Narcos

by Jeff Mariotte

  “What?” Aguilar asked.

  “There are so many lovers here, I figured we should let them think we’re gay,” Montoya managed. Then he lost it again, laughing so hard tears squeezed from his eyes.

  “You’re crazy,” Aguilar said. But Montoya’s hysteria was infectious, and soon they were both laughing too hard to finish their camarones al ajillo.

  After dinner, they retired to their separate rooms on the tenth floor of the new beachfront Hilton for siestas, then met again at midnight to hit some clubs. The women were beautiful and willing, and Montoya took one back to his room. He offered to share, but Aguilar declined. Dancing wasn’t cheating, he decided, as long as there wasn’t much touching. Anything else was out of bounds. He wished Luisa were here with him, rather than Montoya. One day he’d bring her back.

  In the morning, over a breakfast of strong coffee and fried arepas de huevo, Aguilar asked, “So, do we try for Rodrigo today?”

  Montoya said, “There’s one more place I want to show you before we get down to business.”

  “I need to get home,” Aguilar said. “Luisa needs my help around the house. She’s getting big.”

  “She won’t get too much bigger over the next twenty-four hours or so. She’ll be fine.”

  “I’m a little concerned about taking him out anyway,” Aguilar said. “He’ll be protected, right?”

  “Most likely, sure. But nobody will be expecting an attack from just two guys. They’ll be looking out for an attack, like on the market back home.”

  “If they’re any good, they’ll be ready for anything.”

  “Cartagena’s a backwater,” Montoya countered. “And he’s strictly small-time.”

  “Big enough to be a problem for Don Pablo.”

  “Not a problem. A nuisance.”

  “Okay,” Aguilar said. “What’s this place you want to show me?”

  “Finish your coffee,” Montoya said. “It’s not going anywhere.”

  * * *

  The Palacio de la Inquisición, facing the Plaza de Bolívar, was an eighteenth-century building that had housed the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Its ornate Spanish colonial architecture was striking, to Aguilar’s eyes, but what interested Montoya was what was inside: a display of instruments of torture, including an inquisitor’s rack and an elaborate construction of wood, iron, and rope. “What’s that?” Aguilar asked.

  “It’s a witch scale.”

  “Scale? How does that work?”

  “If a witch can fly on a broom,” Montoya explained, “she doesn’t weigh as much as she should, for her size. They weighed suspected women on these, and if they were too light, they were executed. Exorcisms were popular here, too. Satan was active in those days.”

  “We have our own devils now,” Aguilar said. He was thinking of Escobar and his kind, but he found the whole place a little spooky. A lifetime of Catholicism had taught him that devils were real, and not to be toyed with.

  They spent another half-hour examining the other implements of torture on display: thumbscrews and boots, a Judas Cradle and a crude wooden “donkey,” and an elaborate bronze device that Aguilar couldn’t figure out until Montoya told him it was called the “head crusher.” At that point, its mechanism and purpose were obvious.

  “We can update these for our own purposes,” Montoya said. “Who would refuse to talk once they were placed in a head crusher? You wouldn’t even have to tighten it; just the idea would loosen tongues.”

  “Threats and bribes seem to work,” Aguilar said. “Plato o plomo.”

  “For most people, sure. I’m talking about the extreme cases.”

  “Hopefully we won’t have many of those.”

  They drifted away from the torture implements and browsed through other historical artifacts. At one point, Montoya started laughing out loud, and Aguilar joined him in front of a glass display. “What’s so funny?”

  “Apparently, Don Pablo’s ideas aren’t all original.” He pointed at a slip of paper with faded, purplish ink on it. “This is a receipt from the pirate Francis Drake. For ten million pesos, he agreed not to burn Cartagena to the ground. And when they paid, he gave them a receipt.”

  “Just like Escobar and the stolen cars,” Aguilar said. “Except he wasn’t stupid enough to put it on paper.”

  “Exactly. Maybe he’s thinking too small. He should ask Medellín for a hundred million dollars to not destroy it. They’d probably pay.”

  “What would he do with another hundred million?” Aguilar asked. “He’ll never be able to spend what he already has.”

  “No wealthy man ever has enough money,” Montoya said. “Just like no powerful man ever has enough power. They all want more, and the more they have, the more they want. Speaking of which, let’s go take care of Rodrigo. Killing him won’t make us powerful, but it’ll help make us rich.”

  * * *

  According to their telephone company contact, Rodrigo’s most recent phone call had been made from his penthouse condominium in the Bocagrande district, a strip of land that lay between the Caribbean and Cartagena Bay. The Hilton was there, too, on a spit that jutted out, so the Caribbean surrounded it on three sides, with the bay a few blocks behind it. Rodrigo’s building was four blocks north, visible from their rooms. After visiting the museum, they had lunch at the hotel, and Aguilar made a quick call to Luisa. Then they walked over and strolled back and forth in front of Rodrigo’s local headquarters, then through the alley in back, where they found an entrance to an underground parking garage.

  The ground floor housed a bank and a fashionable dress shop. Between those, double glass doors led into the building’s lobby. A security guard sat behind a high counter, flanked by video screens that showed him the sidewalk just outside the doors, an alley behind the building, and the interiors of the two elevators that faced him. Aguilar looked over the counter and saw a Glock at his waist. Another guard, similarly armed, stepped off an elevator and came to the desk to chat.

  “We’re not going to be able to get to him inside,” Montoya said when they’d finished their reconnaissance there. “But he can’t stay inside forever.”

  “We can’t stay in Cartagena forever.”

  “Why not? Don’t you like it here? Nice hotel, good restaurants, pretty girls.”

  “We have jobs. And Luisa needs me at home.”

  “I know, you’re a devoted husband. Maybe a little stupid, to marry when you were young and poor, but it’s too late now.”

  “I don’t think it was stupid. I love Luisa.”

  “And you’ll still love her when your house is full of little no-neck monsters and you’re changing dirty diapers all night long, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s no life for me, brother, but you’re welcome to it.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” Aguilar said. “What now?”

  “Now we try to figure out his routine,” Montoya replied. “When he comes and goes. How many guys with him. What does he ride in?”

  “That could take days. Weeks.”

  “Look, man, if you want I’ll ask Don Pablo to replace you. You can go home to Luisa and think about all the money I’m making here. Or you can go home with your pockets loaded, and take good care of her financially. Up to you.”

  “I’m not saying I want to go, Alberto. I’m just saying, let’s try to get it over with in a hurry.”

  “It’ll take as long as it takes.” Montoya nodded toward a café across the street. “Let’s get a window seat,” he said. “We can watch the door from there.”

  Before leaving Hacienda Nápoles, they’d been given an intelligence folder detailing what was known about Rodrigo. He had attended the University of Cartagena, and after graduating, had gone into business with two partners, buying houses in disrepair, restoring them, and selling them. They’d plowed their early profits into ever more real estate, and soon became some of the largest landowners in the city.

  Somewhere along the way, Rodrigo had realized how m
uch more could be made smuggling drugs, especially with Cartagena’s convenient location on Colombia’s northern coast. He’d continued to invest in real estate, building several large ranches—cattle ranches were ideal for laundering money, Montoya explained, because on paper, a man could buy ten thousand cows at 100,000 pesos each, and who would ever count them?—and acquiring office and apartment buildings throughout the region. The partners had disappeared along the way, and were presumably buried where some of those cattle grazed.

  Photographs included in the folder showed a slender blond man with a receding hairline and a heavy mustache. He favored shirts open to halfway down his chest, usually worn with a white suit, and a gold chain or two around his neck. He wore expensive wristwatches, a different one for each day of the month. Aguilar was sure he’d recognize the man if he saw him. “What if he uses the garage, and never comes out this door?”

