Avoiding Prison & Other Noble Vacation Goals

by Wendy Dale

  Francisco wasn’t exactly sure where his old manager was (it had been more than three years since Francisco had left Costa Rica the last time), but he had a friend named Rafael Quiroga who worked at another travel agency and could help me get in touch with him.

  The next day in search of Mr. Quiroga, I entered the largest, most bustling travel agency I had ever seen. After stumbling into three offices and failing to find reception, I finally found the right room and asked a busy secretary wearing a headset where I could find Rafael Quiroga.

  “Rafael Quiroga? Rafael Quiroga? Carlos, is there anybody here named Rafael Quiroga?”

  “I don’t know any Rafael,” the man said, gliding past the receptionist.

  A woman carrying a stack of files rushed by. “Do you know anyone here named Rafael?” the receptionist asked her.

  “Ask Jaime,” the woman responded, sliding out of the room.

  The receptionist made a phone call. “Jaime . . . yes . . . yes . . . anyone here by the name of Rafael Quiroga? Great, thanks.”

  “There’s a Rafael Quiroga in Accounting,” the receptionist informed me. “Down the hall, third office on the left.”

  Sure enough, there was a Rafael Quiroga in Accounting. He just wasn’t the Rafael Quiroga I was looking for.

  “You must mean the Rafael Quiroga who works for us on a contract basis,” the wrong Rafael Quiroga informed me.

  “Where do I find him?” I asked.

  “Talk to Rolando in Administration, down the hall, exit the building, go around the corner, and it’s the first door on the right.”

  “Rafael Quiroga, of course I know Rafael Quiroga,” Rolando in Administration said, reclining in his chair. “I have his number here in my Rolodex. Let’s give him a call.”

  He dialed seven numbers and waited.

  “Rafael Quiroga, please—what? What number have I called? And there’s no Rafael Quiroga there? Sure? Well, thanks.”

  “Wrong number,” he said to me with a shrug, replacing the useless card back into his Rolodex. “But he has to come in here tomorrow. Would you like to leave him a note?”

  “Sure,” I said, frustrated. “Could you loan me a pen?”

  “Hey, anyone around here have a pen?” Rolando shouted out.

  I left a note and returned the next day.

  “Any sign of Rafael Quiroga?” I asked Rolando.

  “Yeah, he came by and it turns out he’s not the Rafael Quiroga you’re looking for. But he’s a private investigator and he said he’d help you find the guy if you’d like.”

  “Do you have his phone number?”

  “Sure, it’s right here in my Rolodex.”

  I had once discovered that the only cure for depression was to do the thing I least wanted to. What I least wanted was to get out of bed, to face my circumstances, but in doing it every morning, in forcing myself out of the house, my depression subsided into a constant nervous anxiety. And focusing on Francisco’s case kept my mind occupied, preventing my thoughts from convincing me how impossible the whole situation was. Because if I were to face the facts, there really were no grounds for hope. The Costa Rican legal system was based on the Napoleonic Code, which meant that a man was guilty until proven innocent. But try proving that someone didn’t do something. And add to it the fact that his only alibis were criminals.

  Nevertheless, I was determined to get Francisco out on bail. His ex-wife, Laura, had made him out to be some stranger who had stolen her car, but I wanted to show that they lived together for two years, that Francisco was a responsible, well-off family man who had no need to go around stealing automobiles.

  Francisco did not make the job easier. I would pry him for information at every visit and he would give me vague leads, often remembering someone’s first name or the neighborhood where the person lived, but he couldn’t recall last names or addresses.

  At least he could recall his previous address—I figured his former neighbors would provide good references. Better yet, I learned that one of them had notarized the bill of sale when Francisco originally purchased the car. Her testimony alone would be an incredible plus. She was an attorney, she had firsthand knowledge of the fact that Francisco and Laura were not mere acquaintances (as a neighbor, she watched them walk out of the same apartment building every morning), and she would remember that Francisco, not Laura, had been the one to purchase the car in the first place. There was just one problem—for the life of him, Francisco could not remember her name. But he gave me the address: “From the gas station in Rohrmoser, take a right, go three blocks, make another right, and it’s the last building at the end of the street, a white gated complex with a guard standing outside.”

