by Callie Hart
“I used to go stay at his compound. He always had the best girls in his stables. And the best blow.”
“So you are interested in women, too?” he says.
I shrug, doing my best to look nonchalant. “I’m a guy, aren’t I?”
Fernando looks at the ground, brows banked together, as if he’s thinking furiously. Taking a step to the right, he holds out one hand, gesturing me into his office. “Come in. I need to make a phone call. You’ll excuse me for a moment, I think.” It’s not a request. He’s merely informing me of what’s about to happen, and I honestly don’t like the sound of it. A phone call to whom? I cut a sidelong look at Natalia. She seems to be locked in some kind of intense, silent communication with her father, and I can’t decide if that is a good or a bad thing. Bad, I’m sure.
“I have something for you, Sam,” she tells me. “My father will be back in a minute. I’m sure the two of you can discuss the matter of a purchase further then. In the meantime…” She gives me a tight-lipped smile and heads past her father, into the office.
I make a point of smiling warmly at Fernando as I enter his office. Better for me to pretend I’m completely oblivious to the danger of this situation than to break out into a sweat. Fernando nods slightly, and then he hurries off down the length of the floor, making a beeline for Ocho. His shoulders seem to have inched up some, like he’s bracing for something; why Fernando Villalobos would be worried about anything here, in his home, with all his men and their weapons around, is a mystery.
Fernando’s office is unassuming. No art on the walls. No frills of any kind. Bare tile floor. Regular desk. A small lamp, which is turned on, since there doesn’t actually appear to be an overhead light.
“Have a seat.” Natalia pulls out a seat in front of her father’s desk, gesturing for me to park my ass in it. She seems to have forgotten about my gun. Either that, or she’s placing a great deal of trust in me, and she doesn’t expect me to shoot her father where he stands.
“Sorry it’s so dim in here,” she tells me. “My father has very sensitive eyes. Normal fluorescents bother him.”
“That’s okay.” I sit down, watching her as she goes and sits in the seat Fernando must have occupied a moment ago. Sliding open a drawer, she produces a small silver mirrored plate, along with a narrow metal tube. It glints in the half light—a solid gold blow pipe.
I know what’s coming next. Sure enough, she places a small wrap of paper down onto the desk in front of her and begins to unfold it. “I’m sure you’ll want to sample our current product, yes?”
“Oh, that’s not necessary.”
She looks up at me, frowning. “No? That’s normally our buyers’ motto—try before you buy. People are normally ripping this stuff out of our hands. Not cheap.”
“I’m sure that’s true. But it’s also bad business. I’m not here to enjoy myself. I’m here to make a deal. If I’m out of my head, how can I have a proper conversation with your father?”
Natalia smiles, splaying her fingers on the table in front of her. She studies her fingers, each and every one, before she speaks again. “Mr. America, you had better stick this pipe up your nose, and you had better inhale deep. If you don’t, my father is going to have your hands removed, and he’s going to mount them on the wall of our living room. Is that what you want?”
Well. When she puts it like that…
I hold my hand out, and she places the blowpipe in it, smiling. “A good choice,” she advises me. The coke is already pre-cut and fine as icing sugar. She scoops a healthy amount out of the pile with her fingernail, and then she taps it out onto the silver plate, passing it to me. I’ve done coke before. It would have been impossible to avoid, living a life like mine. I’m hardly a seasoned pro when it comes to snorting narcotics, however. I already know how hard I’m going to have to work to prevent the top of my head from blowing off once the drugs hit home.
Sliding the pipe up my nose, I hold the other end to the small silver plate, and I inhale. Fireworks light up the inside of my head. Fuuuuuck. My head automatically kicks back—it feels like my nose is bleeding—and lights flash and flare behind my closed eyelids. A crushing wave of euphoria hits me hard. My body feels like it’s been transformed, turned into silk, into the softest cashmere. My pores prickle and my head hums, my ears whistling as the cocaine gets to work. By and far the cleanest, most impressive buzz I’ve ever experienced.
“Is it good, Mr. America?” I open my eyes, and Natalia is leaning across her father’s desk, eyes narrowed, watching me intently.
I sniff, shaking my head, trying to piece myself back together enough to form a sentence. “Yeah. Fuck yeah. Damn.”
She laughs. “What does it feel like?” she asks.
“I’m sure it feels the same for me as it does for you.”
“I’ve never taken cocaine.” Her voice is calm and collected. She says this as if it should be obvious—that there’s no way she would ever do such a crazy, reckless thing.
I blink at her. My vision seems to have sharpened. Everything in the room has focused, the light growing to blinding proportions, the colors so much bolder and brighter. “That is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. The daughter of a cocaine dealer, never having taken cocaine. Just seems so…”
“Unbelievable?”
“Yeah.”
Natalia smirks. With the drugs coursing through my veins, she’s even more beautiful, even more vibrant and alive. “My father forbids it,” she informs me.
“I see. And you always do what your father tells you?”
The smile grows bigger. “Always.”
“You should probably rebel every once in a while. It’s good for you.”
She just shakes her head, scooping another bump of coke onto her fingernail and sprinkling it onto the silver plate. “Rebellion is called mutiny in Ecuador, Mr. America.” She passes me the drugs. She doesn’t let go of the plate. For a moment, we’re both holding onto it, and she’s giving me a pointed look that penetrates deep. “And mutineers get shot at dawn.”
She lets go of the plate.
“I’ll bear that in mind, then.”
“See that you do.”
The second blast of euphoria hits me even harder this time. It’s like a sledgehammer to the side of my head, sending me reeling back into my chair. I can feel my pulse everywhere, throbbing like the beat of a demented drum, and my fingers have gone completely numb. In fact, my whole body feels kind of numb, like I’m made out of cotton wool. It should be a worrying sensation, and yet it feels good. Really, really fucking good. My lips are tingling like crazy, and fuck…even my dick is getting hard. I want to risk a quick look down to my crotch, to see if my increasingly large boner is all that noticeable, but when I open my eyes, Natalia is watching me again with an intense, fascinated look on her face, and all other thought flies out of the window.
She isn’t “morning-sunrise” kind of beautiful. She’s “out-of-control-burn-your-fucking-house-down-forest-fire” kind of beautiful. And she’s looking at me like she wants to shove me back into my seat, pull down her panties, and sit on my face so she can ride my mouth.
I’m sure her father would not approve.
I could be imagining this, of course. There’s a very good chance I’m just seeing what I want to see, because my dick is now harder than granite, and my eyes feel like they’re shooting laser beams out of them.
Natalia licks her lips. “Would you like some water?”
“Thank you.”
She gets up and leaves the room, which strikes me as strange. If she’s not watching me, then who is? I suppose the men out on the production floor would put me down pretty quick if they thought I was up to no good. But still… If one of Perez’s guys left me alone at his compound, they’d find themselves headless and in need of a shallow grave. Not even Jamie would leave a guy sitting alone in an unlocked room.
Natalia doesn’t come back for quite a while. I sit in my chair and I don’t move, though. I can feel my
breath, pulling and pushing around my body; it’s as though the cells that make up my body are bigger than they should be, more sensitive, and I can feel every last one of them. I’m not in my right mind. I’m smart enough to realize that the drugs have fucked me up, and I shouldn’t go making any rash decisions, so I keep my ass parked in my chair and I wait.
Eventually, Natalia comes back carrying a large glass carafe of water and two small tumblers on a tray. She sets it down on Fernando’s desk, and begins to pour the liquid into the two glasses with all of the gravity and measure of a Japanese geisha preparing tea.
When she holds out a glass for me, filled almost to the brim with water, I accept it, holding my breath, not wanting to spill it. Natalia throws back her glass of water like it’s a shot of tequila, down in one, and then she leans forward on her elbows, observing me as I slowly sip from my glass.
“You’re not like most men who come here,” she tells me.
I frown. I need to be like most men who come here. If Fernando’s going to be tricked into thinking that Sam Garrett is a real person, right along with Louis James Aubertin the third, and that we want to start selling his narcotics north of the border, I need these guys to think I’m driven by addiction, desire for power, or a desire for money. Anything else is going to look suspicious. And a man with unclear motives is a dangerous man. “How so?” I ask.
Natalia sits back in Fernando’s chair. She looks like she wants to kick her feet up on the desk, but then thinks better of it. “You’re thinking all the time. Think, think, think.” She taps her temple with her index finger. “Every word you say is measured. Like it’s passed a rigorous vetting program before it is allowed out of your mouth. It makes me think you are trying to hide things.”
I press my fingertips against the sides of the cold glass in front of me, trying not to appear surprised by her very accurate assessment of me. “I promise I’m not doing it on purpose. And of course I’m hiding things. Every single guy you meet is trying to hide something, I can pretty much guarantee it.”
“If you’re referring to your erection, Mr. America, you really need to try harder.”
I bark out laughter—I can’t help it. She does not look like she has any business saying the word erection let alone actually noticing mine, and yet she doesn’t seem embarrassed. Not even slightly pink in the cheeks.
I shift in my chair, angling my hips up for a moment so the bulge in my pants is even more prominent. “That is entirely your fault,” I inform her. “Coke turns me on.”
“Evidently.”
“And so do exotic, half Ecuadorian women with sexy accents.”
“How do you know I’m only half Ecuadorian?”
“Because your skin is almost white. And your eyes are green.”
She harrumphs. “Skin and eye color don’t seem to be a very reliable way of assessing someone’s heritage, Sam.”
“So you are one hundred percent Ecuadorian?”
She smiles a small, weighted smile. After a drawn out second, she says, “No, actually. You are right. My mother was born in Philadelphia. She moved to Ecuador when she was only eleven.”
“And she still lives here?”
“No.”
“She went back to Philadelphia?”
“No. She died, of course.”
She says “of course,” as though it was the natural progression for her mother, like it was fated. Could be she was fated to die, the second she met Fernando Villalobos. “I probably shouldn’t ask how she died, should I?”
Natalia gives me an accommodating smile, sighing. “Probably not.”
“Then I will keep my mouth shut.” I hold up my water glass, and Natalia reaches across the desk and toasts me. I’m about to say something else when the door behind me opens, and Fernando returns with a very thick, chunky-looking cell phone in his hands. No, not a cell phone. A sat phone. We used ones very similar in the military. Fernando gives me a jagged edged smile as he crosses the room toward us.
“Are you quite relaxed, Mr. Garrett? It’s a very mellow high, no? We are always complimented on the soothing qualities of our coca. You feel more alive than you ever have, but also more in love, too. No hostilities here. No arguments or fights because of our product.”
I am feeling pretty damn mellow; not even the drugs are enough to slow down the thunder of my heart, or dampen the buzzing in my head, though. I tap my fingertips against the side of Fernando’s desk. “Did you figure everything out on your phone call, Mr Villalobos? You weren’t gone for very long.”
Fernando nods. “Not particularly. I called to confirm your credentials, Sam. My contact in New York is unreachable at the moment, however. I was only able to verify that your employer is very well known in certain circles. If there is anything you wish to tell me, now is the time to do it, my friend, when you cannot be caught out in a lie.”
I shrug, but underneath his desk, where he can’t see, I’m digging my fingernail into the grain of the wood, pressing hard, until I can feel splinters biting into my skin. The pain helps keep me focused. Helps keep my face straight. “I’m not lying. We want to buy from you, and I want to make a huge, fat profit back in the States.” I look at Fernando and then at his daughter, hoping they don’t see anything in my expression that might make me look suspicious. “Why is that so hard to believe?” I ask.
No one speaks for a moment. After a long, nerve-racking pause, Fernando inhales sharply. Taking his tortoiseshell glasses from his face and sliding them into the breast pocket of his neatly pressed button-down shirt, he clasps his hands together in front of him. “You’re right, of course. I’m sure you understand, though. Like your employer, we are very private people, Mr. Garrett. We don’t like to be disturbed, or have strangers show up announced. It makes us...what is it you say in America? Antsy?”
“Yeah. Antsy.”
“We shall know if you’re a legitimate customer in good time,” Fernando continues. “Until then, you will be a guest. Eat, sleep and relax in my home.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary. I’m sure I can find somewhere comfortable enough in Orellana that—”
Fernando’s cold, sharp look cuts me off. “But really, Mr. Garrett. I insist.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE BLUE DOOR
Fernando tasks Ocho with escorting me from the premises, gun pressed into my back, Jurassic 5 now buzzing from his tinny speakers—I can hear the lyrics of the music perfectly as I climb back up the rungs of the ladder towards the surface, and I can still hear it perfectly when I’m standing there, waiting for his head to pop up out of the ground behind me like a gopher. A number of things occur to me during those few fleeting seconds while I’m waiting, the first of which being that I could easily kill him right now if I wanted to. One swift kick to the throat as he emerges from the ground would be enough to do it. I don’t want to kill the guy, though. Apart from getting a little pokey with the muzzle of his gun, he’s kept his mouth shut, and he hasn’t been even remotely offensive. I’ll feel bad if I kill him just so I can go darting off into the trees, fleeing the situation before I’ve really gleaned any useful information. If letting him live means I get to see inside the Villalobos family home, then so be it.
I don’t think I know a single soul who has entered the Villalobos estate. I have no idea what to expect, and I have no idea if my sister will be there. Thankfully she wasn’t chained to a desk down in that bunker, working her ass off cutting coke, naked as the day she was born. That’s something to celebrate at least.
Ocho prods me with his gun, pointing this way and that into the rainforest, directing me, and we walk for what feels like an unbelievably long time, until we finally hit a dirt road that cuts through the trees. We head west. I count in my head, not wanting to pull out my cell phone to check the time in order to monitor how long we walk for, just in case Ocho thinks I’m going for my gun and shoots me in the back. I reel numbers off in my head until I reach six hundred, and then I start over again. I’ve ticked off seventeen min
utes in my head by the time we emerge from the forest into a small clearing, where an Escalade and a brand new Jeep Patriot are parked side by side. Ocho grunts. Once he has my attention, he tosses me a set of keys and opens the driver’s side door of the Escalade.
He jabs me with the gun.
“Me? You want me to drive?”
He jams the muzzle of the gun into my ribcage, and I don’t ask again. I climb into the vehicle, and I go to slide the key into the ignition, only there is no ignition. A small START button brings the engine roaring into life the moment I hit it. Ocho grunts again, slamming the passenger door closed behind him, and then he’s pointing, gesturing for me to go left. I do as I’m told. We pass back through the town of Orellana, and then head over the river via a narrow, unstable looking bridge. The landscape whips by in a blur, and Ocho says nothing. Only points. Eventually he directs me to take yet another dirt track off the pot-holed, bumpy road we’ve been traveling down, and we drive for a short period of time before the roadway suddenly becomes paved, and we’re winding our way up a bare, exposed hillside, into the mountains.
I count fourteen hairpin turns before we’re spat out on top of the mountain, and we’re faced with the biggest, grandest, most over the top villa I have ever seen in my life. And I’ve seen some ridiculously big houses. Huge, the building stands three stories tall, with five-foot high windows on the upper floors. A row of ostentatious pillars prop up the façade, twelve of them all evenly spaced out in a row, bared like teeth against the cool blue sky that seems to stretch on forever into the distance behind the mansion. God knows how they got the building materials up here to create such a monstrosity. The road was barely enough to take the Escalade. There’s no way heavy lifting machinery made it up here. No way in hell. Ocho stabs his finger toward the right, gesturing for me to take a small pathway that leads around the side of the house, and I take it, pulling up around the back into a fully constructed motherfucking parking lot, filled with four-by-four vehicles and, unbelievably, golf carts.