The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

  On Pilar.

  He falls asleep smiling.

  Fabián Martínez—aka El Tiburón—is a stone killer.

  The Junior has become one of Raúl’s key sicarios, his most efficient gunman. That newspaper editor in Tijuana whose investigative journalism got a little too investigative—El Tiburón took him out like a target in a video game. That loser Californian surfer and dope dude who had three tons of yerba dropped off on the beach near Rosarita but didn’t pay his landing fee—El Tiburón popped him like a balloon and then went out to party. And those three totally fucking idiotic pendejos from Durango who did a tombe, a robbery-murder, on a shipment of coke that the Barreras had guaranteed—well, El Tiburón took an AK and hosed them off the street like dogshit, then poured gasoline over their bodies, set them on fire and let them burn like luminarias. The local firemen were afraid, with good reason, to put them out, and the story goes that two of the guys were still breathing when El Tiburón dropped the match on them.

  “That’s bullshit,” Fabián would say, denying the story. “I used my lighter.”

  Whatever.

  He kills without feeling or conscience.

  Which is what we need, Raúl thinks now as he sits in the car with the kid and asks him to do this favor for the Barrera pasador.

  “We want you to take over making the cash deliveries to Güero Méndez,” Raúl tells him. “Become the new courier.”

  “That’s it?” Fabián asks.

  He’d thought it would be something else, something wet, something that involved the sharp, sweet adrenaline high of killing.

  Actually, there is something else.

  Pilar’s children are the loves of her life.

  She’s a young madonna, with a three-year-old daughter and an infant son, her face and body more mature, and there is character around her eyes that wasn’t there before. She sits at the edge of the pool and dangles her bare feet in the water.

  “The children are la sonrisa de mi corazón,” she tells Fabián Martínez. Then adds pointedly, sadly, “Not my husband.”

  Fabián thinks that Güero Méndez’s estancia is totally gross.

  “Traficante chic” is how Pilar privately describes it to him, her tone not even attempting to hide her contempt. “I am trying to change it, but he has this image in his head . . .”

  Narcovaquero, Fabián thinks.

  Drug cowboy.

  Instead of running from his rural roots, Güero flaunts them. Creates a grotesque, modern version of the great landowners of the past—the dons, the ranchers, the vaqueros who wore wide-brimmed hats and boots and chaps because they needed them out in the mesquite, herding cattle. Now the new narcos are turning the image on its head: black polyester cowboy shirts with fake mother-of-pearl buttons, polyester chaps in bright pastels—lime greens, canary yellows and coral pinks. And high-heeled boots. Not practical walking boots, but pointed-toe Yanqui cowboy boots, made from all kinds of materials, the more exotic the better—ostrich, alligator—dyed in bright reds and greens.

  The old vaqueros would have laughed.

  Or would spin in their graves.

  And the house . . .

  Pilar’s embarrassed by it.

  It’s not the classic estancia style—one-floor, tile roof, gentle, gracious porch—but a three-story monstrosity of yellow brick, pillars and ironwork railing. And the interior—leather chairs with cattle horns as wings, and hooves for feet. Sofas made from red and white cattle hide. Barstools with saddles for seats.

  “With all his money,” she sighs, “what he could do . . .”

  Speaking of money, Fabián has a briefcase of it in his hand. More money for Güero Méndez to commit to his war against taste. Fabián’s the courier now, the pretext being that it’s too dangerous for the Barrera brothers to move around, with all that’s happened to Miguel Ángel.

  They have to lie low.

  So Fabián will make the monthly cash deliveries and report from the front.

  They’re having a weekend party at the ranch. Pilar is playing the gracious hostess, and Fabián is surprised to find himself thinking that she is gracious—lovely and charming and subtle. He’d expected some frumpy housewife, but she’s not that. And at dinner that night, in the large formal dining room now crowded with guests, he sees her face in candlelight, and her face is exquisite.

  She glances over and sees him looking.

  This movie-star-handsome boy with the good, stylish clothes.

  Pretty soon, he finds himself walking out by the pool with her, and then she tells him that she doesn’t love her husband.

