“Do you mind if I ask what your relationship is with Professor Connor?”
“Well—um—we’re very close friends, and—um—well—we used to date. Why do you ask?”
“Well, Mr. Finn, as you’re a close relation, I suppose I can tell you that Professor Connor and the fifteen others members of our team down there all went offline last night at approximately 9:30 p.m. Costa Rican time, and we have yet to hear a single word.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, honestly I’m not sure what it means, but we’ve already contacted the United States Embassy and the Costa Rican authorities, and they’re sending in a rescue team to assess the situation. Odds are likely they had some kind of power failure, but we won’t know for certain for a few hours.”
“A few hours?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid the location is fairly remote.”
“So—that’s all you can tell me?”
“Yeah, but I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”
“That’d be great, though do you mind if I get your number? That way, I can contact you if I hear anything more from Estelle,” I said.
“Good idea.”
Dean Donald Delaney and I exchanged numbers, then I hung up and created a new contact in my iPhone address book. Finished, I took a moment to think as I sipped the final bit of coffee in my mug. A strange night just turned into an even stranger morning. Lovely.
CHAPTER TWO
Missing Persons
SO, ESTELLE REALLY was in Costa Rica on a dig, though, if I remembered correctly, her interest lay more in Mayan civilization, and I was fairly certain that the harbingers of the 2012 doomsday paranoia hadn’t gotten down that far south. Interesting. Well, at least it explained my strange dreams of a dark forbidding jungle filled with beasts, though those beasts would most certainly turn out to be a bunch of professors and their graduate students traipsing around through the lovely Costa Rican jungle while under the influence of beer, wine, and perhaps some locally grown marijuana. Oh to have pursued a career in academia.
With nothing to do but wait, I made myself some steel cut oats, the healthier version of oatmeal, then proceeded to eat while I finished a third cup of coffee. After taking the last bite, I rinsed my bowl off in the sink and felt a magical tickle in my abdomen—the enduring sign that my digestion was back to normal. Blessed be the regular man. I refilled my coffee cup and headed upstairs to my bathroom and took a moment to gaze in wonder at my Japanese Toto toilet. It was a fine machine, crafted by the greatest minds in waste management, and I had dubbed this one R2-Pee-Poo. He was my little buddy, my wing man, and my spirit guide every time I sat upon his gloriously multi-tasking seat.
“Pee poo—pee poo—pee poo—ooooooo,” I said, in my best R2-D2 imitation as I disrobed and dropped into his familiar and loving embrace.
I instantly felt better and realized that all this stuff with Estelle was obviously some kind of elaborate prank or miscommunication, and at any moment I would receive a call and be able to relax and return to my usual mundane worries. Perhaps I might even take advantage of the beautiful weather and drive out towards the oceanside town of Pt. Reyes for lunch and a cup of coffee. I picked up my phone, took a sip of precious java, and set about de-boarding my fecal passengers, who were patiently waiting on the other side of my sphincter. Group one, or first class, left without a hitch, and all appeared to be going perfectly according to plan. Group two, economy, was just approaching the porcelain jetway when my phone rang with its unmistakeable fart ring tone. It was my tone for known callers, and it was a special sound for a ringer, as it happened to be one recorded by a woman I had met in Hawaii. She was an FBI Special Agent, and, on our last drunken night together, she had decided to leave me something to remember her by—namely a recording of her fart. Strangely, it was one of the more special things a woman had ever given me. Sure, guys and farts went hand in hand, but any woman who understood that relationship helped bring peace and tranquility to the sex-time continuum. So, there I sat, simultaneously defecating and listening to a long lost lover’s fart, and the experience was somewhere between surreal and sentimental until I finally hit the accept button to answer the incoming call.
“Finn here.”
“Yeah, hello, Mr. Finn. It’s Dean Donald Delaney.”
“Any news?”
“Yeah, and it’s not good.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Meaning?”
“The rescue party reached the camp and found it utterly deserted. There were half-eaten meals, unfinished glasses of wine—you name it. It’s as though they all instantly vanished from the face of the earth.”
Sipping wine under the romantic Costa Rican stars. Typical. That’s how I imagined Estelle spent her time with her asshole graduate advisor. Maybe they all got so drunk they ran off to go skinny dipping and managed to get lost in the jungle.
“So, what now?” I asked.
“To start, we have officially reported our team missing and filed all the necessary documents with the State Department, so I suppose at this stage, it’s a waiting game.”
“Well shitzky.”
“Mr. Finn, if you don’t mind me asking, why was it that Professor Connor decided to call you?”
“Well, I can’t be sure—but I suspect it has something to do with my job. I’m a private investigator.”
“And do you handle missing persons?”
“I do—along with the occasional international rescue operation.”
“I know I already asked you what Professor Connor said, but now it’s even more important that we know every detail possible, so, can you remember anything else she said that might be useful?”
“Well, she said she was on a dig at the Chalupa ruins in Costa Rica, and she needed my help because there were scary things in the camp, but then she screamed, and the line went dead.”
Suddenly, my iPhone was making a beeping noise, and I assumed I had another call coming in, and, as I held it away from my head, I saw that Dean Donald was attempting to FaceTime me. Perhaps he had some kind of picture or document that he wanted to show me. Lovely. A little warning might have been nice, considering I was sitting on the toilet. I thought about making a hasty exit but instead decided to keep the framing close and try and play it off that I was sitting at my desk—or really anywhere other than on the toilet. I adjusted the camera framing then hit accept and saw that Dean Donald Delaney was sitting at his desk.
“Oh, sorry about that. I just put my iPhone down on my desk and must have accidentally hit the FaceTime button.”
His hand moved closer and eclipsed most of the screen as he picked up the phone and fumbled with the buttons. The next moment the view changed to the lens on the opposite side of his phone, and I was looking at the wall in front of his desk. Every inch was filled with the typical mementos of a life in Archaeology, though nearly all of his pictures and items related to Costa Rica. In the very center, was a map of the entire country with ink markings just to the north of San Jose—probably the site of the Chalupa dig. Above, and in the very center of the wall, was a plaque from the Costa Rican Board of Antiquities. Clearly, Donald had spent some time down there, which also explained why UCLA was working at the Chalupa ruins.
“Ah, got it!” he said, finally terminating FaceTime.
A second later, I was off FaceTime and feeling grateful to be back to just speaking with Dean Donald Delaney. The ever growing technology of communication was a wonderful thing, though there was definitely a proper time and place for it—a bathroom not being one of them.
“Judging by your wall, I see you have a real penchant for Costa Rica,” I said.
“Yeah, I love the place. As a matter of fact, I did a lot of the preliminary research on the Chalupa site.
“Interesting, though it’s kind of a funny name,” I said.
“Yeah, had you not heard of it before?”
“In terms of Taco Bell—yes, but in terms of ancient archaeological sites—no, at least not until Est
elle’s call.”
“Well, it’s the name of both a people as well as the name of the ancient city where the team was working, and it was also kind of my unofficial love child.”
“How come you weren’t part of the team this time?”
“Too busy. As dean of the department, I unfortunately have too many daily duties, though I was probably lucky considering the circumstances.”
“Yeah, otherwise it would be seventeen missing people.”
“True.”
“So, I take it that you’re pretty familiar with Costa Rica?”
“Oh yeah, in fact I’ll probably move there when I retire from UCLA.”
“Nice, I imagine your money will go a lot father down there than here.”
“Absolutely—now, getting back to our current problem—I’m thinking that we could possibly help each other.”
“How so?”
“Would you be willing to come down here today so we can talk in person?”
“As in UCLA?”
“Yes.”
“Sure.”
“Good, because if you’re willing, I’d like to talk to you about traveling to Costa Rica to be our personal liaison—our man on the ground to oversee the search effort. Needless to say, it’s an incredibly embarrassing situation to have an entire research team go missing, and we could use someone to coordinate our efforts down there. I’d go myself, but, as I said, I’m too busy and will be doing what I can from here.”
“I’m in. I’ll be your man on the ground.”
“Excellent, I’ll book you a flight immediately and text you the details. See you soon, Mr. Finn.”
“You too, Dean Donald Delaney.”
Five minutes later, a text appeared on my phone, and I officially had a reservation on a Southwest Airlines flight leaving SFO at 3:30 in the afternoon. That meant I only had a few hours to pack my things and arrange transport of a firearm, which could be a hassle unless you were some kind of specialized police officer or federal agent. I was neither at the moment, but I had something even better. I was a close personal friend of the vice president of the United States, and one call to Sandra, his head of security, and I would have no awkward conversations or need to get cavity searched when I checked my weapon at the airport.
I finished up on the toilet, made a quick call to Sandra, then took a quick shower, and dawned a black suit and a white dress shirt, hoping to look somewhat credible when I met with Dean Donald Delaney—a man I decided to nickname, Triple D. Clean and fresh, I went to my man-room to pick out a pistol and grabbed my 9mm Sig Sauer, because it had an extremely effective silencer I’d had custom built by a master gunsmith in Hawaii. The silencer, which was highly illegal for private citizens, was made out of a composite material that rendered it invisible to airport scanners, and, if it were physically inspected, it had a little attachment that made it look like a travel toothbrush.
I also took a quick look at my rifles, specifically my trusty M4 but decided it was probably silly to bring a long gun on a missing persons job, even if I was heading off into the dark forbidding jungle. The larger and scarier looking the weapon, the more shit you took at customs, so I decided to keep things simple. That just left the other essentials, namely socks, underwear, T-shirts, shorts, and of course my night vision goggles, lock picks, and my portable all-weather GPS. I was probably overpacking, but it would be a lot better to have them and not need them then leave them behind. Of course, there was a good chance that Estelle and her entire team would turn up any moment, making this all a huge waste of time. Still, I couldn’t get that spooky-ass phone call out of my head. Those sounds in the background were hardly the romantic canoodlings of her graduate advisor, unless he suffered from some advanced case of sleep apnea or perhaps irritable bowel syndrome.
Finished packing, I headed downstairs and called my neighbor Joyce to tell her I’d be away for a bit and asked if she’d collect my mail. She said it would be no problem, so I was officially set and ready to go. I decided to take the Silver Hornet, my beloved Subaru WRX STi, to the airport, and twenty-five minutes later I had parked in a nearby extended stay private parking lot, and I was riding aboard their shuttle en route to my first economy class flight in six months. Ah, to be with my beloved proletariat yet again. The shuttle dropped me off at the curb, and I immediately went to check in at the Southwest counter. I showed the pretty woman at the ticket counter my ID then handed over my bag and gun case and watched as she typed something into her computer. A moment later she gave me a scrutinizing gaze, so I guess she didn’t check a lot of pistols.
“What are you? A cop or a spy?” she asked.
“Neither, I’m a private investigator.”
“Who is personally cleared by the vice president of the United States and the Secret Service.”
“It’s not really a big deal.”
“Yeah sure, it happens all the time,” she said, in a friendly, though sarcastic tone.
“No, seriously—I’m just a private investigator.”
There was an attractive late twenties couple in line behind me, and the woman chimed in at that point.
“I’d totally guess you’re a spy as well,” she said.
I turned and smiled at her.
“No, I’m definitely not, and the sad truth is that my life is a daily grind of mundane and mostly shitty investigative work that includes divorces and lost pets.”
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,” the girl behind the counter said, as she handed me my boarding pass.
“Me too,” said the woman behind me.
Lovely. Good thing I really wasn’t a spy at the moment, or my cover would have already been blown by the curious hens. Maybe it was the suit. Men in suits always got a lot more interest and respect than men in board shorts and T-shirts. I took my ticket and pass and headed towards my gate to find a seat near the boarding area. With nothing else to do, I took out my laptop and was about to check my email, but I remembered that the airport charged for internet. Assholes. Entire cities had free wifi, but these cheap fucks pinched every penny out of a captive populace. Fuck them. I closed my laptop and instead decided to people-watch at the adjacent bar, as I was curious who else was heading to Los Angeles on such a lovely spring day. I took a seat and noticed a twentysomething guy drinking a beer to my immediate right. He was also busily texting someone, perhaps the person he was going to visit, which begged the question—what the hell would he have left to talk about when he actually saw the other person? Hopefully it was a lover, and they’d already be done with the chit-chat and could get right to the bang-bang.
I turned my attention to the rest of the bar and noticed that most of the people around me looked like business travelers, but their true identity could often be hidden in the details. The couple to my left, which also happened to be the same two who were behind me in line at the ticket counter, were both dressed as though they had come straight from the financial district, but, if you looked a little closer, their appearance told a different tale. The man wore a suit but didn’t appear to be comfortable in it, which made me think he was in a new job that required one—perhaps sales or marketing. She, on the other hand, was dressed nicely but with a very obvious touch of sexy. She was also wearing a suit, but hers had a short mid thigh length skirt and a matching jacket, though the latter item she had already taken off and folded over the back of her chair. This revealed her white silky button up shirt, which she was wearing sans a bra, and it made her pointy nipples particularly obvious—not that I noticed or spent an inordinate amount of time admiring them. After all, five straight minutes of direct viewing of a woman’s breasts and associated accessories was a mere glance in terms of man-minutes. I definitely liked her sense of style and concluded that she likely hadn’t come from a typical office and instead worked for a company with a more relaxed and forward thinking dress code—perhaps a dot-com or edgy ad agency.
The longer I gazed at her, the more I realized the woman was extremely attractive, and I would
go so far as to say uniquely beautiful. Her ancestry gave her an exotic look, probably a mix of European, Asian, or even some kind of Pacific Islander—a fact which instantly made me think about the incredible woman in Hawaii who had recorded her fart on my iPhone. She was also of a similar heritage, and perhaps when I finished up this thing with Estelle, it might be time for another trip to the Islands. I turned my attention back to the couple and noticed that they were engaged in some pretty heavy social drinking, and by that I was referring to the fact that they were doing a round of shots in addition to their beers. Clearly, they were obviously at the beginning of some kind of party weekend. Meanwhile, the bartender approached and asked if I’d like something to drink. It was a little early for alcohol, so I went with a mineral water on the rocks with a squeeze of lime. The woman, or Nipples as I had unofficially decided to nickname her, overheard and gave me a questioning look before commenting.
“James Bond would never order a mineral water at a bar.”
“He might before five.”
“Come on, let me buy a spy a drink,” she said.
“Thank you, but I really can’t.”
“You’re turning me down?”
“Yeah, but just so you know, I generally make it a point never to turn down a drink from a beautiful woman,” I said.
“Until now, apparently, which would suggest that I’m not a beautiful woman,” she responded.
I smiled at her excellent ability to put me on the spot.
“Well, for the record, you are an extremely beautiful woman, but I’m really trying to keep a clear head at the moment.”
“Come on, dude. Just one beer,” the guy, who I assumed was her boyfriend, said.
I looked at the woman and then at my watch and saw that it was two fifty-nine and therefore not even close to five o’clock.
“Shit—I really appreciate the offer and would love one, but this is a working trip for me.”
The Chalupa Conundrum Page 2