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It used to be a home. That’s the strange part for Steve. The deserted Narcos villa, hidden away from the world by wildering green, used to be a home. Children’s laughter had echoed through those long and winding hallways, a wife had lovingly decorated the countless rooms. People – a family – had lived here.
Pablo Escobar’s family, but still, a family nonetheless.
The sky is dark gray, dulling the villa’s colorful walls. The paint is peeling off the windowsills. An unnerving quiet has settled deep within the villa’s bones. Once, the lawn had been manicured, and the pool had been filled to the brim with bright, glistening water. If he closes his eyes, he can almost smell the sharp smell of chlorine staining the air. The splashing of water underneath a shimmering sun ghosts his ears.
It’s all gone now; the large body of water has been diminished to a brownish puddle lying on the pool floor.
Peña walks up beside him, his boots echoing on the cracked tiles. ‘Weird, isn’t it?’ he asks, his aviators hiding his eyes. ‘All this for just one family.’ He stands close to Steve, the distance between them just enough to still be considered casual. Peña’s hands are sitting on his hips, his elbows pointing outwards like small wings. If Steve reached out, he could touch him.
That’s a big if. ‘Huh?’ he mumbles instead, shoving a hand in his pocket. He fidgets with a thread lining the inside of his pants. Together, they stare out over the rolling landscape. He studies the mountains in the far distance. Angry thunderclouds assemble above the summits.
Colombia has something eerily deceiving about it, as if it still holds peace amidst all the chaos. Sometimes, when he is surrounded by her untamable nature, he can almost forget the blood that flows through the very heart of the country. Almost. It’s a lie he gets lost in seconds before he remembers. A child, screaming. Gunshots echoing through the chaotic streets of Medellín. People calling him a gringo, like it’s a bad thing, like all of it – the chaos, the endless wars, the dead bodies turning up in the streets like weeds – is somehow his fault. To the Colombians, it doesn’t matter one bit that he’s here to try and put an end to it all.
‘This place.’ Peña leans forward a little. The gravel crunches under his soles. He looks at the ground for a moment, his thumb and pointer finger running along his upper lip. ‘Could feed a city with the kind of money that made this all possible.’ He looks up quickly, as if he hadn’t meant to say that part out loud.
‘Yeah,’ Steve agrees. They could.
He wonders, for a fleeting moment, if Peña would say yes if he asked him to walk away from it all. They are surrounded by a richness that surpasses Steve’s wildest dreams. The abundance of money so easily left behind, thrown away, while people are starving to death in this country; some days, it feels like none of the things they do make a difference. He wonders if Peña feels the same.
Before he can ask, Peña’s turned around. His hand pats Steve’s chest once in passing.
He can hear Peña walking away, returning to the chaos of their dangerous lives with steady steps. Somewhere behind him, Carillo’s men search the place. Their army boots sound heavy on the traditional Spanish tiles. Their hands are angry as they pull open cabinets in the outdoor kitchen.
The emptiness they’re faced with; it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. They had been too slow, again. The endless bureaucracy surrounding their jobs makes everything they do just a tad too slow. No amount of angry pacing and jabbing fingers had managed to speed things up. He had raised his voice, gotten angry, threatened to walk right out. Peña had been there too, his presence calming, his patience too practiced. Peña had been down here longer than any of them. He’d gotten used to it somehow.
Steve doesn’t think he can ever get used to it. Pablo had been long gone by the time the search warrant had finally come through. Of fucking course, he had thought angrily when he had stormed the deserted villa with Carillo’s men in tow.
He turns his face up to the sky. God, he hopes they at least find something. They’ve been chasing ghosts for weeks now. An endless string of stakeouts, hours spent in the passenger seat of Peña’s beat-up car. They had talked about everything and nothing. The frustration had been simmering under the surface, always present but never quite reaching a boiling point. It’s like they are stuck in this endless back-and-forth.
It doesn’t yield any results. None of it does. People have died. Carillo has lost his temper more times than Steve can count.
Still, nothing.
An angry shout in Spanish. Two of Carillo’s men start scuffling. A body slams into a wall. Peña’s voice breaks through the tension. He’s there. He’s always there, his Spanish a low murmur that’s meant to de-escalate the situation.
Steve stays where he is. He can’t get himself to return to the chaos, not yet. He needs a little while longer, away from it all. His eyes wander over the landscape again. Some tropical birds screech in the distance. The atmosphere weighs heavily on his skin, the air sticky with the soft promise of rain.