The Devil to Pay Page 15

  “The modus operandi. An unannounced visit, roaring up in oversized SUVs with pumped-up motors and a small army of guards. If it’s not the president of the country, it’s King Pablo.”

  “Uh … how do I avoid meeting this man?”

  The SUVs making their way to the house had disappeared out of sight. They would get there before we would.

  “You can jump off the planet. But since he’s already here, I suggest we put a happy face on his visit.”

  “How can he be wanted by the police and still run around loose? Why don’t they arrest him?”

  Josh laughed without humor. “That’s a question asked daily in Washington and Bogotá. Brigades of Colombian federal police and army, U.S. drug agents, and now U.S. commandos would like to do just that, but they have to operate in his territory. They get no help from the locals. The local police leave him entirely alone and are almost always on his payroll. Several hundred Medellín cops who didn’t take his silver ate his lead.”

  “That’s insane; a criminal can’t just take over an area where a couple million people live.”

  “Tell that to the people of Chicago during Al Capone’s heyday. The big problem is that there is less respect in Medellín for the Bogotá crowd that runs the country than there is for Pablo, at least among the have-nots. He’s the local boy who’s made good and feeds back his success with public building projects that are easy to see.”

  “And people let him get away with murder.”

  “Literally. In Medellín and the surrounding towns, you can always tell when there’s going to be another murder committed. The police disappear off the streets. They don’t come back until it’s time to remove the body. And there’s no effort to find the killer.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to find him around here. Colombia is a wild country; all of Latin America has a history of civil wars and political violence, but Colombia takes to violence more than any of them. Are you familiar with Colombian history?”

  “I know they speak Spanish and grow coffee.”

  “Another Ugly American proud of her ignorance.”

  “Very funny. I know very little.”

  “Here’s your instant lesson in Colombian History 101. Start with the fact the place breeds outlaws, revolutionaries, and blood vendettas. It’s a land of a few very rich and an enormous number of very poor, with almost everyone having a different political opinion. Currently, there isn’t just one revolt against the government, but half a dozen. Revolutionaries have never been too good at overthrowing the government because they can’t get together and agree on anything. Including who they’re supposed to be killing.

  “The country has had a history of bloody conflict from the time it separated from Spain a couple hundred years ago, and the worst period of violence isn’t ancient history, but started following the Second World War and continued right into the mid-to-late sixties.

  “It’s called La Violencia, the violent times. It began as fighting between political parties in the forties and didn’t stop for almost twenty years, ending up with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Escobar wasn’t even born when it started, but he was in his mid-teens by the time it ended. To understand Pablo you have to realize he was a child of La Violencia, that much of his character was molded by the spectacular era.”

  “What made it so spectacular?”

  “Savage, brutal, vindictive, uncontrolled violence—in a country where the people involved were mostly educated and affluent. Unimaginable cruelty was the name of the game—torture, mutilation, even rape and murder of innocent family members.”

  “All this by civilized people.”

  “All this in the world’s most beautiful country, populated by the nicest people I’ve ever met. And Pablo Escobar is a good example. He’s known for being polite, courteous, even charming. He wasn’t brought up in poverty. His mother’s a schoolteacher and his father owns a small piece of land, making them sort of lower-middle-class types.

  “But he’s still a product of La Violencia. I suppose when you grow up in a country where the leaders who are sworn to uphold the law in turn practice brutality that would have made some of Hitler’s and Stalin’s henchmen shudder, you get immune to it. Violence becomes another way of life, a negotiating point in making a deal.”

  “When did he turn bad?”

  “He started in crime as a teenager, with petty thefts and street hustling. He graduated into robbing banks and running a chop shop for a large-scale car theft ring. There’s no honor among thieves, and Pablo got an early start in violence by dealing swiftly and lethally with anyone who screwed him. He has nerves of steel and is completely without a conscience. Early on, he ventured into kidnapping, sometimes murdering the victim even when the ransom was paid if he didn’t like the person or the money was paid too slowly. Sometimes the victim’s enemy put up more to have him killed than the ransom.”

  “Pablo sounds charming, a real Robin Hood type.”

  “It gets worse. He entered the cocaine business as a small-timer. But he quickly went right to the top—he promoted himself in narco-business by murdering the guy who ran much of the stuff in the Medellín area. Simply killed him and announced he was the new boss. He was under thirty at the time. Hell, he’s only in his early forties now.”

  “He simply took over a crime empire that easily?”

  “It wasn’t an empire ten or fifteen years ago. Annual narco-trafficking in those days was in the hundreds of kilos—today, it’s in the hundreds of tons. He was a prime mover turning it into a billion-dollar industry. And spending it, too. He has a preference for palatial estates, expensive cars, beautiful women—preferably young teens.…” He grinned at the look I gave him.

  “He also plays the grandee. He’s built housing for the poor, a park and soccer field, things that are highly visible. He tosses bones to the poor and they think he really is Robin Hood. I’ve heard him called El Padrino, the Godfather, and El Beneficiador, the Benefactor. Forbes lists him as one of the ten richest people in the world.”

  “And he does it by just being brutal.”

