by Jerold Last
We all assembled in the living room at the suggested time, washed and hungry, for dinner at the conventional late hour in Chile, in this case 10 PM. We followed Octavio into a large dining room dominated by an enormous table that could easily have seated and fed more than twice our number, which was eight of us. Both the living room and dining room walls had paintings hanging of rural areas and older portraits of people, interspersed with crucifixes and other religious objects.
Octavio pointed at some of the wall decorations while we waited for the first course to be served. He identified three of the portraits as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, all of whom had lived on this farm previously while they raised their families. "The rural scenes are all paintings either of this farm or of my older brother's nearby farmhouse, which is the original Cortes family house and has been in the family for more than 300 years. My ancestors were one of the first families to settle in the Aconcagua Valley, and have owned a huge amount of acreage in the San Tomas area since before the city has been on any map. As multiple sons were born the fathers broke up the large land holdings into smaller farms so each could have their own property and make their own living while keeping the extended family close enough to celebrate holidays and attend church together.
"Nowadays some of us are still farming for their living, but that is very difficult to do in the current economic situation. Others, like myself, have regular jobs in Santiago. It is important to me to maintain my connection to this land, which is the source of our family's history and roots. I hire men and women to do much of the farm work, but still experiment with new crops and products to help sustain the local farms economically even as we must compete with larger and more efficient irrigated farms in the north and south of Chile."
There was a brief interruption while we were served some kind of bean soup by two young ladies I assumed to be hired servants.
"What do you do when you are in Santiago?" I asked.
"I teach Economics at The University of Chile, do some consulting work with various multinational industries in Santiago, and sit on the Board of Directors of several Chilean corporations. My father, who you will meet tomorrow, is a chemist who also is involved with directing several Chilean corporations, especially in the energy area. He lives both here and in Santiago, and is semi-retired. You will also meet one of my brothers, a full-time farmer who lives in that 300-year old house with his family. My other brother, who regrettably is not here today, works in Santiago and leases his farm to others who do all of the work while he and his family live in the City and come out here whenever they can just to visit with us.
"All three of my children are in school. Roberto and Fernando attend the local high school, which is quite good educationally. Roberto wants to become an scientist, like his grandfather. Fernando wants to become a professional football player. Perhaps he will succeed; he is an excellent athlete. Louisa is studying biochemistry in the Medical School at the University of Chile."
"That's interesting," commented Suzanne. "I'm a biochemist on the faculty of the Medical School at UCLA when I'm back home in Los Angeles. You and I should talk a little bit if we get a chance, Louisa."
"I'd like that," replied Octavio's daughter.
We switched to the main course, a chicken casserole that turned out to be succulent and flavorful, with rice and several cooked vegetables. A home-baked bread came with them. A flavorful white wine poured from an anonymous decanter accompanied the food.
Octavio continued by asking, "Is everything all right?"
We all nodded yes with our mouths full.
"Let me tell you a bit about the wine and dessert so you can better appreciate them when they are served. The wine is a Chardonnay, made locally from grapes we grew on my farm a few years ago. We grow several varieties of grapes on this farm, some for local wine production like the Chardonnay we're drinking, which is the only white wine we make, and cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, and cabernet franc grapes for red wines. The rest of the grapes are red and intended for eating as table grapes. Those are exported to Japan and to the USA and may well end up in your local markets in Los Angeles.
"The cheese is also made on the farm from goat's milk. I'll show you the facility tomorrow. We were visiting France several years ago when I fell in love with this style of cheese. We were able to convince a French couple to immigrate to Chile, and they still live here on this farm and produce the cheeses for us. I sell enough of it to local restaurants in Santiago and in San Tomas de Aconcagua to pay for the operation, and we get to eat the rest of it ourselves. You could not buy this style of cheese anywhere in Chile. It just has to be eaten fresh; it does not ship well."
Dessert was fresh fruits, a complete wheel of the goat's milk cheese, and a sweet white wine similar to a Sauterne that complemented the cheese well. The cheese itself was wonderful, among the best intensely flavored cheeses I had ever tasted. In the European and South American style the children drank wine with dinner the same as the adults. All three drank in moderation, spoke in moderation, and were well mannered and respectful to all of the adults present.
After dinner, Octavio invited us for cognac in his den. This invitation was for just the four of us. Suzanne excused herself for a short time to talk biochemistry with Louisa, joining us in time for the second pouring of the cognac. Octavio thoroughly approved of Suzanne's priorities, commenting that family, especially the next generation, should always come first.
