Independence Girl

By Matt Lambert

Equal parts The Sun Also Rises, The Manchurian candidate, and A Confederacy of Dunces.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543980431

Book preview

©All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54398-042-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54398-043-1

Written for

Miles Wright Nicholas

This book is best classified as a roman a clef, and parts of it are barely fiction. I told Kisha and Brian that the only way it was going to work was if I made us all more despicable than we really are, and I think I have at least succeeded in that. I have spent a lot of time in Belize over the years, for the fishing at first, but mostly due to the relationships that have formed there over the years from Ellis and Sara Nicholas, Ellen, Raf, Darren, Brownman, and others. It had never occurred to me to set a book here until Brian and Kisha got together.

Thanks to Robin Keller for all of her support and for sending Traeh along on the adventure that spawned this piece of art. Thanks to the staff at Posada Margherita in Tulum for letting me write, play guitar, and work up a $450 bar tab. Thanks to Eric and Sebastian at the Iguana Reef Inn and Rainy and James for the hospitality while on Caye Caulker. Thanks to Luchi for driving us around the country while we were doing some research and scene setting. Thanks to Darren and Anna for the food, and Armando for the food and music. Thanks to Ellis, Sara, and Miles and Sara’s family. Shout out Erica Lemon and Meredith Damore, TW and the crew, and the Big R’s- Rodrigo and Raulerson. Don’t sleep on Tope and the Logar family, and Eyamindae. I have adopted many of the edits proposed by Anne Jones. Lastly, thanks to Brian and Kisha.

For Belizeans and historians, please note I have changed some of the dates for political events and elections to fit my fictional storyline. While I changed the names of the three main characters, I have used the real names of many Belizeans including Dean Barrow, Patrick Faber, John

Briceno, and Evan X Hyde who were not consulted in creating this work of fiction.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 1

Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize

September 2018

Even after the events of the last nine months, and especially after the events of the last 48 hours, he still couldn’t stop thinking about politics. He was at the border, in Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize while resting his bandaged head on the backseat, driver side window of the Range Rover and gazing over at the Guatemala side. The effect of artificial lines on maps have had so many human consequences all over the world throughout history and this one, still under dispute from the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, was more proof that perpetuating these conflicts has been a staple of political tactics long before Trump. He was leaving a former British colony for a former Spanish one and naturally, switching languages. Both countries were primarily Catholic and majority Mestizo, but Belize has significant Garifuna and Mennonite populations not seen in Guatemala and so the people across the border were shorter and had a skin tone somewhere in between black and white. He was going from the land of the Belize dollar to the home of the quetzal, and since Central American countries control the flow of their own beer, he was switching from Belikin to Gallo. He was going from a border without guns to one heavily guarded and leaving people who were sort of desperate to be amongst people who were really desperate.

But he was not at the border by his own accord. He was crossing in the back seat of a police vehicle, under heavy guard, with one bullet in his left shoulder and another fragmented behind his left ear. He was being transported by Belizean authorities under the guise that he was going to Guatemala City to receive medical care. But the truth was that he was being deported. Even after all he had done, the police couldn’t figure out if they could charge him with a crime, so they decided to just get him out of the country as soon as possible.

Chapter 2

Belize City, Belize, CA

November 2017

Kevin had been flailing since Trump was elected and by his estimation, so was DC. He was a political consultant and lobbyist and both he, and his Logan Circle neighborhood, had enjoyed a good run during the Obama years. Being a political operative for Democratic initiatives made him dispensable after Trump’s unexpected election. Business was down, even when compared to more traditional Republican presidencies, and shops were closing in the liberal enclaves of the city. Bannon’s influence on decreasing the size of the federal government by simply not filling certain positions, and thus decreasing those walking about with disposable income, had just as much impact on business as the general malaise of the town after Clinton’s loss. The protest industry was the only thing doing well and some of Logan Circle’s spoils had moved to the Wharf and other parts of the city. All of this made him realize that he needed a vacation with some sun and water to clear his head. He thought about Miami, but the whole town reminded him of Ella, and he didn’t want to go to the Bahamas or Mexico for the same reason. He had been to Belize several times back during his backpacker days and enjoyed his time on Caye Caulker, so when he found himself with nothing to do right after Thanksgiving, he decided that it would be a good place to retreat and plan his next move.

He was born Kevin Allen Faye in Arlington, Virginia in 1975 to lifelong government bureaucrats and had spent his entire life in and around DC, except for five years at the University of Colorado in Boulder where he graduated in 1998. While in Boulder, he had spent just as much time skiing Arapahoe Basin as he had studying political science, but since then his yearly ski trips took him to farther out I-70 to Steamboat Springs. His slight build on a 5’9" frame made him an agile skier and his green eyes and relative good looks kept his social calendar full. All that time working on his turns kept him out of the Ivy League for law school, so after a few years of working as a staffer on the Hill and volunteering for the Gore campaign in 2000, he enrolled in the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason and graduated in 2004. He spent a few years with Deloitte, worked at the RAND Corporation for a while, and had been at Wiley Rein ever since 2010 lobbying in the healthcare and information technology spaces. He also did a lot of freelance election and messaging work for Democratic candidates.

He had arrived in Belize five days earlier and had settled down in a rental toward the south end of the Caye. The cottage was off the water but had a nice sitting area outside that was surrounded by palms, and had wi-fi, air conditioning, and even a pool. These such amenities were not common when he first visited here, when most of the accommodations were budget backpacker places along Front Street and the Internet Cafe was always bustling. There had been no pools on the island until Simon built one at the Seaside Cabanas around 2004. Kevin was astonished at the amount of growth that had occurred on the island, much of it in areas of the island that were once mangroves, and they had even started to develop the North part of the island across The Split, which was where the island was cut in two by the storm surge from Hurricane Hattie in 1961. What was once a creek had become faster, deeper, and wider every year until now it was held back by a massive concrete flood wall on the South side. All of this growth had complicated navigation greatly. Even though foot, bicycle, and golf cart were still the only modes of transportation, and the island’s motto was still Go Slow, there were now many more streets to navigate than the original Front, Middle, and Back Streets. What was once a fishing village that turned into a hippie haven in the seventies, was now a full-on tourist destination.

At this moment, however, he was not on the Caye. He was back on the mainland in Belize City waiting on a friend at the Ocean Ferry water taxi terminal. Belize City is still a pretty rough place with pockets of significant crime and one of the few places you can still see open sewers. The port city was founded along the banks of Haulover Creek, which was used to float mahogany trees harvested from the inland forests to the Caribbean, where they could be loaded on ships bound for Britain. Recently, the area north of the creek had been converted to a tourist village with local goods, foods,