Sao Paulo Blues

By Robert Seares

John is a discredited CIA agent who has worked as a liaison with the drug cartels. He was escorted back to Sao Paulo in the final days before the critical 1989 Brasilian presidential election. The invasion of Panama is imminent, waiting on negotiations that John will conduct with a cartel associate who has fled to Brasil. A false story has John questioning the agency’s motives while he pursues his own corrupt agenda.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665565318

Robert Seares

Robert Seares lives in Berkeley California and the interior of Sao Paulo State.

Book preview

I

1

Jalisco, Mexico

1977

In Guadalajara I met Richard for the final briefing. We sat outside at a small table, coffee and stomach safe pastries. The traffic passed ten feet away, fumes and grinding gears the backdrop to conversation.

Richard slowed his delivery, lowered his voice to a range expressing frustration,

It is about your status. Before the day is out, you’ll be thanking me for your cover and these fucking clothes you’ve been complaining about. Don’t underestimate this guy, Jose. Don’t ever, ever, forget who you are.

He spread his arms holding the table edges, balancing a short leg at fingertips, playing with its weight. As if it were for him to put it right. With a voice to hide his boredom, conscious of my stare, Richard spoke with tones of quiet irony, bemused understatement. All slanted toward a world only he could see.

Working up to his delivery, Daddy is so rich and so fucking connected it doesn’t matter who is President or what party is in power. Forget that you’ll be dead and buried so fast you won’t have a chance to piss your pants.

Freeing an arm, he grabbed and bit into a roll. His thick red hair was flecked with gray, his face heavily freckled, lining deeply on his forehead. Richard was skidding into middle age without much of a fight.

Maybe the corners of my mouth had turned up in the beginning of a smile and he reacted, Not the cynic, he wanted me to get it, I’m fucking serious. Dead serious!

His open mouth sent dry crumbs tumbling, bouncing off a small gut, jeans, and work-a-day boots. (I guess he didn’t want to look wealthy) He watched them fall to his lap and then swept them to the concrete floor.

In something of a lucid trance, Richard spoke, awakening to what he was saying and what Langley wanted,

"Remember you’re getting a free co-sign from this fucker Jack. Credibility is the name of this game. That’s why you’re here. We’re buying your rep and that doesn’t come easy and we’ve --and by that, I mean I’ve-- gone to some little trouble and risk setting this table for you. Don’t blow it by talking on your first date. You have one little speech with Jose and nothing more. Play dumb but with a wink and you’ll get your free ride.

Jack picked me up later that morning on a corner a few blocks from the mercado. A poorly suited man in the back seat rode with us to the edge of Guadalajara. The suit, a self-confident sort, bestowed blessings of protection. When he finally spoke his Spanish was salted with what I took as a federale tone of authority, Let me off here.

Jack got it and pulled over. A taxi that had followed us through the city came to a stop behind us.

We drove north in silence for several hours, first on the asphalt, through agave fields that climbed up the hillsides, sunlight reflecting off their long leaves. Tequila production centered here in Jalisco.

Been in Nam? Jack asked after an hour or so.

No. We dropped to silence.

Then, after three hours and fifty minutes at a good speed from Guadalajara, Jack spotted the wooden sign and turned off to a dirt road and bumpy ride. I couldn’t read the odometer.

We came to a stop and Jack slid from behind the wheel of the big white Ford. He was tall and thin, with long stringy hair, blue jeans, cowboy boots and hat. A rock band’s faded tee shirt stuck to his back; tour dates darkened in sweat. Inhaling strongly, Jack lifted and cleared his nostrils, and bottle thick glasses rode up and down his nose. Counting steps aloud he paced off, stopping to drag his foot several times across the dirt road.

Maybe he was thirty.

The road curved to my right bordered on the left by a jumbled pile of rocks rising to a small hill, a couple of hundred yards or more from where I waited in the car.

