The Border (Power of the Dog, #3)

by Don Winslow

hard to know what he can do about Mexico from Washington when the real source of the opiate problem might just be on Wall Street. You’re standing on the Rio Grande with a broom, he thinks, trying to sweep back the tide of heroin while billionaires are sending jobs overseas, closing factories and towns, killing hopes and dreams, inflicting pain. And then they tell you, stop the heroin epidemic. The difference between a hedge fund manager and a cartel boss? Wharton Business School.

So they moved into Travis’s van and live basically as gypsies now. Not homeless, Jacqui insists, because the van is a home, but they’re . . . what’s the word . . . peripatetic. She’s always liked the word peripatetic. She wishes it rhymed with something so she could use it in a song, but it really doesn’t. It sort of rhymes with pathetic, but Jacqui doesn’t want to go there because it has the ring of truth.

“Do you seriously believe anyone really wants to win this war? No one has an interest in winning this war; they have an interest in keeping it going. You can’t be that naive—tens of billions of dollars a year in law enforcement, equipment, prisons . . . it’s business. The war on drugs is big business.

Howard smiles a politician’s smile, as sincere and heartfelt as a twenty-dollar hooker, but without the warmth.