The Power Of The Dog (30 page)

“I don’t have any names.”

“Did Chupar give you those names? You said that he did. Tell them to me.”

“I was lying. Making it up. I don’t know.”

“Then tell me the name of Chupar,” the Doctor says. “So we can ask him instead of you. So we can do this to him instead of you.”

“I don’t know who he is.”

Is it possible, Adán wonders, that the man really doesn’t know? He hears echoes of his own scared voice eight years ago during Operation Condor, when the DEA and the federales beat and tortured him for information that he didn’t have. Told him that they had to be sure that he didn’t know, so kept up the torture after he told them, again and again, I don’t know.

“Christ,” he says. “What if he doesn’t know?”

“What if he doesn’t?” Raúl shrúgs. “The fucking Americans need to be taught a lesson anyway.”

Adán hears the lesson being conducted in the other room. Hidalgo’s moans as the metal of the ice pick grinds against his shinbone. And the Doctor’s gently insistent voice: “You want to see your wife again. Your children. Surely you owe them more than you owe this informant. Think: Why have we blindfolded you? If we intended to kill you we wouldn’t have bothered. But we intend to let you go. Back to your family. To Teresa and Ernesto and Hugo. Think of them. How worried they are. How scared your little sons must be. How they want their papá back. You don’t want them to have to grow up without a father, do you? Who is Chupar? What did he tell you? Whose names did he give you?”

And Hidalgo’s response, punctuated by sobs.

“I … don’t … know … who … he … is.”

“Pues …”

It starts again.

Antonio Ramos grew up on the garbage dumps of Tijuana.

Literally.

He lived in a shack outside the dump and picked through garbage for his meals, clothes, even his shelter. When they built a school nearby, Ramos went, every day, and if some other kid teased him for smelling like garbage, Ramos beat the kid up. Ramos was a big kid—skinny from lack of food, but tall and with quick hands.

After a while, he wasn’t teased.

He made it all the way through high school, and when the Tijuana police accepted him, it was like going to heaven. Good pay, good food, clean clothes. He lost that skinny look and filled out, and his superiors found out something new about him. They knew he was tough; they didn’t know he was smart.

The DFS, Mexico’s intelligence service, found it out, too, and recruited him.

Now if there’s an important assignment that requires smart and tough, Ramos usually gets the call.

He gets the call to bring back this American DEA agent, Hidalgo, at all or any cost.

Art meets him at the airport.

Ramos’ nose and several knuckles are crooked and broken. He has thick black hair, a shock of which hangs over his forehead despite his occasional attempts to control it. Jammed into his mouth is his trademark black cigar.

“Every cop needs a trademark,” he tells his men. “What you want the bad boys saying is, ‘Look out for the macho with the black cigar.’ ”

They do.

They say it and they watch out and they’re scared of him because Ramos has a well-earned reputation for his own brand of rough justice. Guys rousted by Ramos have been known to yell for the police. The police won’t come—they don’t want any of Ramos, either.

There’s an alley near Avenida Revolución in TJ nicknamed La Universidad de Ramos. It’s littered with cigar stubs and snuffed-out bad attitudes, and it’s where Ramos, when he was a TJ street cop, taught lessons to the boys who thought they were bad.

“You’re not bad,” he told them. “I’m bad.”

Then he showed them what bad was. If they needed a reminder, they could usually find one in the mirror for years afterward.

Six bad hombres have tried to kill Ramos. Ramos went to all six funerals, just in case any of the bereaved wanted to take a shot at revenge. None of them did. He calls his Uzi “Mi Esposa”—my wife. He’s thirty-two years old.

Within hours he has in custody the three policemen who picked up Ernie Hidalgo. One of them is the chief of the Jalisco State Police.

Ramos tells Art, “We can do this the fast way or the slow way.”

Ramos takes two cigars from his shirt pocket, offers one to Art and shrugs when he refuses it. He takes a long time to light the cigar, rolling it so that the tip lights evenly, then takes a long pull and raises his black eyebrows at Art.

The theologians are right, Art thinks—we become what we hate.

Then he says, “The fast way.”

Ramos says. “Come back in a little while.”

“No,” Art says. “I’ll do my part.”

“That’s a man’s answer,” Ramos says. “But I don’t want a witness.”

Ramos leads the Jalisco police chief and two federales into a basement cell.

“I don’t have time to fuck around with you guys,” Ramos says. “Here’s the problem: Right now, you’re more afraid of Miguel Ángel Barrera than you are of me. We need to turn that around.”

“Please,” the chief says, “we are all policemen.”

“No, I’m a policeman,” Ramos says, slipping on black, weighted gloves. “The man you kidnapped is a policeman. You’re a piece of shit.”

He holds the gloves up for them all to see.

“I don’t like to bruise my hands,” Ramos says.

