—So I will my lieutenant.
—It's normal, you're confused right now, it was your first time with a girl. That is the most important. Maybe she is the woman of your life or maybe there are many more. It is too early to judge. My advice as a professional is that by the time you forget, continue with your life as if nothing had happened. Meet another girl. Go out with her, live life, enjoy her company, fall in love with her, give her a new smile every new day, surrender to her without reserve with the same intensity that you have done tonight with Lucia. If you still remember her over the course of time, only then, will you know that she is really the woman of your life.
— Thank you doctor. Does this mean that I am cured?
—I don’t know, son, maybe you've never been sick. You have only been a victim of the cruelty of life; Perhaps you would only be a prisoner within your own armour. The only thing that I have done is to show you the way to face your own fears in time you will learn to understand and overcome them.
—Thanks a lot, Dr. Chopper, can I ever visit you again?
—Don’t even think about it when my wife is alone.
Nicholás released some of the tension accumulated that morning, laughing at the doctor's occurrence. After melting into a strong hug. Dr. Chopper said,
—My house is your home, son.
Nicholas already knew. But anyway, he appreciated his words, his friendship went far beyond the doctor-patient relationship. From that day Dr. Chopper's image would supplant part of the paternal figure in his life, helping him to fill that immense emptiness he had been dragging since he was a child. Unfortunately he had never been lucky enough to meet his real parents, he could not help saying goodbye to the doctor in tears. He wished he had met him long ago, his life would have been easier.
8—What an idea!
Nicholás re-joined the service, hours after Lucia's disappearance. Several teams of the Civil Guard along with those of the forestry had combed the mountains and the village in their search. Her detention was a matter of hours. Nicholas climbed into the Nissan Patrol and forced himself to push out of his mind any thoughts, other than to do his job and catch the fugitive; He came up the mountain from Arnuiz accompanied by Sergeant Ramon Da Silva in the hope of intercepting La Reina, who only two hours before taking advantage of his silence had penetrated the Sierra until reaching the Alto de las Cancillas. From there it took her an hour to descend to the Blacksmith's, hit hard on the door of Mireia's house, while terror galloped inside her chest: it was a cold fear that caused her anguish. She was sweating profusely, carrying this backpack by the side of the sierra meant a great effort to which she was not accustomed.
The backpack weighed about six kilos. She had in it the essential things: a some underwear, a change of clothes, food, water, money and something important, shoes and spare socks; Of course trekking to avoid unnecessary swelling in the soles of the feet. All very professional. Her tardiness only increased her anguish. And if she was not home! After a while she seemed to hear footsteps, their sound increasing, as they approached the door. Mireia opened, still wearing her pyjamas and had the eyes of one who has not yet stretched out, her face from the yawn surprised to see her friend.
—I have been discovered, I have come running from home, they know, they know I am here, someone has seen me and recognized me despite the change of look.
—I think I know who it was.
—Who? —Lucia was startled, it seemed that Mireia knew more than expected.
—Susana spent a few days in the house with me, maybe she saw you by chance, while walking in the area.
It was her then, Lucia thought. She had felt her footsteps behind her in the tavern, she turned around to take care of her but when she did she had vanished as if nothing. At first she thought she would be someone who had decided to go in for a drink, another idea had invaded her mind, changing her mind and hurrying out of the room. Then she thought that people have nothing better to do than to spin around, without giving more importance to the matter. After clearing the tables she swept the floor, waving goodbye forever to Antonio with a strong handshake that ended in embrace, and went home. While Susana was going to the nearest quarter to denounce the fugitive.
Nuria or Lucia. Two different people, one being. She didn’t know which one dominated over the other. Nuria was the innocent, hard-working, good, discreet, always ready to love and be loved. On the contrary, Lucia was the bad, spiteful, arbitrary, drug dealer, wanted by the police, sentenced to eight years in prison, dirty, provocative and capricious to the point of doing whatever was necessary to achieve her goals, Economic, social, sentimental or simply sexual. Sometimes one of these two women watched the conduct and actions of the other as a mere spectator, not daring to judge her. Now it was Nuria who was looking at Lucia, wondering how much it was worth facing her fate trying to flee from it, instead of surrendering and serving sentence. A cell with companion included, heating, even moving some contacts probably with air conditioning, gym, multiple activities, two or three hours of patio a day, three free meals with siesta, television by channel. Everything without the minimum effort, including the right to intercourse once a week with the beloved one, even if this one, was a member of the Civil Guard.
Nuria even dared to say to Lucia sometimes:
—You should pay for what you've done.
But Lucia would reply:
—Everyone earns his living as he can, I am not to blame for the hypocrisy of a society determined to outlaw drugs. Who does a periwinkle hurt, or do you smoke a Chinese, even a little weed? The only bad thing is when you get hooked and abuse, especially when you don’t have the money to buy top quality material.
— It doesn’t matter! —Said Lucia. The greatest pleasures of life are in other things: enjoy nature, landscapes, a good book, friends. Drugs always confuse everything. Nothing like having a clear mind to think clearly.
In the end, Nuria's sanity almost always triumphed over her friend's contemptible unreason.
Lucia sat next to her friend on the brown leather sofa and poured her a cup of coffee.
—I have an idea! —Mireia stared at her frightened friend—. You will surrender to the Civil Guard, so you won’t have to flee or go to Brazil.
—What an idea! —She said resignedly.
—No, the idea is different. I'll write a novel about your life. You will help me with your dictates from jail. It will be a long novel, from your beginnings in the world of contraband, to your entry into prison and your subsequent repentance. It will be an incredible story based on real events. We will go to fifty percent in the profits of the work. My share will go to my fees, yours to get a good lawyer. We will reduce the sentence and it is possible that for good behavior in two years they give you the conditional.
—I already have a good lawyer.
—Come on, a real one, famous and very qualified. We will bribe whoever is needed: judges, jury ... They will be indulgent with the protagonist of a bestseller, you will tell them that you are really sorry and determined to start a new life.
—Do you think I'm not? Dammit! —Said Lucia as she pondered Mireia's words.
Maybe it was better than going to Brazil, gambling her life in a foreign country full of unknown people, with one of the highest crime rates and homicides on the planet. What did she know about favelas, samba or carnival? If she didn’t even speak Galician well, much worse she was going to defend himself with the Portuguese. Brazil or prison, a difficult decision to take especially now that she had found a home in Chandrexa. She took a deep breath trying to reassure herself, leaving only three hours left for her flight to Brasilia. Braulio was waiting for her. It was the contact her father had sought to help her settle in the city. How to get to the airport without being killed? How to give up everything she struggled so hard to achieve? Her friends, the contacts, almost all bought by the money that the drug had contributed to. Whether she liked it or not, it was her business, and the truth is that despite the risks she had carried out until rec
ently, she had done quite well. But she had made a terrible mistake and mistakes in her world were paid dearly. She had let herself being caught, she wasn’t smart enough, in this business, they almost never are. She had kept the drugs in her own house and trusted her man. Too much risk. Stupidity. "If you want to get up in this business, you can never get your hands in the dough," Uncle Sam had warned. You must delegate responsibilities, create legal lids that lead authorities to dead ends. You must behave like a queen, not as a gregarious. If you want to get high above everything you can never get caught with your hands in the dough, take care of your boyfriends and choose well your lovers. If you don’t do this, trusting the wrong people won’t last you long. You will become cannon fodder to make prison steaks.
Uncle Sam was quite right, if she had listened to him she wouldn’t be in this mess. He used to give good advice often, he had always been her most faithful dealer. Uncle Sam and his rappers, with their titanium chains encircling their necks, holding some styled gold medallions on their chests. Riding on their chrome Harleys in their leather suits, under steel spatulas on whose sewn linings they used to hide the fleece, they controlled mostly the northern part of the city on the other side of the Roman Bridge. They used to be seen often by the bars of the old area; They all wore the same tattoo on their ass, specific to them. Uncle Sam had taught her once during a rally of motorcycles, it was a spliced gorilla: "No one is as fat as Uncle Sam, baby!" He used to say.
—Well, have you made up your mind? —Mireia asked as she sipped her coffee.
—I have only three hours to catch that plane to freedom or death. It depends on how you look, because if I continue in the business there I can get a good wool, because the horse, the powder and hashish are paid very well among the most favoured classes.
—But you weren’t going to quit? —Her friend asked in surprise.
—Yes, but I have to live from something. I don’t know how to write, nor do I have a career like you ... Anyway! On the other hand, I'm afraid. I don’t know the modus operandi of Brazilian mafias. Too much risk, too much violence. I can choke on lead at the first oversight. That or the prison that is very fucked up. There I will be exposed to any kind of humiliation with the cells full of scum, people of the lowest society.
—Come, there will be people of all kinds. Also, you could use a good cleaning of funds ...
—Yes, I think I need it.
—Surely yes.
With her statement, Mireia managed to wring a slight smile from her despite the serious urgency of her situation.
—Would you abandon all your plans, to write about my life? —Lucia asked in surprise.
—Of course I will. I will have time to develop them later, now is the time to tell the true story of The Queen. Tomorrow, I'll start writing it.
9—The first night.
First they seized her personal belongings. Little things: a silver chain with a San Epifanio medallion, the Costa da Morte narcos patron, the watch, a small purse with a wallet, a lipstick and several accessories to use for personal cleaning. Her lips kissed the medallion of San Epifanio before depositing it with the rest of objects in the silver tray destined to save the flows of the prisoners. Then she entered another room with the rest of the rookies. They were ordered to remove their clothes, they tagged them in a plastic bag that they sealed. Then the traditional shower with a pressure hose to further intimidate newcomers. Her hands covered modestly the flower of her shame that which only a few hours before, an agent of the Benemérita had struck it hard with base of wild attacks time and again. She missed that big, awkward sex between her buttocks, rushing her with animal ferocity. She missed him so much. It was a strange paradox, always having lived with her back to the law to finish on her face, lying with her legs open and offering him the depth of her being.
The first night locked in her cell after turning out the lights, she couldn’t take away the image of that male body from her mind. His marked chest, muscles of his bronze-polished pectorals, his abs worked on limestone. The natural deformation of his buttocks as he penetrated her. The softness of those fingers caressing her everywhere with supreme tenderness. His marble thighs, hard as Romanesque columns. The struggling and friction of his sex upon entering her, seeking her gently; His lips trapping her toy tongue with his, so manly thick and red.
Nicholás's back was gigantic like a huge bone-lined map of the world, which marked the lines of the mountain ranges and mountain systems under his tanned skin. They say that the first night in prison is the worst, for her it wasn’t. She isolated herself tightly against the pillow, remembering every line of Nicholas's body; Wrapped around his waist, stroked his neck, read in the reliefs of his skull the curvature of a helmet belonging to a medieval armour, searching with her fingers for the roughness of his ears, the feeble strength of his nasal septum, and the Palaeolithic structure of his spine.
She killed the nerves of her first night in prison masturbating under the white sheets with careful stealth, trying not to interrupt the sleep of her cellmate, a recluse sentenced to six years for murdering her husband, with a revolver in hand, during the course of a marital row. Lucia had liked her. From the beginning, she just tried to make things easier for her. She looked like a rich, cultured, bourgeois girl. She was dark-haired, 6 feet tall, light-eyed, about thirty. Very attractive and friendly. Her name was Lorena Vázquez Montalbán. She looked beautiful and very feminine, fond of reading, surely they would be great together. In the morning, Lucia was visited by a new lawyer who was hired by her father. He had filed an appeal requesting the immediate reduction of sentence, from eight to five years, because his client lacked criminal records.
—We will get it, —Amadeo Montero told Lucia—. I am a specialist in these cases, you won’t even do two year. If you don’t get into trouble, you will soon be paroled. There have been several irregularities on the part of the judge at the time of sentence. This is between us but we know he will accept the appeal because we have bought that bastard.
—Did you? —Lucia asked in surprise.
—Well, rather it was your father, Uncle Sam, the Swede and the heads of the other bands, including of course Carpenter. They miss you, apparently since you are not around, the distribution of drugs is a disaster: The couriers are uncoordinated, the deliveries are late, unnecessary risks are run. The transport is not as before. You always knew which was the safest means to use on each delivery. People are nervous. They say that without La Reina everyone loses.
Even the police wants you out, they fear a possible war between gangs. With you everything worked better, you knew which cops you could bribe; You had several politicians in your pocket. Now everyone is bewildered, for now there is no one able to fill the void that you have left. Everyone would welcome your participation from the shadows in the organization of deliveries. We have good contacts inside the prison, you could continue working at your leisure. Of course without drawing attention, for this we have put you back in charge of the library, a simple job, of which you do not have to get your hands dirty. With a lot of free time to organize deliveries, choose the most suitable places to do them, choose the means of transport and the safest routes to introduce the cargoes in the city, the big families, the heads of the coast have given the approval. They control the entrances of the merchandise through the ports and even the clandestine landings to avoid routine inspections of the customs agents. But once the charges reach the coast, all responsibility will lie with you as always. The chiefs don’t trust the new couriers, since your absence two important charges of hashish and heroin have been intercepted by the narcotics brigades.
—It's okay! But I'll need a computer connected to the Internet with GPS and a mobile phone with an open line twenty-four hour a day. I also need a gregarious on board, in my service. Of course, it must be someone of my total confidence. I would like to choose him myself.
—Who did you think of? —Said the lawyer. Amadeo Montero was a man in his forties, brown hair, arched nose, the folds
that formed on his forehead as he spoke gave him the appearance of an intelligent man, tanned in many battles. That inspired confidence in Lucia, she felt comfortable next to him. She liked the security he had when he spoke to her.
—Mateo Yanez. Do you know him?
—Yes. An inverted. For years he worked for the Stupa. It became a real nightmare for the families, but these soon found the solution, Aurelio Sousa, the first-born of the Sousa family of Vila García de Arousa, made him an offer that Mateo couldn’t refuse. On the one hand, he triplicated the annual salary that Mateo earned in the service of the law and on the other hand he pardoned the life of his two daughters, who he kept for two days, if he worked for them and joined the cause of the powder and the smack (In reference to cocaine and heroin). The case was, that after much thought he accepted the offer of the Sousa putting himself totally in his hands. Although I suppose this story you already knew it? —Asked Mateo.
—Yes, that's why I want him, because he has worked on both sides and knows the movements of the enemy better than anyone else, —Lucia said, convinced that this game of chess could only be won by moving its pieces.
Anyway, what other way out? She was trapped in the system, she knew from experience, that once inside it was impossible to leave, families would never allow her to leave the world of narcotics, because those who now protected her, as soon as they knew of their intentions to abandon them, would try to To eliminate her, either because of mistrust or fear of being betrayed, because she knew too much, or perhaps they did it for simple professional rigor. If they let her out, anybody else could cheer up and cross the line as if nothing, leaving the organization down, she was convinced that it was more the first thing than the second. No one important would ever leave the circle alive. It had always been that way, and it would remain until death, once inside it is impossible to get out, her father had warned her at first. But she never wanted to hear that warning.
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