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

by Don Winslow

His mother had sneaked it away in his sleep and replaced it with a new elephant with two eyes and a pristine aroma, and when Art woke up he thanked her for the new elephant and then found and retrieved the old one from the trash.

Art takes money from his pocket and offers it to Parada. It’s his last month’s salary. “It will buy medicine,” Art says. “God bless you.” “I don’t believe in God,” Art says. “Doesn’t matter,” Parada says. “He believes in you.” Then He, Art thinks, is a sucker.

Someone running drugs out of Honduras is about as surprising as someone selling hot dogs in Yankee Stadium.

A relationship with a snitch is like a relationship with the opposite sex. You flirt, you seduce, you tempt. You buy them presents, you tell them how much you need them, you can’t live without them. And if they do get in bed with you, you don’t tell, even—especially—the boys in the locker room.

They don’t need to say anything more. Dantzler will take the info to one of his own guys, who will tell it to one of his CIs, who’ll then turn around and tell it to Dantzler, who will take it to a judge and presto—probable cause.

Peaches sets him straight. “Men live in the now. Eat now, drink now, get laid now. We’re not thinking about the next meal, the next drink, the next fuck—we’re just happy now. Women live in the future—and this you better learn, you dumb mick: The woman is always building the nest.

She knows it’s another cliché, just as hackneyed as love in the afternoon, but men do come to hookers to talk. The wives of the world would take a chunk out of her business if they glanced at the sports pages, spent a few minutes watching ESPN or Wall Street Week. Their husbands would willingly spend a few hours discussing feelings if the wives were willing to just talk about stuff a little more.

The Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Without them, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it.

This is what Mexican cops appreciate that American cops don’t. We are partners, mi hermano Arturo, in the same enterprise. Comrades in the War on Drugs.

So what Sal was saying, Callan guessed, is that the people should have democracy, just not that much democracy. They got the absolute freedom to choose what we want them to.

Everywhere in Latin America it was the same—the long shadow war between the haves and the have-nots, between the right wing and the Marxists, with the liberals caught, deer-in-the-headlights, between them.

Liaising with army officers trained at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Providing training, technical advice, equipment, intelligence. Lending assets to the Latin American armed forces and militias.

Luis Carlos Galán, the Liberal Party presidential candidate who was miles ahead in the polls, was taken off the count in the summer of ’89. Bernardo Jaramillo Osa, the leader of the UP, was shot to death as he got off a plane in Bogotá the following spring. Carlos Pizarro, M-19’s candidate for president, was gunned down just a few weeks later.

fifteen-year record of corruption—no, not just corruption. That would be the sad norm, and this is extraordinary. More than extraordinary—language fails. What they did, in the simplest possible terms: They sold the country to the narcotraficantes.

And soliciting the narcos to pay for it all. And to commit the murders. And to torture and murder the American agent Hidalgo. And then there was Operation Cerberus, the conspiracy to fund, equip and train the Contras through the sale of cocaine.

Peaches has become a health nut, like everyone else in California. He’s still three bills and change, but now he’s a tan three bills and change with a low cholesterol number and a high-fiber diet.

Tirofio shakes his hand. “One day you will come to see that everything is politics, and you will act from your heart instead of your pocket.” On that day, Tirofio tells him, you will find your soul.

American dollars to China for guns, guns to Colombia for cocaine, cocaine to the United States for

American dollars . .

professional liar knows that the key is not to make his lies look like the truth, but to make his truth look like lies.

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.