Pale dust filmed the windshield, blotched yellow with fluids of dead bugs. In the glare of the afternoon sun, I struggled to follow his movements as he reached and began to climb the hill. Near the top, amid big boulders but with a clean line of sight, he stood staring down at the car. Then crab-like he picked a path back down the rocks, stopping once to survey the car, the slow bend of the road, the desolate grazing, dry and flat--stretching off to brown hills in the distance.

This was the second stop where Jack paced off to a hill. Now he smiled on his way back, kicking a few small stones, speaking to himself, waving arms, clenching jaws--out there and then some. He pulled his hat down hard on his head getting in the car and drove away pounding the steering wheel with some rhythm.

We soon reached, rattling a few more miles on the dirt road, an old adobe structure with twelve, fourteen-foot-high walls looming on a barren hill. Red tiles peeked just past the top of the walls.

A gun barrel flashed catching light as it moved to track us. Jack slowed, driving up to heavy wooden doors with a light pedal. The doors opened as we crawled up the last rise.

Rusty metal roofing sloped down from perimeter walls on my left, covering hay, fencing, and two stake side trucks backed under the tin. Open to the air directly in my front, roughly paved in stone was a courtyard, thirty, forty feet square. To my right, a plastered wall with a wooden door in its center.

Men approached from behind the trucks, pointing guns. Zapata-ish one of them, complete to a proud mustache and cartridges crossed over his chest. They motioned us out of the car. Jack got out, stretching his arms, pitching an indifferent voice in scratchy and nasal tones, Anybody speak English?

One of the men stepped forward, A little.

I got big suitcases. I need my room. Jack spoke louder as if to make it all easier to understand.

But it went by them, so I began to translate even as the door in the plastered wall opened and Jose walked into the courtyard. A fit young man of some size and height, Jose was dark from the sun, showing that year a small mustache and long black sideburns. He halted his men with a raised hand, nodded at Jack as a greeting, and directed his men toward the car in gruff slang I couldn’t follow.

Jack opened the trunk. Three men wrestled with the heavy suitcases, leaning for balance against their loads as Jose led them off through the door. Jack followed.

I fended with my small bag while several guns remained pointed vaguely in my direction. I played the second, the young fool in expensive gray slacks and tasseled loafers-- the monogram on my white polo shirt like my badge, a newly minted attorney perhaps on a weekend outing, hand-tooled leather briefcase and overnight bag at the ready.

Evening came. I was called from my book and barren room by the knocking of the compound’s senior woman. Witch wrinkled face, gray wisps of hair, and an over-washed tent of a dress, all badges of her survival, decorating here with her age the building’s decades of decline. Soured adobe crumbling, doors and shuttered windows of rough wood twisted and gray from many dry years; brown-orange tiles half broken in their settings.

The rooms backed to the perimeter walls, brick pillars holding shed roofs as they extended past these rooms eight or ten feet, leaving only a small courtyard to harvest the sun. A roofed outdoor kitchen was at one end, the wall and door to the trucks on the other. A fire burned in the low, rustic, brick stove, of the universal peasant, why cut the wood style-- just push the branches into the fire box as they burn.

Two hammocks stretched between pillars.

Jose rose from one to greet me speaking Spanish,

Jack is out. Something to drink. Beer? Tequila? I’m ready to cook some meat.

The grill glowed at the front of the stove. Branches burned red to embers. Jose squeezed limes, spread salt on thin strips of meat, sizzling as they hit the grill. Scraping, turning, tending the fire Jose busied himself. Stars milked a clear night sky; kerosene lamps spotted the thick plank table with pale patches of light.

I was never one to wait. Pitch fast. The company wanted talent.

Some very important people we know are having labor problems in Monterrey. We heard your uncle might be able to help with the unions. This is our attorney’s number in Monterrey. I handed Jose the paper. He’d heard half of my speech.

Jose glanced at the paper, folded it carefully and put it in his front jean pocket. He gave me a self-important nod, I ‘ll see to it.

