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

by Don Winslow

What is on these tapes? He goes through a pack and a half listening to them. Lighting one cigarette from another, he listens to the tapes and pores through the documents. Memos of meetings, Cerro’s notes. Names, dates and places. A 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. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t heard it himself: Tapes from a dinner—$25 million per plate—to help elect this president. The murders of election officials and the theft of the election itself. The voices of the president’s brother and the attorney general planning these outrages. 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. And Operation Red Mist, the right-wing murders funded in part by the drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico and supported by the PRI. Small wonder Cerro is afraid of hell—he’s helped to build it here. And now I understand why he brought this evidence to me. The voices on the tapes, the names on the memos—the president, his brother, the secretary of state, Miguel Ángel Barrera, García Abrego, Güero Méndez, Adán Barrera, the literally scores of police, army and intelligence offic...

The truth is that he’s worried. The attack on La Sirena, the fact that they used federale uniforms and identification—it must have cost hundreds of thousands in mordida. And the fact that Güero felt strong enough to violate the prohibition on violence in a resort town must mean that Güero’s business is healthier than they had thought. But how? Adán wonders. How is the man getting his product through La Plaza, which the Barrera pasador has all but shut down to him? And how has Güero won the support of Mexico City and its federales? And has Abrego aligned himself with Güero? Would Güero ever have launched the La Sirena attack without the old man’s approval? And if that is the case, Abrego’s support would bring the president’s brother, El Bagman, and the full weight of the federal government.

Callan don’t like it one bit. He’s in the backseat of a stolen fire-engine red Suburban—the vehicle of choice among the narcotraficante cowboys—sitting beside Raúl Barrera, who’s cruising around Tijuana like he’s the fucking mayor. They’re rolling down Boulevard Díaz Ordaz, one of the busiest streets in the city. He has a Baja State Police officer driving and another one in the front seat. And he’s tricked out in full Sinaloa cowboy gear, from the boots to the black pearl-button shirt to the white cowboy hat. This is no fucking way to fight a war, Callan thinks. What these guys should be doing is what the old Sicilians would do—go to the mattresses, lay low, pick your spots. But this apparently ain’t the Mexican way, Callan has learned. No, the Mexican way is macho—go out there and show the flag.

Güero had spotted the bright red Suburban, but he didn’t see the nondescript Ford Aerostar and the Volkswagen Jetta that were trailing it from a block behind, and now those two stolen vehicles roar in and trap the federales. Fabián jumps out of the Aerostar and rakes a federale across the chest with an AK burst. The wounded federale tries to crawl for cover underneath the black Suburban, but one of his own boys sees how outgunned they are and makes a bid for survival by switching sides on the spot. He raises his own M-16 and as the man pleads for his life delivers the coup de grâce through his partner’s upraised arms and into his face, then looks to Fabián for acceptance. Fabián puts two rounds into his head. Who needs a coward like that?

It’s a major goat fuck, Callan thinks. Cops are roaring in from all compass points, in cars, on motorcycles and on foot. Federal cops, state cops, Tijuana city cops, and they’re not sure who’s who—it is just a fucking free-for-all. Everyone’s trying to figure out who to shoot at the same time they’re trying to work out how not to get shot. Fabián’s shooters at least know who they’re shooting at, though, as they methodically gun down the federales who pulled them over. But those guys are tough, they’re shooting back, and there are bullets flying every which way and you have some moron across the street standing there with his Sony 8mm trying to videotape the whole goddamn mess, and through that grace given to idiots and drunks he lives through the whole ten-minute gun battle, but a lot of people don’t.

Meanwhile, Ramos and his boys get there ready to kick ass, except most of the ass either is already bleeding on the pavement or is long gone. The whole street is buzzing like insects in Ramos’ ear as he hears the rumor that the police have arrested one of the Barreras. It was Adán. No, it was Raúl. Whichever the fuck Barrera, Ramos thinks, which cops arrested him, and where did they take him?! It matters, right, because if it was the federales they probably took him to the dump to shoot him, and if it was the Baja state boys they probably took him to a safe house and if it was the city police Ramos might still have a shot at bagging a Barrera brother. Would be nice if it was Adán. A close second if it’s Raúl.

On the American side, an army of DEA, INS, ATF, FBI and Customs agents are poised in the area across from the tunnel, waiting to rush the exact location as soon as the tunnel party radios in. “Un-fucking-real,” Shag Wallace says when they get down to the bottom. “Someone dumped a lot of money into this.” “Someone ran a lot of money through it,” Art answers. He turns to Ramos. “We know this was Méndez, not the Barreras?” “It’s Güero's,” Ramos says. “What, someone show him a video of The Great Escape?” Shag asks. “Let me know when we cross the border,” Ramos says to Art. “I’d just be guessing,” Art answers. “Christ, how far does this thing go?” Fourteen hundred feet, give or take, is how they pace it out before they get to the next vertical shaft. An iron ladder bolted to the concrete walls leads up to a bolted hatch.

“Who owns this building?” Art asks. “You ready for this? The Fuentes brothers.” “No kidding.” “I shit you not.” Three Brothers Foods, Art thinks. Well, well, well—the Fuentes family is a prominent fixture in the Mexican-American community. Important businesspeople in southern California, and major contributors to the Democratic Party. The Fuentes trucks go from the canneries and warehouses in San Diego and Los Angeles to cities all over the country. A ready-made distribution system for Güero Méndez’s cocaine. “Genius, isn’t it?” Dantzler says. “They bring the coke in through the tunnel, can it as Caliente Chili Peppers and ship it anywhere they want. I wonder if they ever screw up—I mean, I wonder if someone in Detroit ever goes to buy himself a can of peppers and ends up with twelve ounces of blow instead. In which case, give me a bowl of that chili, you know what I mean? So what do you want to do about the Fuentes brothers?” “Bust them,” Art says. Which is going to be interesting, he thinks. Not only are the Fuenteses major supporters of the Democratic Party, they’re also big contributors to the presidential campaign of Luis Donaldo Colosio.

Nora’s in her bedroom when she hears the news. She’s reading, with CNN on for background noise, when her ear catches the words, “When we come back, the tragic death of Mexico’s highest-ranking cleric . . .” Her heart stops, and there’s a pounding in her head and she hits the speed dial for Juan’s number as she sits through the endless commercials—hoping, praying that he’ll answer the phone, that it’s not him, that he’ll pick up the phone—Please, God, don’t let it be him—but when the news comes back on there’s an old, posed photo of him on one half of the screen and the scene from the airport on the other and she sees him lying on the pavement and she doesn’t scream. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

Nora Hayden’s blond hair is covered with a black shawl, her body draped in a black dress. Even with all that she’s still beautiful. He kneels beside her, puts his hands up in prayer and whispers, “Pray for his soul and sleep with his killer?” She doesn’t answer. “How can you live with yourself?” Art says, then gets up. He walks away from her soft crying.

By morning the national commander of the entire MJFP, General Rodolfo León, is flying to Tijuana with fifty specially selected elite agents, and by afternoon they’ve broken into heavily armed, combat-ready squads of six officers each, sweeping the streets of Colonia Chapultepec in armored Suburbans and Dodge Rams. By evening they’ve smashed into six Barrera safe houses, including Raúl’s personal residence on Caco Sur, where they find a cache of AK-47s, pistols, fragmentation grenades and two thousand rounds of ammunition. In the enormous garage they find six armor-plated black Suburbans. By the end of the week they’ve arrested twenty-five Barrera associates, seized over eighty houses, warehouses and ranches belonging to either the Barreras or Güero Méndez and arrested ten of the airport security police who escorted the Barreras off Flight 211. In Guadalajara, a squad of real Jalisco State Police stumbles on a pickup truck full of fake Jalisco police, and a chase through the city ends with two of the fake cops being trapped inside a house and shooting it out with over a hundred Jalisco cops all night and into the morning, when one is killed and the other surrenders, but not before they’ve killed two of the real police and wounded the commander of the state police force.

