Savages

by Don Winslow

  RR could have walked.

  RR didn’t. Only walk he took was in shackles to the bus for Chino. Now he’s walking around the yard for fifteen to thirty. That’s a lot of strolls to think about your lawyer fucking you up on your own blow. RR thinks long and hard about this, maybe five whole minutes, before he makes the call.

  So now Lado is on his way to personally deliver justice, and he figures he’ll get his kitten’s paws wet. Lado likes the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, and one thing he’s learned is that mother leopards and cheetahs have to teach their young to hunt, the kittens don’t know how to instinctively. So what the mother cats do is they wound an animal but don’t finish it off. They bring it to their young so they learn how to kill.

  That’s nature.

  Now he’s going to break Esteban in—get him “wet,” in the lingo.

  The cartel needs soldiers up here. That was one of his missions when he got his green card and came here eight years ago.

  Recruit.

  Train.

  Get ready for the day.

  Now he drives to this lawyer’s place.

  He tells Esteban to grab the brown paper bag at his feet and open it. The kid does and pulls out a pistol.

  Lado makes sure to notice his reaction.

  The boy likes it. Likes the weight and heft in his hand.

  Lado can see that.

  15

  Very nice place, this house.

  Trimmed, tended lawn, manicured pebble walkway to the back of the house, to the kitchen door.

  Esteban follows Lado down the pebbled path.

  Lado rings the doorbell, even though they can see the lawyer standing at his kitchen island chopping onions. He sets down his knife and comes to the door.

  “Yes?”

  He looks annoyed, distracted, bothered maybe. Probably thinks they’re mujados looking for work.

  Lado puts one big hand to his chest and pushes him inside.

  Esteban kicks the door shut behind them.

  Now the lawyer looks scared. He glances at the knife on the cutting block but decides not to do that. He asks Lado, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Roberto Rodriguez asked me to visit you.”

  The lawyer turns white. His legs start to shake a little and Esteban feels something he never felt before in his whole life—

  Power.

  Weight.

  Some gravity on this American soil.

  The lawyer’s voice trembles. “If it’s money . . . let me get you some money.”

  Lado snorts, “Roberto could buy and sell you with what’s in his pockets. What’s money going to do for him in prison?”

  “An appeal, we could—”

  Lado shoots him, twice, in the legs.

  The lawyer crumbles to the tile floor. Folds himself up and whimpers.

  “Take your gun out,” Lado says to Esteban.

  The boy takes the pistol from his pocket.

  “Shoot him.”

  Esteban hesitates.

  “Never,” Lado says sternly, “take your gun out if you’re not going to shoot. Now shoot him. In the chest or the head, doesn’t matter.”

  The lawyer hears this and starts to beg. Tries to stand but his broken legs won’t let him. Pulls himself across the kitchen floor on his forearms, leaving a streak of blood behind him, and Esteban thinks that his mother would hate to have to clean that up.

  “Do it now,” Lado snaps.

  Esteban don’t feel powerful now.

  He feels sick.

  “If you don’t,” Lado says, “you’re a witness. I don’t leave witnesses.”

  Esteban shoots.

  The first bullet hits the lawyer in the shoulder, spinning him back down on the floor. Esteban steps up and makes sure this time, firing two bullets into his head.

  On the way out, Esteban vomits on the pebbled path.

  Later, that night, he lies with his head on Lourdes’s belly and cries. Then he whispers into her tummy, “I did it for you, m’ijo. I did it for you, my son.”

  16

  One Christmas

  What was waiting under the tree for O were—

  Boobs.

  She was hoping for a bicycle.

  This was during one of her (rare) Productive Periods, when she got herself a J-O-B, at the Quiksilver shop on Forest Avenue, and wanted green transportation to get back and forth from W-O-R-K.

  So she came down in the morning (yeah, okay, it was eleven-thirty but still the fucking morning, yah), all excited like a kid even though she was nineteen at the time, and didn’t see the shiny new bicycle she was hoping for but a shiny new envelope instead. Paqu was sitting cross-legged on the floor (this was during her Buddhist phase) and Stepdad Three (Ben once observed that O was in the early phases of a Twelve Stepdad Program) was plopped in his easy chair grinning at her like the lascivious mouth-breathing cretin that he was, blissfully ignorant that he had one foot out the door anyway to make room for Four.

  O opened the envelope to find a gift card from a cosmetic surgeon for:

  “1 Complimentary Breast Augmentation.”

  “This does mean, actually, two complimentary breast augmentations, right?” she asked Paqu.

  “I’m sure it does, darling.”

  “Because otherwise . . .” She drooped one shoulder down to illustrate, ultra–creeped out that Three was, like, assessing her bosom.

  “Merry Christmas, my darling girl,” Paqu said, her face radiant with the glow of giving.

  “I kind of like my breasts the way they are,” O said. Small, yes, but tasty, yes, and other people seem to like them, too. Given the right mellow weed, people have dined on them for hours . . .

  “But, Ophelia, don’t you want breasts like . . .”

  She searches for the right word.

  The word is “mine,” O thought.

  Don’t you want boobs like mine? Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the nicest rack of all? Me, me, me, me. I walk through South Coast Plaza and make men hard from across the aisle. To affirm that I’m still attractive, not getting old, getting old getting old not. Don’t you want to be beautiful like me?

  Yeah, no.

  “I really wanted a bicycle, Mom.”

  Later, after three apple martinis over Xmas dinner at Salt Creek Inn, Paqu asked O if she was a lesbian. O confessed that she was. “I’m a five-five bull dyke, Mom. Carpet munching and strap-ons are what I like, you bet.”

  She traded the gift card to Ash for a bright red ten-speed.

  Quit her job three weeks later anyway.

  17

  One day when Chon—then Johnny—was three years old, his father taught him a lesson about trust.

  John Sr. was a founding member of the Association, the legendary group of Laguna beach boys who made millions of dollars smuggling marijuana before they fucked up and went to prison.

  Big John lifted Little Johnny up to the living room fireplace mantel, held his arms out, and told him to jump. “I’ll catch you.”

  Delighted, smiling, the little boy launched himself off the mantel, at which point Big John lowered his arms, did an ole, and Little Johnny crashed face-first on the floor. Dazed, hurt, bleeding from the mouth where a front tooth had gone into his lip, Chon learned the lesson his father had intended about trust:

  Don’t.

  Ever.

  Anyone.

  18

  Chon hasn’t seen much of his father since the old man finished his fourteen-year federal stretch.

  John came back to Laguna but by that time Chon was in the navy and they just sort of drifted apart. Chon bumps into him every once in a while at Starbucks or the Marine Room or just on the street and they exchange greetings and as much small talk as Chon can manage and that’s about it.

  There’s no hostility; there’s just no connection, either.

  This doesn’t bother Chon.

  He doesn’t yearn for it.

  Chon’s thinking is that twenty-some years ago his father fucked hi
s mother, the sperm did their SEAL thing, and so what? His father was getting his nut, not signing up for Little League, fishing trips, or heart-to-heart talks. As for the fuckee, aka Mom, she liked dope a lot more than she liked Chon, and Chon gets this totally—he likes dope a lot more than he likes her.

  Ben once observed that you could say Chon was “raised by wolves,” except that wolves are warm-blooded mammals that care for their young.

  19

  Some backstory on Ben.

  The missing Ben, the rarely present Ben.

  Start with the genetic material—

  Ben’s father is a shrink, his mother a shrink.

  Can we safely say he grew up in an overanalyzed home? Every word reconsidered, every action reinterpreted, every stone turned over for its hidden meaning.

  What he craved most was privacy.

  He loved (and loves) his parents. They are good, warm, caring people. People of the Left who came from People of the Left. His grandparents were New York Jewish Communists, unreconstructed apologists for Stalin (“What was he supposed to do?”) who sent their kids (Ben’s parents) to a socialist summer camp in Great Barrington, Mass., where they met and formed an early association between sexuality and left-wing political dogma.

  Ben’s parents went from Oberlin to Berkeley, smoked pot, did acid, dropped out, dropped back in again, and ended up with comfortably lucrative psychotherapy practices in Laguna Beach.

  Where they were among the very few Jews.

  (One day Chon was bitching about being one of the few [former] military types in Laguna Beach, California, and Ben decided to take him up on it.

  “You know how many Jews there are in Laguna?” he asked.

  “Is your mother Jewish?” Chon inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “Three.”

  “Correct.”)

  Ben grew up listening to Pete Seeger and both Guthries, Joan Baez, Dylan. Subscriptions to Commentary, Tikkun, The Nation, Tricycle, Mother Jones. Stan and Diane (Ben was instructed to call them by their first names) were not upset when they caught fourteen-year-old Ben with a joint—just told him to smoke it in his room and of course asked him endless questions: Was he happy? Unhappy? Alienated? Not? Everything okay at school? Was he confused about his sexuality?

  He was happy, unalienated, pulling a 4.0 and relentlessly straight with a series of Laguna girls.

  He just wanted to get high every now and then.

  Stop analyzing everything.

  Ben grew up in privilege but not wealth.

  Nice but not luxurious house in the hills above downtown Laguna, such as it is. Mom’s and Pop’s offices were in the house, so he learned to come in the side door after school so as not to walk in on the patients in the waiting room.

  He grew up Laguna cool.

  Hit at the beach, smoked herb, walked around barefoot. Hung at the basketball court, the volleyball court (was really good there, met Chon there, partnered up and beat a lot of other teams there), the playground.

  Did well in school.

  Genius at botany.

  And business.

  Ben went to Berkeley—of course.

  Where else?

  Double major—botany and marketing, and no one asked what was up with that. Summa cum, Phi Beta Kappa, honors thesis. But Ben was a SoCal, not a NoCal (and these are not only different states of mind, they are different countries)—he’s sun, not fog, light, not heavy—so he came home to Laguna.

  Hooked up with Chon—when Chon was home—and they played a lot more volleyball.

  And went into business.