  “At his level, it goes beyond simply being a thug. Stalin, Hitler, Mafia crime bosses, they all share a common trait—a complete lack of conscience and the willingness to spill the blood of anyone, any time they believe they are threatened or even opposed. They act quickly and savagely to protect their power.

  “Pablo has that same ruthless mentality. If he wasn’t rich and successful, we would call him a serial killer in the sense that he kills a certain type of person—people who oppose him. And he’ll kill your wife, children, and parents, too, if he can’t find you or if that’s the best kind of method of persuasion. Hell, he’d kill his own wife and kids if they got in his way. You have to comprehend the most important thing about him—he strikes terror in violent criminals who strike terror in the rest of us.”

  “Plata o plomo,” I added.

  “Yeah, that’s what he offers judges and the police—take his money or his bullets. And he absolutely means it. He kills judges and police officers like we squash bugs. He’s killed some of the country’s top policemen and judges, not to mention the minister of justice and presidential candidates. He arranged to have a passenger airliner blown out of the sky because he thought a candidate adverse to his interests was on it.”

  I had mentioned that fact to my handsome friend on the plane from Panama City to Bogotá. I decided to see if Josh knew the man. “Do you know Ramon Alavar?”

  “Alavar?” He shrugged. “I’ve heard the name.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Of course. He has something to do with coffee.”

  “And Pablo Escobar?”

  “I don’t know, Pablo has something to do with everything in the region, including coffee, so he and Alavar could have a connection. Anyway, Pablo learned the extended family routine from La Violencia—when bribes or threats don’t work with a judge or police official, you send a murder squad t
o burn down his house, murder his kids, and rape his wife. If the official’s been real tough, you rape and murder them with the guy watching.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I told you, he’s not in Colombia, though there’s divine intervention of a sort. An outfit called Los Pepes claims to be composed of surviving victims and families of victims of Pablo’s crimes. It’s a murder squad, probably with unofficial-official support. They’ve gone after Pablo with the same sort of savage violence he made famous as a narco-terrorist. They’ve killed members of his family, friends, bankers, business associates, and lawyers. While this was going on, in the States millions of dollars of his assets in real estate are being confiscated. The idea is to follow the money, tie up his billions, and isolate him from the support of his followers.”

  “Sounds like an old-fashioned Argentine-type death squad.”

  “That and a Charles Bronson Death Wish vigilante group. They’ve offered a big reward for Pablo’s hide, over six million, but it’s a dead man’s gambit, because Pablo never goes anywhere without a small army of bodyguards. And he changes those constantly.”

  I took a deep breath.

  We were in sight of the house. A group of men had exited the cars and were in front of the house talking to Cesar and Lily.

  The thought occurred to me that Josh seemed to know a lot about Pablo Escobar, but it could have just been the fascination of the macabre.

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Yeah, don’t piss him off. His favorite method of killing people is to hang them upside down and burn them—slowly.”

  My heart starting racing, not because of what Josh had just said but because I saw the familiar face.

  Scar, my friend from Seattle.

  24

  It was easy to pick out which of the visitors was Pablo Escobar—he was the only one who looked calm and relaxed. Everyone else around him, from his bodyguards to Cesar, had a nervous edge. Only Lily managed to maintain her sphinxlike inscrutability.

  Even though I had been told that the man orders murders with the sort of ease most of us order pizzas, he was not a guy that stood out, at least not in his appearance. With a thick bushy black mustache, short curly black hair, jowls starting to sag, and his belly drooping over his belt—from carrying too much weight—he reminded me a little bit of Stalin. I suspect the image had been planted in my mind by Josh’s comments about bloody dictators.

  If I were a contestant on a TV game show and had to guess Escobar’s occupation, I’d have answered “dentist.” Dentists tend to be the middle-of-the-road types—they lack the predatory look of trial lawyers, the smug satisfaction of CPAs that they control your money, and the arrogance of medical doctors that let you know that your life is in their hands.

  Scar gave me an angry glare as I came up to the group. He looked like an annoyed crow that couldn’t quite get its beak on a piece of roadkill.

  Pablo laughed. “I do not need to be introduced to this lovely senorita. Obviously, she is the one who has left Jorge eating her dust as she roared out of Seattle and Medellín.”

  Escobar was a charming bastard. And Scar had a name, Jorge—George in English. Js sounded like hs in Spanish, so his name was pronounced something like “whore-hey.” I preferred “Scar.”

  I smiled and offered my hand. “And you must be Don Pablo. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  He shook hands and gave me a polite little bow of his head. “And how did you know who I am, senorita?”

  “You’re the only one who isn’t wetting his pants.”

  He tried to smother a laugher but gave up the ghost, throwing back his head with a good guffaw.

  “Jorge, I can see why this one was too tricky for you.” He shook his finger at me like a schoolteacher gently reprimanding a student. “But you must not be tricky with me, eh, senorita?”

  I gave him a generous smile. I almost popped out with, What will you do? Have me murdered? but put a brake on my tongue before it slipped out.

  Josh answered before I was able to say anything. “Don Pablo, I have a small, trivial gift for you.” He pulled the small black-velvet pouch out of his coat pocket that had contained the stone he’d given me earlier and shook out a brilliant green gem.

