The Investigation

1

Today, March 21, is the equinox of this year, 1998, one of two days (the other being September 21) when the sun “crosses the line” as the nautical expression goes, meaning that at local noon the sun is directly overhead at the equator. (On those two days, a line drawn from the center of the sun will intersect the earth’s axis at a right angle.) A result of this fleeting alignment of the sun and earth is that at latitudes far enough from the poles that the sun rises and sets, the day and the night are of equal length for that one rotation of the earth. Near the poles, where the sun stays under the horizon for the equinoctial 24 hours of “day/night” (there being no meaningful distinction), the overall ambient brightness of the sky remains constant while the sun does its 360 degree revolution below the rim of the world. Darkness and light are hence in equilibrium on the equinox, everywhere on earth. It is, in a sense, a day of balance. Of symmetry.

The March equinox is also an important astronomical event to the expatriate surfers of Pavones, as it marks the end of the meteorological doldrums of the austral summer and hence the dearth of groundswell-producing storms between Tierra Del Fuego and New Zealand. Although the December through March season has seen fairly consistent surf, it’s been primarily in the shoulder-high class.

The swell this equinoctial morning off the tiny hamlet of Pilon – a six kilometer jounce north of the break in front of the cantina – is clearly on the rise; the healthy multi-wave sets are a solid head high, with occasional boomers half again as big. Sizable though it is, the wave today is even-tempered and forgiving, ideal for my preferred longboard toes-to-the-nose style of wave riding.

As I bob solo in the lineup, there is a geographical perspective at work, another sort of symmetry. Although I cannot see it for the dense copse of palms that lines the most pristine shoreline I’ve ever come across – not a human soul nor a work of man visible as far as the eye can see – just a few hundred yards to the east is the spot where Max Dalton took a bullet in his chest back in November, then lay gasping and crying out for help for maybe a half hour while the squatter mob which had surrounded him jeered and threatened those few neighbors who would help; and if my coterie of informants is to be believed, Gerardo Mora, with help from his son, Esteban, stuck the butt of a machete down the old man’s throat to exacerbate his agony and hasten his demise.

About a mile due north of my location in the lineup of the near-perfect surf I’m riding, in the deep bush beyond the luminous sweep of deserted beach in an area called Langostino, lives Mora himself along with his hellion wife Mayela and their two sons; their isolated thatched hutch is situated on one of the many tracts of land Danny Fowlie bought so many years ago with his ill-gotten gains. Langostino is the stronghold of the most militant of the squatters, Mora their unquestioned master.

The outcome of my three months of digging into the killing of Max Dalton is that I now know most of the truth about what happened that day, November 13, 1997, and why. Although the information I’ve uncovered was derived from a variety of sources, including documents procured through clandestine and/or illegal means, much of what I’ve learned resulted from the trust I’ve gained from Gerardo Mora’s friends and enemies, some of whom put their lives at risk in speaking to me.

I’ve also come to know the truth through many hours spent with Mora, the man himself, in that rough-hewn shanty in the bush.

2

Mayela Mora didn’t trust me, that was plain enough from her darting looks as she made coffee on the woodstove at my first sit-down with Mora back in January, two weeks prior to my 50th birthday. I recalled the of-repeated story of how she had jumped onto the podium and tried to throttle then presidential candidate José Figueras while he was giving a campaign speech; how she’d slapped Billy Clayton around at the gate to Billy’s Sawmill property while Gerardo and the boys chanted for Billy’s demise; and, according to rumor (later verified by a document I uncovered), how she’d put a knife to Max Dalton’s throat and told Max he was a dead man on November 10th, three days before he was gunned down. Short, compact, tightly wound like a coiled spring, Mayela Mora was not the usual diffident down south campesina dueña de la casa.

But Mora himself, at 40 prematurely gray, tall, gaunt, with a direct, penetrating gaze, was affable enough as he answered my initial questions concerning the genesis of the land conflict in Pavones. I’d heard most of it already, if with a norte spin.