  20

  Every great company has an origin story and here is Ben and Chonny’s:

  They’re hanging out at the beach, Chon on extended leave between his two hitches, and they’re playing volleyball on the court next to the Hotel Laguna.

  Ben and Chon are the kings of the court, and why not? Two tall, lanky, athletic guys who make a great team. Ben is the setter who thinks of the game as chess, Chon is the spiker who goes for the kill. They win a lot more often than they lose, they have a good time, and tanned chicks in bikinis and suntan oil stop and watch them do it.

  It’s a good life.

  So one day they’re sitting on the sand post-match and start speculating about the future—

  —what are they going to do—

  and Ben brings up that old saw “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

  Which sounds good to them.

  Okay, what do we love? Chon asks.

  Sex

  Volleyball

  Beer

  Dope

  They don’t want to act in or make porn films, so sex is out. There are only about two guys in the whole world who make a decent living playing volleyball, the whole microbrewery thing is a bust, so . . .

  Ben’s been playing with hydro in his room.

  A lot of trial and error, but lately he’s actually produced some pretty potent stuff that he and Chon and O have smoked up.

  And they love getting high, ergo . . .

  Ben has the scientific and business knowledge and Chon has . . .

  The baditude . . .

  And a pedigree in this sort of thing, given his legacy.

  “You were there when the Association tubed,” Ben observed. “What went wrong?”

  “Greed,” Chon said. “Greed, carelessness, and stupidity.”

  (Qualities that, to Ben, pretty much describe not only the defunct Association but the human species as a whole—greedy, stupid, and careless.)

  Vowing to avoid greed, stupidity, and carelessness, Ben and Chon decided to go into the marijuana business. Not as smugglers or dealers, but as growers.

  Their goal: to produce the best marijuana in the world.

  This was the seed (we’re getting there) of an idea, and, like any great idea, it all starts with the seed.

  The best cannabis seed in the world comes from . . .

  Afghanistan.

  No ocean, no waves

  But hellaciously fine cannabis seeds, the absolute premium of which is called—

  The White Widow.

  Coincidence or fate?

  You decide.

  21

  The wine world is basically divided into red and white. (We ain’t gonna go far with this—wine types are almost as hateful as tweekers. Every great wine-tasting session should end with arsenic.)

  The cannabis world is basically divided into indica and sativa.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, indicas basically have a higher dose of CBDs than THCs and sativas have the reverse ratio.

  Got it?

  No, unless you’re a blazer you don’t, so some definitions (and no, there won’t be a quiz at the end because we’re talking about stoners here):

  CBD is short for a substance in plants called cannabidiol. THC is the acronym of a substance in plants called tetrahydrocannabinol, aka Delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol.

  Unless you’re Ben or Chon you don’t need to know this shit, but to understand Ben and Chonny’s you do need to get that the indica blends of cannabis—more CBD, less THC—produce a sleepy, heavy, tranquilizing kind of high. The sativas—more THC, less CBD—get your brain and genitals really cranking.

  Or you can put it in terms of energy:

  Indica = low energy. You’re going to flop on the sofa and fall asleep to whatever is on TV because changing the channel requires too much effort.

  Sativa = high energy. You’re going to fuck your brains out on the sofa and then invent perpetual motion mechanics, or at least try to while you’re repainting the living room.

  So just as wine connoisseurs will yap endlessly about this Merlot, that Beaujolais, grown from this or that fucking grape, stoners will likewise enthuse about different blends of indica and sativa—for their taste, their aroma, but mostly their effect. And finding the perfect blend of indica and sativa to suit the individual taste, that is the art of a master grower.

  Just like great wine starts w
ith the grape, great boo starts with the seed.

  To wit, the White Widow.

  The cannabis produced from the White Widow seed is the strongest in the world. The bud of that strain is 25 percent THC—the old Delta 9 is just about bursting out of it.

  Expensive, hard to obtain, difficult to grow, and

  Worth it.

  So on Chon’s last tour of Stanland he came home with—

  A bad case of PTLOSD

  A burqa for O to wear on special occasions and

  A bundle of White Widow seeds.

  22

  Giving White Widow seeds to Ben was like giving Michelangelo some paintbrushes and a blank ceiling and saying—

  Go for it, dude.

  What Ben did was take the White Widow and selectively breed it until it was even stronger. George Washington Ben Carver created a Frankenstein seed, a mutant X-Men seed, a genetic freak of a seed.

  This was a plant that could almost get up, walk around, find a lighter, and fire itself up. Read Wittgenstein, have deep conversations about the meaning of life with you, cocreate a television series for HBO, cause peace in the Middle East (“The Israelis and Palestinians could coexist in two parallel universes, sharing space but not time”). It took a strong man—or a strong woman, in O’s case—to take more than one hit of the Ultra White Widow.

  With that as his base, Ben started to create different blends of indica and sativa, all incredibly powerful, and he could customize them for each individual customer. Of which there evolved an increasing number as the word of mouth got around. Whatever it was you wanted to feel or not feel, Ben and Chon had dope for you.

  One, then five, then ten, then thirty grow houses, all producing primo 420.

  They became almost cultlike figures.