Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Then thunders the threat of excommunication.

“Superstitious shit,” Guero says.

“This was a mistake,” Adan says.

A blunder. An enormous miscalculation. The Americans have reacted even more extremely than he had feared, bringing all their enormous economic and political pressure to bear on Mexico City. The fucking Americans closed the border, leaving thousands of trucks stranded on the road, their loads of produce rotting in the sun, the economic cost staggering. And the Americans are threatening to call in loans, screwing Mexico with the IMF, launching a debt and currency crisis that could literally destroy the peso. So even our bought-and-paid-for friends in Mexico City are turning against us, and why not? The MJFP and DFS and the army are responding to the Americans’ threats, rounding up every cartel member they can find, raiding houses and ranches… there’s rumor that a DFS colonel beat a suspect to death and shot three others, so there’s four Mexican lives already lost for this one American, but no one seems to care because they’re only Mexicans.

So the kidnapping was an enormous mistake, compounded by the fact that, for all the cost, they haven’t even learned the identity of Chupar.

The American clearly doesn’t know.

He would have told. He could not have stood the bone-tickling, the electrodes, the iron bar. If he’d known, he would have told. And now he lies moaning in the bedroom that has become a torture chamber and even the Doctor has thrown his hands up and said he cannot get anything more, and the Yanquis and their lambiosos are tracking me down and even my old priest is sending me to hell.

Release the man and come back to God.

His freedom is your freedom.

Perhaps, Adan thinks.

You might be right.

Ernie Hidalgo exists now in a bipolar world.

There is pain, and there is the absence of pain, and that is all there is.

If life means pain, it’s bad.

If death mean the absence of pain, it’s good.

He tries to die. They keep him alive with saline drips. He tries to sleep. They keep him awake with injections of lidocaine. They monitor his heart, his pulse, his temperature, careful not to let him die and end the pain.

Always with the same questions: Who is Chupar? What did he tell you? Whose names did he give you? Who in the government? Who is Chupar?

Always the same answers: I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything I haven’t told you. Nobody. I don’t know.

Followed by more pain, then careful nursing, then more pain.

Then a new question.

Out of the blue, a new question and a new word.

What is Cerberus? Have you heard of Cerberus? Did Chupar ever talk to you about Cerberus? What did he tell you?

I don’t know. No, I haven’t. No, he didn’t. He didn’t tell me anything. I swear to God. I swear to God. I swear to God.

What about Art? Did he ever talk to you about Cerberus? Did he ever mention Cerberus? Did you ever overhear him talking to anyone about Cerberus?

Cerberus, Cerberus, Cerberus…

You know the word, then.

No. I swear to God. I swear to God. God help me. God help me. Please, God, help me.

The Doctor leaves the room, leaves him alone with his pain. Leaves him wondering, Where is God, where is Arthur? Where are Jesus, Mother Mary and the Holy Ghost? Mary, bring me mercy.

Mercy comes, oddly enough, in the form of the Doctor.

It’s Raul who suggests it.

“Shit, that moaning is driving me fucking crazy,” he says to the Doctor. “Can’t you shut him up?”

“I could give him something.”

“Give him something,” Adan says. The moans are bothering him, too. And if they’re planning to release him, as he wants to do, it would be better to deliver him in the best shape possible. Which isn’t very good, but is better than dead. And Adan has an idea how to give the cop back and get what they want in return.

Reach out again to Arturo.

“Heroin?” the Doctor asks.

“You’re the doctor,” Raul says.

Heroin, Adan thinks. Homegrown Mexican Mud. The irony is deft.

“Fix him up,” he tells the Doctor.

Ernie feels the needle go into his arm. The familiar prick and burn, then something different-blessed relief.

The absence of pain.

Maybe not absence; say, detachment, as if he’s floating on a cumulus cloud high above the pain. The observed and the observer. The pain is still there, but it’s distant.

Eloi, eloi, thank you.

Mother Mary Mexican Mud.

Mmmmmmm…

Art’s in the office with Ramos, poring over maps of Sinaloa and comparing them with intelligence reports on marijuana fields and Guero Mendez. Trying to somehow narrow down the grid. On television, an official from the Mexican attorney general’s office is solemnly pronouncing, “In Mexico, the category of major drug gang does not exist.”

“He could work for us,” Art says.

Maybe the category of major drug gang doesn’t exist in Mexico, Art thinks, but it sure as hell does in the United States. The second they got the news about Ernie’s disappearance, Dantzler busted the cocaine shipment in two directions.

His sweep just missed Adan at his safe house in San Diego, but the bust was epic.

On the East Coast he hit pay dirt again, arresting one Jimmy “Big Peaches” Piccone, a capo in the Cimino Family. The FBI in New York passed along every surveillance photo of the crew they had, and Art’s looking through them when he sees something that freezes his balls.

The photo is obviously taken outside some wise-guy hangout, and there’s fat Jimmy Piccone and his equally obese little brother, and a few other goombahs, and then there’s someone else standing there.

Sal Scachi.

Art gets on the phone to Dantzler.

“Yeah, that’s Salvatore Scachi,” Dantzler tells him. “A made man in the Cimino Family.”

“In the Piccone crew?”

“Apparently, Scachi isn’t in a crew,” Dantzler says. “He’s sort of a wise guy without a portfolio. He reports directly to Calabrese himself. And get this, Art-the guy was a full colonel in the U.S. Army.”

Goddamn, Art thinks.

“There’s something else, Art,” Dantzler says. “This Piccone guy, Jimmy Peaches? FBI has had a tap on him for months. He’s Chatty-fucking-Cathy. Been running his mouth about a lot of stuff.”

“Coke?”

“Yup,” Dantzler says. “And guns. Seems like his crew is heavy into selling off hijacked weapons.”

Art is taking this in when another line rings and Shag jumps on it.

Then, sharply, “Art.”

Art hangs up from Dantzler and gets on the other line.

“We need to talk,” Adan says.

“How do I know you have him?”

“Inside his wedding ring. It’s inscribed, 'Eres toda mi vida.’ “

You’re my whole life.

“How do I know he’s still alive?” Art asks.

“You want us to make him scream for you?”

“No!” Art says. “Name the place.”

“The cathedral,” Adan says. “Father Juan will guarantee safety for both of us. Art, I see one cop, your man is dead.”

In the background, along with Ernie’s groans, he hears something that gives him, if possible, worse chills.

“What do you know about Cerberus?”

Art kneels in the confessional.

The screen slides back. Art can’t make out the face behind the screen, which, he supposes, is the point of this sacrilegious charade.

“We warned you and warned you and warned you,” Adan says, “and you wouldn’t listen.”

“Is he alive?”

“He’s alive,” Adan says. “Now it’s up to you to keep him alive.”

“If he dies, I’ll find you and kill you.”

“Who is Chupar?”

Art’s already thought this through-if he tells Adan that there is no Chupar, it’s tantamount to putting a bullet in Ernie’s head. He has to string it out. So he says, “You give me Hidalgo first.”