Reckless (6 page)

“Fifty-fifty’s not bad,” I say from the upper level of the terrace.

Diego lowers the shotgun and looks up. “Caroline! It’s so good to see you. I was taking a break from business to get a little shooting in. Have you ever fired a gun?”

“No,” I lie, continuing my LA-girl stereotype. “But I’ve seen a lot of action movies.”

“Come down and give it a try. There’s no better way to relax.”

I descend one of the curved staircases and join him.

He hands me the shotgun.
 

I recognize it as a Ruger Red Label with an over-and-under barrel design. It’s not a bad gun, but with Diego’s wealth he could have done a lot better. My hands are so quick to move into position that I have to stop myself. I’m Caroline Davis from the LA suburb. I don’t know an action from a stock.
 

I feign fumbling with the weapon.

“Allow me,” Diego says.
 

He places my hands against the receiver and the fore-end. Moving behind me, his fingers glide up my arm, resting on top of my hand. I should feel creepy about Diego touching me in this manner. This is a ruthless killer, a plague on the masses. Yet Diego’s touch is comforting. I feel safe in his arms, as if nothing from my past can touch me.
 

He guides the barrel through the air, lifting my arms.
 

“When the clay pigeons release,” he says, “lift the shotgun just like that. Try to aim right in front of its flight path and then pull the trigger.”

He moves my finger off the receiver and onto the trigger.
 

He squeezes my finger.
 

The gun roars.
 

A bullet disappears over the valley—gunshot residue sweeps past my face.
 

God, how I love that smell.
 

“Now you try,” he says.
 

He reloads the gun and steps away.
 

“Jalar!”

The pigeons fling out along an arched path, curling over the valley. I want to blow each one of these things to smithereens, and I know I can. But I have to remember that I’m not here to impress Diego or win a shooting ribbon. This about drugs and crime and information.
 

I shoot high and then wildly to the left as if the gun’s kickback has jolted me.
 

The intact pigeons plummet to the ground.

Diego laughs. “You shoot like a girl.”

I tighten my grip on the shotgun.

“Reload,” I say.

Diego opens the action and pops in new shells.
 

This time, I yell, “Jalar.”

I don’t even have to think. I follow the pigeons, waiting until the first clay disc reaches its apogee before I blast it out of sight.
 

The dust settles.
 

I catch the second pigeon on the its descent.
 

Clay shatters.

Setting down the gun, I offer Diego a satisfied smirk.

“Must be beginners luck,” he says. “Shall we go for lunch?”

Diego leads me through a pathway spanning between the stairs and underneath the upper terrace. We wind down the steps of a pergola with purple clematis forming a shaded tunnel. When we step out of the darkness, we’re farther down the mountain, away from the main house. A table and a butler wait in a loggia set into the lee of the mountainside.
 

I feel lightheaded. The path before us is no more than a couple of feet wide. Over a short parapet, the mountain becomes a vertical drop.
 

I hug the face of the cliff.

“Afraid of heights?” Diego asks. “Take my hand.”

His grasp is light, but I sense the strength behind it. For a ruthless psychopath, I’m surprised by the romantic gesture. He remains patient, allowing me to move across the path at my own timid pace.
 

The butler helps me with the last couple of steps.
 

I fall into a wooden chair facing the valley.
 

I’ve entered a fairytale. The surrounding rocks create a small cave, shading us from the wind and sun.

“Welcome to Mantanay,” the butler says.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, staring at the valley.

“Yes, it’s very quiet,” Diego agrees. “This is a conservation area of the Polylepis forest. I guess that makes me a conservationist.”

The butler serves us steak on a bed of rice and peas with red wine. He waits for me to try a bite.

I cut into the center and try a small piece.

“It’s very good,” I say. “Is it rib eye?”

They both laugh.

“No,” the butler says. “It’s cuy.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s guinea pig,” Diego says. “A very traditional dish. One you must try while on vacation.”

I almost spit out the meat. “Guinea pig?”

“Yes. It’s no different from cows or pigs.”

I know he’s right. I’ve hunted plenty of fury critters and have never flinched when skinning them. But the game I capture don’t run through plastic tunnels.”

“I’ll get you a ham sandwich,” the butler says.

I start to protest, but the butler won’t listen to me. He heads down the path toward the main house.

“I’m sorry,” Diego says. “I wanted you to try some of the local cuisine. I hope I didn’t offend you.”

“You didn’t offend me. It just took me by surprise.”

“I like surprises. Life is too boring without adventure. That’s why I like you, Caroline. You strike me as someone who goes wherever the wind takes her, not worrying about tomorrow.”

“Life is short. Ten years from now I’ll probably be filing papers in some stuffy desk job. I have to enjoy things while I’m young.”

“I think you underestimate your abilities, Caroline. Though I second the sentiment.” He raises his wine glass. “To living life as an adventure.”

Our glasses clink.

Diego ignores his food. I tell him he can go ahead and eat, but he insists he won’t start until I’m served.

“What does you family think about you staying in Peru? Do they worry?”

Diego has hit on a sensitive subject. I debate whether to give him the family background of Caroline Davis or Miranda Hill. My own background will probably make the most sense. Besides, I haven’t mapped out Caroline’s family history.

“My mother died giving birth to me and my dad recently lost his battle with cancer.”

Diego nods. “Sorry to hear. My parents died when I was very young, as well. My father was killed fighting in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. He was a high-ranking official. My mother was murdered to threaten my father into stepping down from his role in the People’s Army.”

“That’s awful. What did you do?”

“It was a crazy time. My father put me in to hiding when I was six. I was raised in safe houses among the People’s Army. They kept me out of the fighting and taught me how to survive, how to organize, and the realities of the world. Occasionally I saw my real parents.”

I want to press Diego on his political stance and to argue the fallacy of Marxism and Bolivarianism or the hypocritical nature of using guerrilla warfare for peace, but I don’t think Caroline the cocktail waitress is that politically astute.

Diego studies me. “You don’t agree with our tactics, do you? I see the disdain on your face.”

Perhaps I’m not the skilled actress I think I am. “I just don’t think violence is ever the means to peace.”

Diego scoffs. “Yes, your country would know nothing about violence. You may enjoy peace at home, but your nation’s imperialist endeavors bring misery and destruction around the world. It is your main export. Our own government brings that upon its citizens. Corruption and evil is a way of life in South America.”

The butler returns, cutting the tense mood. He smiles and sets down my American dish before leaving again.

“Do you ever blame yourself for your mother’s death?” Diego asks. “I mean, do you feel like you have something to prove to yourself in order to make your life worthwhile?”

“That’s a very rude thing to ask.”

“Is it? I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question. Why are the most important manners of life considered rude while flattery, which allows someone to lead a false existence, is deemed polite? Where’s the honor or respect in that?”

“But you hardly know me. What if I were to ask you the same? Do you think you have to do something exceptional in life to make up for your parents’ young deaths?”

Diego sets down his glass of wine and stares at me. “Absolutely. Every single day I feel that pressure.”

“And has the coffee business tamed those demons?”

Diego smiles. “No. However, what I can do with the proceeds makes up for it. Besides, the coffee business is a temporary thing. I have my sights on bigger endeavors. Positions that can bring about real change.”

Before I have an opportunity to respond, a man wearing a suit rushes out of the pergola, sweat running down his face, his hair flopping with every step.
 

Diego doesn’t get up or act alarmed. He waits for the man to whisper in his ear. I lean in closer, pretending to take a bite of my sandwich, hoping the mic will pick up the conversation.
 

Diego nods and shrugs.

“It happens,” Diego says. “I’ll handle it.”

He folds his napkin and places it on the table.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Of course. We should hurry, though. Let us get you your dress.”

