The Power Of The Dog (56 page)

“You don’t love me enough to—”

“Yes,” he says. “I do.”

She throws her arms around him.

When he goes back to Tijuana he finds Raúl and tells him it’s a done deal.

It’s taken months, but the Shark’s about to feed.

It’s good timing, Raúl thinks.

Because it’s time to start the war with Güero Méndez.

Pilar carefully folds and packs a little black dress.

Along with black brassieres and panties and other lingerie.

Fabián likes her in black.

She wants to please him. She wants it to be perfect, her first time with him. Pues, a menos que la fantasía sea mejor que e acto—well, unless the fantasy is better than the actual fuck. But she doesn’t think it will be. No man can talk the way he does, use the words he uses, have the ideas he has, and not be able to back up at least some of them. He makes her wet talking to her—what will he do when he has her in his arms?

I’ll let him do anything he wants to me, she thinks.

I want him to do anything he wants.

Will you hurt me?

If you want.

Yes.

Then I’ll hurt you.

She hopes so, she hopes he means it, that he won’t be intimidated by her beauty and lose his nerve.

About any of it—because she wants a new life, away from this Sinaloan backwater with her husband and his hillbilly friends. She wants a better life for her children—a good education, some culture, some sense that the world is wider and better than a grotesque fortress tucked away on the outskirts of an isolated mountain town.

And Fabián has that sense—they’ve talked about it. He’s talked to her about making friendships outside the narrow circle of narcotraficantes, about creating relationships with bankers, investors, even artists and writers.

She wants that for herself.

She wants that for her children.

So when, at breakfast, Güero had excused himself and Fabián had leaned over and whispered, “Today,” she’d felt a thrill that fluttered her heart. It was almost like a little orgasm.

“Today?” she whispered back.

“Güero is going out into the countryside,” Fabián said, “to inspect his fields.”

“Yes.”

“So when I go to the airport, you will go with me. I’ve booked us a flight to Bogotá.”

“And the children?”

“Of course,” Fabián said. “Can you pack a few things? Quickly?”

Now she hears Güero coming down the hall. She slips the suitcase under the bed.

He sees the clothes scattered around. “What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking of getting rid of a few of these old things,” she says. “I will bring them to the church.”

“Then go shopping?” he asks, smiling, teasing her. He likes when she goes shopping. Likes it when she spends money. He encourages it.

“Probably.”

“I’m going,” he says. “I’ll be gone all day. I might even stay overnight.”

She kisses him warmly. “I will miss you.”

“I will miss you,” he says. “Maybe I will grab una nena to keep me warm.”

I wish you would, she thinks. Then you wouldn’t come to our bed with such desperation. But she says, “Not you. You are not one of those old gomeros.”

“And I love my wife.”

“And I love my husband.”

“Has Fabián left yet?”

“No, I think he’s packing.”

“I’ll go say good-bye to him.”

“And kiss the children.”

“Aren’t they still alseep?”

“Of course,” she says. “But they like to know that you kissed them before you left.”

He reaches for her and kisses her again. “Eres toda mi vida.”

You are all my life.

As soon as he goes out, she closes the door and gets the suitcase out from under the bed.

Adán says good-bye to his family.

Goes into Gloria’s room and kisses her on the cheek.

The girl smiles.

Despite everything, she smiles, Adán thinks. She’s so cheerful, so brave. In the background, the bird he brought her from Guadalajara chirps.

“Have you given the bird a name?” he asks her.

“Gloria.”

“After yourself?”

“No,” she giggles. “Gloria Trevi.”

“Ah.”

“You’re going away, aren’t you?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Papaaaa …”

“Only for a week or so,” he says.

“Where?”

“A bunch of places,” he says. “Costa Rica, maybe Colombia.”

“Why?”

“To look at coffee to buy,” he says. “For the restaurants.”

“Can’t you buy coffee here?”

“Not good enough for our restaurants.”

“Couldn’t I come with you?”

“Not this time,” he says. “Maybe next time.”

If there is a next time, he thinks. If everything goes right in Badiraguato, in Culiacán and on the bridge over the Río Magdalena, where he is going to meet the Orejuelas.

If everything goes well, my love.

