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

by Don Winslow

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.

explain it, even to himself. It was just that, back in those days, Adán Barrera was a good guy. He really was, or at least it seemed that way. Whatever it was that was lying dormant inside him . . . Maybe it lies in all of us, Art would later think. It sure as hell did in me. The power of the dog.

Hell’s Kitchen being what it is, the cops never find out who canceled Kenny’s reservation.

“What?” O-Bop says. “He didn’t have flintlocks?” “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Callan feels a lot better with a little hardware at his waist. Funny how quick you miss not having it there. You just feel light, he thinks. Like you might float up off the ground. The metal keeps you on the earth.

“Fucking Italians never change,” O-Bop says. “You think they’d maybe mix in a Mercedes, a BMW, I dunno, a fuckin’ Volvo or something. Anything but these fucking Lincolns and Caddies. I’m tellin’ ya, it must be some kind of goombah rule or something.”

We’re spending almost $2 billion poisoning cocaine crops and kids over here, while there’s no money at home to help someone who wants to get off drugs. It’s insanity. Art can’t decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it’s a tragic, bloody farce.

He’s only sure that either he will kill Adán or Adán will kill him, and those are the only two ways this thing can end.