Shooting Down Heaven Read online

  SHOOTING DOWN

  HEAVEN

  Jorge Franco

  SHOOTING DOWN

  HEAVEN

  Translated from the Spanish

  by Andrea Rosenberg

  Europa Editions

  214 West 29th Street

  New York, N.Y. 10001

  www.europaeditions.com

  [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events,

  real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © Jorge Franco, 2018

  First Publication 2020 by Europa Editions

  Translation by Andrea Rosenberg

  Original title: El cielo a tiros

  Translation copyright © 2020 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  ISBN 978-1-60945-589-7

  Book design by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  Original cover design:

  Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial / Patricia Martínez Linares

  Collage with City of Medellin (Getty), Firework Display at Night (Beasely/EyeEm/Getty), Firework Display at Night (Raedel/EyeEm/Getty)

  In memoriam.

  For Humberto, because of whom I am what I am.

  1

  Nelson doesn’t need to read the lyrics as he sings karaoke. He knows them by heart and is crooning with his eyes closed. Loneliness is fear that silence locks in, and silence is fear we kill by talking. The tune’s going one way and Nelson another, but he doesn’t care. He’s told me, I’m going to sing you your daddy’s favorite song, so I listen intently. And fear is the courage to begin thinking about life’s final journey without moaning or shrinking!

  “Libardo would be crying by now,” one of his friends from way back whispers in my ear.

  “He had a song for every woman,” says another.

  Either he didn’t understand who I was when we were introduced, or since I’m a grown man now, he doesn’t feel any compunction about mentioning Libardo’s lovers to me. Or maybe mobsters are always loose-lipped.

  They pour me more whiskey without asking if I want any, even though I’ve drunk only half my glass. The guy to my right says, “But this was his song, just for him, and it was a real nightmare because musicians never knew how to play it. I warned him the song gave him away: a guy can’t go around admitting he’s afraid of fear.”

  He breaks off as the crowd starts clapping for Nelson. I’m anxious about my friends outside, hoping they don’t leave. My suitcase is still in Pedro’s SUV. And I don’t have Fernanda’s address.

  Nelson comes over and says, “Your dad would be doubled up bawling his eyes out right now.”

  “Yeah, so he said.” I gesture to the guy next to me.

  “So what did you think?” Nelson asks me.

  “Great, you guys sing great,” I say.

  “Nah,” he says. “It’s just a hobby—we get together every couple of weeks to let off some steam.” He laughs, then looks at me and says, “Your dad would have loved to come sing karaoke. He was a real music lover.”

  It’s true. Libardo was obsessed with stereo systems; he always had the latest model, not just at home but also out at the farms and in his car. If he was in a good mood, he’d listen to music with the volume way up, cheesy popular stuff that Julio and I used to mock relentlessly.

  “You don’t invite any women?” I ask Nelson.

  “Would you believe it,” he says. “The one time we brought women, they took over the microphone and didn’t let us sing.”

  Another man comes up, fat and grinning, holding a sheet of paper, and asks, “Did you already choose your songs for the second round?”

  “I’m doing ‘¿Y cómo es él?’” says the guy to my left.

  “Come on, Baldomero,” says Nelson. “Again?”

  “I didn’t sing it last time.”

  “Yeah, because you didn’t come. But the time before, and the time before that, and the time before the time before that . . .”

  “Well, whaddaya know,” Baldomero complains. “Now he’s deciding what we can and can’t sing.”

  “Let’s go and ask for the song list so you can look at what else they’ve got,” the fat guy suggests, and the two head off.

  “I’m leaving too,” I tell Nelson.

  “It’s still really early!” he says. “We go up to five rounds around here. One of these days we’ll get you in front of the mike too.”

  “Me?”

  They’re like little kids. They can’t sit still, roaming around from chair to chair, table to table, talking loudly, laughing raucously. I can’t pick out any of the ones who used to come visit Libardo, but it’s been twelve years—maybe it’s the same guys but they’ve gotten old. I wonder what they’re up to these days. Are they still on the wrong side of the law? Did they do their time? Are they still packing heat—not that that means anything in Medellín. Will they actually end up dying of old age?

  “How’d your mom get on?” Nelson says, and the question perplexes me.

  “Get on with what?”

  Nelson stammers something into his drink, claps for the fat guy, who’s started singing. This guy’s good, he tells me, he knows what he’s doing. With what?, I say again. This guy’s amazing, a kick-ass bolero singer. Nelson, when did you last see my mom? It’s been a while, kid, I haven’t seen her for two years, she’s as gorgeous as ever, I bet, he says. I bet, I say. Huh? What do you mean?, Nelson says. I haven’t been back for twelve years, I just arrived today, I explain. Oh, shit, Nelson says, everything must seem so different to you.

  “What’s up with my mom, Nelson?”

  “The world’s most gorgeous tits,” he says, letting out a boozy guffaw. “Sorry, kid, we used to say that to your dad to needle him.”

  The others are singing along with the fat guy for the chorus. And I’m dying to have you next to me, so close, so very close to me. Nelson raises his glass and joins in. Then he says, “Libardo had a good ear but a terrible voice,” and he repeats, “It’s a shame he isn’t around for this, he’d have loved it.”

  I down what’s left of my whiskey, picturing Fernanda the last time I saw her on Skype. There’s nothing wrong, she’s fine, she seemed the same as always. But what if she was hiding something? Just imagining the worst makes me give in to the urge to pour myself another.

  “Yeah, let your hair down,” Nelson says, smiling. “Today is La Albo­rada.”

  Suddenly we hear pounding on the door and then shouting and a scuffle. Some of the men get up, and others keep singing. What’s going on?, one of them asks, and picks up one of the pistols lying on the table in the middle of the room. Another does the same and barks, turn off the music! Outside, the shouts and blows are getting louder. Everyone around me’s pulling their guns out of their waistbands, jackets, or leather holsters. The only one who hasn’t noticed what’s happening is the guy singing. Turn off the music! Who’s standing guard outside?, another guy asks. The music cuts off, and the fat guy keeps singing at the top of his lungs, you’re my moon, you’re my sun. John Jairo’s out there, somebody says. And Diego too, says Nelson, probably referring to the beefy bouncer who almost didn’t let me in.

  I fear the worst: two gangs settling scores, or a visit from the police looking to make these guys pay, twelve years later. A short, stocky guy known as Carlos Chiquito moves toward the door, hiding his gun behind his back. Everybody else stays put, as Libardo used to say when things got hairy, on top-shelf reserve.


  Carlos Chiquito opens the door to reveal several men arguing. There are some women too. The first one I see, his face flushed and distorted with rage, is Pedro the Dictator. Behind him, La Murciélaga is waving her hands, also furious. Carlos Chiquito raises his gun, and I raise my voice to say, “Hold up, I know them! They’re friends of mine.”

  Everybody backs off, relieved. I head to the door as Carlos Chiquito tries to get things under control.

  “Calm the fuck down, dipshits!” he says.

  Pedro spots me and shouts, “Let him go! Let him through!”

  “Who?” Carlos Chiquito asks, perplexed.

  I squeeze between the bodyguards and ask Pedro, “What’s going on? What’s all the fuss?”

  “Are you O.K.?” Pedro asks.

  “What did they do to you, Larry?” La Murciélaga asks.

  Standing next to them is Julieth and some other people I hadn’t seen earlier. Nelson pokes his head out the door.

  “What’s going on, kid?”

  “Nothing, Nelson, just my friends looking for me.”

