Savages (26 page)

Beltran comes out of the passenger side firing, but they riddle him with bullets and he melts into the pavement.

“You can go now,” Elena says to the driver.

The car moves ahead.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hernan asks.

“Could you have pulled it off?” she asks. “Disguised your feelings, smiled, and shook his hand?”

“No.”

“Well, then.” She pats his hand, sighs, and says, “I’m tired of war, tired of the killing, the worry. I have been for some time. So I’ve prepared a move. We’re going to the United States. Lado has prepared the ground for us. Your sisters are there already.”

Azul wants Baja? she ponders.

Fine, he can have it.

Good luck to him.

“To America?” Hernan asks. “What about the police? The DEA?”

She smiles.

Oh, my darling boy.

Dear Mom-O
,

London is XQZT. And swings like a pendulum do. Did you know that Big Ben is the clock and not the tower? I didn’t. And the Tower of London is really interesting. A lot of people got their heads cut off there. Like, yech, right? Good thing they don’t do that anymore, except I guess they do in some Arab countries like Arabia. Anyway, it’s really cool here. Okay, it’s off to Trafalgar Square and later to the West End to see a play. I might even give Shakespere a try! Who’d a thunk, huh?

Miss U

143
,

O (for short)

When O and Esteban aren’t watching TV on Hulu, they’re on Google and Wikipedia looking up stuff on the cities that O is visiting on the European travels that she’s e-mailing Paqu about.

“She’s, like, a detail freak,” O explains to Esteban, “so I have to get the little things right.”

The crazy thing is that Paqu never writes her back.

Too busy with Jesus, O guesses.

Spin looks gloriously ridiculous this morning in a skintight Ferrari cycling suit with a Cinzano cap.

The thing you gotta love about Spin is that he doesn’t even blink when Ben shows up with twenty mil in assets and cash and says it needs to go on the superfast cycle but come
back
as all cash, albeit squeaky clean.

An IRS sort of thing—Ben might have to have a nice explanation as to how he got the money, something other than he took it from the same people he’s about to give it to. He doesn’t say this exactly to Spin, but he doesn’t need to.

Spin sits down at his laptop and

—sells Ben’s house to one of Ben’s own companies, then to a resident of Vanuatu who doesn’t exist, then—

—off-loads a bunch of Ben’s stocks and bonds to a holding company Ben owns, then—

—creates a small ranch in Argentina, puts cattle on it, sells the cattle, and—

“Your cash is immaculate.”

Spin gets back on his bike.

Ben goes to see Jaime.

“Where did you get it?”

Jaime asks, looking at the briefcases full of cash.

“What difference does it make?” Ben asks, figuring a lack of resistance might arouse suspicion.

“We have some money missing.”

“Gee, that’s too bad.”

Ben explains that some of the cash came from the short money they’ve been paying him for his 420, the rest came from selling about everything he owns, thank you very much for that, BTW.

“We’ll need documentation.”

Ben gives him the computer-code keys to the kingdom and tells him to knock himself out.

“I’m transparent,” he says.

Just hurry it up.

Jaime hurries it up.

It all checks out.

“Why didn’t you just do this before?” Jaime asks.

“You tried selling a house these days?” Ben answers. “As it is, I took a thumping on it. Make the call, Jaime.”

Jaime makes the call.

Elena personally okays it.

She’s glad, truly glad, that she can let the girl go.

Esteban comes into O’s room looking almost sad.

“They’re going to let you go,” he says.

WDYS?

“Your friends paid the money,” Esteban says. “We’re going to take you back.”

O starts to cry.

Esteban’s a little choked up, too.

Summoning up his courage, he asks her to be his Facebook friend.

They text the instructions:

Be ready at 2PM. We’ll text you the location.

“You trust these motherfuckers?” Chon asks.

Jump—I’ll catch you.

“No, but do we have a choice?”

No.

Dear Maternal Unit
,

I’m clicking my ruby slippers.

Europe is like, way cool and all that, but ‘there’s no place like home,’ right? Plus, I’m about out of money, but I guess you guessed that already.

Now Momzoid, when I say I’m coming home, I don’t mean home. Well, for a little bit, maybe, but then I’m going to move
out. About time, huh-duh? The thing of it is, I think I need to create a you know. (Sans coach, that is.) I’m not even sure yet what that really means, but it has to mean something. I might even go overseas (again) to do some humanatarian work. You know, like aid stuff. You remember my friend Ben? I might go with him and another friend, Chon, to do some useful type stuff in Indoneesia. Dig wells or something like that. CanU picture that? Your useless little girl with a shovel in her hands?

Luv u
,

O

Gun shop Barney is an inveterate listener to right-wing talk-show radio.

Anyway, Barney hears all about the massacre on the highway and gleans the additional news, welcome other than the fact that he has six less Mexicans to worry about. What he hears is the leaked info about the .50 rounds found in and around the said dead Cans and the speculation that the first shots were fired from a distance—

—well no fucking shit, you don’t use no Barrett Model 90 for close work—

—and he sees a chance to do himself some good.

See, Barney lives on the border.

Yeah, okay, everyone in this fucking life does, but Barney lives on the
border
and what that really means these days is that he lives as much in Mexico as he does in the USofA.

He don’t like it, he ain’t happy about it, but the facts is the facts.

Don’t matter what the Border Patrol says, what the Minutemen say, what any dickhead in DC says, this country is run as much or more by the Baja Cartel.

Just something Barney had to work with.

Which he does pretty well, seeing as how they’re his best customer.

He don’t let that out, because his
second
-best customers are the right-wingers, who, like Barney,
hate
Mexicans, but Barney’s got stacks and stacks of medical bills, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is all
over
his ass—we’re talking the possibility of him spending his golden years dodging the niggers and the shit in a federal penitentiary—so now he has a choice to make.

