thousands of dollars burying our people. Nico asked her to do the same honors for Santacruz. “We don’t want to make a big deal,” he told her. “We don’t want the media to know.”
She didn’t want to do it. “Why are you bringing him here? This is the worst enemy you ever had.” She was afraid the Cali people were going to show up and start shooting.
Nico told her it was safe. He had conferred with the wife and it was agreed that he was going to bring the body home. But the first problem was finding a coffin. Chepe was a huge man, tall and big. The woman had one coffin big enough but it was very expensive. Nico told her he would buy it, choosing it as if it was for himself.
I knew this war had to end and this was the best way. “It was a weird feeling,” Nico told me. When Pablo had been killed he was out of Colombia, “but when I saw the body of Chepe, even after all the terrible things that had happened, I felt very sad. I saw this person who had been so powerful, so rich, who had always been surrounded by people, so all alone. I had tears.”
The second problem at the funeral home became clothes for the body. Nico recounted, “The man from the funeral home told me, ‘We cannot do the service with these clothes. Everything is destroyed.’ There was blood all over. He was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt all covered with blood. He didn’t even have shoes on. It was three o’clock in the morning, and where could I buy clothes for a man that big at that moment?
“I’m also a big man and I was thinking maybe some of my clothes would fit him. At first I thought jeans and a shirt but then I had an idea. The only time I wore a tie was on my wedding day. As I looked through my closet I took out the tuxedo I had worn that day. I ironed it myself. I brought it to the funeral home and it fit perfectly. So he would go home in my tuxedo.
“At 4:30 in the morning a very gorgeous young woman arrived at the place. She was crying and screaming that she needed to see Chepe. She was devastated and couldn’t believe that Chepe was dead. He had given her everything, paying for her education and helping her family. When I allowed her inside she became even more hysterical. She started kissing his body and pleading with him to not leave her alone. She climbed into the coffin and was hugging and kissing and wouldn’t let him go.
“There was always a question why he was hiding in Medellín. I think he made the decision to spend his last days with this beautiful girl.”
It was difficult finding a way to move the body to Cali. Nobody in Medellín wanted to rent us their airplane, for fear of retribution from Cali. It finally cost a lot of money, but we had given our word that Nico would go to Cali and return the body of Santacruz to his wife.
It was almost dawn. The journalists had begun showing up at the funeral home but still nobody knew that Pablo Escobar’s nephew was caring for the body of his once hated enemy. Nicholas was careful to stay away from the TV cameras and the journalists. To bring the body home without incident he rented four funeral cars and put coffins in each one. Two cars left the place and the journalists went after them. While they were driving around the city Nico lay down in the back next to the coffin and the car went directly to the airport. At the airport the police stopped the black car for inspection. And when they opened the back they were shocked to almost heart attacks to find Nicholas Escobar hiding there. The police told the journalists, who came quickly. It became a mess at the airport as the officials did not want to let Nico go, but he paid a lot of money and everything was approved.
Even the short flight to Cali was difficult. A large airplane came too close to their small plane and it started shaking. Nico almost laughed at the thought of dying right next to Chepe Santacruz’s body. Finally they landed and a crowd of journalists was waiting. Nicholas was looking for the wife but she was nowhere.