Savages

Sun Dog

Fun Dog

In the backseat under a blanket sleeps a Remington Model 870 SPS Super Slug pump action, 12-gauge shotgun with a synthetic cantilevered slug and a rubberized pistol grip that “advances deer-leveling technology to farther reaches and smaller group sizes than ever before possible.”

Right now it’s resting up for the big business meeting.

32

Chon likes to keep meetings short.

Learned that in a book, Things They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School.

A short meeting is a good meeting.

He drives down to Dago, finds the house in Golden Hill he’s looking for, and parks on the street. Wakes the shotgun up (“We’re there”), crosses said street, and knocks on the door.

Tire Iron opens it. Big wooly motherfucker, heavy hairy shoulders showing under the wifebeater.

Chon puts the shotgun to T.I.’s throat and pulls the trigger.

Guy’s head goes ballpark.

(Fun Dog!)

Something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School.

“Savages, How to Deal With.”

Savagely.

33

Continuing in flashback mode:

Chon goes back to the Tuna—

Etymology:

(And, by the way, Chon really likes the word “etymology,” the etymology of which is Greek and means “in the true sense.” Hmmmm …)

Laguna, rhymes with

Tuna—

Holes up with a freaking arsenal, tells O not to come around until the biker gang responds.

They don’t.

He never hears from them again except by word on the California Bongo Drum Communications System that they’ve decided to get out of the herb business and focus their efforts on meth.

A sound management decision.

Do not expand horizontally until you have achieved maximum vertical capacity.

Also: do not fuck with someone until you know exactly who the fuck you’re fucking with.

And then don’t do it.

34

“Don’t fuck with people at all”

Is a central tenet of Ben’s personal as well as business philosophy.

Ben is a self-described Baddhist, i.e., a “bad Buddhist,” because he sometimes eats meat, gets angry, rarely meditates, and definitely does consciousness-altering substances. But the basics of Buddhism, Ben is down with—

Do no harm

Which Ben articulates as

Don’t fuck with people.

And he doesn’t think the Dalai Lama would argue with that.

In addition to the interest-accruing deposits in the karma bank, it’s been a very successful business strategy, the very foundation of the very successful Ben and Chonny’s brand.

A brand it is.

You go into B&C’s as either a customer or a sales partner, you know exactly what you’re getting:

As a customer—

Top-o’-the-line, not-to-be-bettered, safe, healthy, organic, prime hydro at a fair price

As a sales partner—

a superb product that sells itself

profit participation

excellent working conditions

day care

health care

Yes, health care, written through Ben’s corporation that e-markets Third World crafts made by Third World women.

You see, Ben does adhere to the Buddhist belief in making a “right living,” which mixes in quite nicely with his childhood socialist indoctrination and his somewhat Reaganite entrepreneurial sense.

Not for Ben the rigid, top-down vertical integration of the Baja Cartel. B&C (and the ampersand is everything, in Ben’s opinion) has a loosely organized, horizontal, flow-out (“Money doesn’t shoot upward to then trickle down, it flows out”) pseudostructure that allows for maximum freedom and creativity.

Ben’s logic on this is that it’s impossible to organize marijuana dealers anyway (for reasons that are probably obvious), so why try to herd (cool) cats when they do better on their own, anyway. So—

You wanna sell dope? Cool. You don’t? Cool. You wanna sell a lot? Cool. You wanna sell a little? Cool. Maternity leave? Cool. Paternity leave? Cool. You set your own targets, make your own budgets, set your own salary, it’s all cool. You just order however much you want from the Mother Ship and then do your own thing.

This simple philosophy, plus the care he takes in growing his primo product, has made Ben a very rich young man.

The King of Hydro.

The King of Cool.

35

There are, of course, some critics—and Ben is one of them—who will say that Ben can be Ben because Chon is Chon.

Ben acknowledges his own hypocrisy on this issue.

(He is nothing but self-aware and self-analytical. See:

Ben, parentage of.)

He and Chon even have a noun for it:

“Hydrocrisy.”

The hydrocrisy is obvious—Ben strives to be nonviolent and honest in a business that is violent and dishonest.

“But it doesn’t have to be,” Ben has argued.