Shooting Down Heaven Read online

  “Juan Pablo has spoken,” he told us.

  “And?” Julio said.

  “He said he was going to get revenge and kill everybody.”

  “Them or us?” I asked.

  “Them,” Libardo said, “or at least that was how I heard it.”

  “Is there school tomorrow?” my brother asked.

  “Of course there’s school.”

  “Are we going?” Julio asked again.

  “Yes, of course. Everything’s going to be exactly the same.”

  When he turned around, we noticed he had his gun shoved into the waistband of his pants, in the back, above his hip. Then I looked at the screen and my eyes widened in horror.

  “Look,” I said.

  “What is it?” Libardo asked.

  I jutted my chin toward the TV. There was Escobar again, laid out on what seemed to be an autopsy table, though the scale hanging from the ceiling made it look like they’d put him on a butcher’s table. He had his pants pulled down around the middle of his thighs, his white underwear and his belly still exposed; his beard was thick like a prophet’s, and his unruly hair was damp with sweat and blood. The image was just a photo snapped by some cold-blooded person, but it was enough to make Libardo collapse into a chair and, for the first time since he’d heard the news, weep disconsolately. I fled to my room, not because of what they were showing on the TV but because I’d never seen my dad cry like that. I caught a glimpse of Julio, clumsy and inexperienced with other people’s grief, placing a hand on his shoulder, but Libardo kept rubbing savagely at his face, gulping and cursing through clenched teeth.

  By then, elsewhere in Medellín, people were already setting off fireworks to celebrate the death of the villain.

  3

  The British Airways employee was initially thrown off by the four first names on María Carlota Teresa Valentina Rivero Lesseps’s passport, but she managed to identify the passenger’s last name and started calling her Miss Rivero. The employee checked her in and handed her the baggage receipts for her suitcases, the passport and boarding pass, and the courtesy pass for the VIP lounge. Her family always called her María Carlota, or just Carlota, and it was later, in school, when people had started calling her Charlie. Her long name was a whim of her parents, since they hadn’t been able to agree on just one name.

  Once she was through passport control, Charlie pulled her carry-on through the displays in the duty-free shop. There was nothing she didn’t own already. She spritzed on perfume from a tester to refresh the dose she’d applied that morning. In her head she reviewed her list of Christmas gifts, nagged by the feeling that she was forgetting somebody. In another store she bought two gossip magazines and a pack of gum. On her way to the VIP lounge she got a text message from Flynn asking how everything was going and whether she was through passport control. Charlie gave him a thumbs-up, and Flynn sent back a heart.

  In the lounge, she helped herself to some nuts and requested sparkling water with a slice of lemon. She sank into an armchair that looked out on the runway and, watching the airplanes land and take off, pondered what it was about Flynn that didn’t quite satisfy her. What it was he was missing. Part of her decision to spend Christmas in Colombia was to see whether distance had any effect on her feelings for him.

  She leafed through the magazines for a while, occasionally glancing up at the screen with the list of flights that were about to take off. As soon as the one for Bogotá started flashing, she gathered her things and went to the bathroom. A final inspection in the mirror was deemed satisfactory. She liked the combination of the Burberry trench coat and ripped jeans. She headed for the gate, filled with anxiety about returning. She pulled out her phone to text Flynn the message she’d promised him: I’m about to board. An incoming call from an unknown number interrupted her. She was hesitating anyway about whether to add an I love you. She started walking faster—gate 27 was far away and the terminal was crowded. I love you, she finally wrote. Her phone rang again, with a long number and the international code for Colombia. She also got another message from Flynn. Me too, have a good flight, call me when you get in. Several images of the previous night flitted through her mind. Flynn performing oral sex on her, Flynn’s cock, the way he’d smacked her buttocks when she came, the emptiness she’d felt afterward. In another message, Flynn told her he missed her already, and in another he asked if she was on the plane yet. At a third phone call, she started to get irritated; she still had ten gates to go. As she hurried down the terminal, another request from Flynn came in. Send me a photo now, right this moment, I want to see what you look like. Then another call from the unknown number, and just as she reached her gate, when there were very few passengers left to board, she got another text message that wasn’t from Flynn but from Cristina, her sister, that said, please pick up, Dad’s dead.

