by Todd Merer
My visitor was Mondragon’s Mr. Green, bearing my expense money. Entering, he lowered his hoodie, removed his Yankees cap, and shivered.
“Maldito frío afuera.”
His countrified Dominican accent was typical of those who deliver me manna: gofers in the street crews that distribute product for the Mexican transporters who buy wholesale from Colombian drug-trafficking organizations—DTOs, in DEA parlance.
He handed me a brown paper bag. From its heft, I figured it held five thou in small bills. Tens. I’ve handled greenbacks for so long, I can count them by sound, so I proceeded to do so, taking out a banded pack and riffling it at my ear . . .
I paused and looked at the bills.
Not tens, but Ben Franklins.
Five hundred of them. Fifty thou.
Who the hell pays fifty large up front just for a meet? I didn’t ask, just tucked the money under my horseshoe paperweight while wondering: Is Mondragon’s guy my Biggy?
Mr. Green handed me a throwaway phone. When I put it to my ear, a guy with a Colombian accent said, “¿Todo está bien?” Voices have a nasty way of becoming incriminating, so I just grunted affirmatively.
The guy hung up, and I guessed way down south he’d be collecting $60,000 from my unknown benefactor, which included a 20 percent charge for moving cash outside the system. Guessed, because this was pure drug-money laundering—but only if one participated knowingly—and I personally knew nothing from nothing. I’m a law-abiding citizen. As spotless as a Good Humor Man’s shirt. Pure as the snow that enabled my night with the Avianca flight attendant . . .
Her scent still lingered, or so I imagined. Delicious.
After Mr. Green departed, I retried making sense of the deal. Mondragon and moi? I looked at the Franklins beneath my horseshoe paperweight, a gift from my ex that reflected my history. The horseshoe was gold plated but hardly visible within an acrylic slab badly scratched on the surface. In my good old bad days, I used to razor-chop and snort lines of coke off its surface.
Now my ex was gone, and my clients were world-class drug dealers.
What else is there to say? I am what I am.
I slid open a wall panel, revealing a small safe. I slipped ten thou in my breast pocket and stashed forty in the safe. Any half-assed burglar would spot the panel, and the safe was as easy to open as a can of tuna, and the burglar, thinking he’d found my fortune, would depart in ignorance of the more subtle places that hid my major money. I kept cash in many places because I’m a believer in the world as we know it ending—sooner rather than later—and I wanted to be mobile when chaos and anarchy reigned.
More on that later.
Right now, it was Biggy time. I had no doubt he was out there. Or that I could make him mine. It was simply a matter of getting him to . . .
Walk with me.
Tsk. Why, if I had one dollop of sincerity, I’d utter the words with an addendum tattooed on my forehead: Walk at your own risk. Another reason why I needed to leave the business. I was tired of bullshitting. Very tired.
And yet, there was no escaping the truth.
As much as I wanted to quit the game?
I cannot deny that I loved playing it.
CHAPTER 2
I lived a few blocks from my office. Dollar-wise, the neighborhood’s triple-A. My apartment is a brownstone condo nestled between grand edifices owned by hedge-fund billionaires I ranked by their acquisitions as the Greater and the Lesser, although both were equally greedy. But who was I to judge?
My relatively austere apartment was absurdly overpriced, although it boasted certain necessary amenities: the lobby was manned 24-7 by a concierge—one of three look-alike Serb cousins who all went by the name Viktor—and my full floor was accessible only via keyed elevator.
I’d added a few improvements: several cleverly concealed safes, a super-king-size round bed, and a sleek kitchen kept well stocked by my driver’s wife, Sonia, who—although I’d never met her personally—checked off the laundry lists of my wandering existence.
After hurrying the few blocks from office to pad, I opened my closet, which was neatly lined with crisp sets of both my uniforms. Work was navy suit, blue shirt, and silk tie with hand-stitched loafers. Civvies were blue blazer, blue jeans, and blue-suede loafers. I was a regular Little Boy Blue, with a dash of Lord Fauntleroy. In a moment, I had my carry-on packed and was ready to go off into the wild blue yonder.
Val’s Flex was idling at the curb. Val had a smoker’s lined face, buzz-cut straw-colored hair, and deep-set eyes. He wore dark suits, a white shirt buttoned up, no tie. When he unloosed his gruff, middle-European accent, he sounded as scary as a killer for hire, but if he accidentally stepped on an ant, he’d probably cry.
He handed me the tickets that Sonia’s sister, who worked in a Greenpoint travel agency, obtained, always getting me seat 1-A, my customary private windowed corner, offering first-on, first-off access.
First, I had a stop to make. “Brooklyn.”
Val nodded. In our jargon, Brooklyn usually meant the federal courthouse or jail. But Val picked up on another Brooklyn from my tone: East Flatbush, where I’d lived my first seventeen years. A study in deterioration since. Gone from lower-middle class to bad to badass. At our destination, Val pulled over in front of a tenement. Its front-door lock was broken. I went up two flights to a rear apartment, where I knocked three times and whispered low. A lock turned, and the door opened a crack, enough for me to smell Bea’s Chanel No. 5 and hear her girlish giggle.
“Benn, you can’t come in just now. I look a mess.”
“Baloney. You’re always gorgeous.” Through the crack, I palmed her ten Franklins.
“Oh, Benn, you can’t . . .”
“Just paying more of what my father owed your husband.” A lie. My old man owed no one; people owed him. Bea had been my mother’s best friend. Loyal to the end. This was my way of payback, Bea’s “monthly installments.”
On the way out, I nearly ran into a young guy. The landing light was out, but I recognized him. The guy’s hoodie was black, and so was he. He wore a Brooklyn Cyclones cap. His eyes, slightly buggy, no doubt had seen some things. Me, I’d seen plenty of guys like him, baby velociraptors that thrived in the hood. I’d known him for years, before he changed his name to Billy Shkilla, lead singer of The Shkillas.
He juked sideways. I juked to the left. Then we grinned and exchanged high fives.
“Soon I’m gonna come see you, Mr. B.”
“Don’t find a reason why you should.”
“Yeah, you will. I’m gonna need a lawyer to negotiate my record.”
“Not an old white guy who’s not into rap music.”
“You will be once you hear ours.”
“Maybe. Keep a close eye on Bea.”
“I keep an eye on all my girls. Later.”
I was worried about Billy. He was a good person whose world was filled with bad things. He’d survive. Maybe. I was even more worried about Bea. My ma’s five-decade windowsill neighbor had no relatives left. No friends. Just me. That Bea hadn’t greeted me all decked out and rouged was a bad sign. Her world was beginning to close. Happens to all of us. Sneaks up quick. Which is why I wanted out now . . .
Scant hours later I was on my way to Miami, drinking vodka while browsing my daily web reads: Insight Crime, the Colombian News, El Tiempo Bogotá, and the latest press releases from the US Attorneys’ offices in New York and Florida. A common thread was speculation about a mysterious drug lord said to be the biggest of the big. Right now, he was simply known by his aka:
Sombra . . . Shadow.
He was the drug-lord flavor of the year but still in the larval stage, his face and name yet unknown. A legend to the Indians in his mountain lair, the messiah for whose return they’d prayed for the last five hundred years. The chosen one who would unite the Indians and mixed-blood peasants against the white Spanish, yadda, yadda, yadda.
In my experience, tales of the moral principles of drug legendaries are bul
lshit. On the opposite end of the spectrum, stories of their violence are underestimated. This Sombra character supposedly was greatly feared by both the establishment and his rival narco-traffickers. It was said he neither paid bribes nor extorted officials. Had no partners and made no alliances. He was a lone wolf. Sometimes it was rumored he was dead, or about to be arrested, or negotiating his surrender. More bullshit. The only thing all agreed upon was that Sombra was the richest man in Colombia. And the most dangerous.
For a moment or three, I self-indulged a fantasy—Sombra as my Biggy—then began reading a new blog called Radio Free Bogotá, penned by someone named L. Astorquiza. The subject matter grabbed me:
General Oscar Uvalde, who portrays himself as the archenemy of drug traffickers, in reality is a corrupt pig who feeds at the trough of their money. He claims to be a warrior for justice, but he is both partner and protector of these bandits who are destroying our beloved country. Soon proof of his crimes shall emerge, and when it does, we will be rid of this traitor. Viva Colombia!
Shit! Someone else was looking to trade time for Uvalde. I’d hoped my guy Fercho had the exclusive dirt, but apparently, he was in a rat race to deliver the general. And if Fercho lost, I’d get no bonus . . .
Then again, Fercho would likely win, it being a long shot that L. Astorquiza—probably the alias of an angry young man in Bogotá’s bohemian Candelaria neighborhood—would have the proof, or the cojones, to go public against a monster like General Uvalde.
I gave a little shiver, realizing that Uvalde wasn’t going to like me much, either.
CHAPTER 3
I dozed off and when I awoke, I saw below the chain of lights that was Miami Beach. Ahead were the jumbled blocks of Brickell high-rises, and beyond them the vast grid of the city. My second home, ever since I’d received a sprawling penthouse in lieu of a legal fee.
A very nice score to start, and a gift that kept on giving.
Whenever New York got too gray, I’d escape to Miami. Binge on sun and sin, and in between visit a client in jail or break bread with a source of work or some such. Enough to write the trip off as a business expense and the condo as my branch office.
The next morning, I put on my work uniform and went off to slay dragons. In New York, I got around in Val’s Flex, or my relatively under-the-radar Mini. In Miami, where extravagance is the norm, my ride was a Bentley GTC. I put my shades on and cruised in the sunshine. Palm trees flashed by. I raced over a causeway above a turquoise sea. Nearing an exit, I downshifted, and with a satisfying growl, the big car slowed as I neared the Miami Federal Detention Center, the pretrial jail.
Jails.
A highlight of my life are those moments I leave them. I estimate that over the years, my jail visits have added up to more than ten thousand hours. Round that out to four hundred days. With a reduction for good behavior, that equates to about a year inside. Could I do a year? No way. I’d never make it past a month. Kill myself, or go mad. Yet to my guys, a year inside is a trifle. They’re made of sterner stuff than I.
Inside the FDC, I showed my ID, filled out a visit form, and in short order was escorted through a metal detector and an air lock into the visit room. It was about the size of a high-school gym, only with a high console from which correctional cops kept an eye on things as a spectator stand. In the center of the room were tables occupied by lawyers and inmates. Other than the clients wearing jail tans and the lawyers’ ice-cream-colored suits, they looked equally disreputable.
A cop addressed me: “Counselor, your guy’s in the SHU.”
Not good. Of all the acronyms in the business, the SHU—Special Housing Unit—is the one I hate most. A guard escorted me through another air lock and a steel door to a sally port, where we got onto an elevator that deposited us at another corridor with cinderblock walls, bare but for a picture of Miami FDC, taken from a distant low angle.
Framed by palms and blue sky, the jail looked like one of the thousands of high-rise condos studding Miami. But instead of an airy, bright apartment, the door I went through left me in a narrow, windowless space. Fluorescent light, plastic chairs, a Plexiglas divider, on the other side of which my client Fercho Ibarra sat, smiling.
“Hello, Benn,” he said through a circle of small holes drilled in the Plexiglas. “I been thinking. It’s true, what you said at the beginning.”
“Everything I say is true. Which thing are you talking about?”
“‘Walk with me.’ I close my eyes, I see me walking with you.”
“You okay, Fercho? They put you on meds, or what?”
“Nah. Just that you see all kinds of things when you’re locked down in an eight-by-ten. Another thing I keep seeing? The prosecutor in New York saying yes to my giving them General Uvalde for the deal we want.”
“Basically, you saw it exactly as it was.”
Fercho grinned. “My man, Benn.”
“Tranquilo. One day at a time.”
I was low-keying the issue because nailing a major player like General Uvalde was at best a long shot. Still, if anyone could pull it off, it was Fercho. He’d survived a past that was like a walking history of the drug wars, starting out with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC—guerrillas when they were idealistic and prospering with them as they transitioned into trafficking. Along the way, he began dealing with Autodefensas Unidos de Colombia—AUC—paramilitaries, guys who’d originally signed up to fight the guerrillas but, like them, become traffickers.
“Wait and see,” I said. “What about the other . . . ?”
He whispered: “Go see my Panamanian friend.”
I nodded. Excellent. Helmer Quezada, who was helping Fercho cooperate, lived in Panama. Since Fercho was paying my expenses, no point in mentioning I was already planning to go there to see Foto about a case.
Fercho’s preternatural smile—naïve and knowing at once—returned. “You’ll be in the neighborhood, anyway.”
I cocked my head, trying to read that smile. Did Fercho somehow know I was headed to Panama? Or by neighborhood, was he referring to the city among the three volcanoes, also in Central America, give or take a few hundred miles? Either way, hard to figure how Fercho knew, and pointless to ask because he’d tell me only if and when he wanted.
“Your new client?” Fercho said. “He’s a toxic piece of shit.”
My only new client was Mondragon’s guy. I didn’t even know his name yet but long ago had ceased being surprised at how news gets around in the drug business, and how facile Colombians are at working the jail grapevines. I waited for Fercho to elaborate, but he didn’t, and I knew better than to push him.
I got up to leave.
“Benn?” he said.
I looked back.
“Be careful.”
ALUNE
At last, after so many years, the endgame is in sight. From now on, I shall maintain close, constant surveillance. I expect all to proceed as planned, but even if something unexpected should occur, it will not prevent achieving my final goal, for I am ready, willing, and able to, as the Americans are fond of saying, roll with the punches.
Ah, the Americans . . .
So knowledgeable, and yet so malleable. They make me think of clay being shaped while spinning on a potter’s wheel.
Well, not all. Benn Bluestone’s an exception.
I’m really looking forward to seeing him.
CHAPTER 4
My flight angled into its landing approach above a pale tropical sea speckled with vessels awaiting clearance through the Panama Canal. The plane continued banking, and the view changed to an orange ball of sun sinking into the western sea. Then we leveled off, and I saw a shoreline that seemed a wall of fire: miles of glass towers reflecting the setting sun. These were new luxury condos, mostly owned by absentee foreigners escaping home-country taxes. Then the plane banked still again, and I saw downtown Panama City and felt a familiar rush.
A perk of my job was traveling the Caribbean Rim, and Panama City, or PC, sitting astri
de the neck of the Americas, was its geographic center. PC was twenty-first-century creature comfort amid a boomtown culture that was the legacy of the old Spanish Main. The city offered criminals, and their money, and women.
What else could a man like me want?
I was a premium guest at my boutique hotel. Upon arrival, I placed calls, setting up my agenda. Then I wound down with a well-oiled manipulation by a lithesome Thai masseuse. She offered to continue her company, but I declined in favor of a lonesome blue Valium. Nothing like a good sleep between crisp sheets.
I awoke to birds cawing outside my balcony doors. I breakfasted on a patio beneath palm fronds gently rattling in the heated breeze. Over a second cup of coffee, I read my usual narco news, but nothing much was happening. The yearly holiday truce had begun, and both cops and robbers were enjoying family time.
But not L. Astorquiza. The dude’s Radio Free Bogotá blog was still rocking.
Today’s rant was that legalization was the only solution to the drug problem. He bemoaned the fact that opposition to legalization was powerful: not only from corrupt politicians who were protecting traffickers but also from tens of thousands of people gainfully employed in the criminal justice and penal systems. Cops, guards, clerks, judges . . .
According to L. Astorquiza, the worst were the lawyers:
These doctors, be they Colombians or Americans, are leeches who swim in the same cesspit as General Uvalde. They, too, must be brought to justice, and relieved of their ill-gotten gains. Viva Colombia!
Upsetting, because it was true. Eventually, L. Astorquiza’s voice in the wilderness would be joined by others, and they would swell to a majority chorus for legalizing drugs, and it would be the beginning of the end of the drug trade, including the machinations of my profession. That’s why I needed Biggy so badly: to grab all the cash I could carry, then head for a hill where I could live clean.
Taxis were queued in front of the hotel. I grabbed one that soon became trapped in a traffic jam. PC defied any and all attempts to ease vehicular traffic. Traffic lights were ignored. Pedestrians blocked crosswalks, tan and brown and black masses yearning to be elsewhere, streaming beneath election posters of candidates with white skin and European features.