  He doesn’t know what to say, so he shuts his mouth. He’s surprised when she continues, “I was so young. So was he, and muy guapo, no? And, forgive me, he was going to rescue me from Don Ángel. Which he did. Make me into a grand lady. Which he has. An unhappy grand lady.”

  Fabián says, stupidly, “You’re unhappy?”

  “I don’t love him,” she says. “Isn’t that terrible of me? I am a terrible person. He treats me well, gives me everything. He has no other women, doesn’t go with whores . . . I am the love of his life, and that’s what makes me feel so guilty. Güero worships me, and I have contempt for him because of that. When he is with me, I don’t feel . . . I don’t feel. And then I start to make a list of the things I dislike about him: He’s crass, he has no taste, he’s a hick, a hillbilly. I hate it here. I want to go back to Guadalajara. Real restaurants, real shops. I want to go to museums, concerts, galleries. I want to travel—see Rome, Paris, Rio. I don’t want to be bored—with my life, with my husband.”

  She smiles, then looks back at the guests gathered around the enormous bar at the other end of the pool. “They all think I’m a whore.”

  “They don’t.”

  “Of course they do,” she says evenly. “But none of them is brave enough to say it out loud.”

  Of course not, Fabián thinks—they all know the story of Rafael Barragos.

  He wonders if she does.

  “Rafi” had been at a barbecue at the ranch, shortly after Güero and Pilar were married, and was standing around with some cuates when Güero came out of the house with Pilar on his arm. And Rafi chuckled, and under his breath made a wisecrack about Güero hitching his cart to Barrera's puta. And one of his good buddies went to Güero and told him, and that night Rafi was grabbed from his guest room and the silver plate that he had given them for a wedding present was melted down in front of him and a funnel was stuck in his mouth and the molten silver poured into it.

  As Güero 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, Fabián 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, Fabián thinks, if Güero 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.

  Adán 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 as
ks.

  “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 clichéd “love in the afternoon”; he’s always home in the evening.

  Adán 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,” Adán 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, Adán 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 Adán Barrera and got the whole rundown.

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

  Maybe, Nora thinks now as Adán falls into a postcoital slumber. But she hasn’t seen that side of Adán 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 cliché, 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 Adán. She’s interested in the topics and she likes talking about them with him. She’s used to intelligent, successful men, but Adán 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, Adán, 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.”

  “I assumed as much.”

  “Can you afford that?”

  “Money is not my problem in life.”

  “Adán,” she says, “I don’t want you taking money from your family.”

  She instantly regrets saying it because she can see he’s offended. He looks up from his shirt, stares at her in a way she’s never seen before and says, “I think you already know that is something I would never do.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll get you a condo here in Tijuana,” he says. “We can agree on annual compensation and renegotiate it at the end of every year. Other than that, we never have to discuss the money. You would simply be my—”

  “Mistress.”

  “I was thinking more of the word 'lover,’ ” he says. “Nora, I do love you, I want you in my life, but there’s only so much of my life to go around and most of it is already taken up.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you do,” he says. “And I appreciate that, more than you can know. I know you don’t love me, but I think I’m more than just a customer to you. The arrangement I’m proposing isn’t ideal, but I think it can give us the most we can have with each other.”

  He’s prepared for this, she thinks. He thought it through, chose his exact words and practiced them.

  I should probably think that’s pathetic, she tells herself, but I’m actually touched.

  That he took the time and the thought.

  “Adán, I’m flattered,” she says, “and tempted. It’s a lovely offer. Can I take a little time to think about it?”

  “Of course.”

  She thinks hard after he leaves.

>   Takes stock.

  You’re twenty-nine years old, she tells herself, a young twenty-nine, a good twenty-nine, but nevertheless, just on the edge of over-the-hill. The breasts are still firm, the ass is still tight, the stomach flat. None of that will change for a while, but every year it will be harder to maintain, even with the workout fanaticism. Time will take its toll.

  And there are younger girls coming up, girls with long legs and high breasts, girls to whom gravity is still an ally. Girls who have the bodies without hours on the stationary bicycle and the treadmill, without the sit-ups and the weight lifting, without the diets. And increasingly, those are the girls the platinum johns are going to want.