“Since today is Sunday and everyone goes to bed early, at midnight I’m going to take you on a thrill ride in James Bond’s car,” announces Pablo.
When he presents us with the jewel of his collection, we’re terribly disappointed. Still, though it’s no Aston Martin and it boasts only a supreme dose of automobile anonymity, the dashboard is covered in buttons. He sees our faces lit up by curiosity, and in his pride of ownership he begins to reel off the characteristics of a car that could only have been designed with the police in mind:
“This button lets out a cloud of smoke that throws off anyone chasing you; this other one releases tear gas that leaves them coughing and desperate for water; that one pours oil so they slide in a zigzag and go off a cliff; this one drops hundreds of tacks and nails to puncture their tires; this is a flamethrower that you activate after this one that sprays gasoline; that one sets off the explosives, and on either side are the machine guns, though today we’ve removed them in case the car falls into the hands of some vengeful panther. Oh! And if all that fails to work, this last button emits a frequency that destroys the eardrum. We’re going to give a demonstration of the practical utility of my treasure; unfortunately, though, only the ladies fit in Bond’s car. Ángela will be my copilot. The men . . . and Virginia . . . will go in the cars behind.”
And he pulls away very slowly, while we get in the other car and take off at top speed. After several minutes, we see him coming up behind us like a bat out of hell; we don’t know if he’s flown right over us, but somehow, seconds later he’s in front of us. Again and again we try to pass him, but just as we’re about to do it, he careens off and vanishes around the curves of El Poblado’s deserted streets, only to reappear when we’re least expecting it. I implore God to let no other vehicle cross his path, because it would surely tumble off the road or be flattened on the asphalt like a stamp. The game draws out for almost an hour, and while we pause to catch our breath, Escobar comes out from the shadows, tires squealing, and leaves us floating in a sea of smoke that forces us to stop. It takes us several minutes to find our way, and when we finally do, he passes us in a flash and we’re wrapped in clouds of gas that seem to multiply and grow more inflamed as the seconds pass. We feel like the sulfuric acid is burning our throats and going up our noses to cloud our vision and invade every fold of our brains. We cough, and with every mouthful of poisoned air we breathe, the burning is multiplied by ten. We hear the bodyguards groaning behind us, and in the distance we can hear the occupants of James Bond’s car laughing as they flee the place at 125 miles per hour.
Somehow, at the side of the road, we find a spigot. Escobar’s boys get out of the car at a run, cursing and bumping into one another while they fight for a sip of liquid. When I see them crying, I stand to one side, and to set an example, I get in the back of the line. Then, with my hands on my hips and in the little voice I have left, I yell at them with all the contempt I can muster, “Act like men, dammit! From what I can see, the only brave one around here is me: a woman! Aren’t you ashamed? Have a little dignity; you’re like little girls!”
Once Pablo and his accomplices reach us, they burst out laughing. Over and over he swears to us that his copilot is to blame, because he only authorized her to throw out the curtain of smoke. And that evil witch, who can’t stop laughing, admits, “I pushed the tear gas button by mistake!”
Then, in a militaristic tone, he orders his men: “Have some dignity! You really do look like little girls. And let the lady through!”
Coughing and swallowing my tears, I say I’ll let the “señoritas” go ahead, and I’ll drink water when we get to the hotel, two minutes away. Then I add that his bucket of bolts is nothing but a stinking skunk, and I leave.
ON ANOTHER OF OUR TRIPS to Medellín in the second half of 1982, Aníbal introduces me to a drug trafficker named Joaquín Builes who is quite different from Pablo and his partners. “Joaco” looks exactly like Pancho Villa, and his family are relatives of Monsignor Builes. He is very rich and friendly, and he also boasts that he is very evil—“but really evil, not like Pablito”—and that he and his cousin Miguel Ángel have ordered hundreds and hundreds of people murdered, so many they could be the entire population of an Antioquian town. Neither Aníbal nor I believe a word, but Builes cackles and swears it’s true.
“The truth is that Joaco is harmless,” I’ll hear Pablo say later. “But he’s so, so stingy! He’d rather waste an entire afternoon trying to sell you a Persian rug for $1,000 than invest that same time and effort in dispatching five hundred kilos of coke, which would earn enough to set up ten warehouses full of rugs!”
In that entertaining gathering with Joaco, Aníbal, and the Singer, I find out that as a teenager, Pablo started his successful political career as a cemetery gravestone thief. He would file off the names of the deceased, and then he and his partners sold them as new. And not just once, but several times. I find the story hilarious, because I imagine all those tightfisted old paisas turning over in their graves when they find out their heirs paid a fortune for a headstone that wasn’t even secondhand but third-or fourth-. I also hear them talk admiringly about Escobar’s inarguable and very laudable talent for “deboning” stolen cars of any make in just a few hours and selling them off in pieces as “discount parts.” I conclude that it was the rookie congressman’s encyclopedic knowledge of automobile mechanics that allowed him to order that “exclusive, unique, and absolutely handmade” product that is James Bond’s car.
Someone mentions that our new friend was also a kind of gatillero, or trigger man, during the Marlboro Wars. When I ask what that means, no one wants to clue me in and everyone rushes to change the subject. I imagine it must be something like stealing thousands of packs of contraband Marlboro cigarettes that, certainly, weigh less than a gravestone. And I conclude that Pablito’s life has much in common with the Virginia Slims slogan: “You’ve come a long way, baby!”
SOME DAYS LATER, we receive an invitation from Jorge Ochoa to travel to Cartagena. Awaiting us there is one of the most unforgettable nights I’ve ever experienced. We stay in the presidential suite of the Cartagena Hilton, and after dining at the city’s finest restaurant, we prepare for the outing Jorge and his family planned after the promise he’d made me: a trip through the city streets—the old and new parts—in carriages drawn by horses they’ve had brought in from La Loma.
The scene seems straight out of One Thousand and One Nights, planned by an Arabian sheikh for his only daughter’s wedding or produced by a Hollywood art director with the pomp of some celebration on a nineteenth-century Mexican hacienda.
The horse-drawn carriages are a far cry from the ones in Cartagena or New York or even a Spanish grandee’s at the Fair of Seville. Like those, they have two lights silhouetting an impeccably uniformed driver, but each of the four coaches is pulled by six champion Percheron horses, white as snow, harnessed, chests puffed like the horses pulling Cinderella’s carriage, pleased as can be at their own size and splendid beauty. Stepping with the intense, sensual exactitude of twenty-four flamenco dancers, they parade through those historic streets as though synchronized. Pablo informs us that each team is worth a million dollars, but for me, my sublime enjoyment is worth all the gold in the world. The vision leaves a wake of astonishment behind: people emerge onto the old city’s white balconies; tourists are enchanted; poor Cartagena coachmen watch openmouthed as the display of magnificent ostentation passes by.
I don’t know if the whole performance is an act of generosity