Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Or…

No…

But Art eats lunch at Talavera’s the next day.

The girl’s name is Pilar, and sure enough, she’s Talavera’s daughter.

She sits in a booth in the back, pretending to study a textbook, every now and again performing a self-conscious turn of the hip as she looks up from under those long lashes to see who might be checking her out.

Every guy in the place, Art thinks.

She doesn’t look fifteen except for a remaining trace of baby fat and the perfected adolescent pout on her precociously full lips. And even though it makes him feel a little like a child molester, Art can’t help but notice that she has a figure that is definitely very post-adolescent. The only thing that tells Art she’s fifteen is the ongoing argument she’s having with her mother, who sits down in the booth and loudly reminds her several times that she’s only fifteen.

And Papa glances up anxiously every time the door opens. The hell is he so nervous about? Art wonders.

Then he finds out.

Tio walks through the door.

Art has his back to the door and Tio walks right past him. Doesn’t even notice his long-lost nephew, Art thinks, he’s so focused on the girl. And he has flowers in his hand-honest to God, he has flowers clutched in his long, thin fingers-and honest to God has a box of candy under his other arm.

Tio has come courting.

Now Art gets why Talavera’s so freaked out. He knows that Miguel Angel Barrera is accustomed to the droit de seigneur of rural Sinaloa, in which girls her age and younger are routinely deflowered by the dominant gomeros.

And that’s their concern. That this powerful man, this married man, is going to turn their precious, beautiful, virginal daughter into his segundera, his mistress. To use her and then throw her aside, her reputation ruined, her chances for a good marriage destroyed.

And there’s not a goddamn thing they can do about it.

Tio won’t rape the girl, Art knows. He won’t take her by force. That might happen up in the hills of Sinaloa, but it won’t happen here. But if she accepts him, if she goes with him willingly, the parents are helpless. And what fifteen-year-old’s head wouldn’t be turned by attention from a rich and powerful man? This kid isn’t stupid-she knows it’s flowers and candy now, but it could be jewelry and clothes, trips and vacations. She’s at the base of an arc, but she can’t see the downside from where she’s standing-that one day the jewelry and clothes will slide back to flowers and candy, and then it won’t even be that anymore.

Tio’s back is turned to Art, who leaves some pesos on the table, gets up as quietly as he can, goes to the counter and pays the check.

Thinking, She may look like a young piece of strange to you, Tio.

To me she looks like a Trojan horse.

Nine o’clock that night, Art climbs into a pair of jeans and a sweater and goes into the bathroom where Althea is taking a shower. “Babe, I gotta go out.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

She’s too smart to ask where he’s going. She’s a cop’s wife, she’s been in the DEA with him for the past eight years, she knows the drill. But knowing doesn’t stop her from worrying. She slides the glass door open and kisses him good-bye. “I’m guessing I shouldn’t wait up?”

“Good guess.”

What are you doing? he asks himself as he drives toward the Talaveras’ house in the suburbs.

Nothing. I’m not going to drink.

He finds the address and pulls over a half-block away on the other side of the street. It’s a quiet neighborhood, solidly upper-middle-class, just enough streetlights to make it safe, not enough to be obtrusive.

He sits in his dark spot and waits.

That night, and the next three.

He’s there each night as the Talavera family comes home from the restaurant. As a light goes on in a room upstairs, then goes off a little while later when Pilar turns in for the night. Art gives it another half-hour and then goes home.

Maybe you’re wrong, he thinks.

No, you’re not. Tio gets what he wants.

Art’s about to go home on the fourth night when a Mercedes comes down the street, kills its headlights and pulls up in front of the Talavera house.

Ever gallant, Art thinks, Tio sends a car and driver. No taxicab for this underage piece of ass. It’s fucking pathetic, he thinks as he watches Pilar come out the front door and scurry into the backseat of the car.

Art gives it a good head start, then pulls out.

The car pulls up in front of a condo on a little knoll in the west suburbs. It’s in a nice, quiet neighborhood, fairly new, individual units nestled among the city’s trademark jacaranda trees. The address is new to Art, not any of the properties he’s traced to Tio. How sweet, Art thinks-a brand-new love nest for a brand-new love.

Tio’s car is already there. The driver gets out and opens the door for Pilar. Tio meets her at the door and ushers her in. They’re in each other’s arms before the door is even shut.

Jesus, Art thinks, if I were fucking a fifteen-year-old girl, I’d at least pull the curtains.

But you think you’re safe, don’t you, Tio?

And the most dangerous place on earth Is where you’re safe.

He’s back at La Casa del Amor (as he styles it) late that morning, when he knows that Tio will be at the office and Pilar in, well, ahem, school. He’s wearing the overalls he uses to work in his own garden and he carries a pair of clippers. In fact, he does trim a couple of unruly jacaranda branches as he makes his reconnaissance, noting the color of the exterior paint and plaster, the location of the phone lines, the windows, the pool, the spa, any outbuildings.

A week later, after visits to a hardware store and a model-supply shop and a call to a mail-order techno warehouse in San Diego, he goes back, wearing the same outfit, and clips a few more branches on his way to ducking behind the shrubs that have been thoughtfully planted outside the bedroom wall. He likes this location not for prurient reasons-he’d actually rather not hear that part of it-but because the telephone lines go into the bedroom. He pulls a small flathead screwdriver from his pocket and, delicate as a surgeon, pries a minuscule opening behind the aluminum windowsill. He inserts the tiny FX-101 bug into the opening, removes a small tube of caulking from his pocket and reseals the opening, then takes the little bottle of green paint that closely matches the original color and, with a tiny brush meant for painting model airplanes, paints over the caulk. He blows gently on the paint to dry it, then leans back to assess his work.

The bug, illegal and unauthorized, is also undetectable.

The FX-101 can pick up any sound within ten yards and throw it for another sixty, so Art has some flexibility. He goes outside the complex to the sewer opening. He takes the unit that contains the receiver and a voice-activated tape recorder and duct-tapes it to the top of the sewer. Now it will be a simple matter of swinging by, taking out one cassette and replacing it with a fresh one.

He knows it’s going to be hit-and-miss, but he needs only a few hits. Tio will use La Casa del Amor mostly as a spot for his assignations with Pilar, but he’ll also use the phone. He might even use the condo for meetings. Even the most cautious criminal, Art knows, can’t separate his business from his personal life.

Of course, he admits, neither can you.

He lies to Ernie and Shag.

They take jogs together now. Ostensibly, it’s Art’s mandate for his team to stay in shape, but in reality it’s a cover for them to have the conversations they can’t have in the office. It’s hard to listen in on a moving target, particularly in the open plazas of downtown Guadalajara, so every day before lunch they change into sweats and Nikes and go out for their run.