Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (2 page)

The last time Ricardo had spoken to his daughter was the previous evening. He’d reached her on her cell just before 10
P.M.
to invite her to an impromptu family dinner at a grill not far from the Floreses’ home in Santiago de Surco. Stephany told her father she was hanging out with friends in Larcomar, a three-level mall of boutiques, eateries, and movie theaters carved into the cliff at the edge of Miraflores, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

By day, Miraflores was a bustling place full of foreigners eager to see the sights. A half-hour drive from Jorge Chávez International Airport, Miraflores catered to both well-heeled travelers residing in four-star hotels on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean and backpackers flopping in cheap hostels. Special tourist police and English-friendly information booths sought to give the place a feeling of calm and safety amid the polluted chaos that was greater metropolitan Lima.

In the district’s central square, Parque Kennedy, olive-skinned women in colorful Indian garb sold traditional indigenous paintings, tapestries, and other knickknacks. “Hey Mee-stir” or “Hey Lay-dee,” they would call out, employing the little English they knew. Camera-toting travelers from all points of the globe would stand in line, tickets in hand, for seats on the red double-decker Mirabuses to explore a myriad of museums, pre-Incan ruins, and even catacombs buried deep beneath an ancient Spanish monastery farther downtown. At lunchtime, barkers with broad friendly smiles would stand on the sidewalks corralling hungry foreigners into relatively inexpensive cafés to feast on enormous plates of ceviche,
pinchos,
and Chifa, a wild fusion of traditional Peruvian and Chinese cuisine. Restaurants were equipped with special hooks on the underside of tables to keep purses, knapsacks, and cameras away from street thieves.

The intoxicating smells of lunchtime, the biggest meal of the day, almost masked the thick odor of exhaust that hovered over the city; trapped between the cool winds of the Pacific and the foothills of the Andes on the other side of town, the sickening, damp, polluted air had no place to go. To say the air quality was poor was an understatement. From June through December, a thick, gray fog, known as “
la garúa,
” hung over the city, obscuring what would otherwise be spectacular views of the Pacific coastline.

By night, Miraflores was another place entirely. Cars would race by at breakneck speeds, making the simple act of crossing the street a dangerous endeavor. Neon signs advertised McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks and might seem out of place, but the American fast-food establishments were always packed with budget travelers and locals. The action started late and typically began with a round of pisco sours, Peru’s national cocktail made from brandy, lemon juice, and sugar, topped with frothy egg whites and a drop of Angostura bitters. The drink, surprisingly strong, tasted a bit like margaritas and fueled the laughter, loud conversations, and occasional bar fights. Nightclubs and casinos sprang to life when the sun went down.

After dusk, the district of Miraflores was party central and the revelry often spilled into the streets as bleary-eyed packs of tourists stumbled from bar to bar. Patrols of heavily armed police officers in black flak jackets kept a careful watch over the foreigners, wobbly from the excesses of the evening and vulnerable to petty crime.

Ricardo was aware of Miraflores’s wild nightlife, and although he worried about his daughter’s absence that morning, he also realized she was twenty-one and an adult.

Annoyed that she hadn’t touched base with the family, Ricardo dialed her cell phone. It rang a few times and then went to voice mail. Clearly the phone was on, but she wasn’t answering.

Ricardo had always been a little overprotective of Stephany. The father of five children, he only had one daughter, his baby girl. As Stephany was growing up, he was rarely seen without his little
nenita
in tow.

When Stephany was two years old, the family owned a circus. It was a good, old-fashioned tent circus, complete with trapeze acts and a menagerie of exotic animals. Stephany loved to be around the elephants, bears, and tigers. Because her mother, Mariaelena, was the manager, she was able to spend her days hanging out with carnival workers who shared their strange and curious world with the tiny brown-eyed brunette. The performers loved Stephany and saw her as a kindred spirit. Like them, she was a bit mischievous and utterly fearless.

