Narcos

by Jeff Mariotte

  Montoya shoved Castellanos into the room and closed the door. “Welcome home, Leo,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable. You’re going to be here a while.”

  7

  CASTELLANOS HAD BEEN married once, but not for long, and his wife had moved to Mexico, so that first morning, Montoya called his parents on a portable phone and then passed him the handset. “Tell them you need them to gather the money. Five hundred thousand pesos. I’ll call them back in two days, and if they have it I’ll tell them where to deliver it.”

  “They don’t have that kind of money,” Castellanos objected. “They’re simple people.”

  “They own a house. You own a house. They can sell both and get it.”

  “That could take weeks!”

  “I’m not in a hurry,” Montoya said. “But the quicker they act, the sooner I can let you go.”

  Castellanos’s father had answered the phone while they were talking. Aguilar could hear his voice coming through the speaker, thin and distant. Castellanos almost seemed like he’d forgotten who would answer. “Hello? Father? Is it you? It’s me, Leo.”

  A query came across the phone. Castellanos listened, then explained his predicament. “They need half a million pesos, or they’ll murder me. Yes! Yes, they will, I swear to you. No, I can’t explain, just… you have to get the money. You have to.”

  Montoya snatched the phone away from him. “He’s right, Mr. Castellanos. You get the money together. I’ll call back in two days to see if you have it. If you don’t, I’ll start hurting Leo. I won’t kill him right away, but I’ll hurt him. The sooner you get the money, the better shape he’ll be in when you see him. If you call the police, though, you’ll never see him again. Not this side of the grave.”

  He hung up without waiting for an answer.

  “Two days, Leo. Then…?” He ended with a shrug. “I wouldn’t want to be you.”

  After they secured Castellanos in his room, Aguilar used the phone to call Luisa. When she answered, she sounded almost hysterical.

  “Where are you? What’s going on? I’ve been so worried!”

  “I can’t tell you where I am, baby,” he replied.

  “Why? What are you doing?”

  “I can’t tell you that either.”

  “Jose, tell me what’s happening here! I don’t understand!”

  “I can’t tell you anything, Luisa. I’m fine. I’m not in trouble, and I’m not in any danger.” He hoped that part was true. “I won’t be home for a while, maybe a couple of days. But I’m all right. You just have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you. I just… I don’t know. I never thought something like this might happen. He pulled you from the apartment and you just went with him, leaving me… I’m so scared, Jose.”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of, baby. You’ll be okay for a couple of days. I’ll call when I can, but you can’t call me. Don’t worry, Alberto and I have everything under control.” Montoya was listening, so he didn’t want to tell her that there would probably be a nice bonus at the end of the process. But that was true, too.

  Once she was marginally more calm, he told her he loved her and would try to call again soon. Then it was just him and Montoya and the drained feeling that came when the adrenaline rush had ended. He collapsed into a chair.

  “Two days, right?” he said.

  “At least two days. We might be here longer. Depends on his family now.”

  “Then we let him go?”

  “When they pay, we let him go. If they pay.”

  “But they’ll pay, won’t they?”

  Montoya scoffed. “I don’t know them, do you? Some families pay. Some don’t. You can’t know until it happens.”

  “Have you… done this before?”

  “Once. I was like you, not the guy in charge. This is my first time in charge.”

  “How was it?”

  He made a face and spread his hands. “It was… it was not good. Hopefully this time will be better.”

  * * *

  It took five days. Montoya let Aguilar call Luisa twice more during that time. Each time, she was increasingly impatient, angry, and concerned. Each time, he did his best to reassure her, but the truth was, he didn’t know how it would all play out. He was worried about their shifts on the police force, but Montoya told him they were “covered,” whatever that meant. Aguilar was afraid when they did go back, everyone would know they were on Escobar’s payroll. When he raised that with Montoya, the older man just laughed, and wouldn’t discuss it further.

  The house had a TV, a radio, beds, couches, a dining table and chairs, and a kitchen stocked with food and alcohol. Castellanos never saw those parts of the house. He was either tied to the bed or chained in the bathtub. Sometimes, if he refused to cooperate, he was left in the bathtub with cold water running for an hour or more. Mostly, he cooperated. They prepared him simple food in the kitchen, or went out for food and brought him some back. He complained a lot, but when he got too annoying, they reminded him of the bathtub and he shut up. They kept the hoods on whenever they were near him, so he wouldn’t see their faces. When they were in the other room they drank and ate and smoked marijuana, listened to the radio, talked, played cards. When they could, they slept, never knowing if Castellanos was going to start making a fuss and have to be quieted down.

  Finally, his parents and family friends scraped up the half-million, and delivered it to an address Montoya gave them. Shortly after the delivery, he got a call on the portable phone. He listened intently, his face grim, then set the phone down on the table. It was dark outside; the phone had awakened Aguilar. “Money’s there,” Montoya said.

  “So now we let him go?”

  “Now we kill him.”

  “But he paid the money!”

  “Escobar wants people to know that if they owe him, they have to pay without being pressured to. Think how much this has cost him—this house, our salaries, the other expenses. He’ll get back what was owed, but not the other money that went into all this.”

  “But—”

  Montoya cut him off. “He used to kidnap people for ransom. He doesn’t do that anymore. Now he only does it to get back what’s his, what’s owed to him. He doesn’t even want to do that, but some people—like Castellanos—force him to. He wants to send a message.”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone,” Aguilar said. “That’s not why I joined the police.”

  “He’s heard our voices. Memorized them.”

  “So? He can’t prove—”

  “It’s been decided,” Montoya said, interrupting him again. He dug into a pocket, handed Aguilar the car key. “We do what we’re told. Move the car out of the garage.”

  Aguilar took the key. As he went into the garage and opened the big door, he briefly considered simply driving away. He could go pick up Luisa and…

  And what? Where could they go? Bogotá? Panama? Mexico? How would they live, with no jobs and little money? What about their families? Surely Escobar would punish them for Aguilar’s treason. No, running away was no answer.

  Instead, he drove the Renault into the street—it was just after four in the morning, still dark—then went back into the garage and closed the door.

  That was the first time he saw the drain in the floor, in the center of the room, and how the concrete sloped gently toward it.

  When he was back inside, Montoya donned a sweatpants balaclava and tossed Aguilar the other. Aguilar followed him into Castellanos’s room. “Your lucky day, Leo,” Montoya said. “Your family paid up. Let’s go.”

  “Really?” Castellanos asked. “How?”

  “Why should I care?” Montoya replied. “They did, that’s all I know. Come on.”

  Castellanos was grinning. Montoya freed him from his bonds, and the man rubbed his wrists where they’d been tied. “Can I get dressed?”

  “Of course.” His clothing was piled in a corner. Aguilar picked it up and handed it to him. “Quickly,” Montoya said.r />
  It wasn’t quick. Castellanos hadn’t moved much for the past five days, and his joints were stiff. He winced, in obvious pain, as he tried to pull on his clothes. Montoya lit a cigarette and scowled.

  When their captive was dressed, they started toward the garage. Aguilar was in the lead, but Montoya shouldered past him and made Castellanos get in front. He paused at the garage door, and Montoya gave him a shove. “Go on,” he said. “Don’t you want to get out of here?”

  “I certainly do,” Castellanos said. He opened the door and went out, took a couple of steps, then stopped and turned. “Where’s the car?”

  His mouth fell open when he saw Montoya standing there, arm extended, gun in his hand. “Nno,” Castellanos said.

  Montoya squeezed the trigger.

  The first round hit Castellanos at the inside corner of his left eye, and sprayed blood, bits of brain, and skull fragments across the empty garage. Fluid from his exploded eye ran down his face.

  Castellanos buckled, as if his legs had turned to water beneath him. Montoya stood over him and fired twice more, into his chest. The body twitched as the bullets slammed into it, but only from the impact. Castellanos was already gone.

  Aguilar watched it all with a kind of bland disinterest. He expected to be sick, but he wasn’t. He was numb. It was as if Castellanos had never been human at all, like he’d been a store mannequin or a character from a cartoon. Aguilar couldn’t summon any sense of horror or sorrow, although since moving the car out, he had been dreading this moment. Now it was here and he couldn’t even feel it.

  He wondered what that meant about him. He didn’t much like it.

  “What are you standing there for?” Montoya asked. “Get that door open and bring the car as close as you can.”

  Aguilar obeyed, stepping around the gore as best he could. He threw open the garage door and pulled the Renault partway in. When he started to open the trunk, Montoya said, “No, put him in the front seat. You’ll ride in back.”

  “The front?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Montoya still had that gun in his hand, and a strange half-smile played about his lips. Aguilar was afraid to push him. He opened the front passenger door. Together, they lifted Castellanos off the floor and hoisted him to the car, pushing him in and positioning him so he looked like he was going for a ride. Trying to avoid the blood was useless; by the time they had him in place, Aguilar’s shirt and jeans were soaked. Once, Castellanos’s head lolled over onto his shoulder, his cheek caressing Aguilar’s like a lover’s. Finally, he felt his gorge rise and bile stinging his throat.

  So he did have limits, after all. He found that strangely encouraging. Still, he helped set the dead man into the Renault, then when Montoya had backed it out of the garage, dutifully climbed into the back.

  “What about the garage floor?” Aguilar asked. “All that blood?”

  “Somebody will come along and clean it,” Montoya said. “Not our problem.”

  They drove for about thirty minutes, into Medellín’s downtown, past parks, museums, churches, and tall office buildings. Montoya rejected all of Aguilar’s efforts to learn where they were going. Finally, he pulled onto Carrera 55, where the city’s administrative offices were. Aguilar noticed Montoya’s eyes tick to the mirror, and he turned to see a police car pulling out behind them.

  “It’s the police!” he said.

  “So?”

  “So, we have a dead body in the front seat!”

  “And?” Montoya capped that with a shrug, then he pulled to the curb. The mayor’s office was less than a block away.

  “What are you doing?”

  Montoya shut off the engine. “Getting out. You want to stay here with him?” He stepped out into the street, then walked around and opened the passenger door wide.

  Aguilar bolted from the car. “But—what about the police?”

  “That’s our ride,” Montoya said. He waved to the police car as it cruised to a halt behind them.

  Aguilar felt stunned, shell-shocked by the whole sequence of events that had played out over the last hour. A moment later, he was ensconced in the rear of a police car that stank, like Montoya’s, of bitter Pielroja smoke.

  * * *

  When he passed through the door of their apartment, he was engulfed in shame. He had been part of the kidnapping and murder of another human being. For his trouble, he’d been handed a stack of bills that he hadn’t bothered to count yet, but that must have exceeded fifty thousand pesos.

  Somehow, being paid for it only made it worse.

  He took off his shoes and went into the bedroom. The bed was empty, but the bathroom door was closed. “Luisa, I’m here,” he said.

  “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands and face as best he could. She still hadn’t emerged, so he returned to the bedroom and peeled off his bloody clothes. Instead of putting them with the dirty laundry, he wadded them up and stuffed them into the trash. Nothing he had on was salvageable. He wished he could strip off his skin as easily.

  Finally, Luisa came out. She saw him standing there, naked, and hurried to him. Early morning sunlight was beginning to filter in through the window. “Oh, Jose, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, baby,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m… I’ve been lonely. And worried.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about. It was just some business. It’s over.”

  “Business? You’re covered in blood! You smell like smoke and liquor and the slaughterhouse.”

  “I need a shower.”

  “What’s going on, Jose? You can tell me. I’m your wife.”

  “I know you are, baby. That’s why I can’t tell you. The less you know…”

  “What? The less I know, what?”

  “Nothing. I just don’t want you hurt. I don’t know what I would do with myself if you were ever hurt.”

  “Is someone going to hurt me? Am I in danger? Are you?”

  He put his hands on her shoulders. She was edging toward hysteria, and he had to calm her down enough to get in the shower.

  “There’s no danger, baby.”

  “Are you sure? Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  He had sworn never to lie to her, when they were courting and again when they were first married. He had broken that vow, but he didn’t think he’d ever done so as fully as he did just then. He’d helped kill a man. That man didn’t seem to be a gangster, but Aguilar really didn’t know that much about him. Anyone who had wound up indebted to Pablo Escobar must have some criminal connections, and if that were the case, somebody could come looking for those who’d killed him.

  Then there were the police—the honest ones, anyway. They had left the body on a street that would be busy with morning traffic, just down from the office of the mayor of Medellín. An investigation would be demanded. How hard would it be for them to connect him to the crime? At least three police officers had participated; if even one of them talked, he was finished.

  She didn’t look like she believed him, and he didn’t know how to convince her of something he knew was a lie.

  “Baby, I need a shower. It’s been a hard few days. I’m tired.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No. I had a little tequila last night, with Alberto. Some beer the night before. That’s all.”

  She looked sad. She chewed on her lower lip and lowered her eyes. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Yes you do, baby. I’m just me. I just had a job to do. It was bad, but it’s over now.”

  “All right,” she said after a moment. “You take your shower. When you come out, I have something to tell you.”

  “Is it something good?”

  “I thought so. I hope so. But now, I’m not so sure.”

  “What is it? Tell me now.”

  “Later, after you’re clean.”

  If she had news that would help him scrub his mind
of the image of Castellanos on the floor, blood puddled beneath him, a gruesome hole beside his ruined eye, he wanted to hear it.

  “No, now. Please, Luisa, now. I need to know.”

  “Well, this isn’t exactly the way I pictured telling you, but…” Her face visibly brightened, a smile curving her lips and shining from her eyes. “…I’m pregnant!”

  Tears came to Aguilar’s eyes, overflowed, spilled down his cheeks. He began to sob, then to weep.

  He held her tight against his naked, bloodstained form, and tried to convince her they were tears of joy.

  He wasn’t sure he succeeded.

  8

  NONE OF THE things Aguilar had worried about happened. Instead of being ostracized or punished by his fellow officers, he was lauded, congratulated. Some—the honest ones, he guessed—ignored his five-day absence, but even they knew better than to criticize. The bosses seemed to view him as though he’d passed a test of some kind, and now, his loyalty assured, were willing to trust him with greater responsibility. He was assigned his own vehicle, a Nissan Patrol older than the one Montoya drove, but one that hadn’t been so saturated with tobacco that just entering it was like swimming in an ashtray. Often, he still rode with Montoya—they were partners, after all, and becoming something like friends—but sometimes he was given tasks to perform by himself. He was allowed to take the vehicle home, too, so his bus-riding days were at an end.

  He still performed police duties, but more and more, he was pulled aside to handle tasks for Escobar’s organization. Each of those came with a cash bonus, and since he was now saving to prepare for a child, the money was more important than ever.

  One afternoon, two weeks after the death of Leo Castellanos, he and Montoya were in Montoya’s Nissan. Although afternoon traffic was busy, they sat blocking the right lane of Carrera 34A, a major thoroughfare, watching cars pass. Motorists honked and made obscene gestures, but Aguilar and Montoya only laughed them off. They had a job to do, and they would be here until they had to go.

  Then a gray Mercedes rolled past, with a driver in front and a single passenger in the rear, a graying eminence wearing a homburg. That was their quarry. They let the Mercedes get a block ahead, then pulled into traffic—prompting more horns and shouted curses—and followed. Stealth was unnecessary; a police vehicle could travel anywhere in the city, with no explanation or justification required.