A stout elderly woman in a flower-print dress sat on a stool behind the counter. A radio played Latin dance music softly. The shelves were stocked with dusty canned goods, boxes of cereal, pasta, beans, and rice, and all manner of goods: nuts, bolts, flashlights, combs, toys, batteries, fish hooks, shoelaces, pencils, bug repellant. This was a two hundred and fifty square foot department store, the only retail game in town, and it sold anything anyone in Pangola could possibly need, and then some, including several dozen dusty American superheroes—Batman, Superman, Spiderman, The Hulk—and refried beans canned in San Antonio, Texas. They exchanged greetings, Lucy bought a pack of gum that appeared to have been sitting on the counter for several decades, and then Krish asked for the whereabouts of the house of Maria Fuentes.
She hesitated, gave them a look, decided they passed muster, then came around the counter. They followed her to the doorway. From there she pointed through the driving rain at a house down the road. After thanks and goodbyes they jumped back into the van and crawled slowly down the muddy main drag, escorted by a pair of barking dogs and four young goats. The rain poured down as they pulled to a stop in front of the small, one-story pink house.
Two dark windows flanked a wooden door sheltered from the rain by an overhanging roof. Lucy thought she saw a curtain flutter in one of the windows. Krish came around the van and she jumped out to join him at the front door. He knocked softly. They waited. No one answered. He tried again; again, no answer. He turned the knob tentatively. Locked. He knocked again, harder.
At last they heard sounds behind the door, and then it opened—about two inches. A chain held it in place. A young man peered around the edge. His eyes looked worried, frightened and yet determined. This was his house. He spoke softly to Krish in Spanish. Krish answered, then quickly handed him the note from Renaldo. The man took it and had a look, then said something over his shoulder as he unlocked and opened the door. He greeted them shyly, but warmly, as did the young woman who emerged with two small children in tow from a back room into the tiny, dimly-lit living room where they stood. They exchanged greetings, friendly enough now, and after a moment of rapid conversation in Spanish Krish switched back to English to explain to Lucy that they had been afraid that Lucy and Krish had come from the Rancho to make her go back to work there, or to punish her for quitting. She had not been there in weeks but they were still frightened. After that the husband, Rafael, went to the kitchen to make coffee. Lucy and Krish sat on two small wooden chairs facing Maria, flanked by her two children. Lucy listened while Krish spoke Spanish softly with Maria for a few moments.
The two children, Luis and Marianela, stared at Lucy with their big dark eyes. She smiled, made a face, finally got them both to smile. Rafael returned bearing a tray with plastic cups, a coffee pot, milk and sugar in small containers. While Rafael poured the coffee Krish told Lucy what he’d learned. “She quit because she saw what was going on and couldn’t—let’s just say she has a conscience and couldn’t live with what she saw and didn’t know what to do. She says that every week or so these two or sometimes three men—in uniforms, like soldiers—would come down the river by boat to meet the man at a spot upriver from the Rancho—his name is Augusto Bonaventura, and from what she said he’s the guy that drove the truck, the one with the gun that escorted us—at a spot on the banks not far from here. She only knows because her friend Venezia lives in a little town downriver from here called Moliejon, place even smaller than this, and has some cousins that live on the other side of the border in Nicaragua. Family connections in this area are stronger than the borders, even though the two countries don’t get along so well. So Venezia told Maria about how this man Augusto would come in his boat by the town, and then come back with babies or small children! When they got to the orphanage the gringos that run the place told Maria and the other people that worked there, and also the teenagers from America, that these babies were orphans from around Costa Rica who had been delivered there for the adoption agency in the United States, but she found out that what was really going on was they were being stolen, at gunpoint if necessary, from small towns and villages up in Nicaragua and brought here on the river network. The gringos were paying these soldiers—ex-contras, I would guess—in cash, guns, and even cocaine for these babies, because Venezia knew someone who knows the wife of one of them, and he is a drug addict who—well, anyways, that’s the deal. She also says very fast boats come up the San Juan River sometimes to the orphanage as well, and once in a while they’ve even seen seaplanes landing on the water by the dock. Maria was afraid all the time and didn’t know where to go to tell her story, so she quit. And now she is afraid they will know that she knows things and will come after her. That’s why Rafael wouldn’t let us in at first, till he saw the note.”
