Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“I’m not a punching bag,” she said one night as he lay on top of her in one of his spectacular postcoital depressions.

“I’ve never hit you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He remained a dutiful, if wooden, father. He did all the daddy things he used to do, but now it was more like he was just going through the motions. Like a robot version of Art taking the kids to the park, robot Art showing Michael how to body-board, robot Art playing tennis with Cassie. The kids knew.

Althea tried to get him to see someone.

He laughed. “A shrink?”

“A shrink, a counselor, somebody.”

“All they do is give you drugs,” he said.

Christ, then take them, she thought.

It got worse when the subpoenas came.

The meetings with DEA bureaucrats, administration officials, congressional investigators. And lawyers-God, so many lawyers. She was worried that the legal fees would bankrupt them, but all he would say was not to worry, “It’s taken care of.” She never knew where the money was coming from, but it was coming because she never saw a legal bill, not one.

Art, of course, refused to discuss it.

“I’m your wife,” she’d pleaded one night. “Why won’t you open up to me?”

“There are things you can’t know about,” he said.

He wanted to talk to her, tell her everything, get close again, but he couldn’t. It was like there was this invisible wall, this science-fiction force field-not between them but inside him-that he just couldn’t break through. It was as if he spent all his time walking through water, underwater, looking up at the light of the real world but seeing only the water-distorted faces of his wife and his kids. Unable to reach up, reach through and touch them. Unable to let them touch him.

Instead he dove deeper.

Retreated into silence, the slow poison of a marriage.

That day at the Watergate he looked at Althea and knew that she knew he’d taken a dive-lay down and lied for the administration, helped them cover up a shitty deal that had put crack out onto the streets of American ghettos.

What she didn’t know was why.

This is why, Art thinks now as he peers through the window blinds across the way at 2718 Cosmos Street, where Tio Barrera is holed up.

“I got you now, motherfucker,” Art says. “And no one’s going to snatch you out of it this time.”

Tio’s been switching residences every few days, moving around between his dozen apartments and condos in Guadalajara. Whether it’s a result of his fearing arrest or, as rumor has it, because he’s been smoking his own product, Tio has become increasingly paranoid.

With good reason, Art thinks. He’s been watching Tio in this place for three days now. That’s a long time for Tio to be in any one place. He’ll probably move again this afternoon.

Or thinks he will.

Art has his own plans for Tio’s next move.

But it has to be done right.

His government has promised the Mexican government that it will be done with no fuss, no muss. Above all, with no collateral casualties. And Art has to disappear as soon as possible-this has to look like a Mexican operation all the way, a triumph for the federales.

Whatever, Art thinks.

I don’t care, Tio, as long as it ends with you in a prison cell.

He crouches by the window and peeks out again. The reward for My Years in the Desert, as he came to call that god-awful stretch of ’87, ’88 and ’89, when he maneuvered through the minefield of investigations, sweated out the perjury indictment that never came, watched as one president left office and his vice president-the same man who had run the secret war against the Sandinistas-came in. My Years in the Desert, Art recalls, transferred from one desk job to another as his marriage dried up, as he and Althea retreated into separate rooms and separate lives, as Althea finally demanded a divorce and he fought it every step of the way.

Even now, Art thinks, a fresh set of divorce papers sits unsigned on the kitchenette table of his barren little apartment in downtown San Diego.

“I will never,” Art told his wife, “let you take my kids.”

Eventually peace came.

Not to the Kellers, but to Nicaragua.

Elections were held, the Sandinistas were tossed out, the secret war came to end, and about five minutes later Art went to John Hobbs to claim his reward.

The destruction of every man involved in the murder of Ernie Hidalgo.

A laundry list: Ramon Mette, Quito Fuentes, Doctor Alvarez, Guero Mendez.

Raul Barrera.

Adan Barrera.

And Miguel Angel Barrera.

Tio.

Whatever Art might have thought about the president, John Hobbs, Colonel Scott Craig and Sal Scachi, they were men of their word. Art Keller was given a free hand and all possible cooperation. He went on his tear.

“As a result,” Hobbs had said, “we have a burned embassy in Honduras and a raging civil-liberties battle, and our diplomatic relationship with Mexico is in ashes. To stretch the metaphor to the breaking point, State would like to host an auto-da-fe for you, to which Justice will bring the marshmallows.”

“But I’m confident,” Art says, “that I have the full support of the White House and the president.”

Which was Art reminding Hobbs that before the current president occupied the White House he was busy funding the Contras with cocaine, so let’s not hear any more bullshit about “State” and “Justice.”

The extortion worked; Art got permission to go after Tio.

Not that this had been easy to arrange.

Negotiations at the highest level, and Art hadn’t even been involved.

Hobbs went to Los Pinos, the president’s residence, to make the deal: The arrest of Miguel Angel Barrera would remove one stumbling block to the passage of NAFTA.

NAFTA is the key, the absolutely essential key, to Mexican modernization. With it in place, Mexico can move ahead into the next century. Without it, the economy will stagnate and collapse, and the country will remain a Third World backwater forever, mired in poverty.

So they’ll trade Barrera as part of the deal for NAFTA.

But there’s another, more troublesome condition: This is the last arrest. This closes the books on the Hidalgo murder. Art Keller won’t even be allowed back in the country after this. So he’ll get Barrera, but not Adan, Raul, or Guero Mendez.

That’s okay, Art thinks.

I have plans for them.

But first, Tio.

So now Art watches and waits.

The problem is Tio’s three bodyguards (Cerberus again, Art thinks, the unavoidable three-headed guard dog), armed with 9-mm machine pistols, AK-47s and hand grenades. And willing to use them.

Not that it worries Art overmuch. His team has firepower, too. There are twenty-five special federale officers with M-16s, sniper rifles and the whole SWAT arsenal, not to mention Ramos and his crew of privateers. But the Mexican mandate was “We can absolutely not have a gun battle in the streets of Guadalajara, it just cannot happen,” and Art is determined to live up to the deal.

So they’re trying to find an opening.

It’s the girl who gives it to them.

Barrera’s latest stringy-haired mistress.

She won’t cook.

Art has watched the past three mornings as the bodyguards have trooped out to a local comida to buy their breakfast. Listened through sound detectors at the arguments, her shouting, their grumbling as they go out and come back twenty minutes later, nourished and ready for a long day of guarding Miguel Angel.

Not today, Art thinks.

Going to be a short day today.

“They should be coming out,” he says to Ramos.

“Don’t worry.”

“I worry,” Art says. “What if she gets a sudden attack of domesticity?”