Savages

no money, of working their asses off and dying while they watched the narcos get rich, before they decided to get rich themselves.

Lado’s eyes are cold stone?

Maybe because those eyes have seen—

His own hands holding a chain saw

Swooping through a man’s neck as

Blood sprayed.

Your eyes would be hard, too.

Your eyes would turn to stone.

Some of those seven men they begged, they cried, they pleaded to God, to their mamas, they said they had families, they pissed their trousers. Others said nothing, just looked with the silent resignation that Lado thinks is the expression of Mexico itself. Bad things are going to happen, it is simply a matter of when. They should stitch that on the flag.

He’s glad to be El Norte.

He goes now to find this kid Esteban.

13

Esteban lives in the big housing project and has an inquiring attitude.

Questions for the Anglo world.

You want me to get a job? Mow your lawn? Clean your pool, flip your burgers, make your tacos? This is what we came here for? Paid the coyotes? Crawled under the fence, trudged across the desert?

You want me to be one of those good Mexicans, one of those hardworking, churchgoing, family-valuing, get dressed in my best clothes on Sunday and walk with my cousins down those broad sun-baked boulevards to a park named after Chavez, humble respectful nigger taco Mexicans, the ones we all love and respect and pay subminimum wage?

Like my papi?

Out in his pickup before the sun, the truck with the rakes sticking out, trimming the gueros’ lawns so they look so green and pretty. Comes home at night so chingada tired he don’t want to talk, he don’t want to do nothing except eat, drink a beer, go to sleep. Does this six days a week, stops only on Sunday to be a humble respectful nigger taco Mexican to God, give the money he sweats for to God and the faggot priests. Sunday is his papi’s big day, the day he puts on a clean white shirt, clean white pants (no grass stains on the knees), shoes that come out once a week, wiped off with a clean cloth, and he takes his family to church and after church they get together with all the aunts and aunties, the tios and tias, with all the cousins, and they go to the park and cook carne and pollo and smile at their pretty daughters in their pretty little Sunday dresses and it is so chingada boring that Esteban would lose it if he hadn’t snuck off after church for a hit, drawn the sweet smoke in, chilled himself out.

Like mi madre? Works in the hotels, cleans the gueros’ toilets, scrubs their shit and puke out of the bowls? Always on her knees, if not on bathroom tiles, then on church pews. A devout woman, she always smells like disinfectant.

Esteban had a job for a while at one of Machado’s taco stands. Worked his ass off chopping onions, washing dishes, taking out the garbage, and for what? Pocket change. Then his papi got him hired on to one of Mr. Arroyo’s landscaping crews. Better money, but backbreaking, boring work.

But Esteban he needs money.

Lourdes is pregnant.

How did that happen?

Of course he knows how it happened. Saw her on a Sunday afternoon in one of those pretty white dresses. Her black eyes and long black lashes, the breasts under that dress. Went up and talked to her, smiled at her, walked over to the grill and brought her back something to eat. Talked nice to her, made nice talk with her mother, her father, her cousins, her aunts.

She was one of those good girls, a virgin, maybe that’s what attracted him, she wasn’t one of the gangbanger sluts who will go to her knees for anyone.

He called on her for three months, three months before the family would let them be alone, and then three more months of hot, torturous afternoons of visiting her house when her parents were at work, her brothers and sisters gone. Or into the park, or down to the beach. Two months of kissing before she would let him touch her titas, weeks more before she let him get his hand inside her jeans. He liked what he found there; boy, so did she.

She said his name then and he was in love.

Esteban doesn’t disrespect her, he loves her, he wants to marry her, he told her so. One night under a tree out by the parking lot she stroked him off—pobrecito—his stuff on her warm brown thigh, but you knew it was going to happen, you knew he was going to get up in there once her jeans came off and he was so close he couldn’t help himself and neither could she. That third month in her bed in her house when she let him in, he couldn’t stop before he let loose inside her.

Now they will have to get married.

That’s good, that’s okay. He loves her, he wants this baby, he hopes it’s a boy—a man becomes a man when he has a son—but he needs money.

So it’s a good thing Lado is coming.

His papi’s jefe, he owns the landscaping company Esteban’s father works for. He does a lot more.

A lot more.

He is the gatekeeper for the Baja Cartel in Southern California.

A feared and respected man.

He’s been giving Esteban some work. Not landscaping work. Little things at first. Take this message, be a lookout, ride along on this delivery, keep an eye on that corner. Little things, but Esteban did them well.

Esteban sees him coming, looks around, and gets into the car.

14

Here’s how it works with lawyers and drug cartels.

If you’re running drugs with a cartel and you get busted, the cartel sends you a lawyer. You aren’t expected to shut up or keep secrets, you can go ahead and cooperate if that will get you off or buy you a shorter sentence. All you have to do is sit down with your cartel-appointed lawyer and tell him or her what you told the cops, so the cartel can make the necessary adjustments.

Then it’s a numbers game.

You hire your lawyer and you pay him, win or lose. You pretty much expect to be found guilty; the issue is how much time you’re going to do. Every drug offense has a sentencing guideline with a minimum and a maximum.

For every year under the guideline that your lawyer gets, you kick him a bonus, but you don’t take any money away even if you get the max. You’re a big boy, you knew the risks when you got into it. Your lawyer gets you what he can get you and that’s it, no hard feelings, no recriminations, unless—

Your lawyer fucks up.

Your lawyer is so busy, or distracted, or indifferent, or just plain incompetent that he misses something that might have significantly reduced your sentence.

If that’s the case, if the lawyer has cost you years of your life, you get to cost him years of his—to wit, the remaining ones. And if you’re pretty high up in the cartel—an earner who’s been bringing in seven figures a year—