Las Vegas Sins and Scams: Book Seven - Latin American Expansion

By Paul Wallace Winquist

CAUTION: this book is NOT written for children, Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, or English teachers.
It is a cult type book for nymphomaniacs, perverts, criminals, psychopaths, business scammers, folks with serious ADHD, adventurers, and people who want to read about such folks.
Over the years I have known various gangsters, hit-men, stock market scammers, drug smugglers, unscrupulous lawyers, and other assorted scum of the earth, so that is what I have written about.
Hundreds of pictures of the scenery where the characters are: Las Vegas, Nevada, Los Angeles, and Oregon in this first book. (for COLOR READERS ONLY)
Lots of perverted, normal, fun, perverted. and exciting sex is vividly described. (Some has been censored out for US distribution.) Lots of graphic violence and sex.
Screwball Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims should NOT READ this book. (Jews, Atheists, Buddhists, and Agnostics are usually okay with it.)
Over 30 ways to kill people, without getting caught are described.
Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf rtf lrf pdb txt html

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Wallace Winquist
• Release date: Jul 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9780463438305

Paul Wallace Winquist

Born 1945BS from Portland State University - Business Administration / Real Estate LawMany courses toward MS in Electronics EngineeringInstalled big satellite TV systems into casinos, race and sports books, and hotels in Las Vegas 20 years.Writing this series of books part time since 1990.

Book preview

Las Vegas Sins and Scams - Book Seven - Latin American Expansion (Las Vegas Sins & Scams - Book 7 - Latin American Expansion)

Paul Wallace Winquist

Published by Paul W. Winquist at Smashwords

Copyright 2008

pwinquist.com

Distributed Through Smashwords(TM) http:///www.smashwords.com

ISBN 9781310389344

eBooks Version 2.1 -- (c) 2008 Paul Wallace Winquist

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is the seventh book in the series; the characters and stories are a continuation; read the previous books first.

Table of Contents

Character List

Chapter 120 - Mellowing Out

Chapter 121 - Opening

Chapter 122 - Mellow Times

Chapter 123 - Efficient Growth

Chapter 124 - Smugglers

Chapter 125 - Ecuador & Oregon

Chapter 126 – Organic Vs. Chemistry

Chapter 127 - Right On the Verge of Wonderful

Chapter 128 - Revolution

Chapter 129 - Overkill

Chapter 130 - Money

Chapter 131 - Governments

Chapter 132 - Good Luck

Chapter 133 - Chile

Chapter 134 - Excellent

Character List

Sheldon Stern– One of the Original Partners – In Charge of Latin American Operations

Joe Kass – One of the Original Partners – Chairman of the Board

Sue – Joe’s Long Term Girlfriend – In Charge of the Scholarship Fund

Sandy – Sheldon’s Daughter – VP Development and Publicity

Tony Stephano – One of the Original Partners – Was Married to Lori – Tim’s Dad – In Prison for Money Laundering

Lori Stephano – In Charge of the Farms, Plantations Charter Planes, and Ships

Mike – In Charge of Radio Station Transmitters

Jeanne – One of Sheldon’s Girlfriends, Pilot, Chauffer, and Personal Bartender

Melissa – One of Sheldon’s Girlfriends – In Charge of Radio Programming

Jason – Communications Engineer for Latin American Locations

Ike – Resort Manager in Belize

Don – Resort Manager in Ecuador

Jose – (Speedy Gonzales) - Drug Smuggler from Cuba and Costa Rica

Aaron – Banker in Ecuador – From Cuba

Cynthia Anderson – Photographer – Website Designer

Robert – Expanded Banana Plantation Manager in Ecuador from Wisconsin

Yvonne - Robert’s Long Term Girlfriend – Ecuador from Wisconsin

Ted – X Navy Seals – Mercenary Operative

Dennis – X Navy Seals – Mercenary Operative

Brad – X Navy Seals – Mercenary Operative

Senor Gomez – Cocaine Manufacturer in Colombia

Igor – Spy from Senor Gomez’s Operation in Colombia

Riki – Elwood’s Daughter in Hood River, Oregon

Ken (Chem) – Chemist – Makes Cocaine from Potato Plants

Andrew - Big-U Fruit Company’s local Manager in Quepos Costa Rica

General Sanchez – Rebel Leader in Ecuador

Sid – TV, Radio, and Cellphone Companies in Colombia

Floyd – Paper Plant Engineer - Ecuador

Jake Beermann – Manager of Full Moon Island off of Panama

Chapter 120 - Mellowing Out

Paul Around 1998

Sheldon and Joe didn’t tell anyone about the deal they made to lease and run the Coronado again until they were at the big table in the restaurant that evening. (They had sold the casino, Studio-B, and the radio stations for five billion dollars to the Big-S Japanese entertainment conglomerate in Hollywood. The Management was about to screw it up, so they managed to get it back in a 15-year lease deal.) They waited to mention it until quite a group had accumulated, for what had become an evening meeting/dinner every night in their efforts to reorganize the company.

Joe told the waiter loud enough for the whole table to hear, …Adam, go get six bottles of Champaign… and bring a box of my Cuban cigars from the cooler.

The whole table got silent in a serious state of suspension.

Joe continued, "We leased the casino back for 15 years."

The table got loud with questions.

We made a deal to split the profit 50/50, so that puts us right back to where we were, but now without any mortgages, so it comes out the same.

Two wine stewards were opening the Champaign, and Joe was passing out his treasured Cuban Cigars that Jose had smuggled in via Costa Rica.

The word spread around the casino very fast, and there was a continuous flow of people coming to verify the rumor, and the group grew into a second table.

As the evening progressed into the dinner phase of the evening, everyone was coming down from the panic mode; everyone had been in for the last month.

Sue asked, Now that some space is freed up in here, let’s start the English as a second language classes we have been talking about.

Joe answered, "Absolutely; you can have them set it up in the area the graphic artists moved out of; in fact, you can have the computers for them to practice their English language software on…."

Then a while later, Joe told Sandy, …Now that our profits are assured again, for the short term, go ahead and look into that hotel chain in the Midwest.….

By lucky chance, Tony called Lori’s cell phone right then. She explained the developments to him, and he immediately mellowed out from worrying that the company was making a bad move.

Sheldon told Mike, I am going back to Costa Rica tomorrow; the studio and radio stuff is way ahead of schedule so that it will come out good. Let’s hire a separate crew to find and get going some stations up and down that I-29 and I-35 corridor. Get the quadrants of all the motels Sandy is talking about from her, so you can get the licensing people in Phoenix going.….

Mike replied, Okay; Jim and Carla have been itching to do a road trip; Carla has enough experience now to know the rough value of stations.….

In that case, send them, but find another guy to get us some stations along the Pacific coast again.

I know just the guy; my uncle retired from selling drugs for a big drug company; he is used to spending life on the golf course with doctors. He will do a good job in the high roller neighborhoods, and he is too young to mellow out..…"

Lori said, If we get motels along the I-35 corridor, we should buy out my folks' dairy farm and turn it into a modern indoor process so that it could milk 3 to 5 times more cows.

Sheldon said, "That was a bad idea ten years ago, now it would work; put in the equipment to make those red 5-gallon (19 l) containers for the milk dispensers in the restaurants too..…"

We’ll make them green.

Oh, I like that.

We can do butter, cream, cheeses, and cottage cheese too.

…Find a local builder up there to build it; we have Bob on too many projects already..…

Later that evening, Joe asked Sandy, The computer must keep track of the search requests for our hotels by city, right?

It does.

So, what city do we disappoint the most amount of potential customers in?

New York.

Fuck New York; what’s number two?

Chicago.

"Chicago; well, there’s you girls’ next project. A few months from now, after this next chain is going smooth, find about four on the outer edges of the city like 30 miles out; possibly, by freeways and airports… you know what we need… But don’t even think about casinos over there."

By state, it’s Florida.

Forget Florida too.

The next day Joe went to where the reservations people were answering the phones and dealing with the computers. First, he told them to start taking reservations for the Coronado out into the future again, and then he told them, You can work in either building now, or you can go back and forth, break up the monotony.…

The Studio-B crew had discussed the name situation for over a month and finally decided to just change the one letter. They started printing everything over again. The clothing items that could be relabeled and repackaged sent back to Mexico; the clothing with printed logos and so on, they were sent to Belize and Ecuador to give to the workers. They removed all the CDs and DVDs of Twila’s, Joann’s, Cowboy Clint, and several other music groups and were putting in new covers and were repackaging them. They sent the sign companies to change all the signs except on the two buildings they sold. They changed the spots on all the radio and TV ads to Studio-A. They registered the studio-a.com web name and automatically started sending the hits to the same old computer system.

Sheldon, Jeanne, Melissa, and Jason headed back to Costa Rica. While they were changing planes in Belize, Ike came running up to them, "…The lightning hit the tower; it was loud. It blew up the red and green light."

Do the radio and TV transmitters still work?

Yes.

Well, call up the sign guy and have him make a new one, then have the electricians put it up. Get the welders to put some lightning rods up higher than the light so that it won’t happen again.

The guys are scared to climb up there now.

Their balls will grow bigger after a couple of weeks of good weather.

Jason added, Tell them if they don’t do it, you will call in some white Americans with real balls.

Melissa added, Better yet, tell them there are plenty Mexicans right up the road with big balls; that will hurt their country pride the most.

Melissa’s baby was sure glad to see her; he had a big smile and was swinging his arms around with excitement.

Jason stayed in Costa Rica to connect the school site to the phone and internet systems, while Sheldon and Jeanne went on to Ecuador the next day.

The laundry for the workers was a cultural difference at each location. In Belize, the employees were using the big laundry facilities for their clothes; in Costa Rica, they washed their clothes in their kitchen sinks, or some had washing machines, and they hung the laundry inside or on a porch to dry. In Ecuador, they washed their clothes in the creeks and hung them on trees to dry. Most people had laundry machines in their houses in the US and Aruba, so Sheldon decided to put in big free Laundromats at the three Latin American locations.

In Costa Rica, the racebook and bowling alley building had the concrete shells finished. The ferry ship was headed there with a load of bowling alley equipment from the US, furniture from Belize, and wood siding from Belize. The planes had already delivered the electrical equipment, plumbing materials, and computer systems.

Meanwhile, up in Long Beach, California, the ship was almost ready. The refrigeration and navigation equipment was finished, and the crew was almost finished installing the insulation. Part of the refrigeration crew went up to Longview, Washington, to put a refrigeration system into the warehouse building Lori was having built on the dock. Part of the crew was going to ride with the equipment to put refrigeration into the building they were starting to build in Ecuador.

When Sheldon and Jeanne got to the airport in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, to go through customs and switch to the smaller plane, Sheldon noticed what looked like a hotel or apartment building being built near the airport to very high-quality building standards.

Sheldon said, …That looks like good construction methods; let’s go check it out.… Five minutes later, they were there. Sheldon asked a worker, in Spanish, This is a nice looking building; is it apartments?

Hotel.

Is the builder or owner around?

"Ian is over there."

Thirty seconds later, …This is the best construction I have seen south of Costa Rica… Is that roof concrete over wood?

"Yes, that’s the custom here for buildings that are going to last for many, many, years." Ian suspected that Sheldon was a possible customer, so he was proud to show his latest building project.

Sheldon asked, I like that; is that stucco brown?

No, it’s cement made with the local brown sand, and the local cement is somewhat brown too; it makes a color that doesn’t need to be painted.

I like that too. He walked into one of the units, and Ian followed. What is that; they are putting on the walls?

It’s an almost white plaster that’s made up in Quito; it’s subject to easy discoloration, so we will paint it with a thick latex paint.

What is this wood on the cabinets?

It’s a local softwood; we will paint it.

But, you could do it out of nice hardwoods and then stain and seal it?

Yes, we need to keep the price in line on this project; the rooms have to rent competitive.

I like these rooms; are you a builder or just building it for yourself?

Both; this is my project, and we build a lot of buildings here in Esmeraldas.

"Can you build me about 1000 of these motel rooms about 65 Km (40 mi) north-east of here?"

1000?

Yes, you can spread it out over about two years; also some larger buildings to go with the project.

"500 Units per year; that’s about 40 per month; if I hire a slightly bigger crew; 65 Km (40 miles); what kind of road?"

"We fixed the road so trucks and SUVs can go on it now; later, it will be good for cars. We have an airstrip that we will expand to 2000 meters (6,562 feet) too."

You want me to bid on it?

"No, I want it built good, not cheap; of course, we won’t put up with getting fucked. We have a lumber mill in Belize, so we will supply mahogany lumber and moldings. We have many of these poles like in the ceiling here on the plantation we are cleaning up. We have temporary water and electricity for all the building sites too. We have phones and the internet so that you can set up an office over there too… we have a cell site too, so it will work if you have the right kind of phones. Do you want to fly over there and check it out?"

Now?

"Yes, at least we are ready to start."

You are flying? What? How long is the strip?

"Only about 270 meters (886 ft) now.…"

Okay, I’ll follow in my Cessna.…

I’ll fly low up the roads you will be involved with so you can see them.…

A half-hour later, Sheldon and Don showed Ian and his right-hand man around the plantation in the old CJ-5.

Sheldon said, Wow, they have made good progress on these roads and the temporary streetlights. We will use a different contractor for the sidewalks, patios, fountains, and so on; these guys can only build slabs and very crude concrete buildings. Sheldon gave him a sketch of how they would lay out the resort area.

Sheldon said, Let’s start with the lobby building and one of the 30 unit buildings here and here.… Then they drove over to the little warehouse building that the crude concrete guys had built; they were finished and were starting on the little office building. They walked into the warehouse building, and Ian said, "That roof is going to crack; they didn’t allow for expansion and contraction of the wood; in our buildings, the wood is resting on holes through the concrete so the wood can expand and contract. Also, the concrete is built up over layers of asphalt on top of the wood so that it can slip; you will like our roofs; all the water will run off."

Let’s put gutters on, too; we will run the drains all the way to the ocean."

You will need to put foam on top of this to keep the water from leaking through the cracks that will develop.…

Hum…we were going to put a lot of solar panels up there to run the refrigeration system.

You could put a slip layer than some more concrete; these guys used too much wood so that it will hold it.

"Na; fuck all that; put a good thick layer of foam up there; it will be better insulation too… we’ll clear an acre over here to put the solar stuff…it will be easier to maintain anyway..…."

They drove over to the plantation manager’s area. Don said, They are almost finished with the community building; the electricians are working on the wires.

Wow, the huts are moved already.

As you said about the streetlights, they were all set up in a few nights... Those are all new huts because the holes in the concrete are laid out a little differently. The electricity is not going to them yet, just the electric pipes... We might want to put a timer on the ones here because a lot of the people stay up all night now.…

Yeah, just the group over there and the TV; I want the equipment lit up, so the TV cameras we put in later will work at night… What did they do for sewage?

