The Power of the Dog

by Don Winslow

  Yeah, that makes them fucking angels, Callan thought.

  But he went to Mexico.

  Because where else was he going to go?

  So now he’s here at this beach resort for a Day of the Dead party.

  Decides to have a couple of pops because they’re in a safe place on a holy day, so there ain’t going to be no problems. Even if there are, he thinks, I’m better a little drunk these days than totally sober.

  He throws back the last of his drink, then sees the big aquarium shatter and the water burst out and two people drop in that particular twisting way that people do only when they’ve been shot.

  Callan drops behind the bar stool and pulls his .22.

  There must be forty black-uniformed federales busting through the front door, firing M-16s from the hip. Bullets strike the fake rock walls of the cave, and it’s a good thing they are fake, Callan thinks, because they’re absorbing the bullets instead of deflecting them back into the crowd.

  Then one of the federales unhooks a grenade from his shoulder strap.

  Callan yells, “Get down!” as if anyone could hear or understand him, then he pops two rounds into the federale’s head, and the man drops before he can pull the pin and the grenade falls harmlessly to the floor, but another federale flings another grenade and it hits near the dance floor and explodes in a disco-pyrotechnic flash, and now several partyers go down, screaming with pain as the shrapnel rips into their legs.

  Now people are ankle-deep in bloody water and flopping fish and Callan feels something hit his foot, but it isn’t a bullet, it’s a blue tang fish, pretty and electric indigo in the nightclub lights, and he loses himself in a peaceful moment watching the fish, and it is pandemonium now inside La Sirena as the partiers scream and cry and try to push their way out, but there is no way out because the federales are blocking the doors.

  And shooting.

  Callan’s glad he’s a little buzzed. He’s on alcohol-Irish-hired-killer autopilot, his head is clear and cool, and he knows now that the shooters aren’t federales. This isn’t a bust, it’s a hit, and if these guys are cops, they’re off-duty and picking up a little extra money for the upcoming holidays. And he realizes quickly that no one is going to get out through the front door—not alive, anyway—and there must be a back exit, so he lowers himself into the water and starts to crawl toward the back of the club.

  It’s the wall of water that saves Adán’s life.

  It knocks him off his chair and sends him to the floor, so the first round of gunfire and shrapnel passes over his head. He starts to pick himself up, but then instinct takes over as he feels bullets zinging over him and he sits back down. Looks stupidly at the bullets chopping into the expensive coral, now dry and exposed behind the shattered aquarium, then jumps as an agitated moray eel twists beside him. He looks over to the other wall, where, behind the waterfall, Fabián Martínez is trying to twist himself back into his pants as one of the German girls sitting on the rock shelf does the same, and Raúl stands there with his pants around his ankles and a pistol in his hand and shoots back through the waterfall.

  The faux federales can’t see through the waterfall. That’s what saves Raúl, who stands there blasting away with impunity until he runs out of ammo, drops the gun and reaches down and pulls up his pants. Then grabs Fabián by the shoulder and says, “Come on, we have to get out of here.”

  Because the federales are pushing their way through the crowd now, searching for the Barrera brothers. Adán sees them coming and gets up to head for the back, slips and falls, gets back up again and, when he does, a federale points a rifle in his face and smiles, and Adán is dead, except the federale’s smile disappears in a whirl of blood and Adán feels someone grab his wrist and pull him down and then he’s in the water on the floor, face-to-face with a Yanqui who says, “Get down, asshole.”

  Then Callan starts shooting at the advancing federales with short, efficient bursts—pop-pop, pop-pop—knocking them down like floating ducks in a carnival game. Adán glances down at the dead federale, and, to his horror, sees that the crabs have already scuttled over to feed at the gaping hole where the cop’s face used to be.

  Callan crawls forward and takes two grenades from the guys he just shot, then quickly reloads, belly-crawls back, grabs Adán and, firing behind with the other hand, pushes him toward the back.

  “My brother!” Adán yells. “I have to find my brother!”

  “Down!” Callan yells as a fresh burst of fire explodes toward them. Adán does go down as bullets punch him in the back of his right calf and send him sprawling face-first into the water, where he stupidly lies watching his own blood flow past his nose.

  He can’t seem to move now.

  His brain is trying to tell him to get up, but he’s suddenly exhausted, much too tired to move.

  Callan squats down, hefts Adán over his shoulder and staggers toward the door labeled BAÑOS. He’s almost there when Raúl takes the weight off him.

  “I got him,” Raúl says.

  Callan nods. Another Barrera shooter has their backs, firing behind him into the chaos of the club. Callan kicks the door open and finds himself in the relative quiet of a little hallway.

  To the right is a door marked SIRENAS, with a little silhouette of a mermaid; the door to the left is marked POSEIDONES, with a silhouette of a man with long, curly hair and a beard. Directly in front is the SALIDA, and Raúl makes straight for this exit.

