Savages (8 page)

“You don’t seem to mind when I have your gift bag,” Chon says. He and Dennis meet once a month. Chon arrives with a satchel full of cash and leaves without it. Dennis arrives with no satchel full of cash and leaves with one.

Then he usually swings by Jack in the Box.

“Would you prefer we come to the office?” Ben asks, the office being the federal building in downtown San Dog where the DEA is headquartered.

Where Dennis is a big deal in the antidrug task force.

“Jesus, what has your panties in a wad?” Dennis isn’t used to seeing this side of Ben—well, he isn’t used to seeing much of Ben at all, but when he does, the guy is normally pretty congenial. And Chon—well, forget it—Chon
always
looks jacked up.

“You have intel on the Baja Cartel?” Ben asks. “Hernan Lauter?”

Dennis chuckles. “That’s about all I do.”

Yeah, because he’s sure as shit not putting any effort into scoping out Ben and Chon’s operation. Every once in a while, they’ll toss him a stash or an old grow house, just to keep him upwardly mobile on the promotion ladder, but that’s about it.

“Why?” he asks, thinking he’s about to get a nugget maybe he can use. “The BC making a move on you guys?”

He has it on his radar.

He’s not fucking stupid.

There’ve been pings all over the place, including a viral video featuring seven decapitated dope dealers.

Talk about your hostile takeovers.

And now Ben is going to come whining about it?

Then the dime drops.

“Wait a second,” he says to Ben, “if you’re here to negotiate a payment reduction because the BC is cutting a slice off you, forget it. Your overhead is your overhead, not mine.”

A train comes busting down the track.

The Metrolink, which runs from Oceanside just down the road all the way up to L.A. The conversation stops because they can’t hear each other anyway, then Ben says, “I need to know everything you know about Hernan Lauter.”

“Why?” Dennis asks, relieved anyway that they’re not trying to shuck him. Dennis has bills.

“‘Why’ is not your issue,” Chon says. “Your issue is ‘what.’”

So tell us what you know about Hernan.

The head of the Baja Cartel.

Dennis runs it down for them.

It starts not in Baja but in Sinaloa.

A mountainous region of western Mexico that has the right altitude, soil acidity, and rainfall to grow the poppy. For generations, the Sinaloan
gomeros
—Spanish slang for opium farmers—cultivated the crop, processed it into opium, and sold it to an American market, at first made up mostly of Chinese railroad workers, along the southwest border region of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

The American government at first tolerated the trade, but then declared opium illegal and brought some, albeit ineffectual, pressure on the Mexican government to suppress the
gomeros.

But during WWII, the American government did a complete 180. Desperately needing opium with which to make morphine, and cut off from the usual supplies in Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle, the government went down to Mexico to beg them to produce more, not less, opium. In fact, we built narrow-gauge railways for the
gomeros
to get their crop down from the mountains faster. The
gomeros
responded by putting more and more acreage into poppy cultivation. Therefore, during the 1940s, the economy of Sinaloa became dependent on the opium trade, and the
gomeros
grew into rich and powerful landholders.

After the war the U.S., faced with a bad heroin problem at home, goes back down to Mexico and insists that they stop growing the poppy. The Mexicans are, to say the least, a little confused, but also concerned because the Sinaloans—not just the rich
gomeros
but the
campesinos
, peasant farmers who work the land—are economically addicted to the poppy.

No worries, says the American mafia. Bugsy Siegel goes to Sinaloa and assures the
gomeros
that the mob will buy as much opium as they can produce. The
pista secreta
—the illegal drug trade—commences,
and rival
gomeros
start to fight each other for turf. Culiacán, the major city in Sinaloa, becomes known as “Little Chicago.”

Enter Richard Nixon.

In 1973, Nixon creates the Drug Enforcement Administration and sends DEA agents—most of them former CIA—down to Sinaloa to shut down the
gomeros.
Then 1975 sees Operation Condor, in which DEA agents, with the Mexican army, bomb, burn, and defoliate vast acreage of poppy cultivation in Sinaloa, displacing thousands of peasants and wrecking the economy.