  Carlos Chiquito orders his men to shut the door. I want to say goodbye to Nelson, but two bodyguards have formed an impenetrable wall. Pedro hugs me. “We assumed the worst, man,” he tells me. Who are those guys?, Julieth asks. Pedro got us all freaked out, says La Murciélaga, and with this business about your father showing up, we thought . . . Swear to God, Pedro breaks in, I thought you’d been kidnapped. How did you know I was there?, I ask. I saw you, says Julieth, and I told these guys I’d seen you go in with a couple of dodgy-looking dudes. They turned out to be friends of my dad’s, I explain. We should go somewhere else, La Murciélaga suggests. Yeah, Pedro says, let’s get the check and go. I feel like everybody’s looking at me, like they’re thinking, great, this bullshit again. Libardo’s son getting into trouble again.

  In the car, I gradually piece back together all the muscles and bones that came loose from my skeleton in the chaos. Exhausted, I try asking again: “I want to go home, Pedro. I want to say hello to my mom.”

  “It’s no big deal, man,” he says. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

  “No, it’s not that,” I tell him.

  I’m too tired to repeat what I’ve already told him so many times. It’s not that, it’s everything.

  “You sure you’re O.K.?” asks Julieth, who’s sitting next to me with her hand on my thigh.

  I’m not O.K., but I’m not about to tell her that. Maybe later I’ll tell Fernanda and confess how sad it’s made me to discover that Libardo opened up to these guys more than he did with us, that they know more about my dad than she, Julio, and I do.

  2

  Libardo steeled himself to keep from falling apart when he saw Escobar’s body lying on the roof of the run-of-the-mill house where the world’s most wanted man had been hiding out. The rumor reached him before he saw the announcement on TV; like everybody else, he thought it was another made-up death, just like the numerous other times Escobar had died over the course of his life. But within half an hour they’d started reporting developments on the radio. On a hunch, he’d called Fernanda to go pick us up from school.

  Though I’m younger than Julio, the two of us were in the same grade—eleventh—but we’d been put in different classes. My brother had failed ninth grade, but I was a good student. Our driver usually came to get us, so that afternoon we were surprised to see two SUVs drive up; Fernanda was in one, and the boys were in the other. She was distracted, smoking a cigarette and drumming her fingers on the steering wheel as if she were playing along to a song. Confused, Julio and I walked over. Fernanda wasn’t very clear; she said she’d come to get us because there were going to be demonstrations later that afternoon. Julio asked her who was going to be protesting, and she said the students. The students again, she said indifferently. But I already knew. The school secretary had interrupted biology class and whispered something to the teacher. After she left, he told us what was being reported on the news. It felt like everybody in the class was turning to stare at me.

  “Pablo’s dead,” I said to Fernanda once we were in the car.

  She looked at me in the rearview mirror, and Julio, who was riding up front with her, said in surprise, “What?”

  “That’s just a rumor,” said Fernanda.

  “That’s why you came to get us,” I said.

  “Is it true, Ma?” Julio asked.

  “It’s hearsay—nothing’s been confirmed yet,” she insisted.

  Julio turned on the radio, Fernanda switched it off, Julio turned it on again, and she told him, turn that off, I’ve got a headache. She doesn’t want us to find out, I piped up from the back. Julio rotated the dial, searching for a news station. Fernanda looked at me again in the rearview mirror and said, “I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

  She pressed the cigarette lighter on the dashboard and pulled a pack out of her purse, but she couldn’t shake a cigarette out. Julio stopped the dial on one of the many stations discussing the news. The announcer, very worked up, said that the area had been cordoned off, taken over by the military; the corpse of the individual presumed to be Escobar was still lying on the rooftop, and some soldiers were raising their arms with their fingers held in a V for victory. Fernanda smacked the cigarette pack harder against her leg and cursed. The lighter popped out, and she told Julio, turn that off and get me a cigarette out. Julio said, this is going to blow up, referring to the news.

