This is just AU of My Blue Heaven of how Jane ends up coming back to the US after escaping to a Latin American country. Forgive me, native Spanish speakers, for mangling your beautiful language. Please let me know what I've done incorrectly so I can fix it. I've been led to understand there is no Spanish equivalent to "The Smiling Charmer" so I went with "The Handsome Smile"


Thank you, Make-Mine-A-Kiaora and Cumberland River Relic for your beta reading.


Patrick Jane hated rice and beans.

Lunch and dinner, dinner and lunch. Sometimes even breakfast came with a side of pintos in sauce.

Picking up his fork, he stirred the ubiquitous side dish and pushed the breaded unrecognizable meat away

At one time, it was easy to tolerate the repetition because he was free to choose it. If he'd been in prison, the slop thrown onto his tray would have tasted like burnt plastic, even if it was first-rate prime rib and fresh lobster tail. So what if his choices were only five or six items written in chalk on a plank hanging on the wall of a scrap wood hut? It was freedom. Sorta. In the little village of La Mejor Vista near La Playa de la Cosecha where Walter Mashburn's yacht had dropped him off two years before, he could decide to eat rice and beans, or have beans and rice instead.

Then again, maybe prison wouldn't have been so bad. He would have been close to Lisbon, after all: 28 miles instead of 3,670 miles and six countries away. Okay, so she probably wouldn't visit him in Folsom if he turned himself in, and he could definitely rule out a conjugal. No doubt she was still pissed…no, furious with him. At the time they last talked, he was lucky she'd left him with his balls attached to his body. Two years wasn't even close to long enough for her to calm down.

So…no prison.

Frankly, Señor Patricio Tagus (or El Guapo Sonriente as he was sometimes known around the village) and his "mysteriously" unlimited colones were probably the only reason the restaurant stayed in business, since he never cooked for himself, no matter how boring the food had become. Remaining holed up in his cinderblock and broken stucco shack would have driven him mad.

Madder.

He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. Staying in or going out; it didn't really matter. He carried his own prison with him; two large green eyes filled with tears that placed inescapable steel bands around his chest, crushing the living breath out of him. Despite not being behind bars, he was still trapped in a cage, one of his own devising.

"¿Señor Tagus? ¿Rubio? ¿Le gusta esta comida?"

Jerking his eyes open and straightening in his seat, Jane smiled at the kindly cook who owned and operated the restaurant.

"Si, dulce madre."

His recollection of Spanish words was excellent so whenever anyone spoke with him, he could often catch their meaning. However, his syntax when speaking was subpar, despite two years in Costa Rica. On top of that, he'd try to put an Australian accent just to throw his potential pursuers further off his trail. After everything he'd been through, making even a minor mistake caused him to resort to charismatic grins and over the top compliments, hence the earned nickname "The Smiling Charmer".

Jane supposed it was better than Rico Gringo "The Wealthy Yankee" like Mashburn was called by the locals. "Rico Gringo Dias" were declared whenever Mashburn vacationed in his compound on the edge of town. A lot of money flowed on those days.

To stop Madre Maria from asking any more questions about his enjoyment of her cooking, Jane tucked into the simple dinner, consuming every bite. Rice, beans, mystery meat under a flour-based coating and some soft-boiled yuca – it was the same every Tuesday. If he was lucky, she had some mamón chino for dessert. If he was really lucky, she'd remember that he didn't like the seeds left in the fruit.


After trudging through the small town, he studied his neighbors' houses, looking for changes. Many of the homes showed caring because they were well tended but no money for actual improvements, except the new roof on the Sