Cactus Garden Page 14

  The event, as he came to think of it, badly shook him, and he soon found himself having chills when he slept and dreading the time he would see Jose’s ghost again.

  For Eduardo Morales was certain that this was what he was seeing, a ghost. The sad, bleeding ghost of Jose Benvenides. And he knew at once what Jose wanted, knew it but tried for a time to put it out of his mind, because he did not believe in vengeance; it wasn’t a practical way to conduct his affairs.

  For three months, Eduardo Morales sought to forget Jose’s bleeding, weeping ghost, until the night Jose came to see him, walked into Eduardo’s huge walnut-paneled library at his estate in Colombia (but three miles away from the boy’s grave) and said, “Did you not love me?” And Eduardo had cried out, “You know that I did. Why do you torture me?” And Jose had smiled then and put his hand in the bullet hole in his head, and said, “If you love me, why are my murderers still alive?” And then he had sat down on the carpet and wept blood. And Eduardo had wept as well and then said, “I will avenge you. I swear it.” And the ghost of Jose Benvenides had looked up and said, “Good, but you must do it soon. You haven’t much time,” and had disappeared.

  Eduardo had been frightened by that, terribly frightened, for he had cancer of the colon. He had been diagnosed a year ago and told that the disease was slowly growing, that “if everything went as expected,” he had ten years of life left. But the doctor had warned him no one knew how these things went. Some cancers began as slow-moving as a slug, and others suddenly began to race like cheetahs through the bloodstream.

  Then Eduardo Morales began to live in fear. It was such a strange emotion for him. All his life he had been able to battle back against those who tried to smash his empires. He was afraid of no man.

  But ghosts and cancer were a different matter. No man could experience these two things and not feel shaken.

  If there was a good side to all of this misfortune, it was that Eduardo now knew what he must do—act at once. If he didn’t, all his millions, all his power, his life itself, would be nothing.

  And now, tonight, it had begun.

  He looked down at the grave and said, “I have invited Jaime Martinez to the house tonight, Jose.”

  He waited, waited for some kind of a sign (he wished the cross would move or that thunder and lightning would roar and flash), but there was none.

  Still, he knew that this was the beginning of his elaborate plan for revenge, a plan that would not only avenge Jose’s murder, but, in the end, bring down the DEA itself. In a terrible way, he thought as he walked away from the grave back toward his waiting helicopter, he had turned the worst thing that had ever happened in his life to his advantage. For when his plan was realized, he would have consolidated his empire and utterly destroyed his enemies.

  He smiled as the chopper whirled into the cold air. This was what Jose would have wanted too. Eduardo was certain of it.

  The helicopter sat down in a field behind Eduardo Morales’s sixteenth-century mansion. Eduardo was met there by his longtime personal assistant, Vincenzo Juarez. Juarez was a huge man; Morales’s nickname for him was “The Bear.” He always looked disheveled, especially so when he was dressed formally, as he was tonight.

  “The guests have just arrived, patron,” Vincenzo said.

  “Thank you,” Eduardo Morales said, ducking under the helicopter blades, and getting into his Land Rover.

  Vincenzo Juarez took the wheel.

  “Is the dinner prepared?”

  “It’s magnificent. Everything is perfect.”

  “Good. This is a very important night for me.”

  Vincenzo Juarez nodded. There was no need for words. He knew only too well what Jose Benvinedes’s death had done to Eduardo.

  The first guest tonight was the forty-seven-year-old police chief of Bogota, Herbert Caruso. He had been in Eduardo’s pocket for so long, he had lint in his hair. Caruso did whatever Morales wished, whether it be helping to expedite a shipment of drugs by giving the trucks a police escort through the mountains or killing a youthful revolutionary who misguidedly wished to stomp out drug dealers.

