The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow
Mickey don’t look at his watch. The call will come when it comes. He’s sitting in a car parked at the Oceanside Transportation Center. He smokes a cigarette and goes through in his head what happens if the couriers don’t take the 5. Then what they should do is call it off, wait for the next time. But Peaches ain’t gonna let them do that, so they’ll have to scramble. Try to guess the route from the info that O-Bop’s giving them and find a way to get ahead of the courier car and then figure out a place to take them down.
Cowboy-and-Indian stuff. He don’t like it.
But he won’t look at his watch.
Six minutes.
Little Peaches is about to yank.
A million in cash on the line and—
The phone rings.
“We’re good,” he hears O-Bop say.
He presses the restart button on his watch. One hour and twenty-eight minutes is the average drive time from the on-ramp to this exit. Then he calls Peaches, who picks the phone up without taking his eyes off the paper.
“We’re good.”
Peaches checks his watch, calls Callan and orders a piece of cherry pie.
Callan gets the call, coordinates his watch, phones Mickey, then gets up and takes a long, hot shower. There’s no hurry and he wants to be loose and relaxed, so he stands in there awhile and lets the steaming water pound his shoulders and the back of his neck. He can feel the adrenaline start to build, but he don’t want it to get too high too soon. So he makes himself take the time to shave slowly and carefully, and he feels good when he notices that his hand isn’t shaking.
He also takes his time dressing. Slowly puts on black jeans, a black T-shirt and a black sweatshirt. Black socks, black biker boots, a Kevlar vest. Then the black leather jacket, tight black gloves. He heads out. He paid in cash the night before and signed in with a fake name, so he just leaves the key in the room and locks the door behind him.
O-Bop’s job is easier now. Not easy, but easier, as he can lay back a good distance from the courier car and get closer only as they get near off-ramps. He has to make sure that they don’t throw a curve and exit onto the 57 or the 22, or Laguna Beach Road or the Ortega Highway. But it seems like Peaches’ hunch was right, these guys are headed straight up the gut—they’re staying on the main road all the way down to Mexico. So O-Bop eases back, and now he can talk on the phone without fear of getting spotted, so he fills Little Peaches in on the details: “Blue BMW, UZ 1 832. Three guys. Briefcases in the trunk.” This last bit ain’t great news, as it causes an extra step once they’ve taken the car down, but of course Mickey made them practice this option so O-Bop ain’t too worried about it.
Mickey worries.
That’s what Mickey does. He worries and waits until the Amtrak window opens, then he goes in and pays cash for a one-way fare to San Diego. Then he walks over to the Greyhound station and buys a ticket to Chula Vista. Then he goes back to his car and waits. And worries. They’ve practiced this dozens of times, but he still worries. Too many variables, too many what if's. What if there’s a traffic jam, what if there’s a state trooper parked nearby, what if there’s a backup car and we don’t see it? What if someone gets shot? What if, what if, what if . . .
“If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle,” is what Peaches had said to all these worries. Now he finishes his pie, has another cup of coffee, leaves cash for the bill and tip (the tip just the right amount—not too small, not too large; he don’t want to be remembered for any reason), and goes out to his car. Takes the gun out of the glove compartment, holds it low in his lap and checks the load. All the bullets are still there, like he thought they’d be, but it’s a habit, a reflex. Peaches has this horror of going to pull the trigger someday and hearing the dry click of an empty chamber. He straps the gun into his ankle holster and likes its comfortable weight as he starts the car and steps on the gas pedal.
Now they’re all in place: Little Peaches off Calafia Road; Peaches on the Ortega Highway exit; Callan on his bike, waiting at the Beach Cities exit in Dana Point; Mickey at the Oceanside Transportation Center; O-Bop on the 5, following the courier car.
All in place.
Waiting for the stagecoach.
Which rolls right into the ambush.
O-Bop gets on the phone. “One half-mile out.”
Little Peaches sees the car come past. Lowers his binoculars, hits the cell phone. “Now.”
Callan pulls out onto the highway. “I’m on.”
Peaches: “Got it.”
Mickey starts a new chrono.
Callan sees the car in his rearview mirror and slows down a little and lets it pass him. No one in the car gives him so much as a glance. A lone biker headed south in the predawn darkness. It’s twenty minutes to the empty stretch at Pendleton, where he wants to do it, so he drops back a little but keeps the car’s taillights in sight. The commuter traffic is headed mostly north, not south, and the few cars that are headed their way will thin out even more as they leave the southernmost Orange County town of San Clemente.
They pass Basilone Road, then the famous surfing beaches called Trestles, then the two domes of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, then the Border Patrol checkpoint that blocks off the northbound lanes of the 5 and then it gets empty and quiet. Nothing on their right except sand dunes and ocean, which are now beginning to emerge in the faint light as the rays of the sun start to appear on the left over Black Mountain, which dominates the Camp Pendleton landscape.