  4

  La Murciélaga flaps in the passenger seat to the beat of a song that’s completely out of step with the moment and the situation. It’s way too early to be wiggling around like that. A female singer with a robotic voice demands, Papi, give it to me hard, give it to me hard against the wall, hard, hard against the wall, papi. As he drives, Pedro the Dictator tells us the story of a friend of his who fell through a manhole and spent the whole night down there because nobody heard his cries for help. He breaks off every now and then to laugh loudly. In reality, he’s only telling the story for himself: La Murciélaga is lost in her music, Julieth is texting, and I don’t really give a shit.

  Splayed out on the backseat, I close my eyes and cross my fingers that we’ll be driving a while so I can try to sleep a little despite the loud radio, Pedro’s laughter, and the alien sounds that La Murciélaga is making.

  Rush hour hasn’t ended yet, and we’re creeping along toward a place that sells hydroponic marijuana, which she claims is more potent and less harmful.

  “They grow it in pure water from the very beginning and fertilize it with volcanic stone,” she’d explained.

  “Wow,” Pedro had said.

  So that’s where we’re headed, even though I told them to count me out, I couldn’t hang out with them all night. At any moment, I said, Fernanda was going to call me to tell me I could leave. But what if she isn’t home, getting ready for my arrival, and instead is at the casino, glued to a betting table? I ask Pedro which casinos Fernanda’s been going to.

  “None,” he tells me. “She quit doing that stuff a while ago.”

  “No way,” I say. “She’d have told me if she’d stopped gambling.”

  “Who’s Fernanda?” La Murciélaga asks.

  “My mom,” I tell her.

  “I know her!” Julieth says, almost proudly.

  “So why are you asking him?” La Murciélaga says, pointing at Pedro.

  “Because I don’t live here and he does.”

  “I don’t get it,” she says, moving her arm to the beat like a charmed snake.

  “Believe it or not, Larry may look like a moron, but he’s an economist from the London School of Economics,” Pedro says.

  La Murciélaga turns and asks, “Really?”

  “No,” I tell her. “I started a degree at City University of London, but I didn’t finish.”

  “Well, your mom says it was at the London School,” Pedro says.

  “She doesn’t know the difference,” I say. “Besides, I was studying banking and international finance, not economics.”

  “That sounds cool,” says Julieth.

  “Anyway, we ran out of money and I had to drop out.”

  “What do you mean, you ran out of money?” Julieth asks in surprise. “I remember the cars you had and the clothes you used to wear.”

  “He’s got money, Juli,” says Pedro. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just pretending to be poor.”

  “Really?” La Murciélaga asks again.

  We live off of what Julio
is able to make on the farm. There are good months and bad ones. I scrape by in London working at a real estate agency, and when the farm has a good month they wire me some extra cash. It’s not that I’m pretending to be poor, it’s that we used to be really rich.

  “Listen to this.” La Murciélaga turns up the volume on the radio and bops in her seat. Pedro keeps the beat with his palms on the steering wheel, Julieth goes back to texting, and all I can think of is taking a shower and then sleeping.

  “Call Fernanda, would you?” I ask Pedro.

  “You call her,” he says.

  “My cell phone doesn’t work here in Colombia.”

  “She said she’d call.”

  “She’s flaky. Please call her.”

  Pedro dials reluctantly. I grab his cell phone and just hear it ringing.

  “So much for proper English manners!” Pedro teases.

  Fernanda doesn’t pick up. I leave her a voicemail: Ma, it’s me. Give me a call on Pedro’s cell. I got in ages ago and I just want to get to your house and rest.

  Pedro turns off the wide avenue and onto steep, narrow streets. We drive through some residential buildings and then enter a business district.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “Solar system, planet Earth, third rock on the right,” says La Murciélaga, and Pedro eggs her on by giving her a high five.

