This blog is political satire inspired by Saturday Night Live. All the individuals mentioned are public figures by virtue of their being published authors, bloggers, quoted repeatedly in the media, or public officials.
One
Yucatán Country Club
When Neil Barnes, a dapper Englishman on holiday in Cancún, learned that several ambitious Yucatecans had announced a real estate development unlike anything seen in Mérida, he was intrigued.
He read the paper as soon as could. His Spanish was not great, but he understood that, in Mérida, located at the other end of the peninsula, a major real estate development was moving forward.
The Yucatán Country Club, which would boast a Jack Nicklaus golf course and a Mark Spitz swimming academy, located between Mérida and Progreso, had broken ground.
He read all the newspaper stories he could find. Who were the men responsible for this? They were listed, of course, with accompanying photographs, looking important and of consequence.
But the names meant nothing to him. They were just Spanish names strung out like letters of the alphabet tossed on the floor in a kindergarten class; gibberish. But there they were: Emilio Díaz Castellanos, Roberto Kelleher Vales, Juan Enrique Cámara Solís, Emilio Loret de Mola Gómory and Fernando Mantecón Rojo.
The Yucatán Country Club.
A Jack Nicklaus golf course.
A Mark Spitz swimming academy.
It was Palm Beach rising in the Yucatán, state-of-the-art clubhouses and towers of apartment buildings to rival the Maya pyramids and ceremonial centers.
“These spics are bloody wealthy,” he mumbled to himself, combining American derogatory term with his British expression.
Spending time among so many Americans in Cancún: spics.
But being true to the United Kingdom: bloody.
And he was right: Mérida was a city of bloody wealthy spics.
He hadn’t realized it, of course.
Who the fuck had ever heard of Mérida?
Neil Barnes spent most of his time scamming along the Maya Riviera. There was always something going down in Cancún, which was either a Caribbean paradise if you were a tourist, or it resembled, to residents, the fourth level of hell in Dante’s Inferno: greed.
He thought about the Yucatán Country Club, as he motioned to the waiter for another gin and tonic. And he glanced at his watch; friends from Isla Mujeres—Americans from the Florida Keys—were due shortly for lunch.
Neil Barnes smiled and, from memory, recited Dante’s masterpiece to himself:
… I saw multitudes to every side of me; their howls were loud while, wheeling weights, they used their chests to push. They struck against each other; at that point, each turned around and, wheeling back those weights, cried out: Why do you hoard? Why do you squander?
And he knew the answer: Because he could.
Those Yucatecan spics could go bloody fuck themselves, he thought.
If there was so much money in Mérida that there was a market for Jack Nicklaus golf course, than he, Neil Barnes, with his impeccable English diction, was going to be in on the action.
Then, suddenly, Buck Garrison and Harry Tuttle walked through the door. He put his drink down. He stood to greet his friends.
The men would have a fine meal, Neil Barnes knew, as decadent as if it belonged in the third level of hell: gluttony.
“It’s so bloody good to see the two of you,” he said, all smiles.
Two
Conversations with Penises
Harriet Riggs, a volunteer librarian at the Mérida English Language Library of Scams, was getting out of her car. She had driven over to Evolución, a dog rescue.
She had books for Geriatric Gringa Volunteer, an old American woman who volunteered at this popular dog sanctuary so much that she didn’t have time to pick up books at the Mérida English Library of Scams herself.
As the head volunteer librarian, Harriet Riggs assigned herself these “community outreach” tasks that got her out of the library. She just wanted to get away from all the gringo losers who mistook the library for an adult daycare center, the old retirees having nothing better to do with the end of their days than to loiter around and bitch about the world.
Had she wanted to listen to old fucks loiter and bitch about the world, she would have stayed in the United States!
She walked briskly to the door and entered.
“What’s in the bag,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer asked.
“Dog leashes,” she replied. “A donation.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“Well, I put up a sign at the library asking for people to donate,” Harriet Riggs said. “And some people even went out and bought new ones to donate.”
“Some people don’t know what to do with their Social Security checks, don’t they?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer chuckled.
“They sure as fuck don’t,” the librarian said. “Here.”
“Well, have you seen the sales center?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer asked.
She didn’t have to explain; the entire expat community in Mérida was abuzz over the announcement of a rival country club development to compete with the Yucatán Country Club.
The Yucatán Country Club, after all, was a Mexican project. None of the expats trusted the Mexicans to be able to make anything more complicated than guacamole. They all thought the Yucatán Country Club would be a disaster, with one problem after another—until the project ran out of money and the entire endeavor collapsed.
The excitement—and the smart money—was on the Flamingo Lakes Country Club—a British venture with Canadian know-how behind it.
“Of course I’ve seen it!” Harriet Riggs said. “I went to the reception at their sales offices in the Fiesta Americana. They had the best drinks!”
The Fiesta Americana was located on Avenida Colón and Paseo de Montejo, one of the best hotels in the city. It had a small shopping center on the pedestrian level; the Flamingo Lakes Country Club sales office was located next to the entrance to Sanborns, a popular store and restaurant that attracted a professional crowd.
“What did you think?”
“I was impressed,” Harriet Riggs said, setting down her bag on the table to take out the library books she had brought. “It’s a master-planned community near Telchac Puerto. I saw the architectural designs—it’s an entire little town built around a gorgeous golf course!”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes!” she said, putting down copies of The World is Full of Married Men by Jackie Collins and The Virtues of Selfishness by Ayn Rand on the table. “It’s going to feature a small village with shops, restaurants, a spa, and a fitness center. The golf course is going to be better than anything Jack Nicklaus can design. There’s even going to be running trails and bicycle paths. They said that golf carts will be the preferred mode of transportation.”
“Golf carts? Just like Isla Holbox. It sounds great,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Mexico without the Mexicans.”
“Exactly! It is going to be great!”
“Who’s in charge of that project again?”
“Neil Baines,” Harriet Riggs said. “They say he was knighted by the queen.”
“Wasn’t there some Canadian involved also?”
“Oh, you mean Wolfgang Fitzner,” she replied. “He’s the designer. He’s from Vancouver, or someplace around there.”
“Speaking of Canadians,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, rolling her eyes. “The Countess of Self-Delusion.”
Harriet Riggs looked over and saw Juana La Loca, one of the insufferable Canadian expats in town, walk in. She was carrying a small bag of dog food and began to wander, looking at the locked up little Mexican mongrel dogs with disdain.
“She drops by to adopt a few strays to send to Canada, as if there weren’t enough dogs in Canada as it is,” she said. “She should ship herself back to Canada if she really wanted to rid Mexico of dogs. She’s such a loser, but she manages to find homes for some of these dogs once in a while.”
The women laughed.
The Countess of Self-Delusion looked over, moved her head as starlets of the 1940s were wont to do, and smiled. Geriatric Gringo Volunteer looked away; Harriet Riggs positioned herself so her back faced the Canadian idiot.
“I just don’t know what it is about these women who come down here, go native in a certain way, and think they’re the all,” Harriet Riggs said.
“I know what you mean.”
The women stood up and walked away from the Countess of Self-Delusion.
“I mean, Nancy Anza sucking black Haitian cock and Bette Steinmuller sucking black Cuban cock,” Harriet Riggs said, shaking her hand. “And for all practical purposes, Judy Abbot is sucking black cock because if you take one look at her husband, Juan, well, you just know that one of his grandmothers went down on Kunta Kinte! He probably has more black blood than Obama—and you know that Obama’s mother went down on some serious Kenyan cock!”
“And, then, of course,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, motioning with her eyes. “The Countess of Self-Delusion has gone down on dark meat, too! Her husband’s that insufferable spic, Jorge. He’s self-delusional, too. He walks around thinking he invented tourism to the Yucatán. They’re crazy. Mark my word, someday someone is going to firebomb their stupid tourism school just to shut these fucking losers up!”
The women giggled. Then Geriatric Gringa Volunteer gave Harriet Riggs a stern look.
“What?”
“You know what,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “The rumors. Are they true?”
There was an awkward pause. The women had not noticed it, but Juana La Loca, as was often the case, sensing she was being ignored, had silently slithered away, leaving a bag of dog food by the door, a donation to the dog rescue.
The door made a noise as it closed behind the Countess of Self-Delusion; Geriatric Gringa Volunteer looked over: “I hate it when that bitch leaves her lunch behind!”
The moment of levity cleared the air.
“Yes, it’s true,” Harriet Riggs finally admitted.
“Then tell me what happened!”
“Well, I knew something was up,” Harriet Riggs began. “I wasn’t born this century, you know.”
“Oh, we all knew something was up, just the way all those blabbermouths at the library suddenly went silent.”
“Yes, it was true,” she said. “But it was Daniel Tyrrell who confirmed it when he told others.”
“So it was all a scam, that ‘Conversations with Friends,’ wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t entirely a scam, like most of the scams around town,” Harriet Riggs said. “It was a sleazy entrepreneur making use of the library facilities, well, to facilitate sex hookups.”
“I see,” she said. “In other words, ‘Conversations with Friends’ was really ‘Conversations with Penises,’ right?”
“If you must know, then, yes,” Harriet Riggs confirmed, annoyed. “It was underage prostitution. But why did Daniel have to say as much in writing? What’s wrong with that man?”
“In writing?” said Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, incredulous.
“That stupid asshole sent out an email to the effect that, ‘It was a private “entrepreneur” making use of a public gathering to run his sleazy business. The board of the day did put a quick end to it and appointed coordinators to attend each session and to be aware of this type of thing. I know for a fact there are at least one or two such coordinators at every Monday night session as I was the desk volunteer at those sessions for the past year or so,’” she said. “Can you believe that idiot?”
“So it’s in writing, meaning that it’s contemporaneous evidence,” she said.
“Contemporaneous—and that’s why he’s seen with contempt now,” Harriet Riggs said. “I mean, when expats commit crimes, it’s our responsibility to cover it up and keep it hush-hush. The last thing we want is for Mexican law enforcement to get involved! And to make matters worse, he also implicated others—saying that Bill Engle, Maggie Cárdenas, and Lewie Connor also knew what was going on. He’s an idiot!”
“This might be a job for Helen Shields—you know—to destroy him,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer. “If he brings discredit to the expat community, he will have to be destroyed! That would certainly be a job for Helen Shields—The Cunt of Viciousness!”
“Oh, that fat bitch is useless,” Harriet Riggs said. “Helen Shields has no power. That’s why I wish I could buy a place in the Flamingo Lakes Country Club! Just to get away from these assholes in the Centro Histórico, the bullshit place that it is!”
“How much is it?”
“They’re asking for a $50,000 deposit,” she said. “And you know I don’t have that kind of money.”
“It’s tough, I know,” she said. “Sometimes I count the hours until my Social Security check is deposited!”
“Tell me about it!” Harriet Riggs said. “If I only had the money! I even went to their offices to ask about financing.”
“Aren’t they at the Fiesta Americana?”
“Oh, that’s their sales office, not their business office!”
“Really?”
“Their offices are in Santiago, on Calle 59,” she said. “Right where Calle 59-A begins.”
“Oh, I know that building—a beautiful colonial thing,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“It’s so elegant!” she said. “You walk in and the most gorgeous crystal chandelier greets you. Really a class act!”
“Fifty thousand dollars to get in on the action?”
“You know it,” she said.
“It isn’t a scam, is it?”
“How could it be?” Harriet Riggs said. “Have you met Neil Barnes? It’s like listening to Prince Charles talk about global warming—so confident and self-assured and optimistic about impending doom. Besides.”
“Besides what?”
“That woman with the blog went to check it out,” Harriet Riggs pointed out.
“Woman with the blog?” she asked. “Which blog? Everyone here thinks the world cares about what their blogs.”
“No, the one who’s sensible,” she replied. “The yenta,” Harriet Riggs said.
“Oh, Yucatán Yenta—Beryl Gorbman!”
“Yes, that one!”
“Well, you know, she also goes down on black cock,” Geriatric Gringo Volunteer said, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes, I know,” Harriet Riggs said. “Her husband’s a Negro from the South. I still don’t get this intermingling of the races. Why did we dismantle segregation in the first place? I liked America better when it was like Father Knows Best.”
“Well, yes, the world has changed; Paula Deen learned the consequences of using yesteryear’s terminology the hard way, didn’t she?”
The women laughed.
“Flamingo Lakes Country Club!”
“I can tell you are crazy over the idea of it,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“I was even thinking of . . . Well, you know . . .”
“Identity theft!”
“You said it, sister!” Harriet Riggs said, giggling with delight. “But I’m such a ‘law and order’ gal. My family goes back to Massachusetts, back to the Salem area, if you get my drift.”
“Yes, I remember,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, without missing a beat. “One of your ancestors sent witches to the gallows.”
“Death by hanging. Law and order.”
“Not for nothing, but did you know that every 20 seconds someone’s identity is stolen in the U.S.?” she said. “That doesn’t happen here.”
“I know it’s wrong of me to even consider such a thing, but it is a victimless crime, isn’t it?”
“The average take is around $75,000,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Trust me, I’ve researched this. Not that I’m unhappy and am wanting to leave this fucking hellhole of a Mexican second-tier shithole city. I’m perfectly happy here. I tell that to myself every day, several times a day, in fact.”
“Did you say $75,000?”
“More than what you’d need to be an investor in the Flamingo Lakes Country Club, Harriet.”
“It is a victimless crime, right?”
“Yes, it is,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Or you could just steal some money from the library, right?”
“Oh, are you nuts?”
“Harriet, it’s me you’re talking to!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer protested. “Everyone knows that library is a scofflaw organization. It’s not authorized by Mexican authorities to have public fundraisers—and I know there’s no liquor license for that clandestine cantina in the back. Besides, everyone knows Lewie Connor is a shrew—and a thief. Her books are more cooked than an overdone goose!”
“Don’t say that!” Harriet Riggs said. “We don’t want people to know that about the library’s finances.”
“Oh, so it’s okay for Mexican kids to be sexually assaulted by old fags, but not for word to get out that the library’s books are cooked?”
“Well, let’s be honest,” Harriet Riggs said. “These Mexican kids are poor—dark skin, dark eyes, dark hair. The world doesn’t give a fuck about poor, dark kids. It isn’t as if we were talking about blond, blue-eyed high school cheerleaders being knocked up. It isn’t as if we were talking about kids whose lives have value.”
“I get it,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Look where I am? Trying to find homes for these mongrel dogs nobody wants. And meanwhile, over at Altabrisa, there’s a waiting list for pedigree terriers and poodles. The Mexicans want dogs that can compete in Best in Show; the expats want to rescue street dogs. Polar opposites.”
“That’s exactly right about pedigree: Mexican teenagers are mongrels no one cares about, and that’s all there is to it.”
The women smiled briefly.
“Now, about Identity Theft,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “If I were you, I’d check out those assisted living centers in Pensiones and Itzimná to scope for candidates—old gringos slipping into dementia whose Social Security number, date of birth, mother’s maiden names, and U.S. zip codes you can easily get.”
“Identity Theft.”
“It’s as American as bitching about that half-breed in the White House, Obama,” Geriatric Gringo Volunteer said. “His mother went down on serious Kenyan cock.”
“You’re repeating what I said, my dear,” she said. “Take some lecithin. It’s good for the brain.”
