The Power Of The Dog (105 page)

Scachi pulls his gun but is afraid to shoot.

“Put the guns down, Sal, or I’ll break his fucking neck.”

“You do and I’ll kill you.”

“Okay.”

Sal lays his gun on the bridge.

“Now mine.”

Sal lays Keller’s .38 down beside his. Then he looks up at the ridge behind Keller and nods.

Callan sees it.

He puts the crosshairs squarely on the back of Keller’s head and takes a deep breath.

Change your life.

Art says, “Nora, toss one gun over the bridge and give the other to me.”

Adán laughs.

Until Nora goes and throws one of the guns over.

“What are you doing?!” Adán yells.

She looks him square in the eye.

“I was the soplón, Adán. It was always me.”

Adán’s head snaps back. “I loved you.”

“You killed the man I loved,” Nora says. “And I never loved you.”

She hands Art the gun.

Sal looks over his shoulder and yells, “Shoot!”

Art spins to face the shooter.

Scachi pulls a second gun from his waistband and trains it on Art’s back.

Callan puts the bullet square into Scachi’s head.

Sal drops from the scope’s sight.

Tío dives and grabs Scachi’s gun.

Art turns.

Tío raises the gun.

Art puts two shots into his chest.

Tío’s hand reflexively pulls the trigger.

The bullet goes through Hobbs’ hip and into Art’s leg.

They both go down.

Hobbs pulls himself up, grabs his cane and starts to stagger away on the bridge, wobbling crazily like a bad stage drunk.

Callan lays his sights on the man’s frail chest.

Blood blossoms on Hobbs’ back.

His cane clatters on the stone.

Adán crawls to Tío.

He takes the gun from his uncle’s hand.

Callan tries to get a shot, but Nora’s in the way.

Art struggles to his knees, sees Adán kneeling by Tío.

Adán’s gun goes off once, twice, both bullets zinging past Art.

Dizzy, he aims his own gun and fires.

The bullet smacks into Tío’s dead body.

Adán shoots again.

Art’s head snaps back, a ribbon of blood swirls in the air, and he falls back into the bridge railing, his gun dropping to the highway below.

Adán turns his gun on Nora.

“GET DOWN!” Callan yells.

Nora drops to the ground.

So does Adán.

He drops to his stomach and crawls along the bridge, firing behind him as he goes.

Callan can’t get a shot through the railings, can’t even see Adán now. He drops his rifle and runs toward the bridge.

Adán gets up and runs.

The pain is ferocious. Blood flows from the deep cut on Art’s forehead into his eyes so that he can barely see. He sways and fights the tunnel vision that’s shrinking his brain, threatening to black him out. He looks up and can just make out the form of Adán running away. Adán looks like he’s running in a fun house, with the floor slanting this way and that.

Art struggles to his feet, falls, then gets up again.

Then he starts to run.

Adán can hear the footsteps chasing him.

Keep running, he tells himself. He knows he doesn’t have to make it across the border, he just has to get into the barrio and knock on the right door and the doors will open for Adán Barrera and close for Art Keller.

So he runs down the Prado, empty now in the small hours of the morning, the museum buildings looming like the walls of a lost city around him. If he can make it off the Prado and onto Park Boulevard he’ll be all right. There’ll be a thousand places he can duck into darkness, then work his way into the barrio.

He sees the fountain maybe fifty yards in front of him, marking the end of the Prado, its light shining on the tower of silver water.

Art sees it, too.

Knows what it means.

Adán gets past that and he’s gone, probably for good. The Twenty-eighth Street boys will hide him, get him back across the border. He forces his legs to move faster, even though every fall of his foot sends a jolt of pain burning through his leg.

He hears sirens in the distance and wonders if they’re real or in his head.

Adán hears them, too, and keeps running.

A few more yards and he’ll be gone.

He turns to see where Keller is.

Art jumps.

Takes Adán high around the shoulders and drives him over the fountain’s low wall and into the water.

Adán gets up and jams his hand into Art’s face, clawing at his eyes.

