The Adventurer's Son(47)
“Pata Lora?” I repeated.
“Yeah, Pata Lora,” he said. “Short for Pata de Lora or “Parrot Foot,” a reference to his limp. He’s a really bad guy. A thief. Into drugs. He comes from a big family on the Osa that’s done well. But he’s the black sheep. Nobody likes him. You can’t trust him. Even his own parents disowned him.”
Lauren interjected. “It’s so like the Fuerza not to even find the hostel where your son stayed. The authorities never really do an investigation quickly or effectively. When our friend Kimberly was murdered a few years ago at her house, they never even found a suspect. We had to hire a private investigator to find out who did it.”
After dinner Thai and I went to our room. It had been a long day. In the darkness and heat, I tossed and turned below a wobbling ceiling fan, trying to reconcile Roman’s last six months of emails with the story of Cody hiring a drug dealer as a guide outside the park.
THE NEXT DAY I told Dondee that we had found Roman’s things at the Corners Hostel. He didn’t care. The prevailing narrative on the Osa that Dondee now pursued involved Pata Lora, the same well-known twenty-seven-year-old thief, sometime miner, bootleg guide, and general Osa ne’er-do-well that Toby had told us about.
In this story, Cody and Pata Lora walked a horse trail from Dos Brazos, through the off-road mining community of Piedras Blancas, then onward to Carate by footpath, a journey entirely outside of Corcovado National Park. From there, they returned by colectivo to Puerto Jiménez, where Cody paid for Pata Lora’s guide services from an ATM there. Then, Pata Lora said, Cody went surfing at Matapalo, the rocky cape with the best break on the Osa. These were details offered by Pata Lora himself to Costa Rica’s version of the FBI—Organismo de Investigación Judicial, or OIJ, pronounced “oh-ee-hota”—who had questioned him about his travels with the gringo. According to Dondee, a nature guide named Roger Mu?oz saw Cody with Pata Lora coming out of the jungle in Carate.
This news was good, if a bit perplexing. Cody Roman was around, just acting strangely. Since Mexico, he’d been quick to answer our emails. But after Peggy had responded to Roman’s email on July 9, calling him the next Thai Verzone, he hadn’t written back. Roman wrote us the day he exited El Petén and La Moskitia. Why hasn’t he emailed us now?
Thai and I headed to Carate at ten, following Dondee in his Cruz Roja Land Cruiser to meet Roger Mu?oz. Driving through Puerto Jiménez, I did a double take every time I saw a young man in short hair and glasses who wore flip-flops and a tank top. They all looked—even to me—like Roman. “The Cruz Roja volunteer was right,” I told Thai. “Every gringo looks the same.”
The potholed road to Carate punched abruptly from Puerto Jiménez’s residences into cattle land. To the east, a gentle surf sparkled in the sun. Ahead, the road passed through a tunnel of fig trees for miles, their fat trunks strung with barbed wire as living fence posts. We bumped along as fast as the corrugated dirt road allowed.
“Thai, thanks for coming down. I wouldn’t have found that hostel without you.”
“Sure, Roman. I’m happy to help. I just hope we find Roman soon.”
“You know, I’m glad everybody seems to think he’s around, but it seems weird that he hasn’t contacted us, or even gone back to get his things at the hostel.”
Thai nodded.
“And if he was headed out surfing, why would he leave all his beach stuff in Forrest’s duffel at the hostel?” It seemed unlikely he’d leave sunscreen and his dive card behind.
“Yeah, and it’s weird he’d hook up with this guy Pata Lora. That doesn’t sound like Roman to me.”
I wanted to believe the Pata Lora story, but it just didn’t fit. Science confronts hypotheses with evidence through the process of disproval and I was more than willing to be proved wrong, especially if it meant Roman was okay.
“Thai, I don’t know what’s going on, but I sure hope these people are right about Roman.”
Chapter 23
Carate
Tamandua, along the road to Carate, July 26, 2014.
Courtesy of the author
Carate is little more than a string of beach camps, locals’ houses, and expensive second homes hidden from view. Parallel to the palm-lined beach, there’s a long paved airstrip where clients arrive for upscale vacations at rustic eco-lodges. Mountains rise steeply above the pounding surf on the beach. Scarlet macaws cruise over the trees. A popular jumping-off point for day hikes into Corcovado National Park, Carate’s colectivo stop is at the end of the road, next to a pulperia that sells drinks and snacks for those waiting to catch a ride back to Puerto Jiménez.
We parked and headed down the beachside path leading to the La Leona Ranger Station at the Corcovado boundary. Slender Roger Mu?oz met us on the trail. In his twenties, his broad smile was open and his short hair and wide ears gave him the clean-cut looks of a guide who likely earned good tips.
“No, I don’t think it was him,” Mu?oz offered in clear English, looking me—the father—up and down while inspecting a recent photo of Roman. “He wasn’t so tall. I wouldn’t have noticed him if he wasn’t with that guy, Pata Lora. Pata Lora is a bad guy, not a real guide.”
Still, Carate was where Roman intended to end his hike. And Roger had seen a gringo with Pata Lora on July 15, when Roman would’ve reached the road, and the day Roger signed La Leona’s logbook. The time and place fit. Just not the gringo.