The Power Of The Dog (27 page)

Ernie’s still in it.

“I told you to take a cab home,” Art says as he slides in.

“I guess I didn’t hear that part.”

“Go home,” Art says. When Ernie doesn’t move, he says, “Look, I don’t want to fuck up your life, too.”

“When are you going to let me in on this?” Ernie asks as he gets out of the car.

“When I know what I’m doing,” Art says.

Like, maybe never.

He gets into Ernie’s car and drives to La Casa del Amor.

What if they’re waiting for me? he thinks as he makes his way over to the wall to retrieve the tape.

You’ll just be alive, and then you won’t.

Click.

Out.

He shakes off his fear and makes his way through the shrubbery to the wall. Takes a quick glance over the top and sees that Tío’s bedroom light is on. Crouching by the wall, he taps his earpiece into the tape recorder so he can listen live.

They say eavesdroppers never hear anything nice about themselves, Art thinks as he listens.

“Did it work?” Tío asks.

“I don’t know.” Sal’s Spanish is pretty good, Art thinks, but it’s definitely the same voice. “I think so, though. The guy seemed pretty scared.”

Yeah, no shit, Art thinks. Let me stick a gun in your neck and see how cool you are.

“Did he know anything about Cerberus?”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t respond at all.”

Relax, Art thinks. I don’t know shit about it. Whatever it is.

Then he hears Tío say, “We can’t take the chance. The next exchange …”

Exchange? Art thinks. What exchange?

“… we’ll do El Norte.”

El Norte, Art thinks.

In the States.

Yeah, Art thinks. Do it, Tío.

Fly it across the border.

Because as soon as you do?

I’m going to reach up and grab that plane right out of the sky.

Borrego Springs, California

January 1985

The plane, any plane really, flies toward a VOR signal. A VOR (Variable Oscillation Radio) signal is kind of like the radio version of a lighthouse, but instead of a beam of light it emits sound waves that register as beeps on a plane’s radio or a pulsing light on its instrument panel. All airports, even small ones, have a VOR.

But a plane full of dope isn’t going to land at an airport in the United States, not even a small one. What it’s going to do is land on a private airstrip bulldozed out of a remote part of the desert. The VOR signals are still crucial because the pilot is going to locate the landing strip by triangulating the location between three VOR signals, in this case, the VORs at Borrego Springs, Ocotillo Wells and Blythe. What happens is that the people on the ground are going to get on the ADF radio and give him that location, cross-referencing it by distance and compass points—called “vectors” in air navigation—from the three known locations of the VORs.

Then they’re going to park at the end of that landing strip, and when they see the plane, they’ll become their own landing tower, if you will, by flashing their headlights. The pilot will line his plane up toward the headlights and bring down the plane, with its valuable cargo.

For security reasons, the guys on the ground aren’t going to give that pilot the landing location until he’s in the air, because once he’s in the air, what could happen?

Well, lots, because the F in ADF stands for “frequency,” and that’s what Art has from listening in on Tío’s conversations, and he’s tuned in on it so he’s going to know the landing location just as soon as the pilot does. But that’s not good enough—Art’s crew can’t wait for him to land and then bust everyone, because they can’t get close enough without being spotted long before the plane gets there.

Once you get out of the little town of Borrego Springs, California, the Anza-Borrego Desert is a million acres of nothing, and if you turn on so much as a flashlight, it’s going to stand out like a spotlight. And it’s quiet out there, so a jeep sounds like an armored column. You’re not going to get close even if you can get there in time once you learn the location.

This is why Art is going in a different direction—instead of trying to chase the plane down and then sneak up on it, he’s just going to land it at his own airstrip.

It’s outrageous, his plan. It’s so out there, so totally crazed, that no one’s going to expect it.

First he needs an airstrip.

Turns out that Shag knows a rancher out there where it takes about a hundred acres to feed a single cow. So Shag’s old buddy has him a few thousand acres and, yes, he has a landing strip because, as Shag explains to Art, “old Wayne flies to Ocotillo to buy his groceries,” and he ain’t kidding. And as old Wayne’s opinion of drug dealers is about the same as his opinion of the federal government, he’s happy to host this little ambush, and even happier to keep his mouth shut about it.

Next thing Art needs is a co-conspirator, because the aforementioned Washington, D.C., would be somewhat less than thrilled to have the Guadalajara RAC conduct a stunt like this several hundred miles away from his assigned territory. What Art needs is someone who can make the necessary arrests and seizures, get it in the press and then start to track the airplane back without any interference from the DEA or the State Department. So that’s why he has Russ Dantzler sitting next to him.

Another thing Art needs to do is jam the pilot’s ADF, switch him over to a new frequency and then talk him down to the party at old Wayne’s ranch.

So the most important thing Art needs is, as old Wayne might put it, one big old shitload of luck.

Adán’s sitting in the front of a Land Rover in the middle of the chingada desert with a few million dollars’ worth of coke in the air and his future in his hands.

