PAYDAY
A Fiery Ending to Fast Paced Intrigue and Adventure in GuatemalaBy O. Lynn JusticeTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2010 O. Lynn Justice
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4269-2223-7Chapter One
Saturday, August 2, 1986 Home Sweet Home
As I remember, we arrived back in Guatemala City around 8 p.m. the night before, an hour later than scheduled. We had flown Delta from Cincinnati to Miami and then Eastern from Miami.
Linda and the seven youngest had left Guatemala the latter part of June to join our oldest daughter, Lynne in Utah. She had just completed her second year at Brigham Young University in Provo. I met the family in Utah in the middle of the second week of July and then all ten of us spent a week and a half visiting friends in Utah and Idaho before flying to the Cincinnati area to spend a like number of days visiting both sides of our families in the tri-state area of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.
When I went to bed, I was so tired that I had planned on sleeping in Saturday morning, but I awoke as usual, a little after 5 a.m. Linda and the kids were still sound asleep. As a farm boy, I had grown accustomed to getting up early to take care of the milking and feeding of the animals before boarding the bus to school. Once gone from the farm, I continued the habit and found the early morning hours important for starting my day right. I could think more clearly and frequently find the solution to a problem that seemed unsolvable the day before. I would plan the day ahead, in the quiet that ceased once the family was up and moving.
The bathroom-closet off of the master bedroom was a unique arrangement for one's private needs. When you first went through the door, there was a semi-enclosed area for the bathroom with all the normal artifacts, including a marble-topped double sink. The tub-shower was anything but standard. It consisted of a sunken rectangular enclosure, made of poured concrete and painted with epoxy pool paint. It had two showerheads and ample room for two adults to submerse in the tub, or shower simultaneously. Down the hall beyond the tub, was the exercise-dressing room, with closets on three sides. The only exercise equipment was a weight machine, so there was plenty of floor space between the closets. The whole complex was in a large room with a high ceiling and ample light and ventilation.
I usually took my shower after jogging, but I decided that I needed a 'waker-upper' that morning, so I jumped in for a quick shower. After the refreshing shower, I dressed in my running suit, but carried my shoes, as I exited quietly through the bedroom into the outer hall.
I headed to the kitchen to prepare my morning cup of mate. I was really looking forward to it, since I had been unable to drink any on Friday due to the full day of travel. I filled the teakettle and started the water to heating. Then I pulled down the plastic container where I kept my mate and filled the mate cup. I had several mate cups, but my favorite was made of vitrified bone-like material.
I hopped up to sit on the counter while my water heated. After being in several large country kitchens during the vacation, I looked around our kitchen and it occurred to me how small our kitchen was. Even after having moved the washer and drier to the outside patio, and putting additional counter in their place, the kitchen was incredibly small for a 4,000 square foot home. It barely met Linda's requirements. Our kitchen like many in Central America were designed for maids, not for the lady of the house.
I picked some flakes of mate off of the counter and dropped them on my tongue. It numbed my tongue a little and I spit it out. Mate is a strong herbal tea, grown mainly in one province in Argentina. The Argentine and Uruguayan gauchos discovered mate, while tending sheep and cattle out it in the Pampas. Mate is a ten-foot tall plant that grows naturally in a small area bordering both countries. The manner of preparing and drinking the tea was still being done in pretty much the same way that the early gauchos did it. They cut up and dried the entire plant, leaves and stems. The resulting dry powder and twigs were placed in a gourd cup, and then wet down with warm water. A few minutes after the first dose of water had soaked in, the tea was ready to be savored. Instead of brewing the tea and straining out the leaves or powder, one strained it while drinking by means of a metal straw with a strainer on the lower end. The gauchos would pour hot water from a thermal container over mate and then sip the tea through the metal strainer-straw while watching over their herds. They learned to drink it with their hard bread, wild berries, jerky and an occasional piece of fresh meat. Sugar was not readily available, so they learned to drink it un-sugared.
I didn't care much for mate the first times I tried it in Argentina. It has a strong flavor and I was used to sweeter drinks. I learned to drink it during a business trip through the Entre Rios Province of Argentina and the interior of Uruguay. A work companion and I were calling on paper mills, sugar companies and similar large industry. We got up early and drove late each day for a week. Frequently during that week the only breakfast we could find was a piece or two of bread. I started out eating bread and drinking water, but soon accepted my companion's offer to share his mate. After a week of sharing, I was hooked. I returned home with a supply of mate and the proper utensils. Years later I read that mate had all kinds of medicinal and health properties, but I figure I drank it for the same reason the Gauchos did. I liked it.
