Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Not him directly, but their lifestyle, the business, the pista secreta. If they had been able to stay in the States, with the excellent prenatal care, if perhaps the baby had been born at Scripps Clinic as planned, if perhaps in those first moments when they saw that something was terribly wrong, if they’d had access to the best doctors in the world… perhaps, just perhaps… even though the doctors in Guadalajara assured her it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Lucia wanted to go back to the States to have the baby, but she wouldn’t go without him, and he couldn’t go. There was a warrant out for him and Tio forbade it.

But if I had known, he thinks now, if I’d had the slightest thought that anything might have been wrong with the baby, I would have taken the chance. And with it, the consequences.

Goddamn the Americans.

And goddamn Art Keller.

Adan had called Father Juan in those first few terrible hours. Lucia was in agony, they all were, and Father Juan had hurried to the hospital right away. Came and held the baby, baptized her on the spot just in case, and then held Lucia’s hand and talked with her, prayed with her, told her that she would be a wonderful mother to a special, wonderful child who would need her. Then, when Lucia finally yielded to the tranquilizers and fell asleep, Father Juan and Adan went out to the parking lot so the bishop could smoke a cigarette.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Father Juan said.

“That God is punishing me.”

“God doesn’t punish innocent children for the sins of their fathers,” Parada answered. The Bible, he thought, notwithstanding.

“Then explain this to me,” Adan said. “Is this the way God loves children?”

“Do you love your child, despite her condition?”

“Of course.”

“Then God loves through you.”

“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

And it’s not good enough, Adan thought, and thinks it now. And thisHidalgo kidnapping is going to destroy us all, if it hasn’t already.

GrabbingHidalgo had been the easy part. Christ, the police had done it for them. Three cops pickedHidalgo up in La Plaza de Armas and delivered him to Raul and Guero, who drugged him, blindfolded him and brought him here to this house.

Where the Doctor had revived him and started his ministrations.

Which, so far, have produced no results.

He hears the Doctor’s soft, patient voice from inside the room.

“Tell me the names,” the Doctor says, “of the government officials who are on Miguel Angel Barrera’s payroll.”

“I don’t have any names.”

“Did Chupar give you those names? You said that he did. Tell them to me.”

“I was lying. Making it up. I don’t know.”

“Then tell me the name of Chupar,” the Doctor says. “So we can ask him instead of you. So we can do this to him instead of you.”

“I don’t know who he is.”

Is it possible, Adan wonders, that the man really doesn’t know? He hears echoes of his own scared voice eight years ago during Operation Condor, when the DEA and the federales beat and tortured him for information that he didn’t have. Told him that they had to be sure that he didn’t know, so kept up the torture after he told them, again and again, I don’t know.

“Christ,” he says. “What if he doesn’t know?”

“What if he doesn’t?” Raul shrugs. “The fucking Americans need to be taught a lesson anyway.”

Adan hears the lesson being conducted in the other room. Hidalgo’s moans as the metal of the ice pick grinds against his shinbone. And the Doctor’s gently insistent voice: “You want to see your wife again. Your children. Surely you owe them more than you owe this informant. Think: Why have we blindfolded you? If we intended to kill you we wouldn’t have bothered. But we intend to let you go. Back to your family. To Teresa and Ernesto and Hugo. Think of them. How worried they are. How scared your little sons must be. How they want their papa back. You don’t want them to have to grow up without a father, do you? Who is Chupar? What did he tell you? Whose names did he give you?”

And Hidalgo’s response, punctuated by sobs.

“I… don’t… know… who… he… is.”

“Pues…”

It starts again.

Antonio Ramos grew up on the garbage dumps of Tijuana.

Literally.

He lived in a shack outside the dump and picked through garbage for his meals, clothes, even his shelter. When they built a school nearby, Ramos went, every day, and if some other kid teased him for smelling like garbage, Ramos beat the kid up. Ramos was a big kid-skinny from lack of food, but tall and with quick hands.

After a while, he wasn’t teased.

He made it all the way through high school, and when the Tijuana police accepted him, it was like going to heaven. Good pay, good food, clean clothes. He lost that skinny look and filled out, and his superiors found out something new about him. They knew he was tough; they didn’t know he was smart.

The DFS, Mexico’s intelligence service, found it out, too, and recruited him.

Now if there’s an important assignment that requires smart and tough, Ramos usually gets the call.

He gets the call to bring back this American DEA agent, Hidalgo, at all or any cost.

Art meets him at the airport.

Ramos’ nose and several knuckles are crooked and broken. He has thick black hair, a shock of which hangs over his forehead despite his occasional attempts to control it. Jammed into his mouth is his trademark black cigar.

“Every cop needs a trademark,” he tells his men. “What you want the bad boys saying is, 'Look out for the macho with the black cigar.’ ”

They do.

They say it and they watch out and they’re scared of him because Ramos has a well-earned reputation for his own brand of rough justice. Guys rousted by Ramos have been known to yell for the police. The police won’t come-they don’t want any of Ramos, either.

There’s an alley near Avenida Revolucion in TJ nicknamed La Universidad de Ramos. It’s littered with cigar stubs and snuffed-out bad attitudes, and it’s where Ramos, when he was a TJ street cop, taught lessons to the boys who thought they were bad.

“You’re not bad,” he told them. “I’m bad.”

Then he showed them what bad was. If they needed a reminder, they could usually find one in the mirror for years afterward.

Six bad hombres have tried to kill Ramos. Ramos went to all six funerals, just in case any of the bereaved wanted to take a shot at revenge. None of them did. He calls his Uzi “Mi Esposa”-my wife. He’s thirty-two years old.

Within hours he has in custody the three policemen who picked up Ernie Hidalgo. One of them is the chief of the Jalisco State Police.

Ramos tells Art, “We can do this the fast way or the slow way.”

Ramos takes two cigars from his shirt pocket, offers one to Art and shrugs when he refuses it. He takes a long time to light the cigar, rolling it so that the tip lights evenly, then takes a long pull and raises his black eyebrows at Art.

The theologians are right, Art thinks-we become what we hate.

Then he says, “The fast way.”

Ramos says. “Come back in a little while.”

“No,” Art says. “I’ll do my part.”

“That’s a man’s answer,” Ramos says. “But I don’t want a witness.”

Ramos leads the Jalisco police chief and two federales into a basement cell.

“I don’t have time to fuck around with you guys,” Ramos says. “Here’s the problem: Right now, you’re more afraid of Miguel Angel Barrera than you are of me. We need to turn that around.”

“Please,” the chief says, “we are all policemen.”

“No, I’m a policeman,” Ramos says, slipping on black, weighted gloves. “The man you kidnapped is a policeman. You’re a piece of shit.”