by Don Winslow
They have a nice home at the end of a cul-de-sac in Mission Viejo. A typical suburban California home in a typical suburb, and when they moved up from Mexico eight years ago Delores was delighted.
Good schools for the kids, parks, playgrounds, excellent Little League program in which their two sons are stars—Francisco is a pitcher, Junior is an outfielder with a strong bat—and their oldest, Angela, made cheerleader at the high school this year.
It’s a good life.
Lado pulls in to the driveway and turns off the radio.
Health care, who gives a shit about health care? You put money aside and you take care of yourself if you get sick. He had to set up a group insurance plan for his employees at the landscaping business and it pissed him off.
Delores is in the kitchen fixing dinner—
—wise Latina—
—when he comes in and sits down.
“Where are the kids?”
“Angela is at cheer practice,” Delores says, “the boys are at baseball.”
She’s still a guapa, Delores, even after three kids. Should be, he thinks, with the time she puts in at the gym. I should have invested in 24-Hour Fitness, got some of it back. Either that or she’s at the spa getting something worked on—her hair, her skin, her nails, something.
Sitting there yapping with her friends.
Bitching about their husbands.
He don’t spend enough time at home, he don’t spend enough time with the kids, he never takes me out anymore, he don’t help around the house …
Yeah, maybe he’s busy. Making money to pay for the house he don’t spend enough time in, paying for the cheerleader outfits, the baseball equipment, the English tutors, the cars, the pool cleaners, the gym, the spa …
She wipes the counter down in front of him.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“Get me a beer.”
She reaches into the refrigerator
—new, three thousand dollars
grabs a bottle of Corona and sets it down—a little hard—on the counter.
“What, you unhappy again?” Lado asks.
“No.”
She sees a “therapist” once a week. More money that she resents him busting his ass for.
Says she’s depressed.
Lado gets up, steps behind her, and wraps his arms around her waist. “Maybe I should make you pregnant again.”
“Sí, that’s what I need.”
She slips from his grasp, walks over to the oven, and takes out a casserole of enchiladas.
“Smells good.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Kids home for dinner?”
“The boys. Angela’s out with her friends.”
“I don’t like that.”
“Good. You tell her.”
“We should sit down the whole family,” Lado says.
Delores feels like she’s going to explode.
Sit down as a family—when you show up, when you drop in from God knows what you’re doing, when you’re not out with your muchachos, or doing your putanas, we should sit down the whole family. But she says, “She’s going to Cheesecake Factory with Heather, Brittany, and Teresa. Dios mio, Miguel, she’s fifteen.”
“Back in Mexico—”
“We’re not in Mexico,” she says. “We’re in California. Your daughter is an American. That was the idea, wasn’t it?”
“We should go back more often.”
“We can go next weekend, if you want,” she says. “See your mother …”
“Maybe.”
She looks at a calendar fastened to the refrigerator by a magnet. “No, Francisco has a tournament.”
“Saturday or Sunday?”
“Both, if they win.”
This is her life—professional chauffeur. Baseball games, soccer matches, gymnastics, cheerleading, playdates, the mall, Sylvan Learning Center, dry cleaner’s, supermarket, he doesn’t even know.
Delores can’t wait for Angela to get her license, drive herself anyway, maybe help with the boys. She’s gained five pounds, all of it around the hips, just driving around sitting on her ass.
She knows she’s still a good-looking woman. She hasn’t let herself go like a lot of the Mexican wives her age do. All the time at the gym—Jazzercise, treadmill, weights, torture sessions with Troy—staying away from the sodas, the bread. The hours at the spa and the salon, getting her hair colored, her nails done, her skin so it’s nice, and does he even notice?
Maybe they go out once a month as a family—to TGIF’s or Marie Callender’s, California Pizza Kitchen if he’s feeling generous, but just the two of them? To someplace nice? An adult restaurant for a little wine, a nice menu? She can’t remember the last time.
Or the last time he fucked her.
As if he wanted to, anyway.
What’s it been? A month? More? The last time he came in at two in the morning a little drunk and wanted some? Probably because he couldn’t find a whore that night, so I would have to do as a segundera?
The boys come rolling in and they’re all over him. The pitches they made, the hits they got, don’t even bother to take their cleats off until she yells at them to do it. Mud all over the kitchen floor and tomorrow Lupe will bitch about the extra work, the lazy Guatemalan puta. Delores loves her boys more than life, but dios mio …
It hits her like a smack in the face
That she wants a divorce.
54
The Montage.
Resort Hotel.
Useta be a trailer park called Treasure Island.
Aaarggh, Jim, I know where the treasure be.
The treasure be in a luxury beachfront hotel where the beautiful people will drop four thousand a night for a suite. This in contrast to a bunch of retirees and trailer park trash living the SoCal sweet life (the lo-cal sweet life?) on the budget plan. Only money they’re gonna make is for the owners of 7-Eleven, the liquor store, and the taco joint. Cheap chump change.
