Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar

by Virginia Vallejo

  He tells me Reagan is obsessed with wiping him out, and Nancy with eliminating his business—which is why that little phrase “Just say no!” was invented—and that he won’t let them or anyone else get to him. I swear to him that I saw a movie where a Russian missile directed at the Pentagon reached the limit of U.S. airspace and then, ipso facto, turned around and went straight back to the terrorist who had sent it. I try to make him see that if his missile bounces off American airspace and returns to Medellín, there will be half a million dead, like in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

  “Oh, God, what a fright! I think you’re going to start World War Three, Pablo!”

  He replies that Hollywood movies are made by a bunch of Republican Jews who see the world from Reagan’s perspective, and that he’s starting to think I’m turning into a chicken, like all the other women.

  “I thought you were my other half and the only one who understood me, but turns out you’re not just Cleansoul, you’re also a moralist. Not to mention an imperialist! It’s no good. But…wait a second…just a second, now…Hiroshima, you said? Nagasaki? Oh, Cleansoul!…You really are a prodigy, a genius! What heaven did you come down from, love of my life?! And I was thinking I’d have to build a base in some banana republic…when it was really so simple!”

  And as if he’d just solved the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture and Fermat’s last theorem, he starts dancing and spinning me around, singing happily:

  “Por el día en que llegaste a mi vida, paloma querida, me puse a brindar!” (“To the day you arrived in my life, dearest dove, I toast!”)

  I tell him one of these days they’re going to put him in a straitjacket and lock him up. I beg him to stop thinking about such barbarities, because sometimes he scares me.

  “You and I always used to talk about politics and history, but ever since I went to the islands you only talk about explosions and abductions and bombings. Neutralize the Pentagon! Do you think you’re the USSR’s minister of defense? There are beautiful things in life, Pablo: think of Manuela and Juan Pablo. Use that head and that heart of yours to build something, instead of dreaming of tearing everything down. I want to rest, too, after so many threats and dirty tricks….”

  He is thoughtful for a while, and then he tells me, “Yes…you should rest a while from all the threats. Travel all you like, as long as you always come back to me…but not to Europe, because it’s full of temptations and you might stay there. To the United States, which is closer, okay? Even though you and I can’t see each other every month, I go crazy every time you disappear on me. When you come back, I’ll have the Tarzan job ready to go, and they’ll know they can’t keep messing with you, either. I’m sick of them tormenting you, poor thing!”

  *

  —

  I HAPPILY GO TO MIAMI, and when I return, Pablo asks me to come to Medellín. He tells me he’s done tracking down every member of the Vieira family, and he has everything ready to blow up Rafa’s boat.

  “I’m going to place the bomb in the marina where Tarzan keeps his boat when he goes to Cartagena! It’s much easier there than in open waters, where the navy could grab my boys afterward.”

  Horrified, I exclaim that at the fishing club dozens of humble workers and tourists are going to be blown to bits, in addition to a hundred yachts. He replies that that is, precisely, the idea.

  “I’ve told you that what I like most is making mischief, so don’t you turn into Cleansoul on me. This will also set a precedent with all those psychos who’ve been tormenting you on the phone. We’ll kill several birds with one stone, and no one, not the butchers, the vipers, the evil stepsisters will mess with you again. You have to demand respect in life. Period!”

  For the next hour I beg him every way I can to not place that bomb, to think of all the innocent people and the Ochoas’ yachts and that of the couple who saved my life, but he won’t let his arm be twisted. He takes several hits of marijuana, and as he relaxes, I start to realize that the bomb fulfills a quadruple purpose: it punishes not only the Vieiras but also Rafa Vieira, and it sends a message not only to the butchers and the journalists but also, above all, to any man who could come between him and me. Since the days of the coke rocks for Aníbal and my express divorce, Pablo has sent two multimillionaire rivals running and asked me to help him kidnap my ex-boyfriends. He’s used any pretext to take revenge on whomever he decides to blame for our separations after absences so long they seem like good-byes, and to hate anyone from my past. Now he asks me if he can lay his head on my lap, and I tell him of course; I caress his forehead and he, staring into space and talking as if to himself, continues:

  “I’ve had enough of them humiliating you and persecuting you because of me. What they want to do is to take you out of my life for good…and you’re my only true friend…the only woman who has never asked me for anything…the only one I can talk to about things you don’t talk about with your mother or wife, only with other men. I can only trust three people now: Osito, Gonzalo, and Gustavo. And no one is happy with their brother, my love, and the Mexican lives in Bogotá, and my partner has changed a lot. Plus, all three of them are just like me, and I need someone who cares about me but challenges me…who has another scale of values, but who understands me and doesn’t judge me. You’ve saved me from making a lot of mistakes, and I can’t allow you to leave again…like after the palace, when I needed you and couldn’t find you anywhere…you, who were always going off with someone richer than me…the owner of two dolphins and a shark! How about that?”

  I tell him that, precisely, Pancho Villa III doesn’t justify an attack from the ETA and Pancho Villa II. Finally, I manage to convince him to forget the bomb and replace it with a couple of the kind of phone calls he knows how to make. Reluctantly, he promises that’s what he’ll do, but only because the explosion at the marina could come back to haunt me. Remembering a recent event, I ask him, “Pablo, have you never thought about killing another man with your fists?”

  Surprised, he asks me what I mean. I tell him how, at a recent dinner in the house of a well-known theater impresario, the boxer “Happy” Lora had asked for my phone number. I’d given him the number of the building’s concierge, so that if he called, the doormen and my chauffeur would be very impressed. With absolute delight, I add, “Now, that’s a fight the whole country would pay to see: Kid Pablo Escobar versus the challenger, Happy Lora! I think, in a twelve-round fight, the bets in favor of the world champion would be…around…a hundred to zero?”

  “Noooo, my dear, you’ve got it all wrong! It would be a hundred to zero in favor of Kid Escobar! Because…why do you think chumbimba corrida was invented?”

  We laugh, and we talk about other personalities of national public interest. He confesses that he plans to contact Fidel Castro through Gabriel García Márquez. The only expeditious way to get drugs into Florida is through Cuba, and he is willing to be more generous with Fidel than he ever was with Noriega or Ortega.

  “Pablo, trying to get a Nobel laureate in literature to help you make drug deals with Castro is like asking the painter Fernando Botero to propose a brothel business to Gorbachev! Get your head out of that cloud, my love, neither García Márquez nor Castro is going to pay you any attention, and they’re going to laugh at you. Ship your merchandise through the North Pole or Siberia, but forget about Cuba: Fidel has Guantánamo inside, and with what’s happening now with the Contras after the Sandinistas started working with you, he’s not going to risk an invasion or having the whole world accuse him of being ‘a drug trafficker tyrant’!”

  “The gringos financed the Contras with money that came from seized merchandise, did you know that? And I don’t mean coke, but crack! Now that’s an addictive drug that ends people’s lives….I’ve tried to block it, but I can’t. If that’s not a double standard, what is? Why doesn’t Nancy Reagan tell Oliver North: ‘Just say no, Ollie’? To kill communists, that guy made a deal with ‘Piña,’ convicted traffickers, and with the devil himself!”

>   I insist that the Castro idea is suicide, and I advise him to stop mixing so much politics in his business. Shrugging, he replies calmly, “And who said the president is the only option? I learned from the Mexican generals that the military doesn’t have so many scruples. And if a president won’t come to you, the generals under him will. In poor countries, every military man has his price, and that’s what the reputation of being rich is for, my love. All of them, every one, are dying to work with me…and Cuba isn’t Switzerland, is it? It’s a simple matter of logistics: if it’s not Fidel or Raúl Castro, it’s whoever’s below Fidel and Raúl. Period.”

  I try to make him see that if Castro finds out that someone in Cuba is working with Pablo Escobar, he’s capable of putting him before a firing squad:

  “And when that happens, the gringos aren’t going to send Contras to Colombia, they’ll come straight for you! Shoemaker to your shoes, Pablo—you’re not a kidnapper or a communist, but a drug trafficker. Don’t make political mistakes—you own an empire and that’s what should matter to you. Otherwise you’ll spend all your cash on wars and end up poorer than when you started. You’re lining the pockets of those Caribbean generals and dictators while you do away with anyone who stands in your way in your own country. And if you want to go down in history as an idealist, you’re doing everything backward, because ‘charity begins at home.’ ”

  “Whoever told you I wanted to go down in history as an idealist, my love? You still have no idea the kind of plans I have!”

  *

  —

  GUSTAVO GAVIRIA has asked me to come by his office to talk about a very private matter. When I arrive, he closes the door and admits that I am the only person he can trust with a secret that’s tormenting him. I imagine he’s going to talk to me about his partner’s crimes—or his liaisons dangereuses—because I know that they are seriously affecting the business’s profits.

  “I’m tired, Virginia…Pablo and the Mexican are practically living in hiding, Jorge Ochoa is in jail, and Carlos Lehder has just been extradited. All the responsibility for the organization falls on my shoulders, and sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it. Thank God, every time you come back Pablo gets reasonable for a while, but then you two separate again and he’s left with no one to rein him in, just smoking weed in that world of hit men and little girls…surrounded by a family that looks at him like he was an omnipotent God….And you know something? I’ve realized that there’s only one thing that matters in life once you have secured the future of your children and of your grandchildren, but you can’t leave the country to spend all your money. And it isn’t accumulating diamonds, it’s being happy with a beautiful woman who loves you, the way you love Pablo. That’s the only thing that can put the brakes on a man. You know what I mean…”

  I ask him who he is in love with, and he tells me it’s a TV actress I must know. He swears he needs her, to adore her, to marry her if she accepts, to be faithful to her for the rest of his life. He repeats that she’s the most beautiful creature in creation, that he’s suffering horribly at the thought that she could reject him, and that for love of her he would retire from the business to become an honest man. And he offers me whatever I want if I just convince her to travel to Medellín and introduce them, because for security reasons, he can’t leave his territory.

  “Gustavo: I don’t even want to know her name, because I wouldn’t wish what I’ve suffered over these years to any other woman. Especially not one who works in the media. I have never been a matchmaker, and you are very married. Don’t ask this of me, for the love of God—I’ve got enough on my plate with Pablo’s latest ideas. Though it pains me to the core because I care about you, I can’t do you this favor, nor do that to her.”

  He asks me what I most want in life, what my most unachievable dream is. I tell him that my life has turned into a hell of constant threats, and that I am going to confide a secret in him, too: I would like to leave the country and to go study simultaneous translation at the school in Geneva, Switzerland. If I had to stay, my goal would be to start my own cosmetics company. But Pablo is determined for me to become witness, and screenwriter or chronicler, of a long chain of events that scares me more each day.

  “If you introduce me to Ana Bolena Meza, Virginia, I promise you will never regret it. And I swear I’ll get you out of the country so you can start a new life, far away from all this. You don’t deserve what they’re doing to you because of us…and what’s coming is worse than anything you’ve seen yet…but I can’t tell you any more. Promise me you’ll try, so I can get rid of all this uncertainty that keeps me awake at night. You know I’m not promiscuous like Pablo: I am a one-woman man. I’m dying of love for that girl, and I just want to make her happy. Help me, you have such a big heart and you can’t imagine how I’m suffering!”

  He moves me so much, and I feel he’s so sincere, that I promise to think about it.

  And I go to San Francisco, to contemplate the ancient giant sequoias of Muir Woods and to see Sausalito again. I also visit that part of paradise on earth that once belonged to a certain General Vallejo, an ancestor of mine who didn’t pass a single acre of Californian land to me. When I am returning from the Wild West and boarding the plane in Miami, two federal agents stop me. They ask if I’m carrying cash, and when they show their badges, I notice that the younger one’s hand is trembling. I conclude that Pablo inspires terror even in the FBI. When I open my suitcases to unpack, I see that my entire luggage is in disarray and seems to have been meticulously searched for money. I never leave any country with more than $1,000, and I conclude that those are the things that happen when one travels a lot and tells customs agents that she’s retired because she’s sick of working.

  Some time before, Joaquín Builes’s girlfriend had called on the verge of tears to tell me that Hugo Valencia owed her more than two million dollars for jewelry, and he didn’t want to pay. She begged me to talk to him for her, saying he no longer answered her calls, but he feels deep esteem and respect for me. I had called Hugo and explained that my friend was in serious trouble with her suppliers and was appealing to his generosity and his sense of honor to send her what he owed. I hadn’t spoken with the Kid in two years, and his reaction had horrified me.

  “I can’t believe that you’re calling me to collect other people’s debts! Why don’t you call your lovers instead, shameless old bitch? That schizo Pablo Escobar or that prisoner Gilberto Rodríguez? How dare you talk to me like that?”

  “If you want people not to talk to you like this, Kid, pay your debts the way decent rich people do. And you know perfectly well I’ve never been Gilberto’s lover.”

  “Ohhh, no? Well, his wife has a marica who goes from station to station paying the journalists to say you are! Hadn’t you heard? Either you went deaf or you don’t live in Colombia!”

  After spending several minutes yelling things that not even our worst enemies would have dared to say about Pablo and me, Hugo had furiously hung up the phone. Two days later my jeweler friend had called, radiantly happy, to thank me—the Kid had just paid her one million dollars all at once. After I told her about the insults I’d had to bear in order to do her that favor, she’d replied that someone like me shouldn’t pay attention to those things, because Huguito was just a boy going through a rough patch.

  I go to Cali for the launch of a new product, and I decide to visit Clara while I’m there. Right away I see that she’s changed a lot. After listening to my story about what happened on the islands, she goes to her room, comes back with a Cartier case, opens it, and shows me a necklace and earrings of emeralds and diamonds worthy of Elizabeth Taylor. Then, with a mixture of rage and pain, she tells me in an accusatory voice, “Did you know your little Pablito chopped Hugo Valencia into pieces? Yes, the Kid, who was our friend and who bought millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry for his girlfriends! Now, Virgie, look closely at the size of these emeralds and guess who ordered them from Beatriz: it was Pablo! And guess who
they’re for? Some nobody beauty queen! That’s right, with this $250,000 parure, Pablo bought a weekend with a little whore in a tin crown! And you, the most elegant and sought-after TV star in the country, a high-society beauty who only dated nobility and multimillionaires, not only did he give you nothing, he left you without work, with everybody gossiping about you, and persecuted by death threats! Look what that lover or ex-lover of yours with the face of a bus driver gives a forgettable hooker for spending a few nights with him! What has that miserable assassin given you in five years? You who were like a queen on a pedestal? What did that butcher give you? Look at it closely: a quarter of a million dollars for an ignorant little maid who will never wear it in front of a camera or at a ball in Monte Carlo, and who will sell it in an emergency for $5,000! Look at it, Virgie, so you never forget that what Pablo Escobar likes are expensive whores from his own social class!”

  I have never asked anyone for jewels or expected them as gifts. The ones I wore on TV were costume Chanel, Valentino, or Saint Laurent; the ones I sported on magazine covers were only on loan from Beatriz. I had always thought that compared to the stingy magnates, Pablo was the most generous of men, the only lavish one, the only multimillionaire who had cared about making and seeing me happy. But the sight of those emeralds worthy of an empress and the description of their recipient, on top of what happened to the Kid and the harsh words from someone who for years had been my best friend, all wake me up from the dream I have been living in and return me to reality. I swallow my tears, tell myself that today I’ve truly reached my limit, and decide that the hour has come to follow Gloria Gaitán’s advice and look for financing for my own cosmetics company. I ask for an appointment with the man who owns half the labs in the country, who has just returned to Colombia after a prolonged stay in Spain. And he sends word that he’ll see me immediately.