Lucy smiled reassuringly at Maria. “Please tell her that you and I will do nothing to cause her to be in danger, and that I appreciate her help very much. Tell her that I, too, would like to do something about what is going on at the Rancho, and that I hope that I can.” Krish translated, then Maria answered at some length.
He translated again. “She says that she knows the place where they bring the babies because Venezia told her, and that she believes they will be coming through again tonight.” He stopped. “She’s offering to show us—to help us spot these guys with the babies.” He drank some coffee. “So what should we do, Lucy? This is getting kind of intense.”
Lucy could hardly contain herself. “You’re right. Intense as fuck-all. But Oh My God, if I can get some photographs of this stuff happening—of these babies being delivered at the river bank—Krish, maybe we can take down this whole ugly operation,” she said. “I’ve got a good telephoto function on my digital camera. We don’t have to get that close. Jesus, stolen babies. Can you imagine what their mamas must be feeling! We’ve got to—I’ve got to do it.”
“I don’t want to put her or her family at risk, Lucy,” he said quietly.
“Nor do I,” she said. “But if she can just show us the place we’ll be fine. And I’ll be happy to, you know, contribute something to her family.”
“Please don’t offer them money, Lucy. They won’t take it. And will be insulted.”
“How about I buy them—oh, never mind. I’ll just get the kids some more presents, how’s that?”
“Hey, that’s right, we’ve got stuff in the car,” Krish said, and jumped up. He dashed out, and came back seconds later with a bulging plastic bag. He quickly fished out a doll, a truck, and a pretty glass vase and handed them out. Then he pulled out a fully-loaded Swiss Army knife and gave it to Rafael.
By the time Lucy, Krish, and Maria got up to leave an hour later, the rain had stopped and the sky turned pale gray. The road out of town remained muddy, but at least they could see what lay ahead: more automotive mud-sliding. It took them over an hour to travel the 15-odd miles of skanky road from Pangola to Moliejon, and they’d have never made it without Maria’s directions, for there were several unmarked crossroads en route, and Krish, who’d lived less than fifty miles away for half a dozen years, had no idea where he was or where they were going. The last stretch of “road”, not even indicated as a dirt track on Lucy’s map, was a three mile jungle slog that cut a half an hour off their driving time. At Moliejon they stopped in front of one of the town’s dozen or so houses, and Maria went inside to find Venezia. She came out a moment later, and conferred with Krish in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Venezia told her she’s heard it’s definitely on for tonight,” he told Lucy. “She’s going to show us the spot where they bring the babies, and also a spot where we can camp and see without being seen. We’ll set up—we’ll need camping gear and a motorboat of some sort—then bring Maria back here. She can get a ride back tomorrow. There’s a bus every other day.”
“That’s OK with her?”
“Yes, definitely. She’s into it,” Krish said, then turned and addressed Maria in Spanish. Maria then looked at Lucy, and said a few sentences.
/> “She says she wants to help you to stop the baby stealers, Lucy. And also to help you save those poor gringo kids from that man Douglas.”
“So she saw more than just the baby stuff, huh?”
“I think so, but she doesn’t want to talk about it.”
They headed north out of town along the muddy riverbank. Half an hour and a hamlet later the van emerged from the undergrowth onto a grassy embankment overlooking a wider river. “That’s the Sarapiqui,” Krish said. “It runs into the San Juan a few miles north of here. Across the San Juan’s Nicaragua.” They looked across the Sarapiqui at a solid wall of jungle.
“Is it true there are man-eating sharks that swim up the San Juan?” Lucy asked.
