The Devil to Pay Page 8

  I knew that there were two main strains of coffee beans, Arabica and Robusta, and that the Arabica bean was considered the milder and better tasting of the two. It was the only coffee I sold in my store. The Robusta was a cheaper variety with a heavier taste and more caffeine. But I pretended complete ignorance—which wasn’t difficult. I knew plenty about selling coffee to consumers, but nothing about growing it.

  “Are you going directly to your uncle’s plantation from the airport?”

  “No, he won’t be there. I’m going to spend a few days in Bogotá before seeing my uncle.” That seemed like a good bet; otherwise it would be an invitation for Ramon to hang around with me at the airport to meet my uncle “the cafetero.”

  “Where will you be staying in Bogotá?”

  I hadn’t picked a place yet. “I’m playing it by ear. Sometimes you can get the best deal by talking to a taxi driver.”

  He shook his head. “You are truly an innocent abroad. You are arriving in what you call the most dangerous city in the world and you don’t even have a hotel reservation.” He raised those beautiful eyebrows. “Senorita, I must take you under my wing and protect you. You cannot trust taxi drivers—or hotel staff. While most murders arise from drug trafficking, it is considered open season on tourists at all times. My car and driver will meet the plane. I will take you to a safe hotel and see to it that they understand you are under my protection. Then I will escort you to the finest restaurant in the city and introduce you to the wines and foods of the greatest city in the world.”

  He leaned closer to me. The scent of his masculine cologne filled my nostrils.

  I admit that I have always had a weakness for hot-blooded men. I hated men whose first love was their car, their muscles, or their sports team. Give me a man anytime who wants to make mad, passionate love.

  “I have a hacienda in the Llanos. Perhaps when you tire of coffee trees, you will honor me with a visit to my home. I will show you the charming culture of Old Colombia.”

  “That sounds interesting.” I gave the standard cocktail-party inane reply to almost anything, but I had to keep from drooling at the idea of having this beautiful man sweep me off my feet and onto his white charger, taking me to his hacienda as we rode off into the sunset. God, I’d never met anyone who had a hacienda.

  His knee brushed against mine ever so slightly and excitement again raced through my body. I suddenly found myself wishing he would make mad, passionate love to me.

  I pulled my blanket up to my neck and closed my eyes, and wondered if I had hit the jackpot or what. I needed a guide and protector and Ramon Alavar was a godsend.

  Maybe he was so filthy rich, he could buy me out of my problems in Seattle.

  Now that was a pleasant thought, meeting a sexy guy who falls madly in love with me and has all my problems go away with a wave of his checkbook. It’s happened to other women. Like winning the lottery—

  Damn, I immediately wondered what the snake was, that serpent who always shows up in paradise to take away all the fun. I gave him a sideways glance—Ramon had to be for real; he was too perfect to come with a snake attached.

  * * *

  A LITTLE LATER, as I was flying miles high over Colombia, it suddenly dawned on me why he had given me an odd look after I told him my uncle’s name was Juan Valdez. I realized with horror and embarrassment why the name had leaped off my tongue so easily.

  “Juan Valdez” was the name of the fictional coffee grower used in Colombian coffee TV and print advertising. His face, poncho, wide-brimmed hat, and donkey with sacks of coffee beans aboard was beamed all over the world by the Colombian coffee industry.

  It was about as clever as telling someone in Virginia that my uncle was the Marlboro Man.

  Shit.

  12

  I woke up when the pilot announced we would be landing in thirty minutes. I suddenly realized my head had been leaning against Ramon’s shoulder.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to impose on you,” I told him as I straightened myself back in my seat. “I guess I slept most of the way.”

  “I didn’t mind at all. I’m glad my shoulder was available.”

  His locked his dreamy green eyes into mine and I felt like a lovesick teenager. For some reason, this guy sent shivers up my body whenever he gave me a lingering look. I looked down and pretended to check my seat belt. It was fastened tight.

