Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

As Guero watched.

That’s how Rafi’s body was found-hanging upside down from a telephone pole on a roadside twenty miles from the ranch, his eyes widened in agony, his open mouth filled with hardened silver. And no one dared to take the body down, not the police, not even the family, and for years the old man who herded goats by that place told about the strange sound the crows’ beaks made as they pecked through Rafi’s cheeks and struck silver.

And that spot along the road became known as “Donde los Cuervos son Ricos”-where crows are rich.

So yes, Fabian thinks as he looks at her, the reflected water from the pool glimmering gold on her skin, Everyone is afraid to call you a puta.

They’re probably afraid to even think it.

And, Fabian thinks, if Guero did that to a man who merely insulted you, what would he do to the man who seduces you? He feels a stab of fear, but then feels it turn into excitement. It turns him on; it makes him proud of his own cool courage, his prowess as a lover.

Then she leans close to him and, to his shock and excitement, whispers, “Yo quiero rabiar.”

I want to burn.

I want to rage.

I want to go crazy.

Adan screams his orgasm.

He collapses on Nora’s soft breasts, and she holds him tightly with her arms and squeezes him rhythmically inside herself.

“My God,” he gasps.

Nora smiles.

“Did you come?” he asks.

“Oh, yes,” she lies. “It was beautiful.”

She doesn’t want to tell him that she never comes with a man, that later, alone, she will use her own fingers to give herself relief. It would be pointless to tell him, and she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. She actually likes him, feels a certain sort of affection for him, and besides, it’s just not something you tell a man you’re trying to please.

They’ve been meeting regularly for some months since their first encounter in Guadalajara. Now, like today, they usually take a hotel room in Tijuana, which is an easier commute for her from San Diego and, obviously, convenient for him. So once a week or so he disappears from one of his restaurants and meets her in a hotel room. It’s the cliched “love in the afternoon”; he’s always home in the evening.

Adan made this clear from the very start.

“I love my wife.”

She’d heard this a thousand times. They all love their wives. And most of them really do. This is about sex, not love.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” Adan stated as if he were laying out a business policy. Which, Nora thought, he was. “I don’t want her to be embarrassed or humiliated in any way. She’s a wonderful person. I will never leave her or my daughter.”

“Good,” Nora said.

Both of them businesspeople, they come to an arrangement quickly and without any emotional fuss. She never wants to see any actual money. He opens a bank account for her and deposits a certain amount every month. He chooses the dates and times for their assignations, and she will be there, but he has to provide a week’s notice. If he wants to see her more than once a week, that’s fine, but he still has to let her know in advance.

Once a month, the results of a blood test, certifying her sexual health, will discreetly arrive at his office. He’ll do the same for her, and they can dispense with the annoying condom.

One other thing they agree on-Father Juan cannot know about them.

In a crazy way they each feel as if they’re cheating on him-she on their platonic friendship, Adan on their former relationship.

“Does he know what you do for a living?” he’d asked her.

“Yes.”

“And does he approve?”

“We’re friends anyway,” Nora said. “Does he know what you do for a living?”

“I’m a restaurateur.”

“Uh-huh.”

She didn’t believe it then, and she certainly doesn’t believe it now, after months of meeting with him. The name had rung a faint bell anyway, from a night almost ten years ago at the White House when Jimmy Piccone had so brutally inaugurated her into the trade. So when she returned from Guadalajara she called Haley, asked her about Adan Barrera and got the whole rundown.

“Be careful,” Haley advised. “The Barreras are dangerous.”

Maybe, Nora thinks now as Adan falls into a postcoital slumber. But she hasn’t seen that side of Adan and doubts that it even exists. He’s been only gentle to her, even sweet. She admires his loyalty to his sick daughter and his frigid wife. He has needs, is all, and he’s trying to get them met in the most ethical way possible.

For a relatively sophisticated man he’s remarkably unsophisticated in bed. She’s had to ease him into certain practices, teach him positions and techniques; the man is startled by the depth of pleasure she can make him feel.

And he’s unselfish, she thinks. He doesn’t come to bed with the consumer mentality that so many johns have, the sense of entitlement that comes with their platinum cards. He wants to please her, wants her to be as satisfied as he is, wants her to feel the same joy.

He doesn’t treat me, she thinks, like a vending machine. Put in your quarter, pull the knob and get the candy.

Goddamn it, she thinks, I like the man.

He’s started to open up, sexually and personally. They spend the interstitial moments talking. Not about drug business, of course-he knows she knows what he does, and they leave it at that-but about the restaurant business, the multitude of problems associated with putting food in the mouths and smiles on the lips of the consuming public. They talk about sports-he’s delighted to find that she can discuss boxing in depth and knows the difference between a slider and a curveball-and about the stock market; she’s a shrewd investor who starts her day the same way he does, with The Wall Street Journal beside her morning coffee. They discuss menu items, debate the rankings of middleweights, dissect the relative strengths and weaknesses of mutual funds versus municipal bonds.

She knows it’s another cliche, just as hackneyed as love in the afternoon, but men do come to hookers to talk. The wives of the world would take a chunk out of her business if they glanced at the sports pages, spent a few minutes watching ESPN or Wall Street Week. Their husbands would willingly spend a few hours discussing feelings if the wives were willing to just talk about stuff a little more.

So it’s part of her job, but she really enjoys her conversations with Adan. She’s interested in the topics and she likes talking about them with him. She’s used to intelligent, successful men, but Adan is really smart. He’s an unrelenting analyst; he thinks things through, performs intellectual surgery until he cuts to the bottom line.

And face it, she tells herself, you’re attracted to his sorrow. To the sadness he carries with such quiet dignity. You think you can ease his pain, and you like that. It’s not about the usual shallow satisfaction of leading a man around by the dick, but about taking a man who’s in pain and making him forget his sadness for a little while.

Yeah, Nurse Nora, she thinks.

Florence Fucking Nightingale with a blow job instead of a lantern.

She leans over and gently touches his neck until his eyes pop open. “You have to get up,” she says. “You have an appointment in an hour, remember?”

“Thanks,” he says sleepily. He gets up and goes into the shower. Like most things he does, it’s brisk and efficient-he doesn’t luxuriate under the spray of hot water, but washes up, towels off, comes back into the room and starts to get dressed.

But today, as he buttons his shirt, he says, “I want us to be exclusive.”

“Oh, Adan, that would be very expensive,” she says, a little disconcerted, caught off-guard. “I mean, if you want all my time, you’d have to pay for all my time.”