  The other guest was Jaime Martinez. Martinez, a twenty-seven-year-old, was handsome in a silent-movie-star way. He had jet-black hair, teeth that glimmered so brilliantly that they almost looked false, and a perfect profile, which devastated young women. Ironically, tragically, it was Eduardo himself who introduced Jose to Jaime. Jose had been a brilliant young man, a man with a talent for the business. He rose fast through the ranks and soon became Eduardo Morales’s top man in America. But Jose was all business; he rarely had any fun. Eduardo, who had a taste for women and the high life, had asked Jaime to take Jose out on the town, to let him relax and have some fun. Jose had protested he had no real desire to do so, but went in order to please Eduardo. To Eduardo’s initial delight, the quiet, studious Jose and the flashy Martinez became fast friends. Jaime soon had Jose dancing and drinking champagne in the clubs and going out with beautiful young women, as he did. And the friendship seemed to be mutually beneficial for Jaime. He became more serious in his work and began to rise through the ranks until he was Jose’s second lieutenant. He was good at his job, which was to open new markets for Eduardo’s drugs. Jose sang his praises to Eduardo, who smiled and said he was glad Jose was having a good time and that he had found such a close friend. But privately, Eduardo now worried that perhaps Jaime Martinez had a bit too much influence on Jose. Twice Eduardo tried to warn Jose about Jaime, but Jose merely laughed at him. Jose reminded Eduardo that after all he had introduced them and that Jaime was a hard worker. So what if he lived to have a good time. “As you yourself used to say, what’s the point of being rich, if you don’t live like it?”

  Eduardo had acquiesced to Jose’s enthusiasm. It was possible, he thought at the time, that he was just getting old, judging Jaime too harshly.

  Now, as Eduardo Morales stepped out of the Land Rover and walked up the marble steps to his villa, he was once again struck by a terrible grief and a noxious wave of guilt. If only he had never introduced them at all, none of this would have ever happened.

  He stopped, sighed, sucked in some air, then opened the glass and gold-filigree doors to his home. What was past was past. He had business to attend to now.

  Because Jaime Martinez loved Mexican food, Eduardo had had his chef, Raymon Artel, create a masterpiece of a Mexican dinner. There was sangria and gold tequila, hand-painted plates of guacamole and sopas—thick, small tortillas filled with refritos, potatoes, and chorizo—fresh green tomatillo sauce, and flaming red salsa. Then came the soup course, sopa de lima, a lime soup made from the finest homemade tortillas, choice chicken livers, chicken breasts, and bitter limes. After the soup dish came the entrada, Pescado a la Veracruzana, red snapper. This was, Morales knew, Jaime Martinez’s favorite dish, and he had instructed Artel to make it to perfection.

  Which he had. Indeed, the guest of honor could only shake his head in wonderment.

  “You have outdone yourself tonight, my amigo,” he said, taking another sip of red wine. “The dinner is fantastico.”

  “I am most gratified that you like it,” Morales said. “And you, Chief?”

  Caruso grunted and kept chewing.

  Martinez smiled and took a generous sip of the Château Petrus, the finest Merlot in the world. It was soft as satin, yet complex, perfect.

  “I have had a dinner as good as this one, only once,” Martinez said. “It was at a restaurant in Mexico City … a place called Veracruz. You really ought to try it someday, Eduardo.”

  Martinez smiled in a condescending manner and soaked up the last of the sauce on his plate with the torn edge of his tortilla.

  “I’ve been very busy,” Eduardo said. “It’s not possible for me to travel for pleasure that often. I leave that to my wife and the children.”

  “And where are they?” the police chief said.

  “At the moment they are in Rome,” Eduardo Morales said.

  “I envy them,�
�� Martinez said. “Rome is the perfect city.”

  “What of Bogota?” Caruso said. “You don’t like it here?”

  “Of course I do,” Martinez said. “This is my home. It is just that as a city … well, Rome is magic.”

  Morales smiled at the police chief. “He’s a man of the world now. Our country is too small for him.”

  Jaime Martinez looked at Morales and blushed slightly. He knew that Morales was baiting him, just as he’d done since the day they met. Morales expected him to play grateful peasant to the grande patron, for that was how they’d started out. He would never allow Jaime to grow up, and beyond that he would never admit that in many ways the pupil had outstripped his old master.

  Martinez took another sip of his wine. It annoyed him that Eduardo could afford three-hundred-dollar bottles of wine, for he was too uncultured to really appreciate them.

