Warriors in Paradise (16 page)

Both maids answered simultaneously, “They are not here. Their homes were flooded, and they asked permission to go and clean up the mess. They will be back after the storm passes.”

“Where are Toro and Millán?” we asked.

“They are both upstairs in his studio. We are waiting for the weather to improve before we fly up to Mexico City,” answered the driver.

We used the tape to bind them to their chairs and placed a piece of tape over each of their mouths.

We left the kitchen and went upstairs, looking for the big, bad Bull and his Colombian associate. We heard their voices long before we reached the studio.

***

We opened the doors and walked in.

They were both sitting in front of a large flat-screen TV, smoking habanos and drinking brandy. As they heard our steps, they turned to look at us. There was a look of recognition and then of hate on Toro’s face. The Colombian stood up quickly and dove for a gun on the desk. But Caleb was moving faster. The Colombian grabbed the gun, but Caleb already had his out. As the Colombian raised his arm to fire, Caleb’s Glock went off with a roar, hitting the Colombian above the right ear, spilling blood, brain, and bone all over the desk. He wobbled and slumped over it, his head bouncing up and showing the mushroomed exit wound.

Toro kept looking at Charlie and me with his little beady eyes. I could feel the strength of his malice. He raised the brandy glass to his lips and sipped. He looked at us some more. As he brought his large Montecristo cigar to his lips, he said, “Would you like one? You should have one,” he added, “since it is going to be your last.”

He then raised his voice and said, “Are you stupid or what? Do you have any idea who am I? Do you know what I can do to you? Do you know that you have just signed death warrants for yourselves and your families?”

The three of us looked at one another and then looked at him, and we started to laugh and laugh. The more we laughed, the angrier he became. In a sudden motion, he stood up and threw his glass at Caleb. Of the three of us, he seemed to have a particular dislike for Caleb. Caleb caught the glass in midflight in a seemingly effortless movement. Most of the brandy was still in the glass. He brought it to his nose and inhaled the aroma, saying, “Too fine a brandy for a little shit like you!”

Caleb put the glass down on a side table and walked toward Toro. When he was close to him, he gave him a tremendous and sonorous slap while picking off the cigar from his fingers in a swift motion. Toro fell to the floor while still looking defiantly at Caleb. Caleb squatted next to him, grasped Toro’s hand, and put out the cigar slowly on his palm. I could hear the sizzling of his skin. Toro just looked at his burning palm without making a sound. Once the cigar had been put out, Caleb pulled him up by his ear. He turned around and said to Charlie, “Would you please do him the honors?”

Charlie responded, “Of course. How uncourteous of me.” He walked to Toro and gave him another tremendous slap, which again threw him to the floor.

Charlie then turned to me and said while pulling Toro up by the hair into a standing position, “What are you waiting for? An invitation in the mail?”

“Sorry. I was distracted,” I said while approaching Toro. When I got close, he flinched, and I thought that we were beginning to break him down. I feinted with my left hand, and then I slapped him hard with my right on the same side of his face. He fell down again. Blood started to trickle down from his ear and the corner of his mouth. The left side of his face started to become swollen.

We looked down on him, and I said, raising my voice, “Are you stupid or what? Do you have any idea who you are fucking with? Do you know what we can do to you? You have just signed your own death warrant!

“Nica, Nica, Nicanor, you’re only alive because we allow you to live. However, at any moment, we can change our minds. We are like that. We constantly change our minds. Right now, we couldn’t care less about you, nor about your drug business, restaurants, nightclubs, whorehouses, and white-slave business. Right now, we are only interested in finding the Canadian and Russian girls. You tell us what we want to hear, and we can make an arrangement to let you go as long as you promise you will not come after us and our families.

“How does that sound to you?” I ended.

He looked at us with his unblinking little obsidian eyes. The corners of his thin-lipped mouth turned up in a hateful smile that seemed both condescending and obscene at the same time, and he started laughing.

We looked down on him, and once he calmed down, I said to Charlie and Caleb, “Now that I know that I can make people laugh, I can have a second career. What do you think, people? Should I become a comedian or a clown?”

“I don’t think you’re all that funny,” said Charlie.

“You will starve both as a comedian and as a clown. Stick with economics,” said Caleb.

“So, the only person I can make laugh is here, this little, chubby psychopath of a hoodlum. That is a very small public!” I said this while squatting next to him, grasping his left hand and bending his little finger until it snapped.

I was getting good at it.

I had to give him credit; he had a high threshold for tolerating pain. Bending back a finger brings excruciating pain, and he just blinked a few times and emitted a low whimper. He kept on staring at me with that obscene, hateful smile.

***

This was going to be difficult.

So far, we had been lucky. The people whom we had interrogated were cowards, either afraid of pain or willing to talk freely. We now needed to know where the girls were and what information we had that justified their need to track us down and kill us. However, Toro seemed unafraid. I decided to pause the interrogation and asked Caleb to watch him while Charlie and I went down to the kitchen.

“Charlie,” I said, “I am out of my comfort zone here. Until now, we have been able to find out what we needed using a combination of fear and torture. We have used—well, at least I have—the techniques and tricks learned in the schoolyard, while growing up, in books, in movies, and on TV. What feels right! However, when I come across someone like Toro, who is prepared to endure torture and is not afraid of dying, I am out of my element. I am concerned that we won’t be able to find out what we need to know. He is the key link in the chain. We need to know what he knows.”

Charlie said, “I haven’t told you much about my background. I guess this is the time to tell you, but first let us check on the people in the kitchen and get the duct tape. The three of us need a powwow before continuing.”

***

The maids, the pilot, and the driver looked OK.