Callan has a mike and a headset inside his motorcycle helmet.
He utters a single word: “Go?”
Mickey answers, “Go.”
Callan twists the accelerator, leans forward to cut down the wind resistance and speeds toward the courier car. Pulls beside almost exactly where he’d planned—on the long straightaway just short of the long right curve that sweeps toward the ocean.
The driver sees him at the last possible second. Callan sees his eyes widen in surprise, and then the car lurches forward as the driver steps on the gas. He’s not worried about getting stopped by a cop now, he’s worried about getting killed, and the Beamer surges ahead.
Momentarily.
This is why they got the Harley, right? This is why they bought the hog, basically an engine with two wheels and a seat attached to it. The fucking Harley ain’t gonna lose to no yuppie-mobile. And it sure ain’t gonna lose to no yuppie-mobile with two million dollars in cash for the taking.
So when the Beamer hits seventy, Callan hits seventy.
When it hits eighty, Callan hits eighty.
Ninety, ninety.
When it slides into the far right lane, Callan slides with it.
Back left, back left.
Back right, back right.
Beamer hits the hundred mph mark, Callan hits the century mark.
And now he lets his adrenaline loose. It’s pumping through his veins like fuel through the bike’s engine. Bike, engine, rider, adrenaline singing now, sailing, flying, Callan is in the zone now—pure adrenaline speed rush as he pulls even with the Beamer and the driver yanks the steering wheel to the left to try to ram him and almost does and Callan has to pull out and he almost loses it. Almost loses it at one hundred per, which would send him spinning out on the concrete, where he’d be just a smear of blood and tissue. But he rights the bike and pulls it behind the Beamer, which now has a ten-yard lead and then the back window opens and a Mac-10 peeks out and starts shooting like a tail gunner.
But maybe Peaches was right—even in a car you can’t hit shit at that speed, and anyway Callan is leaning left and right, swaying the bike back and forth and the guys in the Beamer figure that ain’t gonna work and they got a better chance with the gas pedal so they push it.
The Beamer hits 105, 110, and pulls ahead.
Even the Harley ain’t gonna catch it.
Which is why Callan hit it where he did—because the straightaway ends in that gigantic sharp outside curve that the Beamer isn’t going to handle at eighty, neve
He decides to take his chances with the shooter.
Wrong choice.
Callan slides to the left, his foot nearly scraping the concrete. He comes out of the top side of the curve even with the driver’s window and the driver freaks when he sees the .22 come up near his face. Callan fires one shot to spiderweb the window, then—
Pop pop.
Always two shots, right together, because the second shot automatically corrects the first. Not that it needs to in this instance; both shots go dead center.
The two .22 rounds are zipping around in the guy’s brain like the balls in a pinball machine.
That’s why the .22 is Callan’s weapon of choice. It’s not powerful enough to blast a round through a skull. Instead, it sends the bullet bouncing around inside the brainpan, frantically looking for an exit, lighting all the lights and then putting them out.
Game over.
No bonus play.
The Beamer whips into serial 360s and then goes off the road.
Stays on its feet, though—fine German engineering—but the two passengers are still in shock from whiplash as Callan pulls the bike over and—
Pop pop.
Pop pop.
Callan pulls back onto the highway.
Three seconds later, Little Peaches pulls in behind the Beamer. Gets out of his car with a shotgun in his left hand, just in case, walks up and opens the driver’s door. Leans across the dead driver and takes the keys from the ignition. Walks to the back of the car, takes the briefcases from the trunk, gets back into his car and pulls out.
There must be a dozen cars spread out on the highway that see pieces of this scene, but none of them stop or pull over because Little Peaches is in a California Highway Patrol car and a CHP uniform, so they have to figure he has it under control.
He does.
Gets back in the cruiser and calmly drives south. He ain’t worried about getting stopped by a real cop, because moments before, right by Mickey’s clock, Big Peaches hit a switch on a radio-control transmitter and in a vacant lot a half-block away an old Dodge van went up like an octogenarian’s birthday cake and as Big Peaches pulls out for his next task he already hears the sirens screeching in his direction. He drives to the parking lot of a municipal golf course in north Oceanside and is sitting there when Little Peaches pulls in. Little Peaches takes the briefcases, gets out of the fake cop car and gets in with Peaches. As Little Peaches struggles out of his cop’s uniform they drive toward the Oceanside Transportation Center.
O-Bop has passed the crashed Beamer, so he knows that at least part of the job has gone off, so he drives to the Highway 76 exit. There’s a small dirt lot inside the cloverleaf and that’s where Callan has pulled off. He leaves the Harley and gets in with O-Bop. They drive toward the transport center.
Where Mickey’s waiting in his car.
Eyes on his watch, waiting.
The clock’s running down.
Either the job’s gone okay or his friends are hurt, dead, arrested.
