Narcos

by Jeff Mariotte

  “What if it’s the wrong fucking car?” Big Badmouth asked.

  “Tough shit. Bad day to drive a small blue car,” Aguilar said.

  “Everyone, talk to everybody you know,” Escobar said. “Every informant, every lookout, every would-be sicario. Somebody in the city must have seen something, besides that little boy. Let’s find out who, and what they know.”

  Aguilar didn’t think that would be as helpful as a thorough foot search, but he wasn’t about to turn down the suggestion. He and Escobar quickly assigned teams of four to the different sectors, and the guys headed out to search. Aguilar stayed behind to coordinate the effort.

  When it was just him, Escobar, and Tata in the room, Aguilar noticed that she was quietly sobbing. Escobar gently put his arms around her and pulled her into a hug. He eyed Aguilar over her shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Tata,” he said. “With Jaguar running the show, we’ll find her.” Then, to Aguilar, he added, “You sounded just like a cop.”

  “I guess it’s my training coming out,” Aguilar said. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s good. Sometimes we need somebody who can think on his feet like that. The way you were bossing those guys around, for a minute you sounded like me.”

  Tata blinked away tears and managed a brief smile. “Thank you, Jaguar, for your efforts.”

  “You’re welcome, Señora. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Jaguar isn’t your real name, is it? Pablo loves those silly nicknames.”

  “I’m Jose, ma’am. Jose Aguilar Gonzales.”

  She shrugged free of Escobar’s grip and crossed to him, extending a hand. “It’s good to officially meet you, Jose Aguilar Gonzales. I’ve seen you around. You seem different from most of Pablo’s guys.”

  “It’s because he has an education, and he had an actual job,” Escobar said. “He was a real police officer, and a good one. Too good for Medellín, so I had to hire him before he arrested me for something.”

  Aguilar grinned, but didn’t respond. Instead, he said, “I’m sure we’ll find your niece, Señora. The guy won’t have taken her far away.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.

  “He’d better be,” Escobar added.

  The call came in two hours later. The team headed by Sure Shot had found a small blue car inside a garage, with a blanket thrown over it to hide it from anyone looking in through the little windows set high in the garage door. Dust on the passenger door had been smeared and there were smudges on that window, as if from tiny hands.

  Aguilar called the three nearest teams and gave them the address. It wasn’t too far from the Escobar home, so he and Escobar got into a car and headed out to meet them. Escobar gave instructions not to move in until he’d arrived—he didn’t want to miss the action.

  Aguilar took the wheel of a silver Mercedes-Benz—the most expensive vehicle he’d been in, much less driven, even including the rented Corvette—and headed for the address. He was nervous about driving Escobar, anxious about driving the pricey vehicle, and worried about how it might all turn out. Escobar didn’t think this was a political kidnapping, or one with a ransom as the goal. That only left one reason a random man would snatch a little girl off the street. Aguilar shuddered to think about it.

  “You might be wondering why I’d go through so much effort and expense for a little girl I hardly know,” Escobar said as they wended their way down narrow roads. “It’s because she’s family. Family is everything, Jaguar. Everything. All that I do—even if it’s for the poor, for the people—it all comes back to family. I want my family to grow and live in a Colombia at peace, one where the poor have the same opportunities as the rich. Without Tata and little Juan Pablo and my mother, Hermilda, I would be nothing. I might have the world, but it would be meaningless. I know Dayanna feels the same way about Adriana. And Tata loves her sister. I’d burn this city to the ground if I had to, to get Adriana back safe and sound.”

  He was silent for a little while. Aguilar didn’t know what to say; he had basically given up his family to be an adjunct to Escobar’s. Maybe family was who you chose to be with, rather than necessarily who you were born to be with.

  Then Escobar added, “Do you think we will? Get her back? Alive and unhurt?”

