Guardian of Lies

FIFTY

This morning as Herman and I step out of the cab downtown, I have donned a floppy canvas jungle hat packed from home, and a pair of dark glasses. I have the brim on my hat pulled low over my eyes.

It has taken the mayor the better part of a day to find someone who could produce the passports within the time frame we have.

Just before we left Goudaz’s apartment, I tried to reach Harry at the office using the encrypted cell phone. Harry answered; we got a few words in, but a couple of seconds later the call was dropped. I redialed three more times and each time the same thing happened. Herman thinks it’s the thick concrete walls in the mayor’s apartment building. He calls it the bat cave. I got enough of the message to Harry that he knows we’re all right. I’ll try again later.

We walk two blocks to Avenida Central, a pedestrians-only avenue that runs half a mile or so through the heart of downtown San José. The mayor has put us on to a small shop where they make document copies and do photographic work. He has called the owner and the man is expecting us.

As we shoulder our way through the crowds walking in the center of the street, I feel as though I’m naked. Templeton has a warrant out for my arrest, but I’m worried that the FBI may have identified Herman, in which case they may have circulated his photograph to the local authorities. Even in a crowd he is big enough that walking next to him is like carrying a signpost.

Half a block down we find the shop. Herman and I quickly get off the street. We give the girl at the counter Lorenzo Goudaz’s name, and a few seconds later a tall, slender man with a pencil mustache and drooping eyelids motions us to follow him behind the counter. He takes us to a back room where he quickly closes the door the moment we’re inside.

He turns and looks at me. What is your name, seńor?

We're Lorenzo's friends, I tell him.

“I need to see some identification.”

“Is that necessary?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I show him my driver’s license.

He takes a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolds it, and checks something written on the paper against the information on my license. “Okay. And you, seńor?

Herman does the same.

Okay. Mr. Goudaz says you need them today.

Correct, says Herman.

Did he tell you how much?

No.

The man smiles a little. It must be cash. I only take cash.”

How much? says Herman.

Twenty-five hundred dollars, each,” he says.

“Five grand, that’s pretty steep,” says Herman.

“You need them in a hurry. Of course, you are free to find someone else who will do them for less,” says the man.

“No, we’ll have them done here,” I say. “But they’ll have to be good.”

“My work is always good. I have never had any complaints; the pages are all properly stitched; the covers, you cannot tell the difference between the real passport and mine; and the printing and documentation you will see for yourself are excellent.”

“How long will it take?” I ask.

“Give me a few moments.” He starts for the door, then stops. “You wanted Canadian, correct?”

“That’s right,” says Herman.

“You know, for ten thousand I could give you two French passports, official paper, real covers, the genuine article.”

“Do I sound French to you?” says Herman.

The guy looks at him, doesn’t say a word. He steps out of the room, leaving Herman and me alone with the door closed.

“This is probably where the Costa Rican police come in and bust our ass for passport fraud,” says Herman.

“In which case the Dwarf will probably give them foreign aid,” I tell him. “How much of the money here is going into Larry’s pocket?”

“I don’t know, but you gotta figure the DSG fee down here is probably pretty high. I know it was in Mexico when I lived there.”

“What’s the DSG fee?” I ask.

“Delivering stupid gringos,” says Herman. “You notice the mayor couldn’t wait to step up and swallow my lie about the prosecutor having us followed as the reason we need new passports.”

“That wasn’t a lie.”

“The way I told it, it was.”

“You don’t think he believed you?” I ask.

“I don’t think he heard me,” says Herman. “Calculator in his head was making too much noise trying to figure out the freight on the passports. Mind you, his beer’s not bad. But I can’t recommend the overnight accommodations.”

“Compared to the local jail, I’m thinking I’d probably give it four stars,” I tell him. “The real question is whether his Urban Information Exchange is spitting out accurate poop.”

“You mean the Mariah?” says Herman.

“For starters.”

The ship Mariah never arrived at the port of Balboa in Panama. According to Goudaz, it should have been there by now. That means that either Nitikin is traveling by other means, or the information in his handwritten note to Maricela is wrong, in which case he may not be in Panama at all.

“Like Goudaz said, it’s possible the Mariah went somewhere else,” says Herman.

Our first hope was to find Katia’s camera with the photos from Colombia. We could prop them up in court, identify whatever was in them, and explain the significance to the jury as the reason Pike was murdered. Failing that, our backup was to locate Katia’s mother in hopes that she could either provide leads to solid evidence or testify as to what her father was doing in Colombia. The fact that she doesn’t know anything means we’re batting zero for two.

“I’m troubled by one thing,” I say.

“Only one? That’s not bad,” says Herman.

