Narcos

by Jeff Mariotte

  Then he saw the woman. On her knees in the filthy alley, in front of the man, her head bobbing. He couldn’t be sure it was the one from the hallway, but in the dim light, it looked like her. So she’d found someone to supply her needs after all.

  He turned away, disgusted with himself and the entire human race. He roamed the parking lot until he found the white limo, and the driver let him inside. He sank into the rich leather seats. This whole thing—the trip, the luxurious limousine, the over-the-top hotel room—had been paid for by cocaine money.

  He’d never seen so much of it in just a few minutes. Less than an hour, and he had encountered seemingly dozens of people using it, or looking for more.

  The luxury? The limousines and hotel rooms, the paychecks and bonuses he got from Don Pablo? He liked those. He was making more money every month than his parents had in their entire lives. He was living in a manner he would never have believed. Sure, he’d had to rearrange his principles, adjust his moral code. But that had happened one step at a time, little by little. He had seen it happening, and made the choice at each step.

  This, though—it hit him like a club to the head. He’d thought that cocaine pumped people up, helped them function, made them feel more confident and alive. And maybe it did that. But its effects were more extreme than that, more pernicious, and he hadn’t understood that until tonight. He had thought there was something glamorous about it. That glamor was gone.

  He was still sitting there when the others came out of the club. Six women came with them. They were uniformly gorgeous, but “women” was a stretch in some cases; although he understood that the legal age to be in the club was twenty-one, two of them looked as young as fifteen or sixteen. Those two flanked Escobar when he took his seat, the others clung to La Quica, Poison, Sure Shot, and Jairo. Trigger looked dejected.

  “We wondered where you were, Jaguar,” Escobar said.

  “I had a headache,” Aguilar said. “The loud music, the smoke—I had to get out.”

  “Sorry you didn’t get a date. Maybe you guys can share yours with Jaguar and Trigger.”

  Poison squeezed the sumptuous breasts of his woman. “Sure,” he said. “There’s plenty to go around.”

  Aguilar didn’t want to take advantage of that offer, but also didn’t want to say so here, in front of everyone. If the offer was made later, in private, he would decline. He had too much to think about; having sex with Poison’s playmate, especially after Poison had already taken his turn, was a giant step too far.

  * * *

  Aguilar grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the bar and took it into his room. There, he locked the door and turned on the TV to drown out the sounds that he was already hearing—laughter, squeals, slaps—and those that would doubtless follow soon. He undressed and climbed into the bed, which was more comfortable than any he’d ever been in, and drank until he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

  * * *

  He didn’t stir until a loud banging on his door woke him. Sunlight streamed in through the windows; he’d forgotten to close the curtains. Groggy, his stomach turning flips, he staggered to the door.

  “What is it?”

  “Open up.” The voice was Jairo’s. Aguilar braced himself against the jamb and cracked the door.

  “What’s up?”

  “Get some clothes on,” Jairo said. “Take a quick shower if you have to. There’s coffee and breakfast in the dining room, and we have a meeting in an hour.”

  “A meeting? With who?”

  “Caldwell.”

  “What? Where?”

  “He has an apartment here. Come on, get busy. We don’t want to be late.”

  “Are your whores gone?”

  “They weren’t whores,” Jairo said. “Too bad you missed all the fun.”

  “I’ll be out in a little while,” Aguilar said. He closed the door, and heard Jairo walk away.

  In the shower, he wondered how the meeting would go. He liked Caldwell, and the guy had always been friendly to him. He hoped there was a good explanation for the missing product. They could settle this quickly, maybe spend some more time on the beach, and go home.

  Caldwell’s apartment was on the third floor of an Art Deco building in South Beach. The building was pink, the apartment huge, open, and sun-splashed, with a view onto Ocean Drive and the beach beyond. Caldwell had a telescope on the balcony, aimed down toward the beach instead of up at the stars.