  With the help of several friendly strangers and two cooperative bus drivers, I finally found the gas station. Wandering through the streets of what had once been Francisco’s neighborhood, I couldn’t help but get some sense of the frustration he must be feeling at all that he had lost. He had had a job, a nice apartment in a good part of town. Eventually he had even owned his own business transporting tourists to the beach. They’d had two cars, a daughter, a life together. Four years later, this was what it had degenerated into: his ex pressing charges against him. Out of bitterness, vengeance, or greed, she claimed they had never had any relationship—“an acquaintance” was the way she referred to him. “I am not married to him or anything of that nature.” And her declaration had landed Francisco into prison. This was what love had turned into, I thought, suddenly getting cheered up tremendously—after all, up until that point I thought I had ended my past relationships badly.

  I found the building where Francisco used to live and did my best to explain to the guard the purpose of my visit: I was there to see a guest whose name I did not know. No, I did not have the number of her apartment, but I was sure she lived in one of the eighteen units.

  This was good enough for him. His advice was to go door to door until I found the person I needed, which seemed like a reasonable enough plan.

  As I entered the complex, I thought it was pretty ironic that all of the units were numbered. After all, the building didn’t have an address and the street didn’t have a name. I imagined the complications of living there, trying to write out your address on any official form: “From the gas station in Rohrmoser, it’s five blocks, a white gated complex with a guard standing outside.” And then you’d add: “Apartment 5.”

  The apartments were pretty much identical. I walked through the gate and knocked on the first door.

  “Hi, is your mom home?” I asked the little girl who opened the door.

  “No, she’s working today. Do you want to talk to Jimena?”

  “Jimena? I don’t know. Is Jimena a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Is your mom a lawyer?”

  “No. She’s a seamstress.”

  Okay, so it wasn’t the most complex detective work, but at least kids could always be counted on to tell you the truth. I thanked the little girl and kept up my search.

  At the next three apartments, there wasn’t much to do—no one seemed to be home. Finally, at Door Number 5, a woman in curlers greeted me.

  “I’m trying to find a lawyer . . .” I began.

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Oh, do you know a man named Francisco? He lived here with his wife, Laura. They had a little girl.”

  “I’ve only been here for a year and a half.”

  The only other person in the unit to open the door was an elderly man in his seventies who had no information.

  “Come back after six,” the guard helpfully advised me as I glumly walked through the gate. “Everyone should be home by then.”

  Living with the territorial rules that governed prison life, conveniently enough Francisco and I had become friends with an alpha male. Daniel was a Cali cartel drug smuggler who had taken to us, and he and his wife always insisted we share their seating area and their lunch. Not ones to refuse the hospitality of anyone in regular contact with drug kingpi
ns and hit men, Francisco and I would gingerly take their food, feeling much like the insecure kids in high school intimidated into inhaling as the bong got passed around.

  “Come on, everyone is taking some,” the large Colombian would insist, brandishing a huge piece of chicken. “Just try it. You’ll like it.”

  Sure enough, we did. But chicken was just the beginning. Nancy Reagan was right (or was it Frito-Lay?):You couldn’t take just one. Next came the thighs and legs and drumsticks. Then it was on to potatoes, rice, and cake. Nibbling on a cookie, I suddenly understood what parents needed to do to get their scrawny kids to eat—forget telling them about poor starving African children. Tell them about the poor Americans forced to eat under the pressure of the Cali drug cartel. (“There are people in Central American prisons who don’t get to choose what to eat. They have to eat whatever the drug kingpins offer them—or else! Now be a good girl and just take a few more bites.”)