After the water came to a boil, I prepared my mate and carried it to my desk in the library. Let me clarify, the desk wasn't really mine. Every member of the family affectionately called it dad's desk, but that was just for name's sake. I never sat down to it without having to clear a spot to work. With eight children, I was lucky to reserve our bathroom. It was the family desk. In fact everything outside our bedroom was family owned and operated. It was mine that morning, because I was the first one up to claim it. The house was in the back half of a twelve hundred meter lot. The Library was located in the Southeast corner on the second floor. The bookshelves lined two and a half walls. On half of the East wall there was a built in cabinet, which included hook-up for sound equipment. The rest of the room was window. Windows took up half of the room on the East and half on the South. The desk was in that corner, facing the door. From the chair I could look to the right and view East over the front lawn to the mountains. The South window was good for light, but not a great view, since it happened to look into the neighbor's back lawn and some two-story homes beyond that. As I sat down the Sun was just peaking over the mountains. I just sat for a couple of minutes and watched the sun eat up the shadow in the valley. It was a beautiful sight, but so bright that I knew I would have to drop the blinds in order to work.
I dropped the blinds, and then sat down to start sorting through a sizable stack of correspondence and to organize myself for a meeting on Monday with the local representative of my new employer. Yaneth, my secretary, had put them in touch with me while we were in Indiana. I was glad to have something big on the burner. The regular security services we offered provided a nice income, but it took special contracts to pay for our accustomed life style. The summer vacation had caused us to dip into our cash reserves, which I felt better replenishing as soon as possible. We never touched the invested reserve, just the spendable reserve.
It was six thirty and I had worked my way through about one third of the correspondence when I heard Miriam and Rosita, our two maids stirring around in the kitchen. I decided I had better go down and ask them to walk lightly for a while and tell them I would be fixing pancakes for the family, before they started fixing something else. Sometimes I thought that their loud conversations and banging were to let us know that they were on the job.
Both of them greeted me with, "Buenos das, don Orville." The "v" in Orville came out more like 'b'.
"Buenos Das, seoritas. How have you been? How are your children, Rosita?"
Rosita was the number one cook and maid. She was all of 4 foot, 8 inches tall and maybe weighed 99 pounds. She carried a step up stool everywhere she went to work in the house. She was the older of the two maids. She had two children with her worthless drunk of a husband. He worked irregularly, but beat her regularly. When I first found out that he mistreated her, I went to talk to him in spite of her insistence that I not. I was sure that I could instill an adequate dose of fear in him. I merely taught him to be subtler. I was pretty sure he continued to mistreat her. She sometimes wore a sweater when it was warm.
She answered, "Fine, Don Orville. Juanito was sick for a week in July, but he is fine now. We missed you and Doa Linda and the children and are glad you are back in Guatemala."
"We are glad to be back, at least I am glad to get back into a regular routine. We missed you and our other friends and the climate. How is your family, Miriam?"
Miriam was 20 years old and single. I believe she had a boyfriend, but didn't say much about him, at least not to me. Miriam was not tall, probably five foot three or four inches, but she was long and lithe and seldom walked anywhere. Even if she was going to move ten paces, she did it pretty fast. If she were going anywhere outside, she would run it. Miriam was an evangelical, spiritual person and was always telling us she would pray for us. She would tell the children "bless you" for any sneeze, or cough. It wasn't just words for her. You could tell she meant it.
She answered, "Very well, thank you, Don Orville. What shall we fix for breakfast?"
"If the two of you will squeeze some fresh orange juice, set the table and cook some bacon, I will prepare pancakes for the family, but not now. It's only 6:30 a.m. I expect we will eat around 8:00. You could peel some oranges and if any come in before 8:00, give them some orange sections, or a banana. They will love the fresh fruit. How are Husky and Amy?" (Husky was not a Husky, but a German Shepherd and Amy was a White Samoan.)
Rosita said, "That Amy, she digs many holes. Jos is not too happy about filling in holes every week."
"I am not sure what to do about Amy. She doesn't stay very white with all the mud she makes. I will be back at 8:00 to start the pancakes. Try to work quietly 'til then."
Back in the library, I opened a letter from, Hugo Salinas, the President and major shareholder of Quimicas Salinas, and my newest client. A check for $20,000 unfolded with the letter, a pleasant surprise that would pay for a chunk of our past vacation. I read the letter.