  He opened the door with a grin, and greeted Aguilar, Jairo, and Poison with hugs and back-slaps. He wore jeans, a silk T-shirt, and sandals. “It’s great to see you guys,” he said in Spanish. “I hope you’re having a good time here.”

  “Great time,” Poison said. “Miami women are delicious.”

  “Yes, they are,” Caldwell said. He ushered the visitors into plush leather chairs arranged around a glass-topped coffee table, and took a seat in one on the end. “I love visiting Colombia, but I have to say, Miami has its advantages.”

  “Don Pablo appreciates the years you’ve put in working with him here. You’ve made him a lot of money.”

  “He’s done the same for me. I love Pablo.”

  “He loves you,” Poison said. On the way over, they’d decided that Poison would be their primary spokesperson, with the others chiming in only as necessary. Everybody was strapped, and they had to assume that Caldwell was, too, and probably also had guns hidden around the apartment. “But he’s disappointed. You know why we’re here.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. An unfortunate situation.”

  “Yes,” Poison agreed. “That’s a lot of product to misplace.”

  “It wasn’t misplaced, man. It was seized. Confiscated.”

  “That’s a lot of product to be seized, then. Tell us what happened. Why was that much all together in one place?”

  Caldwell sucked in a deep breath, blew it out. “You guys need a drink or anything?”

  “No,” Poison said. “Let’s just talk.”

  “Okay. Here’s the deal. I have great contacts in Miami, as you know. I’ve moved literally tons of product for Pablo here. But it’s a finite market, you see what I mean? Pablo keeps sending more and more here, and Lion and I have to figure out how to unload it. But there are only so many dealers we can work with. We have to stick with people we know and trust, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “So a guy I knew here who moved to Kentucky—you know where that is, couple states north of the Florida Panhandle?”

  “I know where Kentucky is,” Poison said. Aguilar doubted that he did. Aguilar had completed secondary school, and even he had only the vaguest sense of U.S. geography.

  “Okay, cool. So this guy says he’s trying to meet a strong demand for product in Kentucky, and could I hook him up? I thought, this will work. I can provide him with a good-sized supply to get started, and that way I’d expand my marketplace outside of Miami. If this guy can move enough in Kentucky and maybe shift into some other states in that area, then I can keep taking in whatever Pablo sends and increase everybody’s profits.”

  “That makes sense,” Poison said. “So what went wrong?”

  “What went wrong was that my buddy fucked me over,” Caldwell said. “Turned out he’d gone over to the cops. He was wearing a wire, and he’d tipped off Vice to our meet. I showed up with the hundred and twenty kilos he asked for, and he showed up with the money. But as soon as the cash changed hands, cops swarmed in.”

  “And they grabbed the product and the money?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Then how did you get away?”

  “I got lucky as hell,” Caldwell said. “I saw them coming before they reached me. We’d met in a swampy area, where I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed. When I saw the cops, I ran—and accidentally ran straight into the swamp. Well, you can’t really run in that kind of place, but I figured, what the hell, I’m in it now. So I swam. I just lit out for open water. I know I swam right past an alligator—we startled the hell out of each other—and p
robably a few water moccasins. But like I said, I got lucky. The cops were splashing around looking for me, but I was mostly underwater. Then they saw that big fucking gator and I guess they thought I couldn’t have gone that way. So they started looking in other directions, and I kept going until I hit dry land. Then I hitched a ride back to the city with a trucker, and here I am.”

  “Incredible story,” Poison said.

  “Yeah. Sometimes the most incredible ones are true. That’s what this one was.”

  “Did you get in touch with your Kentucky friend again?”

  “Hell no. I don’t want to give him another shot at me. If I call him or write to him, he’ll probably turn that over to Vice or DEA. That dude is dead to me.”

  “And you were alone when you met him?”

  “Of course. I trusted the guy. I knew he wouldn’t try to rip me off. I just didn’t think he’d ever cooperate with the law.”

  “So there’s nobody who can back up your story?”

