DEATH BY MAKE-OVER

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

His life could serve not only as inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's next screenplay but also, perhaps, as a very grim morality tale for those who would do anything for a sleeker look. On July 4, a man supposedly named Antonio Flores Montes, thought to be in his early 40s, was found dead in his Mexico City hospital room after having undergone eight hours of cosmetic facial surgery and liposuction to his midriff. Bruised and punctured, Flores' corpse was flown by chartered plane the next day to the northern Mexican city of Culiacan, where it was laid out at the Capillas Funerales San Martiaan in a coffin lined with silk. Not all visitors to the funeral home could be described as aggrieved, however. Among the arrivals were authorities from the Mexican attorney general's office who had come to seize the body, having heard that it belonged not to Flores but to Amado Carrillo Fuentes, perhaps the world's most powerful drug lord.

Surely he'd faked his death, many Mexicans suspected. Could it be that a billionaire narcotics trafficker who regularly eluded assassins and prosecutors alike had met his end as the result of a nip and tuck? Having taken an international beating for failing to apprehend Carrillo over the years, the Mexican government was initially reluctant to declare the baron dead. But by early last week, officials of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which considered Carrillo its No. 1 target, confirmed that the corpse's fingerprints matched those known to have come from the fabled criminal. Mexican physicians then conducted tests that matched DNA taken from the body to genetic material from Carrillo's mother and three sisters. The exact cause of Carrillo's death is still unclear (thought to be a heavy cocaine user, he may have died of a postoperative heart attack), and Mexican authorities have not fully ruled out the possibility of foul play.

Rather than going under the knife to upgrade his diminishing physical allure, Carrillo, according to speculation by drug enforcers, may have been seeking to change his identity for a life underground. Carrillo was in no immediate danger of being arrested--a planned U.S.-Mexican task force aimed at capturing him never materialized, largely because of ongoing corruption in the ranks of Mexican drug busters. But Carrillo had gained a level of celebrity in the past few years that made him a target for those on both sides of the law.

The grand don made headlines for the first time in November 1993 when he dodged hit men from a rival drug clan who were shooting at him in a restaurant in the nation's capital. Last January, Carrillo was in the news again when he disappeared, propitiously, from his sister Aurora's wedding at the family's Guamuchilito ranch, just before law enforcers arrived to crash the event. It later emerged that Mexico's drug czar at the time, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, had been on Carrillo's payroll. DEA agents believe Carrillo had been on the run since Gutierrez Rebollo's arrest in February.

However pressured his life became, Carrillo died at the height of his power. Forging important alliances with Colombia's Cali drug cartel in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Carrillo pioneered the use of Boeing 727s and cargo aircraft to move tons of cocaine from South America to Mexico, where supplies were then shipped and trucked across the U.S. border. More significant, Carrillo demanded that the Colombians pay him in white powder rather than cash. This allowed him to set up vast U.S. distribution networks of his own. With most of the Cali dons imprisoned since 1995, Carrillo had become the single most important force in the American cocaine market. DEA agents believe his organization currently grosses $4 million to $5 million a day.

Even the greatest drug lord's death is not expected to curtail the influx of cocaine into the U.S. "I don't see a big change in trafficking," said James Milford, the DEA's deputy administrator. "All our sources tell us it's business as usual. This guy didn't die in a power struggle but suffered a sudden death when most people in his organization were getting along." Even if the Carrillo organization were to splinter, there is neither a shortage of product nor dearth of entrepreneurs eager to exploit the U.S. cocaine market.

Responding last week to a lengthy New York Times investigation of grave lapses in U.S. efforts to curb Mexican drug smuggling, the White House drug-policy chief, General Barry McCaffrey, told the paper that he had recently begun an effort to build "a newly defined architecture" for the disparate agencies engaged in the narcotics war. A better reason for optimism in the fight is that Carrillo is unlikely to be replaced by anyone as skilled as he was. For the time being, his younger brother Vicente, 34, is expected to run operations. "Carrillo was a force to be reckoned with," says special agent Ernest Howard, who is in charge of the DEA office in Houston. "He was a visionary. A visionary can be replaced, but not by anybody who comes along."

--Reported by Elaine Shannon/Washington

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington