Savages: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  Worse, she’s faced with a rebellion in her own Baja Cartel. A faction has remained loyal to her and the old family name but another answers to El Azul, an enforcer who used to work for her brothers but would now be patron.

  It has quickly evolved into open warfare. Baja averages five killings a day now. Bodies lie in the streets, or, as is El Azul’s predilection, stuffed alive into barrels of acid. Elena has lost a dozen soldiers in the past month alone.

  Of course, she has retaliated in kind.

  And been smart—allying herself with the Zetas, formerly an elite antinarcotic police unit that went into business for itself as killers-for-hire. It was the Zetas who started the beheadings.

  Killing people certainly causes fear, but decapitation seems to inspire a certain kind of primal terror. There’s just something about the idea of having your head lopped off that really gets to people. Recently they had the idea of going to the IT people and getting it to go viral—old-school leadership technique meets modern marketing—and it has been an effective tool.

  But the Zetas are expensive—cash on the barrelhead and their own drug turf as payment—so Elena has to acquire more territory just to stay even.

  And El Azul has allies of his own.

  The Sinaloa Cartel, perhaps now the most powerful in the country, adding money, soldiers, and political clout to Azul’s rebellion. Putting yet more pressure on Elena to acquire more territory, make more money to hire more men, purchase more weapons, buy more political protection. Government officials have to be paid, police and army bribed … money, money, and always more money … so she has to expand.

  But the only place left to go is north.

  El Norte.

  Thank God she had the foresight to send Lado up there, what is it now, eight years ago? To quietly prepare the ground, recruit soldiers, infiltrate turf. So when she decided it was time for the Baja Cartel to take over the drug trade in California, Lado was established and ready.

  Azul, of course, had followed suit—it was the obvious move—but so far Lado has him outmanned, outgunned, and outprepared up there.

  It was Lado who decapitated the seven men.

  Lado who will oversee the new marijuana market.

  But now these two Yanquis want to play games?

  She can’t afford their foolishness. She’s at war, she needs the income. It’s a life-and-death matter for her.

  Don’t let yourself think that they won’t kill a woman. They have—she’s seen the photos, the women with their mouths duct-taped, their hands tied behind their backs, always stripped, often raped first.

  Men teach you how to treat them.

  72

  “‘Fuck you’?” she asks now. “He said that? In those words?”

  Chinga te?

  She talks to Alex and Jaime over the phone.

  “I’m afraid so,” Alex says reluctantly.

  “‘Fuck you’ ultimately means ‘Fuck me.’”

  Alex isn’t going near that. He has a pretty dulce life going in California and he doesn’t want to see it messed up with a drug war. They can keep that shit back in Mexico for all Alex cares. So he tries to make peace.

  “They did agree to get out of the market immediately and totally,” he says.

  Elena La Reina isn’t buying. “We didn’t make them an offer to which we expected a counteroffer. We made a demand, with which we expected compliance. If we allow them to think that they can negotiate with us, sooner or later that will cause problems.”

  “Still, if they are willing to abandon the field—”

  “It sets a bad example,” Elena continues. “If we let these two negotiate with us, talk to us like that, other entities will think that they are free to do the same.”

  And she’s concerned about these two Americans—the one, they tell him, is a smart, sophisticated, reasonable businessman, who has no stomach for bloodshed. The other is an uncouth, foul-mouthed barbarian who seems to relish violence.

  In short, a savage.

  73

  Of course, most Americans are.

  Savages.

  And this is what most Americans don’t understand—that most upper- to middle-crust Mexicans think that Americans are uncivilized, unsophisticated, uncultured, rambunctious rustics who just got on a lucky streak back in the 1840s and rode it to steal half of Mexico.

  Mexico is basically Europe laid over Aztec culture laid over Indian culture, but aristocratic Mexicans think of themselves as Europeans and the Americans as …

  Well, Americans.

  And the Yanquis can joke all they want about Mexican gardeners and field workers and illegal immigrants but what they don’t get is that Mexicans think about those people as Indians and look down on them, too.

  This is Mexico’s dirty secret: the darker your skin, the lower your status. Which sort of reminds you of … of …

  Uhhhh …

  Anyway, lighter-skinned Mexicans look down their noses at darker-skinned Mexicans, but not as much as they look down on Americans.

  (Black Americans? Fucking forget it.)

  Yeah, okay, so Elena thinks that this “Chon” is an animale, but a dangerous animale. The “Ben” has his uses, but refuses to use them. In any case, she cannot brook their disobedience.

  “So do you want them killed?” Alex asks.

  Elena thinks it over and her answer is

  Not yet.

  74

  Not yet.

  Because a Dead Ben couldn’t cultivate the excellent herb that produces so much potential profit. And a Live Ben would never do that if they kill his friend Chon. And this Chon, if past is prologue, has certain uses of his own.

  So, wasteful to kill them.

  Besides, it is better that these two be seen by the rest of the world to obey.

  So—

  INT. ELENA’S OFFICE – DAY

  ELENA

  What we need to do is force him to come work for us on our stated terms.

  ALEX

  How are we going to do that?

  ELENA

  (smiling cryptically)

  I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.

  75

  Yeah, it’s a goddamn shame that Elena is allergic to feline dander, because it would be great to have a cat on her lap at that moment, but in reality she wouldn’t fuck up an expensive dress with all that cat hair anyway.

  But basically that’s what she said.

  Which begs a question

  Doesn’t it?

  76

  Elena knows that love makes you strong

  And love makes you weak.

  Love makes you vulnerable.

  So if you have enemies

  Take what they love.

  77

  O

  looks fantastic in your basic little black dress that nevertheless must have cost a mortgage payment. Sheer black stockings and black fuck-me shoes. Her hair cut and dyed back to its “natural” blonde, shiny and sleek.

  “Wow.”

  Ben says.

  Chon nods his agreement.

  She smiles at their approval, revels in it, basks in the sunshine of their admiration.

  “You went all out,” Ben says.

  “I did,” O answers. “I’m going out with both my men.”

  78

  They take a limo to the Salt Creek Grille.

  Hard to get a table there at short notice unless you’re Ben the King of Hydro and then you could get a table at the freaking Last Supper if that’s what you want. Yeah, they’d rush Jesus through dessert to accommodate Ben (“The gentleman at the end already took care of the bill, sir. With cash. Come back and see us again soon”), so table for three is no problema.

  Beautiful there under the strings of lights on the PCH.

  Nothing not to love.

  Fine soft spring night, the air smells like flowers and O is beautiful, smiling, and happy. The food is great although Ben just has the miso soup, which he seasons with Lomotil tablets, the chemical cork, as any Th
ird World sojourner knows.

  Not O—she fired up some of Ben’s appetizer boo and eats like a pregnant horse. Starts with the calamari then hits the French onion soup, the grilled ahi with cracked pepper crust and aioli, garlic mashed potatoes, Gujerati green beans, then the crème brûlée.

  The wine flows.

  No bill, no tab, no receipt but they leave a liberal “as-if” tip, then go out to the limo, blaze up, and hit the exclusive hotel bars—the St. Moritz, the Montage, the Ritz-Carlton, the Surf & Sand. Apple martinis and O grabbing glances everywhere, she’s so hot with her two men.

  “It’s like that movie,” she says, standing on the patio of the Ritz looking out at the moonlight hitting the breakers.

  “What movie?” Ben asks.

  “That old movie,” O says, “with Paul Newman when he was alive and Robert Redford when he was young. I was home sick one day from school and it was on cable.”

  “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Chon kicks in. “If I follow O’s drift, you’re Butch and I’m Sundance.”

  “Which one was Butch?” Ben asks.

  “Newman,” Chon answers. “Which fits, because you’re into the philanthropist thing. I’m the sexy shooter.”

  “I’m the girl in it,” O says happily.

  “Didn’t they get killed at the end?” Ben asks.

  “Not the girl,” says O.

  79

  Lado gets tired

  Following these rich spoiled gueros up and down the Gold Coast.

  Them in their limo.

  Good to get a look at them, though. The one moves like a killer and they’ll have to be careful with him. This is the one that said “Fuck you” to Elena (and we already know how this kind of thing goes down with Lado).

  The other looks soft and easy.

  No problem.

  The puta, la guerita?

  What Lado can’t figure out is, whose woman is she? Which cock does she suck? They both treat her like she’s their woman—an arm around the shoulder, a peck on the lips, but the men don’t look like they’re going to butt heads.

  Could it be that she does them both?

  And do they know?

  And not care?

  Fucking savages.

  80

  After the bar crawl they take a walk on the boardwalk at Main Beach.

  Laguna.

  A gentle arc anchored by the Inn at Laguna on the north and the old Hotel Laguna on the south. Tall graceful palm trees, tropical flowers, moon sparkling on the small waves. The basketball courts, the volleyball courts, the playground.

  The old lifeguard tower.

  One of Ben’s favorite spots on earth and probably why he always eventually comes home.

  So they walk, a little drunkenly, and talk about retirement from the dope business. What he and Chon are going to do, who they’re going to be. O is geeked by the energy idea, wonders if maybe there’s a place for her and the answer is of course. This business is different from the last business, no risks legal or otherwise, all aboveboard, transparent in the open air.

  Launder the dope money, it comes out sunshiny clean as energy.

  They’re happy about this.

  Even Chon is happy about this now he’s thought a little and drank a lot. Might be nice to let the adrenaline level drop a little. Will take some getting used to, but it might be a good thing. Swap the hardware of guns for the hardware of turbines, blades, and panels. Shoot electricity around like streams of bullets.

  Light it up.

  Ben is happy.

  Walking on this beach he loves with these people he loves.

  The arc of the coast wraps around him like their arms.

  81

  Elena lies in her big lonely bed and looks at a soap opera.

  Watches other people’s passion.

  Magda calls from school.

  How are you? I’m fine. How are you? Nothing new, really …

  Elena knows that the call is meant to conceal more than it reveals but she understands and even approves. Good for the girl to get out and have her own life. As much as she can, anyway, shadowed everywhere by bodyguards. She has told them to be discreet and that they are security, not spies—she does not need to know what she does not need to know.

  The light from the television flickers on the grenade screen outside the window and Elena watches that for a few moments. Then the two lovers on the screen start to yell at each other and she turns her attention to that and the argument resolves in an embrace and a fiery kiss.

  When the phone rings it’s Lado.

  The two gueros went out with a girl and they all went back to the same house.

  “A whore?” Elena asks.

  “Not a professional,” Lado answers. “I don’t think.”

  She looks and acts like a rich girl.

  Elena hears this and wonders about Magda. Does she look and act like a rich girl? Probably so. I should have a word with her about toning it down.

  “Whose girlfriend is she?” Elena asks. “Does she belong to Mr. Let’s Cut the Shit or Mr. Fuck You?”

  “I don’t know,” Lado answers.

  He explains his difficulty.

  “You’re there now,” she says.

  “Outside the house, yes.”

  “And the three of them are still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting.”

  Not to Lado. He’s bored. He has four good men with him, all mujados, paperless, untrackable, stone killers who could be back across the border before the sun goes up. The three gueros are drunk and stoned—this might be the easiest they would ever have it against the killer—

  “I can do it now.”

  “That means the girl, too, though.”

  Lado lets his silence answer.

  82

  Another awkward uncharacteristic silence.

  When they get back to Ben’s.

  O wondering what (who) to do.

  But Ben busts out

  The sex dope.

  Moist, musky, earthy, tasty, fetid fucking boo.

  One toke busts the dew out on your blossom, two makes you flow flow flow. You swell and flow, grip and let go, and cry. Tears from your pussy, tears from your eyes, your nips would weep if they could, it’s that good. And that’s for the women, for the men it’s

  Taproot time.

  Could bust through a concrete sidewalk looking for the light, searching for sun. So hard, so hard so hard but you last, literally for fucking ever. Fucking forever, every nerve on your skin a shimmering pleasure center, like, she touches your freaking ankle you moan.

  Ben & Chon’s Sex Dope.

  Responsible for more orgasms on the West Coast than Doctor Johnson.

  No wonder the Mexicans want it.

  Everybody wants it.

  You give this to the Pope he’d be frisbeeing condoms off the balcony to grateful, adoring thousands. Telling them to go for it. God is good, get laid. God is love, get good.

  O takes two tokes.

  OMG.

  O My fucking G.

  Spot.

  Chon hits on it, too. Takes one long one but one long one is long enough. O and Chon splayed out on the bed. He flops down beside O, who takes another whack and hands it to Ben. He sucks it down and this is more than a toke, it’s a decision, an agreement, a tacit acceptance that they’re going to cross a river.

  They all feel it.

  O, the center, the middle, the conduit of their tripartite love.

  They’re in no hurry, though, every slow move is fascifuckinating. Takes Chon about thirty-seven minutes just to peel the shoulder strap of her dress down her arm and she feels like she’s going to come just from that. She has on this transparent black bra and he spends a good five years stroking her breast with the back of his fingers watching feeling that nipple trying to poke through the material like a plant coming up in the spring until she reaches behind and unsnaps the damn thing (Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall) because she wants to feel his skin on her
breast before it just bursts open and when he does she has a little one right there and one when he puts his lips on her nip and the colors in the room get crazy.

  Colors go positively psychotic when he slides down, opens her with his fingers, and tongues her. Very unlike Chon, this oral loving, he’s usually a right-to-the-dicking guy but now he takes his time and hums little happy tunes into her (Little Miss Echo), presses his finger onto her spongy spot, and she writhes and wriggles and wiggles, pants and moans and coos and comes and comes and comes (O!) and then rolls to her side, yanks down his jeans, grabs his dick, and puts it inside of her (where it belongs).

  Ben strokes her back. Runs his fingers slowly up and down her spine, along the curve of her ass, down the backs of her thighs, her calves, her ankles, her feet, and back up again.

  Exquisite.

  O says, “I want both. Both my boys.”

  She reaches behind her to feel his warm hardsoft wood. Ben is pine, no—oak, no—sandalwood, sweet, scented, sacred sandalwood and she places him where she wants him, Chon’s cold-hot steel pumps her fills her but not all of her then she feels Ben push and there’s this little resistance but then he’s inside and now she has both her men inside her (where they belong).

  Who knew they were such musicians, who knew they were a duet capable of this rhythm, this beat this dance? Who knew she was an instrument capable of these notes? A slow song at first, slow and soft, largo and piano, then the pace picks up, one strain comes on as the other recedes, back and forth, a relentless driving beat. Ben’s hands on her breasts, Chon’s on her waist, she touches Chon’s face, Ben’s hair. Her two men, driving in her, playing her, she hears herself scream now, no refuge from the pleasure, no break, no eighth-note rests, no respite, no sanctuary, one thin membrane separating them, she’s dripping, swelling, grabbing, gripping, pouring, shooting screaming one long note as they come together.