Savages

yerba and doesn’t pick up a phone …

Machado picks up the phone.

Goes out in back of one of his stores, where the counter is busy with schoolchildren coming to visit the Mission, and he makes the call.

“You’re a good friend,” Lado says. “We knew we could count on you.”

Set up the sale.

189

Jesus squirms in the fishing net suspended from the beam.

“I’m going to ask you again,” Lado says. “Where did you get this yerba?”

“From those two,” Jesus says, pointing down to Sal and Jumpy, who sit propped against the wall.

“From those two perritos?” Hernan asks, jutting his chin toward the two boys, who sit in a pool of their own piss. “I don’t think so. Try again.”

“I did!” It comes out as a whine.

Lado shakes his head and swings the bat. Big baseball fan, Lado. Thought at one point he might have a crack at the pros. A cup of coffee in Double A, maybe. Now he loves to go to Padres games. Gets there early to watch batting practice.

Jesus screams.

“That was a single,” Lado says. “This is going to be a double off the left field wall.”

He swings again.

Jumpy hears a bone break and starts to cry.

Again.

“You want a triple?” Lado says. “Tell me the truth. Tell me enough truth I might let you live.”

Jesus breaks down. “It was me, I did it.”

Lado, a little winded, leans on the bat. “Not alone, you didn’t. Who are you with?”

“The Nine-Four.”

“Never heard of them. What’s that?”

“My gang.”

“Your ‘gang,’” Lado says. “You little balls of shit couldn’t pull off a tombe like this. Who do you answer to?”

“The Baja Cartel.”

“Pendejo, I’m the Baja Cartel.”

“The other one.”

“What one?”

“El Azul.”

Lado nods. “And who with El Azul told you where to be and when?”

Jesus doesn’t have an answer.

He really doesn’t.

Not even when Lado hits a triple.

Not even when he hits a grand slam.

Jesus just spits out a lot of incoherent shit. This guy came to see him, he doesn’t know the guy’s name, the mystery man gave him the info about the dope run, suggested he should hit it, they’d split the profits …

“Do you know a man named Ben?” Lado asks. “Was it him?”

Jesus is happy for any suggestions. “Yes, that was it, Ben.”

“What did Ben look like?”

Wrong answers, wrong answers. Jesus can’t describe Ben, he can’t describe Chon.

Fregado—useless.

“Would these know?” Lado asks, pointing to Sal and Jumpy.

Yes, Jesus tells him, they’d know.

190

Sal whimpers.

He can smell his own fear, his own filth.

Can’t stop his legs from shaking or the tears pouring out his eyes or the snot running out his nose.

Jesus’s moans have stopped.

He lies like a pile of dirty clothes.

Lado puts his pistol to Jumpy’s forehead and shoots, splattering pieces of Sal’s friend all over him. Then he turns to Sal and asks, “Do you really expect me to believe that you just found a van full of yerba parked in your barrio and you took it? Is that what you expect me to believe?”

“I don’t know.”

Lado puts the gun to his head.

191

The photo comes across Ben’s screen.

Three dead kids

With the legend—

“taking care of business.”

192

O sits on her bed and watches an episode of The Bachelorette on Hulu.

“I’m telling you,” Esteban says, “she’s going for the wrong guy. That boy there is a player.”

O disagrees. “I think he’s sweet, and vulnerable.”

Esteban don’t know what “vulnerable” means but he knows what a player is, and that boy in the hot tub there is a player.

Maybe maybe, O thinks.

Men know men.

She and Esteban have formed a nice little relationship. He’s her new BFF. Sure, probably a case of Stockholm syndrome (O saw this thing on TV once about Patty Hearst), and he’s no Ashley, but he seems like a nice kid. So in love with his fiancee, OMG is the boy whipped. He tells O all about Lourdes and the baby, and she gives him sage, sisterly advice on how to treat a woman.

“Jewelry is very important,” she tells him. “Jewelry and lotion. I’d pull back on the chocolates, though, because she’s probably feeling all fat and stuff.”

“She is.” Esteban sighs.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t bag the groceries, amigo,” O says. “And are you doing the deed regularly?”

“Que?”

“Drilling for oil, digging for gold, performing your husbandly duties?” O forms a “V” with two fingers of her left hand and shoves her right index finger back and forth between them.

Esteban is shocked. “She’s pregnant!”