Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

“I need some proof they’re alive before we do anything. Are they at a place where there’s a phone? We could call them.”

“Fuck you. I’m the only proof you’re going to get until we see some money. They’re your friends, not mine, so it’s a seller’s market. You know what you need to worry about? While you’re sitting here playing word games, the humps got your pals up for sale. They’re in touch with their hump friends back in Saudi Arabia, Brunei, you name it, talking price. How much will they pay for the white girl, how much for that pretty colored girl?”

I said, “Humps?”

His expression said: Are you stupid or what? “ Humps. You know, the sand niggers, the ragheads. Like in camels-humps. In Colombia, if you got a woman to sell, the humps always do the negotiating because they’re the only ones who have contact with the guys who have the real money. The oil sheiks, the big-time weapons dealers.”

“Which is why I should be talking to Kazan, correct? Not you.”

“That albino freak, he’s not my boss. This deal’s between you and me. But we’ve got to do it quick and clean. No more of your bullshit.”

When he reached for his right pocket, I tensed slightly, ready to throw myself back out of my chair. But instead of bringing out a weapon, he brought out a pen. He took a paper napkin, then paused. “How much money do you have on you? I’ll give you a big discount if we do a cash deal now.”

“I’m not stupid, Earl. The way it’s going to work is, I’ll hand the cash to my friends, and they’ll hand it to you.”

He began to scribble on the napkin. “In that case, it’s going to cost you this much per person. No questions, no more negotiations, that’s how much it’s going to be. You can buy one or all three. It’s no skin off my nose.”

I looked at the napkin and read, “$50K.”

“I don’t have that much.”

He stood up. “Then find a way to get it.” He tossed the pen on the table. “You may want to write this down. At the southern boundary of Colombia, there’s a little airstrip at a place called Mameluco. It’s not too far from Araracuara, where there’s a bigger strip, but don’t go there. Mameluco. That’s the place.”

I didn’t bother noting the name. I’d already seen it on a map. Mameluco was very near the village of Remanso, the name that Harrington said meant “still waters.”

He checked his watch yet again. “I’ll give you two days to get the dough. Today’s Tuesday… you’ve got to land at the airstrip before sunset on Thursday. Get off the plane and walk to the dirt road. We’ll know you’re there. Just you, alone, and the money in a briefcase. Cash. Bring anybody else, your friends are dead. Talk to anybody about this, your friends are dead. Have anybody follow you, we’ll know about it. Same thing. Dead. Savvy?”

I told him, “I’ll try my best to raise the money.”

I didn’t tell him I already had a briefcase.

W hen I left Stallings, it was a little after 2 A.M. Amelia would be asleep, and I was feeling restless, so I stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall place called La Habinita, bought a beer to go, looking at all the photos of Che and Fidel on the wall as I waited. Then I took the long way back to the hotel.

I walked along the narrow street that follows the northern-most wall of the city, walked past lovers kissing on cannon parapets, passed vendors selling from munitions ramps-all the antiquated architecture of war now obsolete, nothing more than public furniture for modern life.

The great novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, has a fortress-sized hacienda across the street from the Hotel Santa Clara. There’s always a lone guard outside the little door, predictably holding a 12-gauge shotgun. As I passed, I said hello and asked him how his evening was going.

I was surprised to hear him answer, “It’s not been a good night, friend. It’s not been a good night for anyone in our little quarter.”

I stopped to face him. What did that mean?

When I hear something that truly shocks or frightens me, I feel an ether-like sensation move through the frontal area of my brain to my spine. I felt it now as the guard said, “There was an incident in the hotel. A man was shot, and a woman was kidnapped. I saw them turn the corner, a man on each side of her, moving as if she were very drunk.” He slapped the barrel of his shotgun. “The cabrones! I wish I had known. I could have rescued her! One of them, I’ll be able to recognize again.”

I was already running toward the hotel as he added, “As I told the police: He was a tall albino man, but strange-looking. Not American, not Colombian. Colorless. He was white. ”

Carlos Quasada, one of Colombia’s best heavyweight boxers, had fought his last fight.

His body was sprawled in the open air stairwell between the second and third floors of the hotel, surrounded by police and hotel employees. The police tried to stop me from entering what was now a crime scene, but I forced my way through the perimeter, shouting that I had information that could be helpful to them and demanding to visit my own room.

Or maybe they let me through because they saw the look in my eye.

I’d left Carlos standing guard in the third floor’s open corridor. From where he was stationed, he had a clear view of the stairs, the elevator, and of San Felipe castle, built high on a hill outside the old walled city. Amelia didn’t know that I’d asked him to stand guard there until I returned. I didn’t want to frighten her.

Another stupid mistake on my part.

Whoever had killed him wasn’t a very good shot. It’d taken them three rounds. One in the back, another just above his butt, and a third in the back of the head.

I knew the head shot was last, because Carlos was a bull of a man, and he’d done some crawling-probably toward his attackers.

He’d been well loved in Cartagena. I didn’t realize how much, but I now knew. Standing in the little circle around the body, most of the hotel employees, in their neat beige uniforms, were weeping, as was one of the cops.

A woman who seemed to be the detective in charge said, “You knew the victim?”

I said to her as I pushed past, “Wait. I need to check my room,” and ran toward the stairs.

I took the steps two at a time and threw open the door to our suite.

I didn’t expect Amelia to be there, and she wasn’t. But she had not gone quietly into the night with her abductors. There’s a difference between a room that’s been the scene of a fight and a room that’s been purposefully ransacked.

There’d been a fight here. There were broken lamps, a shattered mirror, an overturned chair that she may have clung to rather than be dragged from the room. She had found weapons where she could. The most touching of them was a small, lignum vitae box, beautifully carved, very dense and heavy, that I’d bought for her that afternoon in the market. I stooped, picked it up, noticing that a corner of the box was moist and slightly darker than the rest of the wood.

Maybe she’d gotten a good blow in. I found myself hoping desperately that she had.

Something else I noticed was that the room had a strange, medicinal stink. It made my eyes burn, caused me to feel slightly dizzy. Probably some variation of chloroform.

I remember the guard telling me that, because of the way the two men were pulling the woman along, he thought she was drunk.

Behind me, a woman’s voice said, “Is there anything missing?”

I turned to see the detective. She wore a dark blue skirt, light white blouse, and a badly cut navy-blue jacket. She had short, frosted blond hair, silver fingernails, and she was nearly as wide as she was tall.

Feeling sick, close to panic, I said, “Yes. I’m missing my girlfriend.”