Narcos E-Book

Jeff Mariotte

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The first official Narcos tie-in novel tells the story an idealistic young Medellín police officer who finds himself drawn into service to Pablo Escobar.The first official Narcos tie-in novel. The Jaguar's Claw tells the story of Jose Aguilar Gonzales, an idealistic young Medellín police officer who finds himself drawn into service to Pablo Escobar. He becomes one of Escobar's top sicarios—before exposure to the human costs of the cocaine epidemic, combined with personal tragedy, turn Aguilar against his former patron. Through Jose's eyes, we see the inner workings of the Medellín Cartel and get to know the powerful, charismatic, and murderous man at its head.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1

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3

4

5

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7

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9

10

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Epilogue

About the Author

Acknowledgements

THE JAGUAR’S CLAW

THE JAGUAR’S CLAW

JEFF MARIOTTE

TITAN BOOKS

NARCOS: The Jaguar’s Claw

Print edition ISBN: 9781789090123

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789090130

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: November 2018

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

™ & © 2018 Narcos Productions LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

Gaumont Books

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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This book is for Marcy Spring, with all my love.

1

Scottsdale, Arizona, United States, 1993

THE MAN CALLED Luis Roberts—known to his friends and post office coworkers as Lou, even though his real name was Jose Aguilar Gonzales—pushed through the glass doors of the Robinsons-May department store in Arizona’s Scottsdale Fashion Square. His hands were laden with shopping bags. He had gone to the mall to do his Christmas shopping, taking advantage of the sales on the day after Thanksgiving.

Lou’s habit of generosity had been developed during an earlier phase of his life, when his income had far exceeded what he made now, sorting mail in the back of the post office. He liked giving presents. His colleagues and the neighborhood kids had come to expect them, thinking of Lou as a kind of Santa Claus figure. But with his diminished income, shopping during sales had become a necessity.

His red Ford Escort—another step down from the old days—was parked in the lot that faced onto Camelback Road, outside Robinsons-May. He’d been lucky to get a spot close by; the parking lot was jammed, and vehicles circled like vultures, trying to nab any space that opened up. As he waited on the curb for a chance to cross into the lot, a black Mitsubishi Montero with tinted windows rolled slowly past. Inside, the driver and passenger—both Hispanic men—eyed him. He didn’t recognize either one, but that meant nothing. From their expressions, as far as he could tell through the darkened glass, he believed they recognized him.

He dropped the bags where he stood, spun, and hurtled toward the department store. A woman was coming out as he reached the doors; he shoved past her, causing her to drop something that landed with the crash of breaking glass. He kept going. Weaving through the crowded aisles at something less than a full-on sprint but more than a jog, he made it through the store and out into the main area of the mall in a couple of minutes. All the way, his right hand was tucked inside the zipper of his leather jacket, close to his gun.

The wide corridors were jammed with holiday shoppers. Lou’s gaze darted this way and that, seeking an escape route and scanning for enemies. Most of the shoppers were white, many with families, children. Of course, anyone could be an assassin, but he had always believed that when they came, they would be Latinos. Colombians, most likely. Possibly even people he knew.

Not seeing anyone who seemed to pose an immediate threat, he started toward another exit, walking quickly but no longer running. He didn’t want to attract undue attention to himself. He kept his gun hand inside his jacket, close to his holster, just in case.

The shoppers he passed were largely cheerful; he heard laughter and uplifted voices. Gloria Estefan’s “Christmas Through Your Eyes” was playing over the P.A. system. Lou was glad for her success in the U.S.; he hated Miami, but as long as he could think of her as Cuban, he could ignore her Miami connections. A few minutes earlier, he might have been humming along, smiling like so many of the people around him. Instead, he was sweating, fighting back panic—the price of years of paranoia, of living on the run, always watching over his shoulder.

A Hispanic-looking man shifted course, as if to block his path. Lou cut across to the far side of the walkway. A woman reached suddenly into her purse. For a gun? Lou tightened his grip on his, and moved so that a family was between him and the woman.

Ahead, he spotted a hallway leading to restrooms. They would offer some degree of privacy; he could fight back, if necessary. He started toward them, but before he’d made it halfway down, the hall started to look like a dead end. In there, he would be trapped, with no escape possible. He whirled around and sprinted out, made for the nearest escalator. On the way, he saw a man by himself, carrying a small bag, looking his way. When Lou hit the escalator, he took the steps two at a time, pushing past people standing still and letting it carry them up.

On the upper floor, he no longer worried about discretion. He raced full tilt for the bridge that passed over Camelback Road. Inside Nordstrom, he slowed once again, eyeing everyone around him as he rode the escalator back to ground level. His fingers rested against the butt of his pistol, ready to yank it from its holster.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, ran down his cheeks, stung his eyes. The escalator seemed to crawl.

Finally on the ground floor, he quickly walked toward the exit and outside, across a small parking lot facing Goldwater Boulevard. If the attack came, it would be here. His head swiveled this way and that, seeking out potential threats. Across Goldwater was a bus stop, and a bus huffed its way toward it, less than a block away. At a break in traffic, he raced across the street, arriving just in time to board the bus. He found a seat in the back and rode, no particular destination in mind, watching every passenger who boarded while keeping an eye on the street.

Luis Roberts had to die, so that Jose Aguilar Gonzales could live for another day. Cheerful Lou, beloved by customers and coworkers alike, generous Lou who gave Christmas presents to the neighborhood children and handed out the best candy at Halloween, could exist no more. He would have to leave Arizona; too close to Mexico, which he had always known but tried to ignore.

Where to go, though? Someplace north. Chicago? Minneapolis? Maybe Detroit? Somewhere far from the southern border.

But did distance really matter? According to the news from Colombia, Pablo Escobar was a fugitive in his own land. But El Patrón’s reach was long, his memory longer still. Forgiveness was not in his vocabulary.

Lou—Aguilar—rode the bus, and watched, and pondered his next steps.

2

Medellín, Departamento de Antioquia, Colombia, 1981

WHEN JOSE AGUILAR Gonzales looked at his wife Luisa, he saw beauty personified, joy made flesh. She didn’t resemble the Colombian beauty queens he saw on TV and in the newspapers. Her skin was much darker than theirs, her features less refined, sculpted more broadly. She was sturdy, thick through the middle, with breasts small for her frame and calves that barely tapered into shapeless ankles.

Her brown eyes were flecked with gold, and to gaze into them was the closest thing to heaven Jose had found on this earth. She had a shy, sly smile that alternately charmed him or thrilled him to his toes. He loved to hold her, and when he couldn’t do that, he loved to watch her move, or breathe, or simply be. He loved her laugh, her fierce intelligence, the way she sank her entire being into any given task.

She was his, and he was hers, and the day they wed was the happiest day of his life.

The second happiest was the day he graduated from the Carlos Holguín police academy in Medellín, the city where he had always lived.

Most of his fellow graduates were local boys, raised in poverty or the middle classes, like him. They were overwhelmingly dark-skinned—the children of Colombia’s white-skinned oligarchy stayed away from such common occupations as officer of the Metropolitan Police. To Aguilar, whose father was a cobbler and whose mother mended clothing when she could and sold lottery tickets on street corners, it was a big step up in the world.

To make things even harder for Aguilar, when he’d been seven years old, a cousin had accidentally spilled a pot of boiling water on him. He’d been badly burned. For a while, no one expected him to survive. He did, but his flesh was mottled, with white and dark patches that he thought made him look like a mangy dog. In some places, hair grew, in others it didn’t. As a boy, he’d thought that his disfigurement would doom him to the life of a street beggar or worse. When Luisa fell in love with him, he wondered about her eyesight; his freakish skin didn’t seem to disturb her. And when he was accepted into the academy, he had at first thought it was a mistake. But he vowed to become the best police officer he could, to pay back his city for taking a chance on him.

He loved his country, but he knew its history. He had studied the Thousand Days’ War in school. La Violencia had just ended when he was born; although he had never seen the men cut into pieces, or the “neckties” made by slicing open their throats and pulling their tongues through the slits, he had seen the photographs and heard the stories his whole life. He had been married for a year, he and Luisa were ready to start a family, and he wanted to raise his children in a Colombia free of its violent past. He couldn’t tame the whole country, but he could start at home, in Medellín.

At the same time, he wasn’t naïve. Everyone in the academy had heard the rumors that some of their fellow students were already on cartel payrolls. Some barely tried to hide it—while most walked or bicycled to classes, they drove convertibles or sports cars or powerful imported motorcycles. When they went out at night, their clothing was flashier than most cadets could afford, and their dates more beautiful.

Aguilar knew that circumstances might one day pit him against brother cadets who had chosen the wrong side. He didn’t mind; he almost looked forward to the opportunity to teach them that Colombia could, despite history, despite everything, be a nation of laws. On that graduation day, in his dress uniform, with Luisa by his side, he fairly swelled with pride. He was proud to be an officer, proud to be a husband, proud to be Antioquian, proud to be part of Colombia’s future rather than its past. After the ceremony and the drinking that followed, he took Luisa home and made love with her and fell asleep wearing a smile and nothing else.

Then came the morning.

His assigned partner was Alberto Montoya. Barely thirty, Montoya was already a veteran officer, a first sergeant whose arrest record was legendary among the cadets. Aguilar could barely believe his luck when they were introduced.

Montoya was tall and broad-shouldered, with curly dark hair and a jutting chin. His olive drab uniform was wrinkled, as if he had slept in it. He had an easy smile and sleepy eyes, leading Aguilar to wonder at first if he was stoned. But the sergeant’s speech was crisp, his intellect sharp. “Welcome to the Colombian National Police, Jose,” he said. “You’ll find this a rewarding career, I’m sure.”

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’m so lucky to be partnered with you. In the academy, everyone talks about you.”

Montoya chuckled. “You can’t believe everything you hear,” he said.

“Only good things, I mean,” Aguilar said, flustered. “That time you stopped the holdup at the Banco Nationale. Or when you foiled the kidnapping of Señora Guerrero. And—”

Montoya held up a hand to stop him. “I did none of those by myself. You’ll see. Police work is teamwork. We cover each other’s backs. Nobody’s a hero.”

“Or you all are.”

“Not ‘you,’ Jose. ‘We.’ You’re one of us now.”

Pride filled Aguilar near to bursting, as it had earlier that morning when he’d donned his brand-new uniform. He had a Beretta 92FS holstered against his hip and his usual pocketknife in his right front pocket, and he was ready for anything. “Where do we start?” he asked, to bring himself back to earth.

Montoya ticked his head toward a Nissan Patrol four-wheel drive SUV. It was boxy, a rectangle on wheels, it needed washing, and it looked as if it had been run into once a month for a year or more. But it had a light bar on the roof and POLICIA across the top of its windshield and a green stripe down its side, and to Aguilar it was the most beautiful vehicle he had ever seen. When he looked back at Montoya, the sergeant was holding keys out toward him.

“You want me to—” Aguilar began.

Snapping his fist closed around the keys, Montoya said, “I’m driving.” He headed for the four-wheeler, and Aguilar followed, reminding himself to pay attention to everything, to learn, and most of all, to remember to breathe.

It didn’t take long for his expectations to be dashed.

Montoya drove all over Medellín, from the Bello, through the comunas of 12 de Octubre, Castilla, across the river into Aranjuez, La Candelaria, El Poblado, and up the mountain into Envigado, then back down through Guayabal, Belén, Laureles Estadio, and Robledo. Along the way, he kept up a running patter, pointing out where notable crimes had occurred, or once in a while, where they’d been prevented. He showed Aguilar how to spot likely criminals, sicarios he recognized as in the employ of Medellín strongman Pablo Escobar, walls pockmarked with bullet holes. Montoya usually had a Pielroja cigarette burning. Luisa said that spending all of her working hours in a smoke-filled restaurant had made her hate the smell, so Aguilar had quit, but he recognized the Indian on the packaging and the smaller one on the cigarette itself. He wondered how long it would take to get the stink out of his uniform and his hair.

The older officer punctuated his tour with complaints. His pay was too low, especially for someone as decorated as he was. The ranking officers were corrupt or idiotic or both, mentally incapable of working the streets and therefore confined to the safety of their desks in police headquarters. Some of his greatest achievements—and there were many, he insisted—went unrecognized by superiors.

Occasionally, he stopped outside a business and told Aguilar to wait while he went inside. He was never in for long. When he came out of the third place, he had a white envelope sticking out of a pants pocket.

“What are you doing in those places?” Aguilar asked. He thought he knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from Montoya.

“Just dropping in on various business owners,” Montoya said. “Public relations. They like to know the police are keeping them safe.”

“What’s in the envelope, then?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

Aguilar had started the shift expecting to be inspired by riding with his hero, but by the fifth or sixth hour of nonstop bitching, he was discouraged. If even Alberto Montoya was bitter about his career, what chance did he have for happiness? Maybe he’d made a mistake. He should have joined the army, or become a teacher. Or let his father teach him how to repair shoes.

The next time he mentioned his paltry salary, Aguilar—already pushed close to the edge by the envelope—could no longer contain his suspicions. “Why do you stay if you hate it so much?”

Montoya shot him a cynical grin. “Not for the pay,” he said. “But for the benefits.”

“What do you mean?”

Montoya didn’t answer for a while. He seemed to be considering how to answer. Then he shrugged and confirmed Aguilar’s hunch. “You’ll find out soon enough, anyway. Certain people will pay nicely for the favors that a policeman can do for them. Especially a sergeant. But even a rookie patrol officer can do okay.”

“What people? That’s what the envelopes are, right?”

Even before the question was out of his mouth, Aguilar realized he shouldn’t have asked it. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

“Which means you already do,” Montoya said.

“Who? Escobar?”

“Among others. But Pablo pays the best.”

“You call him Pablo? Like you’re friends?”

“Not friends. Business partners, in a way.”

“But you’re police! You’re supposed to prevent crime.”

“Look, Jose. I’m telling you this because I like you. I think you can go far in this job, but you have to understand how things are here. You think the captain doesn’t take money from Don Pablo? That bastard owns three houses, and one of them has seven bedrooms. Who needs that many bedrooms? If you take his money, you take his orders. It’s how this city works.”

“But—”

Montoya talked over his objection. “You have to be realistic. Don Pablo has more money to throw around than the city does. If he didn’t share some of it with the police, he would have to hire more criminals to get his business done. Who would you rather have running errands for him, cops or killers?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Of course there is. I feed him information sometimes. I perform minor tasks—nothing that would threaten the safety of civilians, of course, or harm the working people of Medellín. In return, I get information that helps me keep the peace. And I make a little money to supplement my salary. Everybody wins.”

Everybody except those who believe in justice, Aguilar thought. And the rule of law.

He didn’t say it out loud, though. Montoya had demonstrated who he was, and Aguilar didn’t see the point of arguing with him further.

Still they drove. A police radio chattered incessantly, but Montoya seemed to pay it no mind. If he was doing any police work at all, Aguilar didn’t see it. He seemed instead to be playing tour guide, showing Aguilar the sights of the city of his birth.

Some aspects of it, like the Point Zero Bridge and Berrío Park, he never tired of seeing, and he had to admit that Montoya’s capsule history of the city’s criminal past was interesting. Soon, another sight that Aguilar loved—the Iglesia de San Ignacio—loomed ahead of them. Aguilar was Catholic, like most Colombians, and had attended Mass there on several occasions. It was, he believed, the loveliest building in Medellín.

They had almost passed it when the rapid-fire reports of automatic weapons reached their ears. “Guns!” Aguilar cried.

Montoya braked the Nissan, then cranked the wheel and turned into the Plazuela San Ignacio, hitting lights and siren as he did. Now they saw the gunfight under way. Two men were taking cover behind the big statue of Francisco de Paula Santander, and three others were trying to escape, using trees as shelter. One body lay in the street, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. Merchants under broad umbrellas cowered behind their carts.

Montoya brought the vehicle to a shuddering stop, then bolted out his door, whipping his gun from its holster. Aguilar hesitated momentarily. He had practiced this at the academy. He knew what to do. But those were just training sessions, with no actual danger attached. Here, the bullets were real and the people involved were desperate. One man was already bleeding out on the pavement.