He poured three brandies, cleared his throat, and began. "My involvement in the drug industry here in Chile is because the drugs are just another commodity to buy and sell. I never get involved in the criminal side of things and do it just for the money. Because of the drug profits we have been able to provide honest work here on the local farms for hundreds of people. Indirectly, the drug trade is keeping a large section of the Aconcagua Valley alive and pristine well past its historical time to have just become another suburb of Santiago. I did not have to reveal myself to you. I chose to do so, and the manner of doing it, in hopes that you could help us put an end to what threatens to become a bloody civil war among the various factions in Montevideo. We here in Chile don't need that kind of visibility in our commodity transactions.
"I'll tell you all that I know about what is happening in Montevideo, which sadly is not very much, tomorrow while we tour the farm and nobody will be able to hear what we say. I will offer you any other assistance I can. In return, I will only ask that you do what you came here to do as quietly and as tactfully as you can."
On the way upstairs to bed at 2 AM, we finally got a minute to catch up with Eduardo alone and ask about his phone call to Martin Gonzalez. He suggested that we should assume the bedrooms were bugged, no matter how unlikely that seemed, and step into the larger bathroom in the double bedroom. He turned the shower on to confound any microphones that might be recording us and quickly told us what he had found out in the car.
“First, the slow moving ballistics team in Montevideo finally matched the bullets that killed Martin’s former partner Jose Gonzalez with the gun that corpse #2, Carlos Cavernas, was carrying in his shoulder holster, which was not only specially made for that particular make and model of pistol, but also tailored to fit Cavernas. It's highly unlikely that his was a convenient body to put a shoulder holster containing a specific hot pistol on. Perhaps he was murdered because he killed Jose Gonzalez perhaps he was killed for some other reason. It looks like Martin is finally officially no longer a suspect in his partner’s murder.
“Interestingly, the bullets in Cavernas also matched the bullets on file from two previous killings in Montevideo this past week. Both of the victims were minor criminals, almost certainly low-level drug dealers. I think we can assume that whoever killed Carlos Cavernas has also killed at least two other small time dealers in Montevideo. What makes that assumption interesting is that the guys getting killed may have been just a couple of unlucky drug pushers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's possible that they
got asked to run some errands for someone a lot higher up in the new gang who is willing to go to any lengths to cover up their identity. That seems to fit the idea of an ongoing gang war between two competing factions over the drug trade.
“Finally, and most interesting, there’s been another killing. Graciela Sanchez called the police to report that she had found a dead body. The old man was killed very early this morning in his apartment. Apparently the security wasn’t as good as he thought. Andres Sanchez was shot at least six times from up close with a small caliber pistol, probably a .32 caliber. This was blatant overkill; apparently someone wanted him very dead and made sure.
"I don't know about you two, but I'm completely exhausted! You both should be even more tired than I am given the ridiculously late time we eat dinner in this part of the world. Bed sounds awfully good to me now after the early start we got this morning, and I'm used to the late dinners. Let’s get some sleep and discuss all of this tomorrow on the flight back to Montevideo where we can talk safely.”
About 20 minutes later, when Suzanne and I were snuggled into the double bed together, she said, “Hey, Roger, I never thought I’d say this, but I think I actually miss the goodnight puns we used to have every night.
“Did you see the sign over the door on that nice looking small private hospital we passed in Valparaiso that said “Se hablan Ingles los doctors aqui? Can you translate it?”
“Sure. It says ‘English speaking doctors here’. You could translate that sign yourself easily enough. Why are you asking me the question?”
“Because it seemed like such a good idea, I was wondering why we didn’t have doctors like that in our Los Angeles hospitals.”
Chapter 12. Life on the farm
The next morning we were wakened by sounds of people moving around downstairs. After showers, shaves, and such we went down to see what was happening. The dining room and kitchen seemed to be the focus of activity. We walked into the dining room to find Octavio, Alisia, and an older gentleman who had to be Octavio's father sitting at the table drinking coffee with croissants, jam, and butter. Octavio stood, welcomed us, and introduced us to his father, who was dressed somewhat formally in slacks, shirt, and tie. Grandpa stood and greeted us in perfect, if slightly accented, English. We sat at the table and helped ourselves to coffee and croissants while Octavio explained to his father that we were his guests because we were friends of friends. Our obvious cue as to who we were and why we were there led me to believe that either Octavio's father was not aware of all of the business activities that his son was involved in or there were strict rules about what was allowed to be discussed in the house.
Conversation bounced around between the kids' recent achievements and their already having left for school, current events in the news, and what we did back in the United States. Suzanne's connection with a university implied how our paths had converged and nobody corrected the impression. Grandpa Cortes suggested that we eat sparingly and leave plenty of room for lunch, which would be a special experience for us. We followed his advice. Shortly after, Octavio invited us to go for a walk around the farm and see its features. His father opted to skip the walk and reconnect with us at lunch, pleading a minor knee injury and demonstrating a cane to document the reason. Octavio led us through the kitchen and out a back door.
In daylight the farm looked large and fairly well kept. Just outside of the back of the house and off to our right were a fenced pasture containing a flock of about 80 goats, with a small one-story brick building standing behind it. Octavio explained that we were going to start with the cheese making facilities, which began with the goats. They had recently been milked, and several large cans of fresh goat's milk stood in front of the brick building. We walked over to the cheese house where a small fat man speaking French greeted us. Octavio translated some pleasantries and the Frenchman welcomed us to enter his cheese factory. Inside the building a small French woman was meticulously rotating by hand a lot of wheels of cheese in various stages of ripening. The cheese maker carefully poured the fresh goat's milk into what looked like wooden molds in the shape of wheels. Several shelves were lined with these molds placed side by side to pretty much fill the entire space available. In a small room within the room additional shelves were filled floor to ceiling with more wheels of ripening cheese. The smell of the ripening cheese was exquisite.
The cheese maker took a knife from a table and approached us. He cut small pieces from several cheese wheels at different stages of the ripening process, from newly firm to well aged, and lined them up for us to taste. The youngest newly firm cheeses, Octavio told us, were a week or two old, while the older cheeses had aged for anywhere from several weeks to a couple of months. Our impromptu cheese tasting was surprisingly like a wine tasting. We started with the youngest and tasted towards the oldest cheeses. The basic flavor developed and continued to intensify during the fermentation phase over several weeks, and was pretty much the same in subsequent cheeses we tasted that had been aged further after the end of the primary fermentation. The cheese texture became firmer and firmer as it aged. The outside developed a moderately hard rind, while the center progressively softened over time, as with a Brie or Camembert cheese made from cow's milk. As the cheeses aged post-primary fermentation the changes we could taste were a lot subtler. The cheeses themselves became smoother, more complex in flavor, softer, and much more interesting. From my point of view, older was better. Suzanne thought the younger cheeses, with the milder flavor, were more to her taste.
"The cheese will taste differently when you eat it with other foods and paired with wine," cautioned Octavio with a smile. "Don't make your mind up yet. You'll get a chance to see this at lunch, I hope."
We thanked the Frenchman, who beamed when we were able to remember merci beaucoup from countless movies, and the three of us walked the short distance to the goat enclosure. After goat watching for a little while Octavio took us on a much longer walk towards his vineyards, where several varieties of grapes were growing in rows of carefully pruned vines.
Along the way we passed a fenced pasture with a huge bull grazing in it. Eduardo sized up the bull for a bit, then turned towards Octavio.
"I always wondered whether I could be a matador. It was my childhood ambition. What do you think, could I beat your bull over there in the Plaza de Toros?"
Octavio laughed loudly and quite genuinely. The suggestion obviously was absurd. "The matadors that survive their first encounter with a bull are invariably small, very quick on their feet, and built like ballet dancers. I certainly don't think you fit any part of that description, Eduardo. Perhaps Sumo wrestling would have been a more appropriate choice of childhood dream for you to imagine."
When we finally got to the vineyards he stopped to allow us to admire the scenery for a moment, than shifted back to business mode. The smile disappeared and he was obviously back to being serious with us again. Remarkably, he could shift from genial host to drug merchant instantaneously. It wasn't just his tone of voice. Octavio's body language, posture, bearing, and all of the intangibles also changed as his different personas came to the fore.
"I want to tell you what little I know about what is happening now in Montevideo. We have an established organizational structure there for drug sales and distribution that seems to have worked well for several years. Let's call them "the old guard". The banker Andres Sanchez is at the top of the pyramid there, in much the same role I play here. He handles the business end of things and delegates all of the drug-related problems to others. I don't know who they are specifically. In addition he handles all of the money from the Uruguay drug trade and a lot of the profits from Chile for us---what you call "money laundering"---so that taxes can be paid and the profits can be legitimatized in the legal sense.
"Over the last few months Andres seems to have lost his grip on things and there is another gang trying to take over the lucrative drug trade from him. These newcomers have been very careful to conceal their identities, so we
don't know who they are. All of the violence, all of the killing, and all of the drug dealing we know about was by hired dealers and hired guns. Things are getting very violent, with several murders of street-level dealers to establish the new guard into positions of power in several of the most profitable sales areas. We know that they have hired cheap muscle from here in Chile and from Argentina, but we assume the leadership of "the new guard" is Uruguayan. Quite frankly, we don't even know that much for sure.
"Our intelligence tells me that you three are here in Chile in some kind of unofficial capacity. You seem to be quasi-police, not another group of drug dealers. We know that Eduardo has considerable clout with the local intelligence community, especially the U.S. CIA. What we don't know yet is what agency he actually works for. We know even less about the two of you. Would you like to share any information with me?"
