I know that Escobar is not involved in Pardo Leal’s death, because he is a liberal freethinker who doesn’t kill for ideological reasons; he only kills those who steal from him or have spent years persecuting him. When we’d said good-bye, he told me there was nothing, nothing I could do to change the course of history. Since I know that he would never confess his impotence against anything, or any weakness or defeat, I understand what it was that he really wanted to say with those words: there will be nothing, nothing that he can do, with all his ferocity and his billions of dollars, against the sum total of established power, the security organizations that serve it, and his best friend and partner’s obsession with exterminating anything that smells like communism.
The day after I return, I write to Pablo. I do it in code and sign off with one of his many nicknames for me. I recommend he not forget the enormous power Fidel has in the Non-Aligned Nations and with all the de facto governments in the world. I warn him that the day Castro discovers what his subordinates plan to do or are doing, he’s going to line them up before a firing squad and use the event to polish his image. I remind him that sooner or later he is going to have to flee Colombia with his whole family, that no rich country is going to receive them, and that Castro will block their entrance into all those third-world dictatorships that have given him passports. If anyone does let them in, it will quite surely be with the intention of selling them to the gringos later for a reward. I tell him that if he thinks he can face down the Cali bosses, the Colombian state, Fidel Castro, and the Americans at the same time and all on his own, it’s because he’s already lost all sense of proportion and is in the process of losing his mind—the only thing one can never lose after being stripped of everything else—and he’s on the home stretch toward suicide. And I end by saying that I’m tired of being persecuted simultaneously by his enemies and the intelligence organizations, that I’m not going to risk having my American visa revoked, that we are no longer friends, and that I don’t plan to become an observer-accomplice of his existence. I tell him I’ll do everything I can to forget all the reasons why one day long ago I fell in love with his lion’s heart, and to become from now on only the hardest observer-judge of his actions.
“If you open your mouth, you’re dead, love of my life,” he whispers one night at three in the morning, and I know he’s been smoking marijuana.
“If I talked, no one would believe me and they’d lock me up with you, and I’d rather avoid that torture. You know that if you killed me, you’d be doing me the biggest favor of my life. And if you hurt me physically, I’ll go to the media and no woman will come near you as long as you live. For those reasons—and because I cannot expect anything from you—I can give myself the luxury of being the only unarmed human being who isn’t afraid of you. Pretend that you never met me. Forget me, and never call me again. Good-bye.”
*
—
IN NOVEMBER I meet with Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela in Cali. Every time I see him, he seems like a different man. In jail he seemed sad and defeated, but the day he and Santofimio were going to visit Alfonso López he looked like the happiest and most triumphant multimillionaire on earth. Now he looks terribly worried. If there is anyone else on earth who isn’t afraid of Escobar, it’s him, who is as rich as Pablo or more so; but Medellín has already declared war, and it’s only a matter of days or weeks before one of the two cartels fires the first shot. Sitting across from me, Gilberto calls the general manager of his labs and orders him:
“I want you to know that I care a great deal about Virginia Vallejo, who is here with me listening. She’s going to call you later, and I ask that from now on you collaborate with her on everything she could need.”
That’s all he says, only adding that as soon as he resolves some problems, we’ll talk again. He knows that I don’t have a cent, and I know perfectly well what that means: everything depends on whether there is war with Escobar, and for the moment, I am just one more reason for conflict between the two of them. And a particularly sensitive one at that, not because Pablo is still in love with me, but because he’s not going to allow all his secrets and vulnerabilities—that whole treasure trove of information I carry in my memory and my heart—to fall into the hands of his worst enemy. I realize that Pablo is still tapping my phones and that, somehow, he’s already let Rodríguez know that in this matter, he could turn out to be more territorial than all his hippopotamuses put together.
In December, Gilberto invites Gloria Gaitán and me to Cali. They both seem enchanted to have met, and the next day I see him alone. He confirms what Pablo had told me would occur sooner or later, and what I had already sensed.
