Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“That pig?” Ramos asks. “Forget it. Now, if she were my woman, she’d cook breakfast. She’d wake up in the morning whistling and wanting to please me. The happiest woman in Mexico.”

But he’s edgy, too, Art sees. His jaws are clamped on the omnipresent cigar, and his fingers are drumming little tattoos on the stock of Esposa, his Uzi, as he adds, “They have to eat.”

Let’s hope so, Art thinks. If they don’t, and we miss this opportunity, the whole fragile arrangement with the Mexican government could fall apart. They’re already nervous, reluctant allies. The secretary of the interior and the governor of Jalisco have literally distanced themselves from the operation; they’re miles out at sea on a three-day “diving excursion” so that they can plead non-involvement to both the nation and the surviving Barrera brothers. And there are so many moving pieces in this operation, all of which have to be coordinated, that the whole thing is extremely time-sensitive.

The team of federales from Mexico City is in place here, waiting to grab Barrera. At the same time, a special unit of army troops is perched on the edge of town, ready to move in and detain the entire Jalisco State Police force, its chief and the governor of the state until Barrera is flown to Mexico City, arraigned and jailed.

It’s a state coup d'etat, Art thinks, planned to the second, and if this moment passes, it will be impossible to maintain secrecy for another day. The Jalisco police will get their boy Barrera out, the governor will plead ignorance, and it will be over.

So it has to be now.

He watches the front door of the house.

Please, God, let them be hungry.

Let them go to breakfast.

He stares at the door of the house as if he could make it open.

Tio is a crackhead.

Hooked on the pipe.

It’s tragic, Adan thinks as he looks at his uncle. What started as a pantomime of disability has become real, as if Tio acted his way into a role that he can’t shake off. Always a slim man, he’s thinner than ever, doesn’t eat, chain-smokes one cigar after another. When he’s not inhaling the smoke, he coughs it up. His once jet-black hair is now silver, and his skin has a yellowish tint. He’s hooked up to a glucose IV on a rolling stand that he drags behind him everywhere like a pet dog.

He’s fifty-three years old.

A young girl-Christ, what is this? the fifth or sixth since Pilar-comes in, plops her ample ass down on the easy chair and clicks the television on with the remote. Raul is shocked at the disrespect, even more shocked when his uncle says meekly, “Calor de mi vida, we are talking business.”

Warmth of my life, my ass, Adan thinks. The girl-he can’t even think of her name-is yet another pale imitation of Pilar Talavera Mendez. Twenty pounds heavier, limp, greasy hair, a face that’s many carnitas away from being pretty, but there is a faint resemblance. Adan could understand the obsession with Pilar-God, what a beauty-but with this segundera, he can’t comprehend. Especially when the girl puts a pout on her gash of a fat mouth and mewls, “You’re always talking business.”

“Make us some lunch,” Adan says.

“I don’t cook.” She sneers and waddles out. They can hear another television come on, loudly, from another room.

“She likes her soap operas,” Tio explains.

Adan has been silent so far, sitting back in his chair and watching his uncle with growing concern. His obvious bad health, his weakness, his attempts to replace Pilar, attempts as persistent as they are disastrous. Tio Angel is fast becoming a pathetic figure and yet he is still the patron of the pasador.

Tio leans over and whispers, “Do you see her?”

“Who, Tio?”

“Her,” Tio croaks. “Mendez’s mujer. Pilar.”

Guero had married the girl. Met her as she got off the plane from her Salvadoran “honeymoon” with Tio, and actually married a girl whom most Mexican men wouldn’t have touched because not only was she not a virgin, she was Barrera’s thing-on-the-side, his segundera.

That’s how much Guero loves Pilar Talavera.

“Si, Tio,” Adan says. “ I see her.”

Tio nods. Looks quickly toward the living room to make sure the girl is still watching television, and then whispers, “Is she still beautiful?”

“No, Tio,” Adan lies. “She is fat now. And ugly.”

But she isn’t.

She is, Adan thinks, exquisite. He goes to Mendez’s Sinaloa ranch every month with their tribute and he sees her there. She’s a young mother now, with a three-year-old daughter and an infant son, and she looks terrific. The adolescent baby fat is gone, and she’s matured into a beautiful young woman.

And Tio is still in love with her.

Adan tries to get back on track. “What about Keller?”

“What about him?” Tio asks.

“He snatched Mette out of Honduras,” Adan says, “and now he’s kidnapped Alvarez right here from Guadalajara. Are you next?”

It’s a real concern, Adan thinks.

Tio shrugs. “Mette got complacent, Alvarez was careless. I’m none of those things. I’m careful. I change houses every few days. The Jalisco police protect me. Besides, I have other friends.”

“You mean the CIA?” Adan asks. “The Contra war is over. What use are you to them now?”

Because loyalty is not an American virtue, Adan thinks, nor is long memory. If you don’t know that, just ask Manuel Noriega in Panama. He had also been a key partner in Cerberus, a touch point on the Mexican Trampoline, and where is he now? Same place as Mette and Alvarez, in an American prison, except it wasn’t Art but Noriega’s old friend George Bush who put him there. Invaded his country, grabbed him and put him away.

So if you’re counting on the Americans to repay you with loyalty, Tio, count on the fingers of one hand. I watched Art’s performance on CNN. There is a price for his silence, and the price might be you, might be all of us.

“Don’t worry, mi sobrino,” Tio is saying. “Los Pinos is a friend of ours.”

Los Pinos, the residence of the president of Mexico.

“What makes him such a friend?” Adan asks.

“Twenty-five million of my dollars,” Tio answers. “And that other thing.”

Adan knows what “that other thing” is.

That the Federacion had helped this president to steal the election. Four years ago, back in ’88, it seemed certain that the opposition candidate, the leftist Cardenas, was going to win the election and topple the PRI, which had been in power since the 1917 Revolution.

Then a funny thing happened.

The computers that counted the votes magically malfunctioned.

The election commissioner appeared on television to shrug and announce that the computers had broken down and that it would take several days to count the votes and determine the winner. And during those several days, the bodies of the two opposition watchdogs in charge of monitoring the computer votes-the two men who could have and would have asserted the truth, that Cardenas had won 55 percent of the vote-were found in the river.

Facedown.

And the election commissioner had gone back on television to announce with a perfectly straight face that the PRI had won the election.

The current presidente took office and proceeded to nationalize the banks, the telecommunications industries, the oil fields, all of which were purchased at below-market prices by the same men who had come to his fund-raising dinner and left twenty-five million dollars apiece on the table as a tip.

Adan knows that Tio hadn’t arranged the murders of the election officials-that had been Garcia Abrego-but Tio would have known about it and given his okay. And while Abrego is thick as thieves with Los Pinos-partners, in fact, with El Bagman, the president’s brother, who owns a third of all the cocaine shipments that Abrego runs through his Gulf cartel-Tio has good reason to believe that Los Pinos has every reason to be loyal to him.