The Power Of The Dog (6 page)

Then again, what do I have to lose?

Art poured them each another drink, then said, “I’d love to work with you, but there’s a problem.”

Barrera shrugged. “¿Y qué?”

“I won’t be here,” Art said. “They’re reassigning me.”

Barrera sipped his whiskey with a polite pretense of enjoyment, as if it were good whiskey, when they both knew that it was cheap shit. Then he asked, “Do you know the real difference between America and Mexico?”

Art shook his head.

“In America, everything is about systems,” Barrera said. “In Mexico, everything is about personal relationships.”

And you’re offering me one, Art thought. A personal relationship of the symbiotic nature.

“Señor Barrera—”

“My given names are Miguel Ángel,” Barrera said, “but my friends call me Tío.”

Tío, Art thought.

“Uncle.”

That’s the literal translation, but the word implies a lot more in Mexican Spanish. Tío could be a parent’s brother, but he could also be any relative who takes an interest in a kid’s life. It goes beyond that; a Tío can be any man who takes you under his wing, an older-brother type, even a paternal figure.

Sort of a godfather.

“Tío …” Art began.

Barrera smiled and accepted the tribute with a slight bow of his head. Then he said, “Arturo, mi sobrino …”

Arthur, my nephew …

You’re not going anywhere.

Except up.

Art’s reassignment was canceled the next afternoon. He was called back into Taylor’s office.

“Who the fuck do you know?” Taylor asked him.

Art shrugged.

“I just had my leash jerked all the way from Washington,” Taylor said. “Is this some CIA shit? Are you still on their payroll? Who do you work for, Keller—them or us?”

Me, Art thought. I work for myself. But he didn’t say it. He just ate his ration of shit and said, “I work for you, Tim. Say the word, I’ll have ‘DEA’ tattooed on my ass. If you want, it can be a heart with your name across it.”

Taylor stared across the desk at him, obviously unsure of whether Art was fucking with him or not, and of how to respond. He settled on a tone of bureaucratic neutrality and said, “I have instructions to let you alone to do your own thing. Do you know how I choose to view this, Keller?”

“As giving me enough rope to hang myself?”

“Exactly.”

How did I know?

“I’ll produce for you, Tim,” Art said, getting up to leave the room. “I’ll produce for the team.”

But on the way out he couldn’t help singing, albeit softly, “I’m an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande. But I can’t poke a cow, ‘cuz I don’t know how …”

A partnership made in hell.

This is how Art would later describe it.

Art Keller and Tío Barrera.

They met rarely and secretly. Tío chose his targets carefully. Art could see it building—or, more accurately, deconstructing, as Barrera used Art and the DEA to remove one brick after another from Don Pedro’s structure. A valuable poppy field, then a cookery, then a lab, then two junior gomeros, three crooked state policeman, a federale who was taking the mordida—the bite, the bribe—from Don Pedro.

Barrera stayed aloof from it all, never getting directly involved, never taking any credit, just using Art as his knife hand to gut the Áviles organization. Art wasn’t just a puppet in all this, either. He used the sources Barrera gave him to work other sources, to establish leverage, to create assets in the metastasizing algebra of intelligence gathering. One source gets you two, two gets you five, five gets you …

Well, among the good things, it also gets endless servings of shit from the cop types in the DEA. Tim Taylor had Art on the carpet a half-dozen times. Where are you getting your info, Art? Who’s your source? You got a snitch? We’re a team, Art. There’s no I in team.

Yeah, but there is in win, Art thought, and that’s what we’re finally doing—winning. Creating leverage, playing one rival gomero against another, showing the Sinaloan campesinos that the days of the gomero overlords are really coming to an end. So he told Taylor nothing.

He had to admit there was an element of Fuck you, Tim, and your team.

While Tío Barrera maneuvered like a master technician in the ring. Always pressing forward, but always with his guard up. Setting up his punches and throwing them only when there was minimal risk to himself. Knocking the wind and the legs out from under Don Pedro, cutting off the ring, then—

The knockout punch.

Operation Condor.

The mass sweep of troops and supporting aircraft, with bombing and defoliants, but still it was Art Keller who could direct them where to hit, almost as if he had a personal map of every poppy field, cookery and lab in the province, which was almost literally true.

Now Art crouches in the brush, waiting for the big prize.

With all the success of Condor, the DEA is still focused on one goal: Get Don Pedro. It’s all Art has heard about: Where is Don Pedro? Get Don Pedro. We have to get El Patrón.

As if we have to hang that trophy head on the wall, or the whole operation is a failure. Hundred of thousands of acres of poppies destroyed, the entire infrastructure of the Sinaloan gomeros devastated, but we still need that one old man as a symbol of our success.

They’re out there, running around like crazy, chasing every rumor and tidbit of intelligence; but always a step behind, or, as Taylor might say, a day late and a dollar short. Art can’t decide what Taylor wants more—to get Don Pedro or for Art not to get Don Pedro.