As the women continued their conversation, Helen Shields entered. She, too, adhering to the ritual for gringos showing up at Evolución, was carrying a bag of dog food.
“I can’t stand that woman,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Not only is she a fucking bitch, but all she wants to do is stand around and gossip about people.”
“Oh, I hate that, people with nothing better to do than gossip.”
“So, ‘Conversations with Friends’ was all about old queens sucking Mexican teenage cocks?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteered said, laughing. “Fags following in the footsteps of their fag hags, when it comes to dark meat!”
The women laughed.
Three
Mr. Blue Sky
When he was approached about the Flamingo Lakes Country Club, Wolfgang Fitzner was all on board.
The Canadian drug trafficker—in 1998 authorities in Vancouver, Canada took a dim view of his maritime entrepreneurial activities and busted him for trafficking huge amounts of hashish, somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million—was ready to take on a new venture.
And adventure. And one that took him as fucking faraway from fucking Canada as fucking possible.
Carrying out the largest real estate scam in the history of the Yucatán was just the antidote to sweep away the melancholy Canadian law enforcement had exacted upon his life.
Canada was boring in general. His life in Vancouver was boring in particular. He longed for the blue skies of the tropics. He ached to the warmth of tropical sunshine.
He boarded a Continental Airlines flight from Vancouver to Houston to Mérida and never looked back.
What also prompted Wolfgang Fitzner to embark on another high risk scam was, of course, his immeasurable admiration for the promoter of the scam, Neil Baines.
Americans, the English and Canadians knew, were smitten with English aristocracy. All one had to do was to get a spokesman with an English accent and Americans would rush to buy whatever the peddler was peddling.
Wolfgang Fitzner knew that an Englishman in Mexico selling real estate to Americans would be as easy as a pharmaceutical company selling Halcyon or Viagra to Americans, desperate to ease the burden of their vacuous lives by being properly medicated.
When he arrived at the offices of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club on Calle 59 in the Santiago neighborhood, he was ready.
He had to wait, however. Neil Baines was being interviewed by a local reporter.
The Yucatecans were enthralled by His Lordship’s tales that even Queen Elizabeth II had expressed her fond affection for Mérida, which she had visited when José López Portillo was Mexico’s president. The Yucatecans were smitten with the arrival of this well-connected English aristocrat who met privately with Her Majesty at Balmoral Castle—one with deep pockets and ready to invest in Mérida.
Nobility?
Neil Baines, the 23rd Lord of Blomville, was, in fact, titled nobility, or had been.
Yes, according to the Manorial Society of Great Britain, he had purchased the title at public auction in 1988. He sold it five years later in 1993 when he needed cash.
Americans were blissfully ignorant that the selling and buying of Lordships is a standard practice in the United Kingdom, almost as common as buying and selling used cars is in the United States.
With the local reporter, a few minutes later, out of the way, the men were ready for business.
When they had first met over Skype, they knew they were kindred spirits.
Mérida! Yucatán!
The sun shone proudly and the skies were blue.
The two scoundrels wasted no time and hopped into a jeep to drive to Telchac Puerto so Wolfgang Fitzner could get a lay of the land. ELO’s song, “Mr. Blue Sky,” was playing, a throwback to a different time, soothing in its nostalgia for the scams of yesteryear.
“I must say it’s been easy,” His Lordship said.
“How so?”
“These Mexicans are so amenable in every way,” he said, driving west on Calle 59 and taking a left on Calle 68. “You say inversiones and they become as solicitous as strippers at a club when you wave a hundred-dollar bill in front of them.”
The men laughed. Wolfgang Fitzner got it.
“That’s great, the more gullible local media and officials are, the easier it is to reel in the suckers,” Wolfgang Fitzner said.
“And there are a bloody great number of fools here,” His Lordship replied.
“Hey there, Mr. Blue, we’re so pleased to be with you,” Wolfgang Fitzner sang along with ELO. “Look around, see what you do.”
As they drove past La 68, they went right past one of the bloody fools in town, Ian Arthur.
“See that faggot?”
The Canadian drug trafficker nodded, saying “Yeah.”
“Scotsman, but the man’s a total bender, with a perv edge to him.”
His Lordship waved affably at Ian Arthur, who was walking home after having spent the entire night at a sex club near the Mormon temple.
“He looks like shit,” the Canadian drug trafficker commented.
“When the man’s legless, he goes on the pull,” His Lordship says. “Problem is, he’s into leather sex with rough trade.”
“So he gets roughed up, beaten, and robbed,” Wolfgang Fitzner said.
“Of course. But he’s minted, gormless, but minted,” he said.
“Is he representative of the expat community here?”
“Yes, bloody yes,” His Lordship said.
“In other words, this community is shambolic, as you’d say in London?”
His Lordship smiled. He turned right on Calle 47 on his way to Paseo de Montejo.
He was right about Ian Arthur, a sad, old queer who was well-known to local authorities; he filed occasional police reports when he was tied up, beaten, and robbed by the hustlers he had picked up at the Main Square or on Craigslist. The police had advised him repeatedly that, if he wasn’t a masochist who enjoyed being beating to a pulp, perhaps he should use safe words so his kinky games didn’t get out of hand and land him in the hospital.
“I’ve studied the market here,” His Lordship said. “We need to adopt more American vernacular; Americans don’t understand proper English any longer. We can’t use the Queen’s English; we have to speak like the retards that they become since severing relations in 1776.”
Like most Englishmen, His Lordship still resented the American Revolutionary War, especially since as a direct consequence of that war, America had given the world iced tea.
“I agree,” the Canadian drug trafficker said, although he didn’t really under the British hang-ups about their former, lost colonies.
“I can take care of the Americans and you will take care of the Canadians,” His Lordship announced.
“That works,” Wolfgang Fitzner said, admiring the blue skies over Paseo de Montejo.
The men drove past the Rosas & Xocolate boutique hotel, done up in hot pink.
Lewie Connor was walking down the sidewalk, with four dogs in tow. No one knew how many dogs she and her husband had; neighbors complained their home was now a kennel, but Lewie Connor knew that with $200 pesos—and a smile—she could make any city inspector fuck off.
No one knew Lewie Connor’s husband’s name, he was such a nothing. People were sure he had a name in his passport, but around town he was known as “The Eunuch.” He was the spouse with no balls who did nothing but walk dogs around the neighborhood while Lewie Connor presided over the finances of the Mérida English Library of Scams.
“That’s Lewie Connor, total American chav,” His Lordship said. “She’s not a daft cow like your compatriot Juana La Loca, but Lewie will be useful to us. I promised we’d open a branch of that bullshit library at the country club.”
When Neil Baines said Lewie Connor was an American chav, he meant he was a vulgar piece of white trash the way many Americans from New Jersey are vulgar pieces of white trash. Think Governor Chris Christie vulgar. That’s the level of vulgarity Lewie Connor reached.
“Juana La Loca?” the Canadian drug trafficker asked.
“Juana La Loca,” His Lordship said. “She fancies herself a writer—the way I fancy myself a real estate developer.”
The men laughed, as they headed up Prolongación Paseo de Montejo.
“Vancouver?”
“Precisely,” Neil Baines said. “The woman’s a ponce. She and her husband run a sham tourism school and she’s very active in the International Women’s Club in town.”
“I see,” Wolfgang Fitzner said, thinking about how best to use a fellow Canadian to ingratiate himself into the community.
“It’s a sad little thing, the International Women’s Club,” His Lorship remarked. “The Mexican members are earnest and sincere. The American and Canadian members are know-it-alls who want to bully the Mexican women around. The Mexican ladies want to do things, and the American and Canadian bitches shoot their ideas down.”
“And Juanais the barmy bitch who pontificates over it all,” he commented.
“Bob’s your uncle!” His Lordship said, laughing.
“So the secret is simply to bring up Jher name when talking to a target,” the Canadian drug trafficker said.
“All you have to say is something along the lines, ‘Juana and I are both from Vancouver, and isn’t it a small world, but we grew up a short distance from each other! We were neighbors there without knowing it, and now we’re neighbors here!’” Neil Baines said.
“Got it.”
“She’s off one’s trolley, but we’re here for the full monty,” His Lordship said.
The men continued their conversation.
Wolfgang Fitzner would be introduced as a world-class designer who would lower his fees for the first investors to seize this opportunity at this most opportune moment. There would be lavish parties and ceremonies both at the Fiesta Americana and at their business offices downtown.
His Lordship had hired a local architect—Eduardo Baduy—to bolster their credibility with Yucatecan officials and the public. By the time they arrived in Telchac Puerto, the skies were an even brighter blue and it was gorgeous.
“I didn’t know I’d need shit-kickers,” Wolfgang Fitzner said, referring to cowboy boots to make their way through the overgrown terrain.
“It’s not that bloody bad,” His Lordship said.
“Got darts?” Wolfgang asked, inquiring for a cigarette.
“Here you go.”
The men wandered around down a long, bulldozed double roadway, filled with gravel. It didn’t look like much, other than the kind of images one sees in documentaries about deforestation. Here, however, there was no forest to bulldoze; it was coastal scrub growth.
“The governor,” His Lordship said. “We’re meeting with her. A photo-op with that old slapper will be crucial in marketing.”
Wolfgang Fitzner stood for a long time assessing the landscape before him. He could see hundreds, if not thousands, of American, Canadian, and English fools writing checks for deposits on something that would never be.
“What’s the capitalization?” Wolfgang Fitzner asked, referring to the goal.
“$7,500,000 American dollars,” His Lordship said. “That’s the take.”
Wolfgang Fitzner walked around, said nothing, but quietly nodded his head. The men walked around for a little longer.
“I’m ready for a Double Double,” Wolfgang Fitzner said, a Canadian expression for coffee.
His Lordship said nothing, but smiled. The men got back in the jeep and drove away from the barren, bulldozed landscape.
Across town, even Geriatric Gringa Volunteer was fantasizing about a place of her own in the Flamingo Lakes Country Club. She knew she could never afford it, not even if she packed up all the dogs at Evolución and sold them to China for the annual Lychee and Dog Meat Festival in Yulin in Guangxi province.
Animals Mexicans didn’t want, the Chinese coveted as culinary delicacies. Ironic, wasn’t it?
The old woman was wise enough, however, to know there was something up with the expats in charge of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club.
Not unlike Harriet Riggs, Geriatric Gringa Volunteer had also not been born this century. And she looked up Neil Baines on several London registries, so she knew he was a commoner who had bought a Lordship.
He was not unlike Martha Stewart—a pudgy Polish peasant who had acquired a respectable English name by marrying, and divorcing, a real Anglo-American.
Martha Stewart Gracious Living is the success Martha Kostyra Peasant Advice would never be.
And here, in the Yucatán, the Yucatán Country Club was legit and the Flamingo Lakes Country Club was suspect.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer knew this to be true.
How?
Her gut told her so.
She looked up, and then, suddenly, her guts felt a bit off; Suzanne Larimer, an old, thin, flat-chested woman who could drink a sailor under the table, had just walked in, carrying a small bag of dog food and rosemary clippings from her garden.
She hated that woman.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer knew Suzanne Larimer was a bullshit artist from the moment they first met.
In Mérida it was common for the “expat promotion”—people lying about their past professional achievements before landing on this flat-as-a-pancake peninsula.
The high school janitor in America became a retired high school principal in Mérida. The owner of a knick-knack shop morphed into the former owner of a refined fine arts gallery. And so the bullshit went on and on.
Suzanne Larimer, upon first meeting, claimed to be a retired designer for Gucci. Geriatric Gringa Volunteer smiled and went along with the conceit, but she knew full well that Gucci designed its collections in Paris, not nowhere South Carolina, where Suzanne Larimer lived and worked. She was nothing but a Gucci shop girl selling scarves and purses to Dixieland matrons in the American South.
“Good morning,” Suzanne Larimer said, handing the Evolución volunteer some rosemary. “I got this for you from my garden this morning.”
“Oh, thank you, Suzanne,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “How’s Will?”
Will was Suzanne’s long-suffering husband.
“He’s doing fine, or as well as can be expected.”
“That’s good to hear,” she lied, indifferent to the wretched wench standing before her.
“I have to thank you,” Suzanne said, in her solicitous Southern drawl. “Your advice was just what the doctor ordered.”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“I never would have thought that a little constipation could be cured with something so simple,” Suzanne said. “All this time I was taking Ex-Lax and trying to drink prune juice—which I hate.”
“And the solution is so easy—and holistic!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
Two weeks before, when Suzanne Larimer had complained she wasn’t regular, Geriatric Gringa Volunteer advised her that the perfect solution was to sit on the toilet, reach for some toilet paper, and then blow her nose as hard as she could. Not only would this clear her nasal passages, but he force would push a movement right out of her system.
“It works like wonder!”
“Well, I’m glad you’re no longer full of shit, Suzanne.”
Suzanne Larimer was an unrepentant drunk. She showed up at people’s parties only if there was an open and ample bar. Her husband, being ill to the point of becoming a recluse, meant that Suzanne worked hard to become an accomplished fag hag around town. Otherwise, she’d suffer from terrible social isolation, having to sit at home with nothing to do, except obey her marital vows and take care of her spouse.
That was terrible prospect, wiping an old man’s drool all day long.
The folks at Evolución didn’t really understand why she dropped by so often. It isn’t as if she volunteered to do much, or help them find homes for these unwanted Mexican mongrels.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer suspected it was for the gossip, although this reason was not entirely satisfactory. Suzanne Larimer was fag hag to John Powell, who looked so much like an Afghan hound, that he was called Afghan Boy. If anyone had gossip in this tow, it was that loathsome gossip queen.
“Have you seen the plans for the Flamingo Lakes Country Club?” Suzanne asked.
Her voice grated on her ears. Geriatric Gringa Volunteer knew this old bitch had smoked so many cigarettes in her life, she now sounded like Lucille Ball in old age, as if Lucille Ball were being interviewed by Merv Griffin while gargling marbles.
“Oh, isn’t it spectacular?” she answered. “It certainly looks so much better than anything the Mexicans can hope to do in their Yucatán Country Club thing.”
“You’re right about that,” Suzanne Larimer said, smiling. “I was talking to Will about it. If we weren’t so tied to the community here in the historic center, we’d be ready to go. I know some people have said it reminds them of the Century Village in West Palm Beach or The Villages near Orlando, but as I always say in my gracious Southern way about naysayers, ‘They can go fuck themselves.’”
“Exactly as Scarlett O’Hara would have said so herself!”
The women laughed.
“Lewie Connor said she had been asked about setting up a branch of the library over at Flamingo Lakes, but she didn’t commit,” Suzanne said, with both a Southern lisp and a slight slur.
“Well, I’m glad,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer whispered, wondering if the old drunk was drunk. “It would be the kiss of death. That bitch is from New Jersey, so you know what that means.”
“New Jersey?” Suzanne Larimer said. “She told me she was from the Main Line.”
“Pennsylvania?” the Evolución volunteered said, rolling her eyes. “She’s from a toxic waste dump hundreds of miles east of the Main Line if that bitch is from anywhere!”
“Well, imagine that!” Suzanne said. “A liar! The bitch is a liar!”
The Evolución volunteer rolled her eyes, taking a good hard look at the faux retired Gucci designer from the swamps of South Carolina.
“And a crook!”
“Really?”
“The library’s finances are a sham,” she said. “How else do you think that fat spic, José Martínez was able to get away with emptying the bank account? And that Canadian munchkin, Reg Deneau, used the petty cash as his personal ATM. Everyone knows that!”
Reg Deneau was a short, fat Canadian idiot who had been ridiculed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and embarrassed the entire expat community. No one had yet forgiven that stupid shit.
“Well, I had heard rumors.”
“Rumors, they aren’t!”
Suzanne Larimer smiled and looked upon the face of Geriatric Gringa Volunteer with affection. She counted on her visits to Evolución to find tidbits of gossip to share with Afghan Boy, who had perpetual diarrhea of the mouth when it came to talking about people.
The women continued to chat.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer, however, wasn’t about to tell this Southern drunk that His Lordship bought his title at auction; that information was worth something—and to someone who had something to offer in exchange, not this wreck.
But the talk did return to the Flamingo Lakes Country Club.
“You have such a bubbly personality, Suzanne—”
“—Bubbly like champagne!”
“And prosecco!” she replied as the old fag hag before her smiled, the nicotine buildup around her teeth making her smile look like she had just rinsed her mouth with licorice.
“Well, I know that His Lordship is looking for sales help—and with your wonderful experience at Gucci’s, I thought you should look into helping out with sales,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“Really?”
“Oh, yes! You know everyone and their business offices are just a few blocks from your home in Santiago,” she said. “You could stagger—I mean, walk—to their offices in a few minutes.”
“Do they pay?”
“Sales, means commission,” she pointed out, winking. “And besides, they have lots and lots of parties—with an open bar!”
The magic words to Suzanne Larimer: Open Bar.
“Maybe I should look into it,” Suzanne Larimer said, with confidence.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer didn’t give a fuck about Suzanne Larimer. She just wanted an inside gossip to find out what was going on at the Flamingo Lakes Country Club. She had already unmasked the faux pedigree over which Neil Baines prided himself.
She also had gathered some information on Wolfgang Fitzner, the so-called “designer.” Wolfgang Fitzner was a drug trafficker! And now he was in the Yucatán!
Suzanne Larimer smiled and moved away, walking to see the dogs. Geriatric Gringa Volunteer studied her as she walked away; Suzanne had the demeanor of a woman who was a bit tipsy, the kind of functioning alcoholic who was your best friend when drunk, but didn’t really remember who she was when sober.
Suzanne Larimer fancied herself a dog whisperer; the dogs didn’t.
“You can’t smoke here,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said to Suzanne Larimer who was blowing smoke in the dogs’ faces. “We can’t expose the dogs to second-hand smoke; it’s toxic.”
“Exposing the dogs to your caustic personality is even more toxic, right?” the alcoholic said.
After a few minutes of indifferently petting the dogs, she returned.
“Would you like a dog?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Got more than we need.”
“I’d love to, but I have to think about Will,” she said. “Oh, I wish I could be decisive—like Nancy Anza .”
Nancy Anza was the alcoholic founder of “Mérida Rouge,” a vanity nonprofit. The president, George Ann Huck, went along with the suggestion to hold a news conference to denounce Mérida city government, resulting in a scandal. The women were running jokes among expats, old gringas married to men of color caught up in a brouhaha over their interfering in the internal affairs of Mexico, like neo-colonialist imperialists.
“With all her money, you’d think he have a fancy car. But with all this ‘if you drink, don’t drive’ propaganda, she made a choice and stuck to it,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.”
That’s right. If you can’t drink and drive, fuck driving and stick to drinking,” Suzanne Larimer replied.
“I walked by her house on Calle 66 the day before garbage pickup, and there were more empty bottles of wine curbside than there were at the cantina on the corner,” she said, chuckling. “There will come a time when she drinks with an IV drip!”
The women laughed.
“Tell Silvia Cortés that I think she’s doing a fabulous job, for a spic, with all these mongrels,” Suzanne Larimer said, reaching for an airplane-size bottle of whiskey. “It’s really wonderful.”
“Of course, I will,” she replied as Suzanne drank the entire thing in one gulp.
“I could see myself having a marvelous time in sales, couldn’t you?” she said, looking happy and free.
“You could sell ice cubes to the Inuit!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, mindful to use the politically-correct term for the blubber-eating Eskimo, the short, fat fucks living in frozen wastelands for no sensible reason.
“Is it still illegal to buy handguns in Mexico?” Suzanne asked, looking at all the dogs at the Evolución sanctuary.
“I think so, why?”
“Oh, no reason,” the withered Southern blossom said. “It just entered my mind.”
With that Suzanne Larimer threw a couple of air kisses in the direction of the Evolución volunteer as she walked away.
The Evolución Volunteer threw the rosemary in the garbage.
A few weeks later, the expat community of Mérida—and investors around the world—received the Fall 2009 newsletter from His Lordship and the administration of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club.
It began with a dashing announcement:
“On Friday the 18th of September the President of the company Mr. Neil Baines, met with the Governor of the State Ms. Ivonne Ortega at her offices to update her on progress at Flamingo Lakes Resort. She was delighted to hear of the latest developments at this first class resort, which in spite of adverse conditions due to the downturn of the global economy and the added complication of swine flu, has managed a period of steady growth.”
It continued with breathtaking news:
“Construction of the new Highways Entrance to the resort was discussed and the governor has given full government backing as assistance in this matter. Mr. Baines explained the construction methods and benefits of the new road surface, a process which uses the natural soil mixed with a resin. This allows water to penetrate, is twice the strength of concrete and is roadworthy in twenty-four hours.
The governor was especially interested and impressed by the concept of the El Centro town centre which will be the ‘heart’ of the Flamingo Lakes community. El Centro will offer a market square surrounded by a variety of restaurants, bars, bistros and an exclusive shopping mall with underground parking facilities. The church square with three churches and remembrance ground, a tennis ranch and various other premises will enhance and enable the building of a tight knit community.
Mr. Baines showed the governor photographs of the Platinum Condominium, which is now 80% complete, and will be fully landscaped and ready for occupation by the end of October. Both the interior and exterior painting is underway with the parking lot being cleared and prepared for construction.
Two show houses are also nearing completion, with another six projected for January 2010.”
It concluded on a high note:
“Governor Ortega has always given much assistance to Mr. Baines and the project since she came into office, and has been very supportive of Flamingo Lakes, especially since the development will create in excess of 3,000 jobs for the area and local Mexican people, with employment at every level.”
The newsletter featured several photographs of His Lordship posing with Governor Yvonne Ortega, who never met a scam she didn’t fully endorse.
When Geriatric Gringa Volunteer received the newsletter, she called Harriet Riggs.
“Harriet, now’s the time to act!” she said. “If you’re going to find some old fuck whose identity you can steal, sooner is better than later.”
After all, for Flamingo Lakes Country Club, there was nothing but blue skies.
Four
More, More, More
For Lyle Robertson every day started off with a little disappointment. He knew one day, however, this wouldn’t be the case, but for now, it was.
Why did the day start with a little disappointment?
Because every day, upon waking, he would go to the bathroom to take a piss, then go to the kitchen to turn on the coffeemaker, and finally turn on his computer.
Then he would check the New York Times online to see if Henry Kissinger had died.
And when he didn’t see that unindicted war criminal’s obituary in the New York Times, he was disappointed to be sharing another day on this planet with that sick fuck.
Then Lyle Robertson had coffee and went about his day.
He turned on the television to see Morning Joe on MSNBC. Mika Brzezinski was there, with Joe Scarborough. The two looked more stupid with each passing day. They were talking to frequent contributor, the pompous nonentity Donny Douchebag.
That man had bigger tits than Mika, he thought. And the only reason Mika was there was because of her father; nepotism was alive and well in corporate America, especially for the remarkably untalented.
He looked at Mika and winced; she had the scrawniest legs on television. Her legs were as boney as a giraffe’s and Lyle Robertson couldn’t think what made that woman think she could get away wearing above-the-knee skirts on television.
“Why can’t you wear long pants, you stupid bitch!” he yelled at the television.
He put his coffee down, threw the remote at the wall, walked over and turned off the television.
Henry Kissinger was still alive and Mika Brzezinski was wearing an above-the-knee skirt on national television while Donny Douchebag was flexing his pecs.
Lyle Robertson was so happy to be out of the United States of Fucking America.
Which is not to say that Fucking Americans were avoidable; here in Mérida they were far too many around, ruining the ambiance of the place with all their nation-invading imperialist karma. No wonder Canadian expats were abandoning Mérida and moving to the coastal communities east of Progreso.
He thought it ironic: Americans who fled persecution during the American Revolutionary War ended up north, in Canada. And now Canadians, desperate to escape the American Mafia taking over Mérida’ Centro Histórico, were fleeing north, to Progreso’s coastal communities.
His phone rang. He picked it up.
“Hello, Lyle here,” he said.
“As it should be!” His Lordship said. “I am calling your bloody number, after all.”
Lyle listened as His Lordship chuckled at his own lame joke.
“Have you thought about the dogs?” Lyle Robertson asked.
“Yes, I have and I think it’s a brilliant idea you have there, my good man,” he said. “A bloody good idea.”
“Yes, I know it’s solid.”
“Yes, yes, I do see the value of such an approach,” Neil Baines said. “Several photographs of residents walking their dogs, and the suggestion of a dog sanctuary, might be very appealing for the Americans and Canadians to buy up lots at the resort, eh?”
“Of course,” Lyle Robertson said. “American women love to rescue street dogs and put leashes on them. They practice with street dogs and then move up to their fiancés.”
“Oh, a bloody good one, Lyle!” His Lordship said. “I do love your wicked humor, my good man!”
The men continued to speak.
Lyle Robertson, an Australian who, somehow, ended up in Mérida, would arrange for a photo shoot at the Yucatán Country Club—not at the nonexistent Flamingo Lakes Country Club. They would pass off the Yucatán Country Club as if it were the Flamingo Lakes Country Club in their marketing material, the better to lure in more victims.
At first, His Lordship had suggested going over to Evolución, “adopting” five or six dogs, doing the shoot and then, if Evolución had a no return policy on the mongrels, then they could just shoot the dogs.
Lyle Robertson didn’t like that idea: It would take a great deal of money to get him to shoot five or six dogs out of expediency.
His own idea was to borrow dogs from neighbors for the shoot.
God knew there were enough expats living in the Centro Histórico with dogs in their homes. In fact, dogs had become a cottage industry, with so many “doggie play dates” and “doggie sitting” services all over the place. There was even talk of a dog-friendly restaurant where they would serve dogs a bowl of food so people and the dogs could eat together at the same time.
Even the French weren’t that nuts: a water bowl and a treat was enough. But Americans in Mérida wanted to give their dogs a place at the table, the restaurant table.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said to His Lordship.
“Good mate,” Neil Baines said, affecting Aussie vernacular.
After he hung up, Lyle Robertson showered and had breakfast.
When, a few minutes later, he stepped outside and, as fate would have it, that American thief, Lewie Connor, was walking down Calle 66 with two dogs. Lyle Robertson didn’t know how many dogs that bitch had, but he knew it had to be about half a dozen, not counting her husband.
She had a headset on when he motioned to her, a familiar wave when wanting to engage in conversation someone who is listening to music, oblivious to the world around him or her.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” he asked.
She swooned at his Australian accent. The horny bitch smiled and cocked her head. She thought cocking her head was a prerequisite to getting a cock pressed against her face.
“It really is a tropical paradise here, isn’t it?” she said, smiling, her eyes locking in on the Australian man’s eyes.
“What are you listening to?” he asked; the music was so loud it was slightly audible when she removed the earphones.
“It’s Andrea True Connection,” she said, smiling in a somewhat suggestive way. “I’ll bet it’s before your time.”
Lyle Robertson remembered his grandmother listening to that disco crap; he was familiar enough with it.
“It’s ‘More, More, More,’ isn’t it?” he asked.
“How did you ever know!” Lewie Conner gushed, after a slight gasp of surprise.
“Well, Andrea True Connection was a one-hit wonder, so,” he said.
Lewie Connor didn’t know what a one-hit wonder was.
“She’s my idol,” she said.
He was, at this point, somewhat annoyed at this inane small talk with this American asshole. He needed to cut to the chase.
“Listen, I’m working with the marketing department at Flamingo Lakes Country Club,” he said. “And we’re looking to borrow dogs for a shoot at the development. There’s $500 pesos per dog for a one-day shoot.”
Lewie Connor’s horniness vanished instantly.
How dare this Aussie piece of shit offer her money to borrow her dogs for a commercial shoot? Wasn’t Australia founded as penal colony, meaning Australians were descendants of common criminals?
And the paltry sum of $500 pesos per dog was such an insult; Lewie Connor pilfered more than that from the Mérida English Library of Scams in one day than what he was offering her. This Aussie asshole could go fuck himself as far as she was concerned.
“No, my dogs are not for hire,” she said, with a haughty expression.
Lyle Robertson didn’t really give a fuck about the aged American bitch standing before him. If he couldn’t borrow neighborhood dogs, then he’d just go over to Evolución and get what he needed for his photo shoot—even if it ended in a canine mass killing afterwards.
“Oh, I thought you’d want your beautiful pooches showcased in a marketing campaign,” he said, smiling at the stuck up bitch.
“No, I’m not interested in the commercial exploitation of my nonhuman companions! Why would I be?” Lewie Connor said, putting one earphone back in.
“You do know Andrea True is dead. And you also do know that in life Andrea True was a porn star before she was a singer, you stupid bitch,” Lyle Robertson told the stupid bitch before the second earphone was back in her ear. “You’re idol fucked animals on film for money.”
A silence fell between the two.
Lewie Connor couldn’t think what point Lyle Robertson was making: Weren’t we born to love our pets?
“More! More! More!” she sang. “How do you like it? How do you like it?”
And with that, Lewie Connor sashayed her sorry ass down the sidewalk, three dogs in tow, all on leashes.
Lyle Robertson walked off, got in his car, started the engine and, after running a few errands, he made his way to Evolución to negotiate with Geriatric Gringa Volunteer for the immediate adoption of five dogs.
While he was looking for dogs, His Lordship was on his way to meet another dog, the avaricious Governor Ortega.
He wanted to invite her to a tourism event which would afford another photoshoot with her. He knew the way to this glutton governor’s heart: a taco party at the groundbreaking ceremony for the golf club house.
He would arrange for her to arrive by helicopter, looking like Miss Piggy in a Maya huipil dress, with all manner of embroidered flowers, and she would step off, feet from a stage filled with Yucatecan delicacies amid the adulation of a multitude of potential investors/victims.
When he was escorted into the Governor’s office, Neil Baines was struck by how much, in fact, Yvonne Ortega resembled Miss Piggy, especially when she smiled and her fat cheeks filled up her fat face.
Two pigs, separated at birth.
The meeting, with an effete translator who had hinted he wanted a deal on a lot, went well, especially when tacos de cochinita and tacos de lechón asado were mentioned in the same sentence. That was the way to Yvonne Ortega’s heart, the gluttony of more, more, more.
Yvonne Ortega!
What could one say about her that hadn’t been said—and repented in the confessionals of Catholic churches around town?
She loved His Lordship. She being courted by foreign investors. She loved Flamingo Lakes Country Club—and the tacos laid out in a buffet before her whenever she went to one of their many lavish events.