  Maybe I was just horny. I hadn’t had any sexual relations with a guy for weeks now; no, when I thought about it, it was actually more like months. Was I that preoccupied with my café? The days seemed to quickly turn into weeks and then into months. Some days were so exhausting that I just fell straight into bed.

  “If I may give you another word of advice. Bogotá is over a mile and a half high, over eight thousand feet. Don’t exert yourself too much until you get used to the altitude. My driver will take care of your luggage.”

  “Actually, I don’t have any luggage, just a small carry-on.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You are the first woman I’ve met that travels so light.”

  “Well, it, uh, gives me an excuse to shop; you know, I’ve nothing to wear so I have to buy something.”

  “Excellent. Bogotá is a world-class city. If you don’t mind, I will be happy to escort you to the best shops.”

  I couldn’t afford to buy anything at the best shops, but I had a suspicion that Senor Alavar was the kind of man who wouldn’t let a woman pay for anything. At least that was the image I had conjured up.

  I looked out the plane and could see the green and sometimes snow-covered Andes mountains below, with the ranges divided by deep, narrow depressions. The scenery was beautiful.

  “Most of our people live in cities,” he said, “and most of the large cities are found in the valleys and along the sides of our great Andes mountain ranges. We also have jungles and great plains.”

  Bogotá was stunning from the air, sprawling between mountains and neatly laid out in grid patterns.

  “Despite the fact we are near the equator, we have three climates,” Ramon said. “The weather depends on how high one lives. At the lower altitudes, it’s very hot and wet, a torrid zone that includes rain forests. When you get higher, what we call tierra del café, the moderate mid-region of the mountainsides where coffee is grown, the weather is very mild year-round and has moderate rain. The upper region below the snow line is the tierra fria, the cold zone. That’s where Bogotá is, at an elevation of almost nine thousand feet, nearly twice as high as your Denver, but not so cold. You should find the temperature pleasant, cool, but milder than Seattle.”

  I leaned back and looked out the window, a disturbing question suddenly buzzing in my head.

  Had I told him I was from Seattle?

  I couldn’t remember. I didn’t think I had, but I had been cozying up to him—who knows what I said. I also had to wonder whether Seattle, like Denver, was just an offhanded remark.

  I shook off the suspicion, certain I had gotten out of Seattle too fast and clever for anyone to have followed me. I’d met this man in an airport—how would anyone know that I’d bought a ticket in Cancun for Panama City and the next one for Bogotá?

  Besides, there was no chance this rich, sexy man who stroked my feminine fires—and ego—could possibly be involved in the insanity that had gripped my life.

  I had left all that back in Seattle. It was a new day, a new country, new friends. Ramon was going to be a lifesaver.

  I’d bet my life on it.

  * * *

  RAMON FLASHED HIS official identification at the customs official. My passport was stamped without formality, not even a question or a peek into my bag. We were escorted the rest of the way through customs and into the baggage claims area.

  He grinned when he saw the surprised expression on my face.

  “Yes, my position provides some privileges, but in truth, the customs people are not worried about someone smuggling something into the country,” he said.

  When we ca
me out into the crowded baggage area, his driver was waiting to get Ramon’s luggage.

  Ramon pointed out his black Mercedes limo at the curb, visible through the large plate glass window. “As soon as my luggage arrives, we can be on our way. Why don’t you give Rafael your bag so he can put it in the limo?”

  “I’ll need it for a moment; I need to visit the ladies’ room.”

  I used the excuse because the tiny mirror in the airplane didn’t give me a chance to get a good look at the condition of my makeup and hair. After I brushed my hair and added a little blush to my cheeks, I went back to the baggage claims area.

  Rafael, the driver, was still there, his back to me as he waited for Ramon’s luggage to come down the rotating carousel. Through the big window, I spotted Ramon standing by the limo talking to a man.

  I stopped in my tracks and froze.

  The man was Scar, the menacing character who had insisted I sell him my coffee plantation.