  In spite of this new strain on my gallbladder-deprived gastrointestinal channels, this new friendship ensured us a spot by the wall, the most coveted area on prison visiting days. Daniel and his wife would always call out to us, “Over here, guys! Come on, take a seat,” and Francisco and I would obediently march over and squeeze onto the twin mattress they had laid down on the concrete floor.

  Because Colombians were both feared and hated, their tight-knit group sheltered Francisco as a result of his nationality. And the fact that I was an American protected him as well.

  We had become a celebrity couple of sorts at La Reforma. It was a mystery to everyone how a tall, blue-eyed gringa with the world at her feet who lived at Disneyland in a golden house ten miles away from the Statue of Liberty (this was how most Latinos I came across viewed Americans) would choose to spend her time in a prison, in love with a poor Latino. After all, these were Colombians—the only Americans they’d ever met in the flesh had been DEA agents.

  At every visit, at least one starstruck prisoner would gingerly trek over to us to find out if I really was from the United States, and with great ceremony he’d extend his hand for me to shake. My role had grown bigger than me—I was like a young Evita Perón suddenly forced out unprepared onto the balcony.

  “Uniting the north with the south,” Francisco would dramatically add, as if our lust were doing two whole continents a favor. “She is from the United States. I am from Colombia. As nations, we are politically at odds with each other. As individuals, we are in love.”

  We were friendly with everyone but the Costa Rican basuqueros, the drug addicts who smoked an unrefined version of cocaine, supposedly worse for you than crack.

  “Stay away from him,” Daniel cautioned me one day, pointing to a scruffy-looking guy with long hair and a beard who stumbled erratically across the room. Daniel paused for emphasis, making sure I understood the gravity of what he was about to say. “He does drugs!”

  I couldn’t help but note the irony of the situation. “Francisco,” I whispered, “isn’t Daniel the one who got caught with five hundred kilos of cocaine?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, why is he warning me against guys who do drugs?”

  “Wendy, Daniel sells drugs. He doesn’t take them.”

  Francisco didn’t find this at all odd and apparently neither did any of the other Colombians. Selling drugs to them was no big deal, just an astute business investment. But taking drugs—you might as well admit to stealing small babies and chopping them up in a blender.

  In between prison visits, nothing was going right. As part of my ongoing private detective campaign, I’d made two more trips to Francisco’s old apartment building and had finally tracked down the attorney I’d been seeking, but she had been cold and irritated, explaining that she just didn’t have time to get involved.

  I’d also had a considerable number of meetings with a lawyer at the Colombian embassy who was constantly friendly and willing to see me, but who’d merely look at me with a considerable amount of amusement, as if I were going to tell him at any minute that I was just kidding. “Gotcha! I’m not really going out with a man at a prison.” He also didn’t offer much help—he expected me to update him on the progress of Francisco’s case, not the other way around.

  Another strategy I was pursuing was trying to get my journalist’s credentials, figuring I could always use the press to sway Francisco’s cause. I had been undergoing a significant amount of paperwork at the Colegio de Periodistas, but each time I went in to check on the progress of my file, the staff members requested one more new document, and it didn’t seem like they’d ever get around to issuing me a press pass.

  Even worse was the deterioration of my friendship with Jessica. Months earlier back in Los Angeles, Francisco had needed five hundred dollars to switch attorneys, so I had sent a money order to Jessica, figuring she would make the necessary arrangements. After all, sending funds directly to prison wasn’t the wisest or most practical idea. (I could just imagine the DHL guy arriving at the prison gate: “Delivery for Mr. Sánchez. I’ll need a signature please.”)

  What I had recently learned from Francisco’s lawyer was that Jessica had given him only half of the money and kept $250 for herself.

  When I questioned her about it, she had a reasonable explanation: “You can’t give the lawyer his fee all at once. If you do, he won’t do anything.” I couldn’t imagine our attorney doing anything less, but I heard her out anyway. “You give him the other half at the end when the case is over.”