Of course she agreed to attend a “Pre-Launch” Launch event, conveniently timed with the Maya World Tourism Expo, to be held in September 2009.
She knew the photographs from the “Pre-Launch” Launch would be used in marketing materials to persuade the gullible into making an investment in the scheme, but she didn’t care.
She was nothing but enthusiastic about it all.
Perhaps too enthusiastic?
Some said Neil Baines bribed Yvonne Ortega, giving her a lot of her own in the investment.
Others said this was nonsense.
Whatever the case, Governor Ortega was solicitous to His Lordship, who promised to create more than 3,000 jobs in a part of Yucatán State suffering from high unemployment, especially among the Maya, who were naïve enough to believe they could have middle class lives by doing nothing more sophisticated than balancing baskets of fruit on their head. Balancing baskets of fruit on their heads didn’t pay that well.
As soon as he kissed the Governor’s hand—and told her he reminded her of Queen Victoria when Her Majesty was in her prime—he dashed down the stairs of the Palacio de Gobierno, cell phone in hand.
“How it’s going, old chap?” he asked the Canadian drug trafficker.
“Not as well as I had hoped,” he replied.
“Is that so?” His Lordship commented.
“It turns out that my dropping Juana’s name is a terrible idea,” he said.
He was speaking about Juana, the Countess of Self-Delusion.
“Why should that be?”
“People here hate that bitch,” he said. “They think she’s a pompous phony, a dense woman who living in fantasy land.”
“I see,” Neil Baines said, thinking.
His driver pulled up. His Lordship got into the SUV.
“That woman is toxic—at least for sensible people with money,” Wolfgang Fitzner said. “Do you know what they call her?”
“What?”
“The Empress of Smug Condescension,” the Canadian drug trafficker said.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. “Any suggestions?”
“Well, I was told that the Mérida English Library of Scams was the community center for stupid Americans and Canadians in town,” he said. “That’s worth looking into.”
Unbeknownst to the Canadian drug trafficker, the English scam artist had already looked into the Mérida English Library of Scams.
“Lewie Connor is the person to contact over there,” His Lordship said, the SUV on its way to his offices. “That stupid bitch confuses Words with Friends and Sex with Strangers. Word has it she’s lousy at both.”
“But it’s worth looking into,” Wolfgang Fitzner said. “A library is a perfect cover for enticing suckers.”
Lewie Connor, the subject of conversation between the aristocratic Englishman and the commoner Canadian, was on her way to the Evolución dog sanctuary.
She was late; a cop pulled her over for speeding. She smiled, took out a $200 peso bill, and said, “Para los refrescos, no?”
“For soft drinks, no?”
She smiled. The cop smiled. She winked. The cop let her go.
“Fucking spic made me late,” she said into her cell phone to her husband who was getting ready to take a half dozen dogs for a walk, so they could shit all over the sidewalks the way all the sidewalks in Paris are all smeared in dog feces.
They didn’t call Mérida the “Paris of the West” for nothing.
After she bitched about being pulled over, she sped over to the dog pound.
She was late, indeed.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer, in fact, was wondering why Lewie Connor was tardy. She was as anal about being punctual as she was about controlling the donations that came into the Mérida English Library of Scams.
With no distraction, she had no choice but to endure Suzanne Larimer, who had just arrived.
“Now, aren’t you going to ask me?” Suzanne Larimer said, dropping a bag of dog food on the floor.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer went along to humor the alcoholic.
“What were you doing at the orphanage? You know only American gay men in their late sixties show up there!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer asked, all smiles. “To mentor the fatherless boys.”
“Yeah, right,” Suzanne Larimer cackled. “To mentor the fatherless boys.”
“Isn’t it astounding the way those child-molesters get away with all the shit they do?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, rolling her eyes.
“Well, who cares?” the gravel-voiced alcoholic said. “I don’t.”
“So, how did you end up there?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Suzanne Larimer said, her hoarse voice resonating throughout the compound like low thunder. “All I remember, after my fourth Bloody Mary at brunch, was that someone mentioned how kind of me it was to be so concerned about the little Mexican mongrels.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Do you? Do you see what happened?” she asked. “I left, and when I thought of Mexican mongrels, for some reason, I told the cab driver to go to the orphanage!”
“Of course! It’s a natural mistake,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, wondering what the chances were that a bolt of lightning would strike this old bitch dead. “When you say Mexican mongrels, you could be talking about a dog pound or an orphanage.”
“Thank God! I thought I was losing my mind!” she said, reaching for a travel-size bottle of gin. “Burned up too many brain cells!
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, Suzanne,” she said, handing her a pill from the bottle of Xanax Helen Shields had accidentally left behind. “You’re a case of wine away from burning out your brain.”
“That’s what I tell Will all the time!” Suzanne Larimer said, cackling. “I have it all under control; I’m cases of wines away from having a drinking problem!”
“Here, take another Xanax,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “It will do you a world of good.”
And at that moment, Lewie Connor walked in. Suzanne Larimer looked over, sneered at her rival, turned to Geriatric Gringa Volunteer, and smiled.
“If I stay any longer, I’ll be late for a cocktail party,” she said. “Poolside,” she added, so Lewie Connor would hear. And louder still: “And not just a dunking pool.”
In Mérida’s Centro Histórico expats competed for who had the bigger pool. Poor expats had no pools. Most expats had “dunking pools,” which weren’t big enough for swimming. The privileged expats had pools suitable for swimming—and filling up with white balloons when hosting clandestine fundraisers for scams.
“Well, don’t fall in,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “You might end up being rescued by some faggot—and the last thing you want is mouth to mouth resuscitation from any of the gay fucks in this town! Their mouths are living petri dishes of HIV!”
Suzanne Larimer looked stunned: How dare this old bitch speak the truth!
Lewie Connor chuckled; she found all these old American and Canadian faggots in town to be amusing, pathetic old men in their 60s walking around with their Mexican teenage boyfriends.
“Well, Lewie, is it true?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer asked.
“Is what true?”
“Oh, please,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, sneering. “The sex scandal.”
Lewie Connor was furious at Daniel Tyrrell for spilling the beans.
“Listen to me, you old fuck,” Lewie Connor said. “I’m not saying anything happened, but if something happened, as Harriet Riggs says, then it’s our duty as Americans to cover up for each other. The last thing we want is the Mexicans to realize that something—not that I’m saying something happened—happened to happen!”
“Oh, so it did!”
“Shut up!” Lewie Connor said.
“I will not shut up,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “You’re a piece of lowlife from Jersey! Give me a break!”
“You destitute old woman!”
“Well, I may not be rich,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, “but at least I’m not a thief!”
“What?”
“Oh, I know about how you covered up hush-hush when José Martínez stole $450,000 pesos! And I know that you and Bill Engle and Maggie Cárdenas don’t want anyone to know that ‘Conversations with Friends’ was nothing but prostitution—hooking up old gringos who suck on Viagra as if they were cough drops and then suck the cocks of poor Mexican teenagers so poor they have to prostitute themselves!”
“How dare you say such a thing!”
“Because it’s the truth!”
“Fuck the truth!” she yelled. “Who the fuck wants to know the truth?”
“Well, the truth is that the library is the cesspool of scams and fraud—and now, thanks to your fucking mismanagement—of sex predators hunting down teenagers!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “You liquor them up with that cash bar of yours, and the perverts lose all their inhibitions and stalk innocent teenagers!”
“Shut the fuck up! Now you listen to me, you worthless piece of shit!” she said, fuming. “Nothing happened! Nothing at all happened!”
“Oh, then why does the library pose guards on Monday nights?”
“You listen to me!” Lewie Connor yelled. “Nothing happened! And I don’t have to answer to you! Just like I don’t have to answer to the Mexicans! We are Americans in Mexico! The laws don’t apply to us! They only apply to the Mexicans! Don’t you get that? We can do whatever the fuck we want!”
“And you want to cover up the sex scandal at the library!”
Lewie Connor slapped the Geriatric Gringa Volunteer—and then spat at her.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer was outraged. She stood up, rushed over to one of the cages where the pit bulls were kept and let out a warning: “You get the fuck out of here you fucking cunt before I set this pit bull to tear out your dried out old pussy!”
With that, Lewie Connor started to run for the door. She briefly bumped into Lyle Robertson, who was walking in, but she neither stopped nor did she recognize the Aussie expat.
When she reached her car she sat in the driver’s seat and started to cry. To think that everyone was finding out the truth! To think that her best efforts to cover-up the sexual predations against Mexican teenagers were coming to nothing!
“Fuck Daniel Tyrrell, that fuck!” she swore. “Fuck that little shit!”
She turned on the ignition and then she sped off as Lyle Robertson approached the Geriatric Gringa Volunteer. She was taking a couple of Xanax pills with a Bohemia beer.
“What the fuck do you want, you stupid bloke?” she asked the Australian.
“Excuse me,” he said, laughing. “That bitch rattles everyone, doesn’t she?”
“Lewie Connor is a fucking cunt!”
They shared a laugh, which calmed her down.
They worked out the terms of adopting five dogs. He explained that he might have to return them. She explained that, if he were to make an interesting donation, they would look the other way and take the dogs back.
“Would I get a Recibo Fiscal?” he asked.
Only bona fide nonprofit organizations in Mexico duly authorized by Mexico’s tax authority—the SHCP—can give recibos fiscales.
“I think our solicitation is still being processed,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, lying.
Lyle Robertson knew she was lying: Americans in Mérida who were doing illegal things, including tax evasion, prostitution, and running clandestine guesthouses, always blamed Mexican bureaucracy for not having their papers in order.
“Yes, I know how stupid and slow the Mexicans can be about things,” he said, going along with the lie.
“You know how it is with the Mexicans,” she said, as they began to fill out the paperwork for his adopting the dogs. “The Mexicans are always asking for this and that. It’s a pain in the ass, the fucking bureaucracy in this shithole country. I tell you, when it comes to paper, it’s always more, more, more!”
He smiled as he signed on the dotted line.
“Yes,” the Australian expat said.
“Yes,” she repeated, the Xanax kicking in.
“How do you like it? How do you it?” he softly sang.
Five
A Platinum Investment
Everyone knew the Flamingo Lakes Country Club was a platinum opportunity.
The official Flamingo Lakes Country Club website—www.flamingolakes.com—said so.
It stated that His Lordship, Neil Baines was “the President of Platinum Investment Corporation, which specialises in locating and developing resorts. They do this globally; normally selling once planning has been approved. Neil is so impressed with the potential at Flamingo Lakes that he has decided to break with tradition and develop this site himself. He is the founder and inspiration behind Platinum Yucatán Resorts. His past history includes operating and developing companies involved in leisure and resort development worldwide, but mainly concentrating on Spain, the Bahamas, and the South Americas. Neil has specialized in locating leisure resorts for over 25 years.”
It was great sounding bullshit, wasn’t it?
His Lordship thought so. And so did American and Canadian expats in Mérida.
A visitor to their sales office in the Fiesta Americana hotel would see hundreds of little red flags stuck on the enormous map indicating that those lots had been sold. From the looks of it, hundreds had been sold; hundreds others were “reserved.”
Of course this was bullshit also.
They had only sold 89 lots and only 37 were reserved. But all those flags made the scheme seem real—and hot.
The average down payment on the lot was $32,500 USD and some premium lots were sold with a down payment of $50,000 USD. In all, about $3,850,000 had been collected from buyers and investors. And it had all been promptly wired out of Mexico and into his account in the Cayman Islands, a former British colony and current British tax haven.
His Lordship had placed a few “select” lots on sale with some of the local realtors—most of whom were American expats buying and selling real estate in Mexico without a license—to market to their “preferred” clients.
Mérida had the highest per capita of “realtors” to residents—and there were scores of American expat realtors, almost none of whom were licensed. This worked in His Lordship’s favor: he had a small army of desperate Americans on the hunt for investors/victims.
One preferred client was Harriet Riggs, who had dropped by Evolución.
“Didn’t I tell you it was easy?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“Well, you were so right,” she said. “I surprised myself with how easy it was.”
Harriet Riggs had befriended an old, sad Vietnam veteran living in Mérida by the name of Skip Conway. She moved right in to help him with his morning ablutions and daily errands—and she helped herself to his date of birth and Social Security number.
It was when she helped him go through a cache of family photos that the subject of Mr. Conway’s mother’s maiden name came up. He had a bit of difficulty remembering it, but when she saw the newspaper clipping, long faded yellow, from the Chicago Tribune, she confirmed that the his mother’s maiden name was, in fact, Easton.
Armed with that info, and a few clicks at the public computers at the Mérida English Library of Scams, she was all set: Bank of America was only too happy to issue Skip Conway a credit card with a $60,000 spending limit given his excellent credit history.
“You’re not an American librarian in Mexico for no reason!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, laughing.
“And I was able to leverage both the courtesy checks and cash advance to get $40,000, just enough for a premium lot!” Harriet Riggs said, with pride.
“I read that those who put more than $35,000 down payment, they’d get a $10,000 discount on Wolfgang Fitzner’s design service. Is that rumor true?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer wanted to know.
“Let’s just say that Henry Ponce can go fuck himself!” Harriet Riggs laughed.
Henry Ponce was a mediocre Mexican architect all the expats fawned over simply because the closet case was fully bilingual and could communicate properly with the expats he fleeced.
“Good for you!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Just because we’re in Mexico doesn’t mean we have to put up with any substandard thing that little Mexican shit can come up with. Miss Slim Fast is through!”
Behind his back, they called Henry Ponce Miss Slim Fast because that was the only thing he had for lunch; he wanted to remain fit in order to impress all the young men around town, his being married to a (natural-born) woman notwithstanding.
“Well, I have to meet Wolfgang in a little bit at their business offices!” she said, excitedly. “I just came by to drop off these leashes.”
Harriet Riggs emptied a bag of leather collars.
“These look odd,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, picking them up. “Where did you get these?”
“Remember Harold Samuels?”
“That disgusting leather queen?”
“Yes, that one,” she said, cheerily.
“These are his?”
“He died last month,” Harriet Riggs said. “You remember.”
She didn’t remember because Geriatric Gringa Volunteer didn’t follow the random deaths of random fags in this random town; there were just too many.
“I’m sorry, Harriet,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Oh, of course you do!” she protested. “He’s the one who died from autoerotic asphyxiation!”
“Yes!” she said, delighted her memory was sound. “Like David Carradine!”
“Exactly, my dear!” she said. “His family came down and they were getting rid of the stuff in his S&M dungeon. That’s where these leashes came from; the family dropped them off at the library. They thought the leases were for dogs! Little did they realize they were for Mexican sex slaves.”
Not unlike many American homosexuals in Mérida, Harold Samuels had enjoyed a cadre of Mexican sex slaves.
Another American in town, Edward Byrne, a reporter, had railed against sex slavery in Mérida and the burgeoning sex tourism industry. His blog, http://www.MexicoGulfReporter.com, was widely read for exposés about sex scandals, sex murders, and sex trafficking in Mérida. It was a very popular blog among expats in town.
Indeed, Edward Byrne had been banned by the Hennessy’s Bar for Expat Borrachos since he was giving the community a black eye by reporting the truth; Sean Hennessy hoped to make a tradition of hosting receptions for the U.S. Consul and giving Gringa Zapatista a platform to advance her insurgent agenda against the Republic of Mexico.