  “It’s been hours,” Aguilar said. “Typically, when a child is abducted, it’s rare for them to survive the first few hours. It’s different if the goal is ransom, or leverage of some kind—then the abductor has a stake in keeping the child alive. Or if it’s a parent. But stranger abduction… it’s not good, Don Pablo. I won’t lie to you. We can hope for the best, but…”

  “But prepare for the worst. Yes, I understand. If that pendejo has laid a finger on her, he’ll pay.” He was quiet again, scowling. “He will pay,” he muttered. “He will pay.”

  Aguilar came to a stop a half-block away from the house in question. He could see Sure Shot, La Quica, Blackie, Brayan, Royer, and a few of the other guys. Nine in all, plus him and Escobar. With eleven, they could breach every entryway and find the guy wherever he was in the house—hopefully without giving him time to hurt the girl, if he hadn’t already.

  The house was small, modest, and set back from the street. A carriage house converted into a garage sat up close to the road; it was through windows in the door that Sure Shot had spotted the camouflaged car. Lights burned inside two rooms of the house, which was a single story unless it had a basement. For a moment, Aguilar wished Montoya were here—this would be much like the approach they had used to grab Leo Castellanos, what seemed like lifetimes ago. The differences were that this time they had more men—and they had an innocent victim to worry about.

  If Adriana had survived the abduction only to be hurt in the rescue, Escobar would hang his spotted hide on a wall and use it for target practice.

  He huddled with the guys for a couple of minutes, laying out the plan and assigning stations. Sure Shot had already been around the house, counting doors and windows. There were two men for each door—front, back, and side—and one for each window. One of the windows was too small for an adult to go through; Sure Shot figured it was in a bathroom. But a desperate man could shove a little girl through it, so Aguilar wanted it covered, just in case.

  He and Escobar took the side door; El Patrón had a Heckler & Koch submachine gun strapped over his shoulder, and Aguilar carried a handheld battering ram he’d kept from his police car, with his gun in a holster and his knife on his ankle. On the theory that having men crash through every opening in the house at the same time would be surprise enough, he didn’t worry about trying to synchronize watches or anything like that. He gave everyone a minute to get into position, then shouted, “Go!” At that, he swung the ram into the door, right beside the lock. The jamb splintered and the door flew open. They charged into an empty kitchen. All around the house, he heard others crashing through doors and smashing out windows.

  Then he heard screams—little girl screams as well as adult male ones. She was alive.

  From the rear of the house, Trigger shouted, “They’re in here! Stay away from her!” Aguilar and Escobar followed the voices and found themselves in a bedroom. La Quica had gone in through the window, and Snake-eyes and Poison had blocked the doorway.

  The man was thin, almost emaciated. He had short, graying hair and an angular face, and he was wearing a dirty, grease-stained T-shirt with a cigarette pack in the breast pocket, and boxer shorts. Adriana was still wearing her school clothes: a red jumper with a white blouse, and pink sneakers. She stood beside a bed, wailing in terror, but at least the man had shut up. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping the sheets tightly.

  Escobar kicked him in the leg, hard enough to break the skin. “Did you hurt her?” he demanded. “Did you touch her?”

  “I… I j-just wanted someone to p-play with,” the man stammered. “I… I didn’t want to h-hurt anybody!”

  Escobar kicked him again, harder, and shoved the barrel of his gun against the guy’s face. “Did you touc
h her?”

  “Only a l-little,” the man said.

  Escobar turned to the girl and squatted beside her. His voice was suddenly tender. “Adriana, it’s me, your Uncle Pablo. You’re safe now. My men will take you home to your mother. She’s been so worried about you, and so has Tía Tata. But you’re fine now, okay?”

  She seemed to recognize Escobar. The tears kept coming, but the wailing stopped, and she nodded.

  “Who do you know?” Escobar asked. The other guys were crowding into the doorway now, and the girl scanned their faces before pointing out Poison.

  “Poison and La Quica, take Adriana home. And call Tata, so she can call Dayanna and tell her you’re on the way.” To the girl, using his soft voice, he said, “These men will take you home. You’ll be fine, okay? Uncle Pablo wouldn’t let anybody hurt you. All right?”

  “All right,” she said, nodding again.

