Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Manuel gets up from a bench and follows them, his right leg dragging. At a discreet distance, he follows, with his distinctive limp. To Nora he is almost a caricature: an AK slung over his shoulder, a double loop of bandoliers over his shoulders like an old-time bandito, a pistol holstered at each hip, a huge knife tucked into his belt.

All he’s missing, she thinks, are the big sombrero and the drooping mustache.

A maid comes scurrying out with a tray.

Two coffees: white and sweet for him; black, no sugar, for her.

Adan thanks the maid and she hurries back into the kitchen. She doesn’t look at Nora, afraid that the gringa’s eyes will bewitch hers the way they did the patron's. It is the talk of the kitchen-look into the eyes of this bruja and you will come under her spell.

It was difficult at first, the staff’s passive hostility and Raul’s active disapproval. Adan’s brother thought it was fine to have mistresses but not to bring them into the family home. She heard the brothers quarrel about it and offered to leave, but Adan wouldn’t hear of it. Now they’ve settled into a quiet domestic routine, which includes this morning walk.

The compound is beautiful. Nora loves it especially in the morning, before the sun reduces all the shapes to silhouettes and bleaches out all the colors. They start their stroll in the orchard because Adan knows that she loves the acrid smell of the fruit trees-orange and lemon and grapefruit-and the sweet smell of the mimosas and jacarandas, their blossoms dropping from their branches like lavender tears. They walk past the neatly ordered flower gardens-day lilies, calla lilies, poppies-and into the rose garden.

She looks at the flowers glistening with water, listens to the rhythmic shoop-shoop-shoop of the sprinkler system that sprays all the flowers before the sun makes watering an exercise in instant evaporation.

Adan shoos a peacock away from the garden.

Indeed, the compound is alive with birds: peacocks, pheasants, guinea fowl. One morning when Adan was away she went out early on her own and there was a peacock perched on the edge of the central fountain. It looked at her and spread its tail and it was a marvelous sight, all the colors spread out against the light khaki sand.

Other birds are in the trees. An amazing assortment of finches-Adan tries in vain to teach her their proper names, but she knows them only by colors: gold and yellow, purple and red. The warblers and the lazuli bunting, and the incredible western tanager that looks to her like a flying sunset. And the hummingbirds. Special flowers have been planted and sugar-water feeders hung to attract the hummingbirds-Anna’s and Costa’s and black-chinned, as Adan has tried to distinguish them for her. She knows them only as dazzling flights of jeweled colors, and that she would miss them very much if they no longer came to visit.

“You want to see the animals?” he says.

“Of course.”

Adan is a practical, hardworking man and can’t quite bring himself to approve of the time and money Raul devotes to the menagerie. It’s just another entertainment for Raul, a sop to his ego that he has an ocelot, two kinds of camels, a cheetah, a pair of lions, a leopard, two giraffes, a herd of rare deer.

But no white tiger. Raul sold it to some collector in Los Angeles, and the idiot tried to drive it across the border and got busted. Had to pay a big fine, and the tiger was confiscated. It lives in the San Diego Zoo now.

The whale he owned became a movie star. They busted out the amusement park for every penny it was worth then burned it down, and the whale ended up in a series of hit films. So the whale did pretty well for itself, although Adan hasn’t seen it in any new movies lately.

So Adan and Nora walk through the private zoo in the morning, and one of the keepers is always ready with food for Nora to feed the giraffes. She loves their grace, their long necks and the way they walk.

She gets down from the little platform they use to feed the giraffes, picks up her coffee cup and moves ahead of Adan. Another keeper opens a gate to let her into the deer pen and hands her a plastic cup full of food.

“Good morning, Tomas.”

“Senora.”

The deer crowd around her, nuzzling her robe, pushing their noses out to get at the food.

Nora and Adan have breakfast on the east terrace, to catch the sun. She has grapefruit and coffee. That’s all-grapefruit fresh from the orchard, picked literally moments before it is served to her, and coffee. He eats like one of Raul’s lions. An enormous plate of huevos con machaca with chunks of yellowtail and strands of hot chorizo. A stack of warm corn tortillas. At Nora’s insistence, a bowl of fruit. And a small bowl of fresh salsa-the scent of its tomatoes and cilantro makes her mouth water, but she sticks with the slimming grapefruit.

He notices.

“It has no fat,” he says.

“The tortilla I’d eat with it does.”

“You have a few pounds to give.”

“You’re so gallant.”

He smiles and goes back to his newspaper, knowing that he won’t convince her. She’s almost as obsessed with her body as he is. As soon as he showers and goes into his office for a day of work she’ll spend the whole morning in the gym. He put in a stereo system and a television because she likes noise when she works out. And the gym has two of everything-two reclining cycles, two treadmills, two Universal weight machines, two sets of free weights-although she can rarely persuade him to work out with her.

On alternate days she runs on the long dirt road that winds up to the compound, which caused some complaint among the security staff until Adan found two sicarios who liked to run. Then she complained about it, said it made her self-conscious to have the men following her, but on this issue he put his foot down and there was no argument.

So when she runs two bodyguards trot behind her. At his specific instructions, they alternate running and trotting. He doesn’t want them both out of breath at the same time. If it comes to shooting, he wants at least one of them to have a steady hand. And they have been told, “If anything happens to her, it’s both your lives.”

Her afternoons are long and slow. Because he works through lunch, she dines alone. Then she may take a short siesta, stretching out on the chaise under the umbrella, avoiding the sun. For the same reason, she spends most of the midafternoon indoors, reading magazines and books, idly watching Mexican television, basically waiting for Adan to show up before having a late dinner.

Now he says, “I have to go away on a business trip. I may be gone awhile.”

“Where are you going?”

He shakes his head. “Colombia. FARC wants to negotiate.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

She tells him that she understands. She’ll go to San Diego while he’s gone-do some shopping, see a few movies, catch up with Haley.

“But I’ll miss you,” she says.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

“Let’s go back to bed.”

She fucks him with demonic energy. Grips him with her pussy, holds him tightly with her legs and feels him spurt deep inside her. Strokes his hair as he rests his face on her breasts and says, “I love you. Tienes mi alma en tus manos.”

You have my soul in your hands.

Putumayo, Colombia 1997

Adan sits in the back of a jeep bouncing slowly over a muddy, rutted road cut through the Amazonian jungle of southwestern Colombia. The air around him is hot and fetid, and he swats at the flies and mosquitoes that swarm around his head.

It’s already been a difficult trip.

He rejected the idea of simply flying in on one of his 727s. No one can know that Adan is going to meet with Tirofio, the commander of FARC; anyway, the flight would have been too dangerous. If the American CIA or DEA intercepted the flight plan, the results would have been disastrous. And besides, there are things that Tirofio wants Adan to see en route.