  On the radio, a man is begging to the music, touch it, mami, touch it, mami, touchittouchittouchit, touch my heart, mami. La Murciélaga lets out a euphoric whoop and keeps wriggling to the reggaeton beat.

  Suddenly, Pedro brakes hard and throws the SUV into reverse.

  “What’s up?” asks La Murciélaga.

  “Check out these jackasses,” says Pedro. He parks in front of a contemporary furniture store, pokes his head out the window, and yells, “You all are real screw-ups, drinking this early in the day!”

  There’s a group sitting around behind the store window, and one of them stands up and comes outside, his arms spread wide. La Murciélaga, recognizing him, lets out an excited shriek as if she hadn’t seen him for years.

  “Ro!” She starts chanting: “Ro, Ro, Ro!”

  “Hey, old man,” Pedro greets him, while Ro grabs his head roughly and says, “Fucking dictator, where’ve you been, dude?”

  I think back, but I can’t place Ro. When I left we were all just coming out of puberty, and now we’re approaching thirty. When I left we hadn’t finished growing; our bodies weren’t done yet, our beards were scraggly, and our voices cracked when we talked. Now everything seems to have settled into place, even if just for a little while. And we act like we’re going to be young forever.

  La Murciélaga stretches over Pedro to kiss Ro on the cheek. Julieth rolls down the window and pokes her head out to give him another kiss. Seeing me next to her, Ro narrows his eyes, trying to figure out who I am.

  “It’s Larry,” Pedro tells him.

  “Larry?”

  “Larry has no idea where he is,” La Murciélaga says, and giggles.

  “Larry,” Pedro says again. “The one who was in London.”

  Ro looks at me closely and thinks a moment. “I don’t remember you either,” I tell him.

  “Larry,” he says, and then asks, “Libardo’s son?”

  “Yes,” Pedro answers for me.

  Ro’s expression goes cold, though he holds out his hand to shake. Pedro reminds me who Ro is. Rodrigo Álvaro Ospina, son of a former governor, former senator, former ambassador, one of our neighbors way back when. Though we didn’t go to the same school, we were sort of friends because we used to see each other outside, back when we played in the street.

  “Larry got in today from London,” Pedro tells him. “He’s an economist from the London School of Economics,” he says, and La Murciélaga chimes in with a servile giggle.

  “That’s great,” Ro remarks, without much enthusiasm.

  “What are you guys up to?” Pedro asks.

  Ro looks back at the group inside, and a woman raises her glass of aguardiente in greeting.

  “Tere brought a bag of green mangoes, so we had no choice but to open a bottle of liquor to go with them,” Ro says plaintively.

  “Mangoes, yum,” says Julieth.

  “More like aguardiente, yum,” says Pedro.

  Ro laughs so he can buy time to study me again. Then there’s a short but piercing silence, throughout which my heart’s only desire is that Ro will keep his mouth shut and not invite us in. But that doesn’t happen, and he finally makes up his mind:

  “Come on, come inside for a bit and then we’ll go see La Alborada. There’s still some booze left. And time.”

  I let out a dissident snort. Pedro turns and tells me, “Chill, man, let’s stay here for a bit—I’ve got everything all worked out. With me, happiness is guaranteed.”

  He gets out, opens my door, and gives an exaggerated salute. And he asks, “By the way, man, did I welcome you to hell yet?”

  5

  What sounded like shattering glass, at gate 27, turned out to be Charlie’s scream. The few passengers still waiting to board froze. She dragged out the scream into a mad, maddening lament. It sounded like a mentally ill person was trying to force her way onto the plane, or somebody having a panic attack. A couple of airline workers hurried toward her as she sat doubled over on the floor next to a row of seats, her face red and distended from the scream. They helped her up and led her over to a seat. Charlie kept moaning, her cell phone clutched to her chest. They asked her what was wrong, what was happening, and she just shook her head.