If not, he has always made sure that Lucía knows where the life-insurance policies are, and how to access the bank accounts in the Caymans, the securities in safe-deposit boxes, the investment portfolios. If things go badly on this trip, if the Orejuelas toss his body off the bridge, then his wife and child will be taken care of for the rest of their lives.

So will Nora.

He’s left a bank account and instructions with his private banker.

If he doesn’t come back from this trip, Nora will have sufficient funds to start a small business, a new life.

“What can I bring back for you?” he asks his daughter.

“Just come back,” she says.

The intuition of small children, he thinks. They read your mind and your heart with uncanny accuracy.

“I’ll make it a surprise,” he says. “Give Papa a kiss?”

He feels her dry lips on his cheek and then her thin arms around his neck in a lock that won’t let go. It breaks his heart. He never wants to leave her, and for a moment he considers not going. Just getting out of the pista secreta and running the restaurants. But it’s much too late for that—the war with Güero is coming, and if they don’t kill him, Güero will kill them.

So he steels his heart, breaks her grip and straightens up.

“Good-bye, mi alma,” he says. “I’ll call you every day.”

Turns quickly so she won’t see the tears in his eyes. They would frighten her. He walks out of her room, and Lucía is waiting in the living room with his suitcase and a jacket.

“About a week,” he says.

“We’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you.” He kisses her on the cheek, takes his jacket and walks to the door.

“Adán?”

“Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he says. “A little tired.”

“Maybe you can sleep on the plane.”

“Maybe.” He goes to open the door, then turns around and says, “Lucía, you know I love you.”

“I love you, too, Adán.”

She says it like it’s an apology. It sort of is. An apology for not making love to him, for making their bed a cold place, for her helplessness to make it any different. To tell him that it doesn’t mean she doesn’t still love him.

He smiles sadly and leaves.

On the way to the airport he phones Nora to tell her he won’t be seeing her this week.

Maybe never, he thinks as he hangs up.

It depends on what’s happening in Culiacán.

Where the banks have just opened.

Pilar withdraws seven million dollars.

From three different banks in Culiacán.

Two of the bank managers start to object and want to contact Señor Méndez first—to Fabián’s horror, one even picks up the phone—but Pilar’s insistent, informing the cowed managers that she’s Señora Méndez, not some housewife overspending her allowance.

The receiver is replaced on the hook.

She gets her money.

Before they even get on the plane, Fabián has her wire-transfer two million to accounts set up in a dozen banks around the world. “Now we can live,” Fabián tells her. “He can’t find us, he can’t find the money.”

They bundle the kids into her car and drive toward the airport for a private flight to Mexico City.

“How did you arrange this?” Pilar asks Fabián.

“I have influential friends,” Fabián answers.

She’s impressed.

Güerito’s too young to know what’s happening, of course, but Claudia wants to know where Daddy is. “We’re playing a game with Daddy,” Pilar explains. “Like hide-and-go-seek.” The girl accepts the explanation, but Pilar can see she’s still concerned.

The drive to the airport is terrifying and exciting; they are always looking behind them, wondering if Güero and his sicarios are coming. Then they are at the airport itself, driving out onto the tarmac where the private plane is waiting. Sitting and waiting for permission to take off, Fabián looks out the window and sees Güero and a handful of men roll up in two jeeps.

The bank manager must have phoned after all.

Pilar is staring at him, her eyes wide with terror.

And excitement.

Güero jumps out of the jeep, and Pilar watches him argue with a security cop and then he’s looking right at her through the little window of the plane, he’s pointing at the plane, then Fabián coolly leans over and kisses her on the lips and then leans toward the cockpit and snaps, “Vámonos.”

The plane starts rolling down the runway. Güero jumps back into the jeep and races down the runway after the jet, but Pilar feels the wheels lift off and they’re airborne and Güero and the whole small world of Culiacán get smaller.

Pilar feels as if she could take Fabián into the little bathroom on the plane and fuck him right there, but the children are looking at her, so she has to wait, and the frustration and excitement only build.

They fly first to Guadalajara to refuel. Then they fly to Mexico City, where they leave the private plane and get on a tourist flight to Belize, where she thinks surely they will stop and go to some resort on the beach and then she will get some release, but in the small Belize airport they change planes again and take another flight to San José, Costa Rica, where she thinks surely they will stop for a day or so at least, but then they check in for a flight to Caracas but don’t board it.