The Power Of The Dog (89 page)

Art has tried everything he can think of to find Nora. Hobbs has turned over all his resources, even though Art has refused to divulge the identity of his source. So Art has had the benefit of satellite photographs, listening posts, Internet sweeps. They all turn up nothing.

His options are limited—he can’t launch an Ernie Hidalgo–like search for her because that would blow her cover and kill her, if she’s not already dead. And now he doesn’t have Ramos waging his relentless campaign.

“It doesn’t look good, boss,” Shag says.

“When’s our next satellite sweep?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

Weather permitting, they’ll get images of Rancho las Bardas, the Barreras’ compound in the desert. They’ve had five of them already, and they’ve shown nothing. A few servants, but no one who looks like Adán or Raúl, and certainly no one who looks like Nora.

And no movement, either. No new vehicles, no fresh tire tracks, nothing coming in or going out. The same is the case with the other Barrera ranches and safe houses that Ramos hadn’t yet hit. No people, no movement, no cell phone chatter.

Christ, Art thinks, Barrera has to be running out of places.

But so are we.

“Let me know,” he says.

He has a meeting with Mexico’s new drug czar, General Augusto Rebollo.

Ostensibly the purpose of the meeting is for Rebollo to brief him on the ongoing operations against the Barrera cartel as part of their recently rediscovered bilateralism.

The only problem is that Rebollo doesn’t really know much about the operation. Ramos was keeping his activities close to his vest, and all Rebollo can really do is get on television, look fierce and determined, and announce his total support for everything that the deceased hero Ramos has done, even if he doesn’t know what that is.

But the truth is that the support is wavering.

Mexico City is getting more nervous as days go by and the Barreras are still on the loose. The longer this war goes on, the more nervous they get, and they’re looking, as John Hobbs carefully explains to Art before they go into the meeting, for a “reason for optimism.”

In short, Rebollo purrs in his meeting with Art, his green army uniform pressed and neat as a pin, it is obvious that his DEA colleagues have an inside source of information as to the working of the Barrera cartel, and in the spirit of cooperation, his own office could be of much more assistance in the common struggle against drugs and terrorism if Señor Keller would share this source.

He smiles at Art.

Hobbs smiles at Art.

All the bureaucrats in the room smile at Art.

“No,” he says.

He can see Tijuana from the picture windows of this office tower. She’s out there somewhere.

Rebollo’s smile has faded. He looks offended.

Hobbs says, “Arthur—”

“No.”

Let him work a little harder for it.

The meeting ends unhappily.

Art goes back to the war room. The satellite photos of Rancho las Bardas should be in.

“Anything?” he asks Shag.

Shag shakes his head.

“Shit.”

“They’ve gone under, boss,” Shag says. “No cell traffic, e-mail, nothing.”

Art looks at him. The old cowboy’s face is weathered and lined, and he wears bifocals now. Christ, have I aged as much as he has? Art wonders. Two old drug warriors. What are the new guys calling us? Jurassic Narcs? And Shag’s older than I am—he’s looking at retirement soon.

“He’ll call his kid,” Art says suddenly.

“What?”

“The daughter, Gloria,” Art says. “Adán’s wife and the girl live in San Diego.”

Shag winces. They both know that involving an innocent family is against the unspoken rules that govern the war between the narcos and themselves.

Art knows what he’s thinking.

“Fuck it,” he says. “Lucía Barrera knows what her husband does. She’s no innocent.”

“The little girl is.”

“Ernie’s kids live in San Diego, too,” Art answers. “Except they never see their daddy. Set up a wiretap.”

“Boss, no judge in the world—”

Art’s stare cuts him off.

Raúl Barrera isn’t happy, either.

They pay Rebollo $300,000 a month, and for that kind of money he should be able to come through for them.

But he didn’t shut down Antonio Ramos before the attack on Rancho las Bardas, and now he can’t confirm that Nora Hayden was the source of their troubles, something that Raúl needs to know badly, and in a hurry. He’s holding his own brother virtual prisoner in this safe house, and if the soplón wasn’t his brother’s mistress there’s going to be hell to pay.

So when Raúl gets the message from Rebollo—Gee, sorry—he sends word back. The word is simple—Do better. Because if you’re no use to us, there’s no loss in putting out the word that you’re on the payroll. Then you can be sorry in prison.

Rebollo gets the word.

Fabián Martínez huddles with his lawyer and gets right down to business.

He knows the SOP in drug busts. The cartel sends an attorney and you tell the attorney what, if any, information you gave up. That way, it can usually be fixed before any harm is done. “I didn’t give them anything,” he says.