They dug a hell of a cesspool over there and ran the drain field down the side of the pavement all the way to the end, and then about 30 more meters past the end where it goes downhill.

Good, I like that.

The little group headed back to the north airstrip. Sheldon said, We want to build a neighborhood for the higher class citizens making this airstrip into the main street. We want to build the school, library, laundry, and so on this side; on the other side, we want some real houses and apartments… So once you get rolling, you can hire more workers and split the crew into two groups, one for the resort and one for all the other buildings.

How soon do you want to start? I can put my concrete people directly on the slabs if you have some plans.…

You can start on the first building of hotel rooms; use your plans; I like your building. I will make a sketch for the lobby building and offices; we will want a temporary, very informal, restaurant and bar there.… If you can get me a set of drawings for the cabinets, we can have them made in a furniture factory in Belize, and we can have some granite countertops made in Aruba.

Granite countertops; that would add some class.…

What if we made the rooms one meter longer toward the front? Would that mess anything up?

We can go long that way because the poles are the other way.

Yeah, they are… Let’s make ½ of the rooms one meter longer, and ½ two meters longer, then we will have more flexibility for furniture layout… I will get you some 2-way radios to talk to the other contractors with; I’ll have the contractor doing the underground work contact you about where to run the wires and pipes to..…. Then Sheldon went into the normal new contractor discussions.

Ian had barely departed when a priest drove up, driving a nice SUV looking for the new owner of the plantations. Sheldon went to talk to him before he realized who the guy was. After the introductions, the priest said, …I understand you are building a community for the workers; it would be nice to donate some land for a Catholic chapel in their community.

"It was nice of you to wait 250 years for the people to have some money before you came here. Is this the same organization that tells its members not to use birth control measures?"

Yes, the church forbids birth control; it’s god’s desire to have the people multiply.

"You are a lying sack of shit; god didn’t say that; some pope, but not god. Now, get off my property. If I hear about you telling people not to use the condoms we will be passing out, I will pass out condoms for the entire 600,000 population of Esmeraldas like we do in Dangriga Belize."

You can’t do that.

"We pass out about 4000 condoms per day now, in the US, Mexico, Belize, the Cayman Islands, and Aruba. I personally have enough money to pass them out to every village in Latin America, and I just might. Now get off my property before I send my security guards to arrest you for trespassing."

As soon as the priest drove away, Sheldon called Lori, …Type into your computer to send 4 of the 5000 boxes of condoms to Ecuador every month, starting now.…

Okay… My folks want to sell the farm but stay living in the house. My sister and her husband will set up the new buildings and run the operation. You know that farm, even with the added modernization, will only produce about ½ of the milk we buy now.

Plan the processing plant aspect much bigger so you can buy milk from the other farms around there… hum…the shipping might be too high all the way to California.…

"Oh, no, milk is costing us much more in California and Nevada than we can buy it for here.…"

After he got off the phone, Jeanne said, Wow, you were pissed at that priest.

"Fucking vultures! Do you think his nice car belongs parked in the middle of those huts? After being camped out here for two hundred years, that is probably the first priest to come out here to save them… It’s the same asshole organization as Belize; tomorrow, let’s go find someone to start our school; even the government that requires kids to be in school until they are 13 doesn’t come out here.…"

The next morning Sheldon was sidetracked from the school project. He called the government office in Guayaquil, …Your customs guys can move in already, the building is about ready, and the first ship will be here in about a week.…

Jason and his helper had arrived and started connecting everything up. He told Sheldon, I gave them the phone number FUCK, 777-3826; we’ll see if they ever figure that out… I also numbered the plantations SPREAD1 and SPREAD2, 777-3231 and 777-3232.

"I like that; save SPREAD3 in case we buy that place up north.…"

Sheldon drove over to the new runway project to meet the road contractor. …This is coming along good; the faster we get this usable, the faster we can start building along the old runway... It looks like three or four hundred meters could be filled and paved.

Yes, should we pull the crew from the main road for a while?

"Yes; now that we decided to cut back, let’s forget the taxiway and just build the middle half of the width, 20 m by 1100 m (66 ft by 3,600 ft) long, that way we can use it temporally to bring in the twins and have runway centerline lights from the start.…"

One day Sandy and Lori got to talking after they were finished playing with their toys. Sandy said, I wonder if Dad and Sheldon killed guys in the old mobster days? Those guys at the Little River had a list of 18 or 20 guys that disappeared from the Coronado and Casagrande.

Lori had to bite her tongue again about how she had participated in the demise of the guys that had raped Sandy when she was in college. "Don’t ever bring up that topic or building casinos in New York, Chicago, Florida, or the Mississippi River. Apparently, they made some deals many years ago that go on forever. These rooms could be bugged, and the phones are bugged; we don’t want to make some waves that could bring down the whole business.…"

So they.…

Lori interrupted her, Please; just forget that topic.