  This made sense. “Well, would you mind giving me the rest of the money? Now that I’m here, I might as well keep the funds in my own account.”

  She stalled for a minute. “Sure, I’ll get it to you on Friday.”

  Friday came and Jessica provided some excuse. Then next Friday came and then the next. Three weeks later, furious and frustrated, I finally marched up to her office and confronted her. “You spent it, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t answer—but she didn’t have to. I was so full of rage by this point that I no longer even knew who was to blame. I was sick of lawyers. I was sick of the legal system. I was sick of bullshit. I was sick of lies. But most of all, I was sick of this country that was so full of crap.

  “Fuck Costa Rica!” I said and gave her door one final slam behind me.

  Chapter Seven

  Love in the Time of Papalomoyo

  Luck chooses strange moments. It can strike quite innocently one day when you’re sitting on the couch eating a Zero bar while watching a rerun of Charlie’s Angels. It can happen walking through the forest, skipping down the street, or even on those days when you’re stuck at home amusing yourself by staring at the wall (a good thing for us writers who put great stock in wall watching). Luck’s arrival is unpredictable, arbitrary—just because good fortune decides to show up one time is no guarantee that it will choose that same set of circumstances again—which is a good thing. Because luck decided to step in one day while my boyfriend was imprisoned in top security, accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and I really had no desire to repeat that particular experience.

  Had I known where I was going to run into good fortune when I woke up that morning, I’m not sure I would have bothered. I had an address, but it was, after all, a Costa Rican address.

  This time, based on Heather’s information (my sister was spending her summer as an intern at the Organization of American States), I was led to CODEHUCA, a human rights organization in San José. The guard outside opened the gate and I made my way to reception, where I was informed by a polite secretary that I had arrived at the institute for human rights and not the commission. Where was the commission located? From the restaurant Spoon, one hundred meters west, then twenty-five meters east. I asked why not go just seventy-five meters west, but she just shrugged her shoulders and told me that was the address she had.

  I managed to arrive with the help of a taxi, a compass, and a lot of luck. I got out of the cab and stared at the human rights organization in front of me and realized with som
e dismay that I was staring at the court, not the commission.

  A guard instructed me to “go up the hill, make a right, go straight fifty meters, and it’s the third door on the right.”

  By the time I arrived, I had forgotten all about my boyfriend in jail and pleaded with the receptionist to do something about all the suffering brought about in trying to find obscure addresses in Costa Rica.

  Luckily, she had a sense of humor, and after explaining my rather sticky problem to her, she informed me that the attorney I needed to speak to was in Nicaragua at a conference but if it would make me feel better, I could talk to the legal assistant. I told her what would really make me feel better would be two Valiums and a shot of whiskey, but as it appeared she was freshly out of both, I would settle for whatever it was she was offering.

  The legal assistant, Saúl, was not what I expected—which is to say, I was not expecting Saúl. This was not some Costa Rican lawyer who would look me up and down, meet my gaze with a cold grimace, and tell me there was nothing he could do—this was Saúl, someone I had gone to UCLA with.

  I was nearly three-thousand miles from home in a small Central American country where I had walked into an obscure office—yet the door I knocked on happened to be opened by a person I knew. The coincidence was mind-blowing.

  “What the hell are you doing in Costa Rica?” I asked, still reeling at my good fortune.

  After a lot of oh-my-Gods and I-can’t-believe-its, he caught me up on what I had missed of his life in the past six years. While I had been busy collecting boyfriends from prisons in Costa Rica, Saúl had been busy collecting degrees, the latest from UCLA’s School of Law. Not really that into collecting paychecks, Saúl was now working virtually free for CODEHUCA, trying to do something to change the plight of unfortunates in Third World Central American countries.

  We reminisced for a while about old times, gossiping about the friends we had in common, who was sleeping with whom (and who wasn’t getting anything whatsoever), and then we got down to business.

  “Drinks tonight?”