“How did Goudaz know the container would be shipping out of southwest Colombia?”

“Huh?” Herman looks at me.

“Remember when he came into the room after the phone call to his man in Puntarenas? He showered us with all kinds of information. But the first thing he said was, any container coming out of southwest Colombia would most likely ship from the place he called Tumaco. How did he know the container would be coming out of southwest Colombia?”

Herman thinks about it for a second. “Easy. He knew Maricela flew in and out of Medellín.”

“That’s what I thought, until I looked at a Google map of Colombia on Goudaz’s computer. Medellín’s not in southwest Colombia. It’s more or less in the center of the country. Maricela said she took a bus from Medellín to some small village where they picked her up in a truck and drove her to where her father was. She didn’t say how long the bus ride took, but she said the ride in the truck took most of a day and that she couldn’t remember much of it, which I don’t buy.”

“You think she’s lying?” says Herman.

“Let’s just say she’s protecting her dad. Which still leaves us with the question, how did Goudaz know?”

“If he’s wrong,” says Herman, “then everything he’s told us is out the window.”

“I’m not saying he’s wrong. Maricela didn’t correct him when he said it. And you can bet she didn’t tell him.”

“Good question,” says Herman. “Maybe we should ask him when we get back.”

I nod. “Which reminds me. Where is Maricela?”

“She took off early this morning,” says Herman. “She went up to the house to see if she could salvage anything. She was hoping to find her phone. She came back an hour later, said there was nothing but ashes. So she took a taxi over to the phone company-I think she said it was called EESAY. Said she was gonna try to buy a new phone and see if she could get her old cell number back. She’s still hoping to snag her father’s phone call.”

“She’s a good daughter.”

“According to Goudaz, she’s wasting her time. Her old phone was GSM. It ran off a chip. Larry told her there’s no way they can assign the old number to a new chip. Apparently he’s tried it before. He says the assigned phone numbers are already embedded in the chips when the local phone company buys them from the manufacturer. So if you lose the chip, the number’s gone.”

“We better keep an eye on her. She’s wandering all over town alone. Remember what Rhytag said about Katia in the hospital after the bloodbath on the bus? It was better if whoever had tried to kill her thought she was dead.”

“So what’s Maricela gonna do when we leave?”

“Fortunately you saved her passport when you snatched her purse from the fire. She doesn’t know it yet, but depending on where we go, she may be coming with us.”

As I say it, the door in this little back office opens. I turn, half expecting to see the police. Instead the man with the mustache is carrying a shoe box with the lid on and a label on the side that reads CANADA.

He puts the box on the table and lifts the lid. It is filled with passports, each one with a black cover, the word CANADA printed above the coat of arms, with the word PASSPORT in both English and French printed below it. All of the lettering and design is in gold ink.

“First you pay, then you pick out a name, any name you want as long as it’s in the box,” says the mustache. “We will take your pictures, put in the necessary descriptions, and provide the entry stamp for Costa Rica and the temporary entry document. That’s the base package.

“For five hundred dollars more you get the professional upgrade. That includes entry and exit stamps for four other countries of your own choosing, assorted artistic stains, and a press job.”

“What the hell’s a press job?” says Herman.

“We put the passport through a steam press. That bends the binding so it looks like it’s had many trips in your hip pocket. I would recommend that you get the professional package since it makes the passport look much more authentic.”

“Lemme see if I got this straight,” says Herman. “We can pay twenty-five hundred dollars and get your base unit, which is probably good for a stint in a Costa Rican jail, or we can pay three thousand and get a passport that might get us out of Costa Rica and into another country. Is that pretty much it?”

“Up to you.”

As Herman is haggling with the man, I turn my back and start fishing in the cash in the money belt under my shirt. When I turn around I’m holding fifty one-hundred-dollar bills. I lay them all out on the counter. He looks at them, the green reality being much better than talk.

In my other hand I’m holding three more one-hundred-dollar bills. “You can keep the press job and the stains. You give us the four extra entry and exit stamps on each passport, you get three hundred more. Otherwise we’re walking.”

Ordinarily I might not have pressed him. But given the fact that we can no longer use credit or debit cards without leaving a trail like bread crumbs, cash is now king.

“The stains and the bending are very important,” he tells us.

“I can spill my own coffee,” says Herman. “And I bet you if I sit on it, my ass will bend the binding. You want me to try one and see?”

“Take it or leave it,” I tell him. “You can always tell the mayor we went for the base package. He’ll never know, in which case you just made three hundred bucks.”

He looks me in the eyes, tries to read my resolve. When he can’t be sure, he glances back down at the money.

I start to pick up the bills from the counter.

“Okay. You got a deal,” he says.