Savages

141

The problem with intelligence is not what, it’s which. It’s too much info, not not enough. You have to somehow find what’s significant. So now that they have piles of shit on the Baja Cartel, stored on five thumb-drives—they have to sift through it to find what they need.

The speed helps.

Yeah, used to be a coffee-and-cigarette deal, the all-night research thing, the two intrepid investigative reporters looking for Deep Throat, the buddy cops going after that one clue before the lieutenant shuts them down because he’s getting heat from the mayor’s office.

Fuck that.

They don’t smoke (cigarettes) and Ben already has the shits without making it worse by jacking a bunch of Italian Roast and anyway, he’d just buy that fair trade crap that tastes like dirt so they go the pharmacological route.

Chemical toothpicks for the eyes.

Pop. Pop.

Sitting in front of a computer on speed is like putting the car in park while you stomp the gas pedal through the floor.

Idling at a buck ten.

She can’t take much more, Captain.

Yeah, well, she could, Jim, if she had Ben to hook her up with an indica-sativa blend that puts your nerves in park while leaving your brain in high gear.

Dawn finds them—

Check that—

Dawn doesn’t “find” shit—dawn’s not looking. (The only redeeming quality of the universe, Chon believes, is its indifference.)

When the sun comes up they’re still there, poring over the mass of material.

Ben, natch, wants context.

“There is no content without context,” he says. Something he picked up at Berkeley.

Chon’s hoping that Ben doesn’t want to “deconstruct” the Baja Cartel. Chon wants to deconstruct the cartel, but in a very different, non-Derrida way. Context, content—he didn’t want to go down this road, but as long as they are, he just wants to go in and blast people.

He’s a little cranky without any sleep. But Chon knows from experience that it’s a Big Mistake, trying to sleep after a speed binge.

You can’t rope that pony, you gotta let it run until it drops on its own. (Warning: trying to sleep on speed may trigger a psychotic episode. Consult your physician immediately. Like, warning: if erection persists for more than four hours, consult a physician immediately and hope you have one fucking horny physician.)

Ben’s not deconstructing the cartel, he’s deconstructing the information. It looks like Dennis has gotten most of his intel from a single source—CI 1459, who isn’t identified anywhere in the file.

So Dennis isn’t giving that shit up to anybody, not even his own people. Not uncommon—an asset is just that, an asset, and bureaucrats don’t give their coins away.

We’ll get it when we need it, Ben thinks.

“Okay, so what’s your fucking context?” Chon asks.

142

The Lauter family consisted of four brothers and three sisters.

Chekhov, take note.

Elena was smack in the middle.

He finds a photo of Elena.

Definite MILF.

Ebony hair, high cheekbones, deep brown eyes, tight little body.

Queen Elena.

One by one, she watched her brothers go down. The only male left in the family is her boy, Hernan, but it’s not him, he’s not that guy, he’s not capable. He’s an engineer, he’s smart, he could learn the business aspect, but he’s not really serious about the engineering or anything else, except maybe pussy.

Mommy knew this, she knew that he couldn’t run the family business, part of her would have liked to just get out and let El Azul and Sinaloa have the fucking thing. But she also knew that as the last dick left standing his rivals couldn’t let her son live.

She had to take over, if only to keep him alive.

She didn’t want to find him in a barrel of acid.

She’s the most capable. She has the brains, the experience, the name, the DNA, the spine, the guys, the sangfroid, the balls and/or the ovaries.

And she finds that she likes running things, likes the power.

Elena’s hot—sexy, good-looking, smart, efficient. She uses all that to keep loyal supporters around her. She’s also ruthless—it’s love me or off with your head. She’s the Red Queen.

Azul, a former lieutenant, can’t take it. Just won’t let himself be bossed around by a woman, plus he doesn’t think she can do it. Probably doesn’t think she can drive or balance a checkbook, either, so he breaks off and forms his own thing. Goes back to the rednecks in Sinaloa and says, “Can you believe that, the Lauters are led by a woman, what’s going to happen when she goes on the rag, huh?”

“I’ll tell you what freaking happens,” Ben says, warming to the subject, “guys get their freaking heads cut off, blood’s going to flow, all right.”

But Elena is smart—she grew up in the drug trade, there’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, so she does a cold-blooded analysis and sees she’s going to lose in a war with El Azul and Sinaloa.

A recent analysis, written by Dennis, suggests that the Elena/Hernan section of the BC is allied with a group called Los Zetas.

“The vid-clip boys,” Chon says.

Los Zetas recently have branched out across the border into California and formed a subgroup called Los Treintes. DEA doesn’t seem to know much about them, but they appear to be headed up by a former Zeta named Miguel Arroyo Salazar, aka “El Helado”—“Stone Cold.”

Ben shows Chon the old photo in the file showing a Baja State Police officer. They pull up the recording of the hostage video and look at the man with the chain saw standing next to O.

“Same guy?” Ben asks.

“Looks like it.”

“Same guy I met with today,” Ben says. “Our new boss—Miguel Arroyo Salazar.”

“He’s a dead fucker,” Chon says. Sooner or later, he’s going.

So, Ben continues, Elena recruits Zeta—pays them well, gives them their own turf to use, and tells them, “Go forth and prosper.” Go north, young men, and take California (back).

“Why?” Ben asks rhetorically.

“Because that’s where the money is,” Chon answers rhetorically.

Or is it something else? Ben ponders.

He lets that slide, though.

First things first and the first thing is to get O back alive.

Buy her back.

“We have enough here to move on,” Chon says.

Fuck context.