He picked up another piece of meat and dropped it on the grill, then others, and finished filling the small space. A pretty young girl emerged from a doorway and brought beer, knives, and cutting board which she placed on the table. She smiled at me, holding a hand to cover her mouth, before retreating into what I took to be the indoor kitchen.

Jose threw tortillas on the hot metal plate behind the grill, moved pans of beans and rice near the heat, and pushed branches into and over the coals, chasing sparks up to the stripped poles holding the roof over our heads. He wrapped a piece of beef in a tortilla and handed it to me.

You want salsa? It’s hot.

We ate standing, knocking back beers. Jose pressed tequila which he poured into glass jars. I tried to refuse, working some self-deprecating drinking stories with unhappy endings, but Jose pressed, and I had a couple small glasses. We ate with good appetites. The old woman he called ‘auntie’ brought us plates with chicken wrapped in deep fried tortillas. Voices and laughter floated in from the distance. A record player arrived, carried by the pretty girl who claimed Jose with a kiss and a body press, ‘a don’t be too long’ look that Jose took great care to ignore. A generator kicked in beyond walls, the night chilled.

She returned bringing records, caught me looking, deep black eyes saying there was a smile behind the hand that again hid her mouth. Jose called out a selection which she placed on the phonograph and left.

Laments, accordions, guitars.

We moved to the hammocks and Jose struck a match to a large joint, rough twisted paper burning in flames at the end until he shook it out. He inhaled sharply, the paper glowing red, running uneven. With one foot on the ground, holding himself at the apex of the hammock’s swing, he handed the joint to me. I stretched to take it, smelling the smoke with a deep breath and took a hit.

Sweet. The light green, I said. Something near Acapulco –something from the coast. Jose erupted in laughter, shook his head in agreement, watching as I took a couple more hits before I handed the joint back to him.

You work with this guy Jack before? he asked.

I lifted my shoulders, holding my breath a couple extra beats, choked back a cough, and then let the smoke go in a slow show. When I finally spoke, it was as if with reluctance, He has done good work for some of our friends.

And that was it. The rest of my speech, all oblique Richard. Play slow.

It was enough for Jose. He started talking, abrupt, direct as I had been with him, an intellectual to his mind, a thinker. Something I came to see often with his type. And he wanted, or perhaps needed to talk. He didn’t mention Jack again.

"The shit that has been coming down on the border has stopped a lot of action. People talk, everybody thinks they know answers, but I am running a business that is different.

The pistoleros’ day is over. I am replacing this fucking bandit mentality with something modern. Things have changed. That’s what this is all about. These guys coming tomorrow think they are going to split this business with me. Or maybe even push me around or even out. They don’t get it. Hell, look at my own fucking guys, the way they dress. Living in the fucking past. Tomorrow is a new day; tomorrow everyone will understand that I’m going somewhere different."

There was nothing unusual in his voice or delivery. I would have liked to have remembered the conversation differently. Maybe as the drunken talk of a young man who thinks he is on his way. Several years passed before a contact in the DEA explained to me how Jose had worked.

They paid-off big time. That was the key. Semi-tanker trucks crossed the border into California with the grass in the tanks, several tons a truck, three trucks at a shot, right shift, right people, right time. Just waved through. In Southern California they used big cars, big fucking cars with the trunks stuffed with kilos of marijuana, all packed in baby powder and wrapped in plastic. They left them in the back of large supermarket parking lots. You know what I’m talking about? like 100 yards from the store. A telephone call to their distributors, you know their fucking guys were all around the L.A. Area. No talk, no go to their house, no heat, no new people, just an unlocked car door and car keys under the front mat. It was so fucking simple. The money and car came back a day later…. or they talked….

Then the DEA man laughed, a dry rattle to remember, a second hand glimpse into venom under the simpatico that Jose fronted.

Only a few unfortunate accidents until everyone understood how they played.

The DEA man continued, Jose even bragged they dropped to the people in Laguna Beach. Like he had some hippie roots. We never believed that.

