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14
ABREGON: BROTHERS IN CRIME

Juan Carlos Abregon was a smart man. He always had cash and if he didn’t, then he could get his hands on some, if he wanted to. I don’t know how he did it, but he always managed somehow. Apparently, he had been busted for his part in a drug ring in the city of Santa Cruz, although they never got him with anything, so maybe he still had some funds stashed away somewhere. From what people told me, his fortune had gone up and down over the years. Even when it went down, like now, when he was in prison, he always came up with some new plan to get rich and, more often than not, he pulled it off.

Abregon was also a tough man, you could tell that much straight away. He wasn’t big, but even if you had never met him before, you could tell that he was tough by his eyes and his silence. Physically, he was no different from most of the men from Santa Cruz: he was of medium height with dark skin and a small pot belly from eating so well. He also had the obligatory moustache that all the men from those parts had at the time. No one was exactly afraid of him, but he was given a certain amount of respect for being dangerous, although I didn’t know what he had done to earn his reputation. Occasionally he got moody and would refuse to speak to anyone. But when that happened, you just knew to stay out of his way. Mostly, he was friendly enough; he shook hands and made small talk with people he passed in the corridors. So, tough and moody, yes. But dangerous, no.

It took a while for us to become friends, or even to meet each other, for that matter. He didn’t associate much with other prisoners, so no one really knew him too well, which may have been part of the reason why he had maintained his reputation for being dangerous. Abregon