Sean Hennessy loved American expats; their alcoholism knew no restraint. They might as well be honorary Irishmen as far as he was concerned.
Sean Hennessy and his boyfriend were Irishmen running the most popular pub in town. To the Americans and Canadians, it didn’t matter that Sean Hennessy was Irish: they were of the same mindset. The Irish, after all, were enamored with unending civil war, e.g., Ireland vs. Northern Ireland; Catholic vs. Protestant.
And in Mérida, it was Expat vs. Mexican.
“These things,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, looking at the leather leashes with disdain.
“What?”
“Disease free?”
“Of course, they are!” Harriet Riggs said, chuckling. “I soaked them in hydrogen peroxide for an entire day.”
“Good. I always disinfect everything those perverts touch,” she said.
“Well, I’m excited to see what Wolfgang will come up with!” Harriet Riggs said, with joy in her voice. “My own villa in the Flamingo Lakes Country Club! I can’t wait to tell this fucking Centro Histórico to go fuck itself!”
“You’re going to their business office, right?”
“Yes, in Santiago. Why?”
“I’m just curious if Suzanne Larimer is working for them, that’s all.”
“Well, she was, but she isn’t now,” Harriet Riggs said, almost whispering. “You don’t have to guess why.”
“Alcoholism.”
“She was slurring her words and tripping all over the place,” she said. “They had no choice but to fire her.”
“So she’s back—”
“You guessed it!” Harriet Riggs said with a giggle. “She’s back to selling tickets for the Silent Auction for that scam that thief in San Sebastián is running.”
“Oh, good,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “I’m glad to see her talents at swindling are being put to good use!”
While the women continued to chat, across town His Lordship was getting a headache.
Neil Baines, eager to find out what the fuck was up with Juana La Loca, invited her for tea. Naturally, the Canadian dimwit was all flustered at the invitation by a real Lord to real tea.
She wore her best, or at least what people from Vancouver, Canada happen to think looks good.
Neil Baines had gotten some biscuits and tea from Costco. He had his Mexican cha-cha, a derogatory term for Mexican domestic service, derived from the muchacha, meaning young girl, prep it up and serve it on silver. He also had her follow a recipe for faux cucumber sandwiches—a cucumber, Wonder Bread, and mayonnaise—to serve Mrs. Rosado.
Juana La Loca was delighted at the attention.
“These are exquisite,” she said of the common biscuits baked by exploited Mexican workers at the international conglomerate uptown. “I also adore this tea! It’s so authentically British!”
So did the millions who drank Lipton’s tea, which wasn’t British at all.
“I really do feel like we’re in London!” she said, joyfully. “It’s as if we were at Harrods for afternoon tea!
“Only if it were 98 Fahrenheit in London!” His Lordship said, still acclimating to the hellish heat of the Yucatán in summertime.
“Oh, what a wit you have!” the Canadian dimwit said, slightly bowing her head in deference. “A noble wit, my Lord!”
Then, after an awkward moment, the Countess of Self-Delusion started in a soliloquy of sorts.
“My best friend in the world, Helen Shields, stopped by to see about my new book,” she said. “It was so great to see her prematurely-wrinkled face! For some time malicious gossipmongers have been spreading vicious rumors that we are rivals. They say she is jealous of the control I have over the ladies who are members of the International Women’s Club. They say that I am envious of her skills at seduction through her website, ‘Living in Yucatán.’ They lie by saying we are two raging bitches trying to see how will prevail in this catfight to the death! Nothing could be further from the truth! Lies, lies, lies, so you have to be very careful about the expat liars in Mérida!”
The Countess of Self-Delusion paused to take a deep breath; His Lordship was aghast at the sight of this cretin.
“Why, did you know my amazing aunt, Gisele, was one of the most important and famous of Dutch painters? Of course you know Gisele, whose name is as familiar as that other Dutch painter who is almost as famous as my aunt, Vincent Van Goth. But he was not quite as famous as my aunt. Why, Gisele is as commonly heard as Van Gogh in all proper Dutch homes. In fact, I have a good mind to write a book about her life one fine day!”
His Lordship looked on, nodding his head slightly.
“Well, Helen Shields is also of Dutch ancestry!” she continued. “So you, see, we are family! And we have the perfect friendship! Friendship! Why, it is the perfect friendship that Helen Shields and I have—who, entre nous, has adopted the nom de guerre of Gringa Zapatista in her dedicated participation in the Zapatista Uprising! If she’s ever in a jam, perhaps because she’s been deported for supporting the armed Zapatista insurrection against the legitimate government of Mexico, well, there I am! I want you to know that when other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot! Hot! Hot as a Molotov cocktail thrown at my school in a terrorist attack by that fucking bitch! Lah-dle, ah-dle, ah-dle, dig, dig, dig!”
His Lordship didn’t know what to say—and he feared interrupting the deranged woman.
“I will tell you one thing!” the Countess of Self-Delusion said.
He was afraid of that. He was afraid she wanted to speak further; His Lordship had a headache by now.
“And that would be?”
“When I came down here, there was nothing! It’s true! There was nothing! Jorge and I had to start from the nothingness that was the Yucatán. Apart from the runway where the Pan Am jet landed, there really was nothing here. Why, in fact, one of the first things I thought they needed here was a way of communicating knowledge without speaking. So I thought, perhaps, there could be a way to codify the spoken word, memorialized in script, and it could be taught. That’s when I decided to come up with specific characters to represent specific sounds. And if you strung them along together, you could make words. My inspiration was Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. You remember? ‘When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!’ The same applies to committing the spoken word to paper: I named it writing. And to write, I needed to use characters we had invented in order to string them along together to come up with words anyone could remember! If you recall, Julie Andrews had Do, Re, Mi, and so on. I needed more than that! Jorge agreed with me, probably because he’s an agreeable man and he knows that agreeing with me is what he has to do if he wants his cock sucked. And together we worked very, very hard inventing these characters for our script. And when we were happy, we put all the characters together and called it the alphabet. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve heard of it! It’s world-famous, our alphabet. It has replaced Maya hieroglyphics altogether. That was our contribution to the Yucatán, Your Lordship. We gave the Mexicans here our alphabet to use—and we did it for free! Jorge wanted to charge a royalty for the use of the vowels, but I insisted that we couldn’t charge people to use a, e, i, o, and u. And sometimes y.”
His Lordship wanted this woman out of his office at once. But he was trapped.
“Now, remember, the International Women’s Club is the most important organization in this town,” she said, helping herself to faux cucumber sandwiches. “When the ladies at the IWC throw an event, it becomes front page news! I think our bake sale was covered by Anthony DePalma at the New York Times for the Sunday magazine!”
Now His Lordship understood why Juana La Loca was the Yucatán’s Countess of Self-Delusion.
And at the moment, the buzzer rang on his desk: Wolfgang Fitzner wanted His Lordship to see the gracious Harriet Riggs, who had stopped by the offices. The Canadian drug trafficker wanted to see if Ms. Riggs might be interested in moving ahead and writing a check for the deposit on her new home, the Uxmal Villa model; her initial check for the down payment on her premium lot had cleared.
Of course he would!
And with that, His Lordship stood up, put his finger to his lips, reached for Juana La Loca’s hand, kissed it, and escorted her to the door.
“You do think it was generous of us to let people use vowels without paying a licensing fee, don’t you?” she asked.
“You and your husband are the epitome of humanitarians, Mrs. Rosado,” he said, smiling.
He sighed as he showed her the door, motioning Wolfgang Fitzner to take Ms. Riggs to his office.
As His Lordship effortlessly swindled Harriet Riggs into increasing her investment—“There’s no need to bother the credit card issuer for a cash advance, Ms. Riggs! We can simply max out the credit card!”—over at the Governor’s office, her private line was ringing.
“Governor,” José Ricardo Sepulveda y González, a private banker at Banamex, said. “I need to speak to you.”
“Yes?” Miss Piggy’s Mexican twin replied.
“Yes,” he continued, clearing his throat. “I need to tell you that an interesting check was returned to us for insufficient funds.”
Yvonne Ortega didn’t quite understand; even by Mexicans standards she was stupid.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that someone wrote a check for $50,000 American dollars on their account, when they only had $48,385 American dollars,” he explained. “The check bounced.”
“Why should I give a fuck?” she said, in the most ladylike manner possible.
“Well, Governor Ortega, you’re right about that,” Mr. Sepulveda y González said. “There’s no reason why you should give a fuck—except for two other details.”
“Go on.”
“The check was made payable to the Platinum Investment Company—which is the legal entity for the Flamingo Lakes Country Club—and the bank returning the check is based in the Cayman Islands,” the banker explained.
“And what does that mean?”
“It means that our friends at the Flamingo Lake Country Club are accepting dollar checks they are then depositing in the Cayman Islands—which makes me wonder how they are going to finance their development here in Mexico when the funds are ending up in the Cayman Islands,” he said.
“Can’t they bring the money when the need it?”
“They could, but I doubt that,” the banker said.
“Why?”
“Because it turns out that our bank also has the Platinum Investment Company’s bank account,” he began to explain. “And there are certain patterns that trouble me.”
Yvonne Ortega was stupid, but not too stupid not to know that if Mr. Sepulveda y González was troubled, then something was amiss.
“Explain, José,” she said.
“Since they’ve been in operation, the Platinum Investment Company has made deposits totaling $5,179,000 American dollars,” he began. “And there have been 17 wire transfers to the same bank in the Cayman Islands. Their current balance is a mere $189,000 USD.”
“That’s not a lot of money,” she said.
“No, it isn’t,” the banker said. “Not if you intend to build a residential community, commercial shopping center, and a world-class golf resort.”
“What’s going on, José?”
“It’s a scam. It’s capital flight. It’s a money laundering. It’s the wholesale swindle that will tarnish the reputation of Yucatán State as a place to do business,” he said. “It will make it impossible for us to attract legitimate investments if we allow these kinds of scams to defraud innocent people with impunity.”
Governor Ortega didn’t know what to think: she normally loved impunity when it benefitted her personal finances.
“And to think of how I complimented that fucker about the tacos de cochinita they served at their parties!” she said, furious. “If anyone is going to steal in this state, then that’s me! How dare he think he can out steal me? That foreign fuck!”
The Governor was really furious at the idea that someone else was stealing more than she was.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do, except approach His Lordship for clarification,” he said.
“Is that British fuck even nobility?”
“That, I can’t say,” Mr. Sepulveda y González replied.
“I want to meet with you tomorrow, José,” she said. “I’ll have my personal secretary set it up.”
They hung up.
The Governor didn’t know what to do: Was she being mocked by a fast-talking European scam artist? How many millions had been stolen? How many foreign investors had been swindled? Was José Ricardo right and this was a world-class scam?
If the opposition party—the PAN—found out, it would become a world-class political scandal.
She walked out of her office and addressed her personal assistant: “Call the State Police. I want to fly by helicopter over the Flamingo Lakes Country Club and Telchac Puerto to see for myself the progress at that development.”
“Sí,” said the governor’s aide.
Was the Flamingo Lake Country Club real? Was it all a con as big as a Maya pyramid?
The truth was a helicopter ride away!
Now, if Governor Ortega had a helicopter at her disposal, across town, the Yucatán Yenta did not.
That didn’t preclude the resourceful and precocious private investigator from finding things out on her own. Ever adept, Beryl Gorbman, after confirming that His Lordship was not a Lord at all, had taken upon herself to see what was going on.
She reported on her blog the following, which sent shockwaves throughout Mérida’s expat community: “The first few times I tried to enter Flamingo Lakes, I was rebuffed by security, but one day I struck it lucky and was allowed to drive in and look for the office. There were only two residences built (unoccupied), a makeshift office, which was closed, and a multiple dwelling type high rise, not quite finished. There were no signs of life.”
That is exactly what Governor Ortega and her aides saw as they surveyed the Flamingo Lakes Country Club from the air.
At first, she was confused, however. She saw a pristine, manicured golf course and fountains with spurts of dancing water in artificial lakes. There were scores of residences, villas, and apartment buildings lining the well-constructed and ample roads. Flags flew in the tropical breeze in front of an impressive club house.
It all was beautiful and it all seemed in order. Then her aide pointed out that they were flying over the Yucatán Country Club.
A few minutes later, when they arrived at the Flamingo Lakes Country Club—or where it was supposed to be—there was nothing. They flew in this direction and in that direction and there was nothing but wilderness. It looked as if a category 5 hurricane had swept it out to sea; bulldozed scrub forest, unpaved roads, and a few abandoned structures.
And for some reason, there was a group of dead dogs rotting in the tropical heat, their corpses being picked over by vultures.
The entire place was a mess. Governor Ortega was more livid than Miss Piggy when she thinks Kermit is flirting with another swine.
“Get José on the line!” she ordered as the helicopter headed back to Mérida.
They spoke and determined to meet at the offices of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club at once.
There was lots of explaining to do. His Lordship was well-prepared for the meeting, however.
What José at Banamex did not know, but would soon find out as bankers around town began to talk to each other, was that Platinum Investments had another dollar-denominated bank account—at Bancomer.
And in that other bank account, they had deposited—and withdrawn—an additional $4,560,000 American dollars. That account only had the equivalent of $385,000 American dollars in Mexican pesos for expenses in Mérida.
As they approached Mérida, the governor wanted to speak again with José Ricardo Sepulveda y González. He was on his way to Santiago his secretary told the governor. She then called his private cell number. They spoke at length and he ended the conversation by saying, “Lamentablemente, Mérida se ha convertido en una ciénaga de extranjeros nefastos que han llegado para burlarse de las leyes mexicanas y abusar de la confianza del pueblo mexicano.”
In other words: Expats in Yucatán State are fucking people over.
Her helicopter hovered low as it flew over Santiago on the way to her emergency meeting with Neil Baines.
“For the last time, you fucking retard, I had nothing to do with covering up José Martínez’s theft at the library,” Lewie Connor was yelling into her cell phone.
The sound of a helicopter overhead made it difficult for her to hear. She was walking her dogs around Santiago when the governor’s helicopter whizzed by. She was on the phone with Geriatric Gringa Volunteer. She had wanted to warn Evolución not to let that Aussie fucker adopt any dogs.
“Whatever you do, don’t give a single damn dog to that Aussie asshole,” she yelled.
“Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do you, you stupid bitch!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer shouted back.
“He can’t be trusted!”
“And you can?” was the reply. “I still am furious you covered up José Martínez’s theft!”
“For that last time you senile old woman, that wasn’t my doing!” Lewie C0onnor protested. “The board members at that time who approved the hush-hush of his theft were Chloe Pacheco, Surratt Williams, Carlos Aries, Raymond Branham, and Mitch Keenan! Blame those assholes! Not me! They’re the corrupt fucks who did nothing when that fat spic emptied the library’s bank account!”
“Oh, please!” she said. “You’re as much a worthless piece of human shit as the rest of them!”
And with that, Geriatric Gringa Volunteer hung up.
Lewie Connor, not used to having someone dare cross her, was aghast. Not looking where she was walking, she slipped on a dog turd, fell backwards and landed on the street, right across from La 68.
“God fucking damn that husband of mine,” she cursed. “Wet dog shit! That fucking eunuch!”
The helicopter pilot warned Governor Ortega they couldn’t land on the roof of the business offices of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club; the weight of the helicopter would be too much for the colonial building’s roof to hold.
She didn’t care about landing. She just wanted him to hover low enough for her to jump out.
Her official vehicle—and the state police—were en route, ready to arrest Neil Baines if necessary. José Ricardo Sepulveda y González was already there.
What neither the governor nor the banker knew was that His Lordship had paid off two chachas—one at Banamex and the other at Bancomer—to look out for his interests. It was amazing what handing each one an envelope with $15,000 pesos could do.
José Ricardo Sepulveda y González had not gotten off the phone with Governor Ortega for more than ten minutes before the chacha at Banamex had called His Lordship’s private cell number.
And thus, when Mr. Sepulveda y González arrived at the business offices of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club, Neil Baines was ready.
“It’s a pleasure to see you, old chap,” His Lordship had said, smiling.
He had offered the banker some tea. The banker took one sip, puckered his lips, and thought, “This is tea? Only at McDonald’s.”
It was then that he was convinced His Lordship was a con man; no proper British Lord would serve this crap to a guest.
The men sat in an awkward silence, smiling, with very little small talk. Only when the commotion of the governor’s helicopter overhead broke the silence, did they react.
Neil Baines ordered one of the Mexican Nobodies in his employ to rush to help Governor Ortega down from the roof. The banker stood outside, for a moment amused at the spectacle; Yvonne Ortega was the piece of Mexican trash everyone in town knew to be true.
What kind of lady hopped off a helicopter, landed on the roof, and then walked down a ladder, wind upending the ridiculous Maya sundresses she insisted on wearing, as if she were a peasant herself?
It was an unbelievable sight, watching this bitch being helped off the roof.
Once safely inside His Lordship’s office, and formalities out of the way—“What a delightful surprise!”—these Mexicans were about to be manipulated by this master Englishman in ways they never anticipated.
“I’m delighted you had a chance to see the state of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club, Governor Ortega,” he said, offering her a cup of Lipton tea and biscuits from Costco. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” she asked. “That’s what I want to know! I just got back from the Flamingo Lakes Country Club! There’s nothing! It’s like Oakland, California—there’s no there there!”
“Oh, what a wit!” His Lordship said. “I didn’t know you were familiar with the nonsensical writings of that fat American lesbian, Gertrude Stein!”
“Mexican law is very strict about capital flight,” the banker interrupted.
His Lordship was not amused.
“Yes, Mr. Baines,” Governor Ortega said. “What’s this I hear about the money?”
His Lordship summoned one of his Mexican Nobodies, whispered into his ear—he ordered the young man to rush over to the Santiago market and get a couple dozen tacos de cochinita for the governor—before addressing the matter raised.
“Of course,” His Lordship began, cool as a cucumber. “We had to do this.”
“Do what?” the banker asked.
“We had to wire the money to the Cayman Island for safe keeping,” His Lordship said. “I believe there were 17 or 18 wire transfers.”
“Seventeen,” the banker said.
“Well, there you have it, Governor Ortega,” His Lordship said. “Seventeen.”
“But the money is gone,” the governor said.
“No, it isn’t,” His Lordship replied. “It is safe.”
“Safe from what?” the banker wanted to know.
“Yes, safe from what?” the governor repeated.
The governor and the banker looked at each other.
She was beginning to doubt José Ricardo Sepulveda y González.
Why?
Because Neil Baines, without being prompted, readily admitted the money had been wired to the Cayman Islands. If there was something amiss, why would he admit that the money was no longer in Mexico? He would surely have denied any wrongdoing; only an honest man revealed what she and the banker already knew to be true.
In fact, as far as Yvonne Ortega was concerned, here was a man who had volunteered that the money he raised in Mexico for an investment in Mexico was no longer in Mexico.
Would a scoundrel admit to the truth so willingly?
“The money is safe from the apocalypse!” His Lordship said, with confidence.
“The apocalypse?” the banker asked, incredulous.
A momentary silence fell before the governor’s chubby face lit up: an epiphany had occurred to the Mexican political charlatan.
“Oh, Mr. Baines,” she began. “Are you referring to the Maya calendar? That ridiculous prediction that the world will end on December 31, 2012?”
“What?” the banker asked, looking at the governor.
No one with a working brain cell believed in this apocalyptic nonsense. The banker was stunned that the governor was even bringing it up.
“Listen,” the governor said. “I consulted my astrologer about this Maya prediction. I’m a Sagittarius, so I’m naturally inquisitive! And he told me that in 2018 I will be considered as a leading presidential contender for the PRI! So, obviously, if I’m up for becoming the first (natural-born) female president of Mexico in 2018, the world won’t end in 2012!”
“Of course not!” His Lordship said, realizing for the first time that this woman was a complete idiot. “The world won’t end!”
“I know we have leap years, but we don’t leap over years!” she said. “It isn’t as if we’re going to from 2011 to 2013 and forget about 2012!”
The banker was confounded. His Lordship and the governor were bonding in ways they had never bonded before.
“Of course I’m not referring to that nonsense, about the Maya calendar predicting the end of the world in 2012,” he chuckled.
Another epiphany dawned on Yvonne Ortega and she asked, “Well, what other apocalypse are you protecting the money from?”
“Yes,” the banker said, getting used to the surreal scene unfolding before him.
“Before I explain, I’d like to remind you of the sanctity of the endeavor before us,” he said. “To be entrusted with the public trust is a sacred responsibility.”
If he was going to bring up the belief that public service was something sacred, Governor Ortega was not having any of it. The banker, on the other hand, recognized bullshit when he saw bullshit.
“Sanctity?” the banker asked.
“I am Anglican, of course,” His Lordship pointed out. “But our services are basically second-rate rip-offs of Catholic practices and beliefs. So, in that spirit, think about the conclusion of a Catholic mass.”
The Governor couldn’t remember; it had been years since she attended mass. The banker, for his part, stopped paying attention to the liturgy back in 1982, when Mexican President José López Portillo nationalized the banks and he had lost faith in God.
“Well, how does it end?” His Lordship repeated, realizing he was sitting before two lapsed Catholics. “The priest says, ‘Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.’”
Neither the governor nor the banker could remember well enough to confirm or dispute this assertion.
“Well, guess what?” he asked, taking out a business card from his pocket. “I’m that Lord.”
“What?” Governor Ortega asked, thinking herself as the Mistress of the Yucatán before whom all Maya peasants must bow.
“And what did God our Father do? He sent his Son, our Lord, to serve!” His Lordship said.
Now she was really confused, this notion of public service was going to give her a headache. It was fortunate then, that at that moment, the Mexican Nobody showed up with a tray of tacos de cochinita spread out on a silver platter.
The Mexican banker was losing patience: “What does this have to do with your wiring millions of dollars to the Cayman Islands?”
“I wired the money to the Cayman Islands for safekeeping,” Neil Baines said. “I’m sure that on your helicopter ride this morning you flew over the Yucatán Country Club, right?”
“Yes,” Governor Ortega said, helping herself to four tacos.
“Well, everything you saw there will be destroyed in the apocalypse!” His Lordship said. “I have delayed construction of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club until after the apocalypse! There’s no sense in building anything before the apocalypse if it’s going to be destroyed during the apocalypse. It only makes sense to wait until the apocalypse is over—and then build!”
The governor was thinking about his use of before, during, and after. She licked her fingers before reaching for another couple of tacos and then speaking: “It makes sense, doesn’t it, José?”
The banker was not amused. On top of everything, the office was beginning to stink of over-spiced pork meat.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” the banker finally said. “Apocalypse? What apocalypse?”
“Doubting Thomas!” the English con artist admonished.
“Yes,” the governor queried. “My astrological consultant hasn’t said anything about an apocalypse!”
“Have you heard of Carolina Zalce de la Peña?” Neil Baines asked.
Carolina Zalce de la Peña was a charlatan who had been convincing Italians that the end of the world was at hand and that their salvation lay in the Yucatán. The cult, also in the construction business, was building a vast compound of underground bunkers.
“The Apocalípticos de Xul,” the governor said, making a sign of the cross. “Then, do you believe it?”
His Lordship didn’t say he believed in that other charlatan’s prediction about an impending apocalypse, but he said that he couldn’t entirely discount it, either.
“That’s why I wired the money to the Cayman Islands, Governor Ortega,” he said. “I have a fiduciary duty to our investors to protect their money!”
“Yes, you do,” the governor agreed.
The banker was feeling ill. He wasn’t sure if it was the stench of the now-stale tacos, or of the bullshit this conman was spewing.
“I can’t very well be irresponsible—like those chaps over at the Yucatán Country Club—and go forward to build a golf course, club house, villas, and even high rise apartment buildings, if I first can’t guarantee that it all won’t be destroyed by the apocalypse.”
It made sense to the governor. How could she have doubted Neil Baines, the 23rd Lord of Blomville?
And she was angry at José Ricardo Sepulveda y González, this idiot banker and gossipmonger who had squandered her time.
“When will it be safe?” she asked.
“When I get the go-ahead from Carolina Zalce de la Peña,” His Lordship replied.
The banker stood up, stern, reaching for a handkerchief. He muffled, “I have to go.”
He left abruptly.
The governor and the foreign investor continued to chat for a few more moments. She asked where he had gotten the tacos de cochinita. He promised to set aside a prime lot for her girlfriend. She was now more convinced than ever that the Flamingo Lakes Country Club was a solid, platinum investment in the Yucatán’s future.
She summoned her driver, stood up, and let His Lordship kiss her hand.
Then she asked for the rest of the tacos de cochinita to go.
Six
The Bunkers at Xul
Harriet Riggs was sitting in front of the mirror in her bedroom practicing being interviewed by Anderson Cooper.
“That’s right, Anderson,” she said, starting from the top once more. “When I heard the gun fire, I knew it was an ‘active shooter’ situation! What? What? Oh, yes, it was terrifying! I thought I was going to die! But I didn’t. And now I’m giving my world exclusive to you.”
Mérida was a completely modern city and it was up-to-date in every respect. This was a city, for example, that got as hot as Palm Springs, California—and it had an ice rink, bigger than the one at Rockefeller Center, in one of the city’s shopping malls. That’s how up-to-date the people of Mérida aspired to be.
Harriet Riggs, cognizant of this, knew it was only a matter a time before Mérida, like any major city in the United States, would have a mass shooting of its own. And she knew she wanted to be prepared to be interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper when “active shooter” situations became part of daily life.
She had CNN’s New York number on her speed dial, because one never knew when Mérida’s first American-style mass shooting would take place.
“I heard several gun shots, and I got away from the windows!” she said, practicing her diction. “Things unfolded so quickly. I wasn’t sure how many gunmen there were. All I knew is that I had to drop immediately to the ground and pretended to be dead. That’s how I survived, Anderson, by pretending to be shot dead! The gunmen walked right past me, thinking they had already executed me!”
She was sure her left side was her best.
“Blood?” she said, mocking surprise. “Well, here in Mexico, everyone walks around with their own condiments and hot sauces, since we really get addicted to spices! I took the chipotle hot sauce that I always carry with me and I splattered it on my blouse. I think the ‘active shooters’ thought I had bled to death. But it was only chipotle hot sauce. Do you think Woolite will get the stain out of my blouse?”
She was confident that if she was good enough for Anderson Cooper on late night that she would be interviewed by Matt Lauer on the “Today” show the morning following Mérida’s first imaginary mass shooting.
The reason for her wanting to be interviewed by Anderson Cooper is that Harriet Riggs, like most expats in Mérida, were still angry at Bette Steinmuller and Reg Deneau.
These two mother-fucking losers were so stupid they didn’t know they were being mocked and ridiculed when they were featured, on Comedy Central, as “American health care refugees” who had fled to Mexico for the expressed purpose of taking advantage of Mexico’s nationalized health care system.
Reg Deneau, that short, fat Canadian fuck, even pretended to be an American just so he could be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart!
The consensus around town was that that media whore was so stupid, he didn’t realize correspondent Wyatt Cenac was making fun of his ridiculous excuse for a moustache. American expats in Mérida were horrified to be called “refugees” by Jon Stewart. Because of stupid Bette Steinmuller and Reg Deneau, the expat community of Americans in Mérida had been portrayed as a community of leeches, social burdens on the Mexican people.
“A tragedy like this, Anderson, makes you realize how precious life is!” Harriet Riggs said, making sure her left side faced the imaginary camera. “And my message to everyone back home in America is to hug your children tonight! Hug your babies tight and tell everyone you love just how much you love them! That’s my message from the Yucatán, Anderson! Every single day is a precious gift!”
She was ready to take it from the top for another run through when her cell phone rang.
“Hello?” Harriet Riggs, the survivor of a make-believe mass shooting, said.
“Oh, my God!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“What?” Harriet Riggs said, with a sense of urgency.
“Thank God for Identity Theft!” she said. “Otherwise, it would be so devastating.”
“Identity Theft? Devastating?” Harriet Riggs asked, now fully engaged.
“Why, of course!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“My dear!” Harriet Riggs said, standing up and going to the kitchen for a Xanax and a Bohemia beer. “Will you get it out!”
“You don’t know then,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, relishing being the bearer of terrible news. “Flamingo Lakes Country Club!”
“What?” Harriet Riggs shrieked. “What about Flamingo Lakes Country Club?”
“It’s a scam!”
“What?”
“Neil Baines and Wolfgang Fitzner are gone!”
“What?” Harriet Riggs said, reaching for two more Xanax pills. “You’re joking!”
“No, Harriet!” she said. “They left for Cancún and word is they boarded the first flight to Paris!”
“Paris!”
“Oh, Harriet,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, expressing faux concern. “There’s never going to be a Flamingo Lakes Country Club. It was all an elaborate scam.”
Harriet Riggs sat down, took a gulp of her Bohemia. She didn’t know what she should feel. She felt robbed; her entire investment gone. But she was also relieved it really wasn’t her money. It was Bank of America’s money they had loaned to Skip Conway, the poor fuck.
“How can this be?”
“I’m so sorry, Harriet,” her friend calling from the dog sanctuary said. “It has to be true. Even the Yucatán Yenta is reporting it. And you know everything that Beryl Gorbman reports on her blog is the truth.”
“Paris,” she asked. “But the sidewalks are smeared in dog shit!”
“They say that the $8 million dollars they took from investors is missing!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, happy she didn’t have any money these scam artists could have stolen from her. “It’s all gone!”
“What am I going to do?” Harriet Riggs said, thinking that she had a good mind to become Mérida’s first mass shooter herself.
If she could, she’d walk right into the business office of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club on Calle 59 and open fire on all those fucking thieves.
“This is terrible!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do to keep this hushed up! Word can’t get out that things like this happen in Mérida! If word did get out, property values for would fall. Who wants to invest in a community of where miscreants can get away with something like this?”
Harriet Riggs opened another Bohemia. She sliced a lime. She didn’t know what to say. After a moment, she was able to go on.
“And to think of all the preparations I made!” she said, finally.
“Like what?”
“Well, you know Skip isn’t doing well,” she said. “So I was reading up on formaldehyde.”
“Formaldehyde?”