  “You’re a brave girl. Uncle Pablo loves you. You know that, right?”

  She nodded once more.

  “You’ll have to come over and play with Juan Pablo soon. He misses you, too. Go with these men, now. They’ll take good care of you, and they’ll make sure you get home safely.”

  He locked eyes with Poison, then La Quica, as if to reinforce the message, then let her go. Poison took her hand and led her from the room. Escobar’s tenderness with the girl surprised Aguilar; maybe he really meant what he’d been saying on the way over, about family.

  Escobar was quiet, listening. When he heard car doors slam closed and the engine start up and drive away, he turned back to the man on the bed. He held out the machine gun, saying, “Somebody give me a pistol.”

  Four pistols were instantly proffered. Escobar took one and handed off the machine gun. “You think taking little girls off the street is fun?” he asked.

  The man was trembling uncontrollably, his hands twisting the bed sheets into knots. “N-no,” he squeaked. “I-I’m so s-sorry.”

  Escobar aimed the gun and fired a shot into the man’s left foot. The man yowled with pain. Before he could do anything else, Escobar shot the right one.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Y-you’re Don P-P-Pablo,” the man said. Tears and snot ran down his face, and blood pattered onto the floor from his feet.

  Escobar flashed a quick grin, as if pleased that he’d been recognized. Then he was back to business, his face stern. He fired twice, shooting the man in both legs. The man screamed, then jammed a hand into his mouth and bit into it.

  “Do you see your mistake?” Escobar asked.

  The man couldn’t speak, but he managed to nod his head. Escobar fired again. Left knee, then right. The man shrieked and started praying loudly, as if he might still be delivered from evil.

  Escobar shifted his aim and shot him in the upper right arm. This time, the gun locked open. Empty. Escobar held it out, and someone snatched it away and gave him another. He fired again, into the upper left arm, then both elbows, and both wrists.

  The man flailed around on the bed, only wordless screeches coming from him now. Every part of him was shaking. He’d filled his boxers and the stench rose in the room, making Aguilar glad for the gunfire smell that blocked at least some of it.

  When that gun was empty, Escobar asked for the machine gun. He pointed it at the man’s groin and emptied it. When he was finished, the man was dead, his crotch a smoking, smoldering mess.

  “Everybody remember what you saw here,” Escobar said. “Tell everyone you meet what happens to men who mess around with little girls. We’ll make Colombia safe for children, if we have to kill every pervert in the land to do it.”

  He looked at Aguilar, his eyes suddenly weary. “Jaguar,” he said, “take me home. I need to see my family.”

  21

  “THAT WAS GOOD, Jaguar, what you did last night,” Snake-eyes said. “Fast thinking.”

  “Thanks.”

  A steady rain was falling, and they were huddled in the guard shack at the estate’s front gate. They should have been walking the perimeter, but neither one wanted to.

  “How did you know to do that?”

  “I guess it’s from my police training. They teach you to take command of any situation. Assess it, make decisions, and carry them out. That’s what I did.”

  “I just about shit when you started ordering Pablo around.”

  Aguilar laughed. “I did too, when I realized what I’d done. By then it was too late, so I just went with it. I’m glad it all turned out okay.”

  “How young do you think is too young for him?”

  “What do you mean? For Don Pablo?”

  “Tata’s eleven years younger.”

  “That’s not so bad. My mother is fifteen years younger than my father.”

  “But how old was she when they married?”

  “Twenty-two, I think.”

  “I’m not sure how old Tata was, but young. Fifteen, maybe.”

  Aguilar shrugged. “If her parents approved…”

  “I guess they must have. When we go out sometimes, for prostitutes, he always picks the youngest they have. Me, I like a woman with some meat on her, and some experience.”

  “You go for prostitutes with Don Pablo?”

  “Sometimes. You will, too, one of these days. He likes to take some of the guys, pay for them. It makes him feel generous, I think, and he believes it makes us feel indebted to him.”