  Caldwell’s eyes started darting around from one person to another. “I don’t know why I would need anyone to back me up. I’ve never lied to Pablo. I’ve been a loyal soldier, and I’ve made him a shitload of money. Why would I need a witness? What are we doing here? Is this a friendly visit, or what?”

  Aguilar had hoped it would be a friendly visit, but it wasn’t hard to see the problems with his story. No witnesses. A major police operation and a huge seizure that hadn’t been reported to the press. And a very valuable supply of product, disappeared.

  No, he didn’t see how things were going to stay friendly. He could see from Poison’s posture, upright in the chair, hands on his knees, muscles tensed, that Poison didn’t, either.

  “It was,” Poison said. “But I think you know how this sounds. You’re going to have to come with us, and explain things to Don Pablo in person.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Caldwell answered. “Glad to. At your hotel? Where you at?”

  “Not at the hotel,” Poison said. “At a safe house we have in town. It’s cool, he just wants to hear it from you.”

  Caldwell licked his lips. He looked nervous.

  Aguilar didn’t blame him.

  A safe house?

  That didn’t sound good at all.

  29

  THE SAFE HOUSE was at the end of a cul-de-sac in a rural neighborhood. They weren’t too far from the city center, and Aguilar was surprised by how quickly they had moved from an urban landscape to one with thick forest and lots of green foliage. The house was surrounded by tall trees, dripping with moss. The closest other house was some distance away, and had a FOR SALE sign out front. It looked abandoned.

  So did the safe house, although as they approached it, Aguilar saw that the door was sturdy and there were multiple locks on it. From the street, a passerby would think nobody lived there, but anyone trying to break in would have more trouble than he expected.

  The exterior was stucco, like so many houses in Colombia. It had been painted yellow, but that had faded almost to white in some places, and moss or mold had darkened the walls near the bottom. The roof was flat, and tree branches stretched out over it like friendly arms offering shade.

  Behind the wheel, Jairo parked in the cracked, weed-choked driveway, and they walked to the front door. It opened before they reached it, and Trigger stood inside with an AK-47. Apparently Lion had indeed been able to provide the heavier firepower he’d hinted at.

  “He cool?” Trigger asked.

  “We frisked him,” Poison assured him.

  Aguilar nodded to Trigger as he passed. Nobody else spoke until they got into the house’s living room. Mold had seeped in here, too, drawing black dots and streaks on the walls. The smell was musty, unhealthy. But the sparse furnishings looked clean enough. Escobar sat in one of the chairs, looking none the worse for wear for his undoubtedly busy night with the two young women.

  He didn’t get up when Caldwell walked in, with Poison, Aguilar, and Jairo behind him. Aguilar considered that a pointed statement in itself.

  “Kyle,” he said. There was no expression in his voice, none on his face.

  “Pablo,” Kyle said, sounding much more friendly. He moved forward, hand extended. Escobar’s hands remained folded over his stomach. Caldwell got the message and drew his hand back.

  “It’s like that, huh?” Caldwell said.

  “Sit, Kyle.”

  Kyle sat in the other chair. The four sicarios remained standing. Aguilar wondered where La Quica was, but didn’t ask.

  “I told you what happened when I called,” Caldwell said.

  “You did.”

  “And I told these guys today. Didn’t I, Poison?”

  “He did,” Poison said.

  “Look, I know it sucks,” Caldwell said. “Believe me, it sucks for me, too. I can’t afford eight million dollars, but I know that’s what I owe you.”

  “Closer to eight and a half,” Escobar said.

  “But let’s not quibble.”

  “I’m rounding,” Caldwell said. “Point is, you can absorb that kind of loss. I can’t.”

  “And yet, you’re the one who lost the product.”

  “I am. I freely admit that. Maybe I can spend a few hundred thousand and see if I can get it back from an evidence warehouse somewhere.”

  “But you haven’t done that yet,” Escobar said.

  “I didn’t know you’d want me to.”

  “I don’t like losing product,” Escobar said. “More than that, I don’t like being lied to. And I hate being stolen from.”

