The Devil to Pay

by Harold Robbins

  He had had a limo waiting for him the day I ditched him in Bogotá, and had mentioned on the plane that he owned a large house in the capital. I imagined that a private plane, a Rolex, and polo ponies were just a small part of the extravagant lifestyle he was accustomed to. I didn’t get any more information out of him about his connection to the drug cartel king, but I managed to keep my own mouth shut, too.

  The inside of the casa was pretty much what I expected from its appearance on the outside: Colombian rustic, lots of cowhide and wood furniture, big stone fireplaces, a stove in the kitchen you could almost cook a cow on, and one outside in the patio you could cook a cow on—not that it was necessary; an entire cow was already roasting on a spit.

  Ramon introduced a pretty young girl about sixteen as his niece, Elena. She had Ramon’s tanned complexion and soft brown hair. He had already explained to me that Elena’s parents, his sister and brother-in-law, had been killed in a car accident. “My own parents are gone and I haven’t married, so that leaves Elena and me as our total family.”

  Elena was eager to ask me questions about America and even about what was happening in Medellín. She squealed when I told her I had met Pablo Escobar.

  Ramon shot me a look and I pretended to Elena that the meeting had been purely by accident.

  She gave me a tour of the casa as Ramon attended to some business matters. I soon found out that she had cabin fever.

  “Ramon insists that I stay here, in the Llanos. I am so bored; there are few girls my age and most of them work all day on the ranch. None of them have even been to Bogotá. I would love to live in the capital, to go to school there. As it is, a teacher comes here twice a week to tutor me. The rest of the time, I am left on my own to study. I am so tired of books! I have no friends, nothing to do except read.”

  “Why do you have to stay here?”

  “Ramon says it is to protect me.”

  “Is the capital so dangerous? I understand it’s dangerous for people like judges and reporters who fight the cartels, but isn’t it just another big city otherwise?”

  “That’s what I say, but Ramon says I must stay here. He says I will remain pure here, but would be polluted if I go to Bogotá.” She suddenly smiled and her eyes got a warm glow. “But I don’t mind, as long as Ramon is here at least a couple days a week.”

  Of course she did mind. I wondered why, if he thought Bogotá was not the right place, he didn’t send her off to Europe or the States to go to school. But it was none of my business, so I didn’t volunteer the idea.

  That night we had dinner in a delightful garden, with subdued lighting, a frolicking fountain, and music. Men and women from the village entertained us with music and dancing. Some of the music was called vallenata and had developed in the cattle ranches along the Atlantic coast. There was a gyrating, vibrating African rhythm to the sounds.

  Later, Ramon took me for a walk down to the river. He suddenly put his arms around me. I turned my head and pulled away as he tried to kiss me.

  “Have I offended you?” he asked.

  I smiled. “I don’t trust you. You’re still allied with the man trying to steal my plantation.”

  “Perhaps you should try to be a little nicer so you’d have allies of your own.”

  “What I’ve seen so far brings to mind an old American expression: With friends like you, I don’t need enemies. Do you mind if we go back to the house? I’m tired and I’d like to get an early start in the morning back to the plantation.”

  He was puzzled and so was I. I don’t know what came over me. One minute I was intrigued about making love to the gorgeous stud, even though I knew he was a villain—sort of how James Bond feels when he makes love to the temptress who has a knife under the pillow—and the next minute I rebuffed him.

  But I had a bad feeling in my gut. Sort of free-floating anxiety and paranoia. Something wasn’t right about Ramon, the situation; something I’d seen or heard had affected me and I didn’t know what it was yet. I just suddenly had bad feelings and wished the hell I had never come.

  At the casa, I said good night to Elena. The bedrooms were on the second floor, with balconies that overlooked the garden. I barred the door, propping a chair up under the handle, then opened the balcony doors and turned off my lights. I really wasn’t tired; I just wanted to be alone.

