Las Pavones, Costa Rica

(Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Allan Weisbecker’s memoir, In Search of Captain Zero (Penguin Putman, 2001), wherein the author travels south of the border in search of an old friend and sometime partner in crime, missing since 1992.)

The morning of my sixth day at Anuncio’s little village, I was about to commence my paddle out to the point when I noticed a four-foot-long sicle-shaped fin flowing seaward in the backwash by my feet.

The paddle out at an unfamiliar break, especially a remote one with no one else in the water – and for who knew, ten, twenty miles in either direction along a wild coast? – is a subtly unnerving endeavor, for several reasons:  unseen, possibly dangerous bottom conditions like sharp rocks or metallic debris in the impact zone; urchin-covered shoals to fall onto after an ill-timed maneuver; the knowledge that there is no one to come to your aid should you find yourself in trouble; a long ride to a Third World hospital in case of serious injury, if there’s anyone to carry you there.

Shark. The word itself has an almost onomatopoetic ring to it, the sharp, lean sonance being closely akin to the animal itself. 

Say it aloud: SHARK.

A mean, jagged sound, cruel and malevolent and severe in utterance. And the word “attack” follows so easily in its wake.

But the most apt, implying as it does ultimate dominion and power and the violent abuse thereof, is my personal favorite: The Landlord. The Landlord is out there where you’re blithely headed, somewhere, count on it. And the rent due him, my hapless friend, just might be you.

I know: Statistically, it’s more likely you’ll be struck by a lightning bolt than taken by a prowling tiburón. 

But what statistician’s tally includes the eight men known to Chicho, offed by sharks just up the coast? By what means are the attack/fatality numbers gathered for Baja, or any remote coastline where men go to sea daily? By no means, I’d venture. Poor Chicho is running low on leathery, callused fingers in the count of friends lost; he’ll soon need his toes to keep up.

If it is indeed bad luck to name that sea-dwelling devil, as Chicho, Miguel, et al. believe, how much more dangerous must it be to pooh-pooh his menace? No, speak not of how safe you are out there on the edge of the abyss, with limbs like live bait dangling. And what of Chicho’s whispered sobriquet for Big Blue’s netherworld beat – bonita/ Beautiful? Irony is not the vogue among these forthright men, I would submit. No. The assumption here is that not only is the creature sentient, but omniscient, and capable of mercy toward those who venture into his lair.