Heart of the World (24 page)

I usually need a place to park a gun, too. As I wedged the small cylinder of hairspray into the pocket of my jeans, I longed for the Smith .40 locked in my Cambridge desk and cursed the elusive Ignacio for his continued unavailability.

Not only was Santos a skillful driver, he was prompt. Arriving under the hotel's awning at 9:58, he got out and held the door to the back seat. You can count the number of cabbies who'll do that in Boston on the index finger of your right hand. Standing, he was skinny, a little under six feet. He wore the same floral shirt and dark slacks, but he'd combed his hair, slicked it back; I guess, to make himself look older. It made him look wide-eyed and vulnerable instead.

“Okay if I ride in front?” I asked. “I don't want to get you in trouble.”

He promptly slammed the back door and opened the front. Flashed a smile.

The streets of Bogota are laid out in a grid, more like Manhattan than Boston.
Carreras
run from south to north,
calles
from east to west,
crossing the
carreras
at ninety-degree angles. Then there are
diagonales
and
transversales
. We took a main road out of town to the north. He called it the
autopista del Norte
, and I remembered it from the map. We were headed up into the savanna.

“Beautiful country,” he murmured.

In the dark, I had to take his word for it. Occasional streetlights gave piercing views of twinkle-lit valleys, small towns or settlements so far below we might have been traveling in a low-flying plane. Once we passed a series of greenhouses, the long narrow buildings glistening white.

He talked about the Red Sox and I let the conversation wash over me, grunting an occasional response while watching the rearview mirror. The incline grew steeper. We passed bicyclists fighting their way uphill, reflectors glowing red on the narrow frames of racing bikes.

He talked about himself. He was a student, reading economic theory, cabbing part-time. The town further along the road, Chia, was his birthplace.
Chia
, a word in the native Chibcha language, meant “moon,” so Chia was the town of the moon. On the way back, perhaps we'd take a different route. The winding road called the Septima was more scenic. He chattered on nervously and I wondered what topic he was trying to avoid.

“I asked around about this place, the Zona Rosa.” He sounded uncomfortable. I waited for him to continue, but he stayed silent.

“Is it a place to get girls?” The prospect of escorting me to a whorehouse might account for his discomfort.

“No, no. It's a bar.”

“Is prostitution legal here?”

“It's a gray thing. The police don't stop it, but you can't advertise. The places exist, but they don't have signs.”

“Do the cabbies direct the traffic?” It's that way in a lot of cities. When I drive, plenty of men ask if I know where they can “have a good time” in Boston.

“Some,” Santos answered. “Not me. If someone asks, I take them to the Zona Rosa, the entertainment area. No brothels there. Drinks, lots of women, but not, you know, whores.”

“You ever take people to this place we're going?”

“Not unless they ask.” He paused and licked his lips nervously. “There are rumors.”

I waited while he pulled around a slow-moving truck, a maneuver requiring full concentration, not to mention nerve.

He said, “At this place, there might be girls, a few rooms upstairs, you know? And drugs, mainly cocaine, but also
basuca
, which means there are fights, too. Not every night or the police would shut it down, but sometimes.” He paused. “I don't think it's good for you to go there.”

“I won't stay long.”

“You think this girl you're looking for went there? The one who ran away?”

“She was taken.” I may have said it more emphatically than necessary. It was important, an article of faith by now. “Taken? Why?”

“Her father's Colombian.”

“And the mother American? She wanted to divorce?”

“Look, it doesn't matter. What matters is that her father may have friends there. I want him to know I'm looking for him.”

He seemed troubled. “You're paying for the cab for four hours.” “Yes, but it won't take that long.”

“I'll come with you, inside. A woman shouldn't go to a bar alone.”

I opened my mouth to protest.
A woman should; a woman shouldn't
. Santos might as well have worked at the cop house. Then I thought, Don't be stupid. A woman walking into a bar with a man is more natural. It's better cover.

“Thank you,” I said. “That'll be great.”

Embarrassed, he muttered, “It's up here on the left.”

