I nodded. I knew I was pressing my luck. But while getting in was one thing, getting out was another.
At the age of thirty-five, I checked my offshore balance and found I was sitting on an excess of $2 million. And while it wasn’t “about the money,” it sure beat working for Marshall. Later that week, I woke early and en route to the bathroom tripped over a bag holding several hundred thousand in cash. That had me a bit stumped. Where could I put that much money where no one would ever think to look for it? Not knowing, I asked Hack and he showed me with a smile. “Same place I hid mine when I was your age.”
Colin and I ran a tight operation. We didn’t run volume. We ran quality. And using some well-placed and well-paid law enforcement contacts, we ran it only to folks Colin vetted. We charged a premium, but what we offered in return was a product seldom equaled with the added bonus of complete anonymity and the promise that the buyer—who was usually extremely wealthy—didn’t get noticed on some ransom checklist or written up in the paper after he was busted by some high-tech narcotics unit. Our job was made all the easier in that most of our clients were public figures. We knew who they were because we either saw them on TV, bought their albums, read about them in the paper, or listened to them make public speeches. This made us very profitable, successful, and busy.
One of the perks of running drugs from Miami to Central America was how much time it afforded me in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. I’d take one of my boats south out of Bimini, set a course around Cuba for a destination given me by Colin, dock the boat, and either make the drop at the dock or, if the customer preferred, travel inland. I traveled light, alone, and saw some beautiful country.
Another year passed. Then another. And another.
To justify my life, I began having conversations with myself. Long, drawn-out arguments where, eventually, one side told the other side to “shut up.” I didn’t realize it, but my inner turmoil was ramping up and whatever peace I’d found on Bimini was leaking out. I figured people could string themselves out all they wanted and it had little to do with me. If you drive a car that burns gas, don’t blame the petrol company for the pollution you make. I’m not saying this was right, I’m just saying it’s how I thought.
There were three bright places in my heart. Hack, Maria—who was budding into puberty and a beauty that surpassed that of even her mother—and Zaul, who continued to push the envelope. Where Maria was her parents’ joy, Zaul kept them up nights. First, he’d started with one earring, which his mother thought was cute. He followed it with another and then a third. Body piercings appeared soon thereafter. Soon he delved into tattoos. And like earrings, one was followed by two and three and so on. At last count, he had eight and was making plans for two more.
Zaul routinely reeked of marijuana and alcohol, and for every one night he spent at home, he spent four or five elsewhere. He skipped the last quarter of his sophomore year in high school, resigning himself to spending his days practicing his rhymes and lifting weights. He spent his nights hopping from underground rap scene to strip bar. I know because I followed him. Given Spanish genetics, a five o’clock shadow at 9:00 a.m., and what I guessed were healthy amounts of growth hormone, he looked twenty-five. He denied it when I asked, but the sight of his biceps suggested he was shooting steroids. I told him it would wreak havoc on his kidneys, and while it might swell his arms and make his shirts tight, it would shrink him in other areas. He laughed and said, “Wives’ tale.” I knew better. He was huge.
One morning, I searched his car while he was passed out in his room. Given the new tattoo of a Glock pistol on his chest, I was looking for anything resembling a firearm beneath his seat. I didn’t find one, but I did find a spent shell casing for a .40 caliber. I tucked it in my pocket and made an honest attempt to spend more time with Zaul. While his exterior had become angry and prone to showy bouts of violence, I knew better. Zaul was a tenderhearted kid trying real hard to show everyone, starting with his dad, that he was cool and worthy of their admiration and respect. He had grown up in a world where everybody around him was “somebody” and yet he—in his mind—was a “nobody.” Little more than Colin’s son. With zits and an occasional stutter. Problem was, Zaul—the kid who once asked me to teach him how to finish a Rubik’s Cube, bait a hook, and steer a boat—was getting his affirmation in all the wrong places and from people who were just as lost and insecure as he.
Colin and Marguerite had a problem, and it wasn’t just the cocaine or cash buried in their underground bunker. Zaul had everything. And he had nothing. He presented to the world that his life was bubbling over. In truth, he was desert dry. North Africa wrapped in skin.
Zaul was the most popular guy in school. Wild parties, famous movie stars, singers, rappers, fashion designers. His dad’s driveway was always filled with guests’ Lamborghinis or Ferraris or the latest Porsches. Zaul’s house was every kid’s dream. Problem was that all that glitter and gold was merely a mask for the shells that owned it.
I was the exception and the only person in his life who saw beyond his facade and loved him anyway. While his parents were ready to ship him off, I saw a kid who was a lot like me and on whom I’d had great influence.
I never talked about my “work” with Zaul, but he wasn’t stupid. While the rap lifestyle faded, the angry, tattooed surfer, who drove expensive cars and wielded power because of the money he had, grew more and more attracted to the life I led. He saw the boats I drove, the fact that I seldom wore anything more dressed up than flip-flops, that I always carried cash and that I went where I pleased. That I punched no time clock. That while I worked with and for his dad, I answered to no one, and if I had an office, it existed on the water.