  “Then we’ll figure that out after a little while. Harder to watch the garage, though, without being seen by the guard. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  When they were seated in the café with drinks in front of them, looking over at Rodrigo’s building, Aguilar asked a question that had been nagging at him all day. “Why us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Escobar has dozens of sicarios to call on, right? And he could buy any information he wants about Rodrigo—price is no object for him. So why send us after him?”

  Montoya raised two fingers. “Two things. One, just because he can buy anything doesn’t mean he wants to pay top dollar. This way, we’re buying the information out of what he’s already given us, in hopes that success will lead to more. And two, he’s testing us. I don’t believe Rodrigo is a huge problem for him. Kidnapping Costa was an affront that had to be answered, but I’m sure Don Pablo’s not losing any sleep over it. So he points us toward a minor concern, in order to see how we handle it. If we do well, there’ll be more work. If Rodrigo kills us, then it’s no loss for him.”

  Aguilar raised his glass and clinked it against the rim of Montoya’s. “That’s you, always looking on the bright side of things.”

  “Life’s too short to sit around moping,” Montoya said. “I want to get everything I can out of every day. And hey, at least you got to see the torture museum.”

  13

  IT TOOK FOUR more days.

  Whenever Rodrigo left his building, it was in a limousine. The chauffeur wore a uniform with a cap, and two thugs sat in the rear with Rodrigo, one facing front, like him, the other watching out the back window. The first time they spotted him, they had walked over and couldn’t follow. The next day, they parked the rented car near the alley and killed time wandering through shops or sitting in the café until the limo appeared. Then they raced for the Corvette. The traffic in Bocagrande was such that for the first few blocks the limo crawled, so they were able to keep it in sight.

  At mid-afternoon that day, he went to a hotel near the Old City. His men accompanied him inside, then came back by themselves and waited at the limousine for ninety minutes, until he returned. When he showed up again, he was tucking his shirttails into his pants, carrying his suit jacket over one shoulder, and his hair—usually neatly combed—was mussed.

  “A mistress, then,” Aguilar said.

  “So it appears.”

  Montoya was just sitting there, and hadn’t keyed the ignition. “He’s getting back in the car,” Aguilar said. “Do you want to follow?”

  “No,” Montoya said. “He’s probably going home. Let’s go see where she is.”

  “How will we know?”

  Montoya just flashed him a grin. “We’ll know.”

  They left the Corvette parked and went into the hotel. The lobby was quiet. A desk clerk was busily tapping at a keyboard, and a bellman lounged in a chair at his station. The only guest in sight was an old man with bad eyesight, reading a newspaper that he’d folded to the size of a book and held up almost against his birdlike nose.

  The bellman glanced up when Montoya and Aguilar entered, but saw that they weren’t guests and had no luggage, and went back to picking at his fingernails. Montoya walked over to him.

  “The man who just left here. Blond hair, white suit.”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  Montoya tucked some folded bills into the bellman’s shirt pocket. “Okay, thanks.” He started to walk away, then stopped, turned back. “But if you had seen him, what room would he have gone into?”

  The bellman frowned, wrinkled his forehead. Montoya showed him more bills.

  “Two-ten,” the bellman said. “Second floor, third on the left.”

  Montoya put the additional bills in with the first ones. “You didn’t see us, either,” he said.

  Aguilar watched the desk clerk while Montoya negotiated with the bellman. If he was aware of the conversation, he didn’t show it. The old man on the settee couldn’t have seen or heard anything. Montoya ticked his head toward the lobby’s back door.

  It opened onto a courtyard with trees, a fountain, and several stone planters full of flowering plants. Birds chirped and flitted from tree to bush to balcony. A staircase to the right of the door led to the four upper floors. To Aguilar, the place held the elegance of a world gone by, a Colombia that might never have existed except in the romantic imagination.

  At room 210, Montoya tried the knob, then rapped twice on the door. When he heard a rustling behind it, he mumbled, “Cara mía.”