His heart pounding, he threw open his door and rolled out of the Nissan. His legs almost gave out beneath him when he hit the street, but he caught himself and drew his Beretta.

Crouching behind a low concrete planter, Montoya fired a couple of shots at the men trying to flee the scene. The two men sheltering behind the Santander statue stepped out and fired bursts from their weapons—an Uzi and a MAC-10, Aguilar thought. Their rounds found a target; the running man jerked spasmodically and fell, knocking over one of the tables at a sidewalk café on the corner. His leg twitched a few times, and then he stopped moving altogether.

The third man had made it around the corner and was gone. Aguilar heard approaching sirens, and was glad that backup was on the way. They still had the two by the statue to arrest, and those men were better armed than he and Montoya.

Instead of turning his weapon toward the gunmen, Montoya holstered it and approached the men with his hand outstretched. One of the men, young and slender, with a mop of dark curls and a wispy mustache and goatee, held the Uzi loosely in his left hand and clasped Montoya’s offered hand with his right. The other guy, blond-haired and green-eyed, heavier, really just a kid, held back and kept the MAC-10 at the ready.

Montoya beckoned Aguilar with a jerk of his head. As Aguilar approached, trembling a little from fear—and maybe a little from excitement at witnessing a real gunfight, up close, and surviving it—Montoya waved at his weapon. “Put that away,” he said. “You don’t need it. The danger’s passed.”

“Are we arresting these men?” Aguilar asked, confused. His ears were still ringing from the noise. The acrid stink of the gunfire sat heavily in the air.

Montoya just laughed. “This is La Quica,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I don’t know the other guy.”

“That’s Snake-eyes,” La Quica said. “He’s new.”

“So is this one,” Montoya said. “First day. He’ll figure out what’s what, sooner or later.”

“Sooner would be safer.” La Quica extended a hand toward Aguilar. “Welcome to the team.”

“I’m Jose,” Aguilar said. Maybe the guy was an undercover officer. “Jose Aguilar Gonzales. Are you… one of us?”

La Quica broke into laughter, and Montoya joined in. Snake-eyes stood back, eyeing the whole scene with suspicion. Aguilar felt the same way. “Depends on which ‘us’ you mean,” La Quica said.

“You guys better get out of here,” Montoya said, cocking an ear toward the oncoming sirens. “Backup’s almost here.”

“I’ll see you get a little something for your trouble,” La Quica said. “Both of you.”

Aguilar almost replied, but a stern glance from Montoya hushed him. The two gunmen walked away quickly, fading into the growing crowd. In a few moments, Aguilar could no longer see them. By the time more police vehicles reached the scene, they were gone, and Montoya was clearing spectators away from the bodies of those they’d shot.

Aguilar watched, crestfallen. Was this what he’d signed up for? Covering for killers and letting them walk away? Taking bribes?

He had wanted to make a difference. To arrest criminals, and make the streets of Medellín safe for honest people.

He still could, he supposed. But he would have to start by turning in his hero, Alberto Montoya. As he watched more cops spill out of their cars, flooding the scene, he wondered if he had the courage.

3

THE NEWLY ARRIVED cops cleared the onlookers away from the scene, and kept them out until a crew came to pick up the corpses. Montoya talked to detectives, but kept them away from Aguilar. That was fine; Aguilar was still wrestling with what he had observed and how to report it. If Montoya was right, who could be trusted?

When he was finished, Montoya came back to him and waved him into the Nissan. Inside, with the doors closed, he said, “Not a word to anyone, understand?”

“What was all that?” Aguilar said, struggling to keep his voice under control. “Those guys just killed two people, and you let them walk away! You shook a killer’s hand!”

“So did you,” Montoya reminded him. “And introduced yourself. You sounded like a nervous schoolboy.”

“I’m an honest man. I’ve never met a murderer before.”

“That you knew about.”

That was true. After all, he had shaken Montoya’s hand just this morning, upon meeting him. For all he knew, Montoya had killed more people than La Quica.

“I guess,” he said.

