The Extraditionist

by Todd Merer

  No big deal. The criminal life was my milieu, and the prospects of my two other would-be Biggies were fading. Besides, this was my year of living dangerously.

  I shut my computer and left.

  After I deposited the Murmansk check at my bank, Val jumped some red lights and I caught the last available seat on the last flight to Miami. By chance, 1-A.

  I was on a roll.

  I thought.

  CHAPTER 17

  Fercho was tanned. He’d been rotated into a different SHU cell through whose slit window each day came a short hour of sunlight. He had with him a plastic legal file I’d given him, its cover embossed with my name and number. Prisoners are allowed these, and the inmates take notice of one another’s legal representation. Those who respect my guy see my name, and instantly, I become a possible go-to lawyer. Trick of my trade.

  Another reason I give my guys files?

  To pass things without having to worry about them being read by the correctional snoops. What I do—did—was request the privilege of opening the window between us so that we could better confer. During which conference I took from my files a printed copy of Helmer Quezada’s map showing the coordinates of the parasitic-torpedo assembly site. Fercho casually slipped it into his file. Tonight he’d memorize the data, then flush it away, prepared to state the information had originated with him. I’d give another copy of the map to Fercho’s DEA case agent, who currently was stationed in Bogotá.

  “You’re absolutely certain the information is accurate?” I whispered.

  Fercho smiled enigmatically. “One hundred thousand bucks certain.”

  I didn’t reply. The subject of buying cooperation? I know nothing.

  “How does Rigo like New York?” Fercho asked.

  I hadn’t realized when Fercho had called my new client a piece of shit that he already knew it was Rigo. Clearly, there was bad blood between my clients. More remarkable was Fercho’s up-to-date knowledge of my work. I’d always known the Colombian jail grapevine was rich. I wondered if Fercho had gotten his intel via CORRLINKS, the e-mail correspondence available to federal inmates. Perhaps a prisoner in Manhattan had mentioned Rigo’s presence via a CORRLINKS message, and the word had spread to the Miami lockup.

  When I didn’t respond, Fercho motioned me closer, whispered, “Rigo’s trying to cooperate against General Uvalde. I need for you to fuck up his process. Uvalde is mine.”

  My nod conveyed receiving his message, although I was not acquiescing. Until now, I had no inkling Rigo was trying to give up General Uvalde, but if it was true, then I was being asked to help one client by betraying another. I liked Fercho and had an aversion to Rigo, but no way I’d choose sides. Let the chips fall where they may. Whoever nailed Uvalde got the credit, period.

  “Word on the street is that Uvalde sent people to kill Rigo,” he said.

  I nodded vaguely, though I knew otherwise: it was Sombra who’d tried to take out Rigoberto Ordoñez. In addition, Fercho’s theory made no sense. DEA wouldn’t work with Uvalde if he was putting their agents in the line of fire.

  As if reading my mind, Fercho said, “That’s just the street. I also heard DEA”—he pronounced the acronym day-ah, as Colombians do—“thinks the attack came from another source.”

  I waited for him to elucidate, but he changed the subject to one I liked more.

  “Someone is bringing you a little something for expenses.”

  Fercho’s “little something” was usually fifty large.

  When I got out of jail, there was a message on my device from Mondragon: Rigo’s family was awaiting my arrival and prepared to pay my fee. Perfect.

  I called my bank. The Murmansk-54 check had cleared.

  I headed back to the airport, smiling like a cat invited to a canary convention. Rigo had to have many millions stashed away. As did the Natty-Bolivar team. So maybe I was trolling a Biggy after all.

  Maybe . . . two?

  CHAPTER 18

  In Bogotá, I slept with the blinds up so I could rise with the sun and get a jump on the day before it jumped on me. Over breakfast, I checked my device. Last night I’d texted Paz to let him know I was in town, taking a long shot he might convince Sombra to take a second look at me. But Paz hadn’t responded. Nor had Mondragon. And I had other business to attend to.

  Today Castri was driving his wife’s Chevy compact. Bogotá’s monstrous traffic mandated a pico y placa system: even-numbered license plates allowed on even-numbered days, odd on odd. Didn’t help. The traffic jams—trancones—were still curb to curb.

