A King's ransom

“Look,” she said.

We had a bird’s-eye view of the rooftops. The houses were nice, but they were little fortresses. Security walls surrounded each home, some topped with razor wire. Dobermans roamed many of the properties. Dozens had guards posted along the walls or at the doors, like sentries, armed with automatic rifles.

“When I was a little girl, this neighborhood was like the one you grew up in. Kids could ride their bicycles. Mothers could stroll with their babies. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

I nodded slowly, taking it in.

“That green house on the corner,” she said, pointing. “FARC has their twenty-two-year-old son. The yellow house five doors down. They took a father of three. Shot him in the head six months later when he tried to escape, then came back and snatched his eight-year-old daughter while his widow was out making the funeral arrangements. That two-story house on the hill over there-”

“Okay, enough,” I said. Reading the Pais Libre statistics was one thing. Seeing where the victims actually lived was quite another.

“These aren’t drug dealers. They aren’t even super-rich people. They’re normal families who worked hard to have a decent home and a few nice things. Bankers, shop owners, lawyers like you. This is the way they have to live now.”

I noticed her voice tightening. Obviously this wasn’t easy for her to talk about.

“If you want to wander around Colombia against my advice, Nick, don’t do it while you’re my responsibility.”

I looked at her, then back at the fortified homes. “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

“Let’s go.”

We got back into the car, neither of us saying a word. What I’d seen had definitely made an impact. Certainly there was every reason to take precautions. As she’d said in the airport, “No se puede dar papaya.” But her refusal to stay at a hotel or drive a rental car seemed a bit overboard to me, not to mention her going so far as to make a phony hotel reservation purely as a diversion to would-be followers. And her fears of an organization like Fundacion Pais Libre seemed almost irrational.

The ignition whined, then screeched, and finally the car started. As Alex struggled to find first gear, I was starting to wonder. Maybe she was being extra careful for my benefit. She feared for the safety of the gringo.

Then again, maybe it was Alex herself who was hiding from someone.

I glanced back once more toward the houses in the valley, then tucked my knees against the glove box as she drove us back into the city.

23

Two things struck me about television in Colombia. Well, one thing, really. I suppose I’d expected the daily toll of violence on the evening news-murders, kidnappings, muggings. You could get that in Miami. But the nudity was the real shocker, not in the programs but the commercials. To be sure, American TV had its share of scantily clad models selling beer, cars, cologne. But American ads were puritanical by Colombian standards. With the amount of flesh flashing here, who needed the Spice Channel?

Television was about all I saw during my first eight hours in Bogota. Alex had me holed up in our flat all day. It wasn’t a bad place actually. But by eight o’clock I was feeling claustrophobic.

“Want to get some dinner?” said Alex.

“You mean go out?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?” I said, teasing. “I thought you’d have me disguise my voice and order pizza under an alias.”

“Very funny.”

I smiled, but in truth I needed to get out. Watching television in my distant-second language was tiresome, and I found myself slipping into nonproductive worries about my father. “Let’s go,” I said.

We drove north of downtown to a trendy area called Zona Rosa, a maze of music clubs, bars, restaurants, and cafes that seemed to compress into a small nucleus of vibrant Bogota nightlife somewhere around Calle 84. We ducked into a tiny, relatively quiet bistro, where doting waiters wore traditional white shirts and black vests. Several teams of them hovered over a dozen small tables for two. A canopy of twinkling white lights hung in strands from the ceiling, reminding me of Christmas. Our table was in front by the window, with a view of the steady parade of cars outside. The rich were chauffeured in bulletproof Mercedes-Benzes and Renaults. Smartly dressed couples entered in the company of bodyguards. The women wore no jewelry, but once safely inside the restaurant, they opened their purses and applied their diamond earrings or emerald rings as a matter of course, the way American women might check their makeup. It was one of the safer areas, according to Alex, but people never let their guard down completely in Bogota.

The restaurant specialized in food from Antioquia, one of Colombia’s largest and richest departments, which included the city of Medellin. It was a region fond of parties and prayer, Alex told me, known for orchids, gold, coffee, and the distinctive architecture of rural towns that had stood for centuries. Most renowned of all were its native people, the paisas, famous for their hospitality and interesting customs. Alex ordered a glass of wine to start. I took only mineral water, as I was still having a little trouble with the trip from sea level in Miami to over eighty-six hundred feet in Bogota, and alcohol wouldn’t help the adjustment.

“Nice place,” I said.

“After scaring you to death all day, I thought you should see another side of Bogota. People haven’t stopped living.”

I tried a breadstick. “Do you think I was foolish to come here?”

“I understand why you did it.”

“Do you think I made the right decision?”

“Can’t really say. If the only thing to consider was the risk to you personally, that would be one thing. But every time you take a risk, you have to factor in the added anxiety it causes your mother and whoever else cares about you.”

“It’s really just my mother.”

“What about your sister?”

“She still doesn’t even know about Dad.”

“Surely your girlfriend worries.”

She tried to slip that in casually. Maybe I was flattering myself, but I sensed more than just passing curiosity on her part. “I’m unattached right now. I was engaged, but that ended a few weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”

“Yeah, right.” She almost scoffed.

“You don’t believe in fate?” I asked.

“Do you?”

“Sure. We all have our destiny.”

“We make our own destiny.”

“So you would deny me the comfort of thinking that Jenna’s breaking up with me was all for the best?”

“It might be for the best, but it wasn’t fate that got you there. When a relationship dies, it’s usually because somebody finally came to their senses or somebody screwed up.”

She had a way of cutting through the nonsense, which I rather liked. “You’re right. I screwed up.”

“What happened?”

“She told me it was because my job was too consuming. But that wasn’t the real reason.”

“What do you think it was?”

“She built up a lot of resentment over the years.”

“Toward you?”

I nodded. “She never believed that I loved her enough.”

A waiter came by and lit the candle on our table. Alex waited for him to leave, then asked,