Cocaine (19 page)

‘Said he had something interesting.’

I looked at Kieran in puzzlement. What was going on? Kieran gave me a ‘
don’t say a fucking word
’ look, and so I didn’t.

‘Second cubicle.’

‘I am grateful, Mister…?’

‘No problem.’

Franz or Heinz
disappeared inside the café and Kieran sat down and ordered us some
yerbabuena,
a soothing local tea. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

‘
Kieran. What the fuck is going on?’

Kieran raised his china cup and clinked it against mine.

Franz or Heinz
knew he’d made an error by repeating his offer to the wiry fair-haired Colombian in the second cubicle. His head wasn’t down the toilet for more than a few seconds, but it was enough to awaken in
Franz or Heinz
a strong sense of mortality. Juan Andres pulled him out, rammed his head against the ceramic cistern, breaking
Franz or Heinz
’s jaw for the second time and held his head in the toilet for a few more seconds while he flushed. When Juan Andres pulled the German’s head above the water-line he punched him hard in the right side, cracking his second and third ribs and rupturing a kidney.

‘
Who you work for? You were at
Gran Casino
in Quito. What you doing here? You follow us?
Digame
. Tell me.’

Franz or Heinz
was slumped on the floor, soaked from the toilet-flush, bleeding slowly into the right armpit of his green shirt, the discoloration not unlike sweat.

‘
Gran Casino
? You are with the Americans?’ he whispered, barely able to speak. The pain in his side was making it difficult to breath.

‘Americanos? No. I am with no-one. Who you work for?’

Juan Andres knelt over
Franz or Heinz
so that he could hear what he was saying.

‘He said…he said to help him…I …if you kill me, he will find you and he will kill
you
.’

‘Who wants to kill me?’

‘Suares.’

Juan Andres stood up quickly. Had Suares had them followed? Was Suares watching them, waiting to take their hundred kilos? This German was the best kind of scout. An
extranjero
- a foreigner. A non-Colombian.
Franz or Heinz
took deep breaths, trying not to hyperventilate. Juan Andres listened for a moment. There were only three cubicles and the other two, and the urinals, were unoccupied. Less than two minutes had elapsed since Franz or Heinz had knocked on the door of cubicle
numero dos
and walked inside. Juan Andres would have to be quick.

The contents of the tiny jar were now resting in a small see-through plastic bag. Juan Andres removed
the bag from an inside pocket of his light-weight leather jacket, replaced the toilet seat and spread the contents, the crystalline powder from the
Universidad del Cauca
, onto the white plastic.

‘
You have money?’

Franz or Heinz slowly removed his wallet. Juan Andres was careful not to touch it.

‘
Take out a bill and roll it.’

Franz or Heinz looked at him like Juan Andres was crazy.

‘
You will test my cocaine. You will tell me if it is good enough.’

Franz or Heinz
relaxed a little.

This was the first time he had been approached in Cartagena, and maybe this Colombian was still interested in buying cocaine. Maybe roughing him up was part of the negotiation. Maybe if he landed a big cheese then Suares would let him go and drop the charges. That was what
Franz or Heinz
wanted to believe so he pulled out a ten dollar bill and rolled it. Maybe the coke would make him feel better, make him forget the pain from injuries which were not inconsistent with those of a man falling heavily against a hard ceramic toilet.

20

The
Hotel Doral
on
Media Luna
was a small comfortable place with large rooms, ceiling fans and friendly staff. It had a good, cheap restaurant and the mix of travelers, low to medium budget, was invigorating. We hadn’t spoken much to anyone other than each other for the last month and it was good to relax, or to pretend to relax, in the large sunny courtyard surrounded by the rooms and the little staircases leading up to them.

We took a room on the ground floor, number two I think, a large room with two double beds. There was an ensuite shower room and toilet and a tiled floor. The ceiling fan was temperamental and the first night the temperature hadn’t dropped below eighty degrees, leaving us shining and sweaty in the morning, taking shower after shower to cool down. There was no hot water, but in this climate it wasn’t necessary. We were at sea level, not ten thousand feet above at the foot of the
Altiplano
. ‘
We do nothing for one week
’, Juan Andres had said to us. ‘
This man, Suares, he expect us to run, or to do something. We do nothing. I stay with Mama. We be fine. You find this hotel. One week. I meet you there. We eat lunch. We see.
’

I read a story in that morning’s local paper about a drugs bust. The
Narcotrafficos
had cornered the ring-leader of a gang planning on shipping out forty kilos of cocaine to Northern Europe, final destination Germany. As we sat with our morning coffee in the courtyard I read about one Franz Werter, from Dusseldorf, who had been found dead under a bridge, choked to death on his own product. The
Narcotrafficos
had tried in vain to save his life, the paper said, and his body was being flown back today to Germany at the request of his relatives.

