Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [40]
“The flowers are very beautiful,” the old man’s visitor said.
They had driven out to the flower farm, an hour from Bogotá, on the morning after. It had been a sumptuous wedding, elegant, tasteful. The poise and charm of the old man’s granddaughter had more than compensated for the awkward groom. A lucky man, said the guests. She is not the most beautiful woman in Bogotá, but of course, money has a beauty of its own. The bride’s brother, the one with the haunting black eyes, had performed the ceremony from the main altar of the cathedral. He had even trimmed his beard; wasn’t that the least he could have done with the metropolitan bishop there on the altar with him? Three hundred waiters in white coats had dispensed a hundred cases of French champagne, fifty pounds of Iranian caviar and five hundred pounds of Caribbean lobsters to 1,200 guests guarded by 300 policemen, 423 private bodyguards and a company of infantry commanded by one of the guests but deployed out of sight of the colonial finca Bolivar once owned. A catty social page reporter from The New York Times had assembled the box score. Bogotá’s El Tiempo called it “the wedding of the century” but left out the part about the policemen, the bodyguards and the soldiers. The bride’s mother wore a beige Givenchy of Chinese silk. The bride’s father wore a Savile Row morning suit with a perfect white carnation at his lapel. Everyone deferred to the old man from Bogotá. He was the patriarch, and it was his money that had paid for the champagne, the caviar, the soldiers and the bishop.
“Seventy percent of my employees are single women under twenty-five,” the old man said. “Without the flowers many of them would be whores or maids. When they come here, they have no skills. They know nothing.”
The old man and his visitor stopped to admire a bed of red carnations that blazed with color and bristled with health. The girl who tended them had small bones, high breasts and a voluptuous mouth. A red and white plastic name tag on her smock proclaimed her to be Dorita. The two men watched in pleasure as the girl bent, her back to them, to trim a plant.
“They are not paid much by American standards, but it is more than they could make anywhere else. It gives them pride. It keeps them out of the city; it keeps them young and tender,” the old man confided.
“Venga,” he summoned the girl.
Turning to his visitor as the girl made her way through the rows of flowers, the old man gestured at the flowers and at a flat green pasture beyond them.
“Do you see the difference? Here on a few hectares I give work to nearly a thousand people. I make money, and so do they. Over there twice as much land goes unexploited. My neighbor keeps a small herd of cows and gives work to a half dozen cowboys. That is the tragedy of Latin America, my friend.”
The old man’s visitor said something appropriate.
“How old are you, Dorita?” the old man asked the girl in Spanish.
“Sixteen, patrón,” the girl replied. Up close she was quite beautiful.
“Are you happy here?”
“Sí patrón.”
“Your flowers are lovely. You are doing a good job.”
“Gracias, patrón.”
The two men walked out of the carnation shed into the morning sunlight. The old man took his visitor’s arm.
“It is time to talk business, Ignacio.” He could feel the younger man stiffen.
“In Miami or in Bogotá, in a tuxedo at a wedding, you are who you are. When we talk business, you are Ignacio, are you not?”
The man from Miami had to bite his tongue not to say “Sí, patrón.” The old fool. He said nothing.
“I am listening,” the old man said.
“There are two problems. We must redefine the distribution, and we must better control the supply.”
“Why is that my problem?”
“Because all the merchandise in the world is worthless if the market is not well served. The system now is as backward and as inefficient as your neighbor’s farm. You know that as well as I do.”
“And yet, Ignacio, my neighbor’s family has run that farm in the