And get this, get this, the Mexican cop running their side of the operation—the man pointing fingers at what to bomb and burn, whom to arrest—is the second-largest opium producer in Sinaloa, a truly evil genius named Miguel Angel Alvarado, who uses Condor to destroy his rivals.

Alvarado gathers the chosen survivors in a restaurant in Guadalajara—guarded by the army and the
federales
—and he creates el Federacion, the Federation, and divides Mexico up into
plazas
, or territories, to wit—

The Gulf, Sonora, and Baja, with himself, based in Guadalajara, at its head.

Alvarado, a genuine business revolutionary, also takes them out of the opium business and puts them into delivering Colombian cocaine through the Mexican back door.

The front door being Florida. Miami. Where the DEA was putting most of its efforts. The poor schmucks left in Mexico were screaming about the cocaine deliveries—again, guarded by the army and the police—but DC told them to keep their stupid mouths shut if they knew what was good for them, because they’d already announced that they’d won the drug war in Mexico.

Mission accomplished.

El Federacion, in its three plazas, made billions of dollars during the eighties and nineties, gaining so much wealth and power that it became
almost a shadow government, enmeshed into the police, the military, even the president’s office. By the time DC woke up and admitted the reality, it was too late. El Federacion was a major power.

“So what happened?” Ben asks.

It tore itself apart. Karma being karma, Alvarado became a crack addict and ended up in prison. A violent power struggle to fill the gap ensued and then gained a momentum of its own, with blood vendetta on top of blood vendetta. The
plazas
split into factions of a civil war, just as cocaine consumption drastically declined in the U.S. and the
plazas
found themselves fighting over a smaller pie.

And the Baja Cartel was taken over by Alvarado’s nephews, the Lauter brothers, after they broke away from its original patron in the revolution. The AFs were very smart businessmen. Originally from Sinaloa, they came to Tijuana and infiltrated the cream of Baja society. Basically, they seduced a group known as the Juniors, the sons of doctors, lawyers, and Indian
jefes
, and gave them opportunities as drug smugglers. They also came across into San Diego and recruited the local Mexican gangs as enforcers.

From the mid to late nineties, the Lauters and the Baja Cartel
were
the Mexican drug trade. They co-opted the president’s office itself, they had control over the Baja State Police and the local
federales
, they probably assassinated a Mexican presidential candidate and certainly gunned down a Catholic cardinal who publicly protested the drug trade, and got away with it.

Pride cometh before a fall. They pushed it too far. DC leaned all over the Mexicans to go after the Baja Cartel. Their patron, Benjamin, is now in the federal lockup in Dago; their chief enforcer, his brother Ramon, was gunned down in Puerto Vallarta by Mexican police.

Since then, it’s been chaos.

Where once you had three
plazas
—“cartel” is a rough equivalent—now you have at least seven fighting for dominance. The Baja Cartel itself, after pretty much a free-for-all, seems to have devolved into two
rival factions:

“El Azul,” a former Lauter lieutenant, is backed by the Sinaloa Cartel, probably now the most powerful cartel. El Azul, thusly glossed because of his deep blue eyes, is a particularly charming guy who likes to drown his enemies in barrels of acid.

The remnants of the Lauter family, run by a nephew, Hernan, are allied with a group called Los Zetas, originally an elite counter-narcotics squad that went to the dark side and now work as enforcers for the Baja Cartel. Their particular party trip is lopping people’s heads off.

“We saw the video,” Ben says.

“Hence your presence here today,” Dennis says. “You want my advice, boys? And girl? I’ll miss you, I’ll miss your money, but run.”

Run far and fast.

Ben wants peace.

Give peace a chance, imagine there’s no countries. Yeah, imagine there’s no Mark David Chapman, either, see what that gets you. But it’s Ben’s business so they get out the lappie and find the return e-address on the Seven Dwarfs video.

Eighteen e-mails later they’ve set a meeting with the BC for the next day at the Montage.

Ben reserves a 2K-a-day suite.

When that’s done, O smiles at her boys and asks, “Can we go out? The three of us?
Really
go out?”

