Ortega considered that, finally nodded. Said, "I hope not, since your life and those of everyone you love depend upon your silence."
"Si, Señor! I understand completely."
"In which case, you are excused."
Gamboa hastened to depart. Ortega waited until he had cleared the room, then told Buendia, "Mátalo and bring the money back. We'll need it, and I wouldn't trust that worm as far as I can piss against the wind."
Buendia nodded, grabbed a pistol from the table, checked its load, and followed their supplier into outer darkness.
Ortiz had obtained more weapons than his crew of fifteen men required, but he preferred having too many, rather than to find himself caught short. A snatch of dialogue from a Clint Eastwood western movie came to mind, a one-armed sheriff's deputy explaining why he carried to revolvers. "I never want it said," the character declaimed, "that I got killed for lack of shooting back."
From Castilla, four miles north of downtown Medellín, El Tigre planned to launch a war. His overlords, commanding Mexico's dominant Guadalajara Cartel, expected positive results with no excuses for failure. The rising threat from one who claimed to be infamous Pablo Escobar reborn—or risen from the depths of Hell where he belonged—must be eliminated if Ortiz planned on returning home again.
Failing at that, El Tigre knew he might as well pick up the Desert Eagle .44 and turn it on himself right now. Death by his own hand would be preferable to the fate his jefe would devise for one who let him down on such a grand scale.
Ortiz was not worried about failure in the abstract. So far, he had always taken adequate precautions to avoid it and survive whatever trials he faced. There was no reason he should fail this time, despite the heavy odds arrayed against him. Only one thing truly troubled El Tigre.
He had no clue what it might take to kill a ghost.
Pablo—the real one—was deceased. Ortiz knew that as certainly as he knew that his given middle name, sadly misplaced, was "Angel."
No, there was no walking revenant or zombie to be hunted and destroyed, only a man who had somehow convinced others of his investment with some supernatural authority to warp the rules of time and space. That legend, having taken root already from the slums of Antioquia to Bogotá's exalted halls of government, was his real enemy. How he might slay it, bury it beyond recall, was anybody's guess.
Buendia came back from the warehouse parking lot bearing the heft roll of cash Ortiz had given to Gamboa moments earlier. Ortiz accepted it, pleased to discover that the banknotes were not damp or stained with blood,
"The body?"
"Being taken care of as we speak," Buendia said. "There'll be no trace of him until we're all long gone, if then."
"Bueno. Let us collect the tools, then, and begin to finalize our plans."
Los Colores, Medellín
"Diga me," the man who called himself Don Pablo Escobar instructed. "Tell me."
"Sí, jefe." Gilberto Garavito carefully described his raid against the target he had been assigned in Bello, with a head count of the adversaries executed and a tabulation of how much the captured cocaína ought to net when it was moved to buyers in the States.
"No difficulties, then?" his lord and master asked.
"One of our men suffered a minor flesh wound to the leg," said Garavito. "Simón Obregón."
"Yes. I remember him."
"El doctor has him now. It's trivial. We should expect a full recovery."
"All good news, then."
"Sí, jefe."
"What about the Mexicanos, Gilberto?"
"The Mexicans? Which Mexicans, Señor?"
"Which Mexicans? The ones who have invaded Medellín, amigo. Why are you not briefing me on their activities?"
Garavito blinked, mouth working like the spastic jaws of a grounded catfish, before he stammered in reply, "Jefe, I am afraid…that is to say…."
"I hope you are afraid," his leader interrupted. "It severely disappoints me that I hear from others what I'm paying you to tell me in advance."
"Disculpas, jefe. Lo siento mucho."
"Save your apologies. It's information that I need."
Caught off-balance, clearly terrified of making matters worse, Gilberto hazarded a guess. "Guadalajara, sí? I warned you that they would attempt to stop us, Pablo."
"Did you warn me they were here, Gilberto? In my own backyard right now? Did you advise me that they've sent their most respected contractor, with no less than fifteen sicarios?"
"El Tigre?"
"Sí. The very same."
"I will investigate immediately, jefe. That is, if you trust me to continue."
"I insist upon it," his commander answered back. "Rest not until you know their whereabouts, full strength, and any necessary details of their plan. I want them rubbed out. Muerto. Gone as if they never lived at all."
"It shall be done, jefe."
"I will not tolerate a second disappointment, Gilberto."
"No, jefe. I begin at once."
"And don't return without the information I require of you."
As Garavito hastened from his presence, grateful to be breathing when his night of triumph might have ended with a scream of agony, the man Gilberto knew as Pablo Escobar reborn allowed himself another glass of Aguardiente Antioqueño to enjoy in solitude.
His name, as Garavito must have realized by now, although too awed to challenge the pretense, was not and never had been Pablo Escobar. In fact, he had been christened Jorge Torrenegra thirty-seven years ago and was a distant cousin of the man all Medellín had once hailed as a benefactor and a martyr or reviled as Satan in the flesh. When Escobar went down for good in 1993, Jorge had grown accustomed to his kin remarking on his physical resemblance to the famous relative he'd never met in life.
Life in Colombia offers three prospects for advancement: politics, back-breaking labor, or cocaine. Taking his cue from Escobar, Jorge had picked the latter path. The first two shipments he had personally carried into the United States, risking his life or major prison time, established Torrenegra as a minor player in the llello trade. The next few gave him breathing room while he devised a master plan, dropped out of sight to undergo a course of plastic surgery that would enhance his born resemblance to the cocaine king while adding years to Jorge's visage rather than subtracting them, as most patients desired.
His doctor in Cali had been surprised, remarking that Jorge was his first patient who desired to look older, while creating scars—and most specific scars, at that—rather than stripping them away. That observation, casual at first, had sealed the surgeon's fate and Torrenegra had removed his file, complete with its before-and-after photographs, erasing any link between himself and the late doctor, said to be the victim of a bungled office robbery.
Today, Torrenegra had become a living legend—or a dead one, resurrected by some means never explained—to people ranging from Colombia to Mexico and farther north. None knew precisely what to make of him, the legend he had spun around himself, but Torrenegra had elicited responses from old friends, whatever enemies his distant cousin had not slain, from politicians and police. Victory was within his grasp, but he could still lose everything through one egregious mistake.