“Four people in there?” Maribel said. “Is it big enough?”
“We rode all the way out here from—” Aguilar began. He caught himself, and continued, “—from a distant city with four men in the cab. It’s tight, but it’ll be fine.”
Mesa and Maribel protested a little more, but they climbed into the cab and sat where they were told. Aguilar had realized that the protests were mostly for show, to bolster one another’s courage in an unusual situation. They would go along and do whatever needed to be done. By now, curiosity about their patient probably outweighed their fear. He wished Trigger hadn’t shown Maribel the gun, but no real harm had been done.
34
WHEN HE REMOVED the blindfolds from the captive dentist and his assistant and walked them into the house, Aguilar could hear Escobar complaining before the door even closed. He hoped his boss would let the dentist examine him and not simply shoot him on sight.
It turned out that Escobar did allow the examination, although he complained every time his mouth was free from intrusive hands and instruments. He had broken a tooth, irreparably, and Mesa had to extract it and perform a root canal. In less than ideal circumstances and without his proper chair, it took almost two hours. Aguilar tried to stay out of shouting range for the duration.
Then it was over. Hearing that, Aguilar came in to check on him. Escobar whined about the pain, and immediately lit a joint to help dull it. Dr. Mesa assured him that in a week or two, he would forget that the tooth had ever existed, except when his tongue found the hollow spot at the back of his mouth.
“You’re saying it’ll hurt like this for a week?” Escobar demanded.
“A little better every day, Señor,” Mesa said. “I can prescribe painkillers if you’d like.”
“I don’t need drugs,” Escobar said. “I need a competent dentist.”
“I assure you,” Mesa replied, “that I’ve done for you what any good dentist would. The source of your pain is gone; what’s left is residual. It will fade in due time.”
“You’ll fade in due time,” Escobar said. Eyeing Maribel, he added, “You, perhaps not so much.”
Maribel didn’t crack a smile. “We should get back,” she said. “There are other patients.”
“Fine, get out of here,” Escobar said. “Jaguar, take them home.”
“Blindfolded?” Mesa asked.
“Of course,” Escobar said. “Why would we blindfold you one way but not the other? It’s for your own good. If I were you, I’d keep my eyes closed under the blindfold, just in case.”
“Let’s go,” Aguilar urged. If El Patrón didn’t start feeling better in a hurry, he might start shooting after all. Aguilar didn’t want Mesa harmed, but he felt especially protective of Maribel. She had maintained her biting humor all the way to the lab site. It was probably her defense mechanism, he thought. She was afraid—anybody would be, in that situation—but rather than showing fear, she kept up a brave front.
He blindfolded the pair and put them in the truck. Trigger had wandered off somewhere—maybe back into the bedroom, staring at nothing again—and Aguilar didn’t see either of the captives as a threat. He could handle them.
“Where’s your little friend?” Maribel asked when it was obvious that Trigger wasn’t joining them. “Back to primary school?”
“He’s not that young,” Aguilar said.
“Chronologically,” Maribel said. “Maturity and intelligence-wise, I’m not sure he’s advanced that far yet.”
“He’s a poor kid from a poor neighborhood. He didn’t have your advantages. Leave him alone.”
“What makes you think I had any advantages?” Maribel snapped. “Or Dr. Mesa? I’m not even from a poor neighborhood, I’m from a poor village that only had the one neighborhood. None of us had any money. We struggled for everything. But I wanted to get out, so I worked and fought and earned my way to dental school.”
“And then you moved to a similar village,” Mesa said. “Proving that some people don’t have sense enough to go in out of the rain.”
“I wanted to help my people! What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, dear,” Mesa replied. “I’m only teasing you.”
“You should talk,” Maribel said. She turned toward Aguilar, which was a little comical considering she was blindfolded and couldn’t see him anyway. “He came from Bogotá’s worst comuna. Like me, he had to scrap every centimeter of the way, but he got out and became a respected dentist. Then he moved to the village because he knew the city had plenty of choices, but no one was taking care of those deep in the jungle. He works from dawn to dusk. He’s paid in chickens, in coca leaves, sometimes in nothing but words of thanks, but he stays at it. Dr. Mesa’s a hero.”
“My boss is a hero, too,” Aguilar said. “He helps others out of poverty. He’s built entire developments for people who had nothing, who were living in junkyards. He’s created clinics and hospitals where there were none, provided free soccer fields and parks for the poor. He’s a great man.”
He stopped, thinking he might have already said too much. Of course, unless national news didn’t penetrate this far into the jungle, they had likely recognized Escobar. His political campaign had put his picture on front pages and news broadcasts in every city in Colombia.
Then again, what did it matter? El Patrón had enemies everywhere, but he was surrounded by friends, sicarios who would give their lives for him. And even if Mesa or Maribel meant him harm, they had no idea where in the jungle he was, only how long it took to reach him.