“Used to be lots of them. Bull sharks. I’ve heard there are still a few,” Krish said, then said something to Maria. She answered.
“Maria says there are still many sharks, but that they have learned not to approach the boats in the lake. She says they have eaten three people in the last ten years that she has heard of.”
“Hmm. Guess I’ll pass on a swim. So where’s the, um, baby transfer spot?”
“Around that bend,” he said, pointing upriver. We’ll set up camp back in there,” he said, waving at the jungle behind them. “Maria says we should be able to see from there. And she’s got a friend bringing us a motorboat in a little while.”
“Not too inviting, is it?” Lucy said, gazing at the vine-choked, dripping green scene.
“It will be mosquito hell,” he answered. “But we’ve got bug juice, a tent, and a bottle of tequila. We’ll survive.”
“In fine style, no doubt,” Lucy said. “So what now?”
“We go in, find our campsite, and I leave you to set up camp. It’s an easy tent, you can rig it. I’m going to take Maria back to her friend’s house, find a place to stash the van where that Augusto character won’t stumble across it, and then join you. I made a deal so hopefully our guy with a boat will show, we’ll get some sleep, the bad boys will appear, you’ll get your photos, we’ll take it from there. I was thinking we might want to…”
“Follow them downstream.”
“Something along those lines.”
Fifteen minutes later, Lucy waved a worried goodbye as Krish and Maria trudged off, leaving her alone in a verdant, dripping tangle of flora, where contras, jaguars, terciopelos, and mosquitoes roamed and ruled. As the sound of the van receded into the distance and the roar of the bug-filled jungle fell upon her and tropical night loomed, she felt all of a sudden a long, long way from home. How in the hell had she talked herself into this? What was she trying to prove? She’d done it again, gotten in over her head. Darkness closed in as she put the tent together. Drenched in bug juice, she hardly noticed the mosquito hordes hovering. But the occasional rustle or crash in the brush definitely got her attention. Her cover story was birdwatching, in search of a sighting of the rarest of all Costa Rican birds, the Harpy Eagle. She would be happy to spot one of them but mostly she hoped she wouldn’t have to use the cover story. She hoped that she would see no people and no animals larger than the three-toed sloth she had already spotted, scoping the area with her binoculars as they’d carried the camping supplies down a trail just wide enough for the army of leaf-cutter ants that marched along it. They’d found a small clearing with a semi-unobstructed view of the riverbank, and after Krish hacked a few vines down with his handy machete, they spread out a tarp. Now Lucy was organizing the campsite for the night.
She finished as it went dark under the trees, and then it began to rain again. She heard the sound of a small motor chugging along, and slipped under a tree by the river to see who showed. Soon she could make out two men in a boat, towing a second behind. As they came closer she could see that one was Renaldo, the guide. She went to the riverbank and waved a flashlight at them, and soon they beached the boat by her. They showed her how to start and run it, then helped her hide the boat behind some foliage at the water’s edge. They tied it to a tree then took off in the other boat. She dragged the gear into the tent, zipped it shut, then turned on the two flashlights Krish had left with her. The rain drummed on the tent fly. She tracked and killed three mosquitoes that had sneaked in with her, then fell utterly still as she heard a series of weird animal cries in the dark outside. “Holy shit,” she whispered to herself. “What is that?” A crash in the brush, another cry in the dark. “I’m not scared,” she whispered, picturing night marauders from Jurassic Park. “I am scared. Not scared. Scared. Fuck this.” She rifled through Krish’s pack until she found the pint bottle of Mexican tequila. She uncapped it, took a solid hit, gasped, then took another. After that she busied herself with unrolling sleeping bags and laying them out.
About the time that was done she heard an urgent whisper, “Lucy, Lucy it’s me, turn off the light for a sec to keep the bugs off.” She felt a rush of relief so strong she almost burst into tears as she turned off the flashlights. He unzipped the tent and slipped in. “Hey.”