One day, Ricardo received a call from his wife asking him to head over to the main tent. When he arrived, there was a rehearsal in progress. He nearly passed out when he saw his two-year-old dressed in a frilly, pink tutu seated atop an elephant making its way into the arena. It was an unforgettable moment. Ricardo felt pride tinged with horror as he admired his tiny daughter’s courage. She was all smiles balanced atop the giant pachyderm. It turned out she’d been practicing for weeks without his knowledge under the direction of the circus’s veteran animal trainer. And his wife was a co-conspirator.

Years later, Stephany would be involved in another daredevil stunt, this time with her father. The two of them decided to keep Mariaelena in the dark. Ricardo was a well-known race-car driver, a good-looking older man with thick jet-black hair, deeply tanned skin, and a cleft chin, and his televised skills on the rally racing circuit had earned him near-celebrity status in Peru. His team’s name was Riflo, a contraction of his first and last names. The team had won the internationally famous Caminos del Inca Peru Rally in 1991, a 2,700-kilometer (1,680-mile) circuit divided into five grueling stages. The race placed tremendous pressure on both the car and driver. The Andean leg took drivers and their vehicles to altitudes of 15,000 feet, about 4,500 meters, and required that participants carry oxygen on board. Speeding up and down steep mountain roads, past high cliff walls lacking any safety rails, an unlucky driver could easily slide off a crumbling embankment into the abyss. Certain death lay below. The danger, the speed, the steely grins of the racers who had survived the sometimes deadly course generated female groupies. These men were superstars in their own right.

In the years following his victory, Riflo enjoyed this celebrity status. He also served two terms as president of the Peruvian Automobile Club. Off the track he wore tailor-made suits that hung gracefully from his lean, well-toned body. His look was classy and successful but he had a gangster’s edge and carried himself with a confidence that would serve him well from the racetrack to the boardroom.

Rally drivers were always accompanied by a navigator whose job was to shout out the unseen course in front of them. The navigator had to know the route and read from written notes as he simultaneously watched for the dips and turns in the road ahead. He had to know every curve and elevation change. It was a position with no margin for error. The slightest miscalculation could send a driver over the edge of a high cliff wall before he even realized he’d reached it. The driver and navigator had to be in sync and must have complete faith and trust in one another. On and off the racecourse, Ricardo Flores loved being behind the wheel and insisted on being in the driver’s seat. Even when he was out with his family he did all the driving. He selected a navigator with great care.

Stephany was in her teens when she first expressed an interest in racing, and she and her father hatched a plan to get her into the navigator’s seat for a real race. Normally, Team Riflo wore red fireproof racing suits, red being the team color. But Ricardo had two blue uniforms custom-made for him and Stephany. They would also register using pseudonyms.

In a sport dominated by men, it would be unheard of for a driver to use his sixteen-year-old daughter as a navigator. And he was sure his wife would object. The plan went awry when Mariaelena caught the two sneaking the suits out of the house. Admitting everything, Ricardo pleaded with his wife to let him take Stephany. He promised to keep his daughter safe.

Ultimately, Mariaelena acquiesced. She trusted her husband. When Stephany was a baby, the family had nicknamed him
“Papá Gallana,”
or Father Hen, because of the way he guarded over her. She accepted that he would not recklessly endanger their daughter’s life. Their shared passion for racing trumped the risk.

Now, standing in the hallway outside of Stephany’s bedroom, Ricardo felt his daughter slipping away. There was more to his concern than her failure to check in that evening. She had been spending a lot of nights out on the town. He’d recently discovered she was frequenting the casinos of Miraflores, and had gotten herself in over her head. He’d even bailed her out earlier in the year, buying her a new car after he learned that she’d sold her Mitsubushi in an online auction for the equivalent of U.S.$12,000 to cover her gambling debts. Ricardo was upset when he found out what she had done, and he settled the obligation, warning his daughter that owing money was both reckless and dangerous. He didn’t know for sure, but he suspected his daughter was still gambling.

Gambling in the Flores household was something of a family pastime. It was done for recreation, just like Americans might bet on the Superbowl or basketball’s March Madness with friends. Sometimes the buy-in was U.S.$100, which might seem steep, even obscene, in a country as poor as Peru, but in the Floreses’ minds dinner out and a night on the town would be just as expensive.

