The Power Of The Dog (69 page)

Callan’s relieved. This whole thing has been so fucked-up. Raúl gives him his airline ticket and the day’s schedule then tells him, “Güero’s going to try to hit us at the airport.”

“What do you mean?”

“He thinks we’re going there to make peace with him,” Raúl says. “He thinks we’re just protected by a bunch of kids. He’s going to gun us down.”

“He thinks right.”

Raúl smiles and shakes his head. “We got you, and we got a whole crew of sicarios who’ll be dressed as Jalisco State Police.”

Well, Callan thinks, at least that answers my question about why the Barreras were using a crew of kids. The kids are bait.

And so are you.

Raúl tells Callan to keep his hand on his gun and his eyes open.

I always do, Callan thinks. Most of the dead guys he knows got that way because they didn’t have their eyes open. They got careless, or they trusted somebody.

Callan don’t get careless.

And he don’t trust nobody.

Parada puts his faith in God.

Gets up earlier than usual, goes into the cathedral and says Mass. Then he kneels at the altar and asks God to give him the strength and wisdom to do what he has to do this day. Prays that he’s doing the right thing, then ends with, “Thy will be done.”

He goes back to his residence and shaves again, then chooses his clothes with more than particular care. What he wears will send an instant message to Antonucci, and Parada wants to send the right message.

In a strange way, he harbors hope for reconciliation between himself and the Church. And why not? If Adán and Güero can come together, so can Antonucci and Parada. And he is, for the first time in a long time, truly hopeful. If this administration goes out and a better one comes in, in this new environment perhaps the conservatives and liberation theologists can find a common ground. Work together again to seek justice on earth and the bliss of heaven.

He goes to light a cigarette, then snuffs it out.

I should quit smoking, he thinks, if only to make Nora happy.

And this is a good day to start.

A day of new beginnings.

He chooses a black soutane and drapes a large cross around his neck. Just religious enough, he thinks, to mollify Antonucci, but not so ceremonial that the nuncio will think he’s gone completely conservative. Conciliatory but not obsequious, he thinks, pleased with his choice.

God, would I like a cigarette, he thinks. He’s nervous about his tasks today—delivering Cerro’s incriminating information to Antonucci, and then sitting down with Adán and Güero. What can I say, he thinks, to effect a peace between the two of them? How do you make peace between a man whose family has been killed and the man who—as rumor has it anyway—killed them?

Well, put your faith in God. He will give you the words.

But it would still be comforting to smoke.

But I’m not going to.

And I’m going to drop a few pounds.

He’s going to Santa Fe for a bishops’ conference in a month and plans to see Nora there. And it will be great fun, he thinks, to surprise her with a svelte, smoke-free me. All right, not svelte, maybe, but thinner.

He goes down to his office and occupies his mind with paperwork for a few hours, then calls his driver and asks him to get the car ready. Then he goes to his safe and takes out the briefcase filled with Cerro’s incriminating notes and tapes.

It’s time to go to the airport.

In Tijuana, Father Rivera prepares for a christening. He puts on his robes, blesses the holy water and carefully fills out the necessary paperwork. On the bottom of the form he lists as godparents Adán and Lucía Barrera.

When the new parents come with their blessed child, Rivera does something unusual.

He closes the doors of the church.

The Barrera crew arrives at the Guadalajara airport fresh from the mall.

They’re loaded down with shopping bags, having basically tried to buy the freaking place. Raúl had tossed the kids some bonus money to soothe their disappointment over the cancellation of the Güero lottery, and they’d done what kids do in a mall with cash in their pockets.

They’d spent it.

Callan’s watching all this with disbelief.

Flaco bought a Chivas Rayadas del Guadalajara fútbol jersey—which he’s wearing with the sales label still attached to the back collar—two pairs of Nikes, a new Nintendo GameBoy and half a dozen new games for it.

Dreamer went strictly the clothes route. Got himself three new lids, all of which he has jammed on his head at the same time, a suede jacket and a new suit—his first one ever—carefully folded in a wardrobe bag.

Scooby Doo is glassy-eyed from the video arcade. Hell, Callan thinks, the little glue-sniffer is usually glassy-eyed anyway, but now his pupils are glazed over from two solid hours of playing Tomb Raider and Mortal Kombat and Assassin 3 and now he’s sipping the same giant Slurpee he’s been hitting on the whole ride over from the mall.

Poptop is drunk.

While the others were shopping, Poptop went into a restaurant and hammered beers, and by the time they caught up with him it was too late, and it took Flaco and Dreamer and Scooby to wrestle him back in the van to go to the airport and they had to stop three times on the way so Poptop could throw up.

And now the little shit can’t find his airline ticket, so him and his buddies are digging through his backpack looking for it.

Great, Callan thinks. If we’re trying to convince Güero Méndez that we’re sitting ducks, we’re doing a damn fine job of it.