“You know,” she said.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer didn’t know.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, dear, I was reading at the library about the last days of Francisco Franco,” Harriet Riggs explained.
“The Spanish dictator?”
“Yes, him,” she said. “It turns out his aides wanted to prolong his life as much as possible, you know, to have more time for a transition.”
“And?”
“Well, basically, at the end he was a zombie, all hooked up and full of medications,” she explained. “So, I thought that in the worst case scenario, I could do the same. If it was good enough for a Spanish dictator, then it certainly was good enough for an American Vietnam War veteran. I thought I could sit Skip up in a wheelchair, and pump him with formaldehyde just to buy a few more days, just long enough to get his fingerprint on the power of attorney, so I could carry one when his time came.”
“Oh, Harriet,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said with disappointment. “Not Social Security fraud!”
It was not uncommon for one American expat to fail to report a death of another American expat on the “DS-2060 Death of an American Citizen Abroad” form to the nearest American Consulate, as required by law. As a result, Social Security checks would continue to be deposited into that dead person’s bank account. It was not unheard for an American expat to be taking the Social Security payments of another, long-dead American expat for years and years before being caught.
All the thief needed was the PIN to access the Social Security payments from any ATM.
“Well, why not?” Harriet Riggs said. “How was I going to furnish my villa?”
While the women continued to discuss the collapse of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club scheme, His Lordship was at Charles de Gaulle airport where he was connecting to a flight to Spain. He was going to visit his money in Gibraltar. As for Wolfgang Nitzner, well, he was on his way to German nudist colony on the outskirts of Pondicherry, India.
At the Governor’s Palace, for her part, Governor Ortega pretended nothing had happened.
It was business as usual. When a reporter asked about the Flamingo Lakes Country Club, the official spokesman said he didn’t even remember what that was that was all about.
Wasn’t it merely a proposal floated around at some point? Had any permits with the land use office been filed at all? Wasn’t the entire matter a speculative thing, something someone had talked about as a good idea—after the unprecedented success of the Yucatán Country Club? And what kind of name was “Flamingo” in the first place? Was the reporter confused with, perhaps, the flamingo sanctuary at the Ría Celestún Biosphere Reserve?
When a couple of reporters cornered the governor, her spokesman rushed over to intervene.
“What do you know about the whereabouts of Neil Baines?” one reporter shouted.
“Where are the missing millions of dollars?” another asked.
“Is it true that the number of investors scammed approached 300?” a third asked.
Governor Ortega feigned confusion, pointing to her ear as if were deaf, shrugging her shoulders.
When an intrepid reporter from the Diario de Yucatán confronted her, the room stood still: “What is your financial relationship with Lord Baines?”
This is when the spokesman intervened.
“Lord who?” he asked, as the governor scurried away.
“Lord Baines,” the reporter repeated.
“Oh, I’m afraid that the only Lord the governor knows is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” he said, laughing.
That ended that press conference.
What concerned Governor Ortega, the spokesman went on, was the potential threat posed by the “Apocalípticos de Xul” cult and the woman leading this End of Times menace: Carolina Zalce de la Peña.
That was the talk of another expat community in Mérida: Europeans arrivistes.
There was shock that scores of Italians were arriving in Mérida. These weren’t normal Italians; these were mentally unhinged Italians.
These Italians believed in the End of Times. These Italians believed the Yucatán was the safest place to be when the world ended. These Italians believed they were chosen to build bunkers that would allow them to survive the end of the world as we know it—the way the ark helped Noah survive the end of the world as he knew it.
These Italians also believed in surrendering their bodies to the sexual needs of their High Priestess of Xul: Carolina Zalce de la Peña.
Mérida’s expat community was familiar with charlatans. One of the most ridiculous ones was Trudy Woodcock.
That old hippie operated Iluminado Tours. These were “new age” tours to the Yucatán where links between the Maya and the lost continent of Atlantis were explained. Or were the Maya one of the lost tribes of Israel? Or were the Maya visited by intergalactic space travelers aboard UFOs who used ancient Maya ceremonial centers as rest stops in their journeys across the universe.
It depended on what each specific group of suckers wanted to believe.
“The Maya were too stupid to build any of these cities,” racist Trudy Woodcock, who depended on the Maya as household help to wash the shit stains out of her old-lady bloomers, was fond of saying. “All you have to do is read Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, and you get it.”
If Governor Ortega was concerned about Mexican charlatan Carolina Zalce de la Peña, Mérida’s expat community had to deal with charlatan Trudy Woodcock.
The two women were kindred spirits, deceiving the willing and misguided for their own personal ends. Carolina Zalce de la Peña aspired to a Jim Jones-style cult; Trudy Woodcock hungered for gravitas, an old woman trying to redeem a squandered life.
To misguided Europeans, Carolina Zalce de la Peña offered easy answers. To the delusional who looked to the Maya with the awe of New Age enthusiasts, Trudy Woodcock offered them fantasy: the Maya were either the descendants of the survivors of Atlantis, or the descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. Or the race of mankind chosen by extraterrestrials who arrived aoard UFOs to colonize the Yucatán.
Trudy Woodcock’s bullshit shifted to suit the client.
“Of course, when the God of Abraham delivered the Jews out of bondage in Egypt he parted the Red Sea,” she said to a man from Boca Raton, Florida. “And when the Red Sea opened up, one of the lost tribes of Israel made their way from Egypt to Yucatán. That’s why this lost tribe of Israel—whose descendants are the Maya—built pyramids. That’s all they knew how to build in their generations of bondage to the pharaohs.”
The gentleman on the other end of the phone, a Jewish Millennial and follower of the Kabbalah, a mystic sect disavowed by mainstream Jewish thinkers, was riveted by the prospect that the Maya were Jewish. Judy Woodcock knew how to reel in victims, especially gullible believers in occult and syncretic adaptations of traditional religions; self-delusional New Age losers.
“Can you accommodate a group of six for a private tour?” he asked.
“Of course, and at the sacred site of Kabah, there are inscriptions on the monumental temples that are consistent with Hebrew writing,” she said, still on her cell phone as she walked into Evolución.
There were no inscriptions anywhere in the Maya Culture Area that resembled Hebrew script. And she mentioned Kabah just to get her victim’s imagination going: Kabbala = Kabah.
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer rolled her eyes as she watched Judy Woodcock waddle on over.
“Where’s a bag of dog food?” she asked the tourism charlatan. “This is a dog rescue and we count on donations, okay?”
“Oh, I forgot,” Judy Woodcock said. “I’ll have my chacha bring over two bags of dog food, if that’s alright with you.”
“No condescension, bitch,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“You’re a bitter old woman,” she replied. “When they come, they’ll vaporize the bitter first.”
“When who comes?”
“The extraterrestrials, you idiot!”
“Listen to me, old woman,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, taking out a dog leash. “You can save that bullshit for your suckers, but not me! There was no Atlantis! There was no parting of the Red Sea! And there certainly are no extraterrestrials! Save it for the fools you shake down!”
“You have no faith!” she said. “That’s why you’re stuck spending your life surrounded by dogs!”
“Go fuck yourself,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Now you’re pushing Atlantis because you got in trouble with your UFO bullshit.”
Geriatric Gringa Volunteer was alluding to Trudy Woodcock’s scheme to use drones, outfitted with fluorescent lights, to hover over Maya pyramids at Uxmal. In Mexico, all archaeological sites fall under the jurisdiction of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, known as INAH. And INAH took a dim view of this idiot violating the law by flying drones in archaeological sites; her drones were confiscated, she was fined, and warned that she would be prosecuted if she did it again.
Hence, UFOs were out, but Atlantis and the lost tribes of Israel were in.
“It’s not bullshit,” she lied. “It’s just that recent scientific studies examining Atlantis and the parting of the Red Sea are more conclusive!”
“You’re a fraud, you know it, I know it, and so do Plato and the God of Abraham!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “You should have Scotty beam you over to Mars!”
Judy Woodcock laughed, more amused than angered.
“I might do just that, but before that, are there any Mexican hairless dogs?” she asked.
“We had three, but there’s only one now,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, all business.
“I was afraid of that,” Judy Woodcock said. “The xolo is so popular these days. Everyone wants one of the darling doggies.”
Xolo was short for the Xoloitzcuintle, a hairless breed of dog native to Mexico. Geriatric Gringa Volunteer stood up and walked over to show her the remaining xolo.
“He’s over there,” she said, opening the cage.
“You do know why the xolo is hairless, don’t you?” Judy Woodcock asked.
“No,” came the reply. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“Well, I will,” she began. “But only if you want.”
“Actually, I do want to hear your version of reality, Judy,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, handing the tourism charlatan a dog.
“Well, if you must know the truth,” she began. “When volcanic eruptions heralded the destruction of Atlantis, as people desperately fought to save their lives, they grabbed whatever they could and ran for boats and ships. But the volcanic eruptions were so intense that fire rained down on everything. So you see, the dogs had their fur burned completely off. And when the survivors of Atlantis reached what is now Mexico, their dogs were hairless. And they have remained hairless to this day.”
“Is this the shit you tell you the fools stupid enough to book an Iluminado Tours trip?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t believe most anything that comes out of your mouth, Judy.”
“You have no faith!”
“I may not have faith, but I do have brains, Judy,” she said. “Just like I don’t believe you when you say that your extraterrestrial friends have given you the power to levitate!”
“What?” she said, offended, petting the poor dog. “You don’t believe me?”
“No, you fat pig!” she said. “I don’t think you can levitate!”
“But I can levitate!” the tourism charlatan protested.
“If that’s so, then levitate now!”
“You know I can’t levitate now!” she protested.
“Because you can’t levitate anywhere!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“How dare you question my integrity!” she protested. “You know I can only levitate when I am under the glass pyramid I have in my home! The power of the pyramid is the energy I have to harness and channel!”
The women walked over to the desk to fill out the adoption paperwork.
“Speaking of harnessing the power of bullshit,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer asked. “Is it true that Carolina Zalce de la Peña is building cement bunkers capable of withstanding a nuclear attack? Does she know the Cuban Missile Crisis is over?”
“Yes, she does,” Judy Woodcock said, sarcastically. “How do you know we’re in touch?”
“I just figured that she’s a charlatan targeting Europeans with her ‘End of Days’ bullshit and you’re a charlatan targeting Americans and Canadians with your ‘Iluminado’ bullshit,” she answered. “You belong to the same Chamber of Commerce of Scam Artists!”
“Her vision of apocalypse is just as valid as my channeling of the mystic power of this sacred land,” Judy Woodcok replied.
“In other words—”
“Yes, we communicate via telepathy—if you must know,” Judy Woodcock confirmed.
“So, the bunkers?” she asked as she filled out the form, indicating “Judy Charlatan” for the name of the human adopting the nonhuman companion.
“Yes, Carolina Zalce de la Peña is building a compound consisting multiple bunkers,” she confirmed. “The idea is to protect 2,000 people when the apocalypse comes, and these will be the people who will repopulate the earth.”
“Like Noah and his incestuous family after the flood, right?”
“I wouldn’t say it like that,” she answered.
“Which came first, the flood or the sinking of Atlantis?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer wanted to know.
“What?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Oh, what’s the name you’re giving the xolo?”
“Illuminati, of course,” the tourism charlatan said.
“Of course,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, rolling her eyes.
“Illuminati,” Judy Woodcock repeated. “You know that Erich von Däniken was ahead of his time. His book, Chariots of the Gods, remains a work of monumental importance to humanity. It is the first book to bring to the attention to the public the shocking theory that ancient earth was visited by aliens, and it is here in the Yucatán that evidence of their presence. His world-famous bestseller continues to withstand the test of time, and is the source of inspiration to countless books and films.”
“And it’s all bullshit,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, walking to the refrigerator for a couple of Bohemia beers.
The women continued to talk, sharing the Xanax Helen Shields had left behind and a couple of cold beers.
It was clear that when Neil Baines had purchased large amounts of cement to build a few buildings for show at the Flamingo Lakes Country Club. But there was a mistake and they had delivered 12 times the amount needed. Fortunately, the Apocalípticos de Xul needed exorbitant amount of cement to build their bunkers.
Carolina Zalce de la Peña wanted to build a bunker, four stories deep, to be used as a sex dungeon, one where her Italian zombies would submit to her will until the apocalypse came to pass. And so His Lordship managed to make an additional sum of money by selling, at discount, several tons of cement for which he hadn’t even paid.
It was a business transaction that linked the Flamingo Lakes Country Club and the Apocalípticos de Xul.
While Judy Woodcock and Geriatric Gringa Volunteer wrapped up things, over at the Centro Histórico, Harriet Riggs had an unexpected encounter with George Ann Huck, the leading advocate and practitioner of unchecked neo-colonialism of the American expat community in Mérida.
She presented herself as the avant-garde of modernity, lifting the Yucatecan people from the darkness of the ignorance in which they wallowed. George Ann Huck was an advocate of consciousness-raising through spectacle.
What she believed to be shocking, most people found ridiculous.
Years earlier, to underscore the point that, throughout history the voice of women had been silenced, she stood, on the corner of Calle 60 and Calle 59, on a soapbox, with black duct tape covering her mouth. She did this in front of the Church of the Third Order and she wanted to make a statement on how women, in a patriarchal society, are not heard.
The local newspaper published her photograph and many people laughed at the ridiculous spectacle of his old American woman admonishing Mexican society. George Ann Huck could get away with these stunts because she was married to a Mexican citizen—and she enjoyed more ample rights and privileges than tourists or resident aliens do not.
This afternoon, when Harriet Riggs was walking up Calle 60 to Santa Lucia, she looked over and, sure enough, George Ann Huck was, once again, standing on a soap box in front of the Church of the Third Order.
Only this time, she was dressed in bright pink. At first, Harriet Riggs was not sure of what to make of it; George Ann Huck looked like a pink bumble bee. She was wrapped in a hot pink bodysuit, but had to antennas coming out of her head with bright, pink Styrofoam balls at the end.
She could not walk by without engaging this neo-colonialist pig in conversation.
“What’s this, George Ann,” she said, suppressing a chuckle.
“I’m making a statement!” she replied. “Consciousness-raising!”
“Dressed up as a pink bumble bee?” Harriet said, putting down her bag of books.
“Bumble bee?” George Ann Huck huffed. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, what the fuck are you supposed be?” the volunteer librarian asked. “You’re dressed up like a pink worm and you have those pink antennae coming out of your head!”
“Are you blind, you pathetic excuse for a librarian?” the faux avant-garde proponent of neo-colonialism said.
“Then what the fuck are you supposed to be?”
“These aren’t antennae, you idiot!” George Ann Huck huffed. “These are fallopian tubes—and the Styrofoam ovals represent ovaries!”
“What?”
“I’m dressed up as uterus!”
“Are you nuts?”
“Nuts?” she shouted at the volunteer librarian. “Is that what you think? That I’m nuts?”
“You look ridiculous, and you should be happy that someone is telling you so!”
“I am not nuts!” George Ann Huck shouted. “I’m making a political statement!”
“And how is that?”
“Well, if men are free to parade phalluses all over the place, why can’t women celebrate the uterus?” she said. “Our reproductive organs are no less important!”
“Is that what this is about?” Harriet Riggs said, with disapproval. “It’s a spectacle!”
“Spectacle!” the neo-colonialist protested. “I’ll tell you what a spectacle is!”
