Savages

O has a hard time keeping up with her phases—

But in rough order:

Yoga

Pills and alcohol

Rehab

Republican politics

Jesus

Republican politics and Jesus

Fitness

Fitness, Republican politics, and Jesus

Cosmetic surgery

Gourmet cooking

Jazzercise

Buddhism

Real estate

Real estate, Jesus, and Republican politics

Fine wine

Re-rehab

Tennis

Horseback riding

Meditation

And now—

Direct sales.

“It’s a pyramid scheme, Mom,” O said when she saw the boxes and boxes of organic skin-care products that Paqu tried to enlist her to sell. She’d already signed up most of her friends, who were all selling the shit to one another in a sort of merchandizing circle-jill.

“It’s not a pyramid scheme,” Paqu objected. “A pyramid scheme is like those cleaning products.”

“And this—”

“Isn’t,” Paqu said.

“Have you ever seen a pyramid?” O asked her. “Or a picture of one?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” O said, wondering why she was even trying. “You sell this crap and kick up a percentage to the person who enlisted you. You enlist other people who kick up to you. That’s a pyramid, Mom.”

“No, it isn’t.”

O gets home this afternoon and Paqu is on the patio slamming mojitos with all her Organic Makeup Cult buddies. They’re all buzzed and buzzing about some upcoming motivational three-day cruise event.

Which would make you root for Somali pirates, O thinks.

“Can I fix you some Kool-Aid?” O asks the women graciously.

Paqu is oblivious. “Thank you, dear, but we have refreshments. Wouldn’t you like to join us?”

Yes I wouldn’t, O thinks.

“I’m otherwise engaged,” she says, retreating to the relative sanctuary of her room.

Six is hiding in his home office pretending to be tracking the market but really watching an Angels game. The door is open and he sees O and quickly swivels around to peer into his computer monitor.

“Don’t worry,” O says. “I won’t squeal.”

“You want a martini?”

“I’m good.”

She goes into her room, flops on the bed, and crashes.

12

Lado is short for “Helado,” which is Spanish for “stone cold.”

It fits.

Miguel Arroyo, aka Lado, is stone cold.

(A figure of speech that Chon would object to, BTW. Having been to the desert, he knows that stones can be fucking hot.)

Anyway—

Even as a kid, Lado didn’t seem to have any feelings, or if he did, he didn’t show them anyway. Hug him—his mother did, a lot—you got nothing. Whip his ass with a belt—his father did, a lot—the same nothing. He’d just look at you with those black eyes, like what do you want with me?

He’s no kid now. Forty-six, he’s a father himself. Two sons and a teenage daughter who is making him loco. Of course, that’s her job at her age. No kid, he has himself a wife, a nice landscaping business, he makes money. No one takes a belt to him anymore.

Now he drives his Lexus through San Juan Capistrano, looking at the nice futbol field, then turns left into the big housing community, block after block of identical apartment buildings behind a stone wall that runs alongside the railroad track.

NBM.

Nothing But Mexicans.

Block after block.

You hear English here it’s the mailman talking to himself.

This is where the nice Mexicans live. Where the respectful, respectable, hardworking Mexicans live when they’re not at their jobs. These are old Mexican families, been here since before the Anglos stole it, were here when the Spanish fathers came to steal it first. Put the stones in the mission for the swallows to come back to.

These are Mexican-Americans, send their kids to the nice Catholic school across the street, where the faggot priests will train them to be docile. These are the nice Mexicans who dress up on Sundays and after mass go to the park or down to the grassy strips along the harbor in Dana Point and have cookouts. Sunday is Mexicans’ Day Out, pray to Jesus and pass the tortillas por favor.

Lado is not a nice Mexican.

He’s one of those scary Mexicans.

A former Baja State cop, he has big hands with broken knuckles, scars from blades and bullets. Black black obsidian eyes. He’s seen that Mel Gibson movie about Mexico back in the Majan days when they ripped people’s bellies open with obsidian blades and his viejos say that he has eyes like those knives.

Back in the day Lado was one of Los Zetas, the special counter-narcotics task force in Baja. He survived the narco wars of the nineties, saw a lot of men killed, more than a few at his own hands, busted a lot of the narcos himself, took them into alleys and made them give up their secrets.

He laughs at the news reports about “torture” in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were using waterboarding in Mexico since before Lado can remember, except they didn’t use water but Coca-Cola—the carbonation gave it a little more zing and motivated your narco to bubble up with useful information.

Now the U.S. Congress is going to investigate.

Investigate what?

The world?

Life?

What goes on between men?

How else do you make a bad man tell you the truth? You think you smile at him, give him sandwiches and cigarettes, become his friend? He’ll smile back and lie to you and think what a cabron you are.

But that was back in the old days, before he and the rest of the Zetas got tired of busting drugs and making