“Look, kid, I know this is all new to you. But they told me to train you and keep you out of trouble, and that’s what I’m doing. You’re part of this now. You saw what I saw and what I did. You didn’t say anything to the detectives, and that was smart, because you don’t know who’s on which side. Me, I’m on every side. I’m just trying to stay alive and make a little money. You said you’re married, right?”

Aguilar had mentioned Luisa several times during the day. “That’s right.”

“You want her to be safe, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’ve already made your decision. You heard what La Quica said. We’ll both get a bonus for letting them go. If you say anything now, your bonus will come in the form of bullets. Maybe you, maybe your wife. Maybe your wife in front of you, after she’s been raped by a few guys. Also in front of you. That’s not what you want, is it?”

Aguilar’s stomach churned. His guts had turned to ice water. “I can’t believe you’re even asking me that.”

“Then you take the money and you keep your mouth shut. You’re a witness now, so you’re either an ally or a liability. Don Pablo’s generous with his friends and deadly to his enemies. Plata o plomo, that’s his motto.”

“But… that was cold-blooded murder.”

“You don’t know that,” Montoya countered. “For all you know, it was self-defense. That doesn’t really matter, though. If we had arrested La Quica and that other guy—Snake-eyes, I don’t know him—if we had arrested them, they’d be free before we finished writing our reports. If somehow they went to trial, they’d be freed by the judge. But in the meantime, innocent people—witnesses, jurors, and so on—could die.

“Those guys who got killed were bad guys,” he went on. “Drug dealers or worse. They had guns and were in the middle of a shootout in a public plaza. The world’s better off without them. By protecting La Quica, we’re ensuring the safety of citizens who don’t even know the danger we could be in. And we’re ensuring our own safety, and that of your wife. If we made any other choice, we’d have targets on our own backs, and so would everybody we care about. You don’t want your wife to be a widow on your first day.”

“Of course not,” Aguilar said. “But—”

Montoya silenced him with an outstretched palm. “But nothing. I’m telling you how it is, Jose. You can’t deal with the world you wish you lived in. You have to deal with the one you do live in. You can make a difference in people’s lives. You can keep people safe. You can arrest bad guys. But you have to do it within the system as it exists, or the system will chew you up and spit you out, like gum on the sidewalk. Understand?”

“Yeah.” Aguilar crossed his arms over his chest and dropped his chin. He had expected his first day to be exciting, eye-opening, but not like this. In glum silence, he rode out the rest of his shift.

* * *

He hadn’t intended to tell Luisa about the things he’d learned. A woman should be protected from such ugliness, he believed. But she had expected him to come home from his first day on the job inspired, excited by all the things he had done and seen. When instead he was quiet, somewhere between gloomy and numb, she pushed and prodded until he gave up and spilled the whole story. He told her about the envelopes, the gunfight, even what Montoya had told him about the possible danger to her.

“If you want to leave me, I understand,” he said when he was finished. “If you’re not with me, if you’re back with your parents, you might be safe. We could make it look like we had a big fight, that I was furious with you. Then they wouldn’t think that hurting you would bother me.”

The look in her eyes was almost unbearably sad. They’d been sitting at their kitchen table in their cramped hillside apartment, but now she went to the floor, kneeling beside him, and rested her hands on his legs. “Nonsense,” she said. “I’m never leaving you. Not for Pablo Escobar or anyone else. You’re my husband, and I love you. I’m devoted to you.”

“But… they could hurt you. Even kill you.”

“If they do, I just want to be beside you when I die.”

“Baby, please—”

“That’s enough. I’m not going anywhere. You should know me better than that.” She pulled herself up on his legs, then wrapped her arms around his waist. He smelled her hair, like a bouquet of flowers from the shampoo she used, and felt her warmth. Her solidity in his arms was comforting, reminding him of why he had fallen in love with her in the first place. She made him feel like he was where he belonged, no matter where they were. Nothing else in his life had ever had that effect on him.

“Maybe I can quit the police. It’s only—”

She reared back from him. “No! Don’t even say that. You’ve worked so hard.”

“Even if I stay, Escobar surely already knows the things I’ve seen—I don’t think I can just walk away from those. I just want you to be safe.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“You can’t know that.”