Plow that dump under and build a luxury hotel, give it a vaguely French name, figure out the most outrageous price you can get away with and then double it. If you build it they will come.
Ben and Chon check in to the suite but don’t plan to spend the night. They slap down the 2K for the afternoon. Get a detached cabana with floor-to-ceiling view of the best right break in California. Have lunch catered by room service. Set up early so as not to disturb the meeting. The cartel reps don’t like waiters walking in and out, figure they’re really DEA agents all wired up.
No worries.
Ben brought in his own geeks, Jeff and Craig, two stoners who do all his IT. They have an office on Brooks Street they’re never in. You want to find these boys you walk across the PCH down Brooks to the bench overlooking the break and wave your arms. If they recognize you, they might paddle in. They do this because they can—they invented the targeting system for the B-1 bomber and now they make sure all of Ben’s communications are sacrosanct.
How Jeff and Craig got the gig was, they approached Ben at an outdoor table at Cafe Heidelberg downstairs from their “office,” sat down at his table with their lattes and laptop, cranked the latter (not the latte) open, and showed him his last three days of e-mail.
Chon wanted to shoot them; Ben hired them.
On the spot.
Pays them in cash and herb.
So today they show up at the Montage and sweep the air, clear Ben’s aura of any bad vibes from the alphabet agencies. Then they set up jammers so any eavesdropper is just going to get a sound like a junior high garage band playing with the feedback.
Chon does a sweep of another kind—walks the perimeter looking for potential shooters—sicarios, in Spanish. He knows it’s an excess of cautious, over-due diligence, because no one’s going to perpetrate any wet work at the Montage. Bad for business. Capitalists honor the First Commandment—Thou Shalt Not Fuck with the Money. You don’t see no massacres on Rodeo Drive, either, and you ain’t gonna�
�unless there’s a post office nearby. So no one’s likely to pump AK rounds into any golden geese here. It was still Treasure Island you could splatter chunks of flesh, bone fragments, and vital organs all over them single-wides and it’s film-at-eleven, but it’s the Montage now. The Montaaaggge. It’s French, it’s genteel.
The rich do not mess with each other’s money or leisure.
Or reluxation.
But Chon walks the beat because there’s always that first time, in’t it? Always that exception that proves the rule. That guy who says, “Fuck it, the rules don’t apply to me.” Above it all. The bozo who’s going to go early John Woo all over the manicured lawns and flower beds just to show he doesn’t give a fuck about convention.
Yeah, but we’re talking about the Baja Cartel here, and they own a bunch of hotels in Cozumel, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo, so they appreciate that flying lead makes the touristas nervous. No Germans are gonna go parasailing if they think a bullet is going to clip the line and send them floating away to the ozone. (God, that would suck, wouldn’t it?)
Chon gets back from patrol, Ben twigs him about it. “No guys with sombreros, big droopy mustaches, and bandoliers?”
“Fuck you.”
Which is how this thing began.
55
The two Cartel reps show up in gray Armani.
Black silk shirts open at the throat, but no gold chains.
French cuffs. Italian shoes.
In contrast to Ben—faded denim shirt, faded jeans, huaraches.
And Chon—black Rip Curl T-shirt, black jeans, Doc Martens.
Handshakes.
Intros around.
Ben.
Chon.
Jaime.
Alex.
Mucho gusto.
Jaime and Alex are your classic early-thirties, Tijuana-spawned, San Diego–born, dual-passport Baja aristocracy. Went to school in TJ until they were thirteen, then moved to La Jolla so they could attend the Bishop’s School, then college in Guadalajara. Jaime is an accountant, Alex is a lawyer.
A&J aren’t flunkies or errand boys.
They’re highly valued, well-respected, handsomely compensated upper-middle management in the BC. They have stock options, medical benefits including primo dental, pension plans, and rotating use of the company condos in Cabo.
(Nobody ever quits the Baja Cartel. Not because of blood oaths or fear of getting clipped, but because … well, why would you?)
Ben serves lunch.
Wraps of duck in hoisin sauce with green onions. Club sandwiches with pancetta instead of bacon, smoked turkey, and arugula. Trays of sushi, platters of salad. Fresh fruit—mangoes, papayas, kiwi, pineapple. Pitchers of iced tea, Arnold Palmers, ice water. Gourmet cookies—chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin.
Coffee.
Very nice, very fresh.
Alex gets down to business.
“First of all,” he says, “thank you for arranging this meeting.”
“Pleasure,” says Ben.
As if.
“We appreciate your willingness to dialogue,” Alex says.
“Dialogue” is a noun, not a verb, Chon thinks, annoyed. “Decapitation” is also a noun, whereas “beheading” could go either way.
“I can’t help but wish,” Ben says, “that you had extended an invitation to talk before you took certain actions.”
“Would you have responded?” Alex asks.
“We’re always willing to talk.”
