Savages

Hector nods.

Francisco goes into his delivery and throws a nice breaking ball, low and inside, for a called strike.

“You been doing anything else, Hector?”

Hector looks confused. “What do you mean?”

Francisco sets up and Lado knows he’s going to come with the fastball this time. Out in left field, Junior looks half asleep. Knows the ball isn’t going to come his way. He’s right, Lado thinks, but he needs to look sharper anyway.

“You’re not double-dipping, are you?”

“No!”

It’s the fastball, straight down the middle but the kid’s swing is behind it. Hector’s a good man, been with them, what, six years? Never a problem, never any trouble.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to think,” Lado says, “that they can take advantage of these gueros just because they’re new and a little soft. People need to know that they’re under my protection.”

“Understood, Lado.”

You bet your brown Mexican ass, understood. If you’re under Lado’s umbrella no rain falls on you.

“Good,” Lado says. “The next pickup needs to go smooth.”

“It will.”

Francisco wastes the next pitch, just like Lado knew he would. He’s a smart kid, Francisco, up two in the count, no sense in wearing out his arm, throw the kid a bad pitch to see if he’ll swing on it. Smart.

“How’s your brother?” Lado asks. “Antonio? He still selling cars?”

He can hear Hector’s heart stop.

“Yes, he’s fine, Lado. He’ll be pleased you asked for him.”

“And his family? Two daughters, is it?”

“Yes. All well, dio gracio.”

Francisco goes into his windup. The stance is still too narrow, but the kid has that long whip arm so he gets away with it. Breaking ball that drops like it fell off a table and the batter swings and misses.

Two down.

And now Hector knows that if he’s playing games with these yerba shipments he’s dead, but not before his brother, sister-in-law, and nieces back in Tijuana.

“Delores! Hello!”

Lado turns to see Delores edging her way down the bench, saying hello to the other mothers. She sits down next to him.

“So I’m on time and you’re late,” Lado says.

“I was waiting for the roof guys,” she says. “Of course they came late.”

“I told you I’d take care of it.”

“Yes, but when?” she asks. “It’s supposed to be a wet winter. Has Junior batted yet?”

“Next inning probably.”

Francisco throws a low ball, pure junk, but the batter bites on it and pops up. Lado stands and claps as Francisco trots to the dugout, his glove folded casually under his arm.

“Let’s take the boys to CPK after the game,” Lado says.

“Fine with me,” Delores says.

She can smell that hair-cutting whore on him.

The least he could do is take a shower.

170

She can smell him.

His sweat, his breath

As he comes toward her.

O twists her head away but

He stands right over, breathes into her face, stares

Into her face with those

Cold black eyes

She

Cries she

Chokes on her panic she

Can’t turn it off.

Yeah, but you have to, girl, O tells herself.

She makes herself take a deep breath. Time to stop being girlie-girl about this. Time to cowgirl up, show some ovaries. She gets off the bed, walks to the door, and pounds on it.

“Yo!” she yells. “I want Internet access!”

171

Yes, she wants fucking Internet.

She wants Internet, a computer to use the Internet, she’s hoping like hell they have Wi-Fi wherever the fuck they are and not DSL or, God help them, dial-up. She wants all that plus she wants a TV, satellite TV—if I miss one more episode of The Bachelorette I’ll never catch up—an iPod and access to her iTunes account, and could they mix in a salad every once in a while because if she keeps wolfing down these starches they’ll need a forklift to get her out of here and deliver her to some fat farm in La Costa, which would make Paqu very happy and speaking of her mother …

“You want to let me use the Internet,” she says through the door, “because if Moms doesn’t hear from me every twenty-seven minutes she will call the FBI and I think but I’m not sure that one of my stepfathers—Four, maybe?—anyway, it doesn’t matter, might have been in the FBI”—actually it was the FDIC but who fucking cares—“so she knows people, and, oh yeah, I want to contact my friends to let them know I’m all right, or at least some version of all right, and would it kill you to whip up a martini?”

Esteban comes into her room.

He doesn’t know what the fuck to say.

She snaps, “Okay, what’s your name?”

“Esteban.”

“Nice,” O says. “Okay, Esteban, I want—”

She repeats her demands.

Esteban agrees to go ask.

172

This gets kicked all the way upstairs.

From the boys running the house where they have the girl stored, to Alex, to Lado, then to Elena.

Who buys the Paqu argument.

The last thing she wants is a “hunt for the missing girl” drama all over American television, so she says, yes, provide the girl a computer and supervised use of the Internet. See that she writes her mother—make sure she gives no clues as to where she really is—and let her write her friends, who are, after all, our business associates.

I already have one rebellious spoiled daughter, Elena thinks.