Narcos

by Jeff Mariotte

  Aguilar considered for a moment. There would be more cops on the scene; having nothing more interesting to do, they’d have gathered together, smoking, trading the latest gossip. Once the car was on the way, though, they would lose interest. One car might follow the tow truck to the garage, but no more than that. Controlling the variables would be harder, because the vehicle would be on the move—meaning a greater risk of innocents being caught in the crossfire, including the tow truck driver. But the danger to himself and Poison would be lessened.

  “On the way,” he said. “Can we find out what route the driver will take?”

  Poison tapped a radio receiver mounted on the motorcycle. “You have your radio, and I have mine,” he said. “We’ll know.”

  While they waited, they planned their attack as best they could. When the call came, they made some last-minute adjustments and headed out.

  There would be a point on Avenida San Juan at which the tow truck would pass beneath a highway. The sides of the road were concrete walls there, usually covered in graffiti, which would minimize the danger to bystanders. And once the truck was in the underpass, it wouldn’t easily be able to escape.

  Poison raced through traffic on his motorcycle. When Aguilar felt he was falling too far behind, he switched on lights and siren and cleared the way ahead.

  On Avenida San Juan, he spotted the tow truck hauling a yellow Toyota sedan, traveling in the center of three lanes. As he’d expected, a single police car rode behind with two officers inside. They were talking animatedly; he saw their heads bobbing like puppets. He killed the siren and lights before closing in, so he wouldn’t alert them.

  Poison had assured him that the truck driver would be ready. When Poison passed him on the motorcycle and gave him a sign, the driver would slam on his brakes.

  They got into position, with Aguilar four vehicles back, behind an ancient pickup truck piled high with what appeared to be all of a family’s possessions. He could see the police car and the tow truck, but unless the officers in the car were more observant than he expected, they wouldn’t be able to see him. Poison was alongside him, but at Aguilar’s nod, he sped ahead. He took the inside lane and raced ahead of the other vehicles, then cut across until he was beside the tow truck. Catching the driver’s eye, he gave a salute and shot in front of the truck.

  The driver hit his brakes. The tow truck shuddered and skidded to a halt, its rear end fishtailing and blocking the left lane as well as its own. Behind it, brakes squealed as cars either lurched to a stop or slid into the rightmost lane, the only one still open. A couple of cars bumped across the median strip and into the oncoming lanes, then had to repeat the process to avoid head-on collisions.

  The driver of the police car wasn’t so lucky. Doubtless distracted by his conversation, he braked, swerved, and slammed into the sedan under tow, caving in his front end.

  The car behind that managed to avoid the pile-up, but the pickup truck’s brakes weren’t up to the challenge. The driver tried to stop, but his truck slid sideways, clipped the rear fender of the police car, and tipped over. Chairs, bicycles, children’s toys of every description, a dining table, three mattresses, and dozens of boxes spilled across all three lanes of traffic, some even winding up in the nearest oncoming lane. Clothing scattered—women’s, men’s, children’s—and, caught by the wind rushing through the underpass, fluttered and soared back across the mess. A pair of women’s panties snagged on the twisted windshield wiper blade of the police car, causing Aguilar to wish he had brought Montoya’s Polaroid.

  His amusement didn’t last long. The capsized truck blocked every lane, and he couldn’t drive up to the tow truck. The idea was that once they’d dispatched the following officers, they would reroute the tow truck to someplace where they could recover the cocaine. Once they had it safely in Aguilar’s Nissan, it didn’t matter what became of the car itself.

  Now, though, Poison was ahead of the tow truck, stopped and straddling his motorcycle, looking back at the wreck. The police car was tangled up with the sedan; Aguilar thought it might take a crowbar or a torch to separate them. But the pickup truck and its detritus had stopped all traffic behind it, so Aguilar couldn’t get through. Traffic in the other direction was slowing down, as people moved over to avoid the far left lane and to observe the calamity.