And now the chingada radio won’t work.

“What’s wrong with it?” he snaps again.

“I don’t know,” the young technician repeats, fiddling with knobs, dials and switches, trying to get the signal back. “Electrical storm, something on the plane … I’m trying.”

The kid sounds scared. He should—Raúl takes out a .44 and points it at the kid’s head. “Try harder.”

“Put that away,” Adán snaps. “That’s not going to help.”

Raúl shrugs and tucks the pistol back into his belt.

But the radio-geek kid’s hand is shaking on the dials now. This isn’t the way it was supposed to go down—he was just supposed to do a little easy work for a little easy coke, and now they’re threatening to blow his brains out if he can’t get the plane on the ADF.

And he can’t.

All he can get is a Led Zeppelin–on–acid kind of guitar-feedback squeal. And his hand is rattling on the dials.

“Relax,” Adán says. “Just get the plane in.”

“I’m trying,” the kid repeats, looking like he’s going to cry.

Adán looks at Raúl like, See what you did?

Raúl frowns.

Especially when Jimmy Peaches walks over and taps on the window. “The fuck is going on?”

“We’re trying to get the plane on the radio,” Adán says.

“How hard is that?” Peaches asks.

“Harder if you keep bothering us,” Raúl says. “Go back, hang in your truck, everything’s cool.”

No, everything isn’t cool, Peaches thinks as he walks back to the truck. First thing that isn’t cool is I’m out here playing Lawrence of Arabia in East Bumfuck, second thing is I’m sitting in a truck chock-fulla felony, third thing is I got major non-returnable investment in the truck that I leveraged with other people’s money, fourth thing is them other people is Johnny Boy Cozzo, Johnny’s brother Gene, and Sal Scachi, none of which is exactly known for his forgiving nature, which brings me to the fifth thing, which is that if Big Paulie ever gets wind we’re dealing dope he’s gonna have us whacked—the “us” starting with “me”—which leads me to the sixth thing, which is that all the coke is now in an airplane somewhere in the sky and these beaners can’t seem to find it.

“Now they can’t find the fucking plane,” he says to Little Peaches as he climbs back into the truck.

“What do you mean?” Little Peaches asks.

“Which word didn’t you fucking understand?”

“Irritable.”

“Fucking A, I’m irritable.”

Drive all the way out to California with a truck full of guns, and not just a few pistols but major freaking weaponry—M-16s, AR-15s, ammo, they even got a couple of LAWs back there, and what the fucking Mexicans need rocket launchers for I’ll never know. But that was the deal—the beaners wanted to get paid in weapons this time, so I get the money from the Cozzos and Sal, add a little secret surcharge to cover my end and haul ass all over the East Coast hustling up this freaking arsenal. Then I drive it all the way across the country, shitting my pants every time I see a state trooper because I got Life in Lewisburg in the back.

Peaches is also irritable because things in the Cimino Family ain’t going so well.

First of all, Big Paulie has his panties in a wad about the Commission Case, what with New York Eastern District D.A. Giuliani threatening to lay about a century each on the heads of the other four families. So Paulie ain’t letting them do nothing to earn a living. No robberies, no hits and, of course, no dope. And when they kick it up the chain that they’re fucking starving here, the answer comes back down that they should have invested their money.

They should have legitimate businesses to fall back on.

Which is bullshit, Peaches thinks. All the fucking hoops you gotta jump through to get made—for what? Sell shoes?

Fuck that.

Fucking Paulie is such a fucking woman.

Peaches has even started calling him the Godmother.

Just the other day on the phone, him and Little Peaches were talking about it.

“Hey,” Peaches says, “you know that maid the Godmother is pronging? You ready for this? I hear he’s got this pump-up dick he uses.”

“How does that work?” Little Peaches asks.

“Nothin’ I want to think about,” Peaches says. “I guess it’s like a flat tire, and you pump it up to get it hard.”

“He’s got, what, like an inner tube in his dick?”

“I guess so,” Peaches says. “Anyway, it’s wrong what he’s doing, tappin’ the maid right there in the house where his wife is living. It’s disrespectful. Thank God Carlo ain’t alive to see it.”

“If Carlo was alive, there’d be nothing to see,” Little Peaches says. “Paulie wouldn’t have the balls, never mind the inflatable dick, to fuck some whore in the house right in front of Carlo’s sister. What Paulie would be is dead, is what.”

“Your lips to God’s ears,” says Peaches. “You want some strange, fine—go get yourself some strange. You want a little something on the side, get it on the side, not in the house. The house is the wife’s home. You respect that. That’s our way.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s all so fuckin’ bad right now,” Big Peaches says. “And when Mr. Neill finally passes … I’m telling you, the underboss job better go to Johnny Boy.”

“Paulie ain’t gonna make John underboss,” Little Peaches says. “He’s too scared of him. The job’s going to Bellavia, you watch.”