Then he sees Little Peaches pull into the parking lot. They sit in the car until the train is announced and they can see it down the track, coming up from San Diego. Then they get out of their car, wearing conservative suits, each carrying a briefcase and a cardboard cup of coffee and an overnight bag slung over his shoulder, looking just like any other businessmen rushing to catch the train for a meeting in L.A. Mickey slips them their tickets as they walk past the car. They board moments before their trains pull out, and this is why they picked the Oceanside Transportation Center—because as the Amtrak train pulls up from the south, the local commuter train pulls out on a different track, headed south. Peaches takes one briefcase and gets on the L.A.–bound train. His brother takes the other case and heads south for San Diego.
As the trains depart the platforms, Callan and O-Bop pull into the parking lot and get out of the car. Their hair is cut short, Marine-style, and they’re wearing the kind of bad clothes that Marines wear when they’re off-duty. They sling their duffel bags over their shoulders, walk past Mickey’s car and get their tickets and then walk over to the side of the transport station where the buses are parked. Just two more Marines out of Pendleton on leave. O-Bop gets on a bus bound for Escondido, Callan on one headed for Hemet.
Peaches has a ticket for L.A., but he doesn’t take the whole ride. A few minutes south of the Santa Ana station, he goes into the lavatory and changes his clothes from the business geek’s suit into California casual, and he doesn’t come out until the train pulls into the station. Then he gets off at Santa Ana and checks into a motel. Little Peaches does a similar routine, only southbound, getting off in the funky surfing town of Encinitas and checking into one of those old roadside cottage motels across the PCH from the beach.
Mickey, he just drives back to his hotel. He hasn’t been close to the action, and if the cops want to track him down and ask him any questions, he’s got nothing to say anyway. He does his thirty-five per downtown and goes back to bed for a nap.
Callan and O-Bop take their full rides, O-Bop to a No-Tell Motel next to a porn shop, so he’s happy and has things to do while he’s lying low. He checks in, then walks over and buys twenty bucks’ worth of tokens and spends most of the afternoon pumping the coins into the video machines.
Sitting on his bus, Callan tries to forget about having just killed three men, but he can’t. He don’t feel his usual nothin'; he feels something he can’t put a name to.
I forgive you. God forgives you.
Can’t get that shit out of his head.
He gets off his bus and checks into a Motel 6. The room ain’t much, but it does have cable. Callan flops on the bed and watches movies on the television. The room smells of disinfectant, but it beats the Golden West.
The plan is to chill out for a few days, then if everything is cool—and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be—they’re going to meet up at the Sea Lodge in La Jolla, chill out on the beach for a few days, call in some broads (Peaches actually says “broads”) from Haley Saxon, have a party.
Callan remembers the girl he saw there, Nora. Remembers how much he wanted that girl, and how Big Peaches took her away from him. He remembers how beautiful she was, and thinking that if he could somehow touch that beauty it would make his own life less ugly. But that was a long time ago, a lot of blood’s flowed under the bridge since then and it’s not possible that the girl Nora is still in that house.
Is it?
He don’t want to ask, though.
Three days later, Peaches is on the phone like he’s ordering Chinese food: Whaddya want? A blonde, a brunette, how about a black chick? They’re all hanging out in Peaches’ room even though they all have adjoining rooms right on the beach. It’s actually pretty cool, Callan thinks—you step right out of your room and you’re on the beach, and he’s getting off on watching the sun set over the ocean while Peaches is on the phone ordering pussy.
“Whatever,” he tells Peaches.
“And a whatever,” Peaches says into the phone, and then he chases them out because he’s got business to do they don’t need to be a part of. Take a swim, take a shower, have some dinner, get ready for the broads.
Peaches’ business arrives about an hour later, after it’s dark.
They don’t talk a lot. Peaches just hands him a suitcase containing three hundred large in cash as his share for the information.
Art Keller takes the money and leaves.
Simple as that.
Haley Saxon has some business, too.
She decides on the five girls she’s going to send to the Sea Lodge, then gets on the horn to Raúl Barrera.
Some wise guys from the old days are in town throwing around a lot of cash, and guess who they are. You remember Jimmy Peaches? Well, he
Raúl is very interested.
And sure, Haley knows exactly where they are.
Just leave my girls out of it.
Callan lies in bed watching the girl get dressed.
She’s pretty, really pretty—long red hair, nice rack, nice ass—but she wasn’t her. She got his rocks off, though, gave him his money’s worth. Gave him head, then climbed on top of him and rode him until he came.
Now she stands in the bathroom fixing her makeup, and she sees him in the mirror, looking at her.
“We can go again if you want,” she says.
“I’m good.”
When she leaves he wraps a towel around himself and goes out onto the little terrace. Watches the small waves break silver in the moonlight. A nice-looking sports-fishing boat sits about a hundred yards out, its lights glowing golden.