“You should know,” Maribel said after a little while—almost as if she’d read his mind. “There are people in our village, and others nearby, who resent your boss. He’s buying coca leaves from farmers in the area, and paying next to nothing. Meanwhile, they’ve stopped cultivating other crops, because earning that paltry amount is easier than hauling produce to some market in a far-off city and possibly dealing with unsold goods, or bandits, or damages. So the people are short on food because the farmers have stopped growing it, and the farmers are being cheated out of what they should earn for the coca. Some think if we ran the cocaine labs ourselves, we could all make more money. Why should all the profits go to Medellín instead of staying here, in the community?”
He had suspected that she had known, but this confirmed it. “So you knew all along.”
“Of course,” she said. “Who else but a gangster’s henchman would come into a dentist’s office with guns and fat wads of money, demanding immediate service? And everyone around here knows that Pablo Escobar runs a cocaine lab in the area.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Only generally. I know the basic direction it’s in, twenty-five kilometers or so from the village. Everybody knows that.”
“But the blindfold…”
“That’s your charade. We went along with it to humor you, but we were just being polite.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” Aguilar said. “But you could have told me earlier.”
“Why? You weren’t going to kill us; your boss was in excruciating pain. Dr. Mesa could have made his pain much, much worse, but instead he acted like a professional, and helped him. We aren’t your enemies, Jaguar.”
“You can call me Jose,” he said.
“You can call me Señorita Restrepo.”
“Not Maribel?”
“Are we friends?”
“I thought, in some small way…”
“You kidnapped us—Jaguar. Yes, you were a gentleman about it. But you’re carrying a gun, and you threatened us. That’s a strange basis for a friendship.”
“I didn’t threaten you, Trigger did. And I told him not to.”
“Not all threats are explicit,” she said.
“Well, I’m sorry if you felt threatened. That wasn’t my intention. And I did pay you well.”
“Yes, you did,” Mesa said. Aguilar had almost forgotten he was in the truck as well. “And Señor Escobar gave us more. People in the village will
eat well for a few weeks.”
“You’ll share that money?”
“Of course,” Maribel said. “If we hoped to get rich, we’d be working in a city. Our basic needs are met; beyond that, we try to help our people.”
“I guess you’re both heroes,” Aguilar said.
“Hardly. Just human beings, doing what people do.” She paused, then added, “Some people.”
“But not me, you’re saying.”
“I don’t know you well enough to say either way, Jose.” He noticed that she didn’t call him Jaguar. The sound of his name coming from her lips sent a jolt through him.
“You could.”
“Are you living here now, or just visiting?”
“Visiting, I guess. But I’m not sure for how long. A while longer, I think.”
“Maybe, then.”
“Maybe what?” he asked.
“Maybe you can call on me. But no guns, no blindfolds. If you want to get to know me, it’ll be as a person, not as some gunman.”
“Do you really mean it?” Aguilar asked. “You two aren’t…?”
Mesa laughed. “Us, a couple? Thank you for the compliment, but no. I’m far too old for her, and far too crotchety. And my wife would object, as well.”
“His wife’s lovelier than him, anyway,” Maribel added.
“I just wanted to make sure you were serious.”
“Don’t push her, son,” Mesa warned. “She made the offer. She wouldn’t have if she didn’t mean it. But I can tell you from experience, if you act like a fool, she’ll retract it.”
“He knows me too well,” Maribel said.
“I’m with you—what did you say? Dawn to dusk, every day. Of course I know you well.”
Aguilar made a turn, and they were at the plaza. The dentist’s office sat just ahead. He considered driving around the village a few times, just to spend a few more minutes beside Maribel. But smells from the plaza’s food vendors had begun to permeate the cab, and he feared they would catch on.
Instead, he braked the truck beside the office. “We’re here. You can take off the blindfolds.”
They did. Maribel looked at Aguilar, blinking in the sudden late afternoon light.
“Thank you for the ride, Jose. And for not taking advantage of us. You had money, guns, blindfolds… many men would not have acted so honorably. That—not your silly nickname, or your reasonably handsome face, under the spots, or your position in the employ of a drug lord—is why I’ve agreed to see you again. If you would like.”
“I would. Definitely.”
“Find me at the office, then. If I’m not there, I’ll be at home. Everyone in the village knows where that is. I’ll pass the word to cooperate if you ask for me.”
Mesa climbed out of the truck before Aguilar made it around to his door. Maribel was just getting out, so he extended a hand to help her down, and she took it. She graced him with a smile, and said, “I hope I’ll see you soon.”
Then she was gone, inside the office. Aguilar closed her door, feeling almost dreamlike. Had that really happened? A woman he’d essentially kidnapped, on Escobar’s orders, had invited him to see her again? He practically floated back to the driver’s door, grinning.
Before returning to the lab, he drove through the villages and all the way to San Vicente del Caguán before he found a motorcycle for sale. He paid what the owner asked and a little more, made sure it worked and was full of gasoline, and put it in the back of the truck.
If he was going to make regular trips to the village, he didn’t want to do it in a big flatbed truck.
35
THUS BEGAN A period of Aguilar’s life that felt charmed. He patrolled at night, slept for a while after his shift, and whenever he had time off, rode his motorcycle into the village to spend it with Maribel. She seemed to like him as much as he did her. By their third visit, they were holding hands. One night he took her to dinner in San Vicente del Caguán, and after, in front of her door, she kissed him—a kiss that lasted a long time, and was rich with the promise of so much more.
