to get worse?

Focus, focus, Ben demands of himself.

Focus on saving O.

With one of theirs killed, the BC will feel obligated to Do Something About It and they might do it to O if they suspect our involvement in the robbery.

Gotta give them someone else.

It’s too bad, the dope is mid–six figures but they have to dump it. Dump the dope and their guilt onto Somebody Else.

It’s ugly, it’s wrong, and—

They drive the van to Dana Point.

DP is a funky old surf town that has retained some of its funk. It used to be famous among surfers as “Killer Dana” for a big wave that crashed right onto the point of Dana Point. But then they built the harbor and the marina and fucked up the wave. All that’s left of Killer Dana is an eponymous—

—good word, Chon has postulated that

Alcoholics Anonymous is also

Alcoholics Eponymous—

—surf shop that maintains the legend, anyway.

Dana Point also has a small but distinct barrio with a small but growing gang problem. Ben has it in mind to give the small but growing gang problem a bigger problem. Chon pulls the van into the barrio, finds a nice little cul-de-sac, and leaves it there.

He and Ben walk.

On the walk Ben conducts an internal Socratic self- cross-examination.

You took a human life.

Yes, but in self-defense.

Not really, you were robbing him, he was the one defending himself.

Actually, he was robbing me first.

So two wrongs make a right?

Of course they don’t, but when he pulled the gun he left me no choice.

Certainly he did. Would it not have been the moral choice to allow him to kill you instead of committing a murder yourself?

I guess, but I just reacted.

Exactly. You didn’t think.

There wasn’t time to think. Only react.

But you put yourself in that situation. You committed a robbery, you carried a gun. Those were choices.

He would have killed me.

Now you are merely repeating yourself.

He would have killed my friends.

So you were saving them, not yourself?

I don’t know what the hell I was doing, all right?! I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know who I am anymore.

And it’s all fun and games until someone loses an I.

When the dope van didn’t arrive Hector and his boys drove the route and found two of their men sitting beside a body in the road.

Gun still in his hand.

Lado had him carefully wrapped in sheets of canvas and put respectfully in the back of the truck.

“Bury him like a man,” he ordered. “He died doing his job. Money to his family.”

Then he went off to find the killers.

Two DP wannabe gangbangers spotted the strange van and took about fifteen seconds to boost it.

Joyrode it down to Doheny Beach, where they looked in the back and couldn’t believe their luck.

All that
yerba.

Wide-eyed, Sal looks at Jumpy and asks, “How much you think this is worth?”

“Lots.”

Mucho dinero.

They can’t help but sample just a little. Peel a corner of the wrapping off one brick—

“Is that blood,
hermano
?”

“
Mierdita
, is that hair?”

—and smoke up.

Unreal,
cabron.

A one-toke high but they each take three. Inside five minutes they’re higher than the sky.

“We’re rich,” Jumpy says.

“Where can we sell it?” Sal asks.

“This shit?” Jumpy says. “Anywhere.”

They bliss out on this thought for a few minutes, then Sal really fires up. “Think for a second,” he says, although this is very difficult. “This could be our ticket.”

They been trying to break in for a while. This could be that stamp on the hand that lets them in and out of the club.

VIP Room, too.

Ben and Chon go back to the house because it would look suspicious not to.

“If we don’t go back,” Ben reasons, “we can never go back. They’ll know it’s us.”

So they go back to Table Rock, but gun up for the expected invasion. Shotguns, pistols, rifles, machine guns—Chon’s whole arsenal is at the ready. But even the Mexicans aren’t going to come to a beach house in Laguna in the middle of the day for a shootout.

If they want us, Chon knows, they’ll wait.

At least until night.

More likely they’ll be more patient than that. Send the pros to wait it out, pick them off as opportunity presents itself.

As it would, as it will.

They don’t get an invasion, they get a text.

Summoning Ben to a sit-down.

Come alone.

“They’re going to grab you,” Chon says.

“Or hit me on the way there or back,” Ben says.

“I doubt it,” Chon offers. “They’d want to torture you first. Probably tape it so they can teach a lesson.”

“Thanks.”

But he goes.

The other way with it.

Takes the offensive.

He meets Lado and Alex at a public place, the boardwalk at Town Beach, gets the news about the bloody jacking and the insinuation of guilt and he goes off.

“You better fucking do something about this,” Ben says to Lado. “I’ve been in this business for eight years and never had a person as much as scratched. I hook up with you and I get robbed, and now you’re telling me a man is dead?!”