  “A rare and beautiful flawless emerald,” he told Escobar. “To be worn by one who is also flawless.”

  Josh was certainly silver-tongued when he wanted to be. I was only worth a little chip of flawed emerald, but the world’s most dangerous killer got nothing but the best.

  “Gracias, amigo,” Escobar said. “But my friend, I have told you before, you are wasting your time smuggling these stones. You can make more money on cocaine than emeralds. When you are ready, I will finance your first shipment.”

  “Cocaine is too dangerous a game for me. No one gets too excited about emeralds, not even the customs people.”

  “I hope you have made a fine gift of a priceless gem for this beautiful woman.” Escobar grinned at me. “I admire a woman who is fast on her feet, who travels light and changes planes on a whim. I am a man who also has to be fast. Maybe I should hire you to keep me one step ahead of the death squads that want my blood, eh?”

  I smiled. And wondered what the pay would be.…

  He shook his finger again. “They have brought in a norteamericano death squad to kill me, something called Delta Force.” He looked around at his entourage. They all seemed to snap to attention. “Amigos, I ask you, do I look like a man who deserves to die?”

  There was a universal disclaimer and sympathetic murmurings of, “No, Don Pablo.”

  I just smiled again, remembering the taxi driver’s comment that Escobar had men killed if they looked at him the wrong way.

  He sighed. “I could go live on the French Riviera in great comfort, but here I am, looking after the poor people, the people of the ghettos and the poor farmers. It is for them that I risk my life.”

  I was too scared to laugh.

  “Now that Don Carlos is no longer with us, it is up to me to ensure that his colonos still have a patrón, no?”

  I guess that was his way of telling me that he had staked a claim on my plantation.

  * * *

  LUNCH WAS SERVED in the atrium around a large table. Everyone except Escobar and Scar seemed about as cheerful as immediate family at a wake.

  Cesar was obviously worried and uneasy with Escobar’s presence. His nervousness drove up my fear level because he was the one who’d been worrying me up to now. What he was up to with Escobar certainly wasn’t making him a happy camper at the moment. It made me suddenly realize that I might be giving Cesar too much credit for being the lynchpin behind blowing up my business with me in it. Maybe he was just a whipping boy for the man who frightened the murderers who scared the rest of us. Josh had intimated that.

  Oh, what tangled webs we get ourselves into just by living and breathing. Like a genetic defect passed on by my parents, it seemed like I was paying for their prides and passions. Why couldn’t my mother have gotten pregnant by a rich old man in Boston who left her beaucoup bucks instead of a coffee grower in coco loco land?

  Lily’s face was still unreadable, but her eyes weren’t. She was meeting Escobar’s blunt stare with bedroom eyes. I wondered if she was calculating how much a billion dollars was in Chinese yuan.

  Dr. Soong and Dr. Sanchez joined us for lunch. Soong buried his head in food and drink and paid no attention to any of us. Sanchez treated Escobar with the cautious respect and toadiness a mass murderer deserves.

  It was obvious that everyone at the table knew something that I didn’t know. There was a connection between everyone at the table and Escobar. I was reasonably certain that even Josh fitted somewhere into the scenario, too. The boyish emerald smuggler routine was too innocuous to be true.

  Small talk about the weather, coffee prices, politics, and other mindless subjects went on for about an hour. As the dishes were being cleared by women at Juana’s direction, Josh gave me a nod. “Com’on, let
me show you the pond on top of the falls.”

  When we were out of their earshot I asked him, “You were told to take me away, weren’t you?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Why is it every time you move your lips a lie slips out?”

  “I wasn’t told. Pablo gave me a meaningful look and jerked his head in your direction.”

  “In other words, it was time for me to leave so the others could talk business. What are they going to talk about? How they’re going to steal the plantation from me? Or maybe how they’ll murder me to get it?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I doubt they’re talking about that.”

  “Which? The stealing or the murder?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Halfway up the hill I stopped and glared at Josh. “This is insane. That man’s a criminal, we should call the police. You said everyone’s looking for him; we just tell them that he’s here.”

  “Shhh, don’t say anything like that out loud, don’t even think it. He’d disappear long before they got here and leave behind a couple dozen bodies, with ours in pieces.”

  “It doesn’t sound to me like the Colombian authorities really want to find him.”

  “There have been accusations from the State Department that the Colombians don’t try hard enough. Deliberately. But the truth is, he’s just been more clever and vicious than them. He has more authority in this region than the government does.”

  “I don’t get it; why does he need this plantation for his cocaine crop? There must be a thousand places like it.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what Pablo’s up to; he may have just dropped by because he was in the area.”

  “In a pig’s eye. That bastard is after the plantation—over my dead body, if necessary. He wants to grow cocaine on it.”

  “No, for sure, he doesn’t. Pablo’s not in the business of growing the coca plant. You don’t understand cocaine trafficking. There’s a million people in this country and the rest of South America growing it, mostly small farmers. There isn’t a lot of money in growing the stuff. The big money, the cartel billions, comes from processing and smuggling it.