“Man am I glad to see you,” she said. “It’s a jungle out there, Krish.”
“You might say,” he said. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Renaldo and another guy showed up with a boat. It’s tied up on the river. Kind of a wreck but they started the engine for me, and it works fine. After they left I got rattled by some weird noises, but then I visited your tequila bottle and got better.”
“Don’t worry. Aside from lunatic contras, American military madmen, and blood-crazed mosquitoes there’s nothing out there that’s going to bother us.”
“That’s a relief. But what about snakes?”
“This tent is snake-proof. And pretty much scorpion-proof too. So…”
“Scorpion-proof? You mean there are—”
“Scorpions? God yes. Big, bad-tempered ones. Check your shoes in the morning.”
She took another hit of tequila. “Jesus, what the hell am I—are we doing here?”
“You tell me, adventure girl. You wrote this movie. Hey, pass that bottle to me.”
She handed it over. “You get the car stashed OK?”
“Yeah, no problem. At some point I’ll go back for it.”
“Right. Well—” they fell silent for a moment. The rain came down, the bugs buzzed. They sat on their sleeping bags. Krish handed the bottle back. Lucy took another hit, then spoke softly. “Hey, Krish, I know I kind of dragged you into this thing, and I wanted to tell you, before we go any further into it, that—just, thanks a lot. There’s no way I could have gotten this far without you.”
“No problem, Lucy. I’m not sure if I should have encouraged this craziness, but here we are, eh?” He gave her a bit of a wild-eyed look; she thought she detected a lustful glint in it, and felt a pang.
“Yeah. Right smack dab in the middle of nowhere, huh?” she said, and sighed. After a moment she ventured into the personal. “So how come you never had any kids, Krish? You must be what, pushing thirty-five?”
“I’m thirty-eight. Hedy and I talked about it, but then we split up. Just never happened for me in the States, and I’ve been so busy down here. The years go by, it seems less important. Or maybe more important so I think about it less. I’m breaking my mama’s heart, I know, since I’m the only kid she’s got no grandchildren, but what can I do?” He took a hit, and gave her a look at once quizzical and lustful. ”What about you, Lucy? Do you have any desire to have kids? You hear that biological tick tock?”
“Of course. Most women do. But a good man is hard to find in New York City, amigo. I mean I kind of have a boyfriend, but he’s—”
“And a good woman is hard to find in Costa Rica, it seems.” He gave her another one of those looks.
“Please, Krish, let’s not go there,” she said. “I really like you a lot and if I was into messing around you’d be about the first guy I’d call but I’m not, so—”
“OK, OK. Sorry, Lucy.” He took another hit of tequila. “It’s just been so much fun hanging with you.”
“I
t has been great to have a partner,” she said. “And like I said, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He made one last attempt, giving her a look with his sexiest bedroom eyes. “But there’s no chance of a little fun of a different kind?”
She reached over and touched his face, suddenly overcome by longing. Why the hell not? She’d been talking with Harry on and off for a couple of days and it felt like a business arrangement, what she had going with him. They had an understanding. This was something else, strange, spontaneous, dark romance in a tent in the jungle. “Kiss me once, and I’ll tell you,” she whispered. He moved closer, and they kissed, gently, then with more urgency. Soon his hands had worked their way inside her sleeping bag, and found her body. They were hard-soft, calloused but gentle as he touched her.
Within a few moments they had pulled the sleeping bags open, gotten naked, and commenced with ardent foreplay which had come now to this, the moment of truth, when Krish said, “I don’t have a condom, Lucy.”
She laughed. “God, it sort of embarrasses me to admit it,” she said, “But I do. And I don’t—didn’t—know why until this moment, I guess,” she said as much to herself as to him as she rolled over to fish it out of a pocket of her pack. He stroked her buttocks, and bit her gently. “Ooh, man, that’s nice,” she said. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “You do it.”
Lucy's Money: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 4) Page 16