  The lock clicked back and the door started to open. “What did you forg—”

  Montoya shoved the door open and clapped a palm over the woman’s mouth. She was barefoot, wearing only a skirt and a bra. She was in her twenties, pretty, her pale skin still flushed from her recent encounter. Montoya pushed her into the room, and Aguilar stepped in and closed the door, locking it behind him.

  “We’re not here to harm you,” Montoya said. His tone implied the unspoken threat. “As long as you don’t make a fuss. If I take my hand off your mouth, will you be quiet?”

  She nodded, eyes wide with fright.

  Montoya removed his hand. The woman touched her mouth, as if to make sure he’d left it in place.

  “What’s your name?” Montoya asked.

  “Amparo.”

  Montoya took her in, and let his gaze wander around the room. “This isn’t a bad place, Amparo,” he said. “But Rodrigo could afford far better. Why hasn’t he bought you an apartment, or a house?”

  “I don’t know who you mean,” she said.

  “Don’t be stupid. I’m not interested in you, only in Rodrigo. You help us and you’ll be fine. Maybe Rodrigo’s too cheap to buy you a place, but my employer isn’t. And you won’t even have to put up with his unwanted attention.” He sniffed the air. Aguilar smelled it, too. It was overpowering and reminded him of fermented fruit. “Or his cologne. It can’t be fun to breathe in that stuff while he’s on top of you.”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” she said.

  “I know everything about it,” Montoya said. He picked her blouse up off the floor. “Rayon, not silk. That skirt is cheap, too. Your sandals are leather, but not good leather. You think being mistress to a mid-level gangster is going to elevate you financially? I understand that. But Rodrigo’s never going to be more than that. He’ll never leave his wife for you. He’ll put you up in decent hotel rooms until he’s bored with you, and then one day he’ll stop calling.

  “Or you can cooperate with us. I can make one phone call and have two hundred thousand pesos transferred into your bank account in a day.”

  “I don’t have a bank account.”

  “You should. Every working woman needs a bank account.”

  “How about cash?” Amparo asked.

  “We can do that.”

  Aguilar didn’t know why Montoya was willing to make such promises without even checking with Escobar, but he didn’t want to interrupt. The older cop’s patter was calm and confident, and she seemed to be buying into it.

  “And l
et’s make it two-fifty,” she said.

  “Why not three?” Montoya asked.

  “Why not? Three. What do you need from me?”

  “How often do you see him?”

  “The same time, every other day.”

  “Always here?”

  “Different hotels, but most often this one.”

  “How do you know where to go?”

  “He makes a suggestion when he calls in the morning. I come to the hotel he suggests and arrange the room. When he comes, he covers the cost. I can stay in the room overnight, or go home, whichever I choose.”

  “Where’s home? Getsemani?”

  She turned up her nose. Getsemani was an impoverished neighborhood, blighted and crime-ridden. “Of course not. Pie de la Popa.”

  “Handy. You can walk here. Save the bus fare. You have your own house?”

  “I live with my mother. She’s not well.”

  “So you have medical bills, too?”

  “Some.”

  “And he’s not helping with that either?”

  “He helps,” she said, her tone defensive. “He takes care of us. And I work, too.”

  “He treats you like a prostitute. You deserve better.”

  “How do you know what I deserve?”

  “I cherish women,” Montoya said. “And I honor them. You all deserve better than that.”

  “Speaking of work, I need to get back there,” she said. She snatched away the flowered blouse that Montoya still held. “What is it you want from me?”

  “The next time he makes a date, we’ll be here, too.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then you get the three hundred thousand.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  “For you. We’ll do the hard part.”

  “How do you know I won’t call him as soon as you leave, and tell him what you offered? Maybe he’ll do better.”

  “You already know he won’t. You’re getting what you can, a little at a time. Like I said, I have no problem with that. We all do what we have to do. But he’s never going to give you a big payday, because then you’d stop seeing him. He wants to stop when he’s ready, not when you are. And until then, he wants you to be available to him, which you wouldn’t be if you got what you’re looking for.”