Dear Orville: I cannot thank you enough for your help over the past six months. I followed up on your suggestions of further areas to investigate and your intuition, again proved to be on the mark. On behalf of the Board of Directors, my family, and myself I want to reiterate my deep felt gratitude for your effective resolution of our problems. I appreciate your discretion in handling this situation, which could have been so potentially embarrassing to my family. I know that I can count on your continued discretion. Neither words nor money can express my gratitude, but I hope that you will accept the small gift that I have enclosed. Please believe my sincerity as I tell you that if there is ever anything my company or I can do for you or your family, please allow us the opportunity to show our gratitude. I would be very interested in having you regularly available to us for consultation on a retainer basis. Perhaps you could phone me at your earliest convenience and let me invite you to lunch at the club, in order to discuss this matter. Warmest regards,
Hugo Salinas,
I thought: I sure am glad that Don Hugo followed up on my suggestions. He must have caught the other scoundrels that I suspected were working inside the company with his half brother. They had taken the company for three quarters of a million green ones over the past three years, but we had caught them just before they made the big bite. Hugo was right in not trying to solve it through their contracted security firm. Some of their security people had bought into the swindle.
In Guatemala and generally in most of Central and South America, only the poor that could not afford otherwise, voluntarily involved the police in any serious investigative matter. Hugo had found me through some others that I had helped. We discovered that his half brother was deeply involved, which was potentially embarrassing for the whole family. Also some trade secrets were in danger of getting into the hands of the competition. At my suggestion, Hugo quietly got the participants to sign very binding documents in lieu of criminal prosecutions. He retrieved his trade secrets and about half of the money that we could trace to local and overseas accounts. The money that was spent was gone, but the participants were forced to find very low-key employment and watch their step from then on. Hugo's half brother was left administering one of the family's smaller farms up in the Petn. He was granted enough salary to maintain his family, but he no longer had any growth potential.
When Hugo took over managing Quimicas Salinas, it was Cloro Salinas, and it's only product was liquid chlorine. Hugo's parents and uncles were mainly ranchers and farmers that dabbled in manufacturing. The Cloro Salinas had no distribution network and merely delivered Chlorine from the factory door. The family was going to sell the obsolete Cloro Salinas, when Hugo, recently graduated in Chemical Engineering from Texas A & M, begged them to sell him controlling interest. He gave up a small chunk of his inheritance to buy the company and reengineer it. He brought down some of his gringo friends from Texas A & M to help him. They were happy to have a summer in Guatemala before going off to work in big industry, and besides that, a glowing letter from a foreign enterprise for a few months of work abroad never hurt a new graduate's resume.
That was 30 years ago. Hugo converted Cloro Salinas into Quimicas Salinas, S.A. and about four other satellite corporations, of which by 1989, he controlled around 90 percent. By then, the corporate group was manufacturing over a hundred industrial and consumer products and marketing several hundred throughout Central America and southern Mexico with a combined gross of around seventy million dollars annually. In the early 1980's, two of Hugo's fellow graduates from A&M accepted his offer for them to join his management team in Guatemala. Each of them rose to manage a division of Hugo's company. They were both key in uncovering the recent fraud. Good guys! I reflected that they probably also received a bonus. One of them, Geraldo Jimenez, a gringo from Mexican parents, was the one that had set me up with the new client I was to meet with on Monday. I reflected a silent thanks to Geraldo, and thought, 'maybe I can return the favor some day.'
I took pleasure when things worked out well for my clients. Of course, they didn't always! Sometimes my best efforts failed to obtain the objective, since the results depended on my being able to anticipate and outmaneuver the moves of some very astute and determined swindlers. I always tried to explain up front to my clients about all of the possible risks, and I kept them posted as much as possible during every facet of a project. I had three very efficient and trustworthy employees that coordinated my research, my communication, and my travel and they kept track of the whereabouts of key people (including a few enemies) and in general, covered my tail.
Every contract was unique, depending on how and where my client needed me. I had been contracted to rescue victims from kidnappers, save individuals and families from the middle of war zones and natural disasters, escort and protect prominent dignitaries into and through high risk areas, survey and report the security risks in countries of region and a few less glorious tasks. I had worked for individuals, small companies, multinational corporations, and governments and on occasion when a problem needed solving and there is no one contracting me to solve it, I did it for society in general. At that moment in 1986 my company was retained as consultant on security matters by nine organizations.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from PAYDAYby O. Lynn Justice Copyright © 2010 by O. Lynn Justice. Excerpted by permission.
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