Savages

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.