They must be at a dump because Flaco smells garbage. And it must be morning because he can feel faint sunlight on his face, even through the black hood. One of his eardrums is ruptured, but he can hear Dreamer pleading, “Please, please, no, no, please . . .” A gunshot explodes and Flaco don’t hear Dreamer no more. Then Flaco feels a gun barrel brush the side of his head, by his good ear. It makes little circles, like its holder wants to make sure Flaco knows what it is, then he hears the hammer click back. Flaco screams. A dry click. Flaco loses it. His bladder lets go and he feels the hot urine run down his leg and his knees give out and he crumbles to the ground, squirming and twisting like a worm, trying to get away from the gun barrel at his head and then he hears the hammer go back and another dry click and then a voice says, “Maybe the next one, little pendejo, eh?” Click. Flaco messes his pants. The federales whoop and holler. “God, what a stink! What you been eating, mierdita?” Flaco hears the hammer click back again.

Flaco’s tongue lolls lazily from his mouth. His face is dark blue. He hangs by the neck from the steam pipe that runs across the ceiling in his cell. Dreamer dangles next to him. The coroner returns with a verdict of double suicide: The young men couldn’t live with the guilt of killing Cardinal Parada. The coroner never deals with the unexplained blunt-trauma blows on the backs of their heads.

Don Francisco Uzueta—aka García Abrego, head of the Gulf cartel and patrón of the Federación—rides a palomino stallion at the head of the parade in the annual festival of his small village of Coquimatlán. He has the stallion in full parade trot, its hooves clapping on the cobblestones of the narrow street, and he’s decked out in full vaquero costume, as befits the patrón of the village. He sweeps his bejeweled sombrero in acknowledgment of the cheers. And well they should cheer—Don Francisco built the village clinic, the school, the playground. He even paid to air-condition the new police station. So now he smiles at the people and graciously accepts their gratitude and love. He recognizes individuals in the crowd and makes a special point to wave to children. He doesn’t see the barrel of the M-60 machine gun as it pokes out of a second-story window. The first short burst of .50-caliber bullets takes the smile along with the rest of his face. The second burst rips his chest open. The palomino whinnies in terror, rears up and starts to buck. Abrego’s dead hand still clutches the reins.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Art says. “Don’t scream.” He slowly takes his hand off her mouth. She turns and slaps him across the face, then says, “I’m calling the police.” “I am the police.” “I’m calling the real police.” She walks to her phone and starts to dial. He says, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a . . .” She puts the phone down. “That’s better.” “What do you want?” “I want you to see something.” “You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that.”

Which is why you chose it to live in. Place to finally lose your own constant losing battle. The Golden West Hotel. SRO. Single Room Occupancy. Shit Right Out. The last stop before the sheet of cardboard on the street, or the coroner’s slab. Because the Golden West Hotel converts welfare checks, Social (in)Security checks, unemployment checks, disability checks directly into room rent. But once the checks run out, you’re Shit Right Out. Sorry, pops, hit the street, the cardboard, the slab. Some of the lucky ones die in their rooms. They haven’t paid their rent, or the smell of the decomposition seeps under their door and finally overpowers the Lysol, and a reluctant desk clerk puts a handkerchief over his nose and turns the passkey. Then the call is made and the ambulance makes its slow, accustomed trip to the hotel, and another old guy is taken out on a gurney for the last ride, his sun at last setting over the Golden West.

He’s just thinking about getting that drink, and his feet carry him into one of the old survivors, a dark narrow bar he doesn’t know the name of—the sign faded long ago—wedged between the last of the neighborhood Laundromats and an art gallery. It’s dark, like all bars should be. This is a serious drinkers’ bar—no amateurs or dilettantes need apply—and there are a dozen or so drinkers, mostly male, staggered around the bar and in the booths along the opposite wall. People don’t come in here to socialize, or talk sports or politics, or to sample fine whiskeys. They come in here to get drunk and stay drunk for as long as their money and their livers last. A few of them glance up resentfully as Callan opens the door and lets a wedge of sunshine break into the darkness. The door closes quickly enough, though, and they all go back to staring at their drinks as Callan walks in, takes a stool at the bar and orders.

Little Peaches turns to his brother. “Are you feeding this guy?” “Yes, I’m feeding him.” “Not this grapefruit shit,” Little Peaches says. “Jesus Christ, get him some sausiche, a little prosciutto, some raviolis. If you can find any. Callan, they got a Little Italy in this town, you couldn’t get a cannoli with a machine gun. Italian restaurants here they serve sun-dried tomatoes. What is that? A couple years out here I am a sun-dried tomato. It’s always eighty-three and sunny here, even at night. How do they do that, huh? Is anyone gonna get me some coffee, or do I have to order it like I’m in a fucking restaurant?” “Here’s your fucking coffee,” Peaches says.