  At the counter, they made the final boarding call. One of the employees asked if she was on that flight. Charlie nodded. They asked if she was sure she still wanted to travel, and she said yes and begged, please don’t leave me, I’ve got to be on that plane. The employee signaled to his colleague at the counter to wait and asked Charlie for her passport and boarding pass. Shaking, she rummaged for them in her purse. The employee rushed over to the counter with the documents, and the one who stayed behind said, I’m sorry, but you have to board now, they’ve announced the final call. And he asked her again, Are you sure you want to go?, we can book you for another day. At this, Charlie jumped up. No, she said, I’m going, I have to go. Have you been drinking?, the employee asked. She looked at him in confusion. What? I asked if you’ve been drinking, he repeated. Alcohol?, Charlie asked. Yes, alcohol. She stopped sobbing and let out a laugh and shook her head. Let’s go then, he said.

  On the jet bridge, a small group was still waiting to enter the plane. Just four or five passengers. Charlie was pulling a small suitcase, though it looked like the suitcase was actually pushing her. Larry was the last one in line, and he turned to look at her. She grabbed the handrail as her knees buckled. She landed on her butt on the floor, alone, in the middle of the passageway, beneath a glaring fluorescent light. The people waiting to board turned to stare at her. Charlie’s agonized sobbing peeled the skin from their bones. Nobody appeared behind her to help, nobody went over. Two more people from the line moved forward into the plane, and Larry was the only one left outside. He peeked inside the plane to see if a crew member had noticed what was going on, but they seemed to be busy helping the passengers settle in. So he walked halfway up the jet bridge, to where Charlie was, and asked in English, “Are you O.K.?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can I help you?”

  She nodded and replied in Spanish, “Help me into the plane.”

  Larry helped her up. A flight attendant appeared in the airplane doorway and urged them to hurry. Larry held Charlie’s arm and with his other hand pulled her suitcase behind him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “My father just died.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  The two of them boarded the plane. The flight attendant pointed he
r to her seat. Larry followed behind. Charlie stopped at the fourth row in first class and dropped into the seat. He asked if that was where she was sitting, and she nodded. He opened the overhead compartment and stashed her suitcase inside.

  “If you need anything, I’m in the back, row 35,” he told her, but she was crying again, her face in her hands.

  He headed further back toward his row, threading his way between people who were still organizing their things. Suitcases, hats, stuffed animals, Selfridges bags full of crap. Larry tried to turn around and go back to tell Charlie that he was on his way to a funeral too. Maybe that would give her a little consolation. She wouldn’t feel so alone, he thought, as if grief could be shared. But it was different too—he was going to a funeral that was twelve years late. Another flight attendant asked him to take his seat, saying that the flight had been delayed already and was being held up even further by the boarding process. Larry obeyed and found his spot, between two strangers. He’d be there for the next eleven hours. He closed his eyes, thinking.

  There’s no flight in the world worse than one that’s taking somebody to say a last goodbye . . .

  6

  Three days after Escobar’s death, we gathered around the table again. Before, everybody used to do their own thing—Julio and I off to school, or the two of us with Fernanda, or her with Libardo—but it took just three nights for the four of us to end up at the dining room table again and discuss the subject as a family for the first time. During that period, Libardo was constantly in and out of the house; one night he didn’t even come home to sleep, but Fernanda wasn’t worried. I was. The country was in turmoil—whether for good or for ill, something transformational had happened, something so significant that nobody was talking about anything else. Even today everybody remembers what they were doing when they heard about Escobar’s death. So I kept a close eye on Libardo. I read his facial expressions, his mood, to guess what was going on. Relax, son, he kept saying, without my even asking anything. But the more he said it, the more I worried. I tried to keep close to him so I could eavesdrop on his phone conversations, but he’d shut himself up in his study, talk in a low voice, or persuade the other person to meet face to face. When he talked to Fernanda, they’d go off by themselves and speak in monosyllables. She didn’t share much with us. She asked to us to let Libardo do his thing, saying he’d always taken care of us and that wasn’t going to change.