Alisha and JR decided to take a little flying vacation in his Kingair; first, they went to her grandparents' place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, then they went to the Cayman Islands to check out the new golf course, two days later, they went to Belize for a few days including the tour over to the Mayan Pyramids.

A week and a half into the vacation, they went down to Ecuador to check out the plantation. Sheldon and Jeanne drove them around in the old jeep, showing them all the aspects of the plantation and the resort they were going to build.

When they got to the plantation workers' row of huts, they were astonished. JR said, How can people live like this?

Sheldon answered, They were brought here from Africa 250 years ago; they have always lived in these huts... thousands of years. Now look, we set them up with concrete floors and electricity… We built the community building with cooking facilities, bathrooms, showers, a TV, and phones, building a laundry facility next month… Picture this; these people have been living here for 250 years, with no spending money; now that we started paying them better, a priest came to try to get us to donate land for a church. They don’t even have a school yet, and the greedy Catholics want money out of them.

Alisha said, Maybe they just found out about these people and want to help.

No, they have been bringing bananas into town on horse carts for 200 years and the last seventy with crude trucks. Those pricks knew there was no money out here.

Later that evening, the topic of the priest came up again. Sheldon said, Maybe I was a little harsh on the old priest.… After four phone calls, he got the number of the rectory. …This is Sheldon Stern; I wanted to apologize for my irrational behavior yesterday. I am willing to loan you a building on Sundays; if you can live with two simple requests: don’t request any money from these poor people, and don’t mention the birth control issue anymore.

We like to have a building full time so we can have functions throughout the week.

Okay, full time; if you can live with those two terms?

No.…

Okay, they can stay atheists or whatever they are… …Have a nice day, goodbye.

A while later, the conversation turned to the medical facilities; Alisha said, …The people here and in Belize need medical coverage much more than the Costa Ricans.…

Sheldon said, "Absolutely; so, we need you to do all three locations. Get a staff of PAs and nurses; then you can go to each place a couple of days a week.…"

I didn’t say I wanted to work for you; I might want to be where JR ends up.

We will keep JR busy building resorts within quick flying range then.…

JR spoke up, What were you and dad thinking of building next?

How about three medical facilities and three resorts to go with them?

You want me to build another resort in Belize, Costa Rica, and Ecuador?

As long as David and Sandy keep coming up with more customers, we can build more resorts. We don’t know how gambling will turn out here, but Belize and Costa Rica for sure.…

Later JR asked, So are you going to start flying tree-ripened bananas to the restaurants?

Sheldon laughed, No, they have to be picked green and allowed to ripen later.

The next morning Sheldon, Jeanne, JR, and Alisha flew the Cherokee into town; they wanted some real lunch. JR and Alisha took a cab into the main part of town.

Sheldon and Jeanne tried to find a school organization. In a town of 600,000, there were no private schools not connected with a church. The government ran a college for teachers, so they took a cab there. The college turned out to be a real bureaucratic mess, but eventually, they got a hold of the lady that sort of does placements for the graduates. The school year had been over for a month and a half, but many summer school students were there. After a half-hour explanation about what they wanted to do, Sheldon said, Well, there are two categories of students in summer school, those that are brilliant and those that are struggling. We will hire one of the brilliant ones and let that person fill the other positions.

We need these students to fill positions in the public school system.…

We will pay them much more money and provide housing. The kids we are getting the school built for have never had a school, so we are doing your government a big favor here.…

Eventually, the woman said, I will give three of the well-qualified student graduates your card and tell them about your school.…

Later they were getting into the plane when Sheldon’s local cellphone rang; it was a girl at the college. …There are three of us that would like to apply for the school administrator position. May we schedule an appointment for tomorrow?

Better yet, only one can be the head person unless you have decided to function as a team. Do you have access to the internet of a fax machine?

Yes, internet.

Okay, each of you write a short history about yourself. What are your goals in education? What are your views on working with kids of extreme poverty status? Your views on birth control and a list of languages you are fluent in. E-mail it to me.…

By the time they got back and settled in, all three replies were on Sheldon’s laptop. He quickly read them, Wow, that was an easy choice.

Alisha asked, Why was it so easy?

Two of them started the answers about birth control with the words ‘The Church’; the other one believes in family planning. He e-mailed the selected one, You are the one. When is your school over? Call to set up a tour of our place to see if you want to work for us.

The next morning Sheldon and Jeanne flew into town to get the selected girl to check the place out. First, they flew over the area so Yolanda could see the layout of the place.

Then on the ground, Sheldon said, …This is where the workers for the resort will live. We can build a house for you here too. This airstrip will be the main street of the little town. On that side will be housing and this side the school and other buildings. The school can start here and go that way and grow in that direction too. We want this to end up sort of a middle-class neighborhood.…

Then they drove over to the plantation worker’s new area. We can run school busses over here to pick up the plantation worker’s kids. None of these kids has seen the inside of a school, so effectively, they are all in the first grade. It will be years before the ages match the proper grades. This situation in Belize was handled by calling the classes with names for the groups of kids, instead of the grades, like lions, eagles, horses, and so on.

