wife; when no one answered I knew something was wrong and escaped from the back. The police burst into the hotel, they knocked down doors of people sleeping and having sex, and everybody was screaming and had to go into the street without their clothes. It was terrible. Again, they searched for guns, uniforms, drugs, anything that might associate me with the organization. They found nothing, for there was nothing there for them to find.
They put yellow police tape around the hotel and it was closed for a year.
I hadn’t committed any crime, yet they were looking all over for me, including going to my bicycle factory. They went to Gustavo’s house, pushing people around, making threats, setting up phony pictures and arresting his wife. Gustavo also managed to leave. The two wives were put in jail.
From my hotel I went to a farm that I owned just outside Manizales. I thought I would be safe there and have time to decide what to do. But soon after I got there the police showed up. This time to escape I tossed two car tires into the nearby river and floated safely downstream to the house of a friend. We made some phone calls so I could find out what was happening. My wife was taken to prison, my son had been hurt. I would never again have even a little trust in the police. I borrowed this friend’s car and drove to Medellín to speak directly to Pablo. What was happening? Gustavo was already there. My mind was in a terrible condition. When I found Pablo I was very upset: “I don’t understand what’s going on. We’ve got to get my wife out of jail. What’s going to happen?”
Pablo was calm. Pablo was always calm. “Okay,” he said. “I want you two guys to go to this farm and hide there for now. Let me see what I can do.”
This farm was not known to many people. It was just outside the city. Pablo had kept it as a good place to hide when he might need one. Gustavo and I got to the farm. We had to be careful but we were desperate for information. Both of us were worried terribly about our families. Gustavo wanted to call an attorney he trusted one hundred percent to try to get his wife out of jail. “Don’t do anything,” I said. “Nobody knows about this place. Let’s give Pablo some time.”
But Gustavo insisted. He gave the attorney directions to our location. We spoke with him at length and he decided, “Let me study the case. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
That night the little priest visited my dreams again. He told me we were in danger. The next morning I told Gustavo, “You know what, man, you made the biggest mistake. I don’t trust this guy. I think they’re going to come for us.”
A few hours later one of the bodyguards came into my bedroom. “Mr. Escobar, somebody called me from the town to say they saw a lot of police and army guys coming toward us.”
“See?” I told Gustavo. “See? I told you, man. Let’s go.” We ran. The sewer and water pipes from under the city ran near the farm to the river. These are huge round pipes that you can stand inside. We had no choice but to escape through this system. It was nasty, dirty, and disgusting. I had on shorts; Gustavo was wearing jeans but no shoes. We knew there were rats but we didn’t see them. We walked for a long time. Any connection with my old life, that life as a bicycle champion, El Osito, ended as we hurried through the filth.
We walked for a long time until we finally came into the streets. The police were looking for us, but as we were at that moment no one could recognize us. Our faces and our clothes were mudcovered, I had lost my shoes, we smelled bad—and we needed help. We decided to go to the home of one of my employees, who I trusted to help us. “Listen,” I told Gustavo. “We have to pretend that we’re crazy while we’re going there.” Crazy people could be as filthy as us. People would move away instead of looking to see who we were. So we acted crazy, hiding our faces with leaves from trees. People shouted at us from their cars, “Move, you crazy jerks, get out of the street.”