Of course, the prison guards immediately came to find out what happened. Jefferson had his men bar them from the common area while Rúa directed others to clean up the body parts, take the corpses to the basement of the prison, and dissolve them in acid. Nothing, they told the guards, nothing at all has happened. Some fool set off a firework.
Meanwhile, Rúa demanded everyone else stay on the dance floor. Everything was okay, everything was normal. And Rúa ordered them to keep dancing.
There was blood on the floor. There was blood on the ceiling. Some of the whores had bits of skin blown into their hair. Some were bleeding. One man screamed that he needed a doctor and Jefferson had his men slit the man’s throat. They turned up the music. Reggaeton played. They danced.
That was power. Pure power, built of fear and envy and desire. It was the most beautiful thing Jefferson had ever seen.
He opened his eyes. The news had moved on to a piece about the health effects of only eating the same kinds of foods that were eaten by cavemen.
7
Father Iván followed behind Misael Castillo as he walked the northern side of his land, touching one spoiled palm branch after another. He’d come to the farm to ask Misael not about his crops but about his nephew, Edilson, who was apparently behind this idiotic kidnapping. Misael, on the other hand, wanted to talk crops.
“Idiots,” Misael said, and Father Iván nodded in agreement. This was a field of African palm, perfectly legal, and now a full two thirds of the man’s trees were dying. The planes the government sent out to spray coca had accidentally hit here, destroying his livelihood. And worse, because they both knew what those chemicals did. Father Iván figured that Misael’s children would be shitting all night for the next couple of days, and nothing good would ever grow on this land again.
“There’s no coca around here,” Misael said. “We were sick of government planes ruining our fields. That’s why I switched to palm.”
“I thought you switched because the price of coca went down.”
“That, too.” Of late, Misael had been a booster of palm oil. He’d tell anyone who’d listen that it put more money in his pocket than he’d ever had growing coca. And he was a leader in a local collective of farmers who were getting free seeds and fertilizer from Oleoflores, which promised to send trucks to pick up the product, just like the narcos did with coca. He was building his family a brick house. And the work was cooler—under the shade instead of in the sun. But there were more important things at hand.
“I need to know what your nephew wants before I talk to Jefferson,” Father Iván said.
“You know how it is up there.” Misael tugged on a withered palm frond and held it up for inspection before discarding it in disgust.
Father Iván had some idea. The arrival of Jefferson into the area had coincided with a drop in the price of coca, so there’d already been a lot of anger up in the north, where Edilson had been trying to organize a local union. It got worse when the Jesúses had murdered a cocalero who’d tried selling to the Peludos, and then, days later, this American had arrived, setting off all kinds of conspiracy talk.
“I have no idea what he thinks he’s doing,” Father Iván said. “And I’m starting to suspect he doesn’t either.”
Misael walked to the edge of the trees and stared out into the jungle.
“Palm is good work,” Misael said. “A harvest every eight days, regular income. But if I plant new trees, it will be a year and a half before they produce oil. If I plant coca . . . the money will come faster.”
“What will you do?”
Misael stepped into the tree line and Father Iván followed him. Nettles caught against his skin and he had to push through the underbrush. He should have worn work boots, like Misael.
“I’ll have to cut out more forest,” Misael said. “Cut and burn. Awful work. And then I’ll ask around. Maybe my nephew can negotiate a better price with Jefferson for coca. Maybe the price of palm oil will go up. Or down.”
“This country is growing more coca than it ever has,” Father Iván said. “The price of coca isn’t going up.”
“People always think they can tell,” Misael said. “But no one knows. I will wait and see.”
That was fair. Anyone who tried too hard to anticipate the market always ended up a fool. With the price of coca, the price of palm oil, there were just too many factors to consider. The opening and closing of drug routes. The law requiring diesel retailers to mix in 10 percent biofuels. The cocalero unions bargaining for better prices. The new palm oil companies sending trucks out to remote places. The six thousand soldiers patrolling Norte de Santander. The seven dead farmers whose funerals Father Iván had officiated, all of them shot when the counternarcotics police descended on a coca field and opened fire. The aerial spraying of crops. The fungus moving across the coast, poisoning coca plants at the root. The temperature and the rain. The lack of good roads. The decisions of farmers and narcos and policemen and drug addicts and presidents and mayors and weather systems and God himself, all factoring in to determine the forever varying price of a kilo of coca leaves and a kilo of palm oil, so that men like Misael could make decisions about what kind of life they were going