  I spun on my heel and went the opposite direction, back into the terminal. I walked fast and aimlessly, just getting distance between myself and whatever plots or conspiracies were being hatched at the limousine back at the curb.

  Fortunately my feet knew exactly what to do, because my brain had frozen. When my senses snapped back to life, panic set in.

  How in God’s name could I have been tracked from Seattle to San Fran, from Cancun to Panama City, and have that ominous bastard waiting for me like a vulture ready to rip out my liver? Only governments had the authority to get information from airlines. How could—

  Stupid me—this was Colombia. As Ramon said, the country didn’t operate exactly like the States. A little money passed hands and someone at an airport tracked my itinerary.

  I had come thousands of miles to get away from my troubles in Seattle and one of them was waiting for me.

  So much for Ramon being my knight in shining armor. The fact that a high official with the Colombian coffee ministry sat down next to me on the plane was too much of a coincidence; he was just too perfect and sexy for me to see it. What had that flight attendant said to him? He’d just flown in from Bogotá—and had gotten on a return flight without having even left the airport.

  I should have known he was too good to be true. And that I wasn’t beautiful enough for a rich, handsome man to fall for me at first sight. Female flight attendants probably papered him with their phone numbers as he left planes.

  But what Ramon and Scar were up to was beyond me. There was one possibility that screamed at me: They wanted to steal my inheritance for a pittance. It was the obvious motive for Scar’s offer of ten thousand dollars in Seattle. Ramon’s connection with the coffee industry meant he probably knew exactly what Carlos Castillo’s plantation was worth. For the trouble Ramon and Scar were going through to put one over on me, the plantation had to be worth plenty.

  What did they plan to do with me once they had me in the limo or wherever they planned to take me? Have me sign a purchase and sale agreement in blood? I caught myself looking over my shoulder for Ramon or Scar. I didn’t see them.

  I went up an escalator and kept walking, aimlessly putting distance between me and the men waiting for me outside. No more than a minute had passed; they probably weren’t hunting for me—yet. The pleasant glow I had been experiencing at the thought of a passionate evening with a good-looking man had been replaced by an icy chill of fear and a frosting of red-hot anger. I was getting tired of being a punching bag.

  Christ, what had I done to deserve all the hell and damnation that had suddenly exploded under my feet? I shook my head and kept my wobbly knees under me and my frantic feet moving. I just didn’t understand it—my business gets blown up, the police think I’m a murderer, a strange inheritance turns into an international intrigue … my karma seemed to have gotten infected by something akin to those computer viruses that I’ve read about.

  I passed a flight monitor displaying the current flights that were arriving and departing. A flight was leaving for Medellín in thirty minutes. Without a moment’s hesitation, I hurriedly purchased a ticket and boarded the plane. I was the last person on board—my modus operandi, as they say in crime movies.

  As we took off, Ramon was probably wondering whether I had been flushed down the toilet. Or worse, whether I had been kidnapped—by someone else.

  COCO LOCO LAND

  Colombia is currently the most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere, and perhaps the world.…

  If you travel to Colombia, you will be the target of thieves, kidnappers and murderers.… Civilians and soldiers are routinely stopped at roadblocks, dragged out of their cars and summarily executed.…

  Tourists are drugged in bars and discos, then robbed and murdered.…

  —FIELDING’S THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS PLACES

  13

  Medellín

  A little over an hour later, I stepped out of the Medellín airport, located at nearby Rionegro. A line of taxis waited at the curb. I wondered if Ramon and his scar-faced pal had tracked me here already and arranged a reception committee.

  I did what came natural to me—burned a bridge. Refusing the first taxi, I climbed into the second one. That got raised eyebrows, but I didn’t care. I could have explained that a friend had once told me that Sherlock Holmes often refused to take the first taxi in line, but I feared no one would know what I was talking about.

