Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“I don’t know,” the young technician repeats, fiddling with knobs, dials and switches, trying to get the signal back. “Electrical storm, something on the plane… I’m trying.”

The kid sounds scared. He should-Raul takes out a. 44 and points it at the kid’s head. “Try harder.”

“Put that away,” Adan snaps. “That’s not going to help.”

Raul shrugs and tucks the pistol back into his belt.

But the radio-geek kid’s hand is shaking on the dials now. This isn’t the way it was supposed to go down-he was just supposed to do a little easy work for a little easy coke, and now they’re threatening to blow his brains out if he can’t get the plane on the ADF.

And he can’t.

All he can get is a Led Zeppelin-on-acid kind of guitar-feedback squeal. And his hand is rattling on the dials.

“Relax,” Adan says. “Just get the plane in.”

“I’m trying,” the kid repeats, looking like he’s going to cry.

Adan looks at Raul like, See what you did?

Raul frowns.

Especially when Jimmy Peaches walks over and taps on the window. “The fuck is going on?”

“We’re trying to get the plane on the radio,” Adan says.

“How hard is that?” Peaches asks.

“Harder if you keep bothering us,” Raul says. “Go back, hang in your truck, everything’s cool.”

No, everything isn’t cool, Peaches thinks as he walks back to the truck. First thing that isn’t cool is I’m out here playing Lawrence of Arabia in East Bumfuck, second thing is I’m sitting in a truck chock-fulla felony, third thing is I got major non-returnable investment in the truck that I leveraged with other people’s money, fourth thing is them other people is Johnny Boy Cozzo, Johnny’s brother Gene, and Sal Scachi, none of which is exactly known for his forgiving nature, which brings me to the fifth thing, which is that if Big Paulie ever gets wind we’re dealing dope he’s gonna have us whacked-the “us” starting with “me”-which leads me to the sixth thing, which is that all the coke is now in an airplane somewhere in the sky and these beaners can’t seem to find it.

“Now they can’t find the fucking plane,” he says to Little Peaches as he climbs back into the truck.

“What do you mean?” Little Peaches asks.

“Which word didn’t you fucking understand?”

“Irritable.”

“Fucking A, I’m irritable.”

Drive all the way out to California with a truck full of guns, and not just a few pistols but major freaking weaponry-M-16s, AR-15s, ammo, they even got a couple of LAWs back there, and what the fucking Mexicans need rocket launchers for I’ll never know. But that was the deal-the beaners wanted to get paid in weapons this time, so I get the money from the Cozzos and Sal, add a little secret surcharge to cover my end and haul ass all over the East Coast hustling up this freaking arsenal. Then I drive it all the way across the country, shitting my pants every time I see a state trooper because I got Life in Lewisburg in the back.

Peaches is also irritable because things in the Cimino Family ain’t going so well.

First of all, Big Paulie has his panties in a wad about the Commission Case, what with New York Eastern District D.A. Giuliani threatening to lay about a century each on the heads of the other four families. So Paulie ain’t letting them do nothing to earn a living. No robberies, no hits and, of course, no dope. And when they kick it up the chain that they’re fucking starving here, the answer comes back down that they should have invested their money.

They should have legitimate businesses to fall back on.

Which is bullshit, Peaches thinks. All the fucking hoops you gotta jump through to get made-for what? Sell shoes?

Fuck that.

Fucking Paulie is such a fucking woman.

Peaches has even started calling him the Godmother.

Just the other day on the phone, him and Little Peaches were talking about it.

“Hey,” Peaches says, “you know that maid the Godmother is pronging? You ready for this? I hear he’s got this pump-up dick he uses.”

“How does that work?” Little Peaches asks.

“Nothin’ I want to think about,” Peaches says. “I guess it’s like a flat tire, and you pump it up to get it hard.”

“He’s got, what, like an inner tube in his dick?”

“I guess so,” Peaches says. “Anyway, it’s wrong what he’s doing, tappin’ the maid right there in the house where his wife is living. It’s disrespectful. Thank God Carlo ain’t alive to see it.”

“If Carlo was alive, there’d be nothing to see,” Little Peaches says. “Paulie wouldn’t have the balls, never mind the inflatable dick, to fuck some whore in the house right in front of Carlo’s sister. What Paulie would be is dead, is what.”

“Your lips to God’s ears,” says Peaches. “You want some strange, fine-go get yourself some strange. You want a little something on the side, get it on the side, not in the house. The house is the wife’s home. You respect that. That’s our way.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s all so fuckin’ bad right now,” Big Peaches says. “And when Mr. Neill finally passes… I’m telling you, the underboss job better go to Johnny Boy.”

“Paulie ain’t gonna make John underboss,” Little Peaches says. “He’s too scared of him. The job’s going to Bellavia, you watch.”

“Tommy Bellavia is Paulie’s chauffeur,” Big Peaches snorts. “He’s a cabbie, for chrissakes. I’m not reporting to no fucking chauffeur. I’m telling you, it better be John.”

Little Peaches says, “Anyway, we can’t take no chances on this shipment. We gotta get it and put it out on the street and get some fuckin’ money in here.”

“I hear that.”

Callan’s thinking pretty much the same thing as he sits in the back of the truck in the middle of a cold desert night. Wishes he had more than just his old leather jacket.

“Who knew,” O-Bop says to him, “that it would be cold in the fucking desert?”

“What’s going on?” Callan asks.

He doesn’t like this shit. Doesn’t like being out of New York, doesn’t like being out in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t even like what they’re doing here. He sees what’s going on in the streets, what crack is doing to the neighborhood, to the whole city. He feels bad-it’s not a right way to make a living. The union shit is one thing, the construction shit, the loan-sharking, the gambling-even the contracts-but he don’t really like helping Peaches put crack on the street.

“What are we gonna do?” O-Bop had said when it came up. “Say no?”

“Yeah.”

“This thing fucks up, it’s our ass, too.”

“I know.”

So here they are, sitting in the back of a truck on top of enough weaponry to take a small banana republic, waiting for the plane to come down so they can make the exchange and go home.

Unless the Mexicans get cute, in which case Callan has ten. 22 rounds in the clip and another in the chamber.

“You got an arsenal in here,” O-Bop asks. “What you want with a. 22?”

“It’s enough.”

Fuck yes it is, O-Bop thinks, remembering Eddie Friel.

Fuck yes it is.

“Find out what’s going on,” Callan says.

O-Bop bangs on the wall. “What’s going on?!”

“They can’t find the fucking plane!”

“You’re kidding!”

“Yeah, I’m kidding!” Peaches yells back. “The plane landed, we made the switch and we’re all sitting at Rocco’s eating linguini with clam sauce!”

“How do you lose a whole airplane?” Callan asks.

There’s nothing out here.

That’s the problem. The pilot is eight thousand feet over the desert, looking at nothing but dark down there. He can find Borrego Springs, he can find Ocotillo Wells or Blythe, but unless someone gets on the horn and gives him the landing location, he has as much chance of finding that airstrip as he does of seeing the Cubs win the World Series.