One night I found him drunk, passed out on the dock. Alone. I couldn’t carry him, so I set a pillow under his head, covered him with a sheet, and sat nearby for a few hours while he slept it off. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he woke in a drunken and fearful stupor. When he found me next to him, he pointed in my general direction and with barely discernible words said, “Of all the people in this world I’d like to be—” He shook his head. “It’s not my dad.” He tried to touch my nose with his finger.
Zaul was nose-diving, so I suggested to Colin and Marguerite that they take the family away for the summer. Buy a house somewhere in Central America and spend the summer chasing good waves with Zaul and looking for shells with Maria. Given the nature of our business, I knew Colin could run SIN from anywhere as well as he could from his desk. Plus, a break would do him good.
To his credit, he did.
* * *
Colin bought a home in Costa Rica—on the coast. Made-to-order waves right out the back door. I ferried the family down in one of his boats and dropped them off. I’d done some research and found this board shaper who lived a few hours away. Made boards for all the pros. I paid him to be there when we arrived and spend some time with both Zaul and Colin and then craft the board or boards they wanted. The trick worked. On the surface, Zaul forgot everything about the Miami party scene, and from the sound of Colin’s communications with me, Zaul was in a good place. Actually eating breakfast and dinner with the family. Colin sent me a series of sundown pictures of Zaul, Maria, and Marguerite. They were walking hand in hand down the beach. Looking for shells. Maria was sitting up on Zaul’s shoulders. They were laughing. On the phone, Colin sounded happy. Content.
It was one of the only really good things I’d ever done or had a part in, and because of it, my soul smiled.
It was also short-lived.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The rooster woke me, but it was the smell of coffee that got me out of bed. I walked out of the single-room shack occupied by the bed I’d been sleeping in. Two parallel walls of concrete block. Plastic sheeting on the other two. Rusted tin roof. An orange extension cord snaked out of the main house, across the yard, and under the door where it powered a light above my head and the oscillating floor fan. The door was made of horizont
al slats with an inch or two of space between. It wouldn’t keep out much. Stepping back, I realized I’d been sleeping in a converted chicken coop.
I shuffled across the yard and onto the porch wearing another man’s shorts. From what I could tell, she’d already swept the dirt porch, washed and hung the laundry, fed the chickens, and cooked breakfast—which looked like beans, rice, and fried plantains. A pot filled with what looked like milk sat simmering on the stove. The smell of it wafted from steam off the pot and hung in the air. I waved and my voice cracked. “Hi.”
She was standing next to a large, waist-high concrete sink. The left side of the sink was a rippled section on which to wash clothes. The right side looked like a drain for clean dishes. The middle was a deep sink. She was hovering over the middle sink, pouring water from a bucket over her sudsy hair. When I first met her, her hair had been pulled up and back. Now it was wet and hanging nearly to her waist.
She rinsed again, then wrung out her hair and began brushing out any tangles. She pointed with the brush. “Breakfast there if you feel like eating.”
I pointed to the coffee. “May I?”
She nodded. Something about her body language told me she was in task mode and that I was one more task getting in the way of several others. She wasn’t unkind, but I could tell she was trying to figure out what to do with me.
I poured myself a cup from an old percolator, sat at the worn wooden table, and hung my nose over the mug. I was hungry enough to eat the table, but that coffee smelled so good. When I sipped, it did not disappoint.
She noticed my reaction. “Good?”
I nodded while the taste swirled around my mouth. The caffeine buzz was immediate and satisfying.
“You like good coffee?”
Another sip. “I’d let you put it in my IV.”
Over her shoulder, San Cristóbal sat smoking. She pointed to the smaller volcano, lush and green, that sat to the right. “Grown right there.”
The coffee was intoxicating. “The flavor is, well…wow.”
She nodded knowingly. “It ought to be.” She finished brushing her hair, then spun it into a tight bun at the back of her head. She poured herself a cup and sat. I extended my hand. “I think we’ve already done this, but I’m a little hazy. Charlie Finn.”
She nodded and bowed slightly. “Paulina Flores.” She waved her hand across the neighborhood. “Around here…Leena.”
“Thank you.” I waved my hand across myself. “For everything. I don’t remember much, but what I do remember tells me that it wasn’t pleasant.”
Her daughter appeared, sleep in her eyes, hair in her face. She walked up to me, extended both hands, pressed palms together—like she was swimming the breaststroke—and held them out, bowing slightly. She held the pose for several seconds. Waiting. Paulina said, “She’s honoring you.”
I cradled both her hands in mine. “Hello, beautiful.”
Paulina spoke softly over my shoulder. “Hola, linda.”
The girl listened to her mother, and a smile slowly spread across her face. I had a feeling she understood me, but she was waiting for her mother to give her permission to respond to a stranger.
“What’s your name?”
Her mother prompted her. “It’s all right.”
Her voice echoed inside me, taking me back to the sidewalk outside the cathedral. “Isabella.”
