Everyone has a dark side—that little devil in your conscience that says, go ahead and do it! even though you know it’s wrong. It may manifest itself in something as minor as parking in a space reserved for handicapped drivers. Or it may come from a deeper, darker recess within—one that allows you to commit any type of crime and rationalize it, even justify it.
Most of us are better than this, but others harbor that inner sociopath—or worse, secret psychopath—that drives them to take actions rational society rejects.
I used to sometimes joke that I wished I had a criminal’s mindset, because so much crime goes unpunished. This is true not only in Costa Rica, but in many countries around the globe. But as I live in Costa Rica, it’s here I witness it firsthand. Petty thieves steal, are caught, quickly released, and repeat the cycle. Trusted bank employees embezzle large sums.
Government officials pad their expense accounts and pocket the difference. Elected leaders put family on the payroll in no-show jobs. It goes all the way to the top, with numerous ex-presidents implicated in financial shenanigans that netted them billions of colones.
I do not carry that mentality—although on two separate occasions, I was mistaken for someone with that sociopath/psychopath potential.
A couple decades back, I received the strangest proposition of my life. I was spending long hours running a popular sports bar and grill on the coast. One of my regulars was a hard-drinking gringo who was developing a large mountaintop property.
He had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years of work and now had it nearly ready. The electricity was in, the water rights were secured, lots were cut, and a long concrete road connected everything from top to bottom.
There was only one hang-up: he was being sued in a property line dispute by his neighbor, an elderly Tico who owned a large parcel along the same mountaintop. This client came in late one night as I was closing and said he had some work for me if I was interested. Said it would pay $25,000. Of course I was interested—until he told me the problem, and said he’d make it worth my while to disappear the guy.
I laughed, but he was serious.
“Not near enough,” I told him. “Make it $2.5 million and you might have a deal.”
I have no idea why he thought I would be interested in his proposition, or what in my nature led him to believe I was a killer. I can’t watch a hog being slaughtered. I step carefully around leaf-cutter ants. I haven’t even been in a fist fight since I was a teen. I saw the guy many times more over the years, but he never mentioned the offer again.
Some years later, I had a bad experience with a customer while working in travel sales. This client was arriving in Jacó with a large group of men for a few days of sport fishing. They rented three houses in a nearby resort area. When they arrived, they were informed that one of the houses had strict rules against bringing inside any of the young female local talent.
He hadn’t informed me of this specific need—though I admit, with a large group of guys fishing during the day, it was probably a given they were interested in a different kind of sport at night. The client was very angry and let me have it by telephone and email. He laid into me with a stream of insults and invective. He contacted our management and trashed me to them as well. They took it from there.
I had a lot of personal info on the client and looked him up on Facebook. He had a page that showed him living deep in the heart of Texas with a nice wife, kids, his business info—and, of course, numerous photos and mentions of his church and his love of Jesus.
When I mentioned all of this to a friend over beers, my friend had one word for me: Blackmail.
My friend was the type who always looked for such an angle. He had once collected a nice settlement when he slipped and fell in a Safeway supermarket back in the States. “Just tell him you’ll be sending his wife back home the emails,” he said. “That’ll settle him down. Then see how much it’s worth to him to keep it all your little secret.”
I’m not a blackmailer either. I laughed off his suggestion and went back to my sales job the next day. The client was mollified with some freebies from management, and I soon forgot about him.
Fortunately for me—and the prospective victims—my dark side only goes about as far as squashing a cockroach in the shower.
