Savages

Treasure Island.
    Aaarggh, Jim, I know where the treasure be.
    The treasure be in a luxury beachfront hotel where the beautiful people will drop four thousand a night for a suite. This in contrast to abunch of retirees and trailer park trash living the SoCal sweet life (the
lo
-cal sweet life?) on the budget plan. Only money they’re gonna make is for the owners of 7-Eleven, the liquor store, and the taco joint. Cheap chump change.
    Plow that dump under and build a luxury hotel, give it a vaguely French name, figure out the most outrageous price you can get away with and then double it. If you build it they will come.
    Ben and Chon check in to the suite but don’t plan to spend the night. They slap down the 2K for the afternoon. Get a detached cabana with floor-to-ceiling view of the best right break in California. Have lunch catered by room service. Set up early so as not to disturb the meeting. The cartel reps don’t like waiters walking in and out, figure they’re really DEA agents all wired up.
    No worries.
    Ben brought in his own geeks, Jeff and Craig, two stoners who do all his IT. They have an office on Brooks Street they’re never in. You want to find these boys you walk across the PCH down Brooks to the bench overlooking the break and wave your arms. If they recognize you, they might paddle in. They do this because they can—they invented the targeting system for the B-1 bomber and now they make sure all of Ben’s communications are sacrosanct.
    How Jeff and Craig got the gig was, they approached Ben at an outdoor table at Cafe Heidelberg downstairs from their “office,” sat down at his table with their lattes and laptop, cranked the latter (not the latte) open, and showed him his last three days of e-mail.
    Chon wanted to shoot them; Ben hired them.
    On the spot.
    Pays them in cash and herb.
    So today they show up at the Montage and sweep the air, clear Ben’s aura of any bad vibes from the alphabet agencies. Then they set up jammers so any eavesdropper is just going to get a sound like a junior high garage band playing with the feedback.
    Chon does a sweep of another kind—walks the perimeter looking for potential shooters—
sicarios
, in Spanish. He knows it’s an excess of cautious, over-due diligence, because no one’s going to perpetrate any wet work at the Montage. Bad for business. Capitalists honor the First Commandment—Thou Shalt Not Fuck with the Money. You don’t see no massacres on Rodeo Drive, either, and you ain’t gonna—unless there’s a post office nearby. So no one’s likely to pump AK rounds into any golden geese here. It was still Treasure Island you could splatter chunks of flesh, bone fragments, and vital organs all over them single-wides and it’s film-at-eleven, but it’s the Montage now. The Montaaaggge. It’s French, it’s genteel.
    The rich do not mess with each other’s money or leisure.
    Or reluxation.
    But Chon walks the beat because there’s always that first time, in’t it? Always that exception that proves the rule. That guy who says, “Fuck it, the rules don’t apply to me.” Above it all. The bozo who’s going to go early John Woo all over the manicured lawns and flower beds just to show he doesn’t give a fuck about convention.
    Yeah, but we’re talking about the Baja Cartel here, and they own a bunch of hotels in Cozumel, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo, so they appreciate that flying lead makes the
touristas
nervous. No Germans are gonna go parasailing if they think a bullet is going to clip the line and send them floating away to the ozone. (God, that would
suck
, wouldn’t it?)
    Chon gets back from patrol, Ben twigs him about it. “No guys with sombreros, big droopy mustaches, and bandoliers?”
    “Fuck you.”
    Which is how this thing began.

55
     
    The two Cartel reps show up in gray Armani.
    Black silk shirts open at the throat, but no gold chains.
    French cuffs. Italian shoes.
    In contrast to Ben—faded denim shirt, faded jeans, huaraches.
    And Chon—black Rip Curl T-shirt, black jeans, Doc Martens.
    Handshakes.
    Intros around.
    Ben.
    Chon.
    Jaime.
    Alex.
    Mucho gusto.
    Jaime and Alex are your classic early-thirties, Tijuana-spawned, San Diego–born, dual-passport Baja aristocracy. Went to school in TJ until they were thirteen, then moved to La Jolla so they could attend the Bishop’s School, then college in Guadalajara. Jaime is an accountant, Alex is a lawyer.
    A&J aren’t flunkies or errand boys.
    They’re highly valued,