Art’s head explodes in pain, but he has a grip on Adán’s shirt and won’t let go. Just hold on, Art tells himself, just hold on. Adán’s shirt rips free and he starts to pull away.

Art throws himself blindly, desperately, and feels Adán’s body land under him and hears Adán grunt as the air is blown out of his lungs. Blood rises in the water where Adán struck his head. Art grabs him by his hair and forces his head under the water.

He lifts him up, hears him gasp and then pushes him down again, screaming over the sound of the fountain’s cascade: “This is for Ernie, motherfucker! This is for Pilar Méndez and her children! This is for Ramos!”

He holds him down, loving the feel of the man’s legs kicking helplessly beneath him, loving the feel of his body quivering, his suffering, his dying.

“This is for El Sauzal!”

Art presses down harder. Adán bucks beneath him, his back arching like it’s going to snap. Art doesn’t see that—he sees a baby dead in his mother’s arms. He feels the power of the dog.

“This is for Father Juan!” Art yells.

He jerks Adán’s head up and out of the water.

The two men kneel in the water, gasping for air, their blood swirling around them, water pouring down over their heads.

Art sees red lights flashing, then cops walking up on them, their guns out. He keeps one hand on Adán’s neck and throws the other in the air.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he yells. “I’m a cop! This is my prisoner! This is my prisoner!”

In the distance, as if in a long tunnel, he sees Nora and Callan walking toward him.

Then he falls back into the water.

It feels cool and clean.

Epilogue

An undisclosed location

May 2004

The poppies are in bloom.

Bright orange, bright red.

Art waters them carefully.

And savors the irony.

They didn’t put him in prison, the judge having decided that the former Border Lord wouldn’t have lasted a day in any federal institution. So it’s been a series of safe houses between rounds of testimony, seemingly endless sessions before endless committees, then back to another refuge where he’s relatively safe.

He’s been at this one for three months now and soon it will be time to move again, but he takes it a day at a time, and today is sunny and warm and he’s enjoying the garden in the enclosed courtyard.

He enjoys the solitude.

YOYO, he thinks as he sets down the watering can, sits on the little bench and leans back against the adobe wall.

But not really.

You have your ghosts.

Nora is gone now. She finished testifying and faded into her new life. Art likes to think that she’s with Callan, who likewise disappeared. It’s a pleasant thought.

Adán is serving twelve consecutive life sentences in a federal hole, also a pleasant thought. Art got to sit in the courtroom and watch him be led away in cuffs and ankle chains as Adán shouted back to tell him that the bounty on his head was still good.

And who knows, Art thinks, maybe someone will collect.

The drugs stopped flowing out of Mexico for about fifteen minutes after Adán’s downfall, then new kids on the block stepped up to take his place. There are more drugs coming into the country than ever.

Based on Art’s testimony, Congress launched an intensive investigation into Operation Cerberus and Red Mist and promised action. So far, nothing has been done. The government spends billions of dollars a year in aid to Colombia for drug interdiction. Most of it goes for helicopters to fight the insurgents. The war drags on.

The murder of Cardinal Juan Parada is still officially ruled an unfortunate accident.

Art supposes he should be bitter.

Sometimes he tries to be, but it feels like a slightly ridiculous parody of a former life, and he drops it. Althie and the kids—Hell, he thinks, they aren’t kids anymore—are coming for a quick visit this afternoon, and he wants to be cheerful.

He doesn’t know yet what will happen, how long he will have to spend in this limbo, whether he’ll ever get out. He accepts it as penance. He still doesn’t know if he believes in God, but he has hope of a God.

And maybe that’s the best we can do in this world, he thinks as he gets up to resume watering the flowers—tend to the garden and maintain the hope of a God.

Against all evidence to the contrary.

He watches the water bead silver on the petals.

And mutters a snatch of an odd prayer he once heard, which he doesn’t quite understand but that nevertheless sticks in his head—

Deliver my soul from the sword.

My love from the power of the dog.

Don Winslow’s previous novels include

The Death and Life of Bobby Z

And…California Fire and Life