He turned off onto a curvy road that hugged the side of a mountain, and I asked him about the white crosses by the roadside, thinking they might be some kind of native shrine.

“Just places where people died in car accidents.”

Great, I thought. No need to post speed limits.

“Here it is.”

Low and long, constructed entirely of wood, with a courtyard and outdoor picnic benches, the place was a cross between a log cabin and an overgrown barn. Bright lights illuminated a vast grassy parking area to the right. Fairy lights and strings of pennants gave the courtyard a festive used-car-lot atmosphere. Music poured through an open door guarded by a turnstyle and flanked by two guys built like upright freezers.

Neither asked for ID, but we got a thorough scanning, almost a memorization, as we paid the cover charge. The man on the left was armed, the bulge under the left arm unmistakable.

“You play basketball?” It was the cabbie's first comment about my height and I admired both his circumspection and his restraint.

“Volleyball,” I said.

“You should play basketball.”

The place was even bigger than it seemed, a series of smaller rooms expanding into larger ones, at least two with raised dance floors. The rough-hewn wooden rafters were festooned with star lights, banners, and neon signs for Bavaria beer. Costumed men and women, greeters and dancers, mingled with the paying customers. The costumed women wore tiny skirts that started well below the waist and shirts that ended just under their breasts, leaving a lot of taut bare skin in between. I'd have termed the outfits sexist if the men's garb hadn't been just as revealing. And the dancing, well, it was not what you'd see at the senior prom, unless all the chaperones were dead drunk. The noise pounded my ears, salsa amped to the max.

“Let me buy you a drink,” I yelled.

“A
mojito
would be fine.”

I got myself a beer. Club Colombia. Bottled.

If I were doing a search for a kid in the States, I'd have exercised my patience, had a few beers, watched the setup, especially after what I'd heard from Santos. I'd work with a partner and we'd check the layout, identify entrances and exits, chart the flow of movement, see what the patterns were. Prostitution has a pattern. Drug deals have a pattern; buyers come, money changes hands, product changes hands.

Instead I watched the dancers, glued to each other from chest to thigh, hips punctuating the beat. I hadn't had much sleep and I had a full day tomorrow with Base Eighteen to find and visit, and a television reporter to convince. I was impatient. Jumpy. You might say reckless.

When the bartender brought the drinks, I dove in. “The manager here tonight?”

“Why? You dance? You want a job?”

Guillermo leaned over and said, “No, she wants to complain about the service.”

Both bristled. The bartender might have had an attitude problem,
but I was surprised to find Santos acting in such a proprietorial way, like I really
was
his date, and the bartender had insulted me.

I spoke quickly to settle any ruffled macho feathers. “Hey, he didn't mean anything. Just tell me who to talk to. I like to talk to managers. I'm friendly.”

“The manager doesn't see people.”

“He'll see me because I'm here from Miami with news from a friend. Tell him he
wants
to see me. Matter of fact, he
needs
to see me.”

“Just you, or the loudmouth, too?”

“Just me. You'll be doing him a favor.”

He stared at me. I returned his gaze till he dropped his eyes and used a phone. Across the dance floor, someone lit a sparkler, two sparklers, a flood of them, to raucous shouts, applause, and laughter, and I thought about the nightclub fire at The Station in Rhode Island with a hundred dead after a brief shower of fireworks. This place was made entirely of wood and the patrons were standing on chairs waving sparklers at pennants that hadn't passed any U.S. fireproofing standards. If Paolina had been there, I'd have ordered her to leave.

Santos said, “I should come with you.”

“If I'm not back in fifteen minutes, ask for me. If I'm not back in half an hour, make a fuss.”

“Call the police?”

“I hope not.”

The manager's office was up a flight of stairs and through another turnstyle. Wood, flimsy decorations, and sparklers, all the makings of a conflagration, plus a subsequent riot when the patrons were unable to flee quickly through the crowd-restricting turnstyles.

