Crime of Privilege: A Novel (31 page)

I called the waitress over and when she eventually made it I asked where the sailors
hung out. She ran the question through her mind, probably translating it as she tried
to understand what I was asking. “Here,” she said.

I looked around. It was now about four o’clock and the only other customers at the
restaurant were a table full of Germans pounding Imperial beers faster than I was.
She saw me look and said, “Wait.”

A minute later she was back with the manager. I had seen her before, seen her messing
with napkins and things like that, moving in and out of the kitchen, but I had not
paid much attention. Now I did. She was a jockish-looking woman whose short brown
hair did not quite go with her complexion. She had a slight gap between her front
teeth and a dusting of freckles that had more or less been faded by the sun. She wore
a sleeveless blue shirt that showed off a pair of muscular arms and
that was not intended to reach the top of her white cotton drawstring pants, from
which a tattooed green-and-red bird was clawing its way upward to get to her magnificently
flat belly. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said, trying not to look at her tattoo, not to look at her belly.

“You wanna go sailing?” She was clearly an American.

“Well, I was just asking. I see all the boats out there and I didn’t realize this
was a sailor’s port.”

“It’s not, really. More of a fishing village turned surfer town. Those boats … mostly
people who like to cruise the coastline.” She put her hand over her brow and stared
out to sea as if to confirm what she had just told me. I again tried not to look at
her belly.

She was saying something about people who were sailing around the world sometimes
coming in and anchoring for a week or two. But there was not really a sailing culture
in Tamarindo.

She pronounced the word “cul-tcha.”

I asked where she was from.

She told me all over.

I said she had a Boston accent and she blushed. “Yeah. Grew up around there,” she
said, “a long time ago. I been trying to lose it.”

I told her I was from the Cape and a whole new look came over her face. It was as
though she was inspecting each and every one of my features, making sure it passed
muster. She wanted to know where I was staying and I took that as a good sign, a sign
to keep talking. She listened attentively until I asked if she knew a guy named Jason
Stockover.

No, she told me, didn’t know him. And she really had to get back to work.

“Nice chatting with you,” I said, but she was already gone, there was somebody at
the front desk, somebody who could not pick out one of the twenty empty tables for
himself.

I flagged the waitress and ordered another Imperial. Then I looked around. The manager
had disappeared. More people came in. They simply sat down without the manager’s help.

I got the waitress’s attention yet again.

“Yes?” she asked, smiling as though I was becoming a pain in the
ass, ordering my beers one at a time, not even giving her a few minutes … five, ten,
fifteen … to go and get them.

“The manager,” I said. “What’s her name?”

“Leanne,” she said.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

I
WALKED BACK TO THE HOTEL AND TRIED THE DANE
.

The waitress hadn’t been able to tell me any more than Leanne’s name and the fact
that she was the owner’s girlfriend. The owner whose name was not Jason, but J.T.
Which was close enough. She did not know where they lived. But she had pushed her
hand in the direction of the Captain Suizo.

“Yes,” the Dane said when I asked if she knew the restaurant down the beach. She had
been leaning on the reception desk, reading a newspaper. It was a tabloid newspaper,
printed in Spanish, with lots of photos. She looked up, as if she actually were going
to pay attention to me this time.

“You want a reservation?” Her tone said such a thing was unnecessary, maybe even unimaginable.

“No. I was hoping you could tell me something about the person who owns it.”

“The restaurant?”

I nodded, tried to look as though it was a perfectly innocent question.

“You mean J.T.?”

“J.T. what?”

“What?” the woman said back. She folded the newspaper without looking at what she
was doing.

“What’s his last name?”

“You want to buy the restaurant?”

I was not sure why she cared, what business it was of hers, why she could not just
answer my question. “Is it Stockover? Is that it?”

“Maybe.” She was looking at me peculiarly.

“Is that his girlfriend who works there—”

“You mean Leanne?” A slow smile crept over the woman’s face.

“You know her?”

She shrugged. The smile faded but did not disappear completely. “I know her.”

“Know where she lives?”

Slowly the smile grew back. “You want to see her?”

I suddenly felt like a lug, an oversized American with wet feet and sand all over
his shorts. “Well,” I said, formulating excuses as I spoke, “I was just trying to
figure out if I knew who her boyfriend was, if he was this guy I used to know named
Jason Stockover. Back in the States.”

Something was going on with this woman. Everything I said, every question I asked,
was making her think thoughts that were not in keeping with mine. “You like her?”
she said.

“Who? Leanne?”

She nodded once and waited for me to answer.

“Yeah. She’s great.”

“You like her hair?” The Dane touched her own hair, mimicked cutting it off.

What was she telling me? That Leanne had just changed her appearance? That the strawberry
blonde of Landry’s description had just become the nondescript brunette of Tamarindo?

I told her I didn’t think one way or another about her hair. I just wanted to know
where she lived.

She pointed down the beach, away from town. “Get to the big rock. Go over it. Then
one, two, three, maybe four houses. Look for the big table under the big tree.”

“Maybe I should drive there.”

“Is better to walk. No
wachiman
ask what you are doing.”

“I’m just going to visit a friend.”

“Of course.”

“I could just go and ring the doorbell.”

“Only thing is,” the Dane said, “it’s got a big”—she demonstrated, sliding a hand
up and down in front of her face—“gate. It’s like a big door. You can’t just go in
there from the street. The door has to open up.” She put the backs of her hands together
and then drew them apart as if she was doing the breaststroke. “No. Better to go the
beach.”

I
WAITED UNTIL WELL AFTER DARK
.

I had showered and shaved, dressed in a black polo shirt and olive-green cargo shorts,
my darkest clothes, and followed the directions the Dane had given me.

I didn’t have to go back through the lobby to do that, didn’t have to go past anyone.
Just opened my door and walked straight down to the water. From there I was guided
by moonlight. There was enough of a reflection to form a path on the water, and the
path seemed to follow me as I made my way south to the end of the bay and over a huge
rock that usurped the sand for one hundred feet or so and that had to be ascended
and descended without help from anything other than the moon.

And then I was on the other side, with no one else around, no other signs of human
life, no sound except the water rolling into the shore. I passed one, two, three hulking
houses, none of which showed any lights. Then, by moving slowly and peering closely,
I found the big table on a little rise just slightly above the sand. It was positioned
to provide a view over the water while sheltered by large branches from a Guanacaste
tree. I climbed up to the table to look around.

Again, the only sound was the water surging and receding.

The house was at least one hundred and fifty feet away. Up slope. It
was a very large house, and it came out toward the water in two wings, with a patio
in between. Stairs led from the patio down to a swimming pool that was glowing blue-green
from an underwater light. A path meandered from the pool to where I was. Both wings
of the house were lit up. The path was not.

I had no real plan. I mostly wanted to see what Jason Stockover looked like. I would
see him and then I would find a way to confront him.

I never got the chance.

I had not even made it halfway up the path between the beach and the pool when something
struck me across the shoulders so hard it drove me to my knees. Then a foot was delivered
into my back, sending me sprawling into the dirt, and a huge body landed on top of
me. It was all I could do to get my breath and all I could do to keep my head from
being forced into a hood and then my arms were pulled together, something snapped
over my wrists, the hood was cinched tight at my neck, and whatever sounds I made
were those of a shocked and wounded animal.

I WAS PUSHED
and pulled up the path, up a flight of stairs and into the house. I couldn’t see
and the best I could do was feel with my feet, try to guess where I was and where
they were taking me. With my wrists cuffed behind my back, it was doing me no good
to continue to struggle. I did anyhow. I shouted out my name and the fact that I was
a district attorney. My captors went right on pushing and pulling.

I tried digging in my heels, but it made no difference. I was shoved across a floor
and then down a single step and onto a much rougher flat surface. I was delivered
smack into the rear of an open-doored van, and when I ricocheted off the van’s bumper
I was slammed in the back again so that my upper body catapulted forward and then
someone grabbed both my legs and heaved me into the vehicle headfirst. The door slammed
shut while I was still bouncing. I came to rest about the time the engine coughed
to life. I started to get to my knees and the van surged forward. And nobody paid
the slightest attention to the fact that I was being pitched from one side of the
vehicle to the other.

THE VAN TURNED LEFT
. It turned right. I would remember this, I told myself. We flew over rough road,
potholed road, and I repeatedly went up in the air and crashed down again. The bed
of the van was made of thin steel, and it was ribbed, so there was no place to seek
any kind of comfort, even in those rare moments when the nonexistent shock absorbers
let me lie flat. We turned left.

I told myself we were heading back to town. There should be lights, noise, something
to indicate other people were around. As soon as we slowed I would start kicking the
rear door. I would kick with both feet and someone would hear; someone would want
to know what those sounds were.

The transmission shifted. We picked up speed. I bounced more, flew higher in the air,
came down harder. My focus became trying not to move so much. The transmission shifted
again. The driver was not doing me any favors.

We kept going. Only once did I get the sensation of light, but that was about twenty
minutes into the drive, long after we should have passed through Tamarindo. And it
was there for only a second. Something that streaked over my head. A single streetlight,
perhaps. With no voices.

We slowed, we downshifted, and then we sped up again. It occurred to me that these
men could do anything they wanted with me. Who was to know? The Dane? And when would
she know? Tomorrow? The next day? I had taken the room for two days. Would she do
nothing until I failed to leave? How long would it take the people at the hotel to
search my stuff? To see that I had an airplane ticket to fly to Boston by way of Houston
on the day after tomorrow? To realize that I was really and truly missing? And who
would realize it? The very woman who had sent me to the spot where I got mugged?

I told myself I had to live in the moment, not think so much about what lay ahead.
Bounce, recover, be grateful you’re still okay.

It worked part of the time.

A
NOTHER TWENTY MINUTES PASSED BEFORE WE LURCHED
to a halt. I slid forward, banging into the back of the driver’s seat. I was sick
from being tossed around. I ached. I tried to lie very still, as though somehow, if
I was good, nothing bad would happen.

The engine was shut off. I could hear chirping and peeping noises. Doors opened and
closed. Footsteps sounded, one set much heavier than the other. The rear door was
unlatched, hands seized one of my ankles and hauled me toward the opening. I tried
kicking with the other foot. I hit someone, but it did me no good. I was pulled so
hard I dropped at least three feet from the floor of the van to the ground. It was
soft ground, but it still hurt when I hit. It still made me groan and stunned me enough
that I couldn’t kick again before both my feet were grabbed and I was being pulled
over rutted, uneven, rock-strewn dirt, and it was all I could do so my head would
not hit all the things that were thumping against my back.