Well, Heriberto, you can suck my dick.

Figuratively speaking.

Acapulco I can hold, no problem.

Probably Veracruz, too.

Monterrey, that’s a problem, given Diego’s forward-thinking policy of inviting the Zetas to make themselves at home there. And they did. They have probably hundreds of guns in the city and its burbs now.

And those FES marines are no joke. If anything, they’ve gotten better since they double-tapped Diego. They even went into Matamoros and took out Gordo Contreras. Biggest battle in Mexico since the Revolution—people in Texas could hear the gunfire. And, thanks a heap, marines, for killing that fat fuck Gordo. Now the Zetas can send more men down here.

And that low motherfucker Keller is worse than any of them.

Talk about not giving a shit.

The jack of spades thing is pretty good, though. Wish I’d thought of something like that—a calling card. Like, have jacks of spades printed up but with my face photoshopped onto it.

Eddie goes into the kitchen and dumps strawberries, blueberries, protein powder, and water into the blender. The blueberries are full of anti-what-do-you-call-’ems and the protein powder is good for the muscle mass he’s trying to put on.

The feds have been all over him the past few months, arresting his people, busting his dope, tracking him down. It’s serious, because the last thing in the world that the federales want is to take Eddie Ruiz alive.

I have too much to say, so if the federales take me out, it’s on a slab.

Even the DEA has gotten in on the bust-Eddie’s-balls act. A week ago, they seized $49 million of his coke as it went across the border, and last month they charged sixty-nine customs agents—half of them Eddie’s guys—with corruption.

It’s annoying.

In response, he’d made his point to the government again in a letter to the newspapers: “You’re always going to have someone selling this stuff, so it might as well be me. I don’t kill women, children, or innocent people. Yours truly, Narco Polo.”

He’s been using Narco Polo in his signed correspondence, trying to wean them off the Crazy Eddie thing.

I’m not crazy, he thinks.

I might be the sanest guy I know.

Eddie makes himself gulp down the smoothie. You don’t take the time to savor that crap because there’s nothing to savor.

He owns four nightclubs in three cities and shuts them down from time to time so he can party. Stations his guys all around, invites the hottest women in, picks one or two, does some Ecstasy, and parties. Was dating that soap opera star until she got tired of all the security and her “people” started to worry about her “branding.” Doesn’t matter, she was good while she lasted.

Polishing off the smoothie, he goes into the home gym and starts to pump some iron. He should have one of his guys spot for him, but it would be too easy, wouldn’t it, for the guy to do an “oops” on a bench press and drop two bills on his throat.

In this world you can trust yourself and yourself.

He’s glad when he hears the doorbell ring downstairs, and after the security screening, Julio comes up.

“You want a water?” Eddie asks him.

“I’d take a water.”

They get the waters and then go out on the deck with the view of the ocean. Now we, he thinks, should be called the Pacific cartel, not that inland yuppie. He looks across the table at Julio and asks, “Are we ready to go to script?”

“Did you read the treatment?”

“Was that a treatment or an outline?” Eddie asks. Actually, he read up until about page three and then thumbed through the rest of it. The thing was twenty-seven pages long.

“Sort of an outline of a treatment,” Julio says. “If you approve the treatment outline, then we’ll go to the full treatment.”

“Then the script?”

“Well, a script outline.”

Eddie loves the movies. The Godfather, of course, and Goodfellas, but also the drug movies. Scarface, Miami Vice…he’d like to make a contribution to the genre. His own story—the realistic, down-and-dirty tale of a real-life drug lord. The way it really is. No one’s ever seen that shit before.

They’re thinking of calling it Narco Polo, and, get this, the main character, the drug lord, actually plays polo. Eddie’s putting up $100K of his own money and hoping the script will attract investors.

If he ever gets a script from this guy.

Writers.

“Did you like the outline?” Julio asks.

“I did,” Eddie says. “I think there are some good things in there, some really good things. But you can’t have me getting married twice without getting divorced. It makes me look like a dick.”

“I think it makes you interesting.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Priscilla would think it was a little too interesting. You know pregnant women, hormones and shit. And the scene where I escape from the marine raid…I think I leave too early. I think I should shoot my way out. You know…‘meet my little friend.’ ”

“That’s good, yeah.”

“And the ending,” Eddie says. “I get killed.”

“It’s a convention of the genre,” Julio says.

Julio wears tight black jeans and black leather shoes even on a sunny day in Acapulco. Eddie thinks this is because he went to film school, which is why Eddie hired him and because he says things like “convention of the genre.”

“Pacino didn’t get killed,” Eddie says.

“He did in Three.”

“Three doesn’t count,” Eddie says. “Liotta didn’t get killed in Goodfellas, De Niro didn’t get killed in Casino…”

“But they couldn’t end happily. They had to be punished.”

“What are you saying?” Eddie asks. “I have to be punished?”

Julio turns even paler, if that’s possible, and mumbles, “For your crimes.”

“For what?”

“Your crimes.”

“My crimes,” Eddie says. “You want to talk about crimes, you talk to fucking Diego, you talk to Ochoa, you talk to Barrera. I’m the good guy in this movie, the anti-…”

“Hero.”

“Huh?”

“You’re the antihero.”

“Right.” Eddie sulks for a minute and then says, “Casting.”

“Are we still thinking about Leo?”

“Leo would be great,” Eddie says. “But maybe a little too on the nose, you know what I mean?”

“Sort of. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking of going in a different direction,” Eddie says, looking out at the ocean. “What if I called my own number?”

“Meaning…”

“Cast myself. As me. I mean, what a hook, right? No one has seen that before,” Eddie says. Narco Polo: The Real-Life Story of a Drug Lord, starring Eddie Ruiz, a Real-Life Drug Lord.”

Julio takes a long pull on his water and then asks, “How would that work exactly, Eddie? I mean, you’re, you know, wanted. How are you going to be on set? Do promotion?”

“Think outside the box,” Eddie says. “I could do TV interviews from remote, secret locations. What a gimmick, huh? The Today show…Late Night…”

“Can you act?”

Can I act, Eddie thinks. I have sat at the table pretending to like Heriberto Ochoa. Can I act? “How hard can it be? You say the lines, you say them with feeling. I’ll take a class. Fucking hire a teacher, I don’t know.”

They decide to table casting until they have a script. Leo wouldn’t commit on just a treatment anyway, so they have a little time. Eddie finishes giving his notes, and Julio goes off to rethink the ending.

After Julio leaves, Eddie wanders upstairs to the room that’s been soundproofed. He’s found that it comes in handy to have a soundproof room in all his houses. You can blast music as loud as you want without getting negative attention from the neighbors, and if you need to work on a houseguest, you can do so at leisure without his screams alarming said neighbors or keeping you awake at night.

Now he has such a guest.

Retaliation for the four heads that appeared on an Acapulco sidewalk with the placard THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ALL THOSE STUPID ENOUGH TO SIDE WITH THE HOMOSEXUAL, EDDIE RUIZ.