Vice(19)

“How do you know I’m only half Ecuadorian?”

“Because your skin is almost white. And your eyes are green.”

She harrumphs. “Skin and eye color don’t seem to be a very reliable way of assessing someone’s heritage, Sam.”

“So you are one hundred percent Ecuadorian?”

She smiles a small, weighted smile. After a drawn out second, she says, “No, actually. You are right. My mother was born in Philadelphia. She moved to Ecuador when she was only eleven.”

“And she still lives here?”

“No.”

“She went back to Philadelphia?”

“No. She died, of course.”

She says “of course,” as though it was the natural progression for her mother, like it was fated. Could be she was fated to die, the second she met Fernando Villalobos. “I probably shouldn’t ask how she died, should I?”

Natalia gives me an accommodating smile, sighing. “Probably not.”

“Then I will keep my mouth shut.” I hold up my water glass, and Natalia reaches across the desk and toasts me. I’m about to say something else when the door behind me opens, and Fernando returns with a very thick, chunky-looking cell phone in his hands. No, not a cell phone. A sat phone. We used ones very similar in the military. Fernando gives me a jagged edged smile as he crosses the room toward us.

“Are you quite relaxed, Mr. Garrett? It’s a very mellow high, no? We are always complimented on the soothing qualities of our coca. You feel more alive than you ever have, but also more in love, too. No hostilities here. No arguments or fights because of our product.”

I am feeling pretty damn mellow; not even the drugs are enough to slow down the thunder of my heart, or dampen the buzzing in my head, though. I tap my fingertips against the side of Fernando’s desk. “Did you figure everything out on your phone call, Mr Villalobos? You weren’t gone for very long.”

Fernando nods. “Not particularly. I called to confirm your credentials, Sam. My contact in New York is unreachable at the moment, however. I was only able to verify that your employer is very well known in certain circles. If there is anything you wish to tell me, now is the time to do it, my friend, when you cannot be caught out in a lie.”

I shrug, but underneath his desk, where he can’t see, I’m digging my fingernail into the grain of the wood, pressing hard, until I can feel splinters biting into my skin. The pain helps keep me focused. Helps keep my face straight. “I’m not lying. We want to buy from you, and I want to make a huge, fat profit back in the States.” I look at Fernando and then at his daughter, hoping they don’t see anything in my expression that might make me look suspicious. “Why is that so hard to believe?” I ask.

No one speaks for a moment. After a long, nerve-racking pause, Fernando inhales sharply. Taking his tortoiseshell glasses from his face and sliding them into the breast pocket of his neatly pressed button-down shirt, he clasps his hands together in front of him. “You’re right, of course. I’m sure you understand, though. Like your employer, we are very private people, Mr. Garrett. We don’t like to be disturbed, or have strangers show up announced. It makes us...what is it you say in America? Antsy?”

“Yeah. Antsy.”

“We shall know if you’re a legitimate customer in good time,” Fernando continues. “Until then, you will be a guest. Eat, sleep and relax in my home.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. I’m sure I can find somewhere comfortable enough in Orellana that—”

Fernando’s cold, sharp look cuts me off. “But really, Mr. Garrett. I insist.”





CHAPTER FOUR





THE BLUE DOOR





Fernando tasks Ocho with escorting me from the premises, gun pressed into my back, Jurassic 5 now buzzing from his tinny speakers—I can hear the lyrics of the music perfectly as I climb back up the rungs of the ladder towards the surface, and I can still hear it perfectly when I’m standing there, waiting for his head to pop up out of the ground behind me like a gopher. A number of things occur to me during those few fleeting seconds while I’m waiting, the first of which being that I could easily kill him right now if I wanted to. One swift kick to the throat as he emerges from the ground would be enough to do it. I don’t want to kill the guy, though. Apart from getting a little pokey with the muzzle of his gun, he’s kept his mouth shut, and he hasn’t been even remotely offensive. I’ll feel bad if I kill him just so I can go darting off into the trees, fleeing the situation before I’ve really gleaned any useful information. If letting him live means I get to see inside the Villalobos family home, then so be it.

I don’t think I know a single soul who has entered the Villalobos estate. I have no idea what to expect, and I have no idea if my sister will be there. Thankfully she wasn’t chained to a desk down in that bunker, working her ass off cutting coke, naked as the day she was born. That’s something to celebrate at least.

Ocho prods me with his gun, pointing this way and that into the rainforest, directing me, and we walk for what feels like an unbelievably long time, until we finally hit a dirt road that cuts through the trees. We head west. I count in my head, not wanting to pull out my cell phone to check the time in order to monitor how long we walk for, just in case Ocho thinks I’m going for my gun and shoots me in the back. I reel numbers off in my head until I reach six hundred, and then I start over again. I’ve ticked off seventeen minutes in my head by the time we emerge from the forest into a small clearing, where an Escalade and a brand new Jeep Patriot are parked side by side. Ocho grunts. Once he has my attention, he tosses me a set of keys and opens the driver’s side door of the Escalade.