  Just being clever about a taxi didn’t mean I was safe. Ramon said the country’s extravagant murder rate was reserved for the proponents and opponents of the drug trade. How about white-collar bandidos who stole coffee plantations? Did they add to the murder rate? Were Ramon and Scar making me an offer I couldn’t refuse, Colombian style—silver or lead?

  I got a hotel recommendation from one of the flight attendants who assured me that it was a safe place to stay. “Hotel Vista Verde,” I told the cabbie.

  A few minutes’ drive from the airport we veered off the main road, taking a detour. We passed by something that made my jaw drop: Lying on the side of the road was the body of a man. His white shirt was bloodstained.

  I twisted around and stared out the back window, my mouth agape. A dead body. A violent death. Murder? A hit-and-run? Out in plain sight, no police cars, no yellow plastic stay-away tape, no cops holding back crowds, no forensic experts preserving evidence. Just a dead man lying on the highway. Raising eyebrows from passing motorists—but was that all?

  “What happened to that man?”

  He shrugged. “Someone killed him.”

  He made it sound like it was an ordinary occurrence. I wondered about his shrug—was it a sign of ignorance as to the reason for the man’s demise, or indifference?

  “I can see that. But what—what did they do to him? It looked like something was shoved into his neck.”

  “No, senorita, not shoved in, pulled out.”

  “Pulled out?”

  “His tongue. It is called a Medellín necktie.…” He gave me another enigmatic shrug.

  It was indifference, I saw that; the cabbie didn’t care about the man with his … his tongue pulled out.

  I spoke as calmly as I could. “What do you mean, his tongue was pulled out?”

  “A Medellín necktie. Or a Cali one.” He twisted in the seat and glanced back at me. “It depends on where you are, you know, senorita, Medellín or Cali, where you are when the tongue is pulled out.”

  Stay calm. I’m in a different country. This isn’t the States. I reminded myself again what Ramon had said—things were different down here. The travel guide and everything I’d ever heard or read said it was a dangerous place. But seeing horror was different from just hearing about it.

  “What—”

  “His throat is cut, you understand?” The driver slit his own throat with his forefinger. “They cut his throat and then they pull it out, the tongue.”

  “The tongue?”

  “Sí, sí, the tongue, his tongue is pulled out his throat, out the hole they made in his throat. T
he tongue is longer than we think, no?”

  I cleared my throat. It was all becoming as clear as mud to me. Again, I spoke clearly, concisely, and slowly so my textbook Spanish would not be misinterpreted.

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  I wanted to grab him and shake. Good God—a dead man lying on the side of the road, his throat cut open, his tongue pulled out the hole. That meant someone, the killer, had to reach in the opening to the throat, grab the back of the tongue, and pull it—

  Aaaakkkk! I screamed silently, but I wanted to let out one that was heard from here to Bogotá. What kind of country was this? Weren’t the people civilized? Why would they let something so gross happen—and ignore it?

  “Why?” I repeated.

  Another shrug from him. Shrugs seemed to be the national body language of Colombian taxi drivers to explain why dead bodies were out on public display along roadsides. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to explain local murder customs to an ignorant foreigner.

  “Who knows? The police from the capital storm into the Los Olivos district of the city and kill people who they think are supporters of Don Pablo. Don Pablo’s men storm and kill people who they think talk too freely to the police.” He made the sign of the cross. “That one back there, only God knows who he offended. Did he speak too freely to the police so the don’s sicarii punished him … or did he refuse to tell the police what they wanted to hear so they…” He made another slicing motion across his throat. “It is not a pretty sight to see, senorita, but it is not an uncommon sight in our city.” He glanced sideways at me. “It was left there as a warning.”

  “A warning to who?”

  Shrug. “To whoever the man was loyal to. A warning to his compañeros that when they are asked the questions, they give the right answers. Perhaps the man offended Don Pablo—it’s said the don has men killed just for looking at him the wrong way.”

  “Don Pablo … you mean Pablo Escobar, the—” I started to say “drug lord” and caught myself. I didn’t know which side the cabbie was on.