After three more visits, including another dinner, she invited him inside. There, she put a cassette tape in a portable player—classical music from Spain, she said, her favorite—and took him in her arms. He didn’t know much about dancing this way, but she held him and they moved together, and the warmth of her and the smell of her filled him. She felt it too, and before long they were kissing, touching, grasping, then urgently tearing off their clothes and lowering each other to the floor and making love in a white, blinding heat, and then lying there on the floor holding each other as the music ended, listening to each other breathing and the hiss of the empty cassette.
She talked about books and films, and she made strong, dark coffee, and she didn’t have much money but she spent some of what she had on good wine. Making love with her was like the symphonies she preferred, long and complex, with crescendos that took his breath away.
Sometimes she walked him into the jungle or rode on the back of his bike to faraway spots, and taught him about the natural world. She showed him passionflowers and native palms, the red heliconia flowers she called lobster claws, the rubber trees. She took him to a lake almost entirely carpeted by Amazon water lilies; they shed their clothes and jumped in, splashing amidst the lilies and hiding under them for as long as their breath would hold, then making love by the shore. She introduced him to pink bananas and bromeliads and to what seemed like a thousand different types of orchid.
She knew the wild creatures, too. She showed him the cat-sized tamarin, the sword-billed hummingbird, and the pink river dolphin. Together they spotted jaguarundis and boas, venomous banana spiders and a golden dart frog, and, on a weekend trip to the high country, a spectacled bear and a crested eagle.
One day, just before twilight brought a curtain of darkness to the jungle, they were walking less than a kilometer from the village, on a path they’d followed several times before.
“I’m worried,” she was saying.
“About what?”
“The people of the village. Ours, and the next. They’re getting more upset about the lab. About the workers who went there, their brothers and fathers and sons, and who haven’t come back.”
“We can’t exactly let them travel back and forth,” Aguilar said. “Then everybody would know what it is, and where it is.”
“What makes you think they don’t?”
He smiled, and she squeezed his hand, then let it go. “They’re serious, Jose. They’re hungry. They feel like they’re not only losing their land, they’re losing their history. They’re losing everything, and when people have nothing left to lose, they become dangerous. You need to take precautions. Make sure Escobar understands the threat.”
Before he could answer, Maribel grabbed his arm. “Do you feel that?” she asked, her voice hushed.
“Feel what?”
“Something’s watching us.”
“Something, or someone?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t like it.”
She hated that he went everywhere armed, and had made it clear that no long-term relationship could survive if he continued living as a criminal. Now, though, he was glad he had his knife at his ankle and a pistol at the small of his back. “Who’s there?” he asked.
Nobody answered. A moment later, the brush parted and a jaguar stepped onto the path. The beast was long and sleek, solidly muscled, with a tawny spotted coat and golden eyes with round pupils. Those eyes blazed with intelligence. It opened its mouth, showing a pink tongue and sharp, long canine teeth. “He uses those to bite through the brains of his prey,” Maribel whispered. Always the teacher. “Death comes instantly. No struggle. No other big cat does that.”
“We’re not prey,” Aguilar said in a loud voice that he hoped projected confidence. “You don’t want to mess with us.”
“Of course not,” the jaguar said. “I’m not even here.”
Aguilar was stunned. Jaguars could tal
k? He had never seen one in person before, not even in a zoo, but he thought somebody would have mentioned that. He froze. Maribel’s hands tightened their grip on his arm. She heard it, too, then.
“I just came by to tell you that it’s time to decide,” the jaguar added. “Once and for all. Who are you, brother? What are you? You can’t just drift through life, you know. You have to set your own course, and follow it.”
“What do you know about—” Aguilar started to say. But then the jaguar was gone. For an instant, just a flash, he thought he saw a spider monkey riding on its back. But it vanished in less than a heartbeat, without even rustling the brush beside the path.
“Did you… did you see that?” he asked.
“See what?” Maribel replied.
“Don’t joke around.”
“I don’t know what I saw,” she said. “If anything. It was like I was here, with you, and then I wasn’t, and then I was back. It all happened so fast.”
“The jaguar,” he said. “The talking jaguar. And the monkey.”
“It’s getting dark,” Maribel said. “Hard to see anything, or to know what you saw. Let’s go back to my house and make love.”
That was an invitation Aguilar couldn’t refuse.
After, they lay on her bed, half-covered by a damp sheet, legs twined together.
“He’s right, you know,” she said. “You have to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“Your path. Your future. It’s up to you to decide what it’ll be.”
“Then you did see it!” He punched the pillow behind his head. “You did!”
“Did I ever say I didn’t?”
* * *
The next night, he was no longer sure he had seen anything at all. A talking jaguar was impossible. A monkey riding a jaguar was just as unlikely. It had been a trick of the fading light, or of his imagination.
But the point it had made—and which Maribel had underscored—was a good one.
She was an honest woman. He thought he loved her, and that she loved him. Even Luisa hadn’t made him feel like this, like he hated to be out of arm’s reach, that when he was away from her all he could think about was getting back.
Narcos Page 24
