LogCartel: La Vida Coca-Jason-1

Characters

Marc - Daryl, Cocinero Gary - Diego, Halcon Jason - Santiago, Narco, or possibly a wholesaler of refurbished office equipment Tim - Maria, Sicaria Lisa - Yolanda, Esposa

Setup

You?re standing in a crappy room in a place called Siena Suites in Henderson, a strip mall hell hole just outside Las Vegas, NV. The place smells like mildew, shit, and blood, mostly thanks to the dead hooker in the bathroom and the dying trafficante draped over the coffee table. It?s two hours until dawn.

You?re there to do the deal. Two hundred kilos of uncut heroin wrapped and taped in neat one kilo packages. You?ve got five packages with you, the rest are in the beat up van that brought you from Durango. In exchange, this puto leaking all over the rug was supposed to give you five crates of automatic weapons and another of ammo and explosives.

The cabron on the table was twitchy when you walked in. He had a hooker with him. Both were strapped. He was a cocinero from one of the local groups the Sinaloa Cartel uses. He tested the powder and put a key card on the table next to the scale, it was for a gate at Extra Space Storage. He said we?d get the locker key when we dropped off the powder at his concinero in the stucco townhouse development across the highway.

Then the phone rang.

The gringo went skitzo and grabbed for his pistol but it hung up in the shoulder holster. The hooker shot him through the chest but he blew out the back of her head as he was going down. Cinematic. Fuck, Sam Peckinpah would?ve been proud.

What do you do? The hotel room is a one way trip to a life sentence You can?t go back to Durango without the guns, that would be a death sentence. The rest is, as they say, muy fluido?

You?re armed. You?re amped. You?re fucked. And now you hear sirens...

Session

Daryl answers the phone, but the person on the other end hangs up when he speaks. Santiago orders him to take the wheel of the van and get everyone to the storage unit. Daryl parks across the street from the storage area, in a very legal and above board fashion, and Santiago tells Maria to look around and check for any external threats or ambushes. She pulls on her Pink-brand hoodie and puts the silencer on her weapon, while Daryl stares at her ass. Yolanda doesn't like that Daryl is so obviously ogling another woman and goes to smack him with her purse, but he claims that he was just keeping his eyes wide open in all directions, not staring at her ass in particular. She decides to let him off the hook.

Maria goes out, careful to avoid any neighborhood watch types, or other joggers, but she figures the real threat is the police presence. Jogging around doesn't turn up any major threats. Santiago takes Diego with him and goes to knock on the door, figuring that he'll learn something from the reaction of whoever answers.

The door opens partially, and Santiago curses out whoever opens it. It's a skinny blond gringo. The place smells horrible. Apparently this is JZ, and he's just expecting us to bring in the stuff. Santiago tells Diego to give the word, and Daryl backs the van in. Diego starts unloading, and Santiago asks JZ where their stuff is. He says he'll go get the key, but Santiago makes him wait for Maria to come in and go with him. He goes into the kitchen and reaches into a drawer and into his pants pocket at the same time. Maria thinks he's maybe trying to get backup, so she tries to turn up the pressure. She tells him to slow down, and he says he just needs to tell "them" that he has the stuff. JZ puts the key on the counter and backs off, both hands in sight, but he may have sent something with his phone. She backs out of the kitchen.

Maria takes JZ into the garage, trying to be reassuring about this process of threatening him. We finish unloading and leave. Then we drop Yolanda off at a Waffle House with instructions to wait for Santiago's call, and if he doesn't check in with her in 30 minutes or less, tip the cops off to where the H is.

The rest of us head to the storage locker, driving nice and legal, and not the straightest path. Extra Space has cameras everywhere, as you might expect from a nice legal purveyor of storage units. Daryl does a loop around to get a feel for the place, and there are a few other vehicles parked around the area. 939 is near the end of a block and near the side, so it's a little isolated. We park nearby, Diego unlocks it, and there are six bigass crates inside, markings painted over. Santiago suggests a plan: verify the contents of the crates, unload them, and try to move the van full of empty crates. Then some asshole named Rooster walks in and introduces himself as the boss, and mentions there there does seem to be a hiccup. Rooster and Santiago spar a bit but offer the possiibility of a new deal, in which our team takes over for their dead cook. Diego does verify that the crates contain what we expected - Stinger missiles and a crate full of milspec commo gear.

We sent Daryl out in a van full of empty crates to see if anyone's set up to ambush the van, while the other three wait in the storage unit. He thinks je's being tailed, but he comes back with Yolanda. We put the goodies back in the crates and put the crates in the van.

Santiago calls his men and tells them he needs clean wheels in Vegas. His people send him to a storage place in Vegas near the Boulder Station Casino. The place opens at 8 and the wheels will be there - ask for Miguel. We endeavor to be super chill, with Maria listening to the scanner. She also sanitizes the card and key and tosses them out the window while we drive. Diego and Daryl start bickering, but then Rooster pulls up and asks how we're doing. Santiago eventually looses patience and tells him to wait until we call him or get fucking hurt. Rooster leaves, and then Daryl starts worrying that this is going to be a bad deal for him. Santiago is just about to loose patience with his idiot nephew when Yolanda interrupts and makes it sound like Daryl is just hustling for a raise, which makes Santiago and Daryl wonder what the hell she's talking about... until Daryl decides that he's going to go with her play. Then he tells her this is a man thing, he's not a loser like Raoul, and he's going to take care of her. Sitting outide the van eating chips, Diego notices a cop cruising the lot and talking to a day laborer, and he raps on the van to make sure everyone inside knows. Santiago tells Diego to finish his chips and then they'll go. The cop drives off, and when Diego finishes his chips, they drive off.

On the road to Allstate Storage, Daryl think he's being followed, and tries to lose them. He drives a little crazy, cuts across traffic, and does shit that would make it really obvious if anyone was clinging to their ass. At Allstate, there's a short kid speaking Spanglish at the gate. Daryl asks for Miguel and the battery. Miguel asks what kind of car we need, which isn't an ideal start, since my people knew what we were trying to accomplish. He leads us to a pickup with a camper back. We move all the stuff from the van to the pickup and put the van in a storage bay. As we're pulling out, we see Rooster's car parked against the curb. Yolanda asks Santiago why he doesn't have his puta kill Rooster, and Maria tries to slaps her right upside the head. Yolanda blocks it, which just pisses Maria off more, and now it's a brawl in the pickup cabin. Santiago is yelling, "Maria! Enough!" and Diego is trying to pull Maria off Yolanda. Daryl gets an arm around Maria's neck and pulls her off, and she taps out. A police cruiser pulls up alongside them and asks if we're OK on the loudspeaker. Daryl gives them a wave and a thumbs up, and the cops pull up slowly. Daryl tells the cop, in a voice begging for sympathy, that he married a Mexican. The cop understands. The cop drives off.

Santiago asks Daryl to pull the car forward. He tells Diego to steal the lug nutes off the Bonneville while he distracts Rooster with talk. Rooster's alone in the car. Santiago tells him to keep his fucking distance while Diego sabotages him. Diego doesn't think he can steal the nuts, but he puts the tire iron through Rooster's brake rotor. Santiago takes Daryl outside the car and has a quick conversation about how to misdirect Rooster's shitheads. Meanwhile, there's a moment when Maria and Yolanda are alone, Maria informs her dear friend that if she calls her puta again, she will rip her tits off.

Back in the car, Daryl drives out into the southern desert, while Santiago makes a fuss about going north and making delivery to a couple of smugglers we stopped trusting months ago. Out in the desert, Santiago explains his suspicions to everyone, and Daryl finds a transmitter that's warm to the touch. He leaves it out there in the desert, then makes a call on a burner phone to create an open link to the bug, so anyone listening will think we're all near the transmitter, bickering.

When we're in Wickenburg, AZ, Santiago calls home to see what's next. They tell him to drive to Agua Prieta and make delivery to the locals. He asks permission to hold back one pinata for consumer testing, and they authorize it. We arrive in AP no problem, and we go to a designated spot to wait for Simon to show up. A pickup with a trailer shows up and gives the signal. Diego goes to see if it's the right truck, and it checks out. Santiago tells Yolanda, Daryl, and Diego to move the crates, and they get to it. Just as they're working, a green Border Patrol truck drives up, and two big Mexicans get out. Daryl stalls them with some talk about giving his Mexican day laborers to do some construction, and this is the meeting where he's giving them the building materials. Diego stops, looks at Daryl, and says "You want no move?" Yolanda looks up and starts bitching Daryl out as though she had no idea who the Border Patrol are or why they should concern her. The entire scene is so domestic that they're willing to believe it is what he says it is. Santiago makes a phone call and arranges for another car swap. We just need to meet Tyrone at the Pima Air & Space Museum. It's big enough to draw lots of traffic and there's a big lot there, so this should go smoothly.

The swap with Tyrone goes fine, and we're tooling around in silver and woody Town & Country with a car charger for the cell and a fresh set of tire tools. Santiago instructs Yolanda to find a couple hotel rooms in Tucson. The next day, Daryl explains that he's planning to leave, since this is not cook's work, and Santiago looses his patience. Daryl tries to hustle back, and when Diego tries to join in, Daryl pulls Diego's 9mm and yells for everyone to get back, and triggers a loose round because he's so fucking twitchy. Yolanda defuses the situation, and Daryl talks the rent-a-cop down.

We meet up again in another WalMart parking lot and make a plan to go to Vegas and test-fire a missile at the cook house. Daryl and Yolanda bail on us in the midst of the drive, at which point Santiago calls home and orders Daryl killed. Diego drives Maria and Santiago to the cook house, which Maria blows up with a Stinger. Daryl and Yolanda arrive home just as their house blows up.

Play will commence in El Paso.