  Aguilar wasn’t sure how he would feel about that. He had hardly thought about women or sex since Luisa’s death. He’d always supposed a time would come when he would be interested in it again, but for now, he couldn’t separate it from his loss. Luisa haunted his dreams, and sometimes he thought he saw her on the street. Being with anyone else would feel like a betrayal.

  He saw Montoya, too, in nightmares. Saw the fear in his former friend’s eyes, the pain racking his face as Aguilar cut him, the blood pooling on the floor. It was rare for a night to go by without those memories floating to the surface at least once. He tried to chase them away with thoughts of Luisa, but that was only sometimes effective.

  “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it,” Snake-eyes clarified. “Just, you know, he got so upset with that guy last night, and Adriana is nine. I was curious as to what’s too young for him, and what’s just right.”

  “We’ll probably never know,” Aguilar said. “And that’s as it should be.”

  “You’re probably right. I’m glad he did what he did. People who prey on children like that—they should all have their balls shot off. Even that might be too good for them.”

  “Yeah,” Aguilar agreed. “It’s wrong, for sure.”

  “It messes a kid up,” Snake-eyes said. “Makes him distrustful. Mean.”

  “Him?”

  “It happens to boys, too, you know.” His expression was curious, somewhere between bemused and sad, and he gestured toward himself in a way that Aguilar wasn’t sure how to interpret.

  “You?” he asked.

  Snake-eyes shrugged. “I’m not ashamed of it. I couldn’t control it. And when I got old enough, I found the bastard and blew his brains out. My second killing.” He flashed a quick, uneasy grin. “The first was just practice, to make sure I could do it when I found him.”

  Aguilar wasn’t sure what to say. He’d come to know Snake-eyes a little, working with him, but not that well. A revelation like this seemed premature, at best.

  Still, he figured Snake-eyes was right. It wasn’t anything he had done wrong, it was something that had been done to him, no doubt against his will. And he’d dealt with it appropriately, when he was able.

  “I’m sorry that happened,” he said. “But I’m glad you got payback.”

  “Yeah, so am I.”

  They were quiet for a little while, watching the rain and the occasional vehicle shushing up the street. Then Snake-eyes said, “Hey, don’t tell anybody, okay?”

  “Okay,” Aguilar said. “No problem.”

  “I’m not ashamed,” S
nake-eyes said again. “But it’s not something I want everybody to know about, either. I don’t even know why I told you.”

  “It’s cool,” Aguilar said. “I can keep secrets.”

  “We can all do that, right? If we couldn’t keep secrets, Pablo would have our heads.”

  They laughed, then were quiet again.

  The rain kept falling.

  * * *

  After their shift, Aguilar had taken a hot shower and settled into a comfortable chair with a book. He had found a copy of Andrés Caicedo’s posthumous novel ¡Que viva la música! on a shelf in the mansion, and picked it up out of curiosity. Now he found himself gripped by the story of María del Carmen Huerta and the 1970s Cali that Caicedo had himself known. Some of the other guys were watching Sábados Felices and cracking up, but Aguilar had never found Alfonso Lizarazo that funny, and he was able to immerse himself in the book.

  “Reading. That’s good. I should read more.”

  Aguilar looked up from the book and saw Escobar standing beside him.

  “I like to read,” Escobar went on. “But these days, I mostly read newspapers and news magazines. Is that a good one?”

  “I think so,” Aguilar said.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Escobar said. “We’re heading to Hacienda Nápoles. We’re going to have an important visitor tomorrow, from North America. I want to entertain him there for a few days.”

  “Are we all going?” Aguilar asked.

  “Most of us. Tata wants you to drive her. I usually ride in a separate car from her, Juan Pablo, and my mother. In case of trouble, you know.”

  Aguilar had already noticed that. “I thought she had a regular driver.”

  “She does. But she was impressed with you. Not too impressed, if you get my meaning, but impressed. I tried to discourage her—not that I don’t trust you, but I’ve only ridden with you once, last night, and you didn’t seem too comfortable with the Benz.”

  “I’ve never driven anything like that. So luxurious.”