  He sat for a little while, trying to determine the best course of action. Finally, he turned on the lights and siren again, and slowly rolled up over the concrete median. Blaring his siren and horn at oncoming vehicles, he worked his way past the wreckage and cut back in front of the tow truck. Poison parked his motorcycle and joined him there. The two cops got out of their car and eyed Aguilar with relief.

  “That damn driver,” one of them said, gesturing toward the tow truck. “What the hell did he stop for? There was nothing in his—”

  Poison cut him off with three quick shots, two to the chest and one to the head. The other cop reached for his gun, but he hesitated. Aguilar recognized him; they’d been at the academy together, sometimes had coffee together in the mornings before class. “Jose, why—” the guy began. Aguilar drew and fired five rounds, four of which found their target. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name.

  With both officers down, Aguilar pounded on the tow truck’s door. “What are you sitting there for?” he asked. “Get out and help us!”

  The driver scrambled down from the truck. Poison was already freeing rubber-wrapped kilos from the Toyota and stacking them on the road. Aguilar and the truck driver snatched them up and carried them to Aguilar’s SUV, loading them into the cargo area. Around them, horns were honking and people were swearing, but Aguilar pointed to his badge and waved at them to stop. Someone went to the pickup and helped the family inside crawl out, dazed and bloody. The sight stung Aguilar like an arrow to the heart. That should have been me, he thought. Helping the victims, not taking advantage of their anguish to further a crime.

  But life was too short for should-have-beens, or so Montoya might have said. Aguilar pushed that thought from his mind and moved the cocaine.

  19

  THE NEXT TASKS assigned to Aguilar were easier to accomplish, and attracted less attention. He was asked to make evidence disappear, to alter reports, sometimes to use police resources to locate people or to inconvenience them in some way. Nothing too complicated or dangerous, and he was receiving four times his police salary to carry them out from time to time.

  But then there were the murders.

  Escobar, it seemed, always had a list of people who needed killing. Police, judges, lawyers, bankers, merchants, drug dealers, informers, criminals, guerillas… it seemed endless. El Patrón preferred that innocents not be hurt during those assassinations, especially women and children. But if it couldn’t be avoided, then that was okay. The important thing was to take out the targets.

  At first, he thought he would never grow accustomed to killing. Each time he did it, he was shattered all over again. The look in the eyes of the person about to die, lying on the ground knowing they were breathing their last. The sobbing, the begging for life, for just one more day. Everyone who had time to speak seemed to have a family, wives and children who needed them, aging parents who relied on them.

  But after a while, he realized those things affected him less and less. He could pop off a few rounds into a man kneeling before him, hands clasped together in weepy supplication, without feeling that pull at his chest that he had at first. He could move in close and gut someone with his knife, what Escobar called the Jaguar’s Claw, and when the hot gush of blood and intestines drenched his hand, he could shake it off and be on his way.

  As more time passed, he began to look forward to it. He came to appreciate the challenge: plotting the perfect hit, learning the target’s habits, anticipating obstacles, and then carrying out the plan just so. He took a craftsman’s pride in his work; anything worth doing was worth doing well. His father had tried to impress that upon him, when he was younger. Of course, he’d mostl
y been talking about fixing shoes, not ending lives. But the principle applied just the same.

  He never saw his parents anymore, or Luisa’s family. They all remained in the area, but he felt isolated from them, separated by circumstance and occupation. At the funeral, his father had taken him aside and tilted his grizzled head toward Escobar.

  “Why do you have someone like that at your wife’s burial?” he asked. “It shames us all.”

  “Don Pablo’s a great man,” Aguilar replied, almost believing it. “He’s one of the richest men in Colombia. He’s going into politics, and he’ll probably be president one day.”

  “He’s a gangster and a murderer,” his father said. “And everybody knows it.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, Father. His reputation is overblown. Sure, some of his methods are a little strange. But look at everything he’s done for Antioquia. The clinics, the sports fields, housing for the poor. Would a gangster do all that?”

