Savages

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.
    They even let Esteban send out for pizza.

212
     
    It’s a yeeee-had.
    Full-out war between Treinte and 94, a surrogate battle shadowing the struggle between Elena and El Azul South of the Border down Mexico way.
    It had to happen. Just a matter of time, all the experts say, a littlegratified to see their gloomiest prognostications realized. The drug violence in Mexico
had
to leak across the border. A pool of blood seeping under the fence, an unstoppable toxic tide like the
mujados
coming across.
    Like—
    The Swine Flu.
    (Except you won’t need a “preexisting medical condition” and there is no vaccine.)
    Heche en Mexico.
    Drug war.
    Treinte strikes back at 94. Then 94 strikes back at Treinte. The bodies start stacking up in the barrios of SoCal. It will only be a matter of time, the grave newscasters warn, before an innocent (white) person gets killed.
    “Why is this my problem?” Ben asks Jaime at the “staff meeting,” which takes place in the parking lot at Salt Creek Beach.
    “From now on, you deliver your product to us,” Jaime tells Ben.
    “No way,” Ben says. “I’m not putting my people at risk.”
    “There’s no risk,” Jaime says. “We plugged the leak.”
    Yeah. Ben remembers “plugging the leak.” Ben sees it over and over again, his hand pulling the trigger on Alex. Now he says, “I don’t know …”
    “There’s no argument,” Jaime says.
    Putting a Lid (as it were) on It
    That’s our decision.
    Well, then—

213
     
    EXT. BEN’S HOUSE – THE DECK – DAY
     
    Ben and Chon stand at the railing and look off at the cerulean blue ocean.
    CHON
We’ll know where their stash houses are.
    BEN
We will know where their stash houses are, yes.
    Ben lights a bowl of dope and takes a hit.
    CHON
Lot of money in a stash house.
    BEN
Hence the name “stash house.”
    CHON
We could kick this to a whole new level. We could make the rest of the money with one big score.
    Ben passes the pipe to Chon.
    BEN
We