  I leaned against the door frame and looked around me. A bright moon sailed overhead. A light, warm breeze stirred the night. I sighed. It was a night for passionate love, and I had turned off, kicked out of bed, one of the handsomest men I’d ever met.

  Good work, girl!

  I was ready to go inside when I saw them in the garden. Ramon and Elena. They paused by the fountain and he took her in his arms. He gave her the kiss I had rejected.

  His hands went down her back, to her tush, and he pulled her hard against him. His hands came back up, onto her shoulders, and pushed her down to her knees. As he unzipped his pants, I shut the balcony doors.

  Fucking bastard.

  Now I knew why he kept his niece a prisoner at an isolated ranch in the Llanos.

  And I knew what had been bothering me all night.

  It was Elena’s smile and eyes, how she came alive when she said it was all right as long as Ramon was there.

  What I saw was the young girl expressing her love—her desire—for him.

  And he was a disgusting bastard. He could have gotten any woman, but incest must have given him that extra thrill he needed.

  I also knew one other thing.

  He had staged the blow job so I would see it from my room. Revenge for my rebuff? Or more of a turn-on for him?

  I hope one day someone bites off his prick.

  29

  The plane ride back the next morning was cold and silent. Ramon was in a dark mood and I was ready to tell him he was a bastard and a pervert. Only the fact that he might throw me out at twenty thousand feet kept my mouth shut.

  He never spoke to me all the way back, until we had stopped taxiing on the dirt road. The Jeep Cherokee that had chauffeured us before was waiting.

  When the plane had stopped and I opened the door to get out, he said, “Keep your mouth shut about me. If I hear anything, you’ll wish you were safely in a Seattle jail.”

  “You really make that old expression true.”

  “What old expression?”

  “About beauty being skin-deep. You’re slime underneath that pretty face.”

  He turned several shades darker and I got quickly out of the plane and hurried to the SUV. We made it a couple hundred yards when a familiar Jeep blocked our way. Josh waved for me to get in.

  I got out of the SUV and climbed into the Jeep. He popped the clutch and we took off with tires kicking dirt and rock. He was in a grim mood.

  “So … what kind of fuck was he?”

  The roof blew off my temper. “That’s none of your damn business! I am so sick and tired of being accountable to all you crazy people in this crazy country, to have everyone walking on my heels, threatening me and telling me how to lead my life. You’re all a bunch of fucking lunatics and losers. Why don’t you go home and get an honest job?”

  I was irritable and his sarcastic remark infuriated me even more.

  He kept driving but gave me a sideways glance. “Well, at least I’m happy to see that you didn’t have a good time.”

  It suddenly hit me. “You’re jealous.”

  “Naw, I was curious.”

  “Jealous,” I repeated. God, I loved the word. “Jealous.” It was delicious. A man I was attracted to was honestly jealous over me.

  “Okay, I was jealous. So what happened? How did you suddenly link up with Ramon Alavar?”

  I gave him the whole nine yards, me trying to pry the louver, Ramon with the machete. When I got to the part about the niece, Josh got mad, too.

  “Fuckin’ predator.”

  “More than that, it’s a power trip,” I said. “He keeps her prisoner and gets an extra kick out of fucking her.
Before I leave this country, I swear, Ramon will pay for what he’s doing to her, even if I have to take out ads in newspapers because the authorities won’t do anything.” I turned to Josh and couldn’t resist making a catty remark. “Of course, he’s not the only one robbing the cradle.”

  “She’s not my niece and she’s pushing thirty.”

  “She’s not more than sixteen or seventeen.”

  “I wasn’t talking about her chronological age. Besides, now that we’ve met and clicked, I’ve given her up.”

  “Clicked? Clicked? I don’t even like you.”

  “I don’t like me much myself, but I’m trying to change.” He stopped the Jeep and locked eyes with me. “Ramon the Perv gave you one good piece of advice.”

  “Keep my mouth shut.”

  He nodded. “To everyone—and I mean everyone. You can probably trust Juana, but don’t tell her anything. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt you, her—or me. Like he told you, don’t even let anyone know he was here. If anyone gets too nosy, say you were with me … and please, don’t scowl when you say it like I wasn’t a good fuck.”

  I ignored his last comment. My mind was spinning with questions.

  “What’s going on, Josh? There’s a Chinese connection, a cartel connection; now Ramon’s part of it. What’s going on in that laboratory? Are they close to developing the decaffeinated bean?”

  He shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “You seem to know everything else that goes on around here—like even the schedule of Ramon’s plane. How did you know we’d be landing? Or even that I left? And don’t tell me you were on your way to bribe more cops.”

  “I pay to know some things; everyone knows that; they come to me whenever a stranger shows up. It’s insurance on my part. It could be a killer hired by a mine owner.”

  “I think you know more than you’re letting on. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  “What did I just say? Talk kills. Whatever’s going on in that laboratory, Pablo Escobar’s a major player. That’s reason enough for you to keep your mouth shut. And run as fast as you can away from here.”

  “How can I keep my mouth shut? I inherited this place. And I need the damn money it can give me, bad. I need to get to the bottom of the cesspool my life has been dropped into.”

  “Sell the plantation.”

  “Not enough money’s offered. I wouldn’t do that anyway, not unless I knew the people who rely on the plantation would be taken care of.”

  “Jesus, now that’s a load for you to carry: You’re not just going to help yourself; you’re going to save hundreds of workers and their families. I hope you walk on water, because you’re going to need to perform miracles. You better be bulletproof, too.”

  He pulled over and faced me. “I care for you, Nash. I don’t want anything to happen to you. If I could arrange for you to go someplace else, maybe farther south, Uruguay’s a nice country, they call it the Switzerland of South America, you could just wait and ride out—”

  “Ride out what? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  He reached over and kissed me on the lips. I shut my eyes and didn’t resist, then opened them and stared at him. He wasn’t as handsome as Ramon; he still needed a shave and a haircut. But I was inexorably drawn to him.

  Before I found out the man was a pervert, Ramon had excited me sexually. But I think it was more titillation, the idea of making love to a man that other women drooled over.

  Josh had a more profound effect on me. I felt secure and comfortable with him. A feeling that I had finally found the man I’d spent the last dozen years yearning for. But we were still on two different paths.

  “Get this through your thick head—I will not sell the plantation to anyone who will screw the workers and the sharecroppers.”

  “Then what do you plan to do?”

  I snapped at him, “I don’t know, damn it … I don’t know.” I was irritable and suddenly tired.

  For a moment he just looked at me, but then he broke out in an amused grin. “You know, you’re cute when you get angry,” he said in a calm and soothing voice.

  “I’m glad you find this amusing.”

  He was still smiling and I couldn’t help but return his smile.

  Damn it, he had a way of breaking my resistance. I couldn’t ignore the sexual tension in the air. It was there and I know he felt it, too. I had an overwhelming desire to be in his arms, to have him hold me, comfort me, tell me everything was going to be all right. I wanted him to make love to me, really make love to me, something I hadn’t had for so long.

  “Let’s go somewhere where we can be alone,” I said.

  “I know just the place.”

  We arrived at his place a few minutes later. It was surprisingly neater than I expected, small but cozy.

  He led me to the bedroom and began to take off my clothes, not in a hurried manner but in a deliberate and sensuous manner. There was no need for any words between us. It was plain that the sexual hunger in our bodies had to be satisfied. I felt no shame in standing there naked in front of him as I waited for him to take off his own clothes.

  He took my hand and guided me to the bed. I was already wet with desire and he was already hard as he entered me easily and quickly. I kissed him with a fire I hadn’t known before. My heartbeat raced and my blood pounded. I swayed to the ecstasy of pleasure throbbing through my body. It came quickly and I cried out as I felt the explosion inside me. I pulled him deeper inside me and he shuddered against me as he rode the same wave of ecstasy.

  For a few minutes our bodies clung together until the tremors of pleasure began to calm down. He released the weight of his body and pulled me to him. I felt warm and comfortable as I snuggled up against him, a feeling of completeness inside me. We fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  30

  When I returned to the plantation, nothing had changed: Juana was warm as usual toward me, Cesar cold, as if he could barely tolerate me—that wasn’t news—and Lily Soong was still more interested in the shade of her fingernail polish than me. But there was another presence, an uninvited guest: an aura of doom and gloom that had hovered over the plantation house ever since Pablo Escobar’s visit.

  Everyone seemed to be affected by it, their nerves on edge, as well as looking a little depressed. Even Lily seemed a bit gloomy as she polished her nails on the veranda.

  I tried to probe Juana about why everyone had the blues, but she immediately started to tear up. My bottom-line conclusion was that she really didn’t understand what was going on and wasn’t the type to dig for answers.

  The day after I got back, a man drove up in a black SUV and left an envelope with a single notation inside: $100,000.

  I found it curious that Escobar didn’t simply send some of his sicarii assassins to give me an attitude adjustment until I signed over the plantation. But from table talk, newspapers, and the radio I got the impression that Don Pablo was busy with his war against U.S. and Colombian military and paramilitary units. I also had to wonder whether his real interest in the plantation was the place as a whole or just whatever was going on in the laboratory.

  Josh said that they didn’t need the plantation to grow coca and it was too open and obvious for a processing plant. That boiled down to the laboratory. Which led me to wonder whether Escobar was not that interested in acquiring the coffee plantation and Scar was teaming up with someone else—Cesar, of course—to steal it from me at a fire-sale price, after making sure I badly needed the money by trashing my Seattle dream.

  I had a lot of thinking to do. And needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t going to skew everything.

  So I went back to the hill, to my father’s grave.

  I spent hours there, just listening to the earth, hearing and reading the plantation from the bird’s-eye view.

  Like a kid wondering whether she should be a police officer, firefighter, or computer hacker, I finally reached a conclusion as to what I would do when I
grew up.

  Three days after I returned from the Llanos, Juana prepared a dinner for Cesar on his birthday. Josh joined us for dinner. Juana said Drs. Soong and Sanchez were too busy to attend.

  “Still working day and night on their black magic?” I didn’t bother to leave the sarcasm out of my tone. I constantly vacillated on what I thought was going on in the laboratory hut, sometimes sure they were working on something for a drug cartel, other times that they really were developing a decaf plant and there would be enough money to make all my dreams come true.

  “They went to town to get the velvet rubbed off their cocks,” Cesar said.

  “Cesar!” Juana stood at the table. “How dare you talk that way at the table.”

  He shrugged. He had had a couple drinks and was in a sour, arrogant mood. “Okay, is this better? They went to the local whorehouse.”

  Juana looked miserable but managed to keep her emotions tightly drawn. I felt sorry for her. She has no way out, I thought. She had spent her entire life on the plantation, a place of peace and serenity, and now the ugly world was invading it.

  I made an announcement.

  “I received a message from Jorge, the gentleman who has been trying to buy the plantation.”

  Cesar sneered. “Don Pablo’s investment counselor.”

  “The offer on the plantation has gone to a hundred thousand dollars.”

  No one seemed surprised. Cesar looked smug.

  “You should take it and return home,” Juana said. Her voice quivered as she spoke. Selling the plantation to Escobar—if he was actually the buyer—would mean the end of the only life she had known.

  Josh said, “You should take it.”

  I looked around the table, meeting the eyes of each of them. The amount of money involved meant nothing to me; it wasn’t enough for me to set bail on the Seattle case, much less hire a lawyer. But at the moment, I wouldn’t have sold the plantation if the offer had been a million dollars.

  I couldn’t explain it to them, but I knew why Carlos had made me his sole heir. He had checked me out and I think he knew that I would fight to keep the plantation alive. And he had been right.