  “He would if he worried about what people thought.”

  “You’ll see, Father. When he leads Colombia, you’ll be proud to say he spoke at your daughter-in-law’s funeral.”

  His father shook his head sadly, looking at the ground. “The fact that you could even speak that sentence means you’ll never understand,” he said. “I don’t know how you came to this.”

  He walked away, and they hadn’t spoken since.

  They could never comprehend what he did, and he couldn’t even try to explain it. And because they hadn’t experienced it for themselves—his parents had lived through La Violencia, but had never taken human lives—an unbridgeable chasm had opened between them. He didn’t even see people he and Luisa had been friends with, or spend time with those he’d known at the academy.

  His life dovetailed with Escobar’s now. His only friends were Don Pablo’s sicarios. But that was okay.

  They understood him.

  * * *

  The weeks passed in a blur of blood and violence, fueled by liquor, pot, and adrenaline. Aguilar didn’t sleep much. When he showed up for work, he was disheveled and distracted. It was only when he was doing jobs with Escobar’s men that he felt like his heart was really beating, that his lungs were taking in breath. It was amazing how ending another person’s life could crystallize one’s own.

  Finally, he went to Escobar with a request.

  “I’m no good at work,” he said. “I think they’re going to fire me. They’re not giving me any responsibility anymore, and I don’t know if I can even be of any use to you there.”

  They were sitting beside the pool at one of Escobar’s homes in Medellín. The mansion was surrounded by tall stone walls that looked as if they’d survived the centuries and could last for a few more. Spring flowers scented the air, which was alive with buzzing insects and chirping birds. Escobar listened patiently as Aguilar described the state he was in. “I thought this would happen,” he said when Aguilar had finished. “I’m surprised it took so long.”

  “What took so long?” Aguilar asked.

  “For you to become fed up with the straight life. Some call it the honest life, but to me, what’s honest is living up to one’s own capabilities. You were never meant to be a cog in some bureaucratic machine, Jaguar. The primary function of the police is to enforce the status quo. The police exist to protect the financial interests of the oligarchs. Protecting the people—the real people, like your family and mine—is always secondary to that. You see the protection that I have around me at all times, for the safety of my family—that’s necessary because the police won’t protect people like us. In Colombia, unless we’re born into the right families, we have to take care of ourselves.”

  Escobar had just won a seat as a representative to Colombia’s House of Representatives, running as an alternate to Jairo Ortega, who abdicated his seat immediately following the election. Aguilar had accompanied the guys to some of his many campaign appearances, and felt like this speech was just one more of those he’d delivered to adoring crowds over the last several weeks.

  But for all that it sounded like Escobar’s standard speech, it tugged at something deep inside Aguilar. The man was right. As a police officer, his duty had presumably been to serve all Medellín’s citizens. But the truth of it had been far different. If a merchant who sold diamond rings to the city’s wealthy was robbed, a massive police response resulted. That merchant would no doubt have insurance, and losing a day’s profits would hardly bankrupt him. But if a street vendor was robbed of what might amount to all the money he would earn in a week, that hardly merited sending out a single officer to write up a report, with no follow-up. The murder of a socialite whose sole contribution to society was that she got her picture in the papers wearing fabulous gowns demanded action; the murder of a teenager from impoverished La Estrella barely raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re right,” Aguilar said. “I see it every day. The police only serve the rich. Sure, they’ll send us out to a crime against a poor person, but only if there are no rich ones needing us at that moment. As soon as one does, we drop everything else and rush to be of service. It’s sickening.”

  “That’s why I’ve earned the fortune that I have,” Escobar said. “So I can spend it on those who would otherwise go without. The trees I’ve planted throughout the valley, the clinics and classrooms, the parks and soccer fields—they’re all for the people. The real people. The many, not the few.”

  “You’re a good man, Don Pablo.”

  Escobar chuckled. “I wouldn’t go that far. I try, but I have my failings, like anyone else.”