“Danny Fowlie was a narcotraficante,” Mora was saying through El Gitano – who had introduced me to Mora as an independent journalist come to tell the squatters’ side of the land conflict story – after some political puffery, including the quote from Oscar Arias Sanchez about “no land without campesinos, no campesinos without land.” “And therefore Fowlie’s property is subject to liberation by the people, for the benefit of the people.”

Mayela plunked coffee down in front of me, along with a bowl of sugar. No spoon. Chilly, narrow eyes. I thanked her.

“Was Fowlie ever convicted of a crime in Costa Rica?” I asked Gerardo, already knowing the answer, as Mayela stalked off.

“No, not convicted. No.”

“Arrested?”

“...No.”

“Was the source of his money ever investigated here?”

“...No.”

“You’re taking the word of a foreign court then.” A gringo court at that, I was thinking.

“Danny Fowlie abandoned his land in 1985, when he went to Mexico,” Mora said, abandoning his initial rationale relating to Danny’s criminal enterprises. “Abandoned land is subject to seizure by the people.”

As I well knew, Fowlie’s property had never been abandoned, not by any stretch, even after Danny went on the run. And those nortes who had left were in fact driven off, violently, by Mora and his ilk. But I kept these thoughts to myself, let Mora go on about Costa Rica’s squatter laws, which give campesinos the right to live on and work land in disuse and, eventually, allow them to gain legal title.

Yeah, I was thinking, having already done some homework, gain title “after 10 years of uncontested, peaceful residency.” Given that the last ten years had seen nearly continuous desolojos (court-directed evictions) – squatters legally removed then, after having signed agreements never to return to Pavones, immediately doing so, to start it all over again... Uncontested residency? And given that the last ten years had seen nearly continuous squatter intimidation and violence in the form of fence cuttings, livestock thefts and mutilations, bombings, dead of night burn-outs, drive-by shootings, machete wielding mobs and, sporadically, full-blown shooting wars... Peaceful residency?

Notwithstanding my friendships with the nonbelligerent of their kind, there isn’t a squatter within 50 miles of here that has a legal right to anything, was what I was thinking, but “There have been nortes or local caretakers living on Fowlie’s land since he left, right?” was all I said, questioningly, meekly even, not wanting to get too Socratic in my initial sit-down with Gerardo Mora. “I mean people who bought Fowlie’s land or were given power to administrate it,” I added, feigning confusion.

“Narcotraficantes,” Mora replied, returning to his previous argument – which he’d dropped when I’d pointed out its essential weakness – thus completing the disputative circle. Narcotraficantes. Everyone is a narcotraficante. Problem is, there’s not a whit of evidence to support the claim that a single Pavones resident is currently diddling any down south drug-related statutes. But I just nodded, took notes.

“Have you ever seen this?” I asked toward the end of that first sit-down, extracting a three-page document from my knapsack.

Mora picked up the papers, scanned them with narrowed eyes; he shook his head. “Max Dalton’s land lease/purchase agreement with one of Fowlie’s corporations,” I said. I reached over and indicated a notated passage. “It expired last May.” Mora blinked at the implications, read on. Read the other notated clause that proved that Max had entered into the agreement knowing full well that squatters were already on the land, had been for several years; they had not invaded it later, as was claimed in the embassy press releases, which also implied that Max owned the disputed land rather than leased it.

I figured that with the brouhaha over Max’s death threatening to turn into a major international incident, any evidence, however indirect, that his land situation was legally shaky would be important to Gerardo Mora. And I was right; Mora was delighted with the document.

“Listen, Gerardo,” I said. “I’m here to get the truth, no matter where that takes me.” El Gitano relayed my words, grinning, leaning forward, digging it. “You help me, I’ll help you.”
Mora looked down at the document I had given him then bored into me with those eyes, dark, intense, unblinking eyes. He reached across the table and grasped my hand in a thumbs-up shake of brotherhood.

From Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise.