Photo of the author's cousin's suitcase courtesy of the authorA few weeks ago I got a call from my dad saying my cousin had been murdered in a Colombian cartel slaying.
Carlitos was 27 and lived in Panama. He was found in a jeep abandoned on a highway, its engine still running, along with two other bodies. All three had their eyes and mouth covered with brown sellotape. Their hands and feet were bound with cable ties. They were stabbed in the face and legs and then executed with a 9mm in the back of the head.
Carlitos and I played Nintendo, skated and went to the beach together as kids. On hearing the news about his death I told my dad that I'd be on the next plane from London to Panama City to attend the funeral.
I arrived there to find my family in tears and my cousin's face all over the news. Images of his bloody rigor mortis were splashed on the front pages (Latin American tabloids lead with snuff pix as often as possible). The media reported that the triple murder was a cartel hit.
The death of a Colombian money launderer called "Jabon" (soap) had triggered a series of revenge killings of local Panamanian gangsters.
The police issued a statement saying all the deceased were known as "maleantes" (bad guys). One guy had done time for armed robbery and deception, the other guy was a drug dealer, and my cousin had a history involving drugs and stolen cars.
Nobody in the family could believe that Carlitos had been arrested, let alone been killed by mobsters. I always thought he kept his nose clean. He didn't drink, didn't smoke. He wasn't iced-up enough. He wasn't poor/destitute enough. He was a polite, middle-class kid. How could he get mixed up with cartel violence?
Tropical raindrops banged on the tin roof of Guadalupe Church during the funeral. The fat black priest was sweating as he blessed the urn.
The previous priest from this church, my godmother later told me, had been shot dead by maleantes.
I held my grandmother as she sobbed next to Carlitos' sister, brother, father, mother, estranged wife and current girlfriend in the front pew. About 100 people filed past to give their condolences. I cried watching my uncle Carlos, who was in bits behind dark glasses, remembering how earlier that afternoon he'd tenderly described going to the morgue and washing his only son's corpse for cremation.
At the end of the service my aunt read out a message from our family about how people should not believe the sensationalist speculation in the media about the murder. They did not want to believe Carlitos was involved with gangs. They did not know what happened, and they did not want to know… But I did.
Carlitos owned a car shop where he fitted stereos, boy-racer grills and rims. I was sure that his murder was connected to maleante types he came into contact with through this business. So I went there to find clues.
Sat at Carlitos' desk, I looked through his computer hoping to find something—anything that would help to explain why this tragedy had hit my family. Most of the files I found were accounts and spreadsheets. There were pictures of him on holiday with his wife and his baby son. There were pictures of him at racing car meets, posing with busty babes next to chromed-up cars. There seemed to be nothing incriminating.
But then I looked in a folder called "Miami" and found pictures that weren't right. There was a picture of one of the maleantes murdered with Carlitos. There were pictures of girls lying on a bed. On the same bedspread there was a picture of a suitcase stuffed with stacks of $20 bills—I'd guess close to a quarter of a million dollars.
I didn't take long to figure out that the money in that picture was in all likelihood connected to the death of my cousin. I didn't know who it belonged to but it was a criminal amount of money, most probably the proceeds of cocaine smuggling.
Panama is awash with coke and coke money. A gram costs £1. Crack is 20p a stone. Coke floods in from neighbouring Colombia to be shipped to Mexico and on to the US. Cash made in North America from cocaine flows south back into Panama because, as Latin America's favourite off-shore banking paradise, the money can be easily cleaned.
With so much coke and coke money floating around, the temptation to dip into the narco-economy, be it by drug smuggling or money laundering, is big - more so for the 40 per cent of Panamanians who live below the poverty line. But the associated risks are deadly serious given the ultra-violence of the gangsters operating in the country.
Like most capitols in the Caribbean region, Panama City is riddled with gun-toting Reggaeton crackheads roaming its ATM machines.
But gang violence has surged with the influx of Colombian maleantes from over the porous border, fleeing the $3.5 billion US war on drugs over there. Local crime has started to gain a cartel signature: poisoning police officers, grenade-attacks and ultra-violent execution-style hits like the one which killed my cousin.