Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

"Bring some coffee. I leave in-Christ-an hour. Strong, Virgilio. I didn't get much sleep last night."

Virgilio grinned. " Si , Niño."

He stepped into the shower and turned the two chromed handles. Cool water blasted out from sixteen nozzles, creating a Heraclitean vortex. He had flown two men over from Munich to install it. It felt so delicious. Sometimes he just let himself get lost in there with his thoughts. A little warmer. He soaped his groin. It was tender. Their teeth were filed when they were young; he was seriously considering flying in a dentist to round them off.

Barazo gone. Missing. Presumed… dead? No, if Cabrera was going to kill him, he'd kill him. Medellin was direct if nothing else. Subtlety was not an arrow in their quiver. If Barazo was missing they had probably taken him back whole to Colombia. But to take Barazo alive you'd need steel nets and tranquilizer darts and Christ knows what else, a shark cage. Barazo was an animal, no beauty of nature. The people you had to deal with in this business- que horror . Barazo was pure id. If Barazo ever bent over a flower it wasn't to smell it but to blow his nose on it.

They'd only met once, in Panama; the interview set up by del Cid. Barazo had the minister in charge of the Bahamian Defense Force on his payroll, an arrangement that went back to the days when he was making marijuana runs in DC-3s. He was a peasant, Barazo, a total crudity, something from underneath a rock-but a snob nonetheless, proud of his Bahamian connection: "I deal only with ministers, nothing below cabinet rank." He boasted of his friendship with Noriega. Doing business with him was one thing, but boasting of being Cara Pina's (Pineapple Face's) friend. My God, please.

"So," Barazo said, "why should I waste my time with you? Cabrera sends me seven hundred and fifty kilos every week."

"Because I can send you a ton. For the same price."

"How?"

"I'm vertically integrated." Barazo probably thought that was something to do with getting an erection. "I do my own farming, refining and transporting. I control every aspect of production. The families in Medellin and Cali want you and everyone else to think they're the only ones who get their hands on ether and acetone. I have access to the finest precursor chemicals in the world, Don Jesus." (It caught in his throat to call him that.) "I'm even thinking of installing a pipeline from Brazil. Well, I'm joking"-Barazo wasn't laughing-"but the point is, I take it from leaf to pasta sucia to pasta lavada to pasta basica to hydrochloride under my own roof. And I pass on my saving," he said, "to the wholesaler. Cabrera charges you twelve thousand U.S. a kilo, correct?"

"Ten," Barazo lied.

He was expecting that. "Then my price is eight, with a quarter again the volume. And a guaranteed purity of ninety-five percent."

"Bullshit."

"Testing for purity is as simple as… finding out if you're pregnant. Either you are or you aren't. If it tests out less than ninety-five percent, it's yours, no charge."

Barazo nodded.

"With that kind of quality you're going to pass along your savings to your people. Or," he added with a grin, "not." Barazo gave a little grunt. "By my own calculation, you'll be making about three million more a week. Before taxes, that is. Of course, if you're afraid of upsetting Cabrera, I completely understand."

"Cabrera fucks the sheep on his farm." Charming.

Two weeks later, Barazo Federal Expressed the eyeballs with the little matador swords. After that it made sense to tighten security around Yenan: booby traps-which were constantly blowing up monkeys and jaguars-Beni and his SAM-7; and for insurance, a monthly retainer to Garza in Bogotá in case Cabrera found out the identity of Barazo's new supplier. Redundancy, Virgilio; make sure you never run out of options.

So-had Cabrera finally decided after all these years to get his revenge on Barazo? Sanchez will have an insight when he gets here.

"What?"

"Niño, the plane! You'll be late!"

"What?" he shouted over the roar of the shower jets.

"It's eight o'clock, Niño. You've been in there an hour."

Yayo was waiting on the tarmac. Today the motorcade consisted of four cars: the armored Range Rover and three others, two in front, one behind. The lead car emitted from its front fender an electromagnetic pulse that detonated mines. It was developed by the Spaniards after the Basques blew Franco's chief of staff, in his armored car, over the roof of a building. El Niño got into the driver's side of the Range Rover. Yayo squeezed his Incan bulk into the front passenger seat. Flores rode in back and briefed him as they drove through the dismal traffic toward the slum of Las Barriadas.

"Channel 7 for sure, Channel 5 maybe. El Comercio says they're sending someone, but they always say that. La Republica is sending Gaetana. Oh, and guess what- ¡Mira!'s coming."

" ¡Mira!? "

"You know it's serious when ¡Mira! starts showing up, eh?" Flores joked.

Papa wouldn't permit the magazine in the house after it published photos of Franco's mistress, Chu Chu Valpina. "LA VERDADERA 'PASIONARIA'!" But the servants used to read it anyway in the kitchen, hovering over the pictorials of Gina Lollobrigida and Cantinflas and Ordonez the bullfighter and of course the royals. Royals were the mother's milk of ¡Mira! If Princess Anne fell off her horse, ¡Mira! treated it like the Second Coming. Once the pastry cook and the gardener got into a shouting fight in the pantry over an item in ¡Mira! saying that the Conde de Barcelona-father of the present King of Spain-was having an affair with Jacqueline Kennedy. (JFK was still alive.) Papa heard it and came in and tore the copy into pieces with his huge hands and discharged them both and cuffed him hard on the ear simply for being present. ¡Mira! continued to be a thorn in his existence. Just a few months ago he'd caught Soledad with a copy of it. An Indian girl who couldn't read, whose only Spanish was "I love you," staring, fascinated, at photographic spreads of Julio Iglesias and Joan Collins. He'd lost his temper a little, snatching it away and ripping it into pieces-just as Papa had, it only now occurred to him-and yelling at her with words she didn't understand: "Pretty boys! Sluts! Garbage!" He gave her a scare. She started to cry. Suddenly he's down on his hands and knees piecing the wretched thing back together, Julio's face, Joan's left breast…

"They'll do the Robin Hood angle, you can bet on it," Flores was saying. "Yayo can be Father Tuck."

"Brother Tuck," El Niño corrected. Yayo made no response, Uzi on his lap. El Niño said to Flores, "Try to keep ¡Mira! away from me."

They were going through a red light. It was one of the virtues of having an armed motorcade. At the far end of the intersection he saw a gamine, seven or eight years old, filthy, hair matted, half naked, holding a stick with a piece of rag attached to it. He braked. The security car behind almost smashed into them. "Shit," said Flores. "Niño, come on, we're late." But he was already out the door, Yayo following with his gun drawn, shouting orders at his men in the lead car to form a cordon. He was a nightmare to protect, like Gorbachev, always jumping out of cars. Someday-

The gamine saw large men with guns converging on her and turned and began to run. He caught her after a few feet. She struggled in his arms. He soothed her. "It's all right, beauty. We're not going to hurt you. I promise."

He held her tightly. The stench was appalling. Her right eye was runny with pus. Some of them this age had syphilis, gonorrhea, AIDS. By ten they were old; by fifteen, according to one estimate, 80 percent of them were dead.