35

THUS BEGAN A period of Aguilar’s life that felt charmed. He patrolled at night, slept for a while after his shift, and whenever he had time off, rode his motorcycle into the village to spend it with Maribel. She seemed to like him as much as he did her. By their third visit, they were holding hands. One night he took her to dinner in San Vicente del Caguán, and after, in front of her door, she kissed him—a kiss that lasted a long time, and was rich with the promise of so much more.

After three more visits, including another dinner, she invited him inside. There, she put a cassette tape in a portable player—classical music from Spain, she said, her favorite—and took him in her arms. He didn’t know much about dancing this way, but she held him and they moved together, and the warmth of her and the smell of her filled him. She felt it too, and before long they were kissing, touching, grasping, then urgently tearing off their clothes and lowering each other to the floor and making love in a white, blinding heat, and then lying there on the floor holding each other as the music ended, listening to each other breathing and the hiss of the empty cassette.

She talked about books and films, and she made strong, dark coffee, and she didn’t have much money but she spent some of what she had on good wine. Making love with her was like the symphonies she preferred, long and complex, with crescendos that took his breath away.

Sometimes she walked him into the jungle or rode on the back of his bike to faraway spots, and taught him about the natural world. She showed him passionflowers and native palms, the red heliconia flowers she called lobster claws, the rubber trees. She took him to a lake almost entirely carpeted by Amazon water lilies; they shed their clothes and jumped in, splashing amidst the lilies and hiding under them for as long as their breath would hold, then making love by the shore. She introduced him to pink bananas and bromeliads and to what seemed like a thousand different types of orchid.

She knew the wild creatures, too. She showed him the cat-sized tamarin, the sword-billed hummingbird, and the pink river dolphin. Together they spotted jaguarundis and boas, venomous banana spiders and a golden dart frog, and, on a weekend trip to the high country, a spectacled bear and a crested eagle.

One day, just before twilight brought a curtain of darkness to the jungle, they were walking less than a kilometer from the village, on a path they’d followed several times before.

“I’m worried,” she was saying.

“About what?”

“The people of the village. Ours, and the next. They’re getting more upset about the lab. About the workers who went there, their brothers and fathers and sons, and who haven’t come back.”

“We can’t exactly let them travel back and forth,” Aguilar said. “Then everybody would know what it is, and where it is.”

“What makes you think they don’t?”

He smiled, and she squeezed his hand, then let it go. “They’re serious, Jose. They’re hungry. They feel like they’re not only losing their land, they’re losing their history. They’re losing everything, and when people have nothing left to lose, they become dangerous. You need to take precautions. Make sure Escobar understands the threat.”

Before he could answer, Maribel grabbed his arm. “Do you feel that?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“Feel what?”

“Something’s watching us.”

“Something, or someone?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t like it.”

She hated that he went everywhere armed, and had made it clear that no long-term relationship could survive if he continued living as a criminal. Now, though, he was glad he had his knife at his ankle and a pistol at the small of his back. “Who’s there?” he asked.

Nobody answered. A moment later, the brush parted and a jaguar stepped onto the path. The beast was long and sleek, solidly muscled, with a tawny spotted coat and golden eyes with round pupils. Those eyes blazed with intelligence. It opened its mouth, showing a pink tongue and sharp, long canine teeth. “He uses those to bite through the brains of his prey,” Maribel whispered. Always the teacher. “Death comes instantly. No struggle. No other big cat does that.”

“We’re not prey,” Aguilar said in a loud voice that he hoped projected confidence. “You don’t want to mess with us.”

“Of course not,” the jaguar said. “I’m not even here.”

Aguilar was stunned. Jaguars could talk? He had never seen one in person before, not even in a zoo, but he thought somebody would have mentioned that. He froze. Maribel’s hands tightened their grip on his arm. She heard it, too, then.

“I just came by to tell you that it’s time to decide,” the jaguar added. “Once and for all. Who are you, brother? What are you? You can’t just drift through life, you know. You have to set your own course, and follow it.”

“What do you know about—” Aguilar started to say. But then the jaguar was gone. For an instant, just a flash, he thought he saw a spider monkey riding on its back. But it vanished in less than a heartbeat, without even rustling the brush beside the path.

“Did you… did you see that?” he asked.

“See what?” Maribel replied.

“Don’t joke around.”

“I don’t know what I saw,” she said. “If anything. It was like I was here, with you, and then I wasn’t, and then I was back. It all happened so fast.”

“The jaguar,” he said. “The talking jaguar. And the monkey.”

“It’s getting dark,” Maribel said. “Hard to see anything, or to know what you saw. Let’s go back to my house and make love.”

That was an invitation Aguilar couldn’t refuse.

After, they lay on her bed, half-covered by a damp sheet, legs twined together.

“He’s right, you know,” she said. “You have to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“Your path. Your future. It’s up to you to decide what it’ll be.”