“Every time the Beast sees you on the screen, she shouts at my eleven-year-old son: ‘Come and look at your stepmother on TV!’ You are any rich man’s dream, and the fantasy of any cosmetics lab owner, but you’ve come into my life too late.”
I remark that since he’s obviously referring to my age and nothing else, I am at my best moment.
“No, absolutely not, it’s nothing like what you’re thinking! What I mean is that I’ve been married twice to women even more déclassé than me, while you are a princess, Virginia. But last night the Beast tried to kill herself, and when she recovered she told me that if I ever saw you again in my life, she would take away that little go-cart champion boy who is what I adore most in the world. He’s the only reason I’m still with her and the only reason for my whole criminal career. I was faced with a choice between my favorite child and the business with you.”
I reply that if he finances my cosmetics business with a decent amount, I swear I’ll build an empire, no one else will know we are partners, and for the rest of his life he’ll be able to turn to those legitimate funds in any emergency, because the new laws against illicit gain—the so-called forfeiture laws—are going to start to squeeze him mercilessly. With a paternalistic expression and a condescending air, he replies that he already has hundreds of legitimate companies that pay a true fortune in taxes.
After saying good-bye to him forever, I think how that cunning man was much more dangerous than Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodríguez put together, and that God does things for a reason. Back in Bogotá and looking at myself in the mirror, I decide to encourage myself with Scarlett O’Hara’s famous words in Gone with the Wind: “Well…tomorrow is another day!”
And we’ll see what happens in 1988. Let them kill each other if they want, because there’s nothing more I can do. Gilberto is human, and when Pablo crosses swords with someone, even the most macho and the richest go running. I still have $12,000 in the bank and $30,000 in the safe. I’m thin, I have an IQ as high as the number of designer dresses in my closet, and I’m going to Careyes, which is supposedly beautiful!
Careyes, on the Mexican Pacific, turns out to be one of the paradises of the richest and most elegant people on earth. Angelita, the beautiful model, has invited me to go with her so she won’t be alone amid all those French and Italians while her boyfriend, a Parisian polo player, supervises the construction of the field. We don’t say a word about Pablo, who five or six years before had yearned for her, or about my life over the intervening years. Our first night there I am introduced to Jimmy Goldsmith, who presides over a mile-long table full of his children, their boyfriends and girlfriends, wives and lovers past and present, grandchildren, and friends, all of them beautiful, tanned, and happy. When the legendary French-English magnate shakes my hand and smiles, I think he is perhaps the most attractive man I’ve seen in my life, that he must be a friend of David Metcalfe’s, and that there’s a reason people say: “El hombre que se casa con la amante, deja el puesto vacante!” (The man who marries his lover leaves the position vacant!)
Sir James has just sold all the shares of his company before the stock market crashed, has ended up with a fortune of six billion dollars, and had been married to the daughter of Antenor Patiño. I look at those palapas owned by the Bolivian tin magnate’s descendants
as they celebrate his daughter Alix’s birthday by listening to the most sublime mariachis on earth, and I wonder why our stingy tycoons can’t live with a little style, as Metcalfe would say. And I think about Pablo and Gilberto, who have half or a third of this man’s money and are only two-thirds his age and who could choose to be happy in a place like this, to enjoy the exquisite and perfect things in life, like this ocean, this climate, those infinity pools, the singular architecture with enormous vines climbing the columns that hold up the mansions’ thatched roofs. And instead they think of nothing but killing each other.
Why won’t the Mexican come listen to these mariachis, instead of assassinating presidential candidates? Why does Pablo prefer the Putumayo queen over these girls, who are so beautiful? Why doesn’t Gilberto see the potential of this land they’re practically giving away, and that will be worth a fortune in a few years? All these rich and noble Europeans realized, and came to colonize it before it’s all bought up!
I conclude that it takes several generations to instill good taste and acquire a certain beauty so that people don’t mock the excesses of fast money. And I think that, at the rate things are going in terms of longevity, the ugly billionares are going to take at least half a millennium to achieve it.
