Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Parada takes a long pull on the cigarette, walks to the window and looks outside onto the zocalo, where the street vendors have spread their blankets and laid out their milagros to sell.

“I’ll go see Miguel Angel,” he says. “I doubt it will do any good.”

“Thank you, Father Juan.”

Parada nods.

“Father Juan?”

“Yes?”

“There are a lot of people who want to know that address.”

“I’m not a policeman,” Parada says.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Adan says. He walks to the door. “Good-bye, Father Juan. Thank you.”

“Change your life, Adan.”

“It’s too late.”

“If you really believed that,” Parada says, “you wouldn’t have come here.”

Parada walks Adan out the door into the small foyer, where a woman is standing with a small overnight bag over her shoulder.

“I should be going,” Nora says to Parada. She looks at Adan and smiles.

“Nora Hayden,” Parada says, “Adan Barrera.”

“Mucho gusto,” Adan says.

“Mucho gusto.” She turns to Parada. “I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” She turns to leave.

“I’m just going now myself,” Adan says. “May I carry your bag? Do you need a taxi?”

“That would be nice.”

She kisses Parada on the cheek. “Adios.”

“Buen viaje.”

Outside in the zocalo she says, “That sly smile on your face.. .”

“Is there a sly smile on my face?”

“-is misplaced. It’s not what you think.”

“You misunderstand,” Adan says. “I love and respect the man. Any happiness he finds in this world, I would never begrudge him.”

“We’re just friends.”

“As you wish.”

“We are.”

Adan looks across the square. “There’s a good cafe over there. I was about to have breakfast, and I hate to eat alone. Do you have the time and inclination to join me?”

“I haven’t eaten.”

“Come on, then,” Adan says. Crossing the square with her, he adds, “Look, I just have to make one phone call.”

“Go ahead.”

He gets his cell phone out and dials Gloria’s number.

“Hola, sonrisa de mi alma,” he says when she answers. She is the smile of his soul. Her voice is his dawn and his dusk. “How are you this morning?”

“Good, Papa. Where are you?”

“In Guadalajara,” he says. “Visiting Tio.”

“How is he?”

“He’s good, too,” Adan says. He looks out over the square where the street merchants have gathered in strength. “Ensancho de mi corazon, comfort of my heart, they sell songbirds here. Shall I bring one home to you?”

“What songs do they sing, Papa?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I think you have to teach them songs. Do you know any?”

“Papa,” she laughs, delighted, knowing she’s being teased, “I sing to you all the time.”

“I know you do.” Your songs crack my heart.

“Yes, please, Papa,” she says. “I would love to have a bird.”

“What color?”

“Yellow?”

“I think I see a yellow one.”

“Or green,” she says. “Any color, Papa. When will you be home?”

“Tomorrow night,” he says. “I have to go see Tio Guero, then I’ll come home.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” he says. “I’ll call you tonight.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

He ends the call.

“Your girlfriend?” Nora asks.

“The love of my life,” Adan says. “My daughter.”

“Ah.”

They choose an outdoor table. Adan pulls the chair out for her, then sits down. He looks across the table at those remarkable blue eyes. She doesn’t look away or flinch or blush. Just looks right back at him.

“And your wife?” she asks.

“What about her?”

“That’s what I was going to ask,” Nora says.

The door cracks like a gunshot.

Wood shattering on metal.

Angel’s pito slides out of the girl as he turns to see federales coming through the door.

Art thinks it’s almost comical as Tio shuffles with his pants around his ankles into a grotesque imitation of a run, the rolling IV stand following him like a harried servant, trying to reach the guns that are stacked in the corner of the room. Then the stand topples over in a crash, pulling the needle out of his arm, and Tio falls in the corner, on top of the guns, and comes up with a hand grenade and sits there fumbling with the pin until a federale grabs him and jerks the grenade out of his hand.

There’s still a fat, white ass sticking up from the kitchen table like a gigantic pile of dough. And the sound of a thwack as Ramos walks over and whacks it with the butt of his rifle.

She yelps an indignant “Ow.”

“You should have cooked breakfast, you lazy slut.”

He grabs her by the hair and pulls her up. “Get your pants on, no one wants to look at your nalgas grandes.”

Your big ass.

“I’ll give you five million dollars,” Angel is saying to the federale. “Five million dollars American to let me go.” Then he sees Art standing there and knows that five mil isn’t going to do it, that there isn’t enough money. He starts crying. “Kill me. Please, kill me now.”

And this is the face of evil, Art thinks.

A sad burlesque.

The man sitting there in the corner with his pants off, begging me to kill him.

Pathetic.

“Three minutes,” Ramos says.

Before the guards get back.

“Let’s get this piece of shit out of here, then,” Art says. He kneels down so his mouth is right next to his uncle’s ear and whispers, “Tio, let me tell you what you’ve always wanted to know.”

“What?”

“Who Source Chupar was.”

“Who?”

“Guero Mendez,” Art lies.

Guero Mendez, motherfucker.

“He hated you,” Art adds, “for taking that little bitch away from him and ruining her. He knew the only way of getting her back was to get rid of you.”

Maybe I can’t get to Adan, Raul and Guero, Art thinks, so I’ll settle for the next best thing.

I’ll make them destroy each other.

Adan collapses on Nora’s body. She holds his neck and strokes his hair.

“That was incredible,” he says.

“You haven’t had a woman in a long time,” she says.

“Was it that obvious?”

They had left the cafe and gone directly to a nearby hotel. His fingers had trembled, unbuttoning her blouse.

“You didn’t come,” he says.

“I will,” she says. “Next time.”

“Next time?”

An hour later she braces her hands against the windowsill, her legs a muscular V as he pumps into her from behind. The breeze through the open window cools the sweat on her skin as she moans and whimpers a beautiful fake climax until he is satisfied and lets himself come.

Later, lying on the floor, he says, “I want to see you again.”

“That can be arranged,” Nora says.

It’s just a matter of business.

Tio sits in a cell.

His arraignment didn’t go well-not the way it should have gone at all.

“I don’t know why they connect me with the cocaine business,” he said from the dock. “I’m a car dealer. All I know about the drug trade is what I read in the newspapers.”

And the people in the courtroom laughed.

Laughed, and the judge bound him over for trial. No bail-a dangerous criminal, the judge said. A definite risk of flight. Especially in Guadalajara, where the defendant is alleged to have considerable influence in the law enforcement community. So they had put him-shackled-on a military aircraft and flown him to Mexico City. Under a special canopy from the plane to a van with black-painted windows. Then to Almoloya prison and into solitary confinement.