Savages

Mucho dinero.

They can’t help but sample just a little. Peel a corner of the wrapping off one brick—

“Is that blood, hermano?”

“Mierdita, is that hair?”

—and smoke up.

Unreal, cabron.

A one-toke high but they each take three. Inside five minutes they’re higher than the sky.

“We’re rich,” Jumpy says.

“Where can we sell it?” Sal asks.

“This shit?” Jumpy says. “Anywhere.”

They bliss out on this thought for a few minutes, then Sal really fires up. “Think for a second,” he says, although this is very difficult. “This could be our ticket.”

They been trying to break in for a while. This could be that stamp on the hand that lets them in and out of the club.

VIP Room, too.

183

Ben and Chon go back to the house because it would look suspicious not to.

“If we don’t go back,” Ben reasons, “we can never go back. They’ll know it’s us.”

So they go back to Table Rock, but gun up for the expected invasion. Shotguns, pistols, rifles, machine guns —Chon’s whole arsenal is at the ready. But even the Mexicans aren’t going to come to a beach house in Laguna in the middle of the day for a shootout.

If they want us, Chon knows, they’ll wait.

At least until night.

More likely they’ll be more patient than that. Send the pros to wait it out, pick them off as opportunity presents itself.

As it would, as it will.

They don’t get an invasion, they get a text.

Summoning Ben to a sit-down.

Come alone.

“They’re going to grab you,” Chon says.

“Or hit me on the way there or back,” Ben says.

“I doubt it,” Chon offers. “They’d want to torture you first. Probably tape it so they can teach a lesson.”

“Thanks.”

But he goes.

184

The other way with it.

Takes the offensive.

He meets Lado and Alex at a public place, the boardwalk at Town Beach, gets the news about the bloody jacking and the insinuation of guilt and he goes off.

“You better fucking do something about this,” Ben says to Lado. “I’ve been in this business for eight years and never had a person as much as scratched. I hook up with you and I get robbed, and now you’re telling me a man is dead?!”

“Take it—”

“You take it easy,” Ben says, jabbing Alex in the chest. “I thought you were the fucking Baja Cartel. I thought you offered protection. Well, it looks like you may be pretty good at snatching girls off the street, but when it comes to—”

“Enough.” This from Lado.

Ben shuts his mouth but shakes his head and walks ahead of him.

Nice day on Town Beach.

People in the water.

Sleek, tall, cut women playing volleyball. The muscles of their bare abs tight as drums.

The boys are out on the b-ball court. Middle-age gay men watch from the benches.

Sun shining on it all.

Another day in paradise.

Alex catches up with him. “You’re saying you had nothing to do with this.”

“I’m saying,” Ben, well, says, “that I’m going to have nothing to do with you if this keeps up. Deal or no deal, I’m not putting my people in harm’s way. You want my product, you guarantee our safety or I’m shutting it down. And you can call the Queen and tell her that. Better yet, put me on the phone, I’ll tell her that.”

“I don’t think you want to do that, Ben,” Alex says. “Remember who—”

“Yeah, I remember,” Ben says, making a point to look at Lado. “And as for your fucking aspersions, your asinine accusations that we’re somehow in on this shit, fuck you and the goat you rode in on. I’m not putting up with any more of that, either.”

“You’ll put up with what we tell you to put up with,” Lado says.

“Just handle your own problems, okay?” Ben says. “Don’t worry about me. I’m taking care of business.”

He walks away.

Crosses the PCH and leaves them standing there.

185

Sal comes to Jesus.

Yeah, it’s a cheap joke, but what do you want, it’s his name.

They find Jesus where you always find him, in the parking lot behind the liquor store, next to the car wash, hanging with five other 94s, drinking beer and smoking a little yerba.

Eleven AM and they’re just out.

Three years now, Sal and Jumpy been trying to join the 94, but been shut out. Jesus told them it wasn’t like the old days—you lived in the barrio, you could get jumped in—now you have to bring something to the table, m’ijo, ese. You have to bring—what did Jesus call it? Assets.

“Hola, Jesus.”

Hola, hola, m’ijo, all that.

186

Jesus is no kid anymore.

He’s twenty-three, and he’s spent eight of those twenty-three behind bars. Lucky not to have spent more, all the gangbanging he did. Him and the other 94s, defending their turf against the other Mexican gangs.

Cliche, stereotyped you’ve-seen-it-all-in-the-movies drive-by, eye-for-an-eye bullshit. By age twelve Jesus already had a sheet. Beat the fuck out of another kid, the judge looked at those unrepentant eyes (remorse? for what?) and sent him to the CYA in Vista, where the bigger boys made him jack them off and suck their dicks until he got more angry than scared and grabbed one of them by the hair and slammed his head into the concrete wall until it looked like a sloppy tagging.