Savages

90

Ben and Chon get busy.

Lots to do, disengaging.

First they get on the phone, the text, e-mail to all their retailers and tell them to take a vacay, go off the radar for a spell. Lots of bitching, pushback, and questions, but Ben is firm about it.

Trading has been suspended.

Just giving you a heads up.

Heh.

Then he and Chon drive down to Cafe Heidelberg on the PCH and Brooks Street to have coffee and a pastry with Ben’s money guy. They have to pass three Starbucks to get there but Ben won’t go in the joints. He will only buy “fair trade” coffee. Chon has a different idea about what fair trade means. He gives them money, they give him coffee, that’s fair trade. Anyway, he doesn’t care, the Heidelberg is just fine.

He makes Ben drive even though Ben is a shitty driver. But Chon wants his hands free for the Glock on his lap, the shotgun on the floor, and the Ka-Bar in his belt just in case they run into a deer that needs leveling or if things get up close and personal.

Ben thinks the arsenal is excessive.

“It’s a business negotiation,” he says.

“You saw the video,” Chon answers.

“That was Mexico,” Ben says. “This is Laguna Beach. The cops wear shorts and ride bicycles.”

“It’s too civilized here?”

“Something like that.”

“Uh-huh. Then why are we going to Indonesia?”

“Because there’s no point in being careless.”

“Exactly.”

They find a parking spot on Brooks, and Ben fills the meter with quarters. For some reason, Ben always has quarters. Chon never has quarters.

Spin Dry is already at a table outside.

Spin D used to be an investment banker with an established bank in Newport Beach. Then he discovered Ben’s product, and that he could make more money laundering Ben’s profits. The bank was not unhappy to see him go.

Now Spin spends the early-morning hours monitoring the money markets in Asia and the Pacific, and the rest of the time riding his bike, going to the gym, and banging Orange County Trophy Wives who get their Mercedes and jewelry from their hubbies and their cookies from Spin.

Spin is a happy man.

He rode his bike here and he’s dressed in one of those stupid skintight Italian bodysuits with the matching cap.

Chon thinks he looks like an idiot.

“S’up?” Spin asks, because he thinks talking like a surfer who’s been hit in the head too many times will make him not forty-three.

“Not us,” Ben says. “I need to go off the grid for a while.”

Spin wipes the cappuccino foam off his upper lip. “S’cool.”

“Yeah, it’s not, really,” Ben says. “But it’s where we’re at. I need you to set up a new line for me, double-blind, liquidate five hundred K, and I want everything else washed fresh. Whole new cycle, make it go away somewhere for a while.”

“No worries.”

No worries—every time Chon hears “no worries” he worries.

“I want to pick it up clean in Jakarta,” Ben tells Spin. “Half in dollars, half in local currency.”

“Lot of lettuce to be carrying around, boss.”

“It’s okay,” Ben says. “Also, so you can plan your personal finances, I want to tell you that we’re getting out of the old pista secreta.”

“Amigo …” Spin is shocked.

A world without Ben and Chonny’s?

“We’ve had a good run,” Chon says. “You’ve made a lot of money.”

A lot is a lot.

But never enough.