Savages

Filipo knocked her up quickly, gave her Hernan, Claudia, and Magdalena, and got himself killed by carelessly and stupidly walking into an ambush. They sing songs about him now, beautiful narcocorridos, but Elena—if she was to be honest with herself—was almost relieved.

She was tired of his financial incompetence, his gambling, his other women, most of all his weakness. She misses him in bed, but nowhere else.

Hernan is his father’s son.

Even if he managed to take the seat at the head of the table he would not be there for long before they killed him.

So she took the job instead, to save her son’s life.

That was ten years ago.

And now they respect and fear her.

They don’t think her weak, and, until recently, she didn’t have to kill so many.

70

Elena has a lot of houses.

Right now she occupies the home in Rio Colonia, in Tijuana, but she also has three others in various parts of the city, a finca in the country near Tecate, a beach house south of Rosarito, another in Puerto Vallarta, a thirty-thousand-acre ranch in southern Baja, four condos in Cabo, and that’s just Mexico. She owns another ranch in Costa Rica and two more houses on the Pacific side, an apartment in Zurich, another in Sete (she prefers Languedoc; Provence is too obvious), a flat in London she has stayed in exactly once.

Through shell corporations and DBAs she’s purchased several properties in La Jolla, Del Mar, and Laguna Beach.

The Rio Colonia house is known as El Palacio. It’s a compound, really, with outer walls and explosive- resistant gates. Squads of sicarios man the walls, patrol the grounds, and cruise the streets outside in armor-plated cars that bristle with guns. Other squads of gunmen guard the first set of gunmen against potential treason. The leaded windows now have grenade screens over them.

The “master bedroom” is bigger than many Mexican homes.

She has furniture imported from Italy, a massive bed, a Renaissance-era mirror from Florence, and a flat- screen plasma television on which she secretively watches lurid soap operas. Her bathroom has a rain shower, a whirlpool bath, and magnifying mirrors that show every new line and wrinkle in what is still, at fifty-four, a pretty face.

In the U.S., Elena would be called a definite MILF.

She maintains her tight little body with rigid discipline in a private gym at the house and the finca. Men still sneak glances at her boobs; she knows she has a nice ass. But for what?

Elena’s lonely in the big house.

Hernan, miserably married to a bruja of a harridan, has his own place now; Claudia is a new bride to a nice, dull factory manager; and then there’s Magdalena.

Elena’s wild child.

Her youngest, her baby, the unexpected.

Who seems to have intuited that her advent was unpredicted and responded by becoming unpredictable. It was as if Magda was always saying, through her actions, if you think I surprised you then, wait until you see what I have in store for you next.

A bright child who shocked with her miserable performance in school, and then, just when you had given up on her academic life (“Please, Maria, find her a patient husband”), she became a scholar. A talented dancer who decided that gymnastics were “more her thing,” then quit abruptly to pursue horsemanship (as it were), then gave it up to return to the ballet. (“But I have always loved it, Mama.”)

With her father’s face and her mother’s body, Magda broke a parade of boys on the wheel of her willfulness. Casually cruel, intentionally dismissive, a shameless tease—even her mother felt badly for a few of the tortured (“You will take it too far one day, Magda.” “I have geldings harder to handle, Mama.”)—Magda quickly intimidated the pool of available suitors in Tijuana.

No matter, she wanted to leave.

There were student trips to Europe, summers with family friends in Argentina and Brazil, frequent outings up to L.A. to go to clubs and shop. And then just when Elena had become resigned to the fact that her baby was just a party girl … surprise—Magda returns from Peru with a serious desire to become an archaeologist. And Magda being Magda, there was not a college in Mexico that could satisfy her ambitions. No, it had to be the University of California, Berkeley or Irvine, although Elena was reasonably sure that her daughter threatened the faraway former to smooth the way for the relatively nearby latter.

Relatively close, yes, but Magda rarely makes the trip home. She’s busy with her studies, and her video messages home show her in big eyeglasses, her hair pulled back into a plain ponytail, her body hidden in formless sweaters. As if, Elena thinks, she fears her sexuality diminishes her intellect. Maybe she has the same concern about too-frequent visits home. So, except for holidays, Elena is left alone in her houses with only bodyguards, the soap operas, and her power for company.

It isn’t enough.

It isn’t what she wanted but it’s what she has, and life has made her a realist. Still, she would like someone in her bed, someone at the breakfast table in the morning, someone to hold her, kiss her, make love to her. Sometimes she would like to open a window and yell out—

I’m not a monster

I’m not a bitch

(She knows they joke about her cock and balls, has heard the opposite punch line, “When Elena gets her monthly, blood really flows.”) I’m not—

Lady Macbeth

Lucrezia Borgia

Catherine the Great. I am

—a woman doing what she has to do. I am

—the woman you made me.

Elena is at war.

71

It’s chaos now.

Where there used to be three cartels—Baja, Sonora, the Gulf—now there are at least seven, all fighting for turf.

And the Mexican government has launched a war on all of them.

Worse, she’s faced with a rebellion in her own Baja Cartel. A faction has remained loyal to her and the old family name but another answers to El Azul, an enforcer who used to work for her brothers but would now be patron.

It has quickly evolved into open warfare. Baja averages five killings a day now. Bodies lie in the streets, or, as is El Azul’s predilection, stuffed alive into barrels of acid. Elena has lost a dozen soldiers in the past month alone.

Of course, she has retaliated in kind.

And been smart—allying herself with the Zetas, formerly an elite antinarcotic police unit that went into business for itself as killers-for-hire. It was the Zetas who started the beheadings.

Killing people certainly causes fear, but decapitation seems to inspire a certain kind of primal terror. There’s just something about the idea of having your head lopped off that really gets to people. Recently they had the idea