  “I am quite serious,” Morales said, also sipping the wine. “When you came to this table with Jose nine years ago, who would have thought that the king of the nightclubs would be able to sit at a dinner table such as this one and talk knowledgeably of Rome, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles.”

  “Los Angeles?” the police chief said. “A puke hole with palm trees.”

  “You’re too harsh,” Morales said. “After all, Jaime loves it there.”

  “Los Angeles is a complex place, like all cities,” Martinez said. He sipped the wine again but felt himself withdraw slightly. There was something just beneath the surface of Morales’s words, something dangerous. He decided not to give them a lecture on the pleasures of Los Angeles.

  Morales smiled. “Can I interest you in some dessert, gentlemen?”

  “I am sorry, but no,” Martinez said. “I’m trying to keep my weight down.”

  Morales smiled and shook his head approvingly.

  “He has women everywhere,” he said to Caruso.

  “That’s not true,” Martinez said warily. “You keep me so busy I have little time for women anymore.”

  Morales smiled as the waiters brought the steaming, rich coffee.

  “Well, we want to keep you even busier, Jaime,” Morales said.

  Now Martinez relaxed a bit. At last, it was happening. He had suspected as much when they had invited him here. They needed him to front for them in America. He was going to be in the inner circle at last. Then he would get information that he could pawn off to the DEA, but not all of it. He would be able to keep the goddamned police off his back and at the same time amass enough of a fortune to become more powerful than Morales himself—because the information he would get would bring Morales down.

  It was a dangerous game, but he had the cojones for it. Jaime Martinez relaxed and sipped his coffee.

  “I want you to know that I think you have done a great job in Mexico and in California,” Morales said.

  “Thank you,” Martinez said.

  “You have made it possible for us to increase our shipments into Mexico, and you have worked well with our friends in America.”

  “I depend on your guidance, patron,” Martinez said.

  “Yes,” Morales said. “I am aware of that. And you have always been the perfect employee. Or near-perfect, anyway.”

  “Only near-perfect?” Martinez smiled nervously.

  “By that I only mean that you are prone to bragging, Jaime,” Morales said.

  “I do not understand,” Jaime said.

  “Oh, it’s nothing.”

  Eduardo Morales looked at Chief Caruso, who was now reaching into the nearby silver humidor for a Romeo Y Julieta.

  “He is so sensitive, isn’t he, Herbert? I merely mean that I know your weaknesses, mi amigo. You brag, you tell people that you have made decisions that you didn’t make. But I don’t hold it against you. Instead, I see it as a mark of your creativity. To a great extent, creative people are always liars. At least, I think that’s true. I’m sure you would know better than me, since you have become friendly with so many people in the arts in Los Angeles.”

  A small trickle of sweat rolled down Martinez’s underarm. Then another and another. He could feel each of them individually, and he knew that if he lifted his arm, he would reveal an ugly patch of sweat.

  “I don’t know why you keep bringing up Los Angeles,” he said. “I haven’t spent any time there since …”

  “Since last year,” Morales said.

  “Yes, since then,” Martinez said.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Eduardo said. “I suppose it only seems like you’ve spent more time there because you talk about it so much. And now that we have brought the subject up, I would like to know … why do you talk so much?”

  “I don’t … not really,” Jaime said. Now the sweat was starting to run in a steady stream. He dared not move. And there was a pain starting in his stomach. A terrible, burning pain.

  “He says he doesn’t talk about it so much, Herbert. Do you think he does?” Eduardo said.

  “I think he does,” the chief said. He turned and smiled at Martinez; there was a piece of red tomato sticking between his front teeth.

  “I think you talk about L.A., and I think you talk about Arizona too,” the chief said. “Maybe you think you are a cowboy, heh?”

  Morales laughed at that, but there was no humor in it. “What are you two doing?” Martinez said. “Are you putting me on?”

  “I don’t know,” Eduardo said, looking at Caruso, who lit his cigar. “What do you think, Herbert, are we putting him on?”

  “No, I don’t think we are,” the chief said.

