Steve is not hard to find.
You can locate him at:
(A) The bar at the Ritz-Carlton
(B) The bar at the St. Regis
(C) The golf course
Steve freely admits to being a high-functioning alcoholic. High-functioning because he drinks only martinis at the bars and (expensive) wine over dinner, gets away with wearing only aloha shirts and khaki slacks, spends his nondrinking time playing tennis and golf and cheating on whichever wife he’s currently on, smokes dope, and makes about a gazillion dollars a year selling the most exclusive homes on the Gold Coast—that stretch off the PCH between Dana Point and Newport Beach.
Yeah, he used to make that much a year, anyway, before the Crash. Now everyone is trying to sell but no one is able to buy, and Steve is trying to ride it out by whittling down his handicap while dodging phone calls.
And blazing up more.
Been a tough year for Steve.
Business goes in the shitter.
His secretary threatens to tell his wife about them.
His wife throws him out anyway for reasons having nothing to do with his banging his secretary but because he couldn’t get enthused about her wanting to become a “life coach,” whatever the fuck that is.
A bummer, having to relocate, but Kim was fast approaching her “sell by” date anyway, and looking on the bright side, there are a dozen houses in foreclosure that he can move in to for the time being. It will shut his secretary up until he dumps her ass and then cans her, and
The secretary is a mouthy pain in the ass, but what a rack.
He’s sitting at the bar at the St. Regis starting in on the second martini when Ben and Chon come in.
Always a pleasure to see them.
Good times, those boys.
To watch them play volleyball was to watch the storied poetry in motion, to smoke their dope a touch of the sublime, and Steve can’t remember which one of them was tapping Kim’s whack-job but tasty little daughter.
Christ, he wouldn’t have minded mooring his boat in that tight little slip, but the chick never gave him as much as a second look.
Too bad.
A little mother-daughter action.
And the kid had a funny name for Kim she let drop when they were both really high one night, when he thought he saw a sliver of an opening with her, what was it she called her?
That’s right—“Paqu.”
Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe.
She got that right, and now the uppity bitch has found Jesus. Good—let Jesus pay for her next eye tuck.
Ben and Chon come sit next to him.
One on each side.
“Steve,” Ben says.
That’s it, just Steve.
“Ben. Chon.”
“Steve.”
“Well, we got our names down,” Steve says.
“I have a name for you,” Ben says.
Elena Sanchez Lauter.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
No, he means—
Get the fuck out of here.
209
They take it to Steve’s office.
They take it to Steve’s office because that’s where Chon suggests they take it and he looks like he wants what he wants. He also wants Steve’s secretary to take an early day. So she takes her luscious boobs and goes.
Steve says, “Guys, maybe you don’t know what you’re messing with here.”
“You’ve been buying property for Elena Sanchez and the Baja Cartel,” Ben says. “Under shell names, DBAs, whatever.”
“Come on, guys.”
“I want a list.”
“You want a list.”
“What I just said, Steve.”
“Even if I did what you said, which I’m not saying I did,” Steve whines, “and even if I had such a list, which I’m not saying I do, you have any idea what could happen to me if I let that information out?”
Chon is no mood to argue. “You have any idea what could happen to you if you don’t?”
He grabs Steve by the throat and lifts him up with one hand.
“This is for your stepdaughter, piece of shit,” Chon says. “You give me that list or I’ll kill you right now.”
They leave with the list.
210
Houses, condos, ranches.
They check listing after listing.
It all tells a story—Elena La Reina has been steadily buying up properties in Southern California. And not flipping them, either. They’re all over God’s little acre. Laguna, Laguna Niguel, Dana Point, Mission Viejo, Irvine, Del Mar.
“They wouldn’t have taken her to the burbs,” Chon says.
So the ranches.
Mostly down in San Diego County.
Rancho Santa Fe—
“Too toney, too crowded.”
Ramona, Julian.
“More isolated up in those hills. Possible.”
Anza-Borrego.
Vast, mostly empty desert.
Elena’s bought three properties out there, several hundred acres each.
“What the fuck for?” Chon asks. “Stash houses?”
Ben shrugs.
The phone rings and it’s Jaime.
Staff meeting.
211
O gets (Esteban-supervised) full use of the Internet. She can go online and surf. She can watch movies and television. They open the back door and Esteban takes her on daily walks around a walled-in garden and O can see that they’re in the desert somewhere.