  Bogotá wasn’t much of a town to look at, but in every direction steeply forested mountains loomed above the city.

  Mountains fascinate me.

  They’re the ultimate physical barrier. It never ceased to amaze me that a handful of Spaniards—many of them Jews the Inquisition had rendered penniless outcasts—had morphed into soldiers of fortune in the service of a nation they despised and a God that wasn’t theirs, crossing mountains up and down the long length of both Americas—

  A sudden rattle of pebbles against the underside of the little Chevy as Castri swerved onto the road shoulder and accelerated past the trancon. He turned into an alley that widened to a street of quiet homes before dead-ending at the high walls of the US Embassy.

  The embassy compound is square-blocks huge and ringed with sensors and guard posts. We stopped, and I made a phone call to a DEA agent named Dave, who worked inside. Easier for him to come out than for me to enter. The place was protected by security air locks, and it could take a half hour for a civilian like me to go through.

  “Five minutes, Counselor,” Dave said.

  Dave was a Zero Dark Thirty type. Polite, but no bullshit. In exactly five minutes, he appeared. I handed him an envelope containing a copy of the map I’d received from Helmer Quezada. Dave studied it intently.

  Across the street a woman was walking a black Lab. Comes to animal husbandry, Colombians are brilliant. Their beloved vacas and paso finos are tops of their breeds, and their dogs are the finest in the world. The woman’s Lab was long legged and heavy boned in the way good Labs are, and as I watched his wagging trot, I felt a pang that my lifestyle did not permit me to have a guy like him. A friend. A pal—

  “We’ll see what we see,” Dave said. “I’ll pass the information to Special Ops. For whatever it’s worth.”

  “Seems to me torpedoes are worth a lot.”

  “Fair to middling is more like it. Just cost two or three thousand to make. What we’d appreciate more are the people who send the torps. Why do I think we might nab a worker or two, but there won’t be a jefe in sight?”

  I one-shouldered a shrug. We both knew the torpedo-factory seizure was a setup, but destroying it would add to DEA’s numbers—the drug-war equivalent of Vietnam’s body count—and Fercho’s AUSA would then add the torpedoes to his cooperation letter, the endgame document, with which I’d argue for a sentence reduction based on quantity, as well as quality, of cooperation.

  A siren screamed nearby.

  A trio of unmarked vehicles flashing purple lights entered the embassy compound. In the center of the little convoy was a polished Lincoln with Colombian flags atop the front lights. Through a dark-tinted rear window, I briefly glimpsed the silhouette of a man wearing an oversize officer’s hat.

  Dave spit on the sidewalk. “General Fucking Uvalde himself. He’s being honored today. Jesus. They’re making a thief like Uvalde an honorary DEA because of his contribution to the success of Operation Los Hachos.”

  Los Hachos was Rigo’s nasty cartel. Uvalde claiming credit for the takedown underlined how big a player Rigo was.

  “Really?” I deadpanned. “I didn’t know Los Hachos were major.”

  Dave grinned. “Funny, that. How was Antigua?”

  I grinned back at him. “Beautiful town.”

  “Don’t yank my chain, bro. And watch your ass. Rigo is on a hit list.”

  “I learned about that firsthand.”

&
nbsp; He grinned. “Gus said you nearly pissed your pants.”

  “Fuck Gus. Do you know whose hit list?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. If you knew why I wouldn’t tell you, you’d get into another line of work.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means stay well, Benn. Gotta go now. Always nice seeing a man who lives the good life.”

  “Same here, Dave. I really mean that. See you.”

  I got back in the car and checked my watch. Almost nine. I was on schedule for my next stop. On the way, I thought about what Dave had said about watching my ass. Worrisome. But although Colombian lawyers often get whacked, I’d never heard of an American lawyer even being targeted.

  At 9:30 a.m., Castri dropped me off at a building Colombians call the Bunker, although its proper name was La Fiscalía de la Nación, aka the Office of the Attorney General. Fifty percent of Colombian prosecutors were, in my well-informed view, on the take. The other 50 percent spent most of their working hours creating documents that no one read.