The pretty lady had returned with more rolled, fried tortillas. She handed me another beer. I couldn’t help looking over her tight young body. She watched my eyes, smiled, and I could see the badly crossed front teeth she had been hiding behind her hand.

I tried my line, I really like the music you’ve been playing.

"It’s nothing. You like it? Senhor, your Spanish is very good," she flirted.

I wish it was better. I lack practice. You can’t just learn from books.

You need to talk more then, She smiled and swayed away, turning her head to see me watching.

Later, in my room, on my bed, I balanced not far from a tequila spinning ceiling. The night cooled and rough blankets scratched. My feet were cold and wouldn’t warm even with socks.

Pounding on the door woke me. Get up! Get up!

The old crone’s voice faded, the shuffling gait of her feet dragging me back into the world. A few minutes later, I settled at the plank table, and with cold water, thick coffee and stale bread. I wasn’t that bad.

He’s waiting, she cackled, coming for the dishes.

Jack had the engine running. We’re leaving here now. Got your stuff? Are you ready for this?

At the top of the broken rock hill a camouflage net hides the fifty-caliber. Jack crouches behind it in the classic standing position. The tripod is mounted on carefully fitted piles of rocks. Jack is sighting down the barrel. Large boulders, rough stacked rock walls frame his position The belt is neatly folded, waiting. Two rifles fitted with scopes lie on a blanket to his right. Hours later, when they finally come, I hear the cars crunching rocks on the road, loud radios, and even drunken cries of laughter--although this might be a false memory. Each car is full of men. He counts them, breaking his silence,

One, two, three.

They round the bend and come into range.

He clears his nostrils hard and pulls the net away.

After a few rounds I can’t hear. He fires fast. I watch as he punches holes in the hood and body of the first car, ripping the metal roof, then bullets splatter rock from the road as he walks the fire back into the second car, pounding the front, and slowly, back to the third car whose brakes have locked as it skids to a stop. He rips this car apart, a storm raining on top and hood. It bursts into flames.

Incendiary rounds, I think. He is killing the cars first.

Walking the fire forward, slowing at the second car, a door is flung open, a man rolls out, and then another, the gun blowing fist size holes into the top but then it’s onto the men, jerking them with blows into a simulation of life. Walking the fire forward, the front car he pounds and pounds into flames, fanned with more rounds, sending smoke drifting up in a black shroud.

He lifts the gun all the way back to the last car, finds range and comes forward again. The gun stops. The cars burn.

He turns to me. I read his lips. My ears are not working. They’re all dead.

2

Nassau, the Bahamas

1977

On my first afternoon in Nassau, I met Richard over a table at what I came to call JP’s bar.

Richard stretched out from his accountants in the Caymans to brief me. For him Nassau was easy cover--successful accountant, yacht salesman, rich tourist-- they all worked against the generic Yankee that Richard played. But for the belly that spilled an extra ten pounds over his belt, perhaps an aging tennis player? Gone to seed yes, but a type you seemed to know from somewhere. Freckled heavily, he flaunted an indifference to the Caribbean sun, arms and face almost looked tan. That afternoon he wore suit pants matched to a sports shirt and expensive leather sandals. In his element he thought, playing to illusions of money that no one cared to notice.

On the table all at the ready, a sharp pencil, a piece of paper with his points, and a pack of cigarettes, a test of will. Affable but now quickening his delivery-- he did have a flight later that evening--he pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket, and pencil holding his place, studied the paper. A bureaucratic sort one might think at first blush. But at this, his third whiskey in twenty minutes, the non-domesticated streak leered wide and deep.

But he knew his points.

He asked me, putting his glasses away, You know how much the Colombians are moving to the States each week? Any idea on the kind of money we’re talking about?

Not a game I could win. Richard didn’t need my guesses; he pulled at his whiskey, reached for a smoke, made a check on the paper in front of him. He flicked his gold lighter with a clunk and obvious relief to this, the table’s first cigarette. I waited for him.

He smiled, Take a shot.

"I don’t know. Twenty tons a