Avoiding Prison & Other Noble Vacation Goals (26 page)

Laura Madrigal Vásquez, 32, a petite brunette, Costa Rican, takes the stand. Information comes to light that she denied having a relationship with Francisco Sánchez when in fact they have a four-year-old daughter. Her response: “I had wanted to forget that part of my life.”
Point 1 for the defense.

The first witness is sworn in, female, Costa Rican. “You originally sold the car to Francisco Sánchez and Laura Madrigal?” the defense asks. The witness responds in the affirmative. “Who paid for the vehicle?” The witness points to the accused. “Francisco Sánchez,” she responds.
Defense: 2, Prosecution: 0.

Exhibit 1: vehicle registration. Original owner of auto: Francisco Sánchez. Exhibit 2: Receipt of sale. Signature on receipt: Laura Madrigal Vásquez.
Defense retains the lead.

Closing arguments on the part of the prosecution: a complete summary of the trial, a rehashing of all witnesses' salient points. Finally, in a very strange twist on judicial norms, it is the prosecution, not the defense, that pleads for absolution.

There is nothing left for the defense to add. The accused takes a seat, an expression of tranquillity on his face that had been missing for eight months, twenty-five days.

The next morning, I stood outside the familiar prison gate as I had so many times before. But this time, there were no inspections, no body searches, just a chorus of prisoners chanting Francisco's last name: “Sánchez! Sánchez! Sánchez!”

I saw him in the distance walking toward me and when he spotted me, he began to run. Closer, closer until we were finally touching, his fingers grabbing mine through the fence. He handed the guard his papers, and with everything in order there was nothing left to do but open the gate. And suddenly, he was walking out of the prison, as simple as strolling out of the park.

I had imagined this moment so many times over the past months. I had pictured it so many different ways. I thought I would scream or dance or shout, but I did none of those things. I clung to Francisco, not sure this was real, and I began to cry. At first it was just a few tears. And then I started to sob. I shook in his arms, shedding all the tears that had not come before on the nights I had spent alone, on the mornings I had woken up hopeless, and during every day that we had lost.

And then I realized that there was a whole world out there and Francisco was at my side, and I began to laugh. And then Francisco was laughing too. And, of course, the prisoners staring at us through the fence all got the joke and began to clap and chuckle as well.

I grabbed Francisco's hand. “So, you want to hang out here all day or you wanna get the hell out of here?”

I looked around for the cab driver supposed to be waiting for us, but he had disappeared. We would have to make our way on foot to the bus stop two miles away.

After walking a few hundred yards, Francisco turned to look behind him. We stood in silence for a moment gazing at the place we'd managed to escape.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then he grabbed my hand and we began to run.

Chapter Eight

What's a Fugitive To Do?

Watching the couples that passed us on the streets of San José, I couldn't help but compare my relationship. I had met, dated, and made love to Francisco in a Costa Rican prison. Other men and women went home to fight over who left the top off the shampoo; we went home marveling at what it was like to ride together on the same bus.

I tried to imagine us alongside the couples that competed on
The
Newlywed Game.
Seated between Donna and Skip, Harrison and Danielle, there would be Wendy and Francisco.

“Wendy, for one hundred points, what is Francisco's favorite time of day?”

“Bob, I would have to say . . . the hour they let him spend outside in the courtyard.”

“And the first time you made whoopee, what was the line Francisco used to get you into bed?”

“That would have to be ‘Conjugal visits start at 3 P.M.' ”

There was so much we had yet to learn about each other. We knew the important things—how to survive separation, how to make it through the bad times, how to chop up potatoes using an aluminum can—but we were missing the details. What did Francisco drink in the morning? What kind of socks did he wear? What flavor of ice cream did he like? How did he feel about the possibility of turning into a fugitive?

This last question had been our shared worry during the previous week. Although Francisco had been absolved of the prison breakout and the car situation, there was still the matter of the false passport. In this case, they had only released him on bail.

It was relatively likely that the next trial would be a simple process. Francisco was five days short of having spent nine months in prison, and since he had been cleared of the other charges, this would count as time served toward the fake passport charges. Even better was the fact that if he was granted a sentence of two years or less, since he had no criminal priors, he would be released immediately on bail. A sentence of more than two years and nine months for a fake passport was unheard of.

Nevertheless, the thought of yet another trial weighed down on us. It wasn't just a questionably irrational fear that Francisco would be imprisoned again; it was our frustration with the legal system that by now extended to the country as a whole. It could be another six months before his trial, maybe longer. What were we supposed to do in the meantime? Squeeze into Doña Cloti's one-room apartment and wait for the months to pass? We were already bitter against the place and the people and had yet to figure out a healthy way of dealing with our resentment. (Self-help titles such as
So, You've Just
Spent the Past Nine Months in Prison
simply didn't exist.) We'd been biding our time for so long now. The thought of yet another wait seemed an unreasonable request to make of us.

“If only there was some way to sneak you across the border,” Fabiola said to us in her office, several days after Francisco's release. “It would be the easy way out.”

We gave her counsel serious thought. In a country where justice seemed to be meted out practically at random, even our lawyer was advising breaking the law as a means to guaranteeing Francisco's freedom. This was the way things were done in Costa Rica—the system rarely worked so people stepped outside of it all the time.

After a week of contemplating our options, we had decided on a plan. We would inform Doña Cloti that we had found a bigger place to live. This way, if anyone came asking our whereabouts, she would tell them that we had moved, which would buy us time if someone decided to trail us. Then we would pack all of our belongings (which were very limited in both of our cases) and take a bus to the border of Panama.

The morning of our scheduled departure, as we fit the last of our things into the trunk of a cab, Doña Cloti chatted away excitedly, wanting to know all of the details.

“The apartment. How many bedrooms?”

“Two,” I fibbed.

I could see her imagining the place in her mind. “Is it big?”

“Big enough.”

She wanted more information: Did it have a washing machine? What neighborhood was it in? What color was it?

I didn't have the heart to destroy her fantasy. I knew that in her mind Francisco and I had the perfect life, proven by the fact that he and I always went out together, unlike her husband who ran off with his buddies to chase women and get drunk at night. So I gave her the specifics of the nonexistent place: a two-bedroom, second-story apartment in Rohrmoser that we'd equip with a washer and dryer, maybe even a dog.

Sharing in our joy, she embraced us both. “I'm so happy for you. But we'll sure miss you. Please come back to visit.”

And it was just one more lie to say we would, even though I knew we'd never see her again.

Nervous about taking the heavily transited route, we had the cab driver let us off at a randomly chosen stop outside of the center of town. From there, we took a series of slow moving but anonymous local buses, moving successively from one town to another with the locals instead of joining the tourists on the plush, quick-moving Tica buses.

The day went by in a blur. We passed through so many towns and changed buses so many times that I never was sure where we stopped to spend the night. Was this San Isidro, San Vito, or Salitre? It didn't matter. It was a hotel on the way to Panama and nervously we checked in, reluctant to hand over our passports to the matronly woman at reception, but knowing there wasn't any other way—it was standard practice for guests to have their passport numbers recorded in the hotel ledger.

We spent a restless night, awakened by every little sound. After all, we were inexperienced fugitives who didn't have any idea what to expect. Were there officials tailing us? It was unlikely. Francisco didn't seem significant enough to merit continuous vigil of Doña Cloti's house. But at any point we could be required to show our passports and Francisco's name would surely appear on the list of those not allowed to leave the country. And then there was crossing the border, which we knew would be the toughest part.

Costa Rica is bounded by two other nations. The northern border, which it shares with Nicaragua, is characterized by gross inefficiency, immensely long waits, and a ridiculous quantity of unnecessary paperwork. In fact, Nicaragua is the only country I have ever visited that closes its border for lunch.

At the southern end of Costa Rica, the Panamanian border is a bit more orderly. It's characterized by slightly long waits, a reasonable quantity of unnecessary paperwork, and a moderate amount of inefficiency—all of which was going to fit right in with our plan. Yes, just like any self-respecting fugitives, we had a plan.

“Francisco, what's the plan?” I asked, dragging a suitcase off the bus at the Panamanian border.

“First, you get the exit stamp for Costa Rica.”

“Right.”

“Then you go over to the Panamanian offices and pay to be able to enter the country.”

“Right.”

“Meanwhile . . .”

“Yes?”

“Meanwhile, I sit in that restaurant over there drinking a couple of beers.”

There was something slightly off about this plan.

“Excuse me a moment. This plan involves drinking and I'm not the one who gets to do it?”

“Sorry, darling.”

“So let me get this straight: You lounge about guzzling beers while I have to face immigration officials, slow-moving lines, and paperwork?”

“Right.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you were foolish enough to enter the country with a real passport, silly.”

He had a point. At Central American borders, travelers had to “check in” and “check out” of every country they visited. However, Francisco's Costa Rican entry stamp was in a passport he no longer carried (the fake passport that had been confiscated), meaning that there was no need for him to get an exit stamp. According to the real passport that Francisco now carried, he had never left Panama.

I was going to do the paperwork to check out of Costa Rica and then into Panama, meet Francisco back at the restaurant, and after I'd matched the number of beers he had drunk in my absence, we'd walk across the border together, both of us completely legal in Panama. At least that was the plan.