  “Anyway,” Aguilar began. He swallowed, and continued. “I was wondering if I could quit the police and work for you. Full-time.”

  “Of course,” Escobar said. “I’ve been hoping you would. But you had to choose when. You had to see that it was right for you, so I didn’t push. When do you want to do it?”

  “Right away,” Aguilar said. “I guess I have to go in tomorrow, to tell them I’m quitting. They’ll want my car back, and my gun, I guess. My badge.”

  “Keep your uniform if you can,” Escobar said. “At least one of them. If they won’t let you keep your badge, we have plenty you can use. Even if you’re no longer a cop, there might be times when it’s handy for you to look like you are.”

  “I’ll try. Anything else?”

  “Anything they’ll let you have might come in handy. Try not to burn any bridges, in case we need you to use your contacts there from time to time. But don’t be afraid to let the bosses know how you feel. There’s nothing they can do to you now. The minute you don’t need them anymore, you’re the one with the power, not them. Always remember that.”

  “I will,” Aguilar said.

  “And one more thing. Welcome to the family. At last.”

  “At last,” Aguilar echoed. Escobar grasped his hand and held it tightly, and Aguilar felt like he had come home after a long absence.

  20

  THREE NIGHTS LATER, Aguilar was playing Galaga with some of the guys in the mansion’s game room when Escobar came in, something akin to panic on his face. “We have a problem,” he said.

  “What is it, Patrón?” La Quica asked.

  “It’s my niece—Tata’s sister’s little girl, Adriana. She’s been taken. Kidnapped.”

  “By who? Guerillas? A cartel?”

  “I don’t think so,” Escobar said, shaking his head. “No. No, this was a guy in a little blue car. She was walking home from school. A boy in her class saw her, up ahead of him. A man in a blue car stopped and the man said something to her, and she got in. He mentioned it to his mother when he got home, and she called Dayanna, Tata’s sister. Dayanna was already worried sick because Adriana was late.”

  “Do you think he’s some kind of pervert, boss?” Big Badmouth asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe. What other kind of man would snatch a little girl off the street like that? She’s only nine.”

  “You should call the po
lice,” Trigger said.

  “The police won’t help us. They’ll sit on their asses and laugh at our worst fears.”

  “He’s right,” Aguilar said. “The police won’t do anything for this family. We’ll have to do it ourselves. Do you know where she was taken from, Don Pablo?”

  “I can find out.”

  “Good, do it now. Anybody have a good map of Medellín?”

  “In my car,” Sure Shot said.

  “Grab it,” Aguilar said.

  Sure Shot ran from the room, right behind Escobar.

  It hadn’t even occurred to Aguilar that he’d been throwing orders around—including to Escobar himself—and that people were obeying them.

  Soon, he had a map unfolded over the video game, and with a marker he blocked out different areas within a three-kilometer radius of the abduction site. “How do you know she’ll be there?” Escobar asked. By now his wife, Victoria Eugenia Henao Vallejo—Tata to Escobar, Señora Escobar to everyone else—was in the room along with all the sicarios at the property.

  “I don’t,” Aguilar admitted. “But look at it this way. The guy was in a small car. If he’d had a van or a truck or something, I would make the perimeter larger. But in a small car, with a little girl, I don’t think he would want to travel far. She might make a fuss, and people would see through the windows. He wouldn’t have grabbed her on a street where he’s known, but I think he took her someplace close by.”

  Aguilar indicated different sections he’d marked. “Four guys per section,” he said. “One goes down the street in one direction, one in the other. Look inside every garage, if there are any. The third guy goes down the alleys behind those streets, doing the same. Be discreet—you don’t want him to see you—but check every house or building. That car’s somewhere, and wherever it is, Adriana is. When you find the car, don’t go in alone. For one thing, it might be the wrong blue car. But if it’s the right one, the guy might kill her to keep her quiet. Call here, and someone will dispatch backup to your location. Once enough guys are there to enter in force, through every door and some windows, then you can go in.”