  Callan screams, “NO!” and pulls him away by the collar. Just in time, because slugs come ripping through the open door just like he expected they would. Anyone who has the time and manpower to stage this kind of hit is going to place some shooters outside the back door.

  So he yanks Raúl through the POSEIDONES door. The other shooter goes in behind him. Callan pulls the pin on one of the grenades and tosses it out the back door to discourage anyone from standing around there or coming in.

  Then he jumps into the men’s room and closes the door behind him.

  Hears the grenade go off with a dull bass thump.

  Raúl sits Adán down on the toilet and the other shooter guards the door while Callan examines Adán’s wounded leg. The bullets have passed clean through, but there’s no way of telling if they’ve broken any bones. Or hit the femoral artery, in which case Adán is going to bleed to death before they can get him help.

  The truth is that none of them are going to make it, not if the shooters keep coming, because they’re trapped. Fuck, he thinks, somehow I always knew I’d die in a shithouse, then he looks around, and there are no windows like you’re supposed to have in American restrooms but there is, directly above him, a skylight.

  A skylight in a men’s room?

  It had been another one of Raúl’s style points.

  “I want the bathrooms to look like cruise-liner cabins turned sideways,” he’d explained to Adán when arguing for the skylights. “You know, as if the ship was sunk?”

  So the skylight is in the shape of a porthole, and the bathrooms are ornate, and everything except the sink and the toilet is turned sideways. Which is just what you want, Callan thinks, if you’ve been pounding margaritas and go to take a piss—a seasick shitter. He wonders how many college kids have staggered in here in pretty good shape and then puked it all up once they got sideways, but he doesn’t think about it for long because that fucking stupid porthole above them is the way out, so he climbs up on the sink counter and opens the skylight. He jumps, gets a grip then pulls himself up and through and then he’s on the roof and the air is salty and warm and then he sticks his head back down through the porthole skylight and says, “Come on!”

  Fabián jumps and pulls himself through the skylight, then Raúl lifts Adán up and Callan and Fabián pull him up onto the roof. Raúl has a hard time squeezing himself through the small porthole, but manages just in time as the federales kick open the door and spray the room with bullets.

  Then they rush in, expecting to see dead bodies and screaming, twisting
wounded. But they don’t see any of that and they’re puzzled until one of them looks up and sees the open skylight and then he gets it. But the next thing he sees is Callan’s hand dropping a grenade and then the skylight closes, and now there are dead and screaming, twisting bodies in the men’s room of La Sirena.

  Callan leads the way across the roof to the back of the building. There’s only one federale guarding the alley in back now, and Callan dispatches him with two quick shots to the back of the head. Then he and Raúl carefully lower Adán down to a waiting Fabián.

  Then they take off trotting down the alley, Raúl with Adán slung over his shoulder, toward the back street, where Callan shoots the window out of a Ford Explorer, opens the door and takes about thirty seconds to hot-wire the ignition.

  Ten minutes later they’re in the emergency room of Our Lady of Guadalupe hospital, where the registration nurses hear the name Barrera and ask no questions.

  Adán is lucky—the femur is chipped but not broken, and the femoral artery is untouched.

  Raúl is giving blood with one arm, on the phone with the other, and in minutes his sicarios are either rushing to the hospital or searching the neighborhood of La Sirena for any of Güero’s boys who might be lingering. They don’t come back with any, only the news that six of the partyers were killed, and ten of the “federales” are either dead or wounded.

  But Méndez’s gunmen have failed to kill the Barrera brothers.

  Thanks to Sean Callan.

  “Whatever you want,” Adán tells him.

  On this Day of the Dead.

  You have only to ask.

  Whatever you want in this world.

  The teenage girl makes him his own pan de muerto.

  Bread of the Dead.

  The traditional sugary sweet roll with a surprise hidden inside, a treat which she knows Don Miguel Ángel Barrera especially likes and looks forward to on this holiday. And as it’s good luck for the person who takes the bite that has the surprise in it, she makes one roll just for him, to make sure that Don Miguel is the one who receives the surprise.

  She wants everything just right for him on this special night.

  So she dresses with special care: a simple but elegant black dress, black stockings and heels. She applies her makeup slowly, paying particular attention to the exact thickness of the mascara, then brushes her long black hair until it shines. She checks the effect in the mirror and what she sees pleases her—her skin is smooth and pale, her dark eyes are highlighted, her hair falls softly on her shoulders.

  She goes into the kitchen and places the special pan de muerto on a silver tray, flanks it with amber candles, lights them and goes into his dining-room cell.

  He looks regal, she thinks, in a maroon smoking jacket over silk pajamas. Don Miguel’s nephews make sure that their uncle has all the luxuries that he requires to make his existence in prison bearable—good clothing, good food, good wines, and, well, her.

  People whisper that Adán Barrera takes such good care of his uncle to assuage his own guilt because he prefers his uncle to linger in prison so the old man won’t interfere with his leadership of the Barrera pasador. Sharper tongues wag that Adán actually set up his own uncle so that he could take over.

  The girl doesn’t know the truth behind any of this and doesn’t care. All she knows is that Adán Barrera rescued her from a future of misery in a Mexico City brothel and chose her instead as his uncle’s companion. The gossips would have it that she resembles a woman whom Don Miguel once loved.

  Which is my good fortune, the girl thinks.

  Don Miguel’s demands aren’t heavy. She cooks for him, launders his clothes, accommodates his needs as a man. True, he beats her, but not as often or as viciously as her own father, and his sexual demands are not as frequent. He beats her, then screws her, and if he cannot keep his floto hard he gets angry and beats her until he can do it.

  There are worse lives, she thinks.

  And the money that Adán Barrera sends her is generous.

  But not as generous as . . .

  She puts the thought out of her head and presents Don Miguel with the pan de muerto.

  Her hands are shaking.

  Tío notices.

  Her small hands quiver as she lays the bread on the table in front of him, and when he looks into her eyes they’re moist, on the verge of tears. Is it sorrow? He asks himself. Or fear? And as he looks closely into her eyes she glances down at the pan de muerto and then back up at him and then he knows.

  “It is beautiful,” he says, looking down at the sweet roll.

  “Thank you.”

  Is there a crack in her voice? he wonders. Just the slightest hesitation?

  “Please sit down,” he says, standing and holding her chair out for her. She sits down, her hands gripping the edges of the chair.

  “Please, you have the first bite,” he says, sitting back down.

  “Oh, no, it is for you.”

  “I insist.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I insist.”

  It’s a command.

  She can’t disobey.

  So she tears off a piece of the pan and lifts it to her lips. Or tries to, anyway—her hand shakes so badly that it has a hard time finding her mouth. And try as she might to hold them back, tears fill her eyes and then spill over, and her mascara runs down her cheeks, leaving black streaks on her face.

  She looks up at him and sniffles, “I can’t.”

  “And yet you would have fed it to me.”

  She sniffs, but little bubbles of snot run out of her nose.

  He hands her a linen napkin.

  “Wipe your nose,” he says.

  She does.

  Then he says, “Now you must eat the bread that you baked for me.”

  She blurts out, “Please.”

  Then she looks down.

  Are my nephews already dead? Tío wonders. Güero wouldn’t dare attempt to assassinate me unless Adán and Raúl, especially, were safely out of the picture. So either they are already dead or will be soon, or perhaps Güero has botched that as well. Let us hope so, he thinks, and makes a mental note to contact his nephews at the first opportunity, as soon as this triste business is concluded.

  “Méndez offered you a fortune, didn’t he?” Miguel Ángel asks the girl. “A new life for you, for your whole family?”

  She nods.

  “You have younger sisters, do you not?” Tío asks. “Your drunk of a father abuses them? With Méndez’s money you could get them out, make them a home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand,” Tío says.

  She looks up at him hopefully.

  “Eat,” he says. “It is a merciful death, isn’t it? I know you wouldn’t have wanted me to die slowly and in pain.”

  She balks at putting the bread in her mouth. Her hand trembles, leaving little crumbs sticking to her bright red lipstick. And now fat, heavy tears plop onto the bread, ruining the sugary frosting that she had so carefully applied.

  “Eat.”

  She takes a bite of the bread but can’t seem to swallow it, so he pours a glass of red wine and puts it in her hand. She sips it, and that seems to help, and she washes the bread down with it, then takes another bite and another sip.

  He leans across the table and strokes her hair with the back of his hand. And softly murmurs, “I know. I know,” as with his other hand he places another piece of the bread to her lips. She opens her mouth and takes it on her tongue, then a sip of wine, and then the strychnine hits and her head snaps back, her eyes open wide and her death rattle gurgles moistly between her parted lips.

  He has her body thrown over the fence to the dogs.

  Parada lights a cigarette.

  Sucks on it as he bends over, putting on his shoes, and wonders why he’s being awakened in the small hours of the morning, and what is this “urgent personal business” that could not wait until the sun came up. He tells his housekeeper to make the minister of education at
home in the study and that he’ll be right down.

  Parada has known Cerro for years. He was bishop in Culiacán when Cerro was the Sinaloa governor, and even baptized two of the man’s legitimate children. And hadn’t Miguel Ángel Barrera stood as godfather on both occasions? Parada asks himself. Certainly it was Barrera who had come to him to make arrangements, both spiritual and temporal, for Cerro’s illegitimate offspring, when the governor had taken advantage of some young girl from one of the villages. Oh, well, at least they came to me as opposed to an abortionist, and that is something in the man’s favor.

  But, he thinks as he pulls an old wool sweater over his head, if this is another teenage girl in an interesting circumstance, I am prepared to be seriously annoyed. Cerro should know better at his age. Certainly, he might have learned from experience if nothing else, and in any case, why does it have to be at—he glances at the clock—four in the morning?