“What?”
“The Kanamara Matsuri in Japan, that’s what!”
“What?”
“You know, the Festival of the Steel Phallus!” George Ann Huck said. “For fucking Christ’s sake, aren’t you a fucking librarian? Look it up!”
“Kanamara Matsuri?”
There was a pause. A few Mexican pedestrians also paused, bemused by the spectacle of this woman dressed up like a big, pink bumble bee.
“Yes!” George Ann Huck said. “It’s even in National Geographic. I look forward to the day when they run an article on a festival celebrating female genitalia!”
“That magazine already exists, George Ann,” Harriet Riggs said. “It’s called Playboy!”
“Oh, very fucking funny!”
“You know, if you do a warrior pose, you’ll look like a flamingo!”
“Why can’t you, as a woman, support me, another woman?” George Ann Huck said.
Harriet Riggs looked with pity at this pathetic neo-colonialist idiot.
“How long are you doing this—statement/performance art?”
“Until sunset,” she said, sighing.
“That long?” Harriet Riggs said, surprised. “What about?”
“The call of nature?”
“Yes,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“Well, Helen Shields administered an enema, so I’m all set for #2.”
“And #1?” Harriet Riggs wanted to know.
“Depends.”
“Depends adult diapers? Oh, no, George Ann!” Harriet Riggs said. “If you’re going to get into urine, you’re going down the fetish road of the fags around town!”
“It’s not by choice!” she protested. “I’ll just have to pee for a little bit, not to get off!”
“I can’t believe this spectacle, George Ann,” she said, feeling sorry for this fool. “Is there anything I can do?”
George Ann Huck appreciated her concern. She thought for a moment and then spoke up: “Yes!”
“What?”
“I could use a bite!” she said, pointing across the street.
“For real?” she said.
George Ann Huck, who condemned corporate America and the consumerist culture that was overtaking Mexico, was pointing to … Burger King.
“French fries, please!” George Ann Huck pleaded.
Harriet Riggs crossed the street, bought French fries and returned to feed them to George Ann Huck, whose arms were wrapped tightly to her body in the circular, pink body suit that represented the uterus.
She began to feed the American exhibitionist French fries, one by one. Within a minute, however, George Ann Huck protested that she was feeding her the fries too quickly: “Don’t shove them in my mouth,” she said, with a full mouth.
“I’m not shoving them!” she protested. “But you have to chew faster! I have things to do!”
“Don’t rush me!” George Ann Huck yelled with a full mouth. “I want to savor these French fries, since I normally boycott Burger King.”
“Except when you’re hungry!”
“You fucking cynic!”
“Cynic?” Harriet Riggs yelled. “You’re a fucking ingrate! Instead of thanking me for feeding your fucking face, you have the nerve to criticize me!”
“My chacha could do a better job!”
That was the final straw. For Harriet Riggs to be compared to a Mexican domestic worker was a moral outrage. She threw what remained of the Burger King French fries to the ground and then slapped the neo-colonialist imperialist.
A fight ensued and George Ann Huck, losing her balance, fell off her soap box.
A cop, watching the farce from the vantage point of Hidalgo Park, rushed over, blowing his whistle. The women were pushing and kicking each other. The peace officer came between the women. He helped George Ann Huck to her feet.
Language proved an obstacle and the cop wanted to arrest both women for disorderly conduct. Harriet Riggs was not about to sucked into George Ann Huck’s stupidity. She reached for her purse and, from her wallet, and took out the newspaper clipping depicting George Ann Huck, standing on the same corner, with black duct tape covering her mouth in the previous stunt that was widely ridiculed by the people of Mérida.
“La señora está loca,” Harriet Riggs said, showing the cop the newspaper clipping.
“I am not loca!” George Ann Huck protested.
The cop looked at the picture, looked at George Ann Huck, and looked at Harriet Riggs who mouthed “LOCA.”
“Why are you dressed up as pink bumble bee?” the cop asked.
“I am not a bumble bee!” George Ann Huck yelled, with hysteria in her voice. “I’m a uterus! And these are my fallopian tubes and ovaries!”
“La señora está loca,” Harriet Riggs repeated.
The cop asked Harriet Riggs what she was doing. She reached for her bag and explained, as best she could, that she was the head volunteer librarian at the Mérida English Library of Scams—she omitted “of Scams”—for expediency. Then she showed him the leaflets, which were titled: “Mérida: The Civil and Friendly Expat Community.” She was conducting a workshop for prospective Americans and Canadians contemplating moving to Mérida.
He was flattered and let her go. Then he called for backup—as he wrote George Ann Huck for disorderly conduct and creating a public nuisance.
“La señora está loca,” Harriet Riggs said once more as she walked off, adding, “And she’s always a public nuisance!”
While George Ann Huck fumed, humiliated, and confronted with a citation, waiting for the squad car, a few blocks away, at the Banamex regional headquarters, José Ricardo Sepulveda y González was having a bad morning.
The fallout of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club was impacting foreign investment in Yucatán State. A total of 379 investors had been swindled. Losses approximated $9,276,000 American dollars.
Three other projects had been cancelled and two others postponed. Investors were stunned that this fraud could have occurred—and that Neil Baines and Wolfgang Fitzner walked away with complete impunity.
They also were suspicious about Governor Ortega—and the way she was piling up loan after loan after loan to keep her populist promises to Maya peasants and ensure that her cronies lined their pockets.
There was nothing José Ricardo Sepulveda y González could do but hope that memories were short and that he could cajole investors to go ahead with their projects. He had to figure out how to best leverage the stupendous success of the Yucatán Country Club and convince the hesitant to write those checks.
In his estimate, Yucatán State lost direct new investments totaling $42 million American dollars as a direct consequence of the Flamingo Lakes Country Club and the failure of Governor Ortega to do anything about it.
When Harriet Riggs dropped off her bag at the Mérida English Library of Scams, she hopped in her car and drove straight to Evolución. She wanted to tell Geriatric Gringa Volunteer all about George Ann Huck before it appeared in blogs all over town.
When she reached Evolución, Geriatric Gringa Volunteer was tossing the Kabbala crystals Judy Woodcock had given her for protection in the garbage.
“She has a doctorate,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said when Harriet Riggs told her about George Ann dressing up as a uterus on a public street. “So, she thinks she’s accomplished.”
“That dimwit?” Harriet Riggs said. “A graduate degree? In what, a doctorate of philistine?”
Geriatric Gringa Volunteered choked on her Bohemia beer.
“No, she really does have a doctorate,” she insisted.
“From where?” a doubting librarian wanted to know.
“Central College,” came the reply.
“Central what?” Harriet Riggs asked.
“Central College,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, adding, “Iowa.”
Harriet Riggs started to laugh. She put her hand to her chest as she laughed and laughed. After a moment, she caught her breath: “One step up from writing with crayons at the Cow Pie Community College!”
“That woman is such a pompous ass,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer. “She thinks because she taught Jethro and Ellie Mae to scribble their names in finger paint in Nowhere, America, that she can come down here and pretend to be Harvard scholar!”
“I tell you, all you have to show up in a place where peasants are walking around balancing baskets of mangoes or avocados on their heads, and suddenly you’re like Moses descending with Ten Commandments from on high,” Harriet Riggs said.
“She’s a ridiculous old woman,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “And she’s also gone local, with her Mexican husband.”
“There you see it again: an American going nuts once they go local and start going down on dark meat!” the volunteer librarian said.
“You’re so right!”
“I think her husband her beard,” Harriet Riggs said. “If you ask me, that spikey haircut makes her look like a bull dyke and she’s as ladylike as Roseanne Barr!”
“I always wondered about that, but I don’t give enough of a fuck about that bitch to give it much thought,” she said, handing Harriet Riggs another Bohemia. “Just like Judy Woodcock.”
“That retard?”
“She was here!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“What did she want?”
“The usual,” she began. “Talking about the End of Times and this or that Apocalypse.”
“Same old bullshit from that bitch,” Harriet Riggs said. “Let me guess: No UFOs since the Mexicans blew her drones out of the sky! So now she’s all gung-ho on Atlantis.”
“You got it,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer.
“It’s hard to believe there are enough idiots in the world that fall for her crap.”
“Which reminds me.”
“Oh, now, you’re not going to go there again, are you?” Harriet Riggs protested.
“Well, yes, I am!”
Harriet Riggs rolled her eyes; she would humor her friend.
“I have it here,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “Daniel Tyrrell’s email!”
“Where did you get it?”
“Where?” she asked. “It’s on the Internet! Everyone in the world can see it!”
“Well, what of it?”
“This is what I want to know,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said, reaching for a printout to read. “Daniel stated: ‘It was a private “entrepreneur” making use of a public gathering to run his sleazy business. The board of the day did put a quick end to it and appointed coordinators to attend each session and to be aware of this type of thing. I know for a fact there are at least one or two such coordinators at every Monday night session as I was the desk volunteer at those sessions for the past year or so.’”
“What of it?” Harriet Riggs asked.
“Well, for one, when he talks about an ‘entrepreneur,’ that means a commercial enterprise, and that means making money. That’s what entrepreneurship is all about. And when you’re talking about a commercial, money-making business that involves sex, then that’s prostitution. So Daniel Tyrrell admits that money and sex were exchanged in a commercial enterprise at the sham library, right?”
“I suppose so,” Harriet Riggs said, humoring her friend.
“Good, you agree that prostitution was taking place!” she said, feeling vindicated. “And when you consider that ‘Conversations with Friends’ is a program that attracts Mexican youngsters—most of whom are teenagers who want to practice their English—then you’re talking about underage prostitution. So the Mérida English Library of Scams was participating in the underage prostitution of Mexican youngsters.”
“And your point is?”
“That it’s reprehensible that Americans in Mexico would have this fake library that steals from the public, sells alcohol without a license, has no financial controls to such a point that its director can empty the bank account with impunity, and worse of all—it is engaged in prostitution and sex trafficking of underage Mexican youngsters,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“I still believe it’s our duty to hush-hush things, dear,” she replied. “And how bad can things be? The U.S. Consul, Gregory Segas, doesn’t seem to give a fuck about any of it. I mean, if it were that egregious, he would report it to local authorities, right? That stupid shit knows what’s going on, and he doesn’t care! In my opinion, the U.S. is only too happy to export these perverts to Mexico so they’re not in the U.S. sexually assaulting American children! Believe me, the consul knows everything!”
“Well, how do you know he knows?”
“I know he knows!” Harriet Riggs protested. “The U.S. Consulate supports our annual Chili Cook-Out! The U.S. Consulate practically endorses our activities. We have cook-outs at the consul’s residence. If that doesn’t confer respectability, then what would?”
“Gregory Segas doesn’t know everything going down in town!”
“Well, he certainly knows everything about the library!” the volunteer librarian protested.
“You’re wrong! They don’t know the cantina in the back is clandestine!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer argued. “Or that old gringos are going down on young Mexican ass during the bullshit Monday language classes!”
“Of course they know at the consulate,” Harriet Riggs said. “That’s nothing but a nest of spies, gathering intelligence on drugs, human trafficking with Cubans, money laundering, all the fun things that make this a tropical paradise!”
“It’s an outrage!”
“Besides, Gregory Segas is on his way out,” the volunteer librarian said.
“Oh, really?” she asked. “Do you know who’s replacing him?”
“Well, don’t quote me, but I was told that David Mico was taking his place.”
“How do you know, Harriett?” she asked.
“The State Department isn’t the only one with spies!” she said, laughing. “I have my source at 2201 C Street!”
That was the address of the State Department in Washington, D.C.
“Well, I’m going to make a point of reporting the sex crimes against Mexican children that are taking place at the Mérida English Library of Scams when he gets here!”
“You will not!” Harriet Riggs protested.
“I will too!” she said.
“Besides, if you ask me, he sounds like a ding-dong, anyway,” the volunteer librarian said.
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, from the sound of it, he strikes me as the kind of idiot who would do a ‘meet and greet’ at the Hennessy’s Bar for Expat Borrachos,” Harriet Riggs said.
“That sounds sensible to me,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “I mean, most American expats in town are drunks!”
“They are not!”
“Yes, they are!”
“No, they’re not!” Harriet Riggs said. “For someone who takes Xanax pills all day, you sure are contentious!”
“Oh, alright, maybe I haven’t had my morning Bohemia!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer conceded. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the library is a magnet for good number of American and Canadian pedophiles in pursuit of teenage Mexican ass!”
“Don’t say that!”
“Well, why not?” she wanted to know. “It’s the truth—and it isn’t me just saying so! Have you read anything that Ed Byrne has written about on his website?”
“That’ shit!”
“He’s a Good Samaritan!”
“Fuck Good Samaritans!” Harriet Riggs said.
“He’s a good man who is also outraged that pedophiles are coming to Mérida to engage in sex tourism!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said. “And the people who design, create, host, and promote the library are to blame for this sad state of affairs!”
“This is so tired, my dear,” Harriet Riggs said.
“Tired? All I know is that Daniel Tyrrell, in writing, implicates Bill Engle, Maggie Cárdenas, Lewie Connor, Chloe Pacheco, Surratt Williams, Carlos Aries, Raymond Branham, and Mitch Keenan! They all knew something! They are all implicated in this cover-up!”
“Who cares? No one cares! That’s who cares! Not even the president of the fucking board, Dan Karnes gives a fuck! We’re Americans in Mexico! The laws don’t apply to us! If Dan Karnes doesn’t give a fuck, why should you care?”
“Well, I care! I care about pedigree dogs and mongrel dogs! I care about American children and Mexican children!” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer said.
“You need to take another Xanax!” Harriet Riggs recommended.
“What? I’m not due until dinner, you idiot! “
“You’re being the idiot!”
“Idiot! How dare you say that?”
“Well, shut up about the library already!” Harriet Riggs demanded.
“Library! That isn’t a library! That’s a crime scene!”
“You’re being ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous? All I know is that Daniel Tyrrell admits that prostitution with underage Mexican youngster was taking place! Who is the ‘private entrepreneur’ he talks about? How many of these miscreants were involved in the cover-up? How many youngsters were molested? How long did it go on?” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer insisted.
“If you don’t shut up, Helen Shields will denounce you in her bullshit website!”
“Fuck that bitch!”
“Give it a rest!” Harriet Riggs said.
“I will not!” she said. “If Mérida is only a place where people come to carry out multimillion dollar real estate fraud, come for sex tourism, or lure idiots who believe in the Apocalypse, none of this is going to be good for real estate values!”
“Why should I care?” Harriet Riggs said. “It isn’t as if I’m living in my Uxmal Villa at the Flamingo Lakes Country Club!”
“No, but you’re a librarian at the Mérida English Library of Scams and Pedophilia!”
“Will you shut up!” Harriet Riggs demanded. “How dare you say that?”
“Because it’s the truth!”
“There you go again with the truth!” she protested. “No one wants to know the truth!”
“You have to break out of that bunker mentality of yours, Harriet,” Geriatric Gringa Volunteer asked. “The truth will set you free.”
“No, it won’t,” she replied. “The truth is always an inconvenience.”
The women continued to bicker as only good friends can bicker. That is to say, they were prepared to bicker and bicker until the impending Apocalypse would wipe them both off the face of the earth.
And that was the truth.
romerobooks 