  “Pablo, if I stole it, I’d have sold it. Then I’d have the money, and I’d be able to pay you. I’d be stupid not to.”

  “Unless you already spent it. Or lost it gambling. Or promised it to someone you fear more than you fear me.”

  Caldwell held his hands out, palms facing Escobar. “Pablo, there’s nobody. No one I respect more than you. It’s not about fear, it’s about respect and a long-time, profitable partnership.”

  “I’m curious about something,” Escobar said.

  Caldwell lowered his hands, seemingly glad for the change of subject. “What?”

  “Why wouldn’t the Miami police have publicized a seizure of this size? I’ve seen pictures in the newspapers when they get their hands on three or four kilos. This would have been international news.”

  “I’ve been wondering that very thing,” Caldwell said. “I just can’t figure it out. After you asked me on the phone, I talked to the reporter for the Herald who covers that kind of thing.”

  “Mr. Arnold?” Escobar asked.

  “Right. Harry Arnold.”

  “And what did Mr. Arnold say?”

  “He told me it’s going to run in the next few days. Like, today, tomorrow. By the end of the week, anyway.”

  “Harry Arnold told you that?”

  “That’s right.”

  Escobar was quiet for a full minute. “That’s funny,” he said.

  “What’s funny?”

  Finally, Escobar heaved himself from his chair. Floorboards squeaked under his feet. “Come with me.”

  “Yeah,” Caldwell said. Flop sweat broke out on his brow, and dark circles had formed under the pits of his silk T-shirt. “Sure.”

  Escobar led the way out of the living room and down a hallway toward the back of the house.

  At the end of the hallway was a closed door. As they approached, it swung open, and La Quica stood there. He had an AK-47 of his own. Sunlight glowed from inside the room.

  “Hey,” La Quica said.

  “Hey, La Quica,” Caldwell said.

  Escobar stopped and stepped to the side of the door. He gestured Caldwell inside. “After you.”

  “You sure?” Caldwell asked.

  “Of course.”

  La Quica moved out of the way and Caldwell went into the room.

  He paused just inside the door and made a noise deep in his throat. Aguilar thought he was going to be sick.

  “Go on,” Escobar said. �
�Say hello to Mr. Arnold.”

  A prod from La Quica’s gun barrel moved Caldwell farther into the room. The others crowded in behind him.

  On his side, on the room’s sole piece of furniture—a bed—lay a man, or what was left of one. His head had been wrapped with duct tape, discolored by blood that had seeped through the edges or run out the holes left for him to breathe through. Where there was no tape—above the forehead to his crown and around the ears—his flesh was swollen and discolored, so what should have been a head was shaped more like an oddly distended melon.

  The man’s hands had been taped together behind his back, and from the looks of his arms, they’d been dislocated at the shoulders. He was naked, and nearly every centimeter of his torso was bloody and bruised. His genitals had been mangled. His legs were similarly bruised.

  The man didn’t move, and Aguilar realized that he was dead.

  Caldwell breathed heavily, almost panting. He was trembling so hard that Aguilar could feel the floor shake.

  “This is the Harry Arnold you were talking about, yes?” Escobar asked. “Of the Miami Herald?”

  Caldwell didn’t respond.

  La Quica shoved the barrel of his AK into Caldwell’s kidneys, hard.

  “Don Pablo asked you a question, puta.”

  “I can’t see his f-f-face,” Caldwell managed at last. “B-but it could be him.”

  “It’s him. He told me he hadn’t heard about any such seizure,” Escobar said. “I asked him about you, specifically. He said he had heard of you, but had never spoken to you.”

  He paused, as if waiting for a response. Caldwell stood there, shaking, but didn’t answer.

  “By the end,” Escobar added, “I believed him. He had no more reason to lie. You, on the other hand… Kyle, I think you’re lying to me. And I hate it when people lie to me.”

  “P-Pablo, n-n-no!” Caldwell said. “I love you, man. I would never lie to you. We’ve made so much money for each other. You can’t—You can’t let this…”