Savages (22 page)

“Jewelry is very important,” she tells him. “Jewelry and lotion. I’d pull back on the chocolates, though, because she’s probably feeling all fat and stuff.”

“She is.” Esteban sighs.

“Yeah, well,
you
didn’t bag the groceries,
amigo
,” O says. “And are you doing the deed regularly?”

“Que?”

“Drilling for oil, digging for gold, performing your husbandly duties?” O forms a “V” with two fingers of her left hand and shoves her right index finger back and forth between them.

Esteban is shocked. “She’s pregnant!”

“Not dead,” O says. “And during her second trimester her hormones are hopping around like bunnies in a field of clover. She’s hornier than a convent. You have to take care of business, boyfriend, or she’ll think
you
don’t think she’s beautiful anymore, and then look out.”

“She is beautiful.” Esteban sighs.

Whipped, whipped, whipped.

“Show her.”

Actually, one of the things O likes about Esteban is that he’s sexually unthreatening.

Which O appreciates these days.

She doesn’t really like the idea of being touched, never mind being entered, being
violated
, which she used to like a lot. Her once voracious sexual appetite has dwindled to a sensual bulimia. Her little bud that used to pop out and welcome any new sensation now hides in the closet in the fetal position.

Thank you so much, my clit-sis, Elena.

And Chain Saw Guy.

Summoning that image is a mistake because it turns on the vid-clip. She squeezes her eyes shut and when she opens them again the bachelor’s head is floating in water and it’s a second before she realizes that he’s just sunk down in the hot tub, but for a second there it sure looked like the bachelorette was bobbing for apples.

“Stebo, you got any weed?”

“I’m not supposed to …”

“Come on.”

Show some
huevos.

“We did this,” Ben says, looking at the images.

“Lado did it,” Chon answers.

“We
caused
it,” Ben says.

Chon goes off. Rare rush of valuable words. “If you’re going to wallow in this self-indulgent guilt trip you should never have started this in the first place. What do you think happens in a war? You think only soldiers get killed?

“You knew what you were doing when you left that van in the hood. You knew you were setting a trap. Don’t be so hypocritical as to now feel sorry for the bait.

“And you know it’s not going to stop here. Azul’s people will have to respond. There’ll be more dead kids within days. Then a counterresponse, then a counter-counter until it’s Gandhi’s world of the blind. But isn’t that what we started out to do?”

Chon knows what war is.

What it turns us into.

They know that Lado will keep going.

He believes there is a leak in his organization, a turncoat working for Azul, and he won’t stop until he finds him.

“Or we feed him one,” Ben says.

At goddamn last.

Party City in Irvine, Deputy Berlinger talks to a stoner clerk who remembers selling a Letterman and a Leno mask.

“You remember the guy?”

“Sort of.”

Sort of.

Fucking blazers.

“Can you describe him for me?”

Amazingly, the kid can.

Tall white guy. Brown eyes, brown hair, didn’t say much.

Paid cash.

Something, anyway, Berlinger thinks.

To get Alex off my aching ass.

You put Spin (the Money Washer) together with Jeff and Craig (the Computer Geeks) and you have:

(A) The Three Stooges

(B) The Three Tenors

(C) A Trio that Can Hack into Bank Accounts and Make $ Appear Anywhere A Trio that Can Hack into Bank Accounts and Make $ Appear Anywhere

If you guessed (C), you win. What these boys do—at Ben’s direction—is find Alex Martinez’s American bank account, then create a
new one for him, transfer deposits of thirty, forty-five, and thirty-three thousand dollars into it, spin it around the world a few times, and wash it back into new accounts.

Then they buy him a condo in Cabo.

Then they goof around some more and launder all this through several DBAs and holding companies so that only a skilled forensic accountant could understand it.

Jaime is a skilled forensic accountant.

He and Ben sit in a booth at the bar in the St. Regis.

“What do you want?” Jaime asks.

“Uncomfortable?” Ben responds. “I know you and Alex usually come to these meetings together. You’re like Mormon missionaries, the two of you. All you need is the white shirts and the skinny black ties.”

“So why did you want to meet me alone?”

Ben says, “I had my people do a little research.”

He slides a folder of documents over to Jaime, who looks at it like it’s some foreign object from outer space.

“Open it,” Ben says.

Jaime opens the file. Starts looking at it and then can’t stop. Starts turning pages faster and faster, flipping back and forth, his face bent closer to the file, his finger tracing lines and columns.

This stuff, Ben thinks, is like porn to an accountant.

Yeah, sort of, but not really. Jaime and Alex are boys, and when the former finally looks up his face is ashen.

He is seriously bummed. Ben bums him more. Cranks up the dial
on the bum-meter. “Check the deposit dates, match them up with the hijackings, and then try to tell yourself that our little Alex isn’t getting rich off my dope.”

“Where did you get this?”

“I got it,” Ben says. “But run it again yourself. By all means, check my homework.”

“I will,” Jaime says. “Alex has a wife and three kids. I’m godfather to his oldest daughter.”

“You have kids of your own?”

“Two boys. Eight and six.”

“Well,” Ben says, “you’re the accountant on this and it happened on your watch. Knowing the temperament of your client, I’d say it’s either his kids grow up without a daddy, or yours do. Unless … oh, J, you’re not in on this
with
him, are you?”

Ben leaves a twenty and Jaime sitting there.

Alex gets summoned to a meeting with Lado.

Alex gets:

(A) A bonus

(B) A promotion

(C) A strong talking-to

(D)

If you guessed (D) …

Alex can’t explain

The source of his income.

The three deposits, the condo.

