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

by Don Winslow

Someone running drugs out of Honduras is about as surprising as someone selling hot dogs in Yankee Stadium. Honduras, the original “banana republic,” has an old and distinguished history in the drug trade, dating back to the turn of the twentieth century when the country was out-and-out owned by the Standard Fruit and United Fruit companies. The fruit companies were based in New Orleans, and the city’s docks were out-and-out owned by the New Orleans Mafia through its control of the dockworkers’ union, so if the fruit companies wanted their Honduran bananas off-loaded, the boats had better be carrying something else under those bananas. So much dope came into the country in those banana boats that Mafia slang for heroin became banana. The Honduran registry isn’t surprising, Art thinks, and it answers the question of where the DC-4s are refueling.