Chapter Twelve

"Drug cartels?" Susan said evenly. "Rich, you had better start making sense right now before I decide you're delusional and drag you to the clinic myself."

"I'm sorry, Susan," he replied. "But I've been lying to you."

Rich turned to the side and started coughing, a deep, hoarse, rasping sound that made Susan feel ill just to hear it. Finally he laid back on the pile of seed sacks and closed his eyes. Is he tired, or can he not stand to look at me? Susan wondered.

"I haven't told you much about my past," he began. "What I have told you isn't entirely false... I just changed the important parts. And I'm sorry."

He stopped to clear his throat, then continued. "I did go to college. University of Florida, like I told you. But my degree isn't in engineering. It's in finance."

"Go on," Susan said.

"After college I went back to Miami and got a job doing the books for a small coffee importer. Or at least, that's what they told everyone. By the time I figured out it wasn't coffee they were shipping in from Colombia, I knew too much to get out clean."

"You work for drug smugglers?" Rogelio asked incredulously.

"No, no. Worked," Rich said. "I could only think of one way out. I started to gather information on their operations, and when I had enough, I went to the FBI."

"You turned them in?" Rich could only answer with a nod as his body was wrenched with another spasm of coughs. Susan handed him a dipper of water, and while he drank, she re-moistened her scarf and put it back on his fevered forehead. He let out a sigh and lay back again.

"My testimony put away the Cali cartel's top man in Miami, and a half-dozen of his deputies. Then I went into the witness protection program."

"Que?" Rogelio asked.

"The government gives you a new name, new home, new job, to protect you from retaliation," Susan explained. "Go on, Rich. How did you end up on Tropico?"

"That's how witness protection is supposed to work," Rich said ruefully. "But if someone wants to find you bad enough, they can. And the cartel wanted me real dead, real bad. They must have paid off someone inside the FBI, because it didn't take them six months to track me down.

"I had to go on the run. But I didn't have a whole lot of resources -- everything I'd earned up to then was drug money, and the DEA took it. All I had was government money, and not much of it. I had to hide somewhere, and since I knew Spanish and liked warm weather, I decided to hide on an obscure Caribbean island. I picked here because everybody knows there is no drug trade on Tropico, so I thought I'd be safe. And it worked, for six years."

"So you never really applied to work at the power plant?"

Rich hacked up some more phlegm into his kerchief and shook his head weakly. "I'm not qualified. And everybody knows Presidente only lets women work in his power plants."

"But you found out the cartel has eyes here, too, didn't you?" Susan asked. Rich nodded as his breathing grew more labored. "That's why you said you applied for educated work, but didn't. It would have put you on a government list."

"But nobody looks twice at a farmer," Rogelio whispered.

"And that's the real reason you wouldn't move into my old house, too, isn't it?"

But Rich didn't answer. He doubled over as if being crushed in a giant fist as terrible, wracking coughs shook his body. Susan frantically slapped him on the back as Rogelio tried to offer him more water to drink.

When the fit subsided and his hand holding the kerchief fell away from his mouth, there were flecks of blood on his lips.

"Madre de Dios!" Susan cried, scrambling to her feet. "Rogelio, get the wheelbarrow. We're taking him to the doctor now!"

"But didn't you hear him? He said --"

"I don't CARE what he said!" she barked, eyes flashing. "If assassins want to shoot him, they'll have to go through me first. But I will NOT stand here and watch my husband die!"