It’s like a
really
bad meeting with an IRS auditor, except Alex can’t bring in H&R Block or any of those gunners that advertise on the radio.

He has to be his own attorney, but he doesn’t have the right to remain silent. And it ain’t no police interview room, it’s a warehouse out in the flats of Costa Mesa. At least Alex isn’t dangling from the ceiling. Lado knows his man—the lawyer isn’t tough, there’s no need for the piñata routine. So he just has Alex tied hand and foot, and he slaps him around a little, that’s all.

The
lambioso
lawyer is already crying.

Chon and Ben have been summoned to the meeting, too.

Elena’s idea.

To see how they react.

Ben watches this movie in horror.

CUT TO:


INT. WAREHOUSE – NIGHT


ALEX sits propped against a wall. Blood trickles from his mouth and flecks of
blood spatter the shoulders of his gray Armani suit.


LADO squats beside him, speaking quietly.


LADO


Who paid you?


ALEX


Nobody.


LADO


Azul? 94?


ALEX


I swear to God. No one.


LADO


Look, you’re going to die. We both know this. But I like you and you have given years of good service. So I’m going to give you this chance. You can die—or you and your whole family can die.


ALEX starts to sob.


LADO (CONT.)


Tell me the truth—right now—and your wife and kids cash in your insurance policy. Lie to me again and I’ll go to your house, tell them you’ve been in an accident, and bring them here. I’ll kill them in front of you.


Ben can’t breathe.

The world spins and he thinks he might throw up, but he can feel Chon willing

Not one word. Not one goddamn word.

Alex straightens up, swallows, looks Lado in the eyes, and says, “It was Azul. He’s using the 94.”

Lado pats him on the head and stands up.

Takes a revolver out of his belt and

Hands it to Ben.

“Do it.”

“He took
your
money, too,” Lado says reasonably, “so you should do him. My gift to you.”

“I’ll do it,” Chon says.

“I said
him
, not
you
,” Lado snaps.

He looks into Ben’s eyes.

As he presses the pistol into Ben’s hand.

Do it, Chon wills.

You have to do it. Think about O.

Ben shoots twice

into Alex’s chest.

“So it was Alex,” Ben says out in the parking lot. His hand shakes like a haunted house skeleton.

“It was Alex,” Lado agrees.

“We’re in the clear.”

A terse nod.

“Then it’s business as usual?”

Sí
, Business As Usual.

“I want to Skype O.”

Lado thinks about that for a second, then agrees.

O’s face

Lights up when she sees them

Big smile. “Hi, guys!”

Hi.

Hi.

“How are you?” Ben asks, feeling stupid.

“You know, I’m okay,” O says. “It’s a slacker girl’s fantasy—I’m actually forced at gunpoint to lie around my room and do nothing but watch bad TV.”

“It won’t be for much longer.”

“No?”

“No.”

“How are you guys?”

“Yeah, good,” Chon says.

“Ben, you good?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ben says.

The session is cut off.

Yeah, Ben’s fine.

“Did you notice the background on the Skype?” Ben asks Chon. “It’s a different place.”

He’s watched it about thirty times.

“And listen …”

He jacks the volume up. “What’s that in the background?”

“Voices.”

“Speaking …”

“English.”

Danny Benoit is a deacon in the Church of the Lighter Day Saints.

And a highly paid sound technician who makes the 405 run from his home in Laguna Canyon up to the L.A. recording studios about once a month in a ’66 Vette he calls the Pirate Ship.

“I sail it up to L.A. once a month,” Danny says, “fill it full of loot, and sail it back before I get caught.”

Danny B is gold.

Or platinum.

DB can make an average voice great and a great voice sublime. “The biggest names in the recording industry” all want Danny on the mixer.

He could give a shit who they are.

He ain’t interested in dropping names

Rubbing elbows

Hanging out

He just wants to do his mix, make his money, and come home.

And Danny does some of his best work for Ben & Chonny’s.

They’ve been known to give him mixes depending on what “artist” he’s sweetening at the moment. He wants
sativa
for the hip-hop,
indica
for R&B? Say the word, my man, and B&C will shortcut the usual distribution network and have it delivered direct.

Ben likes hearing tunes on the radio and knowing he contributed.

“They should put your names on the CDs,” Danny said once. In fact, he was going to thank them at the Grammys one night but fortunately thought better of it.

It would have been cool, but, uncool.

They take a recording of the Skype session to him at his house. Danny looks like your basic hippie who knows that the seventies are way over but doesn’t care. T-shirt, jeans, sandals, ponytail.

It’s rude to come to someone’s house empty-handed so they bring
him a bag of Moon Landing. (“Some say it happened, some say it was staged, we say who gives a fuck.”) Danny has immaculate stoner manners and offers it around.

Formalities over, Ben asks, “Can you enhance this?”

“Can Kobe drain a three?”

He puts it on his home system, dials some dials, switches some switches back and forth, and in a minute you might as well have been in the room with O. And the English speakers in the background?

“Radio,” Danny pronounces. “FM.”

“American station?”

Danny has a very fine ear. He knows his stations from frequent listening to find out who’s ripping him on royalties. (The answer, of course, is that everyone is—it’s that kind of business. Drugs, movies, music—all a circle-jerk of larceny.) He can listen to empty air and know which station it is.

“KROC,” he says after listening to it a few times. “ ‘The Kroc on your dial.’ Out of L.A. Enchilada plate of current pop hits and nineties music.”

“O listens to it,” Chon says.

“Can it reach Mexico?”

“It can,” Danny says, “but not with this clarity. This signal is beautiful.”

Yes it is, Ben thinks.

Back to the file, back to research.