As we head back to the compound, I ask Diego if he’ll show me around. I haven’t gotten a single shred of intel that Nick and José can use.

“Not today,” he says. “My business demands my attention.”

I try to look for anything: coca leaves lying about, discarded gasoline or acetone drums, a hydraulic press used for stamping the bricks. I see nothing. If Diego is one iota as smart as I think he is, an illegal drug has probably never been anywhere near any of his homes.

As he takes me down a spacious hall with marble flooring, I see something I never expected in a drug smuggler’s home.
 

I stop and peer into the room.

“Wow,” I say, staring at the impressive library. Thousands of paper and hardback books sit on mahogany shelves. Maybe millions.

“It was once a ballroom,” Diego says, gesturing to the library. “But I’m not much into ball dancing.”

The shelves hug the walls of the ballroom, two stacked on top of one another. A set of stairs leads to a ledge that spans along the upper shelf. Antique recamiers form little reading areas in the center of the room.

I pass the first shelves and notice a meticulous order: classics, westerns, European history, historical fiction.

“Do you actually read these or are they just to look pretty?”

Diego scans the room. “Well, I have not read them all, no. Only those.”

He points to a row of shelves on the other side of the room. Three of the shelves are filled with an array of different books. Several empty shelves sit beside it.

“You’ve read all of those books?” I say. Three shelves worth may not sound like much, but I’m guessing each can hold about five hundred books. Even reading at a brisk fifty books per year, it would have taken him thirty years to read them all.

I cross the room.

There are impressive authors among the mix: Voltaire, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Proust, Twain.

“There’s more to life than selling coffee,” Diego explains. “Ideas can topple any regime. There are no greater shackles for a slave than ignorance. When my collection is complete and the violence wanes, I want to open a free library in Chocó or Sucre, two Colombian departments that still have staggering illiteracy rates.”

I commend Diego’s altruist endeavors, though they strike me as rather hypocritical. And the way he says, “when the violence wanes,” is especially naive, as if he were talking about waiting out a dry summer or a bear market. People like
him
are the reason there’s so much violence in these countries, and it’s
his
illegal business that continues the corruption and sucks away tax dollars to fight cocaine production rather than building hospitals or schools.
 

While his ambitions may be right, they strike me as a means of justifying his actions.
 

Which is odd.
 

Psychopaths and sociopaths don’t need justifications for their actions. They’re motivated by selfish desires without any consideration of others. If Diego truly is motivated by guilt or a twisted sense of how good is achieved in the world, the CIA’s criminal profile of him is wrong.

Obviously, I don’t say any of these things. I listen and nod and tell him how wonderful it all sounds. Ah yes, colossal libraries dropped into the heart of illiteracy and armed with teachers from Oxford to read to the children! And then e-readers for all, full of the world’s greatest works. And when one of your rivals gets word of your philanthropy and bombs the library, killing a bunch of children, what then, Diego? Oh, that’s right. You’re going to wait for the violence to end. Let me just set my watch for never. By then, maybe you’ll have read all these books, as well.

Still, I’m surprised Diego is an intellectual. Most of the drug dealers I dealt with in the States could barely read a search warrant. If I wasn’t here to gather evidence and if Diego wasn’t one of the world’s most infamous criminals, he would be fascinating to get to know. Just being around him, I sense the intense energy within him, an engine of ideas and theories ready to be put into action.

Diego takes me to another large room that’s mostly empty of furnishings. Inside, there are enough racks of women’s attire to clothe a small village.

“Are you planning on opening a woman’s boutique?”

Diego doesn’t laugh. “No, these are the clothes of my previous wife.”

Previous wife. Yes, that’s one way to call it. I can think of a few more: murdered wife, blown-up wife, pregnant-murdered wife.

This conversation needs a little probing. “Did you have any children together?”

I watch for his reaction. Is there shock, guilt, darting eyes that debate whether to mention she was pregnant?