Daniel arrived, looking tired, hi, babe, what are you drinking? oh, Malbec, great, wait while I get one for myself, have you already met Andrés Felipe? and I said, yes, he’s very nice, and he said, yes, he’s a really powerful man, highly educated, with a good agenda, and protected by Uribe, obviously, but I’m going to tell you something, babe, in Bogotá we’re tired of all these people from the northwest! there’s no room for any more in the Palace, anyway, there’s nothing to be done, and I said to him, well, you people should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?
The next day, at eleven in the morning, I called room 711 and Andrés Felipe answered, hello, my dear, I got out of a meeting today because a little bird gave me a word of advice, it said, look, stay if you can, stay and something good will happen to you. I told him I’d be right there and a minute later we were kissing on the carpet; we fucked on the couch and sitting on the washbowl and finally on the bed, which most people say is the best place to fuck; he told me he was married, that he had two children and they were the only reason he didn’t separate from his wife. His wife was a hysteric, and I said to him, seriously? and why is that? and he said, we almost never make love, whenever I want it she says, don’t pester me, I want it to happen naturally, so I said to him, oh yes, I know that, and in the end she falls asleep, right? he laughed and said, exactly, she falls asleep, and you’re left lying there, none the wiser.
I hooked up with Andrés Felipe and when we got back to Bogotá we started seeing each other, first in the airport motels and then at motels in La Calera; the ones at the airport were good but the noise of the planes wouldn’t let him talk on his cell phone. One day I was with him and Daniel called him, but he didn’t answer. Another day I got a call from Víctor, the Secret Service guy, and he said to me, where have you been, girl? I have a little gift for you, we’re going to party the whole weekend with my boss, and I said to him, okay, but I can’t talk now, I’ll call you in a little while, it’s great to hear from you; I was dying with fear that I’d be intercepted so I switched off the cell phone and said to Andrés Felipe, I have to go, darling, ciao, and he said, has something happened with Daniel? and I said, look, I don’t know if you know this, but I have a private life and sometimes things crop up, I’ll tell you later, I kissed him on the mouth and ran out in a panic, Víctor had never gotten me so scared before; I went to my friend’s house in Chapinero, changed clothes, oh, I didn’t tell you that I had different clothes for this guy and that guy and couldn’t leave them all at home; those for the advisers were high-class brand-name things that my friend kept for me.
I put on something simple and provocative, and called Víctor. He answered right away, hi, doll, shall I send someone to pick you up? tell me where you are, and so that he shouldn’t suspect anything I answered, okay, darling, I’m at a girlfriend’s, they can pick me up on Third and 66th, on the steps outside Cinelandia, and he said, okay, Yesid will be there in the black van, and soon afterwards I was with them, Piedrahita drunk with Mireya on his knees, Víctor really stoned, not in a motel but in an apartment in the north of the city, near San Cristóbal, so I said, pretending to be happy, what an elegant party today! you should have told me to wear a long dress, and Piedrahita replied, no, sweetheart, this is a real stroke of luck, we’re going to hand back the apartment later, but for now we can enjoy it, it belongs to a fugitive we caught up with this afternoon, bang, bang! we took him down and found out he was loaded, isn’t that so, Víctor? yes, boss, he said, really loaded, and he took out a roll of bills and put it in my pocket, four thousand dollars, I counted them later in the bathroom, and we started to drink and do coke and they sent Yesid out to fetch roast chicken with potatoes and melted cheese, which kind do you like, girls, Kokoriko, Cali Mío, or Distraco? Piedrahita asked, and Mireya said, oh, no, they’re rough, I heard Kokoriko gives you colitis, bring me Kentucky Fried Chicken, and with French fries please, and so we were there for three days more or less, Yesid going in and out with rib broth and oatmeal rolls and bringing bottles of aguardiente because, after a couple of days, Piedrahita and Víctor got tired of drinking whiskey and went back to the home-grown stuff, bring us some real hooch, Yesid! they screamed, and another day or two went by, I lost all sense of time, and there was also a jacuzzi and sauna and we’d get in them, all a bit messy with the chicken legs and the guacamole, but in one of our trips to bed I asked Víctor, was it a really good arrest? and he looked down at me and said, we hit it lucky, gorgeous, oh, yes? why’s that? I played dumb while I sucked him off and he kept talking, we caught four of them, all loaded, and we killed two, and you know what? the two we didn’t kill will be useful to us for something else, we have to deal with a journalist who’s making the chief nervous, a man who’s always sticking his nose in everywhere, the order came down from upstairs a while ago, we have to find something on him, but so far we haven’t found a thing, the guy’s cleaner than a nun’s panties. With those two guys we’re going to put something together to make sure he keeps quiet, what they’re going to tell the prosecutor is already being written, anyway, don’t go thinking this is some low-level thing, gorgeous, the orders come from all the way upstairs, that’s why the prize is so good, they left the booty to us, and so I asked him, and the two men who are going to make statements, what will happen to them, will they be sent to prison? and he said, we’ll hide them for a while and then bang bang, that’s the safest way, or rather, that’s what the order is from upstairs, my God, in this country life isn’t worth anything, can you do me a line of coke, doll? and so he continued talking, about this and that, until we heard Piedrahita yelling, and we went out to see what was going on and he was in his underpants, with his gun in his hand, shouting, Yesid! open the other bag, Mireya needs more coke, and then he turned up the volume on the stereo, some horrible reggaeton, the apartment was like a dance hall in La Caracas, and Víctor said to him, turn it down, chief, the neighbors are going to complain, and that only made him worse, let those sons of bitches come and I’ll shoot them in the mouth, or in the ass, don’t be paranoid, Víctor, the walls are soundproof, or do you think these dealers don’t party? Maybe the coke doesn’t agree with you, right? what are you drinking? and he grabbed a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Chivas or one of Blue Seal and filled the glass to the brim, and said to him, go on, chill out, and he went back to the bedroom where we could see Mireya with a very strange thong stuck between her buttocks and with a huge belly in front, and Piedrahita said, wow, what a big black mama, did I tell you we’re trying for a kid? and he went back to the bedroom.