Which government does he call?

Which one can he trust?

Which will do him the most good?

He turns down the radio so he can talk on the phone.

Lado is very pleased to hear from him and believes, yes, they
can
do a little “horse tradin’.”

(Gringo cracker
pendejo.
)

Then Lado hears which pony ole Barney has to trade and

—he’s not happy.

Lado isn’t happy, but Elena is furious.

Out of her skull angry.

Because she feels like a fool.

She let these Americans dupe her and now she wonders if she let her
fondness for (or fascination with?) the girl get in the way of her better judgment.

Settling into the new American house—

Well,
compound
, really, a new fortress set in the remote desert, with more yards of barbed wire, alarms, sound and motion sensors, armed men patrolling in four-wheel-drive vehicles and ATVs, all on high alert since the last assassination attempts—

—is sadly easy. Another set of clothes, sets of linens, towels, toiletries, kitchen appliances that have never been used to fix a meal, all as sterile as her present life. Lado’s wife, the perfect hostess, a lady-in-waiting, has come personally to see that everything is in order. Even the surrounding desert seems too clean—scrubbed by wind and bleached by the sun, an exterior to match her sparse interior landscape.

Thirst.

She thinks about her new life as a refugee.

A billionaire
mujado
, a wetback with greenbacks.

Lado has prepared this (sere) ground against this day, when the cartel would have to leave Mexico and take up a new existence in this new and savage land. Everything is in place—the safe houses, stash houses, the markets, and the men. The DEA generously bribed, her presence here duly un-noted.

She had hoped to leave the bloodletting behind, and now this.

A war that came with her.

A betrayal of her trust.

And now the necessity to commit yet another atrocity.

She gets on the phone to Lado.

“Bring Magda here.”

“She won’t want to come.”

“Did I ask you what she wants?” Elena snaps.

The silence of acquiescence. She’s used to that in men—passivity is their small rebellion. It seems to keep their precious
cojones
in place.

Then Lado asks, cruelly, “What about the girl? The other one.”

“We have no choice but to follow through.”

“I agree.”

Did I ask if you agreed? Elena thinks, but keeps the thought to herself. What she’s asking him to do is enough without adding her bitchiness to it. She knows what’s behind it, too—she doesn’t want to kill this girl.

Elena sits down at the computer and turns on the monitor.

The girl is in her room—at a ranch just a few miles away—lying on her back, doing her nails.

In preparation, Elena thinks, for going home.

You do not want to kill this girl because she reminds you of your own wild child, of yourself during your brief flash of freedom in what now seems another lifetime.

Well, if you do not wish to kill her, don’t.

It is your choice, you don’t have to answer to anyone.

Elena recognizes this for what it is—a moment of rebellion against the present state of her life, against what she’s become.

A forlorn hope.

If you do not kill this girl—if you do not do exactly what you promised to do—then you put your own children at risk. Because the savages will see you as weak, and they will come for you and yours.

Lado has waited patiently.

She says, “Do it. And I want them to see it.”

I am the Red Queen.

Off with her head.

“Do you want to be there?” Lado asks.

“No,” Elena says.

But she’ll make herself watch it on the screen. If you can order it, she demands of herself, you can watch it.

“I want it done before Magda gets here,” she adds.

“It will take me a little time to get there,” Lado says.

“As soon as possible, please,” she says. She has another thought.
“Get in touch with these bastards. Let them know.”

Let them suffer.

Ben and Chon wait by the computer.

The instructions come at two o’clock.

You can watch her die at 6.

We know you did it.

You’re next.

They have four hours.

To do what?

They know she’s at one of three places in the desert, but what are they going to do? Pick one and hope they get lucky? And even if it is the right place—

“We’d never make it in,” Chon says. “And they’d kill her when the shooting started.”

“What are we going to do?” Ben asks. “Sit and watch?”

“No,” Chon says.

We’re not going to do that.

CI 1459 has given Dennis a lot of good shit over the years.

Helped him take down two of the Lauter brothers and put them in jail. Put a few straws in the broom with which Dennis tried to sweep back the ocean of drugs coming from the Baja Cartel.

In turn Dennis rewarded him with a

Green Card

Sanctuary

A New Identity.

Now Lado calls to tell him something that he already knows—Elena Sanchez Lauter is on her way to a “safe house” in the desert.

He gives Dennis the exact location.

Did the dumb cunt think that he was preparing the ground for her? The years of work, of killing, for her and not himself? Yes, Your Majesty.
Sí
, Elena La Reina?

So the DEA will arrest Elena, and no one can blame Lado. And no one will want the weak-kneed son to take her place so there will be nowhere to turn but him. And he will make El Azul a peace offer—a fifty-fifty split of the American
plaza.

Azul will not refuse.

It’s a home run.

Dennis gets in the car.

“They have the girl,” Ben says.

“Who?”

“The girl you met with us,” Chon says. “They’re going to kill her.”

Ben says, “Elena Sanchez Lauter has a daughter, Magdalena. She’s a student at Irvine.”

“Jesus, Ben.”

“Where is she?”

“Are you out of your mind?” Dennis asks.

“Yes,” Ben says. “Tell us where to find her.”

Dennis looks down at his gut. When he looks up his eyes are wet. “I’m into them, Ben. Big-time. Mid–six figures.”

“Fuck, Dennis.”

“Fuck, indeed, Ben.”

“Where’s the daughter?”

“Jesus, Ben, they’ll kill my family.”

“I’ll give you money,” Ben says. “Run with your family, tonight. But you’re going to tell me.”

Dennis thinks about this for a second, then gets out of the car.