Week 21 - Tourist Season - Part 2

Tourist Season Part 2

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Continued...

Trouble, trouble, trouble... Vicente had plenty of trouble, and then some. A girl was dead. A tourist. An American. Washed up dead on the beach, found by some early morning surfers. Her head had been cracked open.

Vicente wasn’t quite ready to call it murder per se, but he knew for sure that there was more going on than a simple slip and fall. That much was pretty obvious. Maybe she drowned first, or maybe she hit her head first. Maybe it was fun and games turned accident. Or maybe she had help finding her demise somewhere along the way.

It could have been the reef. A slip in the water and the rocky terrain did the rest. It could have been. Not likely. There was the alcohol in her system, among… the others things.

It could have been the reef. He could still possibly blame the reef. But he’d have to look the other way on a lot of other things.

Could he look the other way? How much of an investigation would be demanded of him? What did the other tourists think? What had the locals already heard? What else had already been said across the island and by whom? Vicente couldn’t be sure of much, except that with every passing minute, more and more people would be talking. And that meant that word would make its way across the entire island, and soon if not even sooner.

He wished he could just blame it on the reef and call it an early day. But he wasn’t the first or only one at the site. Renaldo would probably go along with whatever Vicente wanted to call it, but they would both have trouble getting any and all tourists to do the same.

Perhaps it was just some late night swimming. Perhaps she passed out on the beach and got carried away with the tides. Perhaps a million things.

But it probably had something more to do with whoever helped fill her stomach with those drugs.

Vicente knew that. He just didn’t want to admit it quite yet.

“Maybe she died happy,” suggested Renaldo, in reference to her altered states.

Small consolation, thought Vicente. No parent would want to hear that or take it as a possible relief. No parent would want to hear they had outlived their child. Vicente didn’t have any children – that he knew of – but he could imagine the loss and suffering. Anything he and Renaldo had to say now was simple justifications.

Things like this weren’t supposed to happen. Not on the island. Not on his island. It was Vicente’s job to make sure they didn’t. This was his island. It was his responsibility. The people trusted him. Without that trust, things could fall apart, and fall apart quickly.

“Gonna have to deal with the Americans,” Renaldo continued, in response to Vicente’s silence.

“I know.”

“News. Publicity. Investigators...” he let that last part trail off. Renaldo knew enough to know what this island was about and knew what too many investigators might bring. He wasn’t trying to antagonize his boss, or remind him of something he already knew; he was simply worried about his job and his lifestyle.

“I know,” stressed Vicente, beginning to show signs of losing his cool.

Vicente hated that. Part of the appeal of this island was the privacy, the lack of foreign intervention. There were several members of the community that wanted to make sure the nearby neighbors never had a foot on the sand or an ounce of influence. They aimed to keep it that way. It was his job to make sure crimes like this didn’t happen, especially to the tourists that visited. It was Vicente’s responsibility to keep the status quo. No one wanted too many prying eyes. No one wanted big splashes or sensationalized scandals. Sovereignty was a fickle thing and isolated freedom was only that when it remained isolated.

“You want to talk to the other girl? The one with all the screaming?”

“You already talked to her,” Vicente answered, halfway between a question and a statement.

“Yeah, but she’s real upset. Wants to make sure the police know. Wants her gov’ment. Demanding everything, pronto.”

“She’ll want the world to know. She’s going to be famous now, whether she wants it or not.”

‘I have more important things to do than worry about her,’ was the part Vicente only said to himself. He knew there was nothing to be learned by talking to the friend. A drunk girl was dead and another drunk girl wasn’t going to be able to shed any additional light on that. The friend would be lucky to know a single name or face of anyone she had met last night. Plus Vicente was in no mood for tears or screams or whatever the girl had to offer. He certainly wasn’t going to listen to any threats of entitlement made from some foreigner that carried no weight here. He was going to have plenty of headaches in the hours and days to come. He didn’t need to add one more to the list quite yet.

“Talk to her again. Let her talk. As long as she wants. Write down whatever she has to say. Make her feel as important as she needs to feel. Make sure she knows she was heard.” This was Vicente’s way of saying ‘try to get her to shut up, if you can.’

“Sure boss.” This basically meant ‘not a chance in hell of that happening.’ “And what do we do after that?”

“Let me worry about that.”

Minutes later Vicente made his first phone call and within the hour he was sitting face-to-face with his bosses – the men in charge. To Vicente they were his bosses. They might have had their own boss, but if they did Vicente didn’t know. He was sure he wouldn’t be allowed to know either. There was security in isolation and limited involvement. Vicente was just a cog and would never see the whole machine. A well paid cog, but a cog all the same.

Vicente called them ‘The Wealth.’ They weren’t government, they weren’t elected or official, but they were the money-men behind a large part of things here. They were his benefactors. And they made the system on the island work. They were the wealth and so Vicente called them just that.

They had names, of course, and sometimes he used them, but he was sure they were fake. He had heard them called so many different names by so many different people on the island, there was no point in pretending. He called them ‘Sir’ to their faces and ‘The Wealth’ if he had to speak of them to someone else. But he tried not to do that. Their anonymity was part of the deal. Usually. On a day like today, they had to be involved. And he had to be the one to report it to them, although usually they already knew everything he had to tell them. They paid for it all, so they made sure to be very well connected and always in the know.

‘The Wealth’ – two very rich men. Not brothers, but definitely connected through other means. They spoke English, but didn’t seem American, or British. They just sort of existed outside of national borders. One was fat and quiet and one was tall and did the speaking. Both were very very serious. The tall one had a mojito sitting there in front of him, but he never drank from it. Vicente couldn’t remember ever seeing him drink, even though it seemed as if he always had a drink set out during their meetings. Perhaps it was an invitation. Or a test. Or perhaps it was set out to make men wonder why it was there and break their concentration. The other one smelled like day old hangover, but Vicente couldn’t be sure. Perhaps his friend set drinks out to rub it in the face of the fat one and taunt his alcoholic tendencies. If that were true, then the tall one was a real bastard, but he was also very much the one in charge.

Vicente had worked for them for years. They silently and secretly controlled the island and pushed it where they needed it to go. When new ‘friends’ arrived, Vicente made sure they were set up with whatever they needed. Usually Vicente was given simple tasks and left to run the day-to-day of the island. He vetted tourists and long staying foreigners. He took control of bad situations and made sure they didn’t escalate. And he looked the other way when he was told to. Vicente had collected money and things but that was rare. He had left the island to help the occasional new arrival relocate, but that was even rarer. Most days he dealt with random drunks or petty theft and that was about it. Killings almost never happened. Ever. The natives knew it and appreciated it. They didn’t always know what went in to keeping the peace, but they were happy it was kept. The peace was kept and set and that was usually enough to keep everything continuing on the same trajectory. And then something like this had to happen.

Usually his meetings were quick and painless. Either he was there to update them on comings and goings or ask for a hand in solving a problem, or they were there to tell him when they needed something done. This was not a quick or painless meeting.

“Do you know why this island works?”

Vicente was well aware of how things worked on the island and who was directly responsible for it. But he also knew he was going to hear it all again.

“This island works because of the trust given to us from our special inhabitants. They trust me, and in turn I trust you. I gave you this job because I thought I could trust you. I thought you could handle it.”

“I can. I will.” Vicente wondered how the fat one felt when the tall one would say ‘I’ instead of ‘we.’ If it bothered him, he didn’t show it. The silent backer. Maybe he was the leg-breaker of the two and wanted to be left out of these sorts of dealings.

“I expect you will try. But I need better than that.”

“What do you want me to do? Find the guilty party or find a guilty party?”

“The public needs a guilty party. But they can wait a day or two. Make a show of it. Make it loud and make sure everyone knows. Put pressure on whomever you need to put pressure on. Whether you think they were involved or not. I want the public to know you are in control. But don’t take too long. We’ll settle for a guilty party before we settle on no guilty party.”

Vicente nodded. He knew he could do that. This was the easy way out. A simple solution that everyone could smile and nod at and agree that things were solved and over. A simple solution would allow people to go back to their normal and life on the island would continue. But Vicente knew that wouldn’t be all there was to do in the end. In the end, someone who was really guilty was going to have to be found and punished. The public status quo was one thing, but the island status quo required everyone falling in line. Having someone out there that knew they could get away with murder was only going to upset things further along down the road. Vicente knew this and he was smart enough to know ‘The Wealth’ realized this too. Just as he had that thought, the tall one continued speaking.

“I know you’ll do what needs to be done to protect what we have here. But I need something extra. Certain guests of ours have grown complacent. They forget who owns this island. They forget how things are run. They’re letting their old habits resurface and the island will suffer if they are permitted to continue. We don’t need one broken rule by one anonymous person to act as tacit permission, so the rest of them start thinking that they can break rules too. Make sure they all know what is and isn’t acceptable.”

Vicente sighed. This meant he was going to have to head to the southern side of the island with all the private estates. He was going to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations today. More than he wanted to have.

To be continued...