The chief says, “Surely we can work something out.”

“No,” Ramos says, “we can’t.”

He turns to the bigger, younger federale.

“Put your hands up. Defend yourself.”

The federale’s eyes are wide, scared. He shakes his head, doesn’t raise his hands.

Ramos shrugs, “As you wish.”

He feints with a right to the face and then puts all his weight behind three ripping left hooks to the ribs. The weighted gloves smash bone and cartilage. The cop starts to fall, but Ramos holds him up with his left hand and hits him with three more shots with his right. Then he throws him against the wall, turns him around and drives rights and lefts into his kidneys. Holds him against the wall by the back of the neck as he says, “You embarrassed your country. Worse, you embarrassed my country,” and holds him with one hand by the neck and the other by the belt and runs him full speed across the room into the opposite wall. The federale’s head hits the concrete with a dull thud. His neck snaps back. Ramos repeats the process several times before he finally lets the man slide to the floor.

Ramos sits down on a wooden three-legged stool and lights his cigar as the two other cops stare at their unconscious friend, who lies facedown, his legs jerking spasmodically.

The walls are splotched with blood.

“Now,” Ramos says, “you’re more afraid of me than of Barrera, so we can get started. Where is the American policeman?”

They tell him everything they know.

“They delivered him to Güero Méndez and Raúl Barrera,” Ramos tells Art. “And a Doctor Álvarez, which is why I think your friend might still be alive.”

“Why is that?”

“Álvarez used to work for DFS,” Ramos says. “As an interrogator. Hidalgo must have information they want, sí?”

“No,” Art says. “He doesn’t have the information.”

Art’s stomach sinks. They’re torturing Ernie for the identity of Chupar.

And there is no Chupar.

“Tell me,” Tío says.

Ernie moans, “I don’t know.”

Tío nods to Doctor Álvarez. The Doctor uses oven mitts to pick up a white-hot iron rod, which he inserts—

“Oh my God!” Ernie shouts. Then his eyes widen and his head collapses on the table where they have strapped him down. His eyes are closed, he’s unconscious, and his heartbeat, which was racing a moment ago, is now dangerously slow.

The Doctor sets down the oven mitts and grabs a syringe full of lidocaine, which he injects into Ernie’s arm. The drug will keep him conscious to feel the pain. It will keep his heart from stopping. A moment later, the American’s head snaps up and his eyes pop open.

“We won’t let you die,” Tío says. “Now talk to me. Tell me, who is Chupar?”

I know Art’s looking for me, Ernie thinks.

Moving heaven and earth.

“I don’t know,” he gasps, “who Chupar is.”

The Doctor picks up the iron bar again.

A moment later Ernie shouts, “Oh my Godddddddd!”

Art watches the flame ignite, then flicker, then reach up toward heaven.

He kneels in front of the bank of votive candles and says a prayer for Ernie. To the Virgin Mary, to Saint Anthony, to Christ himself.

A tall, fat man comes down the center aisle of the cathedral.

“Father Juan.”

The priest has changed little in nine years. His white hair is a little thinner, his stomach somewhat thicker, but the intense gray eyes still have their light.

“You’re praying,” Parada says. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

“I’ll do anything.”

Parada nods. “How can I help?”

“You know the Barreras.”

“I baptized them,” Parada answers. “Gave them their First Communion. Confirmed them.” Married Adán to his wife, Parada thinks. Held their malformed, beautiful baby in my arms.

“Reach out to them,” Art is saying.

“I don’t know where they are.”

“I was thinking of radio,” Art says. “Television. They respect you, they’ll listen to you.”

“I don’t know,” Parada says. “Certainly I can try.”

“Right now?”

“Of course,” Parada says, then adds, “I can hear your confession.”

“There isn’t time.”

So they drive to the radio station and Parada broadcasts his message to “those who have kidnapped the American policeman.” Pleads with them, in the name of God the Father and Jesus Christ and Mother Mary and all the saints to release the man unharmed. Urges them to consult their souls, and then, to even Art’s surprise, pulls the ultimate card—threatens excommunication if they harm the man.

Condemns them with all his power and authority to eternal hell.

Then repeats the hope of salvation.

Release the man and come back to God.

His freedom is your freedom.

“… gave me an address,” Ramos is saying.

“What?” Art asks. He’s been listening to Parada’s broadcast on the office radio.

“I said they gave me an address,” Ramos says. He loops the Uzi over his shoulder. “Mi Esposa. Let’s go.”

The house is in a nondescript suburb. Ramos’ two Ford Broncos, overflowing with his special DFS troops, roar up, and the men jump out. Gunfire—long, undisciplined AK bursts—comes out of the windows. Ramos’ men drop to the ground and return the fire in short bursts. The shooting stops. Covered by his men, Ramos and two others run to the door with a battering ram and knock it in.