It looks like 150 kids here and none over there; why put the school there?

We were told that you can bring the black kids to the white school in this culture, but you can’t bring the whites to the black school. Yolanda looked Indian rather than white or black, but Sheldon didn’t want to ask her straight up yet.

That’s somewhat true. How many white kids will there be?

I guess white is the wrong word here because everyone is a mixture of various backgrounds, but not so black. Maybe 50 kids in two months, 100 or more within a year, 200 or 300 in a couple of years; it depends on if we build a casino and how the government turns out. It could end up 800 in a couple of years or cap out at 200.

How fast are you going to build classrooms and get books?

"We can have 4 or 6 temporary classrooms up in a month. We need you to order all the books and supplies. We will set up a bank account to work with; don’t worry about the money… You will need to hire the teachers too. You will do the entire project. These people have been without a school for 250 years here, so plus or minus a few months is irrelevant. Should we build apartments separate from the resort workers for the schoolteachers, or do you want to be with them? Or do you want to live in town?"

A little apartment would be fine for me, but I can’t speak for the others. You want a school for the adults too?

Yes, if you can find enough teachers. It would be nice to get many of them to read, and the younger adults should get a full education. I would like to see some students make it to trade schools or college in a few years; our scholarship fund will finance anyone that wants to go to college or our trade school we are setting up in Costa Rica… In addition, we would like to teach English to some of the adults to have jobs in the resort that deal with the people. You mention French in your resume; that would be good for some too; we are getting more and more tourists from Europe nowadays… Hum, it looks like we will need to start with around ten classrooms… In Costa Rica, we put the adults in a separate building; should we do that?

Yes, but not far.

If we start you out at, say, $60,000 a year, would that be good?

Yolanda couldn’t believe her ears, "Oooohhhh, Yes! That’s good… So I could start in three weeks?"

It’s up to you. We were thinking of classrooms made out of concrete like that government building; we can get some rooms ready in three weeks with electricity, bathrooms, and lighting. You can start ordering the supplies and between classes, and at night, we can add finishing to the walls, ceiling, and floors later. If we don’t get an apartment done in time, you can stay at the big house, or you can stay at the big house forever; it’s up to you.…

Sheldon didn’t want to slow down the resort buildings, so he called the concrete contractor to get the crude school started.

Sheldon noticed the main contractor drive by, so he went to meet him. …Who put in all the nice flowers at your hotel building in Esmeraldas?

My cousin has a company that does gardening for rich people.…

That’s good; do you think he can handle the project here; we want to start with 6 or 8 full-time gardeners and continue to expand?

Yes; he has three crews running already… I will call him for you.…

Four hours later, Sheldon was showing the gardener around and telling him where he wanted flowers. …You plant the flowers, make watering systems, keep the flowers beautiful forever.…

Do you want to pick the kinds of flowers?

No, you choose… you can use ones that are natural to the area; I even see some nice ones growing in the banana fields where they shouldn’t be growing.…

Yes, I see many flowers there; may I collect some of the extra ones to take to my other customers in the city?

Yes, they are a waste in the banana fields that the crews will just cut down anyway.…

Photos by Paul Winquist

Alisha and JR were in the stage of their relationship where they like sex three or four times a day. They took off on horses early in the morning to do a one-hour project marking some positions with the GPS boxes and didn’t return until sunset. The next morning they took off on horses again.

Down on the docks, the road contractor’s crew was installing the last of the planking on the dock for the big ship as it was heading in already. The government tax and customs workers had killed four days moving into their office and apartments. The captain had called and said the ship would be there at 10 AM. Quite a crowd was gathered to watch the first ship ever to come ashore along there: Sheldon, Jeanne, Alisha, JR, the plantation manager, Don, around fifty workers, and around 150 kids.

The old captain brought the ship in and positioned it perfectly, to a dead stop, about four inches from the dock. The crew lowered the gangplank to the dock, and a ship’s hand ran down to tie up the ropes that other hands had thrown over. The hand on the deck looped the ropes around the pilings, and the hand on the ship activated a winch that tightened the ropes.

Sheldon took pictures of the process with his digital camera; he got a good shot of Alisha and JR watching from horses on the hill above.

The old captain came down to talk to Sheldon while the ship’s crew lowered the huge hatch/ramp to the dock for the trucks to drive on and off the lower freight deck. Sheldon motioned the truck driver to drive their tractors on the ship to start bringing off the full trailers.

About ten minutes later, the first trailer rolled off, and the four customs guys wanted to see what was in it. Part of the crowd clustered around the back of the truck as though there was going to be some kind of show. The truck driver opened the door for the inspectors. Sheldon said, 188 used TVS; you government guys can take five of them to your building.

One customs inspector said, Capitol improvements; used equipment; no tax.

The government workers were faxed a bill of laden, but they wanted to look into every trailer to show their importance. …Farm equipment no tax; farm refrigeration equipment, no tax, and so on for three hours as they unloaded 22 trailers.

While all this was going on, the ship’s crew connected two hoses to pipe connectors on the side of the dock. Eventually, one of the inspectors asked, What are the hoses loading or unloading?

Sheldon answered, "The white hose is water going to the ship, and the black hose is (76 Kl) 20,000 gallons of diesel oil, going up to the tank by the generator."

We need to meter the oil; it is taxable.

Oh, we will buy a meter in that case before the next ship gets here. Today the 20,000-gallon tank is empty, and in a while, it will be full, so you can figure 20,000 gallons, exactly.

There is no bill of laden for the oil.

Shit, I guess we need to make one up then.

"Next time, have a meter that prints the flow in kiloliters… We didn’t notice this, this time, Mister Sheldon.…"

As the group was dissipating from watching nothing happening, except the flow of water and oil, Sheldon’s phone rang; it was JR, "Quick, bring a little plane over to the strip by the huts; we need to run a little girl into the hospital, her appendix has ruptured.…"

Wikipedia

Sheldon and Jeanne flew the 172 over to the south strip, taxied up to the huts, and got out. Alisha carried the little girl and put her into the back seat. The little girl’s mother got in, too; she was herself a little girl. JR and Alisha got in and flew off.

Sheldon and Jeanne were standing there in the little crowd watching the first-ever medical patient being flown off. Sheldon said, I guess we are on foot.

Jeanne said, Trucks, and pointed to the little row of 2½-ton trucks by the maintenance sheds.

Yeah, let’s find a driver to bring it back.…

A couple of hours later, JR called. …It was getting dark, so we got a hotel room; the girl is going to be fine… see you in the morning.…

Alisha and JR came back in the morning, but the little girl had to stay longer because they had waited too long to bring her in.

They got to talking about the medical situation there. Alisha said, …That girl would have died in a couple more hours.…

Don said, The life expectancy of those folks is not too good; probably only half the kids grow up, and there aren’t too many over 35 either.

Sheldon said, I never noticed their graveyard.

Don said, They cremate them all.

Sheldon said, That explains the big bonfires.…

Alisha said, These people need a doctor before I am ready; these people don’t even get any inoculations; Doctor Ralph should send some nurses down here, at least.

Sheldon said, We better; I’ll see if he can free one up, and that one can get some local nurses going.…

Don joked, So the nurses will cancel out the effect of passing out the condoms.

Alisha said, That’s not nice… If you want to finance the nurses, I will prepare a list of supplies and equipment to get ordered for each location.…

Sheldon added, Make a sketch of what we should build as a little medical building… we can put it by the schools.…

Alisha added, Costa Rica has hospitals; here, you should build a little surgery center with recovery rooms and so on.…

"Good; make the sketch of what the dimensions of the rooms should be… we can make the place out of concrete, then we can add fancy wall coverings later.…"

Just paint everything with high gloss white paint for now… We can order all the drugs and supplies in Costa Rica and take them to Belize and here.…

She called Dr. Ralph and explained how the companies would pay for the needed facilities and workers. …We need an RN and two helpers for each location.…

That’s ¼ of my crew.…

"…And I need you to order the pain killers that I am not allowed to prescribe stocked in Costa Rica…

When do you want to do this?

Alisha looked a Sheldon as she was talking, These guys can make a temporary building in two weeks; I want to get it set up before I start my internship on September 11.…

Once she got off the phone, she started making sketches and lists of things to order. Then she said to JR, That’s enough vacation, let’s go work on getting things ordered in Rochester…let’s go now… I need to learn Spanish… I need to learn how to fly.…

Sheldon said, I’ll order another Kingair with the ambulance bed, equipment, and so on.…

Then Sheldon called up Ike, "…I need you to have some guys whip up a medical building, pull some workers off of the pyramid project… put it where the shantytown was, but closest to the tower and generator… it’s about 9000 square feet (836 m2); I’ll e-mail you some sketches to go by.… After that, he repeated the conversation to the main building contractor at the Playa Pacifica, …Put it on the side of the main driveway just past the power equipment.…"

A while later, Sheldon said, I need to get back over to the packing building; the workers are making up two truckloads of boxed up bananas to run up to the states as an experiment.…

Jeanne asked. What will happen if they go bad from the ship making too many stops on the way up there?

40 pallets are going to our restaurants via Las Vegas, so if they go bad, we can just buy more from the current suppliers; 80 pallets are going to the federal prison system so that it will be good enough; whatever else they get packed, Lori will sell. They will turn out good; 100 years ago, they didn’t have temperature controlled ships, and they were much slower… Lori says it’s the other way around; they will have to gas the bananas to make them ripen just before they are shipped to the stores… Lori’s long-term plan is to store the bananas in Longview, Washington and sell them off gradually to get the best money.…

The guys that came down on the ship to build the cooling system for the warehouse and the solar equipment were bored and went right to work. They were disappointed to find out that the resort was not built yet; there were no rent-a-girls and very little beer. They drove the CJ-5 into town the first night and found both; by the second night, the black girls found them. As they got into the culture a little, they were turned on to the black guy’s homemade banana rum and weed.