“Then you did see it!” He punched the pillow behind his head. “You did!”

“Did I ever say I didn’t?”

* * *

The next night, he was no longer sure he had seen anything at all. A talking jaguar was impossible. A monkey riding a jaguar was just as unlikely. It had been a trick of the fading light, or of his imagination.

But the point it had made—and which Maribel had underscored—was a good one.

She was an honest woman. He thought he loved her, and that she loved him. Even Luisa hadn’t made him feel like this, like he hated to be out of arm’s reach, that when he was away from her all he could think about was getting back.

Luisa had been comfortable. Safe. He had needed that, then.

But Maribel challenged him. He had to work to keep up with her blade-sharp wit and fiery intelligence. He needed that, now.

Needed her.

For her part, she told him that the supply of interesting men in the village was vanishingly small, particularly since so many around her age had gone to work at the lab. Aguilar had initially been a curiosity, but he had become something much more valuable: a friend, a companion, a confidant, and a lover.

But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—make a life with someone who lived with violence as a daily prospect. Things had been peaceful, these last weeks since Escobar’s tooth had healed. The airstrip expansion was going well, the new workers were catching on, production was up. Escobar had even brought whores in, as promised, though Aguilar had no interest in them.

Everyone was happy, and for a time, it had almost seemed like his job wasn’t one of murder and torture and death.

But it was. This was a respite, that was all. It couldn’t last.

More and more, though, it was his romance with Maribel that he wanted to last. And it wouldn’t, unless he broke with Escobar.

He couldn’t have both.

He was thinking about these things as he patrolled the next night. The memory of the jaguar encounter—imaginary though it might have been—was so vivid he felt he could still smell the beast, although he hadn’t smelled anything at all after it had gone.

And it hadn’t really told him anything, just prodded him to examine his life. It had undoubtedly been his subconscious, bringing to the forefront of his mind a reality that he had been trying hard to push away.

He wanted Maribel.

He wanted a life with her. A peaceful, decent life, even here in the jungle. He had money put away, and she said she didn’t need much. Her home was simple but comfortable, and when he was there with her he felt like he belonged.

He had been disgusted with himself ever since Miami, when he saw the devastation caused by cocaine, and he’d been forced to torture his friend. Maribel offered a second chance, a way out.

He had never been a proper sicario in the first place. He had always questioned everything, doubted himself. You couldn’t take a man who’d always been a butcher and turn him into a ballerina. He had been a student, a cop, middle class or close to it. The sicarios were poor kids, with no hope and no prospects. He wasn’t a good fit.

With Maribel, he fit just right.

She could keep her job with Dr. Mesa, and he could find some kind of work. He could become a farmer, a hunter.

First he had to leave El Patrón, though.

That wouldn’t be easy. Escobar didn’t take defection lightly. He would believe that Aguilar knew too much to simply let him walk away. He would want to end Aguilar’s career with bullets.

Unless…

Unless he could convince Escobar that he had always been loyal, always faithful, and would remain so.

Escobar had no reason to doubt him, after all. He had always followed orders. No matter what Escobar had demanded of him, he’d found a way to do it. He had become one of Don Pablo’s most trusted, valued men.

He would appeal to the man’s reason. “I’m getting old,” he would say. “I’m tired of running around, killing people. I just want to settle down someplace, raise a family. You’re a family man, you understand that.”

Escobar had always been fair with him. He had appreciated Aguilar’s service, had treated him almost as a member of the family. As had Tata, and if Escobar did anything to hurt him, she would be furious.

He had been worrying for nothing, he decided. He would finish up this shift and sleep for a while. When Escobar woke up, he would explain his situation. There would be a brief discussion, and then Aguilar would climb on his new motorcycle and ride out of the jungle, probably with a gift of several thousand pesos in his pocket.

He trained his flashlight on his wrist to check his watch. He had almost lost track of the time. Twice an hour, the two patrols were supposed to check in with each other. They had prearranged spots where their routes intersected, and he was late getting to the nearest.

He hurried. The jungle seemed especially close tonight, especially dark, and even the insects seemed to have hushed, for a change.

When he reached the small clearing, he saw Trigger, sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, facing away from him.

“Trigger,” Aguilar said. “I’m here, man. Sorry I’m late.”

Trigger didn’t move. Had he fallen asleep? Aguilar wasn’t that late. A few minutes, that’s all.

He crossed the clearing and touched Trigger’s shoulder.

Trigger flopped over backward, falling off the trunk. Aguilar clicked on his flashlight to check him.

Where his face should have been was a bloody, pulpy mess. His eyes dangled from their sockets, the bones of his nose gleamed white, his teeth looked huge. Only the flesh was missing.

No jungle beast had done that, he thought. Terrified, he whipped the flashlight around the clearing, in case whoever had attacked Trigger was still here.

And there it was, pinned to a tree with a knife.

Trigger’s face.