I went to the pilot and asked him how he was doing, if he wanted water or anything. He shook his head. I then went to the chauffeur and asked him the same questions. He nodded. I took the tape off of his mouth and asked him, “What would you like?”

“A glass of water would be fine,” he said to me.

I fetched him the water, which he drank avidly. Before I put back the tape on his mouth, I told him, “Look, we will be back for you in a couple of minutes. Nothing is going to happen to you. Please stay calm, and everything will be OK. OK?”

The driver just nodded and said, “Thank you.”

I placed the tape back over his mouth.

Charlie was doing the same thing with the maids, talking to them and turning on all of his considerable charm to make them feel at ease. We took the duct tape and went upstairs again. We taped Toro to a chair, slapped tape over his mouth, and walked out to the hall.

***

Charlie began. “My father was a major in the US Army. He died in Afghanistan in 1999, when I was eight years old. My mother’s brother, my Uncle Jonathan, and my father were friends and worked for military intelligence. My mother met my father through her brother. After my father passed, my uncle became the father figure in my life. He has always been there for me and has always treated me as an equal.

“After nine eleven, our school and family values and perceptions changed. Children were told how to protect themselves in case of a bombing or a terrorist attack. In our minds, it was as if suddenly we were living inside an action-packed movie.

“One Sunday while we were barbecuing in his backyard, I asked my uncle, ‘How do you know if a jihad fundamentalist is telling you the truth?’
Jihad fundamentalist
sounded ominous to a ten-year-old.

“He answered, ‘You think like them. You get into their shoes. There is something they love above all else. And there is also something they hate above everything else. You find one or the other, or both, and you can use that to get the truth out of them.’”

“OK, I get it,” I said. “With Toro, we cannot use only sticks and no carrots. Let us go back to the kitchen and talk to the maids and the chauffeur. You guys take the maids, and I’ll take the driver. Let’s us find the ‘Loves and Hates of Nicanor Toro.’ Let us find his carrot.”

As we were going down to the kitchen, I said to Charlie, “So you are also a mama’s boy?”

Charlie said, smiling, “That I am.”

“What about you, Caleb?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said.

***

We arrived in the kitchen, and Charlie freed one of the maids while Caleb did the same with the other one. They stood them up and walked them out into the house, talking to them.

I freed the driver as I held his upper elbow in a friendly gesture and walked with him to the living room. “What is your name?” I asked him.

He responded, “Ramon Lopez.”

“Ramon,” I said, “I need your help. If you don’t want to help me, don’t worry because nothing is going to happen to you. I respect you because you didn’t get into the scuffle against us during the yacht party, nor did you abuse my girlfriend. For that I am thankful.”

“
Joven
,” he responded, “what they did to you and your friends was not right. And what they did to your girlfriend was beyond bad. It was an outrage. I am happy that you didn’t drown.”

“Ramon, I need to know where the Canadian and the Russian girls are. Can you tell me?”

“All I know is that the gringo took them, but I don’t know where,” Ramon responded.

“Then the only person who can tell me that is Toro, but for him to tell me, I need to know what are the most important things in his life or the things that he hates or dislikes the most. Can you tell me that, Ramon?”

Ramon looked at me as if I were deranged and said, “He loves money and power. He loves hurting and killing people. He doesn’t care about anybody. Not his wife, lovers, or sons. He hates it when people challenge him or steal from him.”

“Ramon,” I said, “there has to be something that he avoids, something that he dislikes. Can you recall something like that?”

“I don’t know if this is going to help you, but he dislikes swimming in public.”

“Thank you, Ramon. That is helpful.”

Ramon looked at me and said, “I came to work for Mr. Toro ten years ago with my brother Juan. We worked as servants, handymen, and gardeners in his homes. My brother wanted a better job, so he asked Mr. Toro if he could become one of his bodyguards. Mr. Toro liked us, so he sent my brother for guard training and me to learn how to drive. My brother trained hard and learned how to fight, shoot, serve, and protect. I learned how to drive and fix a car.

“During one of the parties that Mr. Toro likes to give for his friends and associates, a bag full of cocaine disappeared. Mr. Toro likes his guests to have only the best, so he places little saucers of cocaine in the bathrooms so they can have as much as they want. One of the bathrooms ran out of cocaine, and a maid was sent to fetch the bag, except the bag was nowhere to be found. One of the bodyguards in the kitchen was jealous of my brother, so he accused him of stealing the bag. Mr. Toro had to set an example. He could not allow anybody in his immediate employment to steal from him. Therefore, he killed my brother slowly in front of me and his household employees in Mexico City.

“Lesson learned, but the problem was that my brother did not steal that bag, and Mr. Toro probably knew that. But since he didn’t know who the thief was, he taught us a lesson never to be forgotten with the life of an innocent man. I have never been able to forgive him, nor will I ever forgive him.

“I will help you any way I can, but I know that after you leave, I am going to be a dead man,” said Ramon.

“Not necessarily,” I said to Ramon. “We are in this together; whatever happens to you happens to us. And we don’t expect to die anytime soon.”

***

“Ramon, let us go back to the kitchen, where you will point out to me the bodyguard who falsely accused you brother,” I said.

We went back to the kitchen; the bodyguards were all tied up neatly on chairs. Ramon pointed to a ginger-haired man in his thirties. I went up to him, straightened his chair, and removed the tape. I grasped his arm, took hold of the back of his pants, and walked him out of the kitchen into the game room we had walked through after coming into the house. I sat the ginger-haired man on a chair, took out the Glock, emptied the magazine, and gave the gun, the magazine, and one bullet to Ramon. I walked out of the room. A moment or two later, I heard a loud gunshot. Charlie and Caleb ran into the kitchen, guns in hand. I told them to put their firearms away. Shortly, Ramon stepped into the kitchen and handled me back the Glock without a word.