The attorney nods.

“They have an informant,” Fabián continues, then drops his voice to a whisper. “It’s Adán’s baturra, Nora.”

“Jesus, are you sure?”

“It can only be her,” Fabián says. “You have to get me bail, man. I’m going crazy in this place.”

“A weapons charge like that, Fabián, it’s going to be tough.”

“Fuck the weapons.” He tells the lawyer about the murder charge.

That’s messed up, the lawyer thinks. Unless Fabián Martínez makes a deal, he’s looking at a long time in jail.

She’s not exactly a prisoner, but she’s not free to go.

Nora doesn’t even know where she is, except that it’s somewhere along Baja’s eastern coast.

The cottage they keep her in is made of the same red stone as the beach around it. It has a thatched roof made of palm fronds, and heavy wooden doors. It isn’t air-conditioned but the thick stone walls keep it cool inside. The cottage has three rooms—a small bedroom, a bathroom, and a front room facing the sea that is a living room combined with an open kitchen.

Electricity runs from a generator that hums noisily outside. So she has electric lights, hot running water and a flush toilet. She can choose between a hot shower and a hot bath. There’s even a satellite dish outside, but the television has been removed and there is no radio. The clocks have also been taken away, and they confiscated her watch when they brought her in.

There is a little CD player but no CDs.

They want me alone with my silence, she thinks.

In a world with no time.

And, truly, she has started to lose track of the days since Raúl picked her up in Colonia Hipódromo and told her to get into the car, that all hell had broken loose and he’d take her to Adán. She didn’t trust him but she didn’t have a choice, and he was even apologetic when he explained that, for her own protection, she’d have to be blindfolded.

She knows they pulled south out of Tijuana. She knows they drove on the fairly smooth Ensenada Highway for quite a while. But then the road got bumpy, and then it got worse, and she could feel that they were slowly going uphill, rumbling along a rocky road in four-wheel drive, and then she could smell the ocean. It was dark by the time they walked her inside and took off the blindfold.

“Where’s Adán?” she asked Raúl.

“He’ll be here.”

“When?”

“Soon,” Raúl said. “Relax. Get some sleep. You’ve been through a lot.”

He handed her a sleeping pill, a Tuinol.

“I don’t need that.”

“No, take it. You need sleep.”

He stood there while she took it, and she did sleep hard and woke up in the morning a little groggy and with cottonmouth. She thought that she was on the beach somewhere south of Ensenada until the sun came up on the wrong side of the world and she worked out that she was on the inland side. When daylight came she recognized the distinctive, bright green water of the Sea of Cortez.

From the bedroom window she could make out a larger house just up the hill, and see that the entire area looked like a moonscape of red stone. A little while later, a young woman walked down from the larger house with a tray of breakfast—coffee, grapefruit and some warm flour tortillas.

And a spoon, Nora noticed.

No knife, no fork.

A glass of water with another Tuinol.

She resisted taking it until her nerves got the better of her, then she swallowed it and it did make her feel better. She napped the rest of the morning and woke up only when the same girl brought her a tray of lunch—freshly grilled yellowtail tuna, steamed vegetables, more tortillas.

More Tuinol.

They woke her out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night and started asking her questions. Her interrogator, a small man with an accent that wasn’t quite Mexican, was gentle, polite and persistent—

What happened the night of the arms arrest?

Where did you go? Who did you see? Who did you talk to?

Your shopping trips to San Diego—what did you do? What did you buy? Who did you see?

Arthur Keller, do you know him? Does that name mean anything to you?

Were you ever arrested for prostitution? Drug charges? Income-tax evasion?

She asked her own questions in response—

What are you talking about?

Why are you asking me this stuff?

Who are you, anyway?

Where is Adán?

Does he know you’re bothering me?

Can I go back to sleep now?

They let her go back to sleep, woke her fifteen minutes later and told her it was the next night. She knew better, barely, but pretended to believe them as the interrogator asked her the same set of questions, over and over again until she got indignant and said—

I want to go back to sleep.

I want to see Adán, and—

I want another Tuinol.

You can have one in a little while, the interrogator told her. He switched tactics.

Tell me about the day of the arms bust, please. Take me through it minute by minute. You got in the car and …

And, and, and …

She climbed back on the bed, put her head under the pillow and told him to shut up and go away, she’s tired. He offered her another pill and she took it.

They let her sleep for twenty-four hours and then started again.

Questions, questions, questions.