By edRogers
[Reviewed here on the novel’s publication day, October 6, 2018: “Coming soon to a Barnes & Noble store near you?”]
The threesome landed at the San Jose International airport in Costa Rica at 1 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. San Jose is the largest city in Costa Rica and the seat of government. It sits in a bowl, surrounded by mountains, and from there in the minivan shuttle they hired it was a little over a two-hour ride westward to their hotel in the town of Puntarenas.
Luckily, the airport was on the west side of San Jose, away from all the traffic of the big city. The highway going to the coast was mostly two lanes with lots of curves, first going up into the mountains and then down the other side. The ensuing ride offered no time to take a nap.
The town of Puntarenas was on a peninsula that stretched out into the Gulf of Nicoya. The hotel they were staying in was at the far tip of the peninsula, so Charlie was able to take in the entire downtown of Puntarenas.
His first impression was that it was a tourist town. It had all the trappings of one. Restaurants and gift shops lined the streets and beachfront. But it was 3:30 and the beach and most of the restaurants and shops were empty. “Rufino, where are all the tourists?”
Rufino glanced around and said, “The tourists like the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. Here is where the locals come on the weekends. That is good, because the locals ask no questions and mind their own business.”
“Why would we need to worry about that?”
Edgar spoke up. “We’ll discuss this later at the hotel. Not everybody needs to know our business.” He nodded his head toward the driver.
Charlie spent the next few minutes with his mouth shut staring out the window. He had done some research during the week and a half before they flew out of Houston. It seemed the selling of shark fins wasn’t illegal. This surprised Charlie, because Rufino and Edgar didn’t strike him as people who cared about laws.
However, there were guidelines as to how the fins were to be removed. In Costa Rica, it was required by law to bring the whole shark back to shore before removing the fins. The entire body of the shark takes up more room on the fishing boats and cuts down on the number of sharks that will be killed. Urine doesn’t pass out of a shark’s body, so the meat wouldn’t be very good to eat without a lot of processing. This is of no benefit to the fisherman.
The illegal shark fishermen cut the fins from the live shark and toss the helpless fish back into the ocean. Unable to swim, it will sink to the bottom to await its death. This leaves more room onboard to store fins, resulting in more profit per trip. It would seem to be easy to catch people who do such a thing. That is, unless something is rotten in paradise. There is almost as much money to be made finning as there is running drugs, and drug runners pay people off all the time to look the other way. Charlie made up his mind that he needed to do less questioning and more listening.
Each of the two novels he had written had taken place in the Old West. He wasn’t an investigative reporter. A little research on the internet got him all the background he needed for those novels. This was not the same. This was real life, and a life he knew nothing about. He began to think that he may have bitten off more than he could chew.
The hotel was on a side street about a block from the beach. Rufino and Edgar had a room together, upstairs. Charlie had one by the small swimming pool toward the back of the hotel. They checked in and put their bags in their rooms, and then met back in the lobby.
Edgar ushered them out onto the sidewalk. “There’s a café up on the corner. Let’s get a beer and something to eat.”
It was a short walk with no talking. The café had open-air seating with a nice view of the beach and water. A long concrete jetty went out into the water, with a place to sit and fish off the end. From where they were seated they could see the ferry boats come and go from the other side of the peninsula. The café was very relaxing, and Charlie was worn out from the trip.
They ordered three bottles of Imperial beer, a locally made beer of Costa Rica. Charlie thought it was very good. They ordered hamburgers and fries, and after the waiter left, Charlie asked, “Okay, what now?”
Rufino set his beer back on the table. “Tomorrow morning we go see Mr.Tai and cut a deal with him to buy our shark fins.”
Charlie forgot the promise he had made to himself and asked, “Who is Mr. Tai?”
Edgar gave Rufino a hard look. “This is not something you need to worry about, Charlie. You’re here to help buy a boat. Rufino and I’ll take care of the details.”
“It’s not cut in stone that I’m buying into this business of yours. I need to know a lot more before I spend that kind of money on anything.” He picked his bottle up and took a long drink of beer, while he waited to see how they would react to his outburst. To confront them wasn’t something Charlie wanted to do but he couldn’t let them push him aside. He knew he’d never in his lifetime have a chance like this again.
Rufino was the first to speak. “Hell, Edgar, he’s buying into it, he might as well know everything.”
Edgar took a drink as Charlie was replacing his bottle on the table. Charlie watched Edgar’s eyes and could almost hear the wheels turning in his head.
At last, Edgar spoke, “Mr. Tai is like the godfather around here. In New York, you go see the mafia don. Here, it’s the Taiwanese mafia you have to deal with.”
Charlie shook his head. It was the last thing in the world he had expected. “Taiwanese? Like, from Taiwan?”
Edgar’s bottle came down harder than he intended. “Are you that fucking stupid? Of course they’re from Taiwan!”
“I didn’t mean it that way. What I meant was, what are they doing here in Costa Rica?”
Thankfully, Rufino answered. “They’re doing the same thing we’re doing – making money. The difference is, they control the police and the government. They buy the votes that allow us to keep doing business and they pay off the cops when we step a little over the line. They also have the outlets overseas that buy the product.”
Something was becoming very clear to Charlie. “So, I guess without them there would be no shark finning?”
The hamburgers and fries came just in time. Charlie could feel Edgar about to explode. The three of them hadn’t eaten anything since Houston, and that alone didn’t put anyone in a good mood. The conversation ended as they tore into their food.
Edgar and Rufino ordered two beers to take back to the hotel, and Charlie decided to take a walk on the beach. They were to meet at seven in the morning at the front desk, but in the meantime, Charlie had a lot on his mind.
That thing about the Taiwanese had really thrown Charlie for a loop. He thought there would be some kind of organization that wasn’t on the up and up, but this was huge. It was an international crime family and he was about to become a member, so to speak.
He headed out on the concrete jetty that ran from the street, crossed the beach, and ended at the water’s edge. He sat at the end of the jetty watching the sunset over the Gulf of Nicoya. He was thinking, This is that time that comes along once in a great while. Today I can walk away, but come tomorrow I will be committed until the end – whatever that might be.
From over the mountains behind him, he heard thunder. He turned and saw a dark cloud coming out of the northeast. It was still the rainy season in Central America. He hurried back to the hotel and got to the lobby as the first drops came. Heavy rain poured down, and lightning flashed so close, one after the other, he could taste the electricity in the air. It was the wildest storm Charlie had ever seen.
The lobby had a pot of coffee for the guests, and a couch and chairs. Eric, the owner of the hotel came out and joined Charlie for a cup of coffee. They had a very interesting conversation. Eric was a Canadian and had married a Tica. Costa Ricans call men Ticos and women Ticas. Eric and his wife had a son and another child on the way. He got a good deal on the hotel five years back, from an American who just wanted to go home. But it was in bad shape and he had been doing remodeling every day since.
Eric asked what the three of them were doing in Costa Rica. He didn’t think they looked like tourists. When Charlie told him he had come down to look into a business that his two friends had, Eric shook his head and said, “Take your money and go home, gringo. There’s no easy money to be made here. Americans lose millions each year. You seem like a nice guy – don’t be one of them.”
The rain stopped as fast as it had started and the sun came back out. Eric went back to work and Charlie went to his room. He was thinking that Eric might be a good friend to have in case things turned bad. And he might also be a good source of information. Having been in Costa Rica for five years, he had to know about the shark finning.
Still tired from the trip, Charlie lay across the bed and closed his eyes, wondering what his new friends would say when they found out that all the money he had in the world was five thousand dollars.
| Copyright © 2018 by Ed Rogers |
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