Bloodline

by Jeff Buick

  In a zombie-like mode he readied himself for bed. The outer doors had yet to be secured, and he latched them as he always did. But tonight the action seemed wasted. Everything worthy of stealing had already been spirited away. The toothpaste tasted foul and he spit in the basin, then rinsed with cool water. He splashed some on his face and neck and let it drip back into the sink and onto the tile floor in the cramped bathroom. A bottle of toilet water sat near the spigots, and he touched it, his finger gently tracing the graceful curves. Inside the glass was an aroma that seemed to have been made for Julie. Somehow the tiny bottle now embodied her; not of great culture, but irreplaceable in design. He lifted the bottle—it seemed so light—and unscrewed the cap, touching his finger to the mouth and tilting it slightly. He closed the lid and carefully set the bottle back on the vanity. Their bedroom was next to the bathroom and he moved around the bed to Julie’s side, touching his finger to her pillow. For a full minute he stood unmoving, his eyes closed, just breathing.

  He slipped under the covers and stared at the ceiling above their bed. It occurred to him that since their marriage he’d never slept without her beside him. They always talked about the day before making love or drifting off in easy sleep. The bed was strange without her and sleep wouldn’t come. Eventually he rose and dressed, then drove into Porlamar, the island’s largest city. It was after two in the morning, but he knew someone who would be awake. The streets were quiet, but not deserted. Avenue 4 de Mayo, dimly lit now that the shops were closed, was home to an occasional prostitute, and groups of various sizes and ages moved between the nightclubs that punctuated the street with music and flashing lights. Eugene cut off the main drag onto a dark side street and found a parking spot for his Vespa. He locked the steering and wrapped a chain through the front spokes and anchored it to a metal railing. Lock it or lose it took on a very real meaning in South America.

  The building that housed his friend’s apartment was set back from the road behind a commercial store that sold auto parts. He walked through the darkness to a flight of stairs and took the risers two at a time. The door at the top was thick and heavy, and he rapped the knocker hard against the wood. A second later an eye appeared in the peep hole, and the door opened. A man in his late fifties with a substantial potbelly stood in the doorway. His hair was long and uncombed and two or three days’ growth of beard went unchecked on his heavily lined face. He smiled, revealing uneven yellow teeth, and motioned for Eugene to enter.

  “Hey, amigo, what brings you down to Porlamar at this time? Julie kick you out for being a good husband?”

  “I need to talk with you, Fidel,” Eugene said, closing the door behind him. “You okay to talk?” The odor of marijuana hung in the air.

  “Sure, Eugene,” his friend said as they moved into the sparsely furnished living room. The television was on, but no one else was present. Fidel picked up the remote control and hit the mute button. The room was quiet but for the distant whine of an air-conditioning unit. Fidel pointed to one of the two threadbare couches and sat in the other one. Numerous beer bottles littered the coffee table and the ashtray was piled high with cigarette butts. “What’s up, my friend?”

  “I’ve got a problem, Fidel. A serious problem.” He spent the next five minutes telling him what had happened at his house earlier in the evening. Fidel sipped on a beer and listened as Eugene relayed the visit from Javier Rastano. Then he thought for a minute.

  “Javier Rastano,” he said. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive. Why?”

  “His father is Mario Rastano. As Javier already told you, he was a major player in the Medellín cartel back when Pablo was involved.” Fidel wasn’t much to look at, but he was intelligent and connected. He knew more about the illegal drug industry in South America than the DEA. On rare occasions, he would drink too much and tell Eugene stories about when he had worked with the cartels in both Medellín and Cali, scary stories that always involved violence, and often death. “Javier was only about twenty-two or twenty-three when Search Bloc nailed Pablo, but his father had started him young. He’d been dealing with Pablo and the Ochoa family for two or three years. But it was old man Rastano who was the driving force behind the business partnership with Escobar.”

  “So they moved a lot of cocaine out of Colombia?”

  “A shit load. Most of it through Norman’s Cay until Carlos Lehder was out of the picture. After that they used Bimini. But that wasn’t the only corridor. They had another route.”

  “Through Panama?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. Sure, it went overland from Colombia to Panama, but that wasn’t where it left for the United States. Noriega was an absolute bastard to deal with and he screwed the narcos more times than you can imagine. How he survived Pablo’s wrath has always amazed me. Anyway, the Americans were watching Panama and Noriega was a problem, so your cousin and the Rastanos moved the stuff overland to El Salvador before mixing it in with coffee shipments and loading it on boats for California. Not many people knew about the route.”

  “How did you find out?” Eugene asked.

  “My ties were with José Rodríguez Gacha…”

  “The Mexican,” Eugene interrupted.

  “Yes. The Mexican. Anyway, Gacha needed someone to watch the books in South America. For some reason, he trusted me. Not that I didn’t earn the trust. I never stole from him, and I forwarded more money to Efraim Roa for laundering than I can remember. Roa was the key man in the Cali cartel, and he was more than happy to get some of the Medellín cartel’s business. So I knew how much money was coming in and where it was coming from.”

  “Sounds like you knew a lot of details about how the cartels operated. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Fidel grinned and his teeth protruded from beneath thin lips. “I was never a threat. I didn’t dress nice and flash wads of cash around at hip discos. I kept my mouth shut and my nose in the books. Gacha made a ton of money, and I was merely an efficient cog in the wheel.”

  “What happened when the Colombian government killed Gacha in ’89?” Eugene asked.

  Fidel disappeared into the kitchen for a minute, then returned with two beers. He handed one to Eugene and sat down. “I got out. Gacha was my contact to the cartels. With him gone I was like the guy without a chair when the music stops. I knew your cousin and Carlos Lehder and the Ochoa clan, but it wasn’t the same. I had Gacha’s trust, but that never extended through to the higher levels. If I’d stayed, I would have died.”

  “You left with nothing?” Eugene asked.

  Fidel motioned to the decrepit surroundings. “It’s not so bad, Eugene. I’ve got enough money stashed away to keep me in beer and pot until I die. It’s not the Taj Mahal, but this place is paid for. And I got out with my life. That’s more than a shit load of others.”

  Eugene took a sip of beer, and nodded. “What can you tell me about Mario and Javier Rastano that might help me find Julie and Shiara? Anything at all, Fidel.”

  Fidel grinned. Again, the ugly teeth. “I might be able to help you there, my friend. So long as you forget where you heard this.”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s no way the Rastano clan would risk taking hostages back into Colombia. They’re respected businessmen in Medellín, and the last thing they want is problems that could tie them to the cocaine trade.”

  “They’re not still active, are they?” Eugene asked.

  Fidel gave him a disbelieving look. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You think that these guys just closed up shop on a two or three hundred-million-a-year operation? Not a fucking chance. They’re still moving product. None through Bimini though. So what does that tell you?”

  “The pipeline through Panama into El Salvador is still intact?”

  Fidel held his beer up in a mock toast. “You got it.”

  “And you think my wife and daughter might be in El Salvador?”

  Fidel just shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

&nb
sp; Eugene pursed his lips and gave Fidel a long, hard stare. “I’ve got a question for you, Fidel.”

  “Ask away.”

  “You’ve been out of the business for almost seventeen years. How come you know so much about what’s going on?”

  Fidel finished his beer, and found a small space on the messy coffee table to set the empty. He lit a cigarette and breathed in the smoke. “Think about our conversation, Eugene. Everything we just talked about, with the exception of the El Salvador route still being open, is history. Read a book on the cocaine trade in the eighties and you’ll get the same story. Except without the personal touch. So, in fact, I don’t really know what’s going on these days.”

  “But the El Salvador connection. You’re sure it’s still active.”

  “Positive.” There was a twinkle in his eyes. “I’m out of the business, but a couple of guys I met while I was involved are still running drugs. One is a boat captain and the other is a port coordinator for the shipments. They stop by on occasion. Isla de Margarita is a wonderful vacation spot, and I make sure they’re well taken care of while they’re here. In return, a couple of packages of prime marijuana buds show up at my doorstep every few months. And while they’re here, they like to talk.”

  Eugene nodded. “So Mario and Javier Rastano are still drug smugglers.”

  “Yup.”

  Eugene held up his empty beer and Fidel lurched off the couch and grabbed two more from the fridge. He opened them and handed one to Eugene.

  “Thanks.” Eugene drank thirstily, then said, “Pablo Escobar, what did you know about his death?”

  “Oh, that’s one very convoluted mess, Eugene. He wasn’t your average drug smuggler. He was rich, powerful and very ruthless—common traits among Colombian drug lords. But there was something about Pablo that set him apart from the Ochoa family or Giselda Blanco de Trujillo, or any of the other major players back in the eighties. Pablo thought he was a hero to the Colombian people, an icon of success and generosity. The football stadiums and housing developments he built in Medellín gave him a degree of legitimacy. He was well liked by hundreds of thousands of people who saw him as a benefactor and a humanitarian. He liked that image, and he began to believe it was the truth. Christ, he was elected as an alternate to El Congreso, a legitimate political position within the Colombian government. But then he made a couple of grave mistakes.”

  “He killed the justice minister, Rodrigo Lara,” Eugene said.

  “Yes. He had him killed because Lara publicly accused him of being a drug dealer. Lara had powerful friends. There was nothing Pablo could do once Lara opened Pandora’s Box. From the second Pablo Escobar took his seat in El Congreso in 1983, he was a marked man. Everyone knew he was a drug trafficker, but until then they’d swept it under the carpet. Pablo blamed Lara for destroying his reputation. And Lara also opened the door to American involvement in Colombia. He allowed the U.S. State Department to dump herbicides on the coca and he authorized the raid on Tranquilandia that netted fourteen labs and over ten tons of cocaine. Pablo was some kind of pissed off. So he had Lara killed.”

  “That didn’t go over well with the Colombian people.”

  “Nope. Pablo could get away with murder at street level. But not this. Not the murder of a justice minister. The people turned against him, and the politicians drafted an extradition treaty with the United States. Extradition was Pablo’s greatest fear.”

  “I remember him talking about it on one of the few times I met him. He was livid. I thought he was going to grab a gun and start shooting.”

  Fidel ground out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “Pablo was Colombian, and he wanted no part of the American justice system. He could control his own destiny to some degree while sheltered inside the Colombian borders, but dealing with the Americans was something else. They couldn’t be bought off as easily as Colombian politicians. And they were powerful. So Pablo faced extradition to the States if he stayed in Colombia. He and the Ochoa brothers hightailed it to Panama, where Carlos Lehder and my boss were already hiding. Imagine that, the entire Medellín cartel ousted from Colombia because of the extradition treaty.”

  “So the movers and shakers of the Medellín cartel were in Panama. What then?”

  “Pablo drafted a six-page proposal to Belisario Betancur, the president of Colombia. He offered to shut down his entire cocaine operation and sell the planes and boats he used to ferry the product to the United States. The cocaine industry would cease to exist if he could return to Medellín and live in peace. No extradition.”

  “I remember the offer. They came back with a ‘no deal’,” Eugene said. “Killing Lara was too much. And downing that Avianca airliner with 107 people aboard in ’89 was way too much.”

  “Yeah. That was a stupid thing to do. The Colombian government thought Pablo Escobar was completely out of control. And many of the people saw it that way too. Not that he was completely ostracized. He still had a following in Medellín and the people in Envigado, his hometown, thought he was being persecuted. Anyway, that was the beginning of Pablo’s downfall. He eventually returned to Colombia, but he was a fugitive from that point on.”

  “That doesn’t explain his death,” Eugene said.

  “No. But it lays an interesting foundation. You have certain factions that want him dead, others that revere him and others who want him extradited. It all adds up to, as I said, a very convoluted mess.”

  “So what actually happened?”

  Fidel shrugged. “I don’t know. But I don’t think Pablo’s death was as straightforward as the Colombian government would have us think. Whether he’s alive or not is another story.”

  “Javier Rastano thinks he is.”

  “And his reasoning is that someone is withdrawing money from a numbered account that only Pablo had access to?”

  “Yes.”

  Fidel was thoughtful. Finally, he said, “Well, from my experience with banks and laundered money, they won’t open the vault without absolute proof that the person wanting in is the legitimate owner. So from that end, it could be possible that your cousin is alive.”

  “Where would he be?” Eugene asked. “Any ideas?”

  “He could be anywhere, Eugene. He has the money and connections to disappear and never surface. In fact, if he’s alive, the only people who know are those close to him, the Rastanos and you and I.”

  “Puts us in a dangerous position,” Eugene said.

  Fidel grinned. “You don’t trust Pablo?”

  Eugene shook his head. “Not if my poking around threatens his situation. He’s a survivor, Fidel. I sure wouldn’t be the first family member he had killed.”

  “True enough.”

  “Javier Rastano suggested I involve the DEA. What do you think?”

  “If any agency in the world could help you find Pablo, it would be them. Strange that Rastano would say that.”

  “I thought so too. But he had his reasons. And what other options do I have?”

  “What about his son, Juan Pablo?”

  Eugene shook his head. “Javier said that if anyone approached Pablo’s son or daughter, they were as good as dead. Pablo would kill them. I believe him. And there’s no way his son or daughter will give him up. That’s a dangerous dead end.”

  “Yeah. I suppose so.”

  Both men were lost in thought for a minute. Eugene thought of Julie and Shiara. Fidel went down memory lane: his connections to the Cali and Medellín cartels now vivid pictures in his mind. Rooms filled with stacks of American tens and twenties, and rows of money counting machines continually spitting out the bills into hundred thousand dollar piles. Cocaine, kilos and kilos of the white powder that America fell in love with. Bodies of suspected informers or bit players who skimmed a little too much off the top and got caught. Heads with bullet holes and throats sliced open, their tongues pulled out, slit and dangling down past their shoulders like neckties. Men without their genitals. Women with their breasts carved off. Children with their
throats slit. The pictures kept coming, like a bad slide show that wouldn’t end. He jerked out of the trancelike state when he realized Eugene was speaking to him.

  “What about Julie and Shiara? Where do you think they are? Give me your best guess.”

  “Well, if they’re not in Colombia, then probably El Salvador. Mario Rastano has an extensive collection and distribution network set up there, and that would be the safest place for him to keep hostages. You asked for a guess, you got one.”

  “El Salvador,” Eugene said quietly, his mind already working on the problem. “You suggested that earlier too. And that may be a good thing, Fidel.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I know someone from San Salvador. A good guy, and very capable. He’s working in Caracas right now. I don’t know if he’ll help me, but I can always ask.”

  “You don’t want to be going into San Salvador blind,” Fidel agreed. “It’s a dangerous place.”

  Eugene slowly turned to face the decrepit figure who was far more than he looked. “When you’re dealing with these guys, everywhere is dangerous.”

  “Amen,” Fidel said, raising his beer bottle. They clinked bottles, and drank.

  Chapter Five

  Dawn was just breaking over Porlamar when Eugene closed the door to Fidel’s apartment. The street looked depressing in the pale morning light. Garbage and empty bottles were strewn about, and an old car without a motor leaked transmission fluid onto the stained pavement. Laundry fluttered from a line strung between two buildings, and the only life in sight was a thin cat scrounging through a trash bin. Eugene unlocked his Vespa and wrapped the chain around the seat. He started the motor and pulled onto the deserted streets.

  Fidel was a gold mine. He knew the ex-smuggler would be helpful, but his knowledge of the cartels, and Javier Rastano in particular, was much greater than he’d imagined. Eugene knew he was not much closer to finding his wife and daughter, but now he had a ray of hope. And hope had to count for something. Out of nowhere his life had changed, reduced from quiet, ordered normalcy to deadly survival. The prize for winning was a return to where things had been less than twenty-four hours earlier. Losing was unthinkable.