Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Suddenly he’s become more of a cat than a bird, Parada thinks. Thinking he’s swallowed the canary. That I’ve sold my soul to him for the sake of my ambition. A transaction that he can understand.

Good, let him think it.

Fake it, the lovely American prostitute had said.

She’s right-it’s easy.

Tijuana

1985

Adan Barrera contemplates the deal he just made with the PRI.

It was really quite simple, he thinks. You go into breakfast with a briefcase full of cash and you leave without it. It stays under the table by your feet, never mentioned but assumed, a tacit understanding: Despite American pressure to the contrary, Tio will be allowed to come home from his exile in Honduras.

And retire.

Tio will live quietly in Guadalajara and manage his legitimate businesses in peace. That’s the upside of the arrangement.

The downside is that Garcia Abrego will realize his longtime ambition of replacing Tio as El Patron. And perhaps this is not such a bad thing. Tio’s health is precarious and, face it, he’s changed since that Talavera bitch betrayed him. God, he actually loved the little segundera, wanted to marry her, and he’s not the same man he was.

So Abrego will assume the leadership of the Federacion from his base in the Gulf states. El Verde will continue to run Sonora; Guero Mendez will still have the Baja Plaza.

And the Mexican federal government will look the other way.

Thanks to the earthquake.

The government needs cash to rebuild, and right now there are only two sources-the Vatican and the narcos. The Church has already kicked in, Adan knows, and so will we. But there will be a quid pro quo, and the government will honor it.

In addition, the Federacion will also foot the bill to make certain that the ruling party, the PRI, wins the upcoming elections, as it has since the revolution. Even now, Adan is helping Abrego organize a $25 million-a-plate fund-raising dinner, to which every major narco and businessman in Mexico will be expected to contribute.

If, that is, they want to do business.

And do we ever need to do business, Adan thinks. The Hidalgo fiasco was a major disruption, and even with Arturo out of the country and things settling down, there is a lot of money to be made up. Now, with our relationship with Mexico City on firm footing again, we can get back to business as usual.

Which means stealing the Baja Plaza from Guero.

It had been Tio’s idea for his nephews to infiltrate Tijuana.

Like cuckoo birds.

Because the long-term plan is to slowly grow rich in power and influence, and then throw Guero out of his nest. He’s an absentee landlord anyway, trying to run the Baja Plaza from his ranch outside Culiacan. Guero relies on lieutenants to run the day-to-day in La Plaza, narcos loyal to him, like Juan Esparagoza and Tito Mical.

And Adan and Raul Barrera.

It had been Tio’s idea for Adan and Raul to ingratiate themselves with the scions of the Tijuana establishment. “Become part of the fabric, so if they want to rip you out, they can’t do it without ripping the whole blanket. And that, they will not do.” Do it slowly, do it carefully, do it without Guero taking notice, but do it.

“Start with the kids,” he’d advised. “Senior will do anything to protect Junior.”

So Adan and Raul had launched a charm offensive. Bought expensive homes in the exclusive Colonia Hipodromo, and suddenly they were just there. Actually, everywhere. Like one day there was no Raul Barrera, and the next day he’s everywhere you go. Go to a club, Raul is there picking up the tab; go to the beach, Raul is out there doing karate katas; go to the races, Raul is there laying down piles of bills on long shots; go to a disco, Raul is there flooding the place with Dom Perignon. He starts to gather a following around him, the scions of Tijuana society, the nineteen- and twenty-year-old sons of bankers, lawyers, doctors and government officials, who like to park their cars alongside a wall by a huge, ancient oak tree and talk shit with Raul.

Pretty soon, the tree becomes just “the tree”-and everyone who’s anyone hangs out at El Arbol.

Like Fabian Martinez.

Fabian is movie-star handsome.

He doesn’t resemble his namesake-some old singer/beach-movie guy-he looks like a young, Hispanic Tony Curtis. Fabian is a handsome kid and knows it. Everyone’s been telling him this since he was six years old, and the mirror is just a confirmation. He’s tall, with copper skin and a wide, sensuous mouth. His black hair is full and worn slicked straight back. He has bright, white teeth-created by years of expensive orthodontics-and a smile that is seductive.

He knows this because he’s practiced it-a lot.

Fabian is hanging out one day when he overhears someone say, “Let’s go kill somebody.”

Fabian looks at his cuate Alejandro.

This is just too cool.

This is right out of Scarface.

Although Raul Barrera doesn’t look anything like Al Pacino. Raul is tall and well-built, with big heavy shoulders and a neck that goes along with the karate moves he’s always demonstrating. Today he’s wearing a leather jacket and a San Diego Padres baseball cap. The jewelry, though-that’s like Pacino. Raul is dripping in it-thick gold chains around his neck, gold bracelets on his wrists, gold rings and the inevitable gold Rolex watch.

Actually, Fabian thinks, Raul’s older brother looks more like Al Pacino, but there the resemblance to Scarface ends. Fabian’s met Adan Barrera only a few times: at a nightclub with Ramon, at a boxing match, another time at “El Big”-Ted’s Big Boy hamburger joint on Avenida Revolucion. But Adan looks more like an accountant than a narcotraficante. No mink coats, no jewelry, very quiet and soft-spoken. If nobody pointed him out to you, you wouldn’t know he was there.

Raul you know is there.

Today he’s leaning against his bright red Porsche Targa, talking casually about killing somebody.

Anybody.

“Who has a grudge?” Raul asks them. “Who do you want hosed off the street?”

Fabian and Alejandro exchange another glance.

They’ve been cuates-buddies-a long time, almost from birth, seeing as how they were born just a few weeks apart in the same hospital-Scripps in San Diego. This was a common practice among Tijuana’s upper class back in the late ’60s: They went across the border to have their children so that the kids would have the advantage of dual citizenship. So Fabian and Alejandro and most of their cuates were born in the States, went to kindergarten and preschool together in the exclusive Hipodromo neighborhood in the hills above downtown Tijuana. Around the time they were ready to go into the fifth or sixth grade, their mothers moved back to San Diego with the children so that the kids could attend middle and high school in the States, learn English, become totally bicultural and make the trans-national contacts that would become so important to success in later life. Their parents recognized that while Tijuana and San Diego might be in two different countries, they’re in the same business community.

Fabian, Alejandro and all their buddies went to the Catholic all-boy Augustine High School in San Diego; their sisters went to Our Lady of Peace. (Their parents took a quick look at the San Diego public schools and decided they didn’t want their children to be that bicultural.) They spent their weekdays with the priests and their weekends back in Tijuana, partying at the country club or hitting the beach resorts of Rosarito and Ensenada. Or sometimes they stayed in San Diego, doing the same shit that American teenagers do on the weekend-shopping for clothes in the mall, going to movies, heading out to Pacific Beach or La Jolla Shores, partying at the house of whichever friend’s parents were away for the weekend (and they’re away a lot-one of the bonuses of being a rich kid is that your parents have the money to travel), drinking, screwing, smoking dope.