What you got out there is a bunch of kids with stacks of luggage and shopping bags on the sidewalk outside the terminal, and Raúl is trying to establish some kind of order, and Adán has just pulled up with a few of his people and it looks like nothing more than a high school field trip headed home on that last chaotic day. And the boys are laughing and hollering at each other, and Raúl is trying to figure out with the attendant at the outside counter whether they should check the bags at the curb or bring them inside, and Dreamer goes to find a couple of luggage carts and tells Flaco to come with him to help and Flaco’s yelling at Poptop, “How could you lose your fucking ticket, pendejo?” and Poptop looks like he’s going to puke again, but what comes out of his mouth isn’t puke, it’s blood, and then he crumples onto the curb.

Callan’s already flat on the sidewalk, tracking a green Buick with gun barrels sticking out the side windows. He pulls out his .22 and fires two shots at the Buick. Then he rolls behind another parked car just as a burst from an AK blasts the sidewalk in front of where he just was, sending bullets bouncing off the concrete and into the terminal wall.

Stupid fucking Scooby Doo is standing there sucking on his Slurpee straw, watching like it’s some video game with really radical graphics. He’s trying to remember if they ever left the mall and exactly which game this is but it must have cost a ton of tokens because it’s so lifelike. Callan dashes out from behind the relative safety of the van, grabs Scooby and throws him to the concrete, and the Slurpee spills all over the pavement and it’s a raspberry Slurpee so it’s hard to tell it from Poptop’s blood, which is also spreading across the concrete.

Raúl, Fabián and Adán drop black equipment bags to the ground and pull AKs out of them, then lift the rifles to their shoulders and start shooting at the Buick.

The bullets bounce off the car—even the windshield—so Callan figures that the car is armored, but he squeezes off two shots, then drops down and can just see the opposite doors of the Buick opening and Güero and two other guys with rifles getting out, and then they lean against the car and rest their AKs on top and let loose.

Callan goes into that zone where he can’t hear anything—it is just perfect silence in his head as he sees Güero, takes careful aim at his head and is about to squeeze him out of the world—when a white car pulls right into the line of fire. The driver seems oblivious to what’s going on, like he’s happened upon some on-location movie and is pissed off and determined to get to the airport anyway, so the car pulls past the Buick and over to the curb about twenty feet in front of it.

Which really seems to get Fabián going.

He spots the white Marquis and makes for it, running sideways past the Buick, blasting at it as he does, and Callan figures that Fabián has the white car lamped for a new carload of Güero’s sicarios, and Fabián is fighting his way toward it so Callan tries to lay down some cover fire but the white car is in the line of fire and he doesn’t want to shoot just in case these are civilians and not more of Güero’s boys.

But now there are bullets hitting the Buick from the other side, and out of the corner of his eye Callan can make out some of the fake Jalisco cops training fire onto the car, which forces Güero and his hitters to squat down behind it, so Fabián survives his charge toward the white Marquis.

Parada doesn’t even see him coming. He’s too focused on the scene of bloodshed playing out in front of him. Bodies are splayed all over the sidewalk, some lying motionless, others crawling on their stomachs, dragging their legs behind them, and Parada can’t tell if they’re wounded or dead or just trying to take cover from the bullets that are flying everywhere. Then he looks out the window and sees a young man lying on his back with bubbles of blood gurgling out of his mouth and his eyes open in pain and terror, and Parada knows this young man is dying, so he starts to get out of the car to give him the last rites.

Pablo, his driver, tries to grab him and hold him back, but he’s a small man and Parada easily shrugs him off and yells, “Get out of here!” But Pablo won’t leave him there, so he huddles as far as he can under the steering wheel and puts his hands over his ears as Parada opens the door and gets out, just as Fabián gets there and points his gun into the priest’s chest.

Callan sees him.

You dumb fuck, he thinks, that’s the wrong guy. He watches as Parada squeezes his large body out of the car, straightens up and starts toward Poptop, and he watches as Fabián steps in the way and raises his AK. Callan stands straight up and yells, “NO!”

Leaps over the hood of the car and races toward Fabián, yelling, “FABIÁN, NO! THAT’S NOT HIM!”

Fabián glances over at Callan, and as he does Parada grabs the rifle and manages to turn the barrel down toward the ground, and now Fabián tries to lift it again and squeezes the trigger and the first shot hits Parada in the ankle and the next one in the knee but the adrenaline is coursing through Parada and he doesn’t even feel it, never mind let go of the gun.

Because he wants to live. Feels it now more strongly, more urgently than ever in his life. Feels that life is good, the air is sweet and there is so much he still has to do, wants to do. Wants to get to that dying young man and soothe his soul before he goes. Wants to listen to more jazz. Wants to see Nora smile. Wants another cigarette, another good meal. Wants to kneel in sweet, soft prayer to his Lord. But not walk with Him, not yet, too much to do, so he fights. Holds on to the gun barrel with his whole life.

Fabián lowers his head and lifts his foot and plants it right on the crucifix on Parada’s chest and kicks, sending the priest sprawling back against the car, and then Fabián lifts the gun’s barrel again and sends fifteen bullets smashing into Parada’s chest.

Parada feels his life draining out of him as his body slides down the side of the car.

Callan kneels down by the dying priest.

The man looks up at him and mumbles something Callan can’t make out.

“What?” Callan asks. “What did you say?”

“I forgive you,” Parada murmurs.

“What?”

“God forgives you.”

The priest starts to make the sign of the cross, then his hand drops and his body jerks and he’s gone.