Don Winslow, ever the street-wise cynic, doesn't believe the stories about Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's daring escapes—through a laundry cart, on an underground motorcycle. Winslow, the author of Savages and The Cartel, has become one of the world's foremost authorities on organized drug crime in North America—and El Chapo in particular—over the last several years. (You might remember this feature he penned last summer.)

The tall tales of the kingpin don't gel with Winslow's instinct that nothing happens in the criminal and law enforcement worlds without at least the tacit approval of people throughout every level of the system. There's always someone who benefits, and they're usually making money. That sentiment runs through his new novel, The Force, which centers on a highly decorated, but secretly dirty, squad leader at the NYPD. Esquire is excited to exclusively reveal the cover for the new work today:

We caught up with Winslow to discuss what he picked up on the NYPD and other big-city police departments while researching the book—and of course to get his thoughts on the enduring saga of El Chapo.

Did you see any signs of corruption at the NYPD?

I'm a novelist, not an investigative journalist, but I spent a lot of time with a lot of cops. I ate with them, drank with them, listened to them, went out on the job with them. They were incredibly generous with me, more open than I ever dreamed.

Police work in major cities—and New York is no exception—has always been vulnerable to corruption. Teddy Roosevelt built his career on it. It seems that a major corruption scandal hits the NYPD about every 20 years. The corruption gets "cleaned up," a lot of attention is paid to it, then things slide back until the next scandal. The corruption runs from soliciting small bribes for not issuing a traffic ticket all the way up to performing bodyguard services for drug traffickers, or even trafficking the drugs themselves. A lot of it comes in the form of payoffs for simply looking the other way. There are over 38,000 people in the NYPD—with those kinds of numbers, there will always be some cops who are dirty.

Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announces corruption charges for three NYPD officers. Drew Angerer Getty Images

Even "dirty" itself is a relative term. A lot of cops will make a distinction between "clean money" and "dirty money." Cops who will take a payment for certain things, for instance, won't touch drug money. And if a homicide is involved, particularly of an innocent person, all bets are off. Having said that, it's a mistake to narrow the subject of corruption down to just the police. Police departments are always a reflection of the society that they serve.

Is there such a thing as "police culture"? Absolutely. Is that culture isolated form the surrounding society? Absolutely not.

Is any of that reflected in the justice system as a whole?

Absolutely, yes—and this is something that makes cops justifiably angry: The corruption probes seem to stop with them and don't go up the line to defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges and politicians. If a cop "sells" a case, it perforce means that there's a "buyer." But usually that buyer is in an Armani suit, not a blue one, so he gets a layer of protection the cop doesn't. Don't kid yourself: The justice system is a business. It's about money.

What did you see in how police departments react to high-profile police shootings?

City police departments, like most institutions, have a circle-the-wagon mentality, so they tend to cover up and protect their own. It's understandable: Cops depend on each other for their lives, most of their social interactions are with other cops and their families. They have an us-against-them mindset, which tends to harden when they perceive they're being attacked from the outside. The worst thing a cop can do is turn against another cop, so they will tend to try to explain away evidence, even when it's on tape. They might privately think that a shooting is wrong—they've told me as much—and be privately very angry with that officer or officers, but they'll be very reluctant to put that out there in public.

"The worst thing a cop can do is turn against another cop, so they will tend to try to explain away evidence, even when it's on tape."

The department hierarchy is likewise defensive, but for a different reason: When you really analyze most of these shootings, the underlying problem is systemic—not necessarily always systemic racism, but shortcomings in hiring, training and assignment. And we can't ignore our own responsibility: We want more cops on the street, departments rush to get them out there, and some of them simply shouldn't be out there at all.

What was the relationship between how police reacted and how city hall reacted?

It drives a wedge between city hall and the police. City hall is largely made up of elected officials who have to answer to the public. Police departments are generally made up of civil servants who have to deal with the public in a very different, often face-to-face, way. And they feel it. Believe me, they feel it.

I was out with cops who wouldn't eat any food that wasn't pre-wrapped for fear that the people they're meant to protect had spit in it—or worse. They're riding in unmarked cars, and people are yelling insults at them. The hostility is palpable. And a lot of cops feel that city hall—notably the current New York City mayor—has sold them down the river on some of these fatalities. They feel they're not getting backed up by their bosses. And privately, they're afraid that they might hesitate on the trigger and that it will cost them their lives.

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What did the NYPD's warrantless mosque surveillance a few years back tell us about how the department operates?

Again, we have contradictory expectations of police: We want to be perfectly safe and perfectly free. We want total security and total privacy. We want the bad guys stopped and the good guys unmolested. That's great for the consumer; try providing it. So warrants—of all kinds—are an interesting topic. I knew a team of cops in which one ran around to the back door and yelled 'Help!" so the other could come through the front door without a warrant. And sometimes you want them to do this.

Regarding the mosque, of course warrantless surveillance violates peoples' civil rights, and it shouldn't have been done. But you're looking at a city that experienced the worst terrorist attack in history and was demanding security. I'm telling you, the conflicts in the job of policing are vicious, and cops take it home with them.

The new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has a hardline record on marijuana. Will that help or hurt the drug war?

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Legalization of marijuana is only a partial solution, and has both positive and negative results. (See the article I wrote for Esquire.) It's a classic example of the "balloon effect": You squeeze a balloon in one spot, and the air goes to another. Legalization across the board is the only answer to that. Regarding Sessions, it doesn't matter who the captain of the Titanic is, as long as we continue plowing toward the iceberg. The War on Drugs has been going on for fifty years, and the drug situation is worse than it's ever been. The only way to win the war is to stop fighting it on the supply side and work on diminishing the demand. The "war" metaphor is self-defeating.

How do police departments combat criminal networks that cross borders (particularly with Mexico)?

Generally speaking, most large city police departments have narcotics units with intelligence sections that are usually very well informed about the various trafficking networks. They cooperate with state and federal agencies—notably the D.E.A.—and we often see inter-agency regional task forces that share information and resources. The unfortunate by-product of this, however, is the militarization of police forces, because large-scale drug operations resemble anti-terrorist operations that can exacerbate tensions between the police and, especially, inner-city communities. The police become, in effect, occupying armies, a role for which they were never intended—and, in fact, that they don't want.

Will El Chapo's trial be public? Why or why not?

I'd bet against it. Guzman has a lot to say, much of which would be embarrassing to both the Mexican and U.S. governments. His knowledge is the only card he has to play now, and there are a lot of people on both sides of the border who don't want to see those cards laid out on a public table.

"Guzman has a lot to say, much of which would be embarrassing to both the Mexican and U.S. governments."

Would he name names as to whom he paid off? Would the Mexican government's favoritism toward the Sinaloa Cartel come to light, with revelations that equipment bought with the US-funded Merida Initiative went to fight the cartel's enemies? Would he talk about U.S. intelligence used to guide raids against everyone but the Sinaloa Cartel?

A public trial? I'm not convinced there's going to be a trial at all. Let's see if he actually comes to trial or strikes a deal instead. My expectation is that the entire trial will be sealed from the public, just as the trial was for major trafficker Osiel Contreras in 2010. If there is a trial, the media should fight being locked out very hard, because what Guzman says would be front page news all over the world.

Why did Mexico agree to extradition in the first place?

Guzman had become an embarrassment to too many people, and he had lost the power base that would have (and did, prior to his "escape") prevented his extradition. The Mexicans wanted him out of there before he "escaped" again, or more likely, experienced another assisted suicide in his cell. By the time he was extradited, Guzman was a vestigial bone on the body narco—no longer necessary, in the way.

What can we learn about the U.S.-Mexico relationship from the way El Chapo was treated?

That it's delicate and ephemeral—always shifting. It would appear that Mexico rushed the extradition through so that it didn't happen on Mr. Trump's watch. But what we need to keep in mind is that, at the end of the day, the U.S. and Mexico have to cooperate in some way on the drug issue, so there will always be a give-and-take. And it will always be fraught with tension. We blame Mexico for our drug problem, but the highly armed and immensely wealthy criminal organizations that are terrorizing Mexico are funded with American (and to a lesser extent, European) money. Until we acknowledge and deal with that reality, the relationship is always going to be difficult.

How will U.S.-Mexico cooperation on the drug war fare under Donald Trump?

Well, when you say that you're going to build a wall to keep out murderers and rapists, it doesn't bode well for a happy working relationship, does it? Like most countries, Mexico doesn't respond well to bullying, especially from the United States.

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And the wall is a problem. It will do absolutely jack shit to stem the flow of drugs, because the wall has gates—San Diego, El Paso, Laredo and others—which are the busiest commercial border crossings in the world, open 24/7. Over 75 percent of the illegal drugs come on trucks through those open gates. So unless you want to shut down the commerce of two countries, with dire economic consequences for both, this is cloud cuckoo land.

Why did Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto take a meeting with Trump during the campaign? And what made him cancel the one after the election?

Most politicians hedge their bets, and Pena Nieto is certainly a politician. As to what made him cancel the second meeting, Mexicans are justifiably sensitive to insult and condescension from their yanqui neighbors. He and his country had just been insulted, and he could not allow himself to appear to be bullied. Trust me when I tell you that the only person who knows less about the War on Drugs than Donald Trump does is Enrique Pena Nieto.

"The only person who knows less about the War on Drugs than Donald Trump does is Enrique Pena Nieto."

Did the Sean Penn interview mean anything, in the end?

Not really. The idea that it led authorities to Guzman is patently false. They already knew where he was. But the fact that Guzman did the interview—as a way of getting close to actress Kate del Castillo—indicated that his sense of judgment was in decline and that he was becoming more of a liability than an asset.

Who steps up after El Chapo is put away?

Let's be very clear: Someone had to have already stepped up for Guzman to have been recaptured in the first place—to wit, his partner Ismael Zambada. The Sinaloa Cartel was never a pyramid structure, with Guzman alone at the pinnacle. It was always more like a wedding cake, with several powerful organizations occupying the top tier.

Organized crime bosses survive as long as they are making other people money. Guzman had started to make business mistakes, alienating a number of his allies, and his public escapades had become a liability. His partners wanted him out of the way, and the Zambada faction had already taken over. But the Sinaloa Cartel is undergoing a heavy challenge from a relatively new group, the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, which began its existence as a bodyguard unit for another of the Sinaloa factions run by another of Guzman's partners, Ignacio Coronel Villareal. Its boss, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (aka "El Mencho") might now be the top narco.

This is the basic problem with the "Kingpin Strategy" of taking out the top leaders: There is always someone willing to step up.

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Why are tales of his escape so hard for people like yourself to believe?

Well, let's start with the word 'escape'. It's a misnomer from the jump, because "escape" doesn't ordinarily encompass the cooperation of one's jailers. So the narrative is false from the beginning. Then there's the history. Let's recall that this wasn't Guzman's first "escape." He also "escaped" in 2001, and the official tale we were told—that he went out in a laundry basket—proved to be fabricated, no pun intended. He actually left in a car or a helicopter. Similar disinformation was put out after the latest "escape," much of it self-contradictory.

It's all a face-saving smokescreen to disguise the corruption. Look, if you can afford the millions to dig a tunnel under a "maximum security" prison, you can also afford not to crawl through the thing. Laundry basket, tunnel—the check's in the mail.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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