Art was out in a Jeep, inspecting the charred ruins of a major heroin lab, when Tío Barrera came rolling up out of the smoke with a small convoy of DFS troops.

The fucking DFS? Art wondered. The Dirección Federal de Seguridad—Federal Security Directorate—is like the FBI and CIA rolled into one, except more powerful. The DFS boys virtually have carte blanche for whatever they do in Mexico. Now, Tío is a Jalisco state cop—what the hell is he doing with a squad of the elite DFS, and in command, no less? Tío leaned out of his open Jeep Cherokee and simply said, with a sigh, “I suppose we had better go pick up old Don Pedro.”

Handing Art the biggest prize in the War on Drugs as if it were a bag of groceries.

“You know where he is?” Art asked.

“Better,” Tío said. “I know where he’s going to be.”

So now Art sits crouched in the brush, waiting for the old man to walk into the ambush. He can feel Tío’s eyes on him. He looks over to see Tío pointedly looking at his watch.

Art gets the message.

Anytime now.

Don Pedro Áviles sits in the front seat of his Mercedes convertible as it slowly rumbles over the dirt back road. They’ve driven out of the burning valley, up onto the mountain. If he gets down the other side, he’ll be safe.

“Be careful,” he tells young Güero, who’s driving. “Watch the holes. It’s an expensive car.”

“We have to get you out of here, patrón,” Güero tells him.

“I know that,” Don Pedro snaps. “But did we have to take this road? The car will be ruined.”

“There will be no soldiers on this road,” Güero tells him. “No federales, no state police.”

“You know this for a fact?” Áviles asks.

Again.

“I have it straight from Barrera,” Güero says. “He has cleared this route.”

“He should clear a route,” Áviles says. “The money I pay them.”

Money to Governor Cerro, money to General Hernández. Barrera comes as regular as a woman’s curse to collect the money. Always, the money to the politicians, to the generals. It has always been this way, since Don Pedro was a boy, learning the business from his father.

And there will always be these periodic sweeps, these ritual cleansings coming down from Mexico City at the behest of the Yanquis. This time it’s in exchange for higher oil prices, and Governor Cerro sent Barrera to give Don Pedro the word: Invest in oil, Don Pedro. Sell off opium and put the money in oil. It’s going up soon. And the opium …

So I let the young fools buy into my poppy fields. Took their money and put it into the oil. And Cerro let the Yanquis burn the poppy fields. Doing work that the sun would do for them.

For that’s the great joke: Operation Condor timed to happen just before the drought years come. He has seen it in the sky the past two years. Seen it in the trees, the grass, the birds. The drought years are coming. Five years of bad crops before the rains come back.

“If the Yanquis did not burn the fields,” Don Pedro tells Güero, “I would have. Refresh the soil.”

So it is a farce, this Operation Condor; a play, a joke.

But still he has to get out of Sinaloa.

Áviles has not stayed alive for seventy-three years by being careless. So he has Güero driving and five of his most trusted sicarios—gunmen—in a car behind. Men whose families all live in Don Pedro’s compound in Culiacán, who would all be killed if anything should happen to Don Pedro.

And Güero—his apprentice, his assistant. An orphan whom he took off the streets of Culiacán as a manda to Santo Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of all Sinaloan gomeros. Güero, whom he raised in the business, to whom he taught everything. A young man now, his right-hand man, cat smart, who can do monumental figures in his head in a flash, who is nevertheless driving the Mercedes too fast on this rough road.

“Slow down,” Áviles orders.

Güero—“Blondie,” because of his light hair—chuckles. The old man has millions and millions, but he will cluck like an old hen over a repair bill. He could throw this Mercedes away and not miss it, but will complain about the few pesos it will cost to wash the dust off.

It doesn’t bother Güero; he’s used to it.

He slows down.

“We should make a manda to Malverde when we get to Culiacán,” Don Pedro says.

“We can’t stay in Culiacán, patrón,” Güero says. “The Americans will be there.”

“To hell with the Americans.”

“Barrera advised us to go to Guadalajara.”

“I don’t like Guadalajara,” Don Pedro says.

“It’s only for a little while.”

They come to a junction, and Güero starts to turn left.

“To the right,” Don Pedro says.

“To the left, patrón,” Güero says.

Don Pedro laughs. “I have been smuggling opium out of these hills since your father’s father was tugging at your grandmother’s pants. Turn right.”

Güero shrugs and turns right.

The road narrows and the dirt gets soft and deep.

“Keep going, slowly,” Don Pedro says. “Go slow but keep going.”

They come to a sharp right curve through thick brush and Güero takes his foot off the gas.

“¿Qué coño te pasa?” Don Pedro asks.

What the hell’s the matter with you?

Rifle barrels peak out from the brush.