“Nah, I don’t know any Frankie.”

Tito stood up. He was holding about $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills in his hand. One by one he started laying them out on the bar. “You might recognize his picture,” he said.

“Stop, man. What do you want to talk about?”

It was that easy. “I want to talk about making you rich.”

The man moved over one seat and spoke in a low voice. “What do I have to do for this, man?”

“Nothing. You do nothing when I land my airplane full of cocaine at your airport. You go get a cup of coffee and you do nothing at all.”

He considered that. “What does this mean?”

Tito told him flat out: “$500,000 up front.”

The official nodded. “How many times a month can you do this?”

That was the way Pablo built up the organization. The money he earned brought even more money. At this time, in the late 1970s, there was no Medellín cartel, just Pablo running his own business. And drug smuggling was not nearly as difficult or dangerous as it was to become because the United States was very slow to recognize the size of the business. They still believed it was mostly small shipments, and operated that way.

There were some other people selling small amounts of Colombian coke to the United States but it was only Pablo who controlled the entire operation from buying the paste in Peru to delivering the product to Miami. And once Pablo had set up his system he invited others to take advantage of it. For example, he would allow other Colombians to invest their money in the business. If someone that could be trusted wanted to invest $50,000, Pablo would tell them he would return $75,000 in two weeks. He would use that $50,000 to finance a drug run. Because his operation was so safe, he also was able to guarantee to people that if the American DEA or Customs intercepted the shipment he would refund 50 percent of their money. It was very profitable for everyone who invested with Pablo. Mostly for Pablo, though, who would own the biggest share of the profits. There were so many people who were almost begging him to take their money, regular people with all types of normal jobs. These people didn’t know about drugs, they knew about Pablo. People were handing over to Pablo their life savings, they were selling their car and their house to raise money to invest with him. And nobody lost money. Nobody. Pablo helped many people have their dreams come true.

Pablo was starting to build a much bigger operation. Two of the other dealers in Medellín were a good friend of Pablo’s named Dejermo and another person Pablo did not know named Rodrigo. Dejermo was good at bringing drugs from Panama into Medellín by car; he had made valuable connections with the police in the city. Rodrigo was a great pilot. These two men started fighting a war between them, for what reason I don’t know. They wanted to kill each other but didn’t succeed, so instead they started killing each other’s families and the innocent people who worked for their enemy, cutting off the heads of the bodies. Dejermo went to Pablo, who by then was getting a reputation in the city for being very strong in doing whatever needed to be done, and having the men with the ability to get it done. He asked him to be the middle guy and negotiate an end to this war.

Pablo spoke with Rodrigo. “You guys have to stop this war,” he said. “Dejermo wants me to be on his side to use my guys to fight you.” Rodrigo knew that Pablo was strong enough to crush him so he agreed to meet with Pablo and Dejermo in Panama. “Let’s start working together,” Pablo told them both. Pablo put them in charge of a route from Panama to Haiti and Haiti to Miami. While the two men never became friends, they did become partners—working for Pablo Escobar.

The great desire from America for coke created the market, and others in addition to Pablo went into the business. There is a great misunderstanding about what is known as the Medellín cartel. Generally it’s believed that the cartel was a typical business, with management at the top giving out the instructions and employees carrying them out. The profit is returned to the company. The Medellín cartel was actually many independent drug dealers who got close together for their mutual profit and