  Fernanda didn’t speak again, and Julio kept switching from station to station. All of them were full of excitement and speculation; every report was heralded as breaking news. Fernanda was on the verge of crashing the car. I was looking out the window, which was shut despite the stifling afternoon, and I seemed to detect in people, in everything I saw, the upheaval described on the radio. If what was already being reported as fact was true, that Thursday in December was going to split our recent history in two. All of us felt it: Fernanda as she stomped on the brake and jerked the steering wheel, urgently smoking a cigarette, and Julio, his eyes glued to the radio, as if it were transmitting the images being described. And me, still staring out the window and sensing reproach on every face, as if everything that was being set in motion were my fault.

  Fernanda entered the house through the kitchen door, went upstairs, and shut herself in her room. From outside we could hear the TV in the living room. We found Libardo intent on the news, muttering and as pale as a sheet. As soon as he saw us, he scrambled for the remote and shut the TV off. He smiled as if we’d caught him up to something.

  “We were listening to the news in the car,” Julio said.

  “Everything’s going to be O.K., boys,” Libardo said, but his voice sounded nervous.

  “It’s going to be a shitshow, Pa,” Julio said.

  “It’s been a shitshow for a while,” Libardo pointed out, and then asked, “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s upstairs,” I said.

  I went over to the coffee table, picked up the remote, and turned the TV back on. Now they were unsteadily trying to lower him from the roof on a stretcher. There he was, stretched out, bearded, bloody, his belly exposed—in other words, dead. Waiting for him below were more arms outstretched to receive him, touch him, make sure it wasn’t some sort of trick. The bullet that had penetrated his ear had made his face swell up and distorted his features. It was impossible to be certain it was him.

  “Turn that off, Larry,” Libardo ordered.

  “Why doesn’t anybody want us to know anything?” I whined, clutching the remote control.

  “Because people are saying things that aren’t true.”

  “Is he not dead or what?” I said defiantly.

  Libardo hesitated. The image on the screen trembled as the stretcher disappeared into the fray. The reporters tried to follow it, panting and bumping into each other or getting tangled in the camera cords
. The chaos transmitted live made Libardo anxious.

  “Turn that off, dammit,” he said, his teeth clenched, and shouted, “Fernanda, Fernanda!”

  “She’s got a headache, Pa,” Julio told him.

  The telephone started ringing.

  “Why are you still watching?” Libardo said. “They’re taking him away now.”

  “Well?” I asked. “Is he alive or is he dead?”

  The telephone kept ringing.

  “Answer that!” Libardo yelled toward the kitchen. “He’s dead,” he said at last, and his voice shook again. He wiped his face and turned off the TV. We could still hear the telephone ringing, until somebody finally answered it.

  “It’s all going to be O.K.,” Libardo said.

  I tossed the remote on the sofa and Julio ran upstairs to his room.

  “December’s fucked now,” I told Libardo, but he shook his head. He sat down in his leather armchair and said, “The only one who’s fucked is the dead guy.”

  Libardo spent the rest of that day making phone calls. He didn’t leave the house and shut himself in the garage several times to talk on the car phone. His booming voice had been reduced to a murmur of curt replies, threats, and inquiries about what other people thought, or where so-and-so was, or why somebody wasn’t answering his calls. He paced back and forth, keeping a constant eye on the street corners through the window.

  He’d turned the TV back on, but the volume was at a murmur. They were still showing the house in Los Olivos, the roof with the broken tiles, the bloodstains, the crowd being held back by a flurry of police officers and soldiers. The defense minister spoke, then the government minister, the mayor, the governor, the chief of police, the head of the army, and finally the president. Libardo listened closely to all of them, clutching a glass of rum that he filled up repeatedly as soon he’d drained it.

  Fernanda didn’t come out of her room for the rest of the day or all night. One of the domestic staff carried a pitcher of water up to her, and later a bowl of soup. Julio and I went down when they called us for dinner. We continued to watch the news on the TV in the kitchen. We were by ourselves when Libardo came in to get more ice.