  When I got to the Bunker, I located a CTI exterior guard named Leonidas, who, for an American fifty-dollar bill, happily deserted his post to assist my bypassing the time-consuming formalities of obtaining the legal pass—boleta—required to visit an inmate in a Colombian jail.

  While waiting, I looked at the distant peaks. Nothing up there but forested highlands above which condors wheeled. Little wonder Sombra chose to live in the mountains.

  Hearing a burst of laughter, I turned and saw some lawyers I guessed were American because their shoes weren’t square-toed like those favored by Colombian lawyers. Apart from their shoes, American lawyers and Colombian lawyers look the same: guys with fixed grins wanting to bond with well-fixed bad guys.

  Too little, too late, boys.

  I’d been lucky. When I first went to Colombia, there had been only a few gringos with the cojones to work there. Coke was just becoming the next big thing, and the first-generation kingpins did business like gentlemen—relatively speaking. You could shake a man’s hand and be reasonably certain to get all ten fingers back. But no longer. Everyone cheated everyone else. Everyone was game, fair or not. Everyone went down. Everyone ratted.

  Fucking time to get out of this business. Fast.

  Leonidas returned with my boleta, and I left. As I descended the steps, horns blared and brakes screeched, and I looked up and saw Castri’s wife’s little Chevy cutting across the three-lane roadway. It wasn’t like Castri to drive recklessly, and I wondered why as he pulled curbside. As soon as I climbed in, he swerved back into traffic and accelerated.

  “What’s the rush, Castri?”

  “I’m in no rush, Doctor. It’s the way you came from the Bunker.”

  “What are you talking? I did my business and left, was all.”

  “You were running. Like you were being chased.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “Take me to jail.”

  CHAPTER 19

  We drove along the ring road atop the mountainsides surrounding the metro area. It was crossing a crazy quilt of centuries. Here, a mile of smooth roadway flanked by new condos. There, a field where trash fires burned and goats grazed. Then a sweeping view of the Bogotá savanna. The ruins of a stone village. Slums and wilderness and luxury. We raced past a horse cart; a Mercedes raced past us. Schoolgirls in pleated plaid skirts walked on the shoulder. At a roadside stand, Indian women wearing derbies cooked arepas over a charcoal fire. I realized that I was going to miss Colombia.

  Abruptly, the road descended through switchbacks that leveled out on a plaza dominated by a grand old church. Below its steeple stretched miles of tin-roofed shantytowns. Then we turned into old Candelaria, where I’d first imagined L. Astorquiza dwelled.

  Laura.

  I’d been so enamored of Jilly the night I’d met Laura I hadn’t thought much about the bold blogger. My bad. In retrospect, she remained incredibly attractive. But my attraction to her was more than physical. Our brain waves were tuned on the same length; we shared a mental compatibility—

  My stomach lurched as Castri guided the little Chevy through another steep swoop, and then we emerged from Candelaria smack into the heart of swarming south Bogotá. Windowless shops whose goods spilled onto sidewalks. Crippled beggars and peddlers and jugglers at the red lights. Along the Spanish Main, costenos smile and laugh a lot. The faces in Bogotá were sour.

  Again, my inner voice rose up:

  Get out before it’s too late.

  “Castri,” I said.

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  We were now out of Bogotá proper on a littered suburban highway between bare brown mountains, their spines adorned with makeshift shacks whose tin roofs winked sunlight. Above the road ahead rose a cluster of buildings I knew well.

  “Nada,” I said.

  We turned off the roadway and stopped at a gate beneath a sign that said INSTITUTO NACIONAL PENITENCIARIO Y CARCELARIO—INPEC—the Colombian equivalent to FBOP, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Colombians had caught acronym fever from the gringos.

  That wasn’t all they aped. INPEC’s older prisons resemble medieval dungeons, but its newer prisons were exact copies of American lockups, and not by coincidence. One of the many benefits Colombia receives for being so kind as to allow the United States to conduct the war against drugs on its soil is that American money pays for the construction of Colombian prisons designed by American penologists. This particular jail was La Picota, which housed defendants awaiting extradition.

  Visiting ended at eleven thirty. I glanced at my watch: 10:30 a.m. Cutting it close. Entering a Colombian jail meant going through half a dozen checkpoints, each requiring stamps and signatures and thumbprints, a process that could literally take hours. But a couple of pesos in the right pockets opened doors, and fifteen minutes later, I was in the visit room.

  It was a cavernous space whose raw concrete walls exuded dampness. I chose a corner table and sat back to the wall, so as to see the other lawyers and defendants.

  There were a lot of both. Now that most everyone cooperates, cartel personnel turn over quickly, so more and more extraditions occur, and more and more fees are paid to American lawyers, often with the very same Franklins that arrived in Colombia as sold-in-America drug proceeds.

  Round and round the money goes, and although much of it sticks to palms along the way, it doesn’t matter because the money keeps on coming. A steady stream of money. A river. A Gulf current. You have no idea how much. Actually, no one does, although I had an informed opinion, having moved in drug-money circles for so long. I thought the amount of money was well beyond the highest estimates.

  “Dr. Bluestone,” a prisoner said.

  He was tall and lean with angular, weathered features. I made him about forty. A handsome white devil with a few drops of Native American. Humor in his dark eyes as if he were amused at the absurdity of his situation. A cool customer.

  “Joaquin Bolivar,” I said.

  He sat across from me and spoke in English. “Here, everyone has an alias. I’m called Indio.”

  “Indio who speaks colloquial American.”

  His white smile was relaxed. “Grew up in the US of A. Must have made a good impression because they seem determined to get me back.”

  “Why, Indio?”

  “I lived with the Logui.”

  I nodded. Bored hours leafing through flight magazines had imparted to me many touristic facts, including those about the Logui, the so-called Lost Fifth Tribe of Indians who centuries ago retreated from the invading Spanish to the remote Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, where it’s said they still remain, insulated from the rest of the world.

  “Those Who Know More,” I said.

  He smiled. “I’m impressed. Your religion, Doctor?”

  Back in the days when I represented generic American miscreants, at various times I’d professed belief in Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed. On occasion, I’ve been an atheist, and once I was a Rainbow Person. Latel
y, I allow my clients to think I’m Jewish because Colombians believe the Chosen People are super-smart warriors. Similarly, among DTO kingpins, it was in vogue to employ Israeli mercs to train one’s own house guard.

  I said, “I believe for every drop of rain, a flower falls.”

  Bolivar laughed. “I’m big on first impressions. I saw you sitting here and knew right away you were going to be my lawyer. I understand you already are, fee-wise?”

  “Yes, I’ve been retained.”

  “Good. We can dispense with that bullshit. Here’s the way it was. Six years ago, I ran a boatload of weed from Cartagena to New York. Or tried to. The load was seized, but me and my crew escaped. A lawyer educated me as to the federal statute of limitations. If there’s no indictment within five years of a drug crime, there can’t be a prosecution. Right?”

  “Right,” I said, thinking no way Bolivar was simply running weed: the trip was a test run to learn if the sailboat ploy was a viable route for tons of blow.

  “So for five years, I stayed far away from the modern world. I lived in the Sierra Nevada with the Indians. Five years passed, and I wasn’t indicted. I believed my problem was over. Only it wasn’t. Why?”

  Indians? An imitation of the legendary Sombra’s life among los Indios? A tribute to it? Or was Bolivar dropping a hint that he was Sombra?

  I said, “Because a guy who owed you money from a load way back contacted you. He said he was flush now and wanted to pay the old debt. You’d forgotten about it and didn’t need the money, but you thought, why not? Problem was, soon as you agreed to take the money, the old conspiracy came back to life. From a legal standpoint.”

  “None of this was in my indictment. How’d you know that?”

  “Modus operandi of the prosecutor who indicted you in the Eastern District of New York. Loves making historical cases on dealers. Like Maledon said, ‘Let no guilty man escape.’”

  “Who’s Maledon?”