Savages (17 page)

Anyway, she makes a (mental) list:

Marie Antoinette, of course.

Good
clothes—the chick could shop. You turn MA loose in South Coast Plaza or Fashion Valley, you got something going.

O is familiar with Marie (they’re on first-name status now, based on shared experience) mainly from the movie with Kirsten Dunst. The movie had very cool music—New Order, the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees—and Marie was married at age fourteen and couldn’t get her husband to do her until she finally explained to him it was like a key going into a lock, which apparently got him enthused. But then she got into a lot of trouble for eating a bunch of pastries and throwing parties, which O can relate to because Paqu approved of neither of these things. The movie didn’t actually show Marie getting her head cut off, but O remembers something about that from history class in high school and
also something about the girl saying, “Let ’em eat cake,” which, you know, you’d think would be a happy thing, but you never know what’s going to piss off the French.

So there’s Marie and there’s Anne Boleyn, whom O knows from the TV series and from a movie about her sister. The girl was a real slut, apparently. She fucked a lot of guys, including maybe even her own brother. O doesn’t hold the slut thing against her—she’s fucked a lot of guys, too, and never had a brother (one pregnancy was plenty for Paqu, thank you. She went out and got her tubes tied after O), so who knows?

Anyway, the chick in the series was fucking
hot.
This catlike little body and she was, like, dirty girl, and O and Ash were very into her and
very
into the guy playing Henry VIII so when they hooked up it was OMFG. But then VIII got tired of her and she couldn’t produce a boy and they sentenced her to death for fucking her brother and some other guy and she came out of the Tower looking all demure and shit and kneeled in front of the chopping block and stretched her arms out and she had this beautiful, elegant neck, but when it comes to beautiful necks you have to give the trophy to Natalie Portman, who played Anne in the movie and Anne was a
major
cock-tease. Which O never really mastered but never really tried because she just really likes cocks so why pretend otherwise?

So there’s Marie Antoinette and Anne Boleyn.

There was Catherine somebody, but that’s season four and it hasn’t been on yet so O doesn’t know anything about her.

Then there was Lady Jane Grey, played in this old movie by that chick who was in the Harry Potter movies, and she was queen for just nine days, which is a bummer and O can’t remember why they chopped her head off, just that they did.

Mary, Queen of Scots.

O is pretty sure she was decapitated because she read something about Scarlett Johansson was going to star in the movie, but something happened and they didn’t make the movie, which O thinks was a mis
take because a lot of mammarily challenged chicks, herself included, would have happily laid down ten bucks to see Scarlett get her head cut off.

O decides to go with Marie Antoinette.

Let ’em eat cake.

The problem with intelligence is not
what
, it’s
which.
It’s too
much
info, not not enough. You have to somehow find what’s significant. So now that they have piles of shit on the Baja Cartel, stored on five thumb-drives—they have to sift through it to find what they need.

The speed helps.

Yeah, used to be a coffee-and-cigarette deal, the all-night research thing, the two intrepid investigative reporters looking for Deep Throat, the buddy cops going after that one clue before the lieutenant shuts them down because he’s getting heat from the mayor’s office.

Fuck that.

They don’t smoke (cigarettes) and Ben already has the shits without making it worse by jacking a bunch of Italian Roast and anyway, he’d just buy that fair trade crap that tastes like dirt so they go the pharmacological route.

Chemical toothpicks for the eyes.

Pop. Pop.

Sitting in front of a computer on speed is like putting the car in park while you stomp the gas pedal through the floor.

Idling at a buck ten.

She can’t take much more, Captain.

Yeah, well, she could, Jim, if she had Ben to hook her up with an
indica-sativa
blend that puts your nerves in park while leaving your brain in high gear.

Dawn finds them—

Check that—

Dawn doesn’t “find” shit—dawn’s not looking. (The only redeeming quality of the universe, Chon believes, is its indifference.)

When the sun comes up they’re still there, poring over the mass of material.

Ben, natch, wants context.

“There is no con
tent
without con
text
,” he says. Something he picked up at Berkeley.

Chon’s hoping that Ben doesn’t want to “deconstruct” the Baja Cartel. Chon wants to deconstruct the cartel, but in a very different, non-Derrida way. Context, content—he didn’t want to go down this road, but as long as they are, he just wants to go in and blast people.

He’s a little cranky without any sleep. But Chon knows from experience that it’s a Big Mistake, trying to sleep after a speed binge.

You can’t rope that pony, you gotta let it run until it drops on its own. (Warning: trying to sleep on speed may trigger a psychotic episode. Consult your physician immediately. Like, warning: if erection persists for more than four hours, consult a physician immediately and hope you have one fucking horny physician.)

Ben’s not deconstructing the cartel, he’s deconstructing the information. It looks like Dennis has gotten most of his intel from a single source—CI 1459, who isn’t identified anywhere in the file.

So Dennis isn’t giving that shit up to anybody, not even his own people. Not uncommon—an asset is just that, an asset, and bureaucrats don’t give their coins away.

We’ll get it when we need it, Ben thinks.

“Okay, so what’s your fucking context?” Chon asks.

The Lauter family consisted of four brothers and three sisters.

Chekhov, take note.

Elena was smack in the middle.

He finds a photo of Elena.

Definite MILF.

Ebony hair, high cheekbones, deep brown eyes, tight little body.

Queen Elena.

One by one, she watched her brothers go down. The only male left in the family is her boy, Hernan, but it’s not him, he’s not that guy, he’s not capable. He’s an engineer, he’s smart, he could learn the business aspect, but he’s not really serious about the engineering or anything else, except maybe pussy.