They know what she means by “really.” The “really” means do it right—get dressed up, hit the best places, drop a bundle, paint the town,
do it.

We can go out is the answer.

Why not go out the night we
go
out? Ben thinks. Do it right. Celebrate the end of a successful business that’s been good to us.

Embrace the change.

“Tomorrow night,” Ben says. “Dress up.”

“I’ll have to go shopping,” O answers.

When O gets home, Eleanor is pulling out of the driveway again.

Seems like that chick is always pulling
out
of driveways.

When O goes into the house, Paqu sits her down in the living room for a

Serious Talk.

“Darling girl,” she says, “we need to have a serious talk.”

Which for O is like

Uh-oh.

“Are you breaking up with me?” she asks, sitting on the sofa cushion where Paqu has patted her hand to indicate that she should sit.

Paqu doesn’t get it. She leans closer to O, her eyes get all soft and misty, she takes a deep breath and says, “Darling, I need to tell you that Steve and I have decided to pursue our separate destinies.”

“Who’s Steve?”

Paqu takes O’s hand and squeezes it. “Now, this doesn’t mean that we don’t love you. We do—very much. This has nothing to do with you and … it is
not … your … fault
… you do understand that, don’t you?”

“Oh God, is he the pool guy?”

O likes the pool guy.

“And Steve is going to stay in town, you can see him anytime you want, this won’t change your relationship.”

“Are we talking about
Six
?”

Paqu blinks. “Steven—your stepfather?”

“If you say so.”

“We tried to make it work,” Paqu says, “but he was so unsupportive of my life coaching and Eleanor said that I shouldn’t be with a man who isn’t supportive of my goals.”

“Six is unsupportive of your life coach coaching you to leave him,” O says. “What an asshole.”

“He’s a very nice man, it’s just that—”

“Is this an
L Word
thing, Mom? Because Eleanor strikes me as a little—”

Dykey.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, O thinks. She and Ash have done some quasi-lesbo things under the influence of grass, X, and each other, but it really isn’t their permanent thing, just sort of an emergency measure like Popsicles when you really want ice cream but the store is closed and that’s all that’s in the freezer.

Or maybe it’s the other way around, metaphorically speaking.

She tries to imagine Paqu going down, strapping on a tool belt, or being femme to Eleanor’s butch, but the image is scoop-your-own-eyes-out-with-a-grapefruit-spoon creepy and twenty-thousand-hours-in-therapy-and-you’re-still-messed-up wrong so she gives it up.

As Paqu gently intones, “So Steve is moving out.”

“Can I have his room?”

Lado drives home listening to some radio talk-show host go on and on about a “wise Latina” and he thinks it’s pretty funny.

He knows what a “wise Latina” is: a “wise Latina” is a woman who knows to shut her mouth before she gets the
back
of the hand, too, that’s what a “wise Latina” is.

His wife is a wise Latina.

Lado and Delores have been married for coming on twenty-five years, so don’t tell him it don’t work. She keeps a nice home, she’s raised three beautiful, respectful kids, and she does her duty in the bedroom when requested and otherwise doesn’t make demands.

They have a nice home at the end of a cul-de-sac in Mission Viejo. A typical suburban California home in a typical suburb, and when they moved up from Mexico eight years ago Delores was delighted.

Good schools for the kids, parks, playgrounds, excellent Little League program in which their two sons are stars—Francisco is a pitcher, Junior is an outfielder with a strong bat—and their oldest, Angela, made cheerleader at the high school this year.

It’s a good life.

Lado pulls in to the driveway and turns off the radio.

Health care, who gives a shit about health care? You put money aside and you take care of yourself if you get sick. He had to set up a group insurance plan for his employees at the landscaping business and it pissed him off.

Delores is in the kitchen fixing dinner—

—wise Latina—

—when he comes in and sits down.

“Where are the kids?”

“Angela is at cheer practice,” Delores says, “the boys are at baseball.”

She’s still a
guapa
, Delores, even after three kids. Should be, he thinks, with the time she puts in at the gym. I should have invested in 24-Hour Fitness, got some of it back. Either that or she’s at the spa getting something worked on—her hair, her skin, her nails, something.