Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Abrego wants to be patron of the Federacion anyway. How long before he thinks he’s strong enough to act? Will he come at me directly, or will he use one of the others?

No, he thinks, they’ll all act together if I can’t find the soplon.

It starts at Christmas.

The kids have been bugging Art to take them to see the big Christmas tree in the Cross of Squares downtown. He had hoped they’d be satisfied with the posadas, the nightly parades of children who go house to house through the Tlaquepaque neighborhood dressed as Mary and Joseph looking for a place to stay. But the little processions only fired the kids up to go see the tree and the pastorelas, the funny, slapstick plays about the birth of Christ that are performed outside the cathedral.

It isn’t the time for funny plays. Art has just listened in on one of Tio’s conversations about sixteen hundred pounds of cocaine in eight hundred boxes, all brightly wrapped in Christmas paper, with ribbons and bows and the whole holiday nine yards.

Thirty million dollars’ worth of Christmas cheer at a safe house in Arizona, and Art hasn’t decided yet whom he’s going to take it to.

But he knows he’s been neglecting his family, so on the Saturday before Christmas he takes Althea, the kids and the extended household of the cook, Josefina, and the maid, Guadalupe, shopping in the open market in the old district.

He has to admit that he’s having a wonderful time. They go Christmas shopping for each other and buy little handcrafted ornaments for the tree back at the house. They have a long, wonderful lunch of freshly sliced carnitas and black-bean soup, then sweet, honied sopaipillas for dessert.

Then Cassie spots one of the fancy horse-drawn carriages, enamel-black with red velvet cushions, and she has to have a ride, Please, Daddy, please, and Art negotiates a price with the driver in his bright gaucho suit and they all get under a blanket in the back and Michael sits on Art’s lap and falls asleep to the steady clop-clop of the horses’ hooves on the cobblestones of the plaza. Not Cassie; she’s beside herself with excitement, looking at the white caparisoned horses with the red plumes in their harnesses, and then at the sixty-foot tree with its bright lights, and as Art feels his son’s deep breathing against his chest he knows that he’s happier than it’s possible to be.

It’s dark by the time the ride ends, and he gently wakes Michael and hands him down to Josefina and they walk through the Plaza Tapatia toward the cathedral, where a small stage has been set up and a play is about to start.

Then he sees Adan.

His old cuate wears a rumpled business suit. He looks tired, like he’s been traveling. He sees Art and walks into a public rest room at the edge of the plaza.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Art says. “Michael, do you need to go?”

Say no, kid, say no.

“I went in the restaurant.”

“Go see the show,” Art says. “I’ll catch up with you.”

Adan’s leaning against the wall when Art comes in. Art starts to check the stalls to make sure they’re empty, but Adan says, “I already did that. And no one will be coming in. Long time no see, Arturo.”

“What do you want?”

“We know it’s you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play games with me,” Adan says. “Just answer me a question-what do you think you’re doing?”

“My job,” Art says. “It’s nothing personal.”

“It’s very personal,” Adan says. “When a man turns on his friends it is very fucking personal.”

“We’re not friends anymore.”

“My uncle is very unhappy about this.”

Art shrugs.

“You called him Tio,” Adan says. “Just like I do.”

“That was then,” Art says. “Things change.”

“That doesn’t change,” Adan says. “That’s forever. You accepted his patronage, his counsel, his help. He made you what you are.”

“We made each other.”

Adan shakes his head. “So much for an appeal to loyalty. Or gratitude.”

He reaches into his lapel pocket and Art takes a step toward him to check him from pulling the gun.

“Easy,” Adan says. He takes out an envelope, sets it on the edge of a sink. “That’s a hundred thousand U.S. dollars, cash. But if you prefer, we can make deposits for you in the Caymans, Costa Rica…”

“I’m not for sale.”

“Really? What’s changed?”

Art grabs him, pushes him against the wall and starts to pat him down. “You wearing a wire, Adan? Huh? You setting me up? Where are the fucking cameras?”

Art lets him go and starts searching the room. In the top corners, the stalls, under the sinks. He doesn’t find anything. He stops searching and, exhausted, leans against the wall.

“A hundred thousand right now for good faith,” Adan says. “Another hundred for the name of your soplon. Then twenty a month just for doing nothing.”

Art shakes his head.

“I told Tio you wouldn’t take it,” Adan says. “You prefer a different kind of coin. Okay, we’ll give you enough marijuana busts to make you a star again. That’s Plan A.”

“What’s Plan B?”

Adan walks over, wraps his arms around Art and holds him tightly. Says quietly into his ear, “Arturo, you’re an ungrateful, inflexible, guero-wannabe prick. But you’re still my friend and I love you. So take the money, or don’t take the money, but back off. You don’t know what you’re fucking around with here.”

Adan leans back so he’s face-to-face with Art. Their noses are practically touching as he looks him in the eyes and repeats, “You don’t know what you’re fucking around with here.”

He steps back, takes the envelope and holds it up. “No?”

Art shakes his head. Adan shrugs and puts the envelope back into his pocket. “Arturo?” he says. “You don’t even want to know about Plan

Then he walks out.

Art steps to the sink, runs the tap and splashes cold water on his face. Then he dries himself off and goes outside to meet his family.

They’re standing on the edge of a small crowd in front of the stage, the kids hopping up and down in delight to the antics of two actors dressed as the Angel Gabriel and Lucifer, banging each other on the head with sticks, fighting for the soul of the Christ Child.

When they leave the parking garage that night, a Ford Bronco pulls off the curb and follows them. The kids don’t notice, of course-they’re sound asleep-and neither do Althea, Josefina and Guadalupe, but Art keeps track of him in the rearview mirror. Art plays with him for a while through the traffic, but the car stays with him. Not even trying to disguise himself, Art thinks, so he’s trying to make a point, send a message.

When Art pulls into the driveway, the car passes, then turns around, then parks across the street a half-block away.

Art gets his family inside, then makes an excuse about forgetting something in the car. He goes out, walks over to the Bronco and knocks on the window. When the window slides down, Art leans in, pins the man to the seat, reaches into his left lapel pocket and hauls out his wallet.

He tosses the wallet with the Jalisco State Police badge back onto the cop’s lap.

“That’s my family in there,” Art says. “If you scare them, if you frighten them, if they even get the idea you’re out here, I’m going to come back, take that pistola you have on your hip and shove it so far up your ass it’ll come out your mouth. Do you understand me, brother?”

“I’m just doing my job, brother.”

“Then do it better.”

But Tio’s message has been delivered, Art thinks as he walks back into the house-you don’t fuck your friends.

After a mostly sleepless night, Art gets up, makes himself a cup of coffee and sips at it until his family wakes up. Then he fixes the kids’ breakfast, kisses Althea good-bye and drives toward the office.