“Good morning, Isabella. Thank you for allowing me into your home.”
She puffed up as though she had information I did not. “You’re not in my home. You’re in the chicken coop. Momma put you in the chicken coop so the neighbors don’t start talking.” Her index finger started waving like a windshield wiper. “It’s not—” She put her hands on her hips, letting me know that she was about to unleash a grown-up word on me. Her lips moved slowly around the letters as she made the word. “Appropriate for you to sleep in our house.”
Look up the word “precocious,” and you’ll find her picture. I asked Paulina, “How is it that her English is so good if she’s grown up here?”
“Life is tough here. It’s a good bit tougher if you don’t speak English. I knew she’d get Spanish by default, so since she was born, I’ve spoken English with her.”
Isabella smiled wider, grabbed a red plastic mug, dipped it gently into the milk, and climbed up into her mother’s lap where she sipped on the milk, painting her upper lip in a mustache while her mother brushed her hair. Leena spoke over Isabella’s head and eyed the pot of milk. “Help yourself. We own one cow. Half Brahma. Half India. The Brahma half is strong and can survive the conditions around here, namely the heat and drought, but generally gives little milk. The India half is weaker but gives good milk. More robusto. Put them together in one cow and…” A shrug. “We drink milk on a regular basis.”
I hefted my coffee mug and smiled. “Why’d you help me?”
“Couldn’t very well leave you.” An honest shrug. “You’d either be dead or about to be.”
The little girl spoke up. “You looked drunk. Were you drinking?”
I laughed. She smiled again, leaned against her mother, and tucked her knees up into her chest. Her hair matched her mother’s, as did her eyes. Jet-black. I chuckled. “No.”
She didn’t skip a beat. “Do you drink?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
“Never really started.”
“Then you’re a good man?”
So much wrapped in so small a question. I’d lied for so long. The memory of my parting with Shelly on the beach was still raw. I had no desire to suffer another self-inflicted wound in such a short amount of time. I shook my head. “No. I’m not.”
Paulina broke the awkward silence. “We didn’t know where to take you in León so we brought you here.”
“Where is here?”
“Valle Cruces. Forty-five minutes west.”
“I know I owe you some money. Everything’s in my hotel room in León.”
“No hurry.”
“Any idea how I might get back there?”
“Bus leaves in a few hours. Cost you a couple of dollars.”
I patted the pockets of my shorts. “Not a penny to my name.”
“Truck leaves in two days. You could hitch a ride then.”
“Truck?”
“Belongs to my uncle. He’s working today and tomorrow, but he can drop you in León day after tomorrow.”
“Any other option?”
She pointed to the road. “You can walk. Although thirty miles in flip-flops might leave your feet in worse condition than when you started.” I eyed my feet. She continued. “You can hitchhike, but unattended gringos with an ‘I’m lost’ look pasted on their faces have a way of disappearing around here.”
She could see my wheels spinning, but she said nothing. My options were few. “Mind if I stay until the truck leaves?”
She shook her head once. “We’ll be gone most of the day, so you’ll be on your own.”
I eyed her cell phone. “Mind if I call my hotel?”
She slid it across the table and helped me contact the young man at the desk. He answered and was glad to hear from me. I told him to hold my room and I’d pay him when I returned day after tomorrow. He agreed, said it was “no problem” and that my bike was still parked out back. It would keep.
I returned to Paulina. “I feel a bit guilty sitting here doing nothing when it looks like you’ve been working since you got up. Can I help?”
She pursed her lips and the space between her eyes narrowed as she considered this. She looked at Isabella, who was smiling and nodding. “You think he should go with us?” Armed with the ability to determine the course of the day, Isabella raised an eyebrow and considered me. Finally, having given it enough time, she nodded. Paulina pressed her nose to Isabella’s. “He could carry the backpack.”
Isabella laughed an easy laugh.
Pauli
na looked at me. “If you feel up to it.”
“Seems the least I can do.”
“It’s a long day, and in all fairness to you, it’s a lot of work for a guy who’s been as sick as you. If you go, you need to let me know how you’re feeling. Okay?”
“Deal.”
She filled a gallon jug with water, poured a few drops of bleach into it, and set it in front of me. She walked to a plant, twisted off a few stems, and shoved them into the water. “You need to drink most of this before we go. I doubt you’ll get your strength back for several days, but this will help. You took four bags of IV fluid, but I doubt that was enough.” When I lifted it to my lips, the water smelled of mint. “We’ll leave soon as you’re ready.”
* * *
The sun was rising and I was already sweating. I drank the entire jug, which seemed to make her happy and did not make me need to pee, which told me that I really needed it. We refilled it, and she began shoving medical supplies and food into two large backpacks plus a third, which was much smaller. She handed me a worn-out baseball cap and said, “You’ll want this in a few hours. The midday sun around here will bore a hole in your head if you let it.” She also handed me an old pair of tennis shoes. They were too small, but the ends had busted open, allowing my toes to stick out the front. “Where we’re going, those will be better than flip-flops.”