Lucy's Money: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 4)

by J. J. Henderson

  “Lucy Ripken,” she stood and held out a hand. “From Grunwald’s Get Going Guide to Costa Rica. How you doing?”

  “Grunwalk? Is this—Krish, is this a good book?”

  “Sure. I mean, yes, I’ve been in it three years and it has gotten me lots of business. Hey, Lucy, why don’t you—maybe you could add Hedwig’s horse camp to the book?”

  “Sure, no problem,” Lucy said. “I’ll stop by, get the info later, OK?”

  “Thank you,” said Hedwig. “Hey Krish, I have a party of six birdheads who want to go spend a night at that new lodge up at Boca Tapada on the San Carlos before they ride up to Monteverde. Can you organize this for me please?”

  “Sure, Hedy,” he said, smiling. “It’s a fucking pain to get up there, as you know, but I’ll stop by later.”

  “Yah, sure,” she said. “See you Lucy.” She left.

  “The ex, eh?” Lucy said.

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “We’re in the same business, what can I say?”

  “Hey, she seems nice enough. And she’s really cute.”

  “That she is. Too cute for her own good. She couldn’t keep her hands off my clients. Or they couldn’t keep their hands off her. Either way, I ended up looking the fool, didn’t I?”

  “Well this is Costa Rica, after all,” Lucy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—at least from what I’ve seen—sex comes pretty easy, or cheap, around here.”

  “Oh, right. The Blue Marlin. The prostitutes and all. Yes, it takes some getting used to. Do you know there’s a man who lives not four blocks from here who sells two of his teenage daughters—for sex—to anyone who’s willing to pay the price? Can you imagine? Pimping for his own children?”

  “That’s disgusting,” Lucy said. “How can he—why doesn’t someone do something about…”

  “Oh, it’s all very unofficial and back door and sly, at least ostensibly. But everyone in town knows about it. But you know what, I have relatives in India. When I was fifteen my uncle took me to a place called Falkland Road in Bombay, where the girls are displayed in cages. It makes Costa Rica look very innocent, to tell the truth.”

  “But still—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to get all moralistic on you. I’ve just run into a couple of weird scenes here the last few days, and it’s—hey did you really try to rescue that guy? I didn’t read anything about that in the newspaper and such.”

  He shrugged. “It was instinct. Jumping in after him I mean. I was in the US Marines, you know. Special Forces. Semper Fi and all that bullshit. Don’t leave a man behind, whatever. Lotta good it did, eh?”

  His cynicism, masking despair and sadness, was disheartening. But what could she say? It might take him a lifetime to get over what had happened, if he ever did.

  “I don’t think you did the wrong thing, Krish,” Lucy said quietly after a moment. “It’s tragic, but it was really just bad luck.”

  “I know—I mean I guess I know, but—I have to live with it.”

  “Yeah. But you know, time heals everything.”

  “Not for his family it doesn’t. He’s gone.”

  “Yes, but your life has to go on. As awful as it was, and as heartless as it may sound to just push the whole thing behind you and go on, you can’t beat yourself up forever about it.” She gave him a heartfelt look. His eyes lightened a little. “Hey listen, I was wondering, if you don’t mind changing the subject.”

  “No, please, anything I can—”

  “What do you hear or know about this place called Rancho de la Luna? It’s an orphanage and—”

  “Damn, Lucy, you’re on to all the weird Costa Rican shit, aren’t you?” he exclaimed.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Rancho de la Luna. It’s up the Sarapiqui towards the San Juan and Nicaragua. Pretty deep in the jungle, actually, although I hear the previous owners had cleared and planted several acres. They say it’s a combination orphanage and reform school and God knows what else. I’ve never had reason to go there myself. Basically I hear it’s a lot of fucked-up kids out in the middle of nowhere. Rumor has it—well never mind. But there’s nothing there you’d want to put in a tourist guidebook, that’s for sure.”

  “What do you mean, rumor has it? Has what?”

