Savages

“Not dead,” O says. “And during her second trimester her hormones are hopping around like bunnies in a field of clover. She’s hornier than a convent. You have to take care of business, boyfriend, or she’ll think you don’t think she’s beautiful anymore, and then look out.”

“She is beautiful.” Esteban sighs.

Whipped, whipped, whipped.

“Show her.”

Actually, one of the things O likes about Esteban is that he’s sexually unthreatening.

Which O appreciates these days.

She doesn’t really like the idea of being touched, never mind being entered, being violated, which she used to like a lot. Her once voracious sexual appetite has dwindled to a sensual bulimia. Her little bud that used to pop out and welcome any new sensation now hides in the closet in the fetal position.

Thank you so much, my clit-sis, Elena.

And Chain Saw Guy.

Summoning that image is a mistake because it turns on the vid-clip. She squeezes her eyes shut and when she opens them again the bachelor’s head is floating in water and it’s a second before she realizes that he’s just sunk down in the hot tub, but for a second there it sure looked like the bachelorette was bobbing for apples.

“Stebo, you got any weed?”

“I’m not supposed to …”

“Come on.”

Show some huevos.

193

“We did this,” Ben says, looking at the images.

“Lado did it,” Chon answers.

“We caused it,” Ben says.

Chon goes off. Rare rush of valuable words. “If you’re going to wallow in this self-indulgent guilt trip you should never have started this in the first place. What do you think happens in a war? You think only soldiers get killed?

“You knew what you were doing when you left that van in the hood. You knew you were setting a trap. Don’t be so hypocritical as to now feel sorry for the bait.

“And you know it’s not going to stop here. Azul’s people will have to respond. There’ll be more dead kids within days. Then a counterresponse, then a counter-counter until it’s Gandhi’s world of the blind. But isn’t that what we started out to do?”

Chon knows what war is.

What it turns us into.

They know that Lado will keep going.

He believes there is a leak in his organization, a turncoat working for Azul, and he won’t stop until he finds him.

“Or we feed him one,” Ben says.

194

At goddamn last.

Party City in Irvine, Deputy Berlinger talks to a stoner clerk who remembers selling a Letterman and a Leno mask.

“You remember the guy?”

“Sort of.”

Sort of.

Fucking blazers.

“Can you describe him for me?”

Amazingly, the kid can.

Tall white guy. Brown eyes, brown hair, didn’t say much.

Paid cash.

Something, anyway, Berlinger thinks.

To get Alex off my aching ass.

195

You put Spin (the Money Washer) together with Jeff and Craig (the Computer Geeks) and you have:

(A) The Three Stooges

(B) The Three Tenors

(C) A Trio that Can Hack into Bank Accounts and Make $ Appear Anywhere A Trio that Can Hack into Bank Accounts and Make $ Appear Anywhere

If you guessed (C), you win. What these boys do—at Ben’s direction—is find Alex Martinez’s American bank account, then create a new one for him, transfer deposits of thirty, forty-five, and thirty-three thousand dollars into it, spin it around the world a few times, and wash it back into new accounts.

Then they buy him a condo in Cabo.

Then they goof around some more and launder all this through several DBAs and holding companies so that only a skilled forensic accountant could understand it.

196

Jaime is a skilled forensic accountant.

He and Ben sit in a booth at the bar in the St. Regis.

“What do you want?” Jaime asks.

“Uncomfortable?” Ben responds. “I know you and Alex usually come to these meetings together. You’re like Mormon missionaries, the two of you. All you need is the white shirts and the skinny black ties.”

“So why did you want to meet me alone?”

Ben says, “I had my people do a little research.”

He slides a folder of documents over to Jaime, who looks at it like it’s some foreign object from outer space.

“Open it,” Ben says.

Jaime opens the file. Starts looking at it and then can’t stop. Starts turning pages faster and faster, flipping back and forth, his face bent closer to the file, his finger tracing lines and columns.

This stuff, Ben thinks, is like porn to an accountant.

Yeah, sort of, but not really. Jaime and Alex are boys, and when the former finally looks up his face is ashen.

He is seriously bummed. Ben bums him more. Cranks up the dial on the bum-meter. “Check the deposit dates, match them up with the hijackings, and then try to tell yourself that our little Alex isn’t getting rich off my dope.”

“Where did you get this?”

“I got it,” Ben says. “But run it again yourself. By all means, check my homework.”

“I will,” Jaime says. “Alex has a wife and three kids. I’m godfather to his oldest daughter.”