Savages

their mistakes.
    “Maoist self-criticism,” Chon offers.
    “Something like that,” Ben says, and confesses to the sins of—
    Complacency.
    Arrogance.
    Ignorance.
    Two will get you three.
    But their complacency is at an end, likewise the arrogance.
    Ignorance they’re left with.
    “Lauter knows everything about us,” Ben says. “We know very little about him.”
    So, first step.

126
     
    The train comes.
    Metrolink commuter, headed south for Oceanside.
    Dennis walks over to the car.
    “Twice inside a week,” he says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
    “Get in,” Ben says—invitation and demand.
    Dennis slides into the passenger seat.
    “I want all the information you have on the BC,” Ben says.
    “I gave it to you.”
    “I don’t mean your freshman term paper,” Ben says. “I mean your intel, your G-2, everything you have on the cartel.”
    Dennis smirks. “I can’t do that.”
    Ben smacks him across the face—hard.
    “Jesus Christ, Ben! What the—”
    This is Ben? Chon marvels.
    Gentle Ben?
    Increase-the-Peace Ben?
    Cool.
    “Actually, Dennis, you
can
do that,” Ben says. “Or I
am
going to come to your office, knock on your boss’s door, and introduce myself as the person who pays you more than he does.”
    Dennis laughs. Ben and Dennis have this Mutually Assured Destruction thing going. They rat each other out, they end up in the same prison, and he reminds Ben of this perfectly symmetrical dynamic.
    “I don’t give a fuck anymore,” Ben growls, “I’ll go to jail. But you—your condo in Princeville gets auctioned off, your wife goes on welfare, and your kids go to the Assistant Manager Training Program at BK instead of to Bard.”
    Dennis ain’t laughing now. He’s making excuses, though. “You’re talking thousands of pages—”
    “Good.”
    “Confidential informants—”
    “All of it.”
    “This isn’t part of our deal,” Dennis says.
    “It is now,” Chon says.
    Dennis gets all blah-blah. What do you think I can do, just walk out of the building with crates of documents? It doesn’t work that way. They watch you like
hawks
, it’s
1984
in there with CCTV, internal spyware, all the updated technology.
    “Dump it electronically,” Ben says. “My computer geeks will call you. Follow their instructions. It won’t take long.”
    “It would take weeks for me to put this stuff together,” Dennis says.
    “Listen, you double-dipping motherfucker,” Ben says. Then he goes Hyman Roth on him. “We pay you every month, no excuses. We have a good month, we pay. A bad month, we pay. You don’t ask and we don’t say, because it’s irrelevant. Year in, year out—we put your kids through school, we put clothes on their backs, food in their mouths. Now we need your fucking help and you’re going to step up. Be at your computer at ten o’clock tonight, or at ten-oh-five …”
    He recites Dennis’s boss’s cell phone number.
    Dennis looks down at the car floor.
    Sulking.
    “I thought you were honorable people.”
    “We’re not,” Chon says.
    “Start talking now,” Ben says. “Give me something I can use on Hernan Lauter.”
    Dennis laughs.
    Hernan Lauter?

127
     
    Hernan couldn’t run a weed whacker, Dennis says. Hernan could
design
one, because he’s a fucking engineer, but run the Baja Cartel, especially when they’re at war? Please.
    “So if Hernan isn’t …”
    “Elena La Reina,” Dennis happily answers.
    Ben shrugs.
    “Mommy.” Dennis is happy to surprise these two arrogant, condescending beach bums. “His mother runs the show. Elena SanchezLauter, sister to the late unlamented Lauter brothers. Elena La Reina.”

128
     
    “A female cartel boss?” Chon asks. “In macho Mexico? I don’t buy it.”
    “Yeah,” Dennis says. “I think it’s
macho
Chon who rings up no purchase. I think you can’t imagine what you can’t imagine.”
    May be the truth, Chon thinks.
    Changes up the revenge fantasy, though.
    Now he can’t see himself doing it.
    Although he’s probably killed women before. Gone out on a scout, fingered an Afghan house with terrorists in it for the drone boys, there were probably women in it when it got vaporized.
    But Chon won’t hit a woman.
    Can’t see himself blowing one’s brains out the back of her head, either.
    Chauvinist pig.
    Ben is amazed.
    The head of the Baja Cartel is a woman?
    Hillary would be
pissed.

129
     
    O isn’t so thrilled, either.
    That it was the
Pink
Power Ranger who was going to cut her