  “I heard that just last week three kids from there tried to run away. They somehow got downstream to Sarapiqui town and were caught hitchhiking south on the road that hooks up with the highway to San Jose. One was fourteen and the others were fifteen. They said they were being held against their wills, and that their parents didn’t realize what the place was like when they—”

  “Three Americans? I thought it was an orphanage for Central American kids.”

  “It is, but—I mean there’s the orphanage, and there’s the other thing, which is like a lock-down high school for fucked-up American kids. You know, like those wilderness programs in Utah or wherever, where bad boys from back east and California go out and live under the stars and have to confront their own demons and do a lot of therapy and such. Couple guys I knew back in Cali ended up in one out in Arizona. I guess they work OK since they keep opening new ones. Anyways Rancho de la Luna’s a Costa Rican version, where the bad gringo kids come down here and live with the foreigners and work on the farm, get to know another culture, that sort of business.”

  “So these runaway kids were in trouble to begin with?”

  “Supposedly. But one of them—a girl—is said to have claimed they were sexually abused by the staff and that the orphan kids were—well, it’s pretty weird shit.”

  “What?”

  “Well, she said it—but no one’s actually been able to prove it. Or to prove anything for that matter, since the story disappeared really fast.”

  “You mean they got hauled back there and there was no investigation or follow-up or anything?”

  “Hey I don’t know. I just heard about it, you know? I mean from a Tico friend. It could be the story never even got reported. Maybe it didn’t even happen. I said rumor has it, remember?”

  “Yeah, but that’s a pretty strange rumor, don’t you think?”

  “Well, yes—and there’s more.”

  “What else?”

  “They say—and this is more rumor, Lucy—that a lot of the girls—I’m talking about the orphans now, not the American kids—if they aren’t adopted by the time they’re twelve or thirteen, the people that run the orphanage have some sort of arrangement with various creeps in San Jose, and these girls end up getting jobs as housemaids or servants, on paper that is, but in reality they’re getting sold into the sex trade.”

  “Holy shit! You mean child prostitution?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know if it’s true.”

  “Jesus,” said Lucy. “This is worse than I expected.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know. Look, I’ll level with you. I came down here to work on a guidebook, but also some friends of mine want me to find some kind of investment for them. For us, since they’re cutting me in in exchange for finding the investment. So I’ve been looking into it and I found this one company that has a great track record. They offer super returns. But then it turns out they’re involved in all sorts of weird shit. This Rancho de la Luna just happens to be one of their investments. The company’s called the Four Señors.”

  “I’ve never heard of them, but then I’ve never had a whole lot of dough to invest, know what I mean? Hey, you want to invest your money in Desafio, I’ll guarantee you a one per cent return in ten years, no problem, plus all the free river rafting you could ever want, for you and your friends.” He grinned.

  “I wish I could, but—I’ve got certain fiduciary responsibilities.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He stood. “Well, now that you’ve heard all the bad shit about Costa Rica that you possibly could, you want to go have a beer? I usually go to the Palace.” He waved at an open air café under a two-story palapa across the square. “They
do a good beef casado, too, if you’re ready for an early dinner.”

  “A beer sounds good. But I’ll pass on the beef. I ate a steak in Liberia for lunch and I swear to God it is still parked in my stomach.”

  “Hey Miguel, I’ll be back in an hour,” Krish said to one of his guys.

  “No prob, Krish. But don’t forget you gotta do that Boca Tapada thing for Hedy.”

  “Right. Thanks.” They headed out. “The beef around here’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “My poor vegetarian mum would just die if she saw the way I eat these days.”

  “Hey, I like protein,” Lucy said as they strolled across the square. About half way across she pulled up short. “Man, what is the story?”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Krish asked.

  “You see that green car in front of the café?” Lucy said. “The mini-SUV?”

  “Yeah. It’s a Samurai, I think. Piece of shit tin can but lots of people drive ‘em around here.”

  “Well, that one’s been following me ever since—well, since I was down by La Cruz early this morning,” Lucy said.

  “Following you? Why would anybody be following you, Lucy?”

  “I’ve been nosing around this Four Señors business for a couple of days. Maybe they—” She stopped herself. “You’re right. There’s no way anyone’s following me. I’m just paranoid sometimes. Let’s go.”

  They strolled out of the bright daylight into the cool, shadowy recesses of the café, an open air affair under an enormous conical palm frond roof tied onto a structure of rough wooden poles. There were just a few tables occupied, and three guys stood watching a soccer game on a black-and-white tv on a shelf behind the wooden bar. A swinging door beyond the bar led into the kitchen. She could hear voices, laughter, dishes clattering in back.

  “Hey, there’s—hey Kent,” Krish called out to the only gringo in the room. Lucy had a look. He sat alone in a strategic corner, in observation mode, with a beer and a book and a small black hardbound notebook precisely placed on his table. He wore a black tank top, black shorts and black leather sandals. He wore his salt and pepper hair trimmed short, and sported round, rimless spectacles of the stylish intellectual variety. He was clean-shaven, slender, mid-forties, put together well. Lucy followed Krish over.

  “Kent my man, when did you get into town? You guys know each other?” Krish said. They both shook their heads. “Well you should. Kent Jackson, this is Lucy Ripken. Lucy’s the new Grunwald writer. Lucy, Kent’s been doing the Sunshine Guide to CR for what, how long?”

  “Too long,” he said. “But the climate suits me.” He stood, and they shook hands. “Hi Lucy. Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” she said. “Hey, is that your green SUV out there?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “God, I am such a fool sometimes. Have you been working your way up from the coast? From around La Cruz?”

  “Yep. Every other year, I spend two months covering the same stinking ground. But it gets better every time, I tell you.”

  And the women get younger every year don’t they, she thought but didn’t say. The Sunshine Guide was the one she’d been reading that night when she cased the hookers in the restaurant and the bar; the one whose writer obviously took his research into Costa Rica’s sex life very seriously. “It’s a really cool country,” Lucy said. “I mean, this is my first time, but I’m digging it.”

  “But why’d you ask about my car?”

  She smiled sheepishly. “I was just telling Krish that I thought someone driving that car was following me. Because I was on the same route.”

  “Well, I guess I was following you then, wasn’t I? Or maybe you were following me. This is a pretty small place after all. Costa Rica I mean.”

  “So why haven’t you been to see me yet, Kent?” said Krish.

  “Hey, just got here, man. Gotta do my restaurants and hotels too, pal,” he said. “Hey, listen—” his voice dropped into a sympathetic mode. “I heard what happened. God, what a drag.”

  “Yes, to say the least,” said Krish. “But we’ll get to that. You want to do the update business now, or join us for a beer?”

  “Join me,” Jackson said. “I was just taking some notes.”

  They sat. The waiter brought beers, and Krish ordered food. Lucy and Jackson circled each other a little warily, chit-chatting the heat, the highway, the northern Guanacaste beaches, where he, too, had investigated the scene at Playa Rajada, and feared for the future of that marvelous beach and for his old friend Lester Martinez. She left the Four Señors unmentioned for the moment. As for the volcanic snarl that let loose while she’d been in the pool across the road from the Tabacon: Jackson, it turned out, had been in the middle of an interview with the general manager of the Tabacon, and had just asked him about the chances of the volcano dumping a load of lava on his resort. The mini-eruption occurred as the manager, with a wave of his hand, shooed away the possibility of danger from the volcano. “The timing was perfect,” Jackson said, “and so I can write it just like it happened. Let my readers figure it out for themselves.”

  ‘My readers.’ This man is certainly self-assured, Lucy thought. But she figured ten years at the same gig, steady sales, and a good royalty income will do that. Her impulse was to like Jackson. She liked his looks, his voice, his point of view, for the most part, and had to acknowledge that his work in the Sunshine guide was accomplished: stylish, amusing, politically correct, and well-researched. Practically anything and everything you could possibly want to know about Costa Rica was in there. But she kept coming back to those pages in his guidebook, where he described the sex scene in San Jose with such unrestrained relish.

  Why did she feel so prudish? Prostitution was legal here, and she’d come to realize that almost everybody but she and her friends knew one reason American men went to CR was for the cheap, easy sex. Yet it was hardly acknowledged in the guidebooks other than Jackson’s. There was nary a mention in her own book, other than a brief sentence ominously warning people to “stay away from the red light district” while in San Jose. She’d walked into it inadvertently and now with all this Four Señors weirdness maybe she’d let that very small part of the Costa Rican scene take on too much importance in her mind. And in doing so she did Kent Jackson an injustice of sorts, pre-judging his attitudes about sex because of his straightforward discussion of what was simply an integral if not particularly significant element of the culture. But then again his robust enthusiasm for that element of the culture was hard to get around.

  She decided the best thing to do would be to tackle the problem, if that’s what it was, head on. “So tell me, Kent,” she said, eyeing the well-annotated copy of the two year-old last edition of his own guidebook that sat on the table between them. “How did you research those parts of your book that deal with the, ah, San Jose nightlife?”

  He gave her an off-hand look, and half-smiled. “I guess you’re talking about my Sex in the City chapter, eh?” he said.

  “I guess,” she said.

  “Well, things are different down here,” he said, then hesitated, not quite sure how to go on. “Look I can’t deny—I do two guidebooks, alternate years, in the Sunshine series: one’s Costa Rica, the other’s Cuba. I’ve spent two months in the tropical sun every year for the past ten. Though they’re obviously vastly different places, for a million reasons, Cuba and Costa Rica do have a lot in common. One thing they have in common is a lot of really beautiful women who have a very liberated attitude about sex.”

  “We’re talking about prostitution, Kent, not a liberated attitude.”

  “You make love with a girl here, you give her a gift. Same deal in Cuba.”

  “But it’s not love, Kent, it’s sex, and it’s her job, and maybe the only one available. And in Cuba especially and maybe here too she’s probably providing for her extended family every time she fucks a gringo.”

  “Whatever.” He shrugged. “The world is what it is. I don’t have to make excuses. I really like w
omen, and there are lots of them available here. I stay away from the kids in the trade—I did mention how evil that was in my book, you know—and the older ones—grown-up women, I mean—don’t seem to have a real problem about getting paid for getting laid. I mean as much as I like the scenery, if I never see Volcan Arenal again in my life I would not give a hoot, but I loooove coming down here—and love going to Cuba even more—because I get so much great sex. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Not a thing. But let me ask you this, Kent: When was the last time you had sex with a woman that wasn’t—that you didn’t pay for?”

  He looked at her, then down at his book. After a minute he said, “You know, I don’t even know—or care.” Then he looked at her. “So when was the last time you had sex?”

  “What? What does that have to—that’s none of your business, as a matter of fact.”

  “Well, I had a hell of a sweet time with two girls in San Jose just three nights ago. It cost me eighty dollars and was worth every cent.” He stood. “I’ve gotta make my rounds. All I can tell you, Lucy, is that Graham Greene, one of the great writers of the 20th century, was a serious aficionado of ‘the brothel life.’ He was one of many, believe me. And I’m not ashamed to follow in his footsteps. Hey, don’t kid yourself. Men like it. And surely you can’t pretend that every sexual relationship doesn’t have an economic component, whether it be a paid-for fuck or a paid-for marriage.” He started off, then looked back and waved. “Good luck with your guidebook, Lucy. Hey Krish, I’ll stop by tomorrow afternoon, see what’s up with your business, OK?”

  “Sounds good.” They watched him stroll away. “Well,” Krish said, “I guess we know where he stands, eh?”

  “He makes a pretty good argument, but he’s just a whorehound when you get right down to it.”