The Cartel (Power of the Dog #2)

by Don Winslow

Ester started to run, but Chido grabbed her and pushed her back against the wall. Then he saw the bottle at their feet. A green bottle that had once been full of cheap wine. He smashed it against the wall and held the jagged neck to her face. “I told you,” he said, “that you saw nothing.” “I didn’t.” “Lying bitch,” Chido said. “Now you won’t see anything.” He dragged the glass across her dark eyes and held his other hand over her mouth as she screamed and screamed. When he let her go she slid down the wall and collapsed, pressed her hands against her eyes and felt nothing but blood. Then she heard Chido say, “She can’t identify what she can’t see. It’s cool.” She heard them walk away. They must have called a squad car, because a few minutes later two cops arrived, picked her up, put her in the backseat, and drove her to the hospital. The doctors did the best they could, but she would never see again, and she became the blind whore of La Polvarilla. As her mother said, you don’t need to see a man’s hard dick to put it inside you, and men came for the cheap thrill of getting done by a girl who couldn’t see them, and when she went to the trucks to get water, some people, boys mostly, were mean and tripped her so the water spilled, but most people were kind and helped her. She never heard from Chido Palacios again. But that, she tells Keller, was when she was young and not a whore.