Now that Jefferson was dead, what pleasures awaited him? He thought this as he was still in hiding, lying low, waiting for the storm to pass. When the news had come of a military raid, Jefferson dead, along with six others, Javier thought it was the beginning of the end. But nothing else happened. No more raids. No attacks on laboratories or warehouses.
Already, he knew it was safe. Already, he knew the surveillance teams were leaving the jungle. The aircraft absent from the skies. This little corner of Norte de Santander was too poor, too remote, too far from Bogotá for the military to devote resources to. It was why Jefferson picked it. Javier only needed to keep Americans out, and keep the countryside pacified, and then he could focus on what Jefferson had excelled at—inspiring devotion.
Two weeks before, he had ordered a shirt from a store in Cúcuta. It was Armani Exchange. A “Regular Fit Short-Sleeve Geo Camo Yoke Shirt.” The torso was a shimmering gray. The sleeves had a camouflage pattern. It fit him tightly, and he buttoned it to the neck. The sleeves cut off midbicep, showing the swell of muscle. How many forty-seven-year-old men looked like this? How many men sculpted themselves this well at any age? Protein powder, creatine, energy powders, regular weight training, and the discipline from the military combined into a body everyone should admire. He had the right mixture of maturity and vigor. He had spent maybe twenty minutes admiring himself in the mirror, smoothing out the creases of the fabric so it was one pure, straight shimmer of beauty from his neck to his waist. Jefferson, who the people loved, had been fat. Jefferson had never had a particularly impressive body, but toward the end he was just fat. And haggard. Javier was superior. A gentleman.
He went to La Serpiente de Tierra Caliente, the one place in town Jefferson had permitted women to disobey the rules of the old manual for the autodefensas about skirts and lewd behavior. “You have to give people at least one outlet,” he always said. Javier took several of his men and went to that one outlet, dressed beautifully, with a body sculpted beyond anything anyone else in the town could achieve, and waited to be admired.
Of course, they didn’t admire. They never did. They looked away. Afraid. Even the whores. And he didn’t want whores. Disgusting, diseased. He walked through the room, standing straight, not wanting to crease his shirt, and if a woman ever caught his eye it was by accident, and she quickly looked away. Or sometimes she would hold his eye, but that was always whores who did that. They’re mostly whores, women.
There was one, short and pretty and a little fat, and she danced and danced and danced and didn’t look at him once. Not even as he stood beside her and stared. She was dancing by herself, not even with someone else. An hour or so later, the short and pretty and fat one got into a fight with a tall and dark indio-looking woman, and he had his men break up the fight. He was furious. And it was worse when he found one of them was a mother. That’s what she told him. Please, sir, my children are at home. He should have killed her, if there were justice in this world. But of course, Javier was a man, he could control himself. Instead he gave them his usual punishment. Cleaning the town square. Naked. To show their whorishness to the world, and to teach them shame.
Women used to throw themselves at Jefferson. They threw themselves at him and he never wanted them. Jefferson had only fucked whores, which Javier found disgusting. Though, as time passed, Jefferson fucked no one at all. Perhaps he’d been ill, toward the end. He wasn’t as sharp as before. And then there was the absurdity with the gringa journalist. Such a stupid thing to let spin out of control. Such a stupid thing to allow that woman, Luisa, to bring into town anyway.
Perhaps Jefferson would still be alive if he had let Javier deal with the problem. Perhaps he’d still be alive if he’d followed Javier’s advice and shut down the foundation. Now the news was full of talk about the raid on Jefferson, bringing up accusations of old crimes from the paramilitary days, rapes and murders and other things.
Javier’s first action was to reach out to Jefferson’s contacts across the border and to assure them they still had a stable partner. His second action was to reach out to the Urabeños and let them know that their access to local routes into Venezuela still depended on their willingness to work with the Jesúses. But his third action was to send a warning shot to the foundation.
Javier was sure it was the foundation who had sent out that photo of Jefferson at their offices, accusing him of crimes on that website “Twitter.” Until now Javier had never heard of Twitter, or had any idea it could be capable of causing him problems, this website where anyone can go and make baseless accusations against brave men who fight for their communities.
He had summoned Abel and together they went down the list of people who’d visited the foundation. When they found the name of a former guerrillera, Alma, the sort of person whose death would bother no one but Luisa, he had ordered some of his men to kill her. And then, as they were on their way, he remembered some of the lessons he’d learned from Jefferson and radioed them to tell them to make it look like an accident.
Now that Jefferson was dead, the people at the foundation were probably feeling good about themselves. Perhaps they hadn’t heard yet about the guerrillera. So
