Sun, Drugs, and Bullets

Prologue
"Read the headlines," Guerrero told his bodyguard. It was the morning of July 34rd, Guerrero had just finished his self-hygiene routine, and now sat at the narrow end of a long mahogany table, in his dining room. There were three plates in front of him, one with lettuce, tomatoes and spinach, the other with watermelon cubes and one with a beef and an egg ("Gotta watch my weight, eh, Trujilito?"). The room had also had a chandelier made of crystal and a (fake) Botero hung on one of the green walls.

Or at least that's what they told him, but he couldn't know. You see, Júlio del Paso Guerrero was blind.

He was blind since three years or so ago, when he forcefully overthrown the leadership of his cartel. And business has never been better, all he had to do was pay ten or twenty percent for one or another "para" and not only the government, the cops and the gringos let him alone, but he also had a few more willing pair of hands to get Maria Juana to Paraguay, then Brazil, and then the world.

Being blind was not easy, but he got used to it, and with the money he made he could pay bodyguards around the clock to help him to do anything he couldn't alone, like, for instance, reading the newspaper. He didn't trust Violeta to do that, he trusted her to do many things, like stealing money from him while he wasn't...for the lack of a better word, "looking."

Trujilito, his son, could barely read, and he was a little worried about the boy. The doctors said something about Dilixia, and whatever it was, he couldn't just take two pills and a goodnight every morning. He considered sending his son to Spain, where there were schools specialized on this kind of kid. But he couldn't bear to live away from his son, and he couldn't leave Colombia.

The clear, monotone voice of Guadajo pulled him away from his reflections.