I felt the chill down my spine drying the sweat that was already there. I didn’t show the paper to Kieran. He was busy juggling. Juan Andres had given us our instructions to go to the Hotel Doral, which we had followed, and neither of us had asked him about what went on in the cubicle, or what had happened to
Franz or Heinz
. Two girls walked out of a room on the first floor and walked down the steps that led to the courtyard. They sat down at the table next to Kieran and I and they ordered breakfast in fluent Spanish. They were both pretty, but in different ways. One was called Helena, and she sounded Spanish. She was younger than we were, maybe nineteen or twenty, and she had a mound of curly light-brown hair piled up on her head, blue eyes and a body that was on the verge of losing the last of its puppy-fat.

The other girl was darkly beautiful, Kerry, hair swept back from her face and smoothed to the sides of her head. Her face was very pretty, like a young Elizabeth Taylor, but her body was very large, surprisingly so, as if she had a glandular problem. She was still attractive, or, at least, I thought so. Kieran, I quickly gathered, was staring at Helena so I directed my gaze, behind my sunglasses, towards the voluptuous Kerry.

‘You wanna join us?’ he asked them, putting down his juggling balls and lifting his blue-tinted Lennon shades so they could see his eyes.

‘Sure’, said Kerry, getting up and introducing herself and Helena to us. We shook hands formally and all sat down to another round of coffees. Forty minutes later the four of us were sitting in room two of the
Hotel Doral
with
The Velvet Underground
playing in the background and twelve lines of coke laid out neatly on a copy of
A Hundred Years of Solitude
in the original Spanish.

May 2007 – Cannes, South of France

‘
It’s beautiful’, said Stephanie, walking round the apartment recently vacated by the Wisemans. ‘Just like yours.’

‘Yes.’

‘So they left in a hurry?’

‘They were fraudsters, Stephanie. They stole money. Someone must have found them out, or maybe they stole enough. They were here for two months.’

‘Oh –
un vue imprenable
! What a beautiful view!’

She walked out onto the terrace and looked out over the water in the burning sun, fifty little sail-boats cluttering the Mediterranean, following each other around a buoy and heading off away from shore again, carried by the wind towards a motor-yacht where I could see a man standing on deck holding a large white flag.

‘You ‘ave a boat?’ she asked me.

‘No. I don’t like boats.’

‘Why not? You get sick?’

‘No. I just don’t like them. Once you’re on it’s difficult to get off.’

‘So you don’t like aeroplanes?’

‘I don’t dislike them.’

‘You are strange man, George. I can say this? You not upset?’

‘No. I’m not upset. You’re probably right. I think I am strange.’

‘When do you tell me about this…this Carlos?’

‘When the time is right.’

‘He is a good friend, no?’

I found the packet of
Gauloises Blancs
in my shirt-pocket, the brand we both favoured, part of the reason I was first drawn to her, that and her toned brown legs.

‘Cigarette?’

‘
Oui. Merci.
’

She took it from me, and my lighter. We were fourteen floors up and the breeze, even on a calm day, was enough to ruffle the hair and make sunglasses obligatory. The glare was also harsh today, and when we looked West we could see the swarm of people at the tail-end of the Film Festival, desperately trying to close a deal or to get laid or hook up with some good coke. The parties had already been going for a week, the nightly extravaganzas for movie studios and their stars, for television companies and their corporate bosses. Cannes was a jolly jolly, a good excuse to get drunk, to pose, to talk and to get laid.

Stephanie lay back on a teak sun-lounger and finished her cigarette. One by one she undid the buttons of her dress, and she slowly slipped it off so that all she was wearing was a silver necklace with a tiny black stone in the centre.

‘I like you, George’, she said.

October 1990 – Cartagena, Northern Colombian Coast

We could see the lights of the harbour from the beach, the lights and the mobile homes and somewhere the Jeep with the Marauder caravan. Kerry and Helena were back at the
Hotel
Doral
, probably having dinner and waiting for us to bring them back some coke.

‘I give good price’, said the bloodshot man to Kieran. ‘Seven dollar one gram. You buy ten? I give you for fifty.’

His two little friends hung back, letting the smallest one, the guy with the tattoo on his shoulder do the talking.

‘Ten grams is good’, said Kieran, getting out two twenties and a ten. ‘Good shit, right?’

‘
Pura cocaine, amigo. La berraquerra!
’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘Come on Kieran’, I whispered to him. ‘Hurry.’

Kieran gave him the money and took the coke. He slipped it down his pants, his normal hiding place.