The Power Of The Dog (59 page)

He gave full custody of the children to Althie.

“I’m grateful, Art,” she said. “But why now?”

Punishment, he thought.

I lose two kids, too.

He hasn’t lost them, of course. He gets them every other weekend and for a month in the summer. He goes to Cassie’s volleyball matches and Michael’s baseball games. He faithfully attends school assemblies, plays, ballet recitals, parent-teacher conferences.

But it’s forced. By definition, the little spontaneous moments don’t happen during scheduled time, and he misses the little things. Making them their breakfasts, reading stories, wrestling on the floor. The sad reality is that there’s no such thing as “quality time”; there’s only “time,” and he misses it.

He misses Althie, too.

God, how he misses Althie.

But you threw her away, he thinks.

And for what?

To become “The Border Lord”? That’s what they call him now in the DEA—behind his back, that is. Except for Shag, who says it to his face. Brings a cup of coffee into his office and asks, “How’s the Border Lord this morning?”

Technically, he’s the head of the Southwest Border Task Force and runs a coordinating group of all the agencies fighting the War on Drugs: DEA, FBI, Border Patrol, Customs and Immigration, local and state police—they all report to Art Keller. Based in San Diego, he has a huge office, with a staff to match.

It’s a powerful position, exactly the one he demanded of John Hobbs.

He’s also a member of the Vertical Committee. It’s a small group—it consists of him and John Hobbs—that coordinates DEA and CIA activities in the Americas to ensure that they don’t trip over each other’s feet. That’s the stated purpose; the unstated purpose is to make sure Art doesn’t do anything to screw the Company’s agenda.

That was the quid pro quo. Art got the Southwest Border Task Force so he could wage his war against the Barreras; in exchange, he slips his head into the leash.

Day of the Dead? he thinks as he sits in a parked car on a street in La Jolla. I might as well go put candy on my own grave.

Then he sees Nora Hayden come out of the boutique.

She’s a creature of habit and has been for the months that he’s had her under surveillance. She first came to his attention through sources he keeps in Tijuana. The word was that Adán Barrera had a girlfriend, a mistress, that he had rented an apartment in the Río district and went to see her there regularly.

Uncharacteristically careless of Adán, picking an American woman for his piece of strange, Art thinks as he watches the woman come down the sidewalk with shopping bags in both hands. Not like Adán at all, really, who had the reputation—at least until recently—of being a devoted family man.

But Art can understand the temptation as he looks at Nora.

She might be the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

On the outside, anyway, he thinks, reminding himself that this cunt fucks Adán Barrera.

Professionally.

He’d had a tail put on her three months ago when she’d come back across the border. So he had a name and an address, and pretty soon he had something else.

Haley Saxon.

The DEA had had the madam up for years. So, it turned out, had the IRS. The San Diego PD knew all about the White House, of course, but nobody had moved on it because Haley Saxon’s client list was a political hornet’s nest that nobody had the balls to stir up.

And now it turns out that Adán’s segundera is one of Haley’s best earners. Shit, Art thinks, if Haley Saxon were Mary Kay, Nora Hayden would have her own fleet of pink Cadillacs by now.

He waits until she gets a little closer, then steps out of the car, shows her his badge. “Ms. Hayden, we need to talk.”

“I don’t think we do.”

She has amazing blue eyes, and her voice is cultured and confident. He has to remind himself that she’s just a whore.

“Why don’t we sit in my car?” Art suggests.

“Why don’t we not?”

She starts to walk away but he holds her by the elbow. “Why don’t I have your friend Haley Saxon arrested for running a house of prostitution?” Art asks. “Why don’t I shut her down for good?”

She lets him walk her to the car. He opens the front passenger door and she gets in. Then he walks around and sits in the driver’s seat.

Nora looks pointedly at her watch. “I’m trying to make a one-fifteen movie.”

Art says, “Let’s talk about your boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend?”

“Or is Barrera your ‘client’?” Art asks. “Or your ‘john’? Educate me on the jargon.”

She doesn’t blink. “He’s my lover.”

“Does he pay you for the privilege?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Art asks, “Do you know what your lover does for a living?”

“He’s a restaurateur.”

“Come on, Nora,” Art says.

“Mr. Keller,” she said, “let’s just say I have some sympathy for dealing in pleasures that society deems illegal.”

“Yeah, okay,” Art said. “How about murder? Are you okay with that?”

“Adán’s never killed anybody.”

“Ask him about Ernie Hidalgo,” Art says. “While you’re at it, ask him about Pilar Méndez. He had her head cut off. And her children. Do you know what your boyfriend did with them? He threw them off a bridge.”

“That is an old lie that Güero Méndez put out to—”

“Is that what Adán told you?”

“What do you want, Mr. Keller?”