Back in Bogotá and after having dinner with some friends one night, I arrive home around eleven. Five minutes later my doorman rings and tells me that William Arango has brought me an urgent message from his boss. The visitor in question is Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela’s secretary, and although it seems strange for him to come so late, I let him up. I think that maybe his boss is back in Bogotá, or has changed his mind about the business or the war and doesn’t want to say anything over the phone. And, as I do every time I press the button to let up the elevator that opens directly into my apartment’s foyer, I put my favorite work of art into my jacket pocket.
The man is completely drunk, and when he comes into the living room, he collapses onto the sofa across from the banquette where I am sitting. Looking at my legs with glassy eyes, he asks me for a whiskey. I reply that in my house the whiskey is for my friends, not their drivers. He tells me that his boss makes fun of me in front of all his friends and employees, and so does the psychopath degenerate Pablo Escobar in front of his partners and hit men. He says that Gilberto Rodríguez has sent him to collect the two bosses’ “leftovers,” because it’s about time the poor got a little something. With utter calm, I explain my problem: over the past seventeen years, the six richest men in Colombia and the four most beautiful have sat right there where he is sitting, and a destitute dwarf with the face of a pig isn’t fit to replace them. He exclaims that it’s true I’m a prostitute, just as doña Myriam says, and that’s why he also has a little gift for me from her. Impassive, I reply that if he calls that low-class woman “doña,” a chauffeur like him has to call me “doña Virginia” and not “Virginia.” Not because I am an Infanta of Spain or married to a Mafia don, but because my family has belonged to the upper class for twenty generations.
He exclaims that he’s going to give me what I deserve, and that now I’ll find out what good really is. He tries to get up off the sofa, which is very low, and puts his hand in his pocket. He sways for an instant and leans on the coffee table to keep from losing his balance. When half a dozen candles in two silver candelabras fall noisily, he glances down. And when he looks up again, he has a 9 mm Beretta pointed at his forehead from five feet away. In my most controlled voice, I tell him, “Get both your hands up, you filthy chauffeur, before I shoot and you stain my sofa.”
“As if someone as snooty as you, Virginia, could ever kill anyone, poor thing! And that little gun, I’m sure it hasn’t a license from the army!” he exclaims, laughing with the cold blood of one who knows he has the support of the highest bosses.
“I bet it’s a toy, and if it’s real, I bet it’s not even loaded. And we’re going to find out right now so I can go to DAS and denounce you so they’ll throw you in jail for carrying an illegal weapon and for being Pablo Escobar’s ex-whore!”
When he stands up, I take the safety off the Beretta and tell him he’s not going anywhere. I order him to sit down beside the phone. He obeys, because I explain that he’s right: in effect, I don’t have a license to carry the gun and it isn’t mine—its owner left it when he came to see me that afternoon, and two of his secretary-drivers are already on their way over to get it.
“Here on the handle it reads PEEG. It’s pronounced ‘Pig!’—the word that its owner yells every time he uses it. Since you surely don’t know English, I’ll translate: Have you heard of El Chopo, El Tomate, El Arete, La Quica, La Garra, and El Mugre?”
The man goes pale.
“See how easy it was to guess the owner’s name? Turns out you’re not as ignorant as I thought! And since you’re so intelligent, and I have my hands so full, I’m going to ask you to act like a good secretary and help me out by dialing this number. We’re going to tell that Vienna Boys’ Choir to hurry it up, because I’m home now and they said they’d be here between eleven and twelve to get this gun. That’s right, the degenerate psychopath Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria left it behind when he came this afternoon to make love to his whore—not his ex-whore. He left it right there where you’re sitting, right where I’ll be disinfecting tomorrow. Go on! What are you waiting for?”
And I give him a Bogotá number that I know will have been disconnected, given to me by the Mexican years before to use in case of an emergency.
“No, doña Virginia! You’re not going to let all don Pablo’s sicarios kill me! You’ve always been a good lady.”
“But how could a genius like you expect that a ‘prostitute,’ one who a car thief and a drugstore messenger are starting a war over, will be some kind of angel, huh? Keep dialing that number, and if it’s busy it’s because that psychopath degenerate is talking with Piña Noriega….Luckily, they never talk for long. And how could you think I’m going to let them tear you to shreds in front of me! Ugh, no, no, disgusting! Nor would I want to watch while that boys’ choir does what you came here to do to me, to your daughters or sons, your wife, your mother and your sisters. Thank God they won’t be long now…because tomorrow I have to get up early to take that furious madman to the airport—supposedly he wants to show me a new plane!”
“No, señora Virginia! You wouldn’t let those thugs—sorry, those men—touch my family!”
“I’d like to help you, but this gun’s owner has the keys to my apartment, and when his secretaries see me aiming it at Gilberto Rodríguez’s secretary, they’re not going to believe me if I say that the boss of the Cali Cartel sent a revolting drunk to smoke the peace pipe with the boss of the Medellín Cartel, are they? I have a little gift for you, too, so you can choose between two options. For you, personally, which do you prefer: some chainsaws that our sadistic carpenter has just gotten from Germany—and that he’s dying to try out!—or half a dozen lionesses that have been dieting for a week, because they were getting fat off so many leftovers they sent to the Nápoles zoo? Okay, let’s stop calling. They must have left a while ago, they’ll be here soon….”
When I get tired of describing all the things they’re going to do to the poor woman who has to sleep with a repugnant pig like him and bear him piglets, I tell him to be grateful that I am a guardian angel of his family and I’m throwing him out of my house before those butchers come to cut her up before his eyes. With the Beretta aimed at his head, I order him to get into the elevator, and although at the last minute I want to kick him, I stop myself: I could lose my balance, and Pablo taught me that when you have a gun in your hand you have to keep your head not just cool, but freezing cold.
“God does things for a reason.” When the door closes behind that depraved man sent by Gilberto Rodríguez to take revenge on Pablo Escobar—or by his wife to get revenge on me—I lock all the doors to my apartment and my room, I kiss the Beretta and bless the day when the man who took my heart of gold left me his pis
tol so I could train to defend myself the instant his enemies would come for me. I swear to God that no drug trafficker will ever again set foot in my house or have my phone number. I curse them all, that they not have one single day of happiness in their lives, that their low-class women cry tears of blood, that they lose their fortunes, that all their descendants be known as the Damned. And I promise the Virgin that in thanks for her protection, starting now I will cooperate with the foreign antidrug authorities any time I can be useful to them. I will sit in the doorway of my house to watch the dead bodies of my enemies and their children go by, and to see the survivors loaded onto DEA planes in handcuffs, even if I have to wait a century.
The next day, I call the only female friend who would never tell anyone what I’m going to confide in her. Solveig is Swedish, elegant as an ice princess, discreet and different from all those society women and journalists Pablo has always referred to as “the vipers.” She and I rarely share confidences. I’ve always swallowed my pain alone, and in these last years I’ve gotten used to not trusting anyone. Today I tell her about what happened, not because I need to unburden myself, but because I know that now, especially, Escobar is tapping my phones and recording my conversations to find out whether I’m seeing his enemy. I also know that, though I hate him now and he doesn’t love me, Pablo will always care about me. He’ll hear me on the phone while my stunned and incredulous friend asks how someone like me could ever have gotten mixed up with people like that and why I let one of those guys into my house. He’ll hear me telling her that I thought I could still stop a war that will leave hundreds of people dead. Since servants and secretaries never act without authorization from the boss, I don’t tell Solveig the name of William Arango, because I know Pablo would shred him with a chainsaw the next day, and I don’t want to carry the weight of that death. The only purpose of my confession to Solveig is to make Escobar loathe the man he always called a “social-climbing pig” even more. Not to mention his evil-sickened wife, who, with all those calls to the media accusing Victoria Escobar of slicing faces to steal gifts, was the one who really started that whole war between the two cartels.
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 35