She leaned close again, and he stroked her hair as she spoke. “I know you’re an honest man, and you want to live an honest life. That’s part of what I love about you. But I also want you to live a long life. Maybe your friend Montoya is right—”

“He’s not my friend.”

“All right, your partner. But think about it. He says what he did there, letting that guy go, will keep other people safe. People who might never know they were in danger, but who, just by happenstance, end up in a position to harm Escobar. But in the fight you witnessed, nobody was hurt except criminals. Right?”

“That’s right. There were plenty of people there who could have been hurt, but they got lucky.”

“Or maybe Escobar’s men knew what they were doing. Either way, no civilians were hurt. By keeping quiet about it and not trying to arrest someone who would never go to jail anyway, you’re preventing others from being hurt. That’s why you’re a policeman in the first place, right? To keep the public safe.”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

“A big part, I think. So nobody gets hurt instead of who knows how many people getting hurt. And in exchange, you earn some extra money. We can use it, especially when we have a family.”

Aguilar was confused, wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “Are you saying I should go along with Escobar, Luisa?”

“I’m saying, you didn’t make this world. This is Colombia. From what I understand, this is how Colombia has always been. Maybe if we lived someplace else, it would be different. But we live here. In Colombia. In Medellín. You can’t take on Escobar all by yourself. But if you can conduct yourself honestly, and still make some extra money for your family, what’s the harm?”

“But how can I conduct myself honestly and still take money from a criminal?”

“Just do what you would do normally. Accept that you can’t fix the whole world. Do what you can to help people and keep the city safe. And if once in a while you have to close your eyes or look the other way, is that so bad? That’s what you did today, and it saved lives, didn’t it?”

“According to Montoya.”

“Well, he’s been a policeman a lot longer than you have. He knows how things work.”

“Luisa, are you really asking me to—”

“I’m not asking anything. I’m just saying, you have to put your family first. You have to keep yourself safe. I need you, and the children we’ll have together will need you. So you have to do whatever you have to do. For both of us. All of us. Will you do that?”

When she put it that way, he didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t quite plata o plomo—silver or lead—but it was close.

4

AGUILAR HAD THE next day off, because his next shift was to be at night, so he could learn that routine. He spent most of the day with Luisa, until she had to go to work at Café Parilla Fresco, where she waitressed. They had met there, when he was washing dishes and sweeping the floors.

Then he took a long walk through the barrio. Some kids were playing soccer in a field that would be dark soon. People sat on the steps outside their homes, drinking beer or wine. The smell of marijuana wafted from open windows. Old men sat on benches, gossiping and laughing. Three dogs raced down the street, snarling at each other over a scrap of stolen meat.

In this neighborhood, nobody had much money. He didn’t mind that; he’d never had much, either. He and Luisa had moved here after they got married, and while he attended the academy, she paid the rent from her waitressing job. It wasn’t far from his parents, or from hers—near enough to visit easily, but enough distance to feel like they were on their own. They still belonged to their families, but they were a family themselves, too.

During the day, he had half-expected one of Escobar’s men to show up with an envelope full of cash. When none did, he was surprised to find himself relieved—maybe La Quica’s promise was empty, after all. That would be fine with him.

Between the thousand pesos a week he made as a police officer and her salary and tips, they would do okay. They would never be rich, but who needed the headaches that came with wealth, anyway? If they could put a little bit away, so that Luisa could quit her job when she became pregnant, that would be good. Beyond rent and groceries, they didn’t need much.

As he walked, hands in his pockets, taking in the sights, sounds, and aromas of his neighborhood—somebody was cooking bandeja paisa; he could smell the chorizo and the frying egg—the sun sank behind the Cordillera Occidental, the mountains to the west, and the sky turned crimson, then purple. The lights of the city spread out below and around him, and he remembered a story his mother had told him when he was a boy, about a blanket of fairy dust that kept sleeping children snug and warm. The lights of Medellín reminded him of that blanket, and he wished it was a real thing. Because he knew that within those lights, some people were safe and warm, eating good food and making love and relaxing, watching television, reading books, enjoying themselves. But others were fighting, plotting, killing, stealing, dealing drugs, hurting themselves or one another. Within those lights, there were people sleeping on sidewalks because they had no shelter, stomachs growling because they had no food. Mothers were crying because their sons had been slain or their daughters had run away or their husbands beat them. The rich worried about keeping what they had and how to get more, the poor worried about having nothing, and everyone in between worried about both.

