The Devil to Pay

by Harold Robbins

  “To turn coca leaves into cocaine, you need chemicals and a processing plant. In fact, the stuff gets processed several times from the time it’s picked to the time it’s shipped to Europe and the States. The cartels buy the chemicals and smuggle them into Colombia; they process the drug in jungle factories, and ship it out to the States and Europe. They don’t need your plantation for growing the stuff; they have thousands of small farmers. And it’s too open and obvious for a processing plant; they hide those in jungles.”

  “If he doesn’t want the plantation to grow cocaine, what does he want? Why is he here?”

  Josh grinned without humor. “I’m sure that’s a question a hell of a lot of drug enforcement cops would like an answer to.”

  “Well, here’s another question. What are you doing here? This region produces coffee, not emeralds.” I found that out from Juana.

  “I used to hang around the mining region, but I nearly got lead poisoning when a mine owner sent around a hit man to rid the world of me.”

  He was lying again. But I was beginning to see the picture. “You smuggle your gems out in bags of coffee, don’t you. It would be a perfect place to hide them. You pay Cesar to let you do it. And if the country runs true to form like the rest of the world, you’re paying Pablo protection money to operate in his territory.”

  He gave me a sharp glance.

  I shrugged, modestly. “I used to analyze business operations. A lot of businesspeople today think pretty much like you—how to get rich without really working at it. They usually fail in the end.”

  The pond atop the hill overlooking the plantation house was a narrow lagoon crowded with large, leafy green plants and white flowers. It was a serene spot.

  I noticed a wooden chair and a small table a few feet from the water.

  “Juana told me Don Carlos used to come up here to read,” I said.

  Then I saw the cross. A simple white wooden cross. It was the only evidence of a grave. I walked slowly to it. I knew it was Carlos’s grave. And it had great emotional meaning to me. There was no longer any question in my mind, Carlos was my mother’s lover.

  This was the grave of my father.

  I knelt by the cross. A fine ground cover with tiny red flowers flowed out from the cross. I’d seen the same tiny flowers in the atrium. Juana had surely planted them up here.

  Life is so unfair. For a moment I was angry at my mother. What right did she have to deny me a father? I could understand that for whatever reason they were not meant for each other, that perhaps all that was between them was a moment of unbridled passion. My mother was both a free spirit and a woman who feared relationships. I suspected that was the reason she fled Carlos, as she would go on to flee other men over the years.

  I didn’t know that for sure, Carlos could have instigated the separation, he could have been a bastard to live with, could have beat his women or even just bored them to death, but as I had seen my mother cut and run from other men, my instinct was that she wasn’t ready to give up her freedom and settle down with Carlos.

  That was her decision to make, her right; no woman had to stay with a man she didn’t want to be with. But I had two parents and I deserved to have had a relationship with both of them.

  Perhaps I wouldn’t have liked my father. Whatever drove my mother away might have kept me from wanting to be around him, too. But I should have had the right to make that decision myself.

  “Did you know him?” I asked Josh.

  “No, he died about the time I met Cesar. But I’ve heard a lot about him. He was a genius at growing coffee.”

  I sat in the chair. Josh sprawled out on his side on the green mat of vegetation, staring up at me, his head propped up by his hand with his elbow on the ground.

  “What happened between Carlos and Cesar?” I asked. “What did Cesar tell you?”

  “Not much; mostly I picked up stuff from the workers. The bottom line was that Carlos had an old-fashioned attitude about the plantation that Cesar didn’t share.”

  “Carlos treated it as a family.”

  “I suppose so, and that worked when the market for coffee was rigged so that all producers were paid enough to cover their expenses and generate a profit. But the market changed; the bottom fell out. Cesar began to see Carlos as a dinosaur. The future was in knocking down the shade trees and growing sun coffee. Cesar’s a realist. If that meant replacing a hundred workers with one machine in order to compete, that was how it had to be.”

  He chewed on a piece of grass and stared at me. “But that’s not you, is it? With all that business training you have, you still think like Carlos.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure I think like either one of them. I can understand both their viewpoints. Carlos couldn’t ignore the changing marketplace in a blind hope to keep the status quo, but I would look for something besides Cesar’s solution. I’d look for one that didn’t mean throwing the baby out with the wash. If it’s not too late. What exactly are your pals Cesar and Pablo up to if it isn’t growing cocaine?”

  “You keep putting me in with the lions, when I’m just a pussycat.”

  “What happened to you?” I asked him. “How did you end up in Colombia, with a career in smuggling gems?”

  “The luck of the draw, I guess. My father was an engineer from Nebraska. He came down here to work in the oil industry. He met my mother here, in Cartagena, which is where I was born, but they eventually moved back to the States. I grew up in Los Angeles. I ran into a little trouble in college because of a cheating scheme, but got a degree in engineering with bad grades and then eventually got married. I ended up getting a divorce after I got into a little trouble for messing around.

  “I got a job at my old man’s company, they sent me down here, I got into a little trouble after U.S. Customs found some emeralds in a company packet I sent back to the States—”

  “So that’s the story of your life? A little trouble here, a little trouble there?”

  He stood up and walked toward me. “No, occasionally I get myself into big trouble.”

  Without any hesitation he pulled me up to him and kissed me on the lips, tenderly at first and then with more fiery ardor. My knees turned to jelly. I experienced a longing inside me that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. My legs suddenly went weak and I was glad he was holding me. With all the troubles in the world bearing down on me, it was comforting to be in his arms. I relaxed and enjoyed his strong arms around me, feeling safe and protected.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I first saw you,” he said, still holding me in his arms. He looked in my eyes for some response from me, but I was still trying to recover from his impulsive move.

  I hadn’t made any move to resist him, or rather my body hadn’t resisted. Mentally I was saying, No, this guy is no good for you, don’t start anything, yet my body was saying something totally different. I had melted in his arms when he kissed me. But then an image of my mother suddenly came inside my head and wiped away my indecision.

  He pressed closer to me.

  “Wait; stop.”

  “Why? You want it as much as me.”

  “Yes … no … I mean, I don’t know you.” That was an understatement. So far all I knew was that he lied almost every time he opened his mouth.

  “Yes, you do; I just told you everything about me. You know everything there is to know.”

  I didn’t totally trust him. There were too many unanswered questions. I was certainly attracted to him; that was a given. But if he was into smuggling jewels, what other bad stuff was he involved with? My woman’s intuition was telling me to hold back.

  “No, you never answered any of my questions; there are too many things about you that don’t add up.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “You’re not even in the running on that score.”

  25

  Pablo followed Lily up the stairs to the bedroom wing. He paused at the top of the stairs and let Lily continue into the bedroom. Pablo looked
back down at two men standing at the foot of the stairs.

  Cesar was rooted at the bottom, staring up, his feet unable to move, his features turning dark as he struggled to keep from exposing his anger. He could read nothing in the expression on Pablo’s face, just his usual amiable countenance, but Cesar knew that opening his mouth was a death sentence. Jorge was behind him. A nod from Pablo, and Cesar knew the thug would put a bullet in the back of his head.

  Cesar turned and walked out of the room.

  “Watch him.” Pablo spoke quietly to Jorge. “A man can do foolish things when another man is fucking his woman.”

  * * *

  LILY WAS SITTING on a chair facing the vanity mirror when Pablo came up behind her. The Oriental red satin robe she had on was open, revealing the sheer red nightie underneath, prominently exposing her nipples. She wore red silk nylons, a garter, and a sheer G-string thong.

  She had done her research—red was Pablo’s favorite color.

  “You look good in red,” he said, resting his hands on her shoulders. He let the robe slide off her shoulders. Looking at her in the mirror, he said, “I want to see all of you.”

  She felt the bulge in his pants press against her back. She stood up. Taking her time, she removed the nightie, exposing her milky white breasts. Her nipples were already hard. Her arousal was real, even though Escobar was not a sexy man. His reputation was exciting to her. The idea of making love with the most feared man in the country was tantalizing.

  He bent down and licked a circle around each nipple, before taking each one in his mouth and sucking it.

  She took off the rest of her undergarments as he watched her in the mirror. For several minutes he just stared at her body, especially at the bare mound between her legs.

  He had taken out his rigid phallus and was now rubbing it against her buttocks. He turned her around and suddenly his open hand caught her cheek. “Suck my cock, you whore.”

  She felt the slight sting as he forced his organ in her mouth. A moment later orgasm racked his body. She almost choked as the thick, white liquid flowed into her mouth.

  * * *

  PABLO LAY ON the bed and blew smoke rings from his cigar up at the ceiling. “I want you to return to Shanghai to make the final arrangements. I don’t like the way things are going. Everyone is dragging their feet.”

  She shrugged off his concern. “It’s something new; no one knows how to deal with it.”

  His hand flew at her throat like a lunging snake. He grabbed her and pulled her close to his face and blew cigar smoke in her eyes.

  “They better learn quickly. I don’t like delays. I’m being hounded on all sides. I need the money.”

  He let her go and she collapsed back, clutching her throat. “You must be patient; we’re close to being finished. You’ll get the money.”

  “I know that. People pay me … if they want to stay alive.” He looked at her. “How are you getting along with the American girl?” Pablo asked.

  “We need to get rid of her.”

  Pablo sighed. “Not today. I filled my quota this morning.”

  26

  I spent the next two days learning all the fine details of how coffee was grown, using the foremen and workers as teachers, from how they selected the finished beans right down to how they selected the seedlings that would grow into a coffee tree.

  But I didn’t fool myself in thinking that I would pick up the art of coffee growing by talking to the workers. Something I’d learned in the business market was that there is both art and science in any field of endeavor.

  The technical part, the science, was the easier to learn; you got it out of books and learning by doing—lawyers with their law books, doctors with their medical manuals, stockbrokers with their graphs and historical analyses. But great lawyers, doctors, and Indian chiefs went beyond books and what they saw around them—they had a talent for their work, developed partly from experience and partly from their own innate abilities.

  When I first went into business analysis, my boss complimented me, telling me that I had a knack for it. He’s the one who pointed out that the best in any field go beyond what they were taught: “Anyone can learn from books the science of investing in the stock market. All stockbrokers know the rules of prudent investing. But few stockbrokers know the art of making money on the stock market. And it’s not something that can be taught at business school.”

  The plantation workers all knew how to grow good coffee, but as more than one admitted, none of them had Carlos’s knack for selecting just the right seedling, just the right beans—that was the art of coffee growing.

  I didn’t know if I’d ever have the talent my father had—that was how I now always thought of him, as my father—but at least he had left the plantation in good shape in terms of the quality of its products. And I carried his genes.

  There probably isn’t any scientific evidence to prove that you can genetically inherit a talent, or at least the ability to develop a talent, from your parents, but I think what we are has more to do with what we get physically from our parents than science gives credit for.

  Thinking about whether I could inherit a talent for growing coffee from my father, I pulled on my right earlobe and got a memory flash from when I was a little girl. My mother had seen me pulling on my ear and told me that my father had had the same habit. Since I had never met the man, I certainly didn’t pick up the habit from seeing him do it.

  To learn more about how coffee was grown, I asked a reluctant Cesar to guide me through the process of what happened once the coffee left the plantation. He wasn’t happy about it, but he drove me to the port, introducing me to people who warehoused, bought, and shipped the coffee.

  He had been moody since Pablo had come—and gone, with no dead bodies left behind, at least none I knew about.

  I noticed Cesar had also been irritable toward Lily. From the way Lily had been looking at Pablo, my analytical brain, which invariably saw the dark side of human nature, concluded that Cesar was jealous of Pablo—for good cause, of course.

  What Cesar, Lily, the two chemists, and Josh had going in the huts, or wherever there was other skullduggery on the plantation, was still a mystery to me. From Cesar’s body language around Pablo and Josh’s comments, I did realize that Cesar was not in control. I no longer thought of him as the person who almost got me killed in Seattle, deliberately or inadvertently, but that didn’t mean he was innocent of scheming to steal the plantation from me.

  We spoke very little on the trip. Cesar didn’t fear traveling the roads and highways. As Josh explained it to me, the locals were not much bothered unless they were involved in catching criminals or competing with them, because killing locals made for bad press—and few people had enough money to make good kidnap victims.

  Juana decided to come along, to do some shopping. Maybe she really did want to get off the plantation, but I suspected that she wanted to make sure I made it safely back.

  I still hadn’t been able to figure out Cesar. At times he seemed like a decent guy—and other times he was abrupt and downright rude to me. The bastardo in him came out more when he drank too much.

  Besides Carlos being my father, I had also accepted Cesar as my half brother. But having the same father wasn’t a subject that came up between us. I didn’t know how to approach it; the relationship came with too much baggage. Plots against me aside, it had to eat at him that he had been disinherited in favor of a stranger.

  Even though I kept quiet about it, the fact I had a sibling was a significant event in my life. At the age of thirty-one, I suddenly had “family” beyond my mother and what she’d told me about her parents.

  Under ordinary circumstances, offering to make him a partner in the plantation would have occurred to me. Growing coffee was not only in his blood; he’d had three decades of training from a master. But these weren’t ordinary circumstances—I sensed plots and conspiracies whirling around me.

  Whatever was coming down, the “decaffein
ated coffee tree” project of chemists Soong and Sanchez was part of it. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see from the faces of the workers I talked to that something besides experiments with coffee was taking place. The workers immediately got cautious when I subtly brought up the subject. The place was off-limits to them.

  Tomas, the foreman, intimated to me that a worker had been badly beaten by Sanchez for getting too nosy about the project.

  I’d been by the huts where the two chemists lived and worked. Each time, I was with a foreman or worker who veered me away from actually going over and sticking my nose into the huts.

  I owned the property, I had every right to check out what was going on, but I wasn’t foolish enough to think I could just waltz over to the huts and see what the two chemists were up to.

  At least not when there was a chance I’d get caught.

  When I returned from the visit to the port, I waited until Cesar was away from the plantation and the chemists went into town for drinking, and whatever else they did, before I snuck over to check out the place. It was siesta time, which reduced my chances of running into anyone.

  There were four huts, all with unpainted wood walls and tin roofs. They were built to house itinerant workers during peak harvesttime. The huts all had wood doors and large, uncovered windows all the way around—except for one.

  It was late in the afternoon but still daylight when I scurried over to take a quick look. The first two huts were easy to figure out—through the windows, I could see clothes that I recognized as belonging to Soong in one, Sanchez in the other. A third hut was a no-brainer also—it was set up for cooking and eating. The wife of one of the foremen came in every day to prepare meals for the two men.

  It didn’t take a great deal of imagination on my part to see that the fourth hut, what I took to be the lab, was shrouded in mystery and intrigue. The thin, bare wood door that the other huts had had been replaced by a metal door. All the windows were covered by louvered shutters made of metal and fastened on the inside.