“Where are you getting the info?” Callan asks. “A guy,” Peaches answers. Callan figured it was a guy. “You don’t need to know,” Peaches says. “He takes thirty points.” “It’s like being back in the dope business, except better,” O-Bop says. “We get the profits but we never have to touch the stuff.” “It’s just basic, honest crime,” Peaches says. “Stick 'em up, give me the money.” “The way the Good Lord meant it to be,” Mickey says.

Nora sleeps with The Lord of the Skies. That’s Adán’s new sobriquet among the narco-cognescenti—El Señor de los Cielos, The Lord of the Skies.

Not that life has returned to the status quo ante bellum. It hasn’t; ever the realist, Adán knows that nothing can be the same after the murder of Parada. Technically he’s still a wanted man: their new “friends” in Los Pinos have put a $5 million reward on the Barrera brothers, the American FBI has put them on the Most Wanted list, their photos hang on walls at border checkpoints and government offices. It’s a sham, of course. All lip service to the Americans. Mexican law enforcement is no more trying to hunt down the Barreras than it’s trying to shut down the drug trade as a whole. Still, the Barreras can’t rub it in their faces, can’t show them up. That’s the unspoken understanding. So the old days are over—no more parties at big restaurants, no more discos, racetracks, ringside seats at big boxing matches. The Barreras have to give the government plausible deniability, allow them to shrug their shoulders to the Americans and claim that they would gladly arrest the Barreras if only they knew where to find them.

So Adán doesn’t live in the big house in Colonia Hipódromo anymore, doesn’t go to his restaurants, doesn’t sit in a back booth doing the figures on his yellow manuscript pads. He doesn’t miss the house, he doesn’t miss the restaurants, but he does miss his daughter. Lucía and Gloria are living back in America, in the quiet San Diego suburb of Bonita. Gloria goes to a local Catholic school, Lucía attends a new church. Once a week, a Barrera courier car meets her in a strip-mall parking lot and gives her a briefcase with $70,000 cash. Once a month, Lucía brings Gloria down to Baja to see her father.

“I started fighting in 1948,” Tirofio says. “During a period they now call 'La Violencia.’ Have you heard of that?” “No.” 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 says, “There’s money and the lack of money, and there’s power and the lack of power. And that’s all there is.”

Art Keller parks three blocks away from the White House and walks the rest of the way. He’s lonely. He has his work and little else. Cassie is eighteen now, soon to graduate from Parkman; Michael is sixteen, a freshman at the Bishop’s School. Art goes to Cassie’s volleyball matches and Michael’s swim meets, and he takes the kids out afterward if they don’t already have plans with their friends. They have awkward once-a-month weekends at his downtown condo—he makes extravagant efforts to entertain them, but they mostly just hang around the complex pool with the other “visitation daddies” and their kids. And his own kids increasingly resent the mandated visits, which interfere with their own social lives. Art understands and usually lets them cancel with a fake-cheery “Next time.”

He and Raúl have come to an understanding: If Nora is not the traitor, then Raúl will step back down and Adán will resume his position as patrón. That’s the understanding, Adán thinks, but experience tells him that no one who has assumed power ever gives it back again. Not willingly, anyway. Not easily.

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

The man keeps spewing information—the Barrera brothers left in the Land Rover, headed for San Felipe to get help for Raúl. Scachi believes him. “Take him outside and shoot him,” he orders. Art doesn’t blink. Everyone knew the rules going in.

“I . . . can’t . . . stand it . . . anymore . . .” Raúl gasps. “Please, Adán.” “I can’t.” “I’m begging.” Adán looks at Manuel. The old bodyguard shakes his head. He’s not going to make it. “Stop the car,” Adán orders. He takes the pistol from Raúl’s belt, opens the car door, then gently slides out from under his brother’s head and lays it back on the seat. The desert air is pungent with sage and hermosillo. Adán lifts the pistol and points it at the top of Raúl’s head. “Thank you, brother,” Raúl whispers. Adán pulls the trigger twice.

