“I’ve seen him at El Patrón’s parties,” the jefe said. “He has an instinct for terrorizing the weakest person in the room. He killed the Old Man of the Mountains, who you may remember was in charge of the Iraqi cartel.”
Matt remembered. The Old Man of the Mountains had once been a feared and dreaded drug lord. He was one hundred and twenty years old by the time Matt saw him, broken by illness and stoked up to the eyeballs with hashish. Glass Eye had sat next to him at a banquet. The boy couldn’t hear what the African said, but he saw the effect on the Old Man. The Iraqi tried to move away, but Glass Eye detained him with a heavy hand. And then the Old Man slumped facedown into a plate of mashed potatoes.
I should have changed the seating arrangement, El Patrón had said, in a mellow mood after the banquet. Something about Glass Eye brings on heart problems. Ah, well. There’s a silver lining. The Old Man’s customers are up for grabs.
Matt remembered this now as he accessed the holoport and found Happy Man’s new address. He was no longer in Africa. He had a new address in Marijuana, on the eastern border of Opium, and his light was blinking furiously.
Happy Man Hikwa was sitting in front of the portal. There was an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a pot of coffee, and a bottle of aguardente, a villainous Mozambican vodka that smelled like crushed beetles. Hikwa looked like he’d been living in front of the portal. His clothes, a plaid suit without a shirt, were dirty, and Matt could smell stale marijuana smoke. He was a drug addict.
Matt smiled to himself. Drug addicts were the easiest clients to handle. They would agree to anything.
“You . . . you . . .,” said Happy Man, having difficulty forming the words. “You child! Where is Mr. Alacrán?”
“I am the new Lord of Opium,” said Matt. “Mr. Alacrán is busy. What do you want?”
It took a moment for the African dealer to process this information. “You’re a clone,” he finally said. “Clones can’t run businesses.”
“I am El Patrón,” said Matt, smarting from the insult.
Happy Man pushed away from the screen. Behind him was a room in chaos full of old food containers and weapons, and beyond was a wide window showing a city. Matt could see skyscrapers chopped in two as though a giant machete had sliced through them. A line of limousines, not unlike Hitler’s old car, was making its way through rubble. “What’s going on?” asked Matt.
Hikwa looked to where the boy was pointing. “Oh, that. We’re still pacifying the city. A few of the Farm Patrolmen are holding out.” A flash followed by screams showed a building being blown up. Fires raged in the distance.
“You’re destroying your own city,” said Matt, appalled.
Happy Man giggled. “We don’t need it. We’ve got more.” He reached for the bottle of aguardente and took a swig. “Anyway, this place was a ruin when we got it. It used to be called Ciudad Juarez, and the crotters who ran this place were trying to rebuild. Fat chance. Glass Eye showed them what’s what. We”—he hiccuped—“put all their women and children into an empty swimming pool and used them for target practice.”
Matt had seen enough. No way was he going to open the border for a shipment to Dabengwa. He reached for the off button.
“Hey! You can’t go! We need our opium!” cried Happy Man Hikwa, but by that time the holoport had closed.
Matt sat, shaken by what he’d seen. He knew things were bad in the old Dope Confederacy, but this mindless destruction was worse than anything he’d imagined. He accessed addresses in Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. In each one a window showed a scene of devastation. What kind of country was Glass Eye building? He and his men acted like a swarm of locusts Matt had seen on an old TV show. Eat one field, move on to the next. You needed infinite fields to keep an army like that going.
Matt found a few portals in rural areas where marijuana and tobacco were grown. The crops had withered, and the bodies of eejits filled dry canals.
He was too exhausted to look anymore. Even though the holoport had adjusted to his slightly different handprint, the scanner still made him nauseated. He went to El Patrón’s apartment and lay down. The windows opened onto green lawns, and the odors of flowers and cut grass drifted in. The sound of eejits using scissors to trim the lawns soothed him. El Patrón’s empire was evil, all right, but it was still alive.
Soon, Matt promised himself, he would rip out the opium and plant different crops. Cattle would be turned onto healthy fields of grass. When the eejits were free, he would offer them jobs as normal farmers, or they’d go back to whatever lives they’d had before. It would be their choice. Far fewer were dying now that Matt had added meat and vegetables to their diet.