The Power of the Dog

by Don Winslow

  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.

  Tell me about this, tell me about that.

  Art Keller, Shag Wallace, Art Keller.

  Tell me about shooting the Chinese man. What did you do? How did it feel? Where did you grab the gun? By the barrel? The handle?

  Talk to me about Keller. How long have you known him? Did he approach you or did you approach him?

  She answered, What are you talking about?

  Because she knew if she gave him an answer she was going to mess up. In the fog of barbiturates, fatigue, fear, confusion, disorientation. She understood what they were doing, there was just nothing she could do to stop it.

  He never touched her, never threatened her.

  And that gave her hope because she knew it meant that they weren’t sure it was her. If they were sure, they would torture her for the information, or just kill her. The “soft” interrogation meant that they had their doubts, and it meant something else—

  That Adán was still on her side. They’re not hurting me, she thought, because they still have Adán to worry about. So she held out. Gave evasive, confused answers, outright denials, indignant counter-assaults.

  But she’s wearing down.

  It’s getting to her.

  Breakfast didn’t come one morning—she asked for it and the girl looked confused and said that she’d just served it. But she hadn’t. I know that—or do I? Nora wondered. And then there were two lunches, back to back, and then more sleep and then another Tuinol.

  Now she wanders around outside the cottage. The doors aren’t locked and nobody stops her. The compound is flanked by the sea on one side and endless desert on the other three. If she tried to walk out she would die of thirst or exposure.

  She walks down to the ocean and goes in up to her ankles.

  The water is warm and feels nice.

  The sun sets behind her back.

  Adán watches her from his bedroom window in the house up the hill.

  He is a prisoner in the room, guarded by a rotation of sicarios whose loyalty is to Raúl. They take turns outside the door, round the clock, and Adán figures there must be at least twenty of them on the grounds.

  He stands and watches her wade into the water. She wears an off-white sundress and a floppy white hat to keep the sun off her skin. Her hair hangs loose on her bare shoulders.

  Was it you? he wonders.

  Did you betray me?

  No, he decides, I can’t let myself believe that.

  Raúl sure believes it, even though days of interrogation have failed to prove it. It’s a soft interrogation, his brother has assured him. She hasn’t been touched, never mind hurt.

  She’d better not be, Adán has told him. One bruise, one scar, one scream of pain and I will find a way to have you killed, brother or no brother.

  And if she’s the soplón? Raúl asked.

  Then, Adán thinks as he watches her sit down at the edge of the water, that is different.

  That is a different thing altogether.

  He and Raúl have come to an understanding: If Nora is not the traitor, then Raúl will step back down and Adán will resume his position as patrón. That’s the understanding, Adán thinks, but experience tells him that no one who has assumed power ever gives it back again.

  Not willingly, anyway.

  Not easily.

  And maybe that would be for the good, he thinks. Let Raúl have the pasador, cash out, take Nora and go somewhere for a quiet life. She’s always wanted to live in Paris. Why not?

  And the other half of the equation? If it turns out that Nora betrayed them, for whatever reason, then Raúl’s little coup becomes permanent and Nora . . .

  He doesn’t want to think about it.

  The example of Pilar Talavera is vivid in his mind.

  If it comes to that I’ll do it myself, he thinks. It’s funny how you can still love someone who betrayed you. I’ll walk her down to the ocean, let her watch the last rays of the sun fade on the water.

  It will be quick and painless.

  Then, if it weren’t for Gloria, I’d put the pistol in my own mouth.

  Children bind us to this life, don’t they?

  Especially this child, so fragile and needy.

  And she must be worrying herself to death, Adán thinks. The news from Tijuana has surely hit the San Diego papers, and even though Lucía will try to shield her from it, Gloria will worry until she hears from me.

  He takes another long look at Nora, then walks
away from the window and bangs on the door.

  The guard opens it.

  “Get me a cell phone,” Adán orders.

  “Raúl said—”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what Raúl said, pendejo,” Adán snaps. “I am still the patrón, and if I tell you to get me something, then you go get it.”

  He gets the phone.

  “Boss?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Heartbeat.”

  Shag hands Art the headset patched into the tap on Lucía Barrera’s phone. He hears Lucía’s voice—

  Adán?

  How’s Gloria?

  She’s worried.

  Let me speak to her.

  Where are you?

  Can I speak with her?

  A long pause. Then Gloria’s voice.

  Papa?

  How are you, baby?

  I’ve been worried about you.

  I’m okay. Don’t worry.

  Art hears the girl crying.

  Where are you? The newspaper said—

  The newspaper makes things up. I’m fine.

  Can I come see you?

  Not quite yet, darling. Soon. Listen, tell Mommy to give you a big kiss from me, okay?

  Okay.

  Bye, baby. I love you.

  I love you, Papa.

  Art looks to Shag.

  “It’s going to take a little while, boss.”

  It takes an hour but it feels like five, as the electronic data are sent to NSA and analyzed. Then they have an answer. The call came from a cell phone (we already knew that, Art thinks) so they can’t provide an address, but they can specify the nearest transmittal tower.

  San Felipe.

  On the east coast of Baja, straight south from Mexicali.