Public Domain Picture

Simultaneously the government workers purchased the rum, girls, and weed too.

After four days of working together and three evenings of serious partying, the black guys felt comfortable enough to show the ship’s crew and the AC guys their special marijuana field and their banana rum still. The next day they showed Jason and Jeanne, but they still thought that Sheldon and Don were too straight, so they didn’t find out until the next day.

The old captain, graybeard, and the rest of the crew purchased some of their rum (white lightning) and weed for their stash on the ship.

Three days later, the little girl with the appendix problem came back, showing off her bandages, "…Doctor Alisha fixed me inside.…"

Now that they have some TVs to pass around, Sheldon set Jason onto the project of making a miniature cable system for the place. He put several TV antennas on top of the temporary tower and found four channels from Ecuador and one from Colombia that worked okay. He added CNN, NBC, Fox News, Clint’s Channel, and PBS from their satellite feed. This was temporary; of course, they would add many more channels before they open the resort.

Doctor Ralph found one RN that would work in Ecuador for the two years it would take Alisha to finish her internship. She had a partial Hispanic background so that she could speak some Spanish. Doctor Ralph loaded up many boxes of supplies, immunizations, vaccinations, antibiotics, antiseptics, first aid supplies, computers, ID cards., etc.

The nurse and the supplies rode a company 737 down to Costa Rica. An office worker with a little medical background wanted to come too. They loaded it all into the freighter Q-400, and then Tim and another pilot flew them down to Esmeraldas.

Sheldon, Jeanne, and Don went three hours early to purchase some more vehicles now that the driveway/road was in fairly good shape. The Mercedes store had an Escalade in stock, so Sheldon purchased it. Then they got two used delivery vans and ordered a Mercedes 4-wheel drive ambulance that would take three months to get there from Germany.

While they were at the bank, the old captain called, The packers are out of pallets and almost out of cardboard boxes.…

Go ahead and get going then; you can go a little slower and save some oil.…

Oh, maybe; Lori wants us to stop in Costa Rica to pick up hundreds of pallets of juice and pineapples; I need to see if the truck drivers can do it early.…

After convincing the customs guys that all the stuff was medical supplies, they ended up with no duty. They purchased two refrigerators and strapped them on the truck, and used a generator to power them for the drive to the plantation.

The plantation house was very crowded now, especially because Sheldon only had them build one bathroom on ½ of the back porch. Sheldon went straight to the little construction project of the medical building to have the workers concentrate on getting one of the bathrooms going and the roof on the part that was the most finished so the girls could move into two unfinished rooms the next day.

Jeanne drove the girls around the plantation to check it out.

The nurse decided to set up a temporary work area on the big front porch of the southern plantation house so they could start the inoculations and screening the next day. By 10 AM, they had some equipment set up and three computer systems to start developing a database of the workers and kids. There was a long line, way beyond what they would process in one day.

The RN looked at the people in the line and selected four kids who looked bad to start with. The RN told the other girl that speaks Spanish, Tell the people that today is for the smallest kids and their mothers, tomorrow the bigger kids and their mothers, and the next day the men will start.…

Jeanne was the first stop for people to enter their name, date of birth, mother’s name, and father’s name. She took a color picture and scanned their right forefinger prints. The adults and kids took a long time looking at their pictures on the ID cards. The cards had a little hole, and they gave everyone a lanyard that wanted one. They were very proud of their green plastic ID cards and necklaces.

The next stop was the medical helper girl that extracted a little about their health history and any current problems, entering the data into the computer.

The RN gave them their vaccinations and any other medical attention they needed.

They changed the order of seeing the people, to having the workers come in the evening, that are related to the mothers and kids that they processed that day. It took five long days to process all 412 adults and kids.

The witchdoctor was not happy at losing some business, so Sheldon went to visit him. After the introductions, Sheldon said, "…We need both witchdoctors and medical doctors. Everybody gets to die eventually; we just don’t like it when kids like the little girl die. If you can fix their problem, that is the best, but if you know they will die, then let the nurse try to fix them… We still need you to do weddings and funerals…and I need you to keep the people happy. I will pay you to do several things for me. Throw more parties on the weekends like your fertility dances, weddings, and funerals… I want you to go to school and learn how to read and write. I want you to write down what plants do a good job of fixing people’s problems. Draw pictures of the plants and their fix for now; you know what works, and what is just ritualistic bullshit, hocus pocus.…"

Bullshit, hocus pocus?

"You know; things that you do, that you know won’t work."

"Oh, yes."

"Like the little girl; you know you had no fix for her problem… Some herbs are good; right?"

Yes, very good.

"That’s the ones we want you to write about when you learn how to write.

What is the name of your religion?

Ah, no name.

"Eat, drink, and be merry?"

"Ha, ha, ha, yes."

"Okay, I am going to put you on the payroll as an herbal practitioner and cremator, or something; witchdoctor doesn’t sound good, for the tax people…$20 a day just like the guys picking bananas… make people happy.…"

Later that evening, Jeanne said, "$20 a day for his mumbo jumbo talk sounds