“Really?” Alex asks. “Because the last time someone had a market dispute with you, I believe you settled it with a shotgun and very little, if any, conversation.”
He looks pointedly at Chon.
Chon looks back.
Fuck you.
“I can assure you,” Alex says, “that we are not some motorcycle gang.”
“We know who you are,” Ben says.
Alex nods, then—
CUT TO:
56
INT. MONTAGE SUITE – DAY
ALEX
We view Ben and Chon’s as a prestige product—a good cut above the norm—and we would continue to market it that way. We’re very aware—and appreciative—of the fact that you have a dedicated customer base with a prime demographic, and the last thing we want to do is disrupt that.
JAIME
Concur. Absolutely.
BEN
I’m glad to hear it.
ALEX
On the other hand—
CHON
Here it comes.
ALEX
—on the other hand, your sales structure—and I think you’d admit this, Ben, if you were to be really candid—is wasteful and inefficient. You’re very liberal in your compensation policies, your profit margin is nowhere near where it should be—
BEN
According to you.
ALEX
No, that’s right, according to us, and we want to reorganize that to bring it up to where it can be.
JAIME
Maximize its full potential. Think “greatest and highest use,” Ben.
Ben gets up, pours an iced tea, and walks around the room.
BEN
You’re smart enough to realize that our retail customers—the high demographic that you value—are used to buying the product from the people that they’re used to buying it from. It’s more than just a business relationship. If you try to replace those people with …
CHON
A bunch of Mexican field hands.
BEN
. . . an anonymous sales force, it just won’t work.
ALEX
That’s where we’re counting on you, Ben.
BEN
How so?
ALEX
To deliver your prime customer base along with your fine product.
CUT TO:
57
“Our demand,” Alex says, “is not that you stop growing your product. Our demand is that you sell your product to us at a price that allows us to realize a reasonable profit. A big piece of that puzzle is your continuing to produce the product and helping to retain the customers who purchase it.”
Jaime nods.
Apparently Alex got it right.
“So basically,” Ben says, “you want us to come work for you.”
“Effectively, yes.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t want to,” Ben says. “I’ve always worked for myself. I have no interest in working for anyone else. Nothing personal, no offense.”
Alex says, “I’m afraid our client will take it personally.”
Ben shrugs. Pop-psych-Buddhist truism—I can only control my actions, not other people’s reactions. Ben tries to explain. “I want out of the dope business. I’m bored and it’s become a drag. I want to do something different.”
“Such as?” Alex asks.
“Clean, renewable energy.”
Alex looks puzzled.
“Windmills and shit like that,” Jaime says.
“Oh.”
Alex looks puzzled.
“And solar,” Ben adds.
“Green,” Jaime says.
“There you go.”
“Couldn’t you do both?” Alex asks.
“Again,” Ben answers, “don’t want to.”
He walks out, Chon behind him.
58
They look down at Aliso Creek Beach.
The water is a deep, cold blue.
“You don’t want to work for these guys, do you?” Ben asks.
“No,” Chon says. “Let me rephrase that—fuck no.”
“Then we don’t,” Ben says. “I mean, they can’t force us to grow herb.”
He appreciates the irony, though, that the Mexicans basically want to turn them into field workers. Plant, grow, and harvest their crop for them. He digs the reverse colonialism of it, but it just isn’t his thing.
Chon looks back at the suite. “We could just kill them both. Get this party started.”
“Buddha w
ould be so pissed.”
“That fat Jap.”
“Fat Indian.”
“I thought he was Japanese,” Chon says. “Or Chinese. Some ‘ese.’”
“Indianese.”
They walk back to the room.
59
Ben’s fucking had it.
Reached the limits of his hydrocrisy.
Goes off on a rant:
Let’s cut the shit, shall we? You guys are here at the behest of an organization that cut off seven people’s heads, and you’re talking like you’re from Goldman Sachs? You represent a regime that murders and tortures and you sit here and lecture me about my business practices? You’re going to increase profits by coercing me to sell at a low price—that’s all, that’s your genius “business plan”—and now you want me to eat your shit and call it caviar? You can put a thug in an expensive suit and what you get is a well-dressed thug, so let’s not pretend that this is anything other than what it is, extortion.
Nevertheless—
You want our marijuana business? You got it.
We can’t fight you, don’t want to fight you. We surrender.
Hasta la.
Vaya con.
AMF.
(Adios, motherfuckers.)
60
Alex turns to Chon. “What do you have to say?”
Oh come on.
Come onnnn.
We know what Chon has to say.
We’ve covered that already.
61
It’s the baditude.
His beatitude.
62
O is at—
South Coast Plaza.
The Mecca and Medina of SOC consumerism where retail pilgrims pay homage at a multitude of shrines:
Abercrombie & Fitch, Armani, Allen Schwartz and Allen Edmonds, Aldo shoes, Adriano Goldschmied, American Eagle and American Express, Ann Taylor and Anne Fontaine