What I hadn't counted on at the border was one of the most frustrating of Central American laws: the obligatory proof of onward passage. This requirement existed so that those of us who were in the habit of just showing up in a country would have a way to get back home, but this rule did not fit in well with my style of traveling. For instance, just to purchase a round-trip ticket required a great deal of pretrip plan making. Not only did I have to choose a date, an airline, and a seating assignment, I also had to choose a return destination—which meant I would have to know in advance where I was going to end up once I left a country.

Superfluous for most travelers, the requirement to produce a return ticket became even more ludicrous when applied to fugitives because it was nearly a given that they wouldn't be sticking around long. That was certainly the case with Francisco and me: We hadn't chosen Panama because it sounded especially appealing; its most desirable attribute at this point was that it wasn't Costa Rica.

But that was what was holding me up at the Panamanian immigration offices—I didn't have onward passage. I had nonchalantly passed through Central American borders so many times before, yet the only time I desperately needed to get into a country, officials were turning me away because I didn't have the requisite return ticket.

“Sorry, with no onward passage, I can't let you in,” the official informed me, handing me my passport through the opening in the window.

I took my documents back, stunned. Francisco, a fugitive, who had entered Costa Rica with a fake passport, simply had to walk across the border. And me, the legal one, the American one, the one whose passport was the envy of all other nations for the ease with which it allowed its citizens to slip in and out of countries—
I
was the one holding up our escape from Costa Rica.

“You must have a return ticket,” the official repeated, and in an attempt to soften the blow of the bad news, he added, “But we could get a drink together later if you'd like.”

“How can I have drinks with you if you won't let me in the country?” I asked, amazed at his gall.

“There's a restaurant right here at the border. You don't need a visa to get in.”

Yeah, I knew the one. In fact, my boyfriend was sitting there at that very moment being a fugitive.

I sized up the official, wondering what it would take to convince him. This was the most important border crossing in my life. I had to think up something. I hadn't come this far to be defeated by a minor international player like Panama.

“Look, I have a round-trip ticket from San José to Los Angeles. I just forgot it in Costa Rica. I'm a journalist. I'm just passing through Panama to do a story in Colombia. Then I'll return to Costa Rica, and if it'll make you happy, I'll use my onward passage to go back to the States.”

He thought about this for a while, had a small private conference with his dour-faced colleagues seated behind him, and came back to me with a question: “Do you have any proof you're a writer?”

“Funny you should ask. I just happen to have a letter from my editor saying that I am indeed qualified to string subject-verb phrases together.” This is what I wanted to say, but as far as I knew letters like this just weren't given out. Now that I thought of it, how did anyone prove they were actually a writer?

“Go ahead. Ask me anything. Gerunds, subjunctive verb tenses, onomatopoeias—I know it all.” This didn't seem likely to get me very far. When official-looking people asked for proof, they always needed some kind of signed and stamped document. In my wallet, I did carry around an expired Writer's Guild of America membership card. I produced it hopefully.

After a short consultation with his superiors, the official returned to the window unimpressed. “Do you have any other cards?”

“You mean like Author's Guild or PEN—something like that?”

“No, like Visa.”

With a weak smile, I timidly pulled out my maxed-out credit card and held it up in the air, hoping they weren't going to run it through the machine and discover that the twelve cents I had left on it wasn't going to buy me a return ticket anywhere.

As far as I was concerned, my credit card had already done right by me. It had substantially contributed to my UCLA education, paying for canned ravioli, coffee, and even several quarters of tuition when I had been short on cash. Having served me faithfully for years, now that it had nearly reached that magic limit and wasn't even worth the price of the plastic it was made of, here it was coming through for me again. The immigration officials looked over the credit card carefully and concluded, ironically enough, that anyone who possessed a card that let them spend money they didn't have must be financially stable and that I wasn't in danger of becoming an illegal in Panama.

Although my Visa was pretty much worthless at the moment, I really did have money on me—well, at least Francisco's underwear was loaded. After paying for lawyers and other expenses in Costa Rica, I still had six thousand dollars left, which was a lot of cash to be carrying around, so Francisco had stuffed it down his pants, which he claimed was the best hiding place (but I suspected that he actually liked the conspicuously large bulge that it formed).

The night before as Francisco and I had rolled about on the hotel bed, teasing each other while fully clothed, Francisco had stopped for a moment and said, “You realize the only thing stopping us from having sex right now?”

I shook my head.

“Six thousand dollars.”

After getting my entrance stamp, crossing the border turned out to be no problem. There wasn't even anyone checking passports at the border. From the government's point of view, it didn't really matter—any traveler who hadn't gotten the required Costa Rican exit stamp followed by the Panamanian entrance stamp would pay dearly for it in fines and aggravation when trying to leave Panama.