The Border (Power of the Dog, #3)

by Don Winslow

Adán Barrera, drug trafficker and mass murderer, became a combination of Houdini, Zorro, Amelia Earhart, and Mahatma Gandhi. A misunderstood child of rural poverty who rose from his humble beginnings to wealth and power by selling a product that, after all, people wanted anyway, and who is now a benefactor, a philanthropist harassed and hunted by two governments that he brilliantly eludes and outwits.

My godfather, Adán, was a ruthless cocksucker who killed more men than ass cancer—” “Nice.” “—and married a hot chica less than half his age who we would all like to fuck, if we’re being honest with ourselves. What’s not to love about Adán Barrera, a man’s man, a narco’s narco, a godfather’s godfather. Peace. Out.’”

If you asked the average citizen to name America’s longest war, he’d probably say Vietnam and then quickly amend it to Afghanistan, but the true answer is the war on drugs. Fifty years old and counting. It’s cost over a trillion dollars, and that’s only one part of the financial equation—the legitimate, “clean” money that goes for equipment, police, courts and prisons. But if we’re going to be really honest, Keller knows, we have to account for the dirty money, too. Tens of billions of drug dollars—in cash—go down to Mexico alone every year, so much cash they don’t even count it, they weigh it. It has to go somewhere, the narcos can’t stick it under their pillows or dig holes in their backyards. A lot of it is invested in Mexico, the estimate being that drug money accounts for 7 to 12 percent of the Mexican economy. But a lot of it comes back here—into real estate and other investments. Into banking and then out to legitimate businesses. It’s the dirty secret of the war on drugs—every time an addict sticks a needle into his arm, everyone makes money. We’re all investors. We’re all the cartel.

“There aren’t a lot of users up here, but what you have here in Inwood and Washington Heights, just downtown from here, are heroin mills. This is where your Mexicans bring the shit in, sell it to wholesalers who cut it up, put it into dime bags and ship it out. Sort of an Amazon fulfillment center.” “Why here?” Location, location, location, Mullen explains. Easy access to Route 9, right up to the little towns on the Hudson that are getting hammered with the shit. A short hop to 95 and the Bronx, or out to Long Island or up to New England. Harlem is just down Broadway, and you’re close to the West Side Highway and the FDR to go to the boroughs. “If you were UPS or FedEx,” Mullen says, “and wanted to serve the Northeast Corridor, this is where you’d be. You can get in your car, be on the Jersey Turnpike or the Garden State in minutes and you’re on your way to Newark, Camden, Wilmington, Philly, Baltimore, Washington. If you’re moving less weight, you put it in a backpack, you take the One or the Two train to Penn Station and get on the Acela. Go south to the towns I just mentioned or north to Providence or Boston. No one is going to stop you, no one’s going to search your bag, and they have Wi-Fi on the train, you can catch up on Narcos.

There are too many people dying. And we’re a few brooms trying to sweep back an ocean of H. “The paradigm has shifted,” Mullen says, “and we have to shift with it. ‘Buy and bust’ works up to a point, but that point is far short of what we need. We’ve had some success busting the heroin mills—we’ve seized a lot of horse and a lot of cash—but the Mexicans can always make more heroin and therefore more cash. They figure these losses into their business plans. We’re in a numbers game we can never win.” Cirello’s done some of the mill busts. The Mexicans bring the heroin up through Texas to New York and store it in apartments and houses, mostly in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. At these “mills” they cut the H up into dime bags and sell it to the retailers, mostly gangbangers, who put it out in the boroughs or take it to smaller towns upstate and in New England. NYPD has made some big hits on the mills—twenty-million-, fifty-million-dollar pops—but it’s a revolving door. Mullen’s right, the Mexican cartels can replace any dope and any money they lose. They can also replace the people, because most of the personnel at the mills are local women who cut the heroin and low-level managers who work for cash. The cartel wholesalers themselves are rarely, if ever, present at the mills except for the few minutes it takes to bring the drugs in. And the drugs are coming in.

“This business of ours,” Caro said, “gives much and demands much. It offers great rewards and terrible losses. It allows us to do wonderful things but at times it forces us to do terrible things. If we accept one, we have to accept the other.

“I’m just saying that people have done worse things and gotten a pass.” “I’m not without feeling,” Núñez says, “for this young man’s past. But his father was a hotheaded madman addled by drug addiction, and he had to go. Now the son has displayed the same sort of erratic, dangerous behavior. Yielding to pity would be a self-indulgent abdication of our responsibilities.” “Which is your way of saying that you want him dead.” Núñez turns to Belinda, and now Ric gets why she’s there. Dead isn’t good enough. Ric starts the engine. “I’m not doing it.” “Doing what?” “Torturing a friend, I’m not doing it.” He pulls out of the driveway. “And you’re not, either.” “You don’t tell me what to do,” Belinda says. “I take my orders from your father.” Those orders are to find Damien, kill him slowly and painfully, and video it. A lesson must be taught, the world had to be shown that El Abogado is anything but weak.

Keller sits beside Marisol and watches the evening news. Specifically, John Dennison announcing his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. “I’m going to build a great wall along the Mexican border, and nobody builds walls better than me. I’ll build a great, great wall down there, and you know who’s going to pay for that wall? Mexico. Mark my words.” “‘Mark my words,’” Marisol says. “How is he going to get Mexico to pay for this damn wall?” “Our country,” Dennison goes on, “has become a dumping ground. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. The people they send bring drugs, they bring guns, they bring crime. They’re thieves, they’re murderers and they’re rapists.” “It’s an expensive TV,” Keller says. “Please don’t throw your glass through it.” “‘Rapists’?!” Marisol says. “He calls us murderers and rapists?!” “I don’t think he meant you personally.” “How can you joke?” Marisol asks. “Because it is a joke,” Keller says. “This guy is a joke.” The Republicans might win the next election and I’ll be out of a job, Keller thinks, but it won’t be this guy handing me the pink slip, even though he’s famous for firing people.

“But, seriously, you guys are working with moolies now?” “We’re woke,” Cozzo said. “You’re what?” “Woke,” Cozzo said. “It means we’re postracial.” “It means we work with moolies,” Andrea said, “if those moolies can get us grade A heroin.”

The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent. —Malcolm X