He was the fattest man I'd ever seen. He sat on a stool, maybe because he couldn't fit in a chair, and his butt lapped over the edges of the seat and drooped perilously toward the ground. I hadn't seen any heavy people in Colombia thus far, and his appearance, pasty white and ultra obese, was shocking. He was twice the size of Gloria. The only person I'd ever seen remotely that size was a massive Pacific Islander, and he'd been tan as well as mountainous. The manager wore a white tentlike shirt over shapeless tan trousers. His dark hair was caught in a greasy pony-tail and tied with a dangling red cord.

The room that housed the fat man was constructed as a kind of
crow's nest; you could see the dance floor below through a series of low smoked windows on two walls. I watched the fat man as he watched the dancers through narrowed eyes. His smile gave me the creeps.

The bartender said, “This is the one. Wants to see you, Gordo.”

Gordo
being Spanish for “fat,” it was possible the manager had a sense of humor, but the cultural differences were such that I wasn't sure.

“Search the backpack.”

The bartender obliged, then patted me down as well, a professional job.

“So who are you?” When the manager spoke, his chins rippled. It was the same voice that had answered the phone when I'd called, low and growly.

“Carlotta from Miami,” I said. “From Naylor.”

He shifted his eyes, a sufficient gesture to usher the bartender out the door.

“Am I supposed to know who Naylor is?”

His reaction when he'd heard the name had already told me.

“I'm looking for someone,” I said.

“Someone in particular?”

“Roldan. On personal business.”

“Roldan?”

“Carlos Roldan Gonzales.”

“Roldan, as in El Martillo?” His chins shook when he laughed, but his dark eyes didn't join in the fun. “If you have personal business with
that
Roldan, you'll need the archangel Gabriel as a go-between. The man is dead these two, three years.”

“Listen, pass the word: I want to see him.”

“It's true what you say? He's alive?”

“He'll know my name. Tell him Carlotta. Tell him the Hotel del Par-que in Bogota. Tell him quick, unless he wants everyone in South America to know he's alive and well and back in business.”

“You talk a lot, Senorita.”

“Tell him I talk a lot.”

“But I truly have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Okay. If you don't know what I'm talking about, who would? The owner?”

“The owner doesn't talk to anyone.”

“Does the owner talk to the law? What I hear, you have girls here. You have dope here. Maybe the owner would rather talk to me than talk to the police.”

He must have pressed a button concealed under the rug because two muscled goons appeared at the door and they hadn't been sent by any archangel.

He said, “You're gonna leave now.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“You don't talk to the police, either.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” I said.

I'd accounted for the unusual width of the staircase by the fact that El Gordo had to travel up and down, but the dimensions were ideal for hustling a woman downstairs locked between two bodyguards like meat in a sandwich. That's what happened to me, the bum's rush, down the stairs. It got a little tricky at the turnstyles, but the goons had obviously practiced. One preceded me, one followed, and lingering was not encouraged.

Santos, the driver, was already outside, pacing under the watchful eye of the entry guards. They no longer looked like freezers to me; after the mountain man inside, they seemed undersized, underfed.

“Jesus, you're back. I didn't know what to do. Time was running out. They told me to leave.”

“Let's go.”

“You're acting crazy, making trouble, a place like this.”

Valid complaint, I thought, but how do you stir things up without acting crazy? I didn't want to spend the rest of my life chasing the shadow of Roldan. The terrible thing about childhood is the speed at which it passes. I'd missed out on so much of Paolina's childhood; I hadn't been paired with her, Big Sister to Little Sister, till she was seven years old. Seven had been a good year, filled with discovery, ice cream, and field trips. Eight was shorter, nine briefer still. Fourteen had whistled past; fifteen was speeding by like an express train. I didn't want her to be all grown up, a cool and distant adult, before I saw her again. I couldn't face that; I wanted things to happen quickly.

Just not as quickly as they did.

We hadn't traveled more than two or three miles. Our headlights pierced the darkness, weak cones of light. Santos had taken the alternate
road, the scenic route, and traffic was so light that he'd flipped on his brights. His continuing silence may have been prompted by anger, but I found it soothing. I needed rest; I needed sleep.