  A sixty-mile radius from the tower.

  Art already has the map spread out on the table. San Felipe is a small town, maybe twenty thousand people, a lot of them American snowbirds. There’s not much down there except the town, a lot of desert and a string of fishing camps to the north and south.

  Even with a sixty-mile radius, it’s the clichéd needle in the haystack, and Adán may have traveled to get into cell phone range and may even now be rushing back out.

  But it gives us a target area, Art thinks.

  Some hope.

  “The call didn’t come from the town,” Shag says.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Listen to the tape again.”

  They rerun it, and in the background Art can hear a faint hum with rhythmic pulses. He looks at Shag, puzzled.

  “You’re a city boy, aren’t you?” Shag asks. “I grew up on a ranch. That’s a generator you’re hearing. They’re off the power grid.”

  Art calls for a satellite sweep. But it’s night, and they won’t have the images for hours.

  The interrogator picks up the pace.

  He wakes Nora out of a deep Tuinol slumber, sits her in a chair and sticks the tracking device in her face.

  “What’s this?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Yes, you do,” he insists. “You put it there.”

  “What where? What time is it? I wanna go back . . .”

  He shakes her. It’s the first time he’s touched her. It’s also the first time he yells. “Listen! I’ve been very nice to you so far, but I’m losing my patience with you! If you don’t start to cooperate I’m going to hurt you! Very badly! Now tell me who gave you this to put in the car!”

  She stares at the little device for a long time, as if it’s some object from a distant past. She holds it between her thumb and forefinger and turns it around, examining it from different angles. Then she holds it up to the lamp and looks at it more closely. She turns back to her interrogator and says, “I’ve never seen this before.”

  Then he’s in her face, screaming. She doesn’t even understand what he’s saying, but he’s yelling—flecks of spit hit her face—and shaking her back and forth, and when he finally lets her go she just slumps in the chair, exhausted.

  “I’m so tired,” she says.

  “I know you are,” he says, all softness and sympathy now. “This can all be over very soon, you know.”

  “Then can I sleep?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Art’s sitting there when the photos come across the computer screen.

  His eyes stinging from fatigue, he wakes Shag, who’s sleeping tilted back in his chair with his boots up on his desk.

  They pore over the photos. Starting with a large weather-satellite image of the entire San Felipe area, they cross off the section that is on the power grid, then start working their way through the enlarged vectors north and south of town.

  They rule out the inland areas. No water supply, few passable roads, and the few roads that do snake their way through the rocky desert would allow the Barreras only one avenue of escape and they would be unlikely to place themselves in that trap.

  So they concentrate on the coast itself, to the east of the range of low mountains and the main road, which runs parallel to the coast, with spur roads going east to the fishing camps and other small settlements on the beach.

  The coast north of San Felipe is a popular spot for off-roaders and is pretty crowded with tourist, fishing, and RV camps, so they don’t give it much play. The immediate coast south of the town is similar, but then the road gets considerably worse and civilization becomes sparse until you get closer to the little fishing village of Puertocitos.

  But there’s a ten-kilometer stretch between the two towns—starting about forty clicks south of San Felipe—where there are no camps, just a few isolated beach houses. The range is consistent with the strength of Adán’s cell phone signal, 4800 bps, so that’s where they concentrate their efforts.

  It’s a perfect spot, Art thinks. There are only a few access roads—more like four-wheeler tracks—and the Barreras doubtless have lookouts posted on those roads and in San Felipe and Puertocitos as well. They would spot every single vehicle that came down the road, never mind the kind of armed convoy it would take to launch a raid. The Barreras would be long gone—by road or by boat—before we could get close.

  But you can’t think about that now. First, find the target, then worry about how to take it out.

  A dozen houses are set on the isolated stretch of coast. A few sit on the beach itself, but most are up on the low ridge above. Three are plainly unoccupied; there are no vehicles or recent tire tracks. Among the remaining nine it’s hard to choose. They all look normal—from space, anyway—although Art is hard-pressed to determine what abnormal would be in this case. All of them appear to have been built on lots cleared from the rocks and agave brush; most of them are plain, rectangular structures with either thatched or composite roofs; most of them—

  Then he spots the anomaly.

  He almost misses it, but something catches his eye. Something not quite right.

  “Zoom in on that,” he says.

  “What?” Shag asks. He doesn’t see anything where Art is pointing but rock and brush.

  That is a shadow made by some rocks indistinguishable from the millions of others, but the shadow—the shadow is an even line.

  “That’s a structure,” Art says.

  They download the frame and enlarge it. It’s grainy, hard to tell, but examined under a magnifying glass there is depth there.

  “Are we looking at a square rock?” Art asks. “Or a square building with a rock roof?”

  “Who puts a stone roof on a house?” Shag asks.

  “Someone who wants it to blend in,” Art answers.

  They zoom back out, and now they start to spot other too-regular shadows, and pieces of brush that have even lines. It’s difficult at first, but then a picture starts to emerge of two structures—one smaller than the other—and shapes that could disguise vehicles underneath.

  They coordinate the frame onto the large map. The house sits off a track that turns off from the main road, such as it is, forty-eight kilometers south of Sa
n Felipe.