I just want to let you know about the choices I’ve made. I’ve made these choices for myself, I’m an adult and…”
“What did your mother say?”
“She told me to tell you”.
“Typical of your mother, pushing the responsibility onto me”.
“I’m of age and economically independent”.
“I know. And if you’re anywhere as stubborn as I am, the decision is already final.’
Guzmán took another drag of his joint, which he had been staring at for a while now.
“Dad, you have always told me that I have to be brave. Braulio is a good guy and I love him”.
“Rita, when you’re in love with someone, everyone seems to be good”.
“You’ll see what a good couple we make on camera, we work well together and the topics we talk about are technology, phones, apps… People love it. We’ve managed to get some sponsors, it’s going well”.
“So, my daughter is a youtuber”.
“Yes, your daughter Rita Guzmán is awesome and a first-rate youtuber”.
“And you get paid to do that stuff?”
“I do and pretty well too”.
“What about moving to Guadalajara?”
“It’s only an hour away by plane”.
“By plane?”
“I promise I’ll come visit you and Mom loads, OK?”
Álvaro took another long drag and let the white smoke drift from his mouth.
“Are you smoking?” Rita inquired.
“Yes, but I’m also old enough not to have to explain myself”.
“Well, I’m not going to give you a speech on that, it’s too late. I’ll leave you to it, I’m in the middle of packing… Love you lots, kisses”.
“I also love…”
She hung up. Álvaro took his joint, breathed in deeply and blew the smoke out. He stood up and moved to the table with his laptop. He got into YouTube and entered his daughter’s name: Rita Guzmán.
Rita spoke while she held the camera in her hand with skill, like a blogger with a lot of experience; ‘Hello, cosmopolitans of the world, this is “easy life” with…’. Everything about her was laughter and excitement. The camera moved and Braulio appeared, a skinny young man who was also smiling broadly, pale with a white hat that looked too Christmassy, and which made him seem even paler and a bit sickly; ‘my daughter always fancied the weaker ones’, he thought. ‘…Braulio and Rita here on “easy life”, broadcasting from the most organic restaurant on the planet…’ Rita turned the camera to her own face, ‘Tocaya in Los Morelos, a great place for your very best moments…’. Rita laughed and zoomed out so that the place became visible behind them; there were tables at the back with people eating and a waitress arrived at the table where they were sitting with some salads and two green glasses. Rita continued talking: ‘dear all, food is here, two Thai salads and two glasses of kombucha and ginger… extremely healthy…’ Rita took a sip and Braulio took his chance and moved the camera. ‘Hello, this is Braulio, and we haven’t come all the way here just to eat; today we would like to show you an app…’. Rita spoke again, interrupting Braulio: ‘that’s right, today we’re going to show you a new app for your phone…its name is Foodoos’. Rita took her phone from the table and showed it to the camera, a logo with an ‘F’ and two big ‘O’s. ‘It’s going to help you lose weight and eat food that’s both healthy and tasty’, said Braulio. Rita: ‘…exactly, so get Foodoos… and start eating healthy every day’. Braulio: ‘Rita, Rita, don’t interrupt; Rita, now, let me explain…’ Rita laughed and laughed.
Guzmán knew that his daughter didn’t take any drugs but on that video, she seemed to be up to her ears in cocaine. ‘Braulio, Braulio, you are boring and I am quicker and more fun than you are. Right, guys?... Download the Foodoos app and have fun eating. You just need to tell the app how much you are willing to spend and what you feel like eating and it will take care of everything else…’. Rita had taken over the whole screen. ‘And don’t forget that Foodoos is a free app’. Rita: ‘Also, in your first order, you get a ten-dollar discount. Here we are, enjoying life, Braulio and Rita’s “easy life”’. Braulio poked his head in front of the camera, close enough to have touched the lens with his nose: ‘Hey you! This is called Braulio and Rita’s easy life. If you’re not careful, they’ll just change the name’. He seemed annoyed. Rita’s face was still at the forefront laughing while Braulio wrote something in a notebook, covering it with his hand whenever the camera came near it. ‘Stop the camera’, he said. The only thing he heard at the end was Braulio saying, ‘Fuck you’ and then the video ended. He looked at the number of views, close to a million, the video was not even five months old. The world has gone crazy, he thought.
Guzmán shut his laptop, took one last drag of his joint and left to take a shower.
***
The man in orange overalls and a bulletproof vest walked taking short steps, it was all he could manage with the shackles that bound both his hands and feet together. Aldo Ríos, tall and slender at the age of fifty, was the new war trophy that would be exhibited as a warning to drug cartels. He was a public enemy finally arrested, and his deportation required all the appropriate security measures for a high-risk prisoner. Escorted by six agents of the DEA, Aldo had a slight limp. He was still in pain from shot he had received in his calf, his latest scar. He walked the one hundred meters of the cement path that led to the airplane that would take him to the penitentiary at Florence, Colorado, to its high security unit, the ADX, where he would stay until the trial for narcotics trafficking. Along the hangar’s perimeter, over one hundred Mexican police agents guarded the prisoner’s handover. Aldo’s eyes were fixed on his short steps, concentrating on not falling. The agents kept a hand on the prisoner as a reference; meanwhile, their eyes continued scanning the whole perimeter, feeling the tension of being observed. The rear ramp of the military airplane was waiting open for him; Aldo stepped onto the ramp, he felt the pain shoot up his leg, and looked at either side of him, knowing that he was being watched. Standing there as he was, he would have liked to raise his arm and form the sign of victory with his fingers. A push made him walk towards the airplane’s entrance.
“Have a good trip, Aldo”, murmured Juno Coentrao, who was watching the whole operation from a rooftop outside the security perimeter. Don had asked him to check on his brother’s health after three months in jail. Juno was the son of one of the drug-trafficking capos in Brazil, Néstor Coentrao, and he had been offered to Don as a sign of respect. The young man was dressed impeccably, he was the king’s messenger in the drug trafficking business and his eyes betrayed an unscrupulous character.
The plane was speeding at the take-off runway.
An unforgivable security error from their ‘Florida friends’ had led to the arrest; the monthly movements at the bank account registered under the name of Kaspar Klee, located in Miami, transactions that withdrew cash and which had been investigated by the DEA. They only had to wait for Aldo to enter the Azteca bank in Tijuana, on that second of September, like every month, five o’clock of a hot evening, arriving in an armored van with seven men armed with AK-47s.
Aldo