She’s a businesswoman, Art thinks. She’s getting right down to it. Good. Time to make your pitch. Don’t fuck it up.

“Your cooperation,”Art says.

“You want me to inform on—”

“Let’s just say you’re in a unique position to—”

She opens the car door. “I’m going to be late for my movie.”

He grabs her and stops her. “Go to a later show.”

“You have no right to hold me against my will,” Nora says. “I haven’t committed any crime.”

“Let me explain a few things to you,” Art says. “We know that the Barreras are investors in Haley Saxon’s business. That alone puts her on Queer Street. If they ever used the house to have a meeting, I’ll RICO her into twenty-to-life, and it will be your fault. You’ll have plenty of time to apologize to her, though, because I’ll put you in the same cell. Can you explain all your income, Ms. Hayden? Can you account for the money that Adán is paying you now to be your ‘lover’? Or is he laundering drug money along with the dirty sheets? You’re in deep, hot water, Ms. Hayden. But you can save yourself. You can even save your pal Haley. I’m reaching out my hand. Take it.”

She looks at him with pure loathing.

Which is fine, Art thinks. I don’t need you to love me, I just need you to do what I want.

“If you could do what you say you can do to Haley,” Nora says calmly, “you would already have done it. And as for what you can do to me—take your best shot.”

She starts to get out again.

“How about Parada?” Art asks. “Are you doing him, too?”

Because they have her visiting the priest in Guadalajara, and even San Cristóbal, on numerous occasions.

She turns and glares at him.

“You’re a piece of filth.”

“You’d better believe it.”

“For the record,” she says, “Juan and I are friends.”

“Yeah?” Art says. “Would he still be your friend if he knew you were a hooker?”

“He does know.”

He loves me anyway, Nora thinks.

“Does he know you sell yourself to a murdering little piece of shit like Adán Barrera?” Art asks. “Would he still be your friend if he knew that? Should I pick up the phone and tell him? We go way back.”

I know, Nora thinks. He’s told me about you. What he didn’t tell me is how awful you are.

“Do whatever you’re going to do, Mr. Keller,” Nora says. “I don’t care. May I go?”

“For now.”

She gets out of the car and walks back down the street, her skirt swinging against her beautiful, tanned legs.

Looking, Art thinks, as cool as if she’d just had tea with a friend.

You fucking asshole, he thinks, you totally blew it.

But I’d love to know, Nora, if you tell Adán about our little chat.

Mexico

1994

Adán has spent the whole day at cemeteries.

He had nine graves to visit, nine little shrines to build, nine elaborate meals to lay out. Nine family members killed by Güero Méndez on a single night barely one month ago. His men, dressed in the black uniforms of the federales, had taken them from their houses or kidnapped them off the streets, in Mexico City and Guadalajara, driven them to safe houses and tortured them, then dumped their bodies on busy corners for the morning street sweepers to find.

Two uncles, an aunt and six cousins—two of the latter women.

One of the female cousins was a lawyer working for the pasador, but the others were uninvolved with the drug end of the family business. Their only connection was being related to Miguel Ángel and Adán and Raúl, and that was enough. Well, it was enough for Pilar and Güerito and Claudia, wasn’t it? Adán thinks. Méndez didn’t start this thing of killing families.

We did.

So it was expected, Méndez’s “Bloody September,” by everyone in Mexico who knew anything about the drug trade. The local police barely investigated the murders. “What did they expect?” ran the general opinion. “They killed his wife and children.” And not only killed them, but sent Méndez his wife’s head and a videotape of his children plummeting off a bridge. It was too much, even for Mexico, even for the narcotraficantes—it put the Barrera pasador beyond the pale, as it were. And if Méndez retaliated by killing members of the Barrera family, well, it was expected.

So Adán had a busy day, starting early in the morning with the Mexico City graves, then flying to Guadalajara to attend to his duties there, then a quick flight here to Puerto Vallarta where his brother Raúl was, characteristically, throwing a party.

“Cheer up,” Raúl tells Adán when he arrives at the club. “It’s El Día de los Muertos.”

Sure, they’ve taken some hits, but they’ve delivered some, too.

“Maybe we should bring food to their graves, too,” Adán says.

“Shit, we’d go broke,” Raúl says to him, “feeding all the guys we’ve sent to the devil. Fuck them—let their families feed them.”

The Barreras v. the world.

Cali cocaine v. Medellín cocaine.

If Adán hadn’t made the deal with the Orejuela brothers, the Barreras would be the recipients of the candy and flowers today. But with the steady supply of product from Cali, they have the men and the money to fight the war. And the battle for La Plaza has been bloody but simple. Raúl has presented the local dealers with a clean choice: Do you want to be a Coca-Cola distributor or a Pepsi distributor? You have to choose; you can’t be both. Coke or Pepsi, Ford or Chevy, Hertz or Avis—it’s either one or the other.