  Jaime Martinez grasped his stomach. He had thought at first that this pain was merely the product of anxiety, but it seemed much worse than that now.

  It was as though someone had lit a match in his bowels.

  “What is wrong?” Eduardo Morales said.

  “Nothing,” Jaime Martinez said. “Nothing at all.”

  Morales shrugged and looked at the police chief.

  “He says nothing is wrong, yet he is holding his stomach. As a trained professional, what do you make of that, Herbert?”

  Caruso sighed, sat back, and rubbed his big belly.

  “I would be forced to say that he is lying. But that does not surprise me, because he is always lying about one thing or another.”

  “Yes,” Morales said. “But you have to give Jaime credit where credit is due. For a long time he has been a very good liar.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Jaime said.

  Now there was no longer any use in hiding the sweat or pretending that he was all right because his shirt was suddenly soaked, not just the underarms, but all over the chest as well. And the pain … the pain was quickly becoming unbearable. And now, suddenly, he couldn’t breathe well either.

  “Eduardo,” he said in a high-pitched voice, “I don’t feel so good.”

  Eduardo smiled and looked at Caruso.

  “He doesn’t feel so good,” he said in a dead monotone.

  The police chief smiled and blew out a smoke ring.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, because, frankly, he doesn’t look so good either.”

  “This is true,” Eduardo said, pouring himself another glass of wine from the decanter.

  “What kind of joke are you playing on me, Eduardo?” Jaime said. “Did you put some kind of red peppers in my food?”

  “Oh, no,” Eduardo Morales said. “I would never do a thing like that. I mean, to waste good food for a joke? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m surprised you would say something like that,” Herbert Caruso said, “a sensitive, artistic type like yourself.”

  “Then why … why does my stomach burn so?” Jaime said. There were tears rolling down his face now.

  “Because of a drug you have taken,” Morales said casually.

  “A drug?” There was panic in Jaime Martinez’s voice. He tried hard to sit up straight, to rein in the screaming panic he felt.

  “You mean poison?”

  Eduardo Morales said
nothing but simply stared at Jaime Martinez.

  “But you couldn’t have poisoned me,” he said. “Because we all ate off the same plate.”

  Again, Morales was utterly silent. He simply stared at Martinez.

  Martinez felt his heart skip a beat, then another, and a pain shot up his left arm.

  “The wine,” he said. “But you couldn’t have poisoned the wine either, because we all drank from …”

  Jaime Martinez stopped talking in order to grab his stomach again, which now felt as though it were roasting over an open fire.

  Morales smiled slightly and turned to Herbert Caruso. “He is such a bright boy,” he said.

  “I agree, Eduardo. They don’t come any smarter than him.”

  “Stop it,” Martinez said, suddenly finding his courage. “Stop it. If you have poisoned me, then be man enough to say so … but stop this mockery.”

  Eduardo Morales got up from his seat. He stared at Jaime Martinez as he walked around the table.

  “You want the truth. All right. It’s true, we all drank from the same wine bottle, but only you drank from that glass.”

  He pointed to Martinez’s drinking glass. Jaime stared at it in horror.

  “You see, a few minutes before you arrived, your glass was given a special treatment with a drug called sodium flouroacetate.”

  “Poison. Eduardo, but why?” Martinez slipped from the chair and fell to his knees on the brightly tiled floor. “Why? You ask that?” Eduardo said.

  He walked away from Martinez now, toward an antique chest, which he had inherited from his grandmother. Eduardo Morales opened the top drawer of the chest and pulled out a small black zippered bag.

  “You see this?” Morales said. “In it, I have the antidote to the drug you have taken. You tell me the truth, and I will administer it to you.”

  Jaime Martinez began to cry.

  “The truth about Jose Benvenides, and why you set him up for the DEA.”

  “Eduardo, please,” Jaime said. “Please …”

  “You will be dead in ten more minutes,” Morales said.

  He sat down in the chair next to Jaime Martinez and unzipped the black bag. He then pulled out a hypodermic needle and a bottle with a clear liquid in it. He struck the syringe into the bottle and drew up a full measure of the liquid.