Manuel knows what to do without being told. He parks the Land Rover right next to his cabin and carries Raúl’s body inside and into the bathroom. He lays the corpse in the bathtub, then goes out to get a knife like the fishermen use. He comes back in and butchers Raúl’s body, severing his hands, arms, feet, legs and, finally, his head. It’s a shame that they cannot give him the funeral he deserves, but no one can know that Raúl Barrera is dead. The rumors will start, of course, but as long as there is a chance that the Barrera pasador’s enforcer is still alive, no one will dare make a move against them. Once they know he’s dead, the gates will be open and enemies will flood in to take their revenge against Adán.

The baby is dead in his mother’s arms. Art can tell from the way the bodies lie—her on top, the baby beneath her—that she tried to shield her child. It’s my fault, Art thinks. I brought this on these people. I’m sorry, Art thinks. I am so, so sorry. Bending over the mother and child, Art makes the sign of the cross and whispers, “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” “El poder del perro,” he hears one of the Mexican cops murmur. The power of the dog.

And who knows where Adán is now? Six months after the raid in Baja and the subsequent massacre at El Sauzal, Adán is still in the wind. The U.S. government put a $2 million reward on his head, but so far, no one has stepped forward to collect. Who wants money you’d never live to collect?

One of the masked men shakes his head then tells him the story: AUC went to the village yesterday, shot the young men and raped the women. Then they locked most of the survivors inside the village’s barn, set it on fire and made the rest watch and listen. Then they took these people to a bridge over the Putumayo, beheaded them with chain saws and threw their heads and bodies in the river to drift downstream as a warning to the villages below. “We came to you,” Javier says, “because we thought that if you could see the truth, you would go home and tell it. The people in America—if they knew the truth . . . they would not send their money and their soldiers to do this.” “What do you mean, our soldiers?” Art asks. “The AUC here,” the masked man says, “were trained by your Special Forces.” The man gestures to the corpses and says, in perfect English, “Your tax dollars at work.”

I’m just a shill for a covert war. The War on Drugs. I’ve fought it my whole goddamn life, and for what? Billions of dollars, trying unsuccessfully to keep drugs out of the world’s most porous border? One-tenth of the anti-drug budget going into education and treatment, nine-tenths of those billions into interdiction? And not enough money from anywhere going into the root causes of the drug problem itself. And the billions spent keeping drug offenders locked up in prison, the cells now so crowded we have to give early release to murderers. Not to mention the fact that two-thirds of all the “non-drug” offenses in America are committed by people high on dope or alcohol. And our solutions are the same futile non-solutions—build more prisons, hire more police, spend more and more billions of dollars not curing the symptoms while we ignore the disease. Most people in my area who want to kick drugs can’t afford to get into a treatment program unless they have blue-chip health insurance, which most of them don’t. And there’s a six-month-to-two-year waiting list to get a bed in a subsidized treatment program. 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.

Art and Shag put Adán’s unconscious body on a gurney and take him down to the morgue. Put him in a body bag, strap him back on the gurney and roll him out to a van painted with HIDALGO FUNERAL HOME. Forty-five minutes later they’re at a secure location. It was relatively easy to force Lucía to betray her husband, and maybe the lousiest thing Art had ever done in his life. They’d been on her for months, keeping the house under surveillance, the land line tapped, the cell phone monitored, trying to break the cybercode that sent messages back and forth between Adán Barrera and his daughter.

“Sal.” “Mickey.” “I was just having tea,” Mickey says. Sal nods. The kettle whistles. Mickey pours the water into the chipped mug and dips the tea bag a few times. The bowl rattles as he spoons in some sugar and a little milk, and then the spoon knocks against the side of the mug as his shaking hand stirs the tea. He lifts the mug to his mouth and takes a sip. Then he smiles—it’s good and it’s hot—and nods to Sal. Scachi takes him out quick and clean, then steps over his body to go into the bedroom.

That evening he makes chicken broth for her and steak and potatoes for himself and they sit down at the table and eat and watch television and when the news comes on about a meth lab blowing up and bodies found he don’t say nothin’ to her about it because it’s clear she don’t know. He tries to feel bad about Peaches and O-Bop, but he can’t. Them two ushered too many people into the next world, and you had to know it was always gonna end that way for them. Like it’s gonna end for me. He feels bad about Mickey, though. But the news also means that Scachi is tracking them down.