Mommy knew this, she knew that he couldn’t run the family business, part of her would have liked to just get out and let El Azul and Sinaloa have the fucking thing. But she also knew that as the last dick left standing his rivals couldn’t let her son live.

She had to take over, if only to keep him alive.

She didn’t want to find him in a barrel of acid.

She’s the most capable. She has the brains, the experience, the name, the DNA, the spine, the guys, the sangfroid, the balls and/or the ovaries.

And she finds that she likes running things, likes the power.

Elena’s hot—sexy, good-looking, smart, efficient. She uses all that to keep loyal supporters around her. She’s also ruthless—it’s love me or off with your head. She’s the Red Queen.

Azul, a former lieutenant, can’t take it. Just won’t let himself be bossed around by a woman, plus he doesn’t think she can do it. Probably doesn’t think she can drive or balance a checkbook, either, so he breaks off and forms his own thing. Goes back to the rednecks in Sinaloa and says, “Can you believe that, the Lauters are led by a woman, what’s
going to happen when she goes on the rag, huh?”

“I’ll tell you what freaking happens,” Ben says, warming to the subject, “guys get their freaking heads cut off, blood’s going to flow, all right.”

But Elena is smart—she grew up in the drug trade, there’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, so she does a cold-blooded analysis and sees she’s going to lose in a war with El Azul and Sinaloa.

A recent analysis, written by Dennis, suggests that the Elena/Hernan section of the BC is allied with a group called Los Zetas.

“The vid-clip boys,” Chon says.

Los Zetas recently have branched out across the border into California and formed a subgroup called Los Treintes. DEA doesn’t seem to know much about them, but they appear to be headed up by a former Zeta named Miguel Arroyo Salazar, aka “El Helado”—“Stone Cold.”

Ben shows Chon the old photo in the file showing a Baja State Police officer. They pull up the recording of the hostage video and look at the man with the chain saw standing next to O.

“Same guy?” Ben asks.

“Looks like it.”

“Same guy I met with today,” Ben says. “Our new boss—Miguel Arroyo Salazar.”

“He’s a dead fucker,” Chon says. Sooner or later, he’s going.

So, Ben continues, Elena recruits Zeta—pays them well, gives them their own turf to use, and tells them, “Go forth and prosper.” Go north, young men, and take California (back).

“Why?” Ben asks rhetorically.

“Because that’s where the money is,” Chon answers rhetorically.

Or is it something else? Ben ponders.

He lets that slide, though.

First things first and the first thing is to get O back alive.

Buy her back.

“We have enough here to move on,” Chon says.

Fuck context.

Let’s get to con
tent.

We have to be careful, Ben thinks.

We have to be beyond careful. If the BC gets one whiff that we’re using their own money to pay them, they’ll kill O.

So—

They find the address in one of Dennis’s files.

Way out in the new eastern housing developments that hug the mountains.

Cougar country.

Not the
new
kind of cougar, the
old
kind of cougar, actual big cats.

Dennis has had it under watch for months. Rented by one Ron Cabral, a known associate, etc.

Now Ben and Chon have it up.

They watch the cars come and go, late at night or early in the morning, usually before dawn. They get a sense of when the runs are made, when deliveries come in, go out, how many men.

Stash house.

Where money is kept until it’s packed up and delivered south.

Or not, as the case may be.

Chon parks the Mustang two miles away and hikes in through the thick chaparral on the hillsides.

Feels almost good to be humping it again.

He plops his ass down, gets out the nocs, and scopes the terrain until he finds what he’s looking for—a sharp curve in the road away from the houses. Takes a mental snapshot and stores it.

I-Rock-and-Roll, Stanland, SoCal.

An ambush is an ambush.

Is an ambush.

They go over it a gazillion times.

In Ben’s opinion.

Not enough in Chon’s.

“It’s no fucking game,” Chon says.

“Didn’t say it is,” Ben responds. “What I’m saying is I got it. It’s in my head.”

Yeah, but Chon knows it goes out of your head the second the ac
tion starts and the adrenaline kicks in. Then it’s all muscle memory that comes from repetition, repetition, repetition.

So they go over it again.

O makes the rounds of the talk shows.

O-prah, of course.

OPRAH


. . . a story of courage, of … inspiring … dignity. Please welcome O.


The audience applauds. A few stand. O, demure in a gray dress, walks out, shyly acknowledges the applause, and sits down.


OPRAH


What a truly amazing experience. What did you learn? What did you take away?


O


Well, Oprah, you know, when you’re alone that long you have no choice but to confront yourself. I think you gain a self-knowledge. You really learn about yourself.


Oprah looks to the women in the audience and smiles. “Isn’t this girl amazing?” She turns back to O.


OPRAH


(softly)


What did you learn?


O


How strong I really am. How strong a woman …


an inner strength that I hadn’t fully realized …


Applause.


OPRAH


Next, a truly awe-inspiring example of courage under pressure—O’s mother, Paqu.


O moves on to Ellen.

ELLEN


Give it up for MTV’s O!


O, in a jaunty sleeveless T-shirt that displays her tattoos, breaks out a few dance moves and then plops down in the guest chair.


ELLEN


You’ve had quite a time of it, haven’t you?


O


Oh yeah. But first—you get to do Portia de Rossi? I’d trade jerseys for that.


The audience cracks up.


She dances with Ellen, then


On to Dr. Phil.

DR. PHIL


… the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and I’m a big believer that you teach people how to treat you. You have to consent to be a hostage, and if you don’t own your part in this then you have no power to
fix it. I’ve been doing kidnap and hostage cases for thirty-five years, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. For every rat you see there are fifty you don’t.