The senior Flores had been a gambler, and knew it had a darker side. Ricardo’s game had been baccarat. But at home the family played poker. And Stephany was good. She even told friends and family that she dreamed of becoming a professional poker player. She excelled at everything she did, and hated to lose. While she shared her mother’s light complexion and soft facial features, she had definitely inherited her thick, dark hair and competitive nature from her father.

Ricardo had hoped his daughter had learned her lesson after hocking her car, but just a few days earlier she’d hit him up for the equivalent of U.S.$1,000, claiming she needed a new laptop for school. As far as he knew, she hadn’t yet purchased one. He hoped she wasn’t gambling again.

Stephany’s mother, Mariaelena, a striking blonde who was stylish and chic, was equally concerned when she learned their daughter had not contacted them. She and her husband had both checked their cell phones; neither had a message. When she dialed Stephany’s number, the Nextel phone she carried appeared to be on, but it just rang several times before going to voice mail. This was odd.

When Stephany had stayed out all night in the past, she was good about letting her parents know her whereabouts. In fact, she was usually the one keeping tabs on her father, who, like Stephany, was a free spirit.

The Floreses’ home was in the quiet neighborhood of Chacarilla, an affluent oasis within the district of Surco, fifteen minutes from Miraflores. Surco itself ran the gamut of economic conditions, from rich to poor. Chacarilla was a work of gentrification in progress. The blocks of beautiful, expensive homes and classy shopping malls that made up its core deteriorated rapidly at the periphery. Almost from one block to another, the upscale areas changed to cinderblock storefronts and half-built dwellings that formed the backdrop of an impoverished district. Street children juggled plastic balls at stoplights for coins and women sold fruit from pushcarts as groups of men stood in small clusters drinking beer on the corners. Where rich and poor collided, the affluent tended to be on edge.

Armed paramilitary patrols would attempt to keep these affluent transplants safe as they relocated to the neighborhood, attracted by low real estate prices and the illusion of finding safety in numbers. Many of the homes on Ricardo’s block were new and a few were still under construction.

Ricardo had been able to keep his family protected within the sanctuary of their new home. To prevent would-be home invaders from gaining easy access, he had built a twelve-foot concrete wall surrounding his house. Many of the city’s residents installed an additional layer of razor wire or electrified fencing to fend off the home invaders and burglars that plagued Lima. But Ricardo had forgone this additional precaution. The private security booth, manned twenty-four hours a day, was next door.

With all these safety measures, he was only able to provide protection for his wife and the couple’s three children—Stephany, a second son he also named Ricardo, and Bobby—when they were at home. Outside one needed street smarts and luck. Stephany had neither.

Ricardo was a relatively lenient disciplinarian. He gave his children a certain amount of freedom and believed that kids learned best by making their own mistakes. Still, it wasn’t like Stephany to be out of touch for more than a few hours.

Ricardo’s mind cycled through the possibilities. Repeated calls to Stephany’s cell phone went unanswered. By late morning, he and his wife were frantically calling anyone who may have seen her, including her two older brothers, Ricardo Jr. and Enrique. The two were Ricardo’s adult sons from his first marriage, but they were very close to their half sister.

Ricardo Jr., nicknamed Richie, was fourteen when Stephany was born. He had been the one to choose her name and its unusual spelling. Now thirty-five and a single dad, he cut a larger-than-life figure in the bars and restaurants of Miraflores. He stood well over six feet tall with thick curly hair, long sideburns, and a broad and expressive smile, which made him one of the most eligible bachelors in the neighborhood. As a younger man working for a catering company in northern California, he’d developed a taste for good food and was both fond and proud of Lima’s nouveau cuisine. He was treated like a VIP by the chefs and maître d’s and was always the one to suggest the hot new restaurant when meeting his father and the rest of the family for impromptu get-togethers.

The day before, Saturday, he had invited the family to lunch to celebrate his son, Sebastian’s, first birthday and was disappointed that his kid sister hadn’t been able to join them. Stephany had told the family she had to sit for an exam and wouldn’t be finished in time. Richie had recently gone back to school himself, studying for a Master’s in business administration, and understood the pressures of academic life. He had just settled in on the couch and was watching cartoons with Sebastian when his phone rang.