Aguilar despaired. He was one man, insignificant in the greater scheme. He was a tiny candle in that vast sea of lights, unnoticed by virtually all the others. He had entered the academy somehow believing in his power to effect change, and it had taken only one day to drive that notion from him.

He would just do his best, he decided. The best he could do was the best he could do. Where he could make a difference, he would, and he would learn to accept the rest. Having reached this conclusion—such as it was—he realized how dark it was getting, and he ran to catch a bus to the police station.

When he walked in, three minutes late, he felt like every eye was on him. Weighing him, judging him, finding him wanting. Some thought he was a rat, others thought he was already corrupted. If anyone thought he was still struggling, he didn’t see that in the way their gazes landed on him.

Montoya waited outside, leaning against the Nissan, smoking a cigarette. “You’re late.”

“I’m sorry,” Aguilar said. “Just a couple of minutes. The bus was—”

“Don’t blame the bus. You could have taken an earlier one. You have a responsibility to your partner, the Colombian National Police, and the city of Medellín. Don’t let it happen again.” He threw the cigarette butt to the ground and stepped on it. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going tonight?” Aguilar asked. He couldn’t believe the man who had let a murderer walk free was lecturing him about being three minutes late for a shift.

“I showed you the city during the day. Now it’s time to see it at night. That’s when most of the bad guys are out.”

“So we’ll be doing some real police work?”

“If we’re unlucky,” Montoya answered. He opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the wheel. “Get in.”

Aguilar wondered how long it would be until he could drive. Maybe never, as long as he was partnered with Montoya. Someday, though, he would be the senior officer, training some green rookie like himself.

Then he would always drive.

Montoya was quiet, resisting Aguilar’s attempts to draw him into conversation. He drove like he had a destination in mind. He took them up Calle 58 through Enciso, then cut through La Ladera, and continued working his way up the mountain. Finally, they reached the end of the paved road and started along a dusty dirt track. There were no lights anywhere except the headlights of the Nissan and the glow of Montoya’s constant cigarettes. He had been lighting each one from the butt of the last, and refusing to talk, answering every question with a grunt or a monosyllabic response, if at all.

Finally, he stopped and turned off the engine. A cloud of dust lifted around them, then settled. The motor ticked. After what seemed an eternity, Montoya opened his door and got out. Aguilar did likewise.

“What are we doing here, Alberto? What’s going on?”

Montoya just looked at him. A quarter moon provided faint, silvery illumination. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, what’s your decision?”

Aguilar had suspected something like this, from his partner’s odd behavior. They were alone on the mountainside. If he gave the wrong answer, he might never leave here. He would be buried in a shallow grave, or left for wild animals. Luisa might never know what had become of him, and would spend the rest of her life wondering.

Until this moment, Aguilar hadn’t been sure what his answer would be. Now he swallowed. He couldn’t look at the other man when he spoke. “I’m in.”

“Good.” The word puffed from Montoya like an exhalation; Aguilar hadn’t realized until that moment that the veteran officer was also nervous. Maybe that meant he wasn’t so bad, after all. He hadn’t wanted to bring Aguilar up here to kill him. “Good, that’s the right choice.”

“I’m not so sure I have a choice.”

“If that’s the best way for you to look at it, that’s fine. It’s true enough. None of us do, really.”

“I don’t like it, though.”

“None of us like it, either,” Montoya said. “It’s as it must be, that’s all.”

“Does that mean we can go back to the city?” Aguilar asked. “Maybe do some police work?”

“We can try,” Montoya said, coming close to him. “But first…” He unbuttoned Aguilar’s shirt pocket and tucked something inside. “That’s for you. Don’t look at it now. You can look when you get home. Now come on… let’s catch some bad guys.”

* * *