Savages

how to outface an interrogation.
    “So?”
    Alex is an amateur at this.
    Shows all over his lawyer face. “Would you know anything about it?”
    Ben jumps all over the conditional tense. “Yeah, I
would
know something about it, if I had anything to do with it. Seeing as how I didn’t, I don’t.”
    Fun with language.
    Alex tries Chon for a stare-down.
    Yeah, that’s going to work.
    Try making a Rottweiler blink.
    “Okay,” Alex says finally.
    Chon is Chon but Ben is Ben. “Try not calling me out for nonsense in the future, okay? How is O?”
    “Who?”
    “Who”? Chon looks like he might slap the guy. It’s a real possibility there for a second, but Ben jumps in. “Ophelia. We call her O. The young lady you kidnapped. How is she? We want to talk to her.”
    “Maybe that can be worked out,” Alex says.
    Ben notices the passive verb form.
    Responsibility is being avoided, or
    Authority is not possessed.
    Interesting.
    “Work it out,” Ben says. He opens the car door. “If there’s nothing else, Chon has marriages to destroy and I have product to produce.”
    They stand in the parking lot as the Mercedes pulls away.
    “You’re good,” Chon says. “You think they really suspect us?”
    “If they did, we’d have seen Chain Saw Guy.”
    They walk back to the shop.
    “By the way?” Chon says. “I feel I make the marriages better.”
    “Really?”
    “Oh yeah.”

154
     
    The myth about drug-trade hijacking is that it’s the perfect crime because the victims can’t report the theft to the police.
    Uhhhhhhhh …
    They might not file a police
report
, but that doesn’t mean they won’t report it to the police.
    It just has to be the right police.
    Alex happens to know a few.
    For example, Deputy Brian Berlinger of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has a nice A-frame in Big Bear that he likes to go to on weekends and holidays. Which is why right now he’s on his computer researching which stores in the OC stock Leno and Letterman masks.

155
     
    For the next hijacking, Ben decides on movie stars.
    “I think I’m going gay,” he tells Chon.
    “No surprise, but specifically …”
    “I’m frighteningly into this
theme
thing,” Ben says as he looks at hischoices on an Internet catalog. “If the dope and robbery don’t work out, maybe I could go into event planning.”
    “Or suck cock.”
    “There’s always that,” Ben admits. He studies the offerings. “You want to be Brad Pitt or George Clooney?”
    “
Beyond
gay. You make gay look straight.”
    “Choose.”
    “Clooney.”
    Ben hits “Buy.”
    Chon’s on his own lappie.
    Google Earth.
    Aerial view of the next crime scene.

156
     
    They’ll be looking for it this time.
    They’ll be alert.
    No shit.
    Lado has put the word out, you see something on the side of the road, you don’t stop, you don’t slow down, you hit the gas,
ese.
    You keep driving, no matter what.

157
     
    Ben and Chon finish laying the spike strip across the dirt road, and then shovel a light layer of gravel across it.
    Like everybody else, they watch
Cops.
(“Bad boys, bad boys, whachoo gonna do …”)
    Then they go back to the work car, pulled off into an avocado field near Fallbrook.
    “Guacamole?” Ben asks.
    Yeah, okay, not funny.
    The pregame nerves are starting to kick in. Chon’s jaws look like they’re tightened with an Allen wrench and Ben’s knee bobs up and down like a jackhammer with a bad jones.
    Yeah, but he gets off on it.
    Why they call it “high-jacking,” he thinks. He gets high jacking.
    Ben hears car tires on the dirt road.
    “Game,” Chon says.
    They hear the tires pop, Chon pulls the work car onto the road, and they’re
on
them. Same drill (practice, practice, practice)—Chon on the driver, Ben on the rider.
    And it goes like that.

158
     
    820K is a crap payday for Clooney and Pitt.
    Lunch money for the
Ocean’s
boys, but not bad for a jacking among the avocados.

159
     
    “Brad Pitt and who?” Lado asks.
    “George Clooney,” the driver says.
    “Ocean’s Eleven,”
the rider adds.
    “And
Twelve.
”
    “Shut your stupid fucking mouth.”
    He gets on the phone to Alex.
    How are we coming on those masks?

160
     
    They’ve narrowed it down to five stores and Berlinger is checking them out.
    Is the answer to that question.
    Lado drives to the parking lot at Aliso Beach.
    “What?” Ben asks. Haven’t I been—
—producing my dope, haven’t I been—
—turning over my retailers, haven’t I