The Power of the Dog (Power of the Dog, #1)

by Don Winslow

Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful?

There hasn’t been an actual condor seen in Mexican skies in over sixty years, longer in the States. But every operation has to have a name or we don’t believe it’s real, so Condor it is. Art’s done a little reading on the bird. It is (was) the largest bird of prey, although the term is a little misleading, as it preferred scavenging over hunting. A big condor, Art learned, could take out a small deer; but what it really liked was when something else killed the deer first so the bird could just swoop down and take it. We prey on the dead. Operation Condor.

Mexican fight fans have more respect for what a fighter can take than for what he can dish out.

You don’t let them knock you out, you make them knock you out. You make them break their fucking hands knocking you out, you let them know that they’ve been in a fight, you give them something to remember you by every time they look in a mirror.

“What we lack in subtlety, we make up for with a lack of subtlety.”

“In America, everything is about systems,” Barrera said. “In Mexico, everything is about personal relationships.”

He’s a forty-four-year-old coke dealer with more memories than possibilities; she’s sixteen with a body like springtime. Why shouldn’t he want to take her for a dirty weekend in Mexico? Nora’s cool with it. She’s sixteen but not sweet.

Haley wants her women to stand out. And they’re always fully dressed. Never in lingerie or robes—Haley’s not running some cheap Nevada mustang ranch. She’s been known to costume the women in turtlenecks, in business suits, in basic little black frocks, in gowns. She dresses her women in clothes that the men can imagine removing. And she makes them wait to do that. They have to jump through hoops, even at the White House.

“You can lie to yourself and to me,” Parada says. “You cannot lie to God.” Why not? Adán thinks. He lies to us.

He starts with the magic words, What if. The two most powerful words in any language.

Tirofio nods. “I was a woodcutter, living in a small village. In those days, I had no politics. Left wing, right wing—it made no difference to the wood I had to cut. I was up in the hills one morning, cutting wood, when the local right-wing militia came into our village, rounded up all the men, tied their elbows behind their backs and cut their throats. Left them bleeding to death like pigs in the village square while they raped their wives and daughters. Do you know why they did that?” Adán shakes his head. “Because the villagers had allowed a left-wing group to dig a well for them,” Tirofio says. “That morning I came back to find the bodies lying in the dust. My neighbors, my friends, my family. I walked back into the hills, this time to join the guerrillas. Why do I tell you this story? Because you may say you have no politics, but the day you see your friends and family lying in the dirt, you will have politics.”

Adán gave her a proper funeral in Badiraguato. A cross with her photo was carried through the village, while musicians sang corridos to her courage and beauty. He built a tomb of the finest marble with the inscription TIENES MI ALMA EN TUS MANOS. You have my soul in your hands.

Deliver my soul from the sword. My love from the power of the dog.