The Power of the Dog

by Don Winslow

  Which is good, which is good.

  Mickey Haggerty finishes his drink, climbs off his stool and slips outside to a phone booth. He knows someone who’ll be very interested to learn that Sean Callan is at a bar in the Gaslamp.

  Must be the d.t.'s.

  Callan reaches for his gun anyway.

  But it’s gotta be the d.t.'s—here at last—because there ain’t no other explanation for Big Peaches and O-Bop standing over his bed in the Golden West Hotel, pointing their guns at him. He can see the bullets in their chambers, shiny and lethal, pretty and silver, reflected from the light of the street lamp outside, the fake gaslamp that the broken venetian blind can’t block out.

  The red neon from the porn shop across the street flashes like an alarm.

  Too late.

  If this ain’t the d.t.'s, I’m already dead, Callan thinks. But he starts to pull the gun out from under his pillow anyway. Take them with him.

  “Don’t, you dumb fucking mick,” he hears a voice growl.

  Callan’s hand freezes. Is this a drunk dream or reality? Are Big Peaches and O-Bop really standing in his room with their guns trained on him? And if they was going to shoot, why don’t they shoot? They say if you die in your dreams you die in your life, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between dead and alive. Last thing he remembers is pounding beers and whiskeys at the bar. Now he wakes up (comes to) and he might be dead or he might be alive. Or is he back in the Kitchen, and the last nine years were a dream?

  Big Peaches laughs. “What are you, some fucking hippie now? All that hair? The beard?”

  “He’s on a binge,” O-Bop says. “An Irish sabbatical.”

  “You got that little .22 popgun under that pillow, don’t you?” Peaches says. “I don’t care how fucking drunk you are, you got that gun. Eeeeasy, there—we had come to whack you, you’d be dead before you woke up.”

  “Then why the guns?” Callan asks.

  “Call it an abundance of caution,” Peaches says. “You are Billy the Kid Callan. Who knows what brought you here? Maybe a contract on me. So bring the gun out slow.”

  Callan does.

  Thinks for a half-second about popping them both, but what the hell.

  Besides, his hand is shaking.

  O-Bop gently takes the gun out of Callan’s hand and tucks it into his own belt. Then he sits down beside him and wraps his arms around him. “Jesus, it’s good to see you.”

  Peaches sits down on the foot of the bed. “Where the fuck you been? Jeez, we said go south, we didn’t mean like the Antarctic. You fuckin’ guy.”

  O-Bop says, “You look like shit.”

  “I feel like shit.”

  “Well, you look like it,” Peaches says. “And what the fuck are you doing in this fucking toilet? Jesus, Callan.”

  “You got a drink?”

  “Sure.” O-Bop takes a half-pint of Seagram’s out of his pocket and hands it to Callan.

  He gulps down a heavy belt. “Thanks.”

  “You fucking Irish,” Peaches says. “You’re all drunks.”

  “How'd you find me?” Callan asks.

  Peaches says, “Little Mickey Haggerty, speaking of drunks. He sees you at this shit-hole bar you been drinking at, he drops a dime, we find out you’re living in the Golden West Hotel, we can’t fucking believe it. The fuck happened to you?”

  “A lot.”

  “No shit, huh,” Peaches says.

  “What'd you come for?”

  “Get you the fuck out of here,” Peaches says. “You’re coming home with me.”

  “New York?”

  “No, dumb fuck,” Peaches says. “We live here now. Sun Diego, baby. It’s beautiful. A beautiful thing.”

  “We got a crew going,” O-Bop explains. “Me, Peaches, Little Peaches, Mickey. Now you.”

  Callan shakes his head. “No, I’m done with that shit.”

  “Yeah,” Peaches says, “whatever you’re doin’ now is obviously working. Look, we’ll talk about that later. Now we gotta get you sobered up, get some good food into you. A little fruit—you wouldn’t believe the fruit out here. Not just the peaches, either. I’m talking pears, oranges, grapefruit so pink and juicy they’re better than sex, I’m telling you. O-Bop, get your boy some clothes together, let’s get him out of here.”

  Callan’s drunk enough to be compliant.

  O-Bop scoops some of his shit up and Peaches walks him out.

  Tosses a c on the front desk and tells them the bill is settled, whatever the fuck it is. All the way out to the car—and Peaches got himself a new Mercedes—O-Bop and Peaches are telling Callan how great it is out here, what a sweet thing they got going.

  How the streets are paved with gold, baby.

  Gold.

  The grapefruit sits like a fat sun in a bowl.

  Fat, swollen, juicy sun.

  “Eat it,” Peaches says. “You need your vitamin C.”

  Peaches has become a health nut, like everyone else in California. He’s still three bills and change, but now he’s a tan three bills and change with a low cholesterol number and a high-fiber diet.

  “I spend a lot of time on the can,” he explains to Callan, “but I feel fucking great.”

  Callan doesn’t.

  Callan feels exactly like a man who’s been on a years-long bender. He feels like death, if death feels really shitty. And now fat, tan Big Peaches sits there nagging him about eating his fucking grapefruit.

  “You got a beer?” Callan asks.

  “Yeah, I got a beer,” Peaches says. “You ain’t got a beer. And you ain’t getting no beer, either, you fucking alcoholic. We’re going to get you straightened out.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Four fucking days,” Peaches says. “And every moment a delight with you puking, crying, mumbling, hollering about shit.”

  What shit was I hollering about? Callan wonders. It’s kind of worrisome because the dreams were bloody and bad. The goddamn ghosts—and there were a lot of them—just wouldn’t go away.

  And that fucking priest.

  I forgive you. God forgives you.

  No, He don’t, Father.

  “Man, I wouldn’t want to see a picture of your fucking liver for anything,” Peaches is saying. “Must look like an old tennis ball. I play tennis now, I tell you that? Play every morning, except the last four mornings I been playing nursemaid instead. Yeah, I play tennis, I Rollerblade.”

  Three hundred twenty pounds of Big Peaches on wheels? Callan thinks. Talk about your accidents waiting to happen . . .

  “Yeah,” O-Bop says, “we took the wheels off a Mack truck, put them on the blades for him.”

  “Fuck you, Brillo Pad,” Peaches said. “I blade pretty good.”

  “People get the fuck out of his way, I’ll tell you that,” O-Bop says.

  “You ought to get some exercise other than lifting your fucking elbow,” Peaches says to O-Bop. “Yo, Lost Weekend, eat your goddamn grapefruit.”

  “What do you, peel it first?” Callan asks.

  “Honest to God, fucking idiots. Gimme the thing.”

  Peaches gets a knife, cuts the grapefruit in half, then carefully slices it into sections and puts it back in Callan’s bowl. “Now you eat it with your spoon, fucking barbarian. You know the word 'barbarian’ came from the Romans? It meant 'redheaded.’ They was talking about you people. I saw that on the—what do you call it?—the History Channel, last night. I love that shit.”

  The doorbell rings and Peaches gets up and goes to answer it.

  O-Bop grins at Callan. “Peaches in that bathrobe, he looks like some old mamma mia, don’t he? He’s even getting tits. All he needs is them fuzzy pink slippers with the little pom-poms on 'em. Honest to God, you should see him on those Rollerblades. People like run out of the way. It’s like some Japanese horror movie. Wopzilla.”

  They hear Peaches say, “Come in the kitchen, see what the cat dragged in.”

  Couple of seconds later, Callan�
�s looking up at Little Peaches, who gives him a big hug.

  “They told me about this,” Little Peaches says, “but I didn’t believe it until I saw it. Where have you been?”

  “Mexico mostly.”

  “They don’t got phones in Mexico?” Little Peaches asks. “You can’t call people, let them know you’re alive?”

  “Where was I supposed to call you?” Callan asks. “You’re in the Witness Fucking Protection Program. If I could find you, so could other people.”

  “All the other people are in Marion,” Peaches said.

  No shit, Callan thinks. You put them there. Old-school Big Peaches turned into the most spectacular songbird since Valachi. Put Johnny Boy in prison for life and then some. Not that life is going to be long—word is, Johnny Boy has throat cancer.

  It’s good, though, that Peaches flipped, because Callan don’t have to worry about him calling Sal Scachi, who can’t be happy that Callan has gone off the reservation. Callan knows too much about Scachi’s work—all that Red Mist shit—to be out there in the wind, so it’s a good thing that him and Peaches are disconnected.

  Little Peaches turns to his brother. “Are you feeding this guy?”

  “Yes, I’m feeding him.”

  “Not this grapefruit shit,” Little Peaches says. “Jesus Christ, get him some sausiche, a little prosciutto, some raviolis. If you can find any. Callan, they got a Little Italy in this town, you couldn’t get a cannoli with a machine gun. Italian restaurants here they serve sun-dried tomatoes. What is that? A couple years out here I am a sun-dried tomato. It’s always eighty-three and sunny here, even at night. How do they do that, huh? Is anyone gonna get me some coffee, or do I have to order it like I’m in a fucking restaurant?”

  “Here’s your fucking coffee,” Peaches says.

  “Thank you.” Little Peaches sets a box on the table and sits down. “Here, I brought doughnuts.”

  “Doughnuts?” Peaches says. “Why are you always sabotaging me?”

  “Hey, Richard Simmons, don’t fucking eat them if you don’t want them. Nobody’s putting a gun to your head.”

  “You fucking asshole.”

  “Because I don’t come to my brother’s house empty-handed,” Little Peaches says to Callan. “Good manners make me a asshole.”

  “A fucking asshole,” Peaches says as he grabs a doughnut.

  “Callan, eat a doughnut,” Little Peaches says. “Eat five. Every one you eat is one my brother doesn’t, I don’t have to listen to him whine about his figure. You’re fat, Jimmy. You’re a fat, greasy guinea. Get over it.”

  They go out on the patio because Peaches thinks Callan should get some sun. Actually, Peaches thinks that Peaches should get some sun, but he doesn’t want to seem selfish. It’s Peaches’ opinion that there’s no reason to live in San Diego if you’re not going to go sit in the sun every chance you get.

  So he leans back in the chaise, opens up his robe and starts to slather his body with Bain de Soleil.

  “You don’t want to fuck with skin cancer,” he says.

  Mickey sure doesn’t. Now he puts on his Yankees cap and sits under the patio umbrella.

  Peaches opens a chilled can of peaches and scoops a few into his mouth. Callan watches a drop of the juice plop on his fat chest, then merge with the sweat and suntan lotion and run down his belly.

  “Anyway, it’s good you showed up,” Peaches says.

  “Why’s that?”

  “How would you like,” Peaches says, “to do a crime where the victims can’t go to the cops?”

  “Sounds okay.”

  “Sounds 'okay'?” Peaches asks. “Sounds like heaven to me.”

  He lays it out for Callan.

  Drugs go north—Mexico to the States.

  Money goes south—the States to Mexico.

  “They just put the bones—six, sometimes seven figures—into cars and drive it across the border, into Mexico,” Peaches says.

  “Or not,” Little Peaches adds.

  They’ve done three of these jobs already, and now they got word that a narco safe house in Anaheim is bursting with cash and has to make the trip south. They got the address, they got names, they got the make of the car and the license plate. They even got an idea about when the couriers are going to make the run.

  “Where are you getting the info?” Callan asks.

  “A guy,” Peaches answers.

  Callan figured it was a guy.

  “You don’t need to know,” Peaches says. “He takes thirty points.”

  “It’s like being back in the dope business, except better,” O-Bop says. “We get the profits but we never have to touch the stuff.”

  “It’s just basic, honest crime,” Peaches says. “Stick 'em up, give me the money.”

  “The way the Good Lord meant it to be,” Mickey says.

  “So, Callan,” Little Peaches says. “You in?”

  “I dunno,” Callan answers. “Whose money are we taking?”

  “The Barreras’,” Peaches answers with this sly, questioning look in his eye, asking, Is that a problem?

  I don’t know, Callan thinks. Is it?

  The Barreras are as dangerous as sharks, not people you fuck with thoughtlessly. That’s one thing. Also, they’re “friends of ours”—according to Sal Scachi anyway—so that’s another thing.

  But they murdered that priest, straight up. That was a hit, not an accident. A stone-pro killer like Fabián “El Motherfucking Tiburón” don’t shoot nobody at point-blank range on accident. It just don’t happen.

  Callan don’t know why they killed the priest, he just knows that they did.

  And they made me part of it, he thinks.

  So there’s gotta be payback for that.

  “Yeah,” Callan says. “I’m in.”

  The West Side gang is back together again.

  O-Bop watches the car pull out of the driveway.

  It’s three in the morning and he’s tucked down in his own rig, half a block away. He has an important job to do: Follow the courier car without getting spotted and confirm that it goes onto the 5. He punches a number into his cell phone and says, “It’s on.”

  “How many guys?”

  “Three. Two in front, one in back.”

  He hangs up, waits a few seconds, then eases out.

  As per plan, Little Peaches calls Peaches, who calls Callan, who calls Mickey. They start the chronometers on their watches and wait for the next call. Mickey has it timed, of course, the average drive time from the driveway to the on-ramp of the 5—six-point-five minutes. So they know within a minute or so when they should get the next call.

  If they get the call, the plan is in place.

  If they don’t, they’re going to have to improvise, and no one wants that. So it’s a tense six minutes. Especially for O-Bop. He’s the one doing the work right now, the one who can fuck it all up if he gets himself spotted, who has to stay where he can see them but they don’t see him. He lays off at varying distances. A block, two blocks. He gives a left-turn signal and flips his headlights off for a second so he looks like a different car when he turns them back on.

  O-Bop works it.

  While Little Peaches sits, sweating, an hour and a half south on the 5.

  For three minutes.

  Four.

  Big Peaches is in a booth at Denny’s off the highway, just a little north of Little Peaches. He’s scarfing down a cheese omelet, home fries, toast and coffee. Mickey don’t like them eating before a job—a full stomach complicates things if you get shot—but Peaches is like, Fuck that. He don’t want to jinx himself by taking precautions about what if he gets shot. He polishes off the greasy potatoes, takes two Rolaids out of his pocket and chews on them while he looks at the sports section.

  Five minutes.

  Callan tries not to look at his watch.

  He’s lying on the bed in a motel room at the Ortega Highway exit, off the 5. Got HBO on and he’s watching some movie he don’t even know what it is. No
point in him sitting out there on a bike in the cold. If the couriers get on the 5 there’ll be plenty of time. Looking at his watch ain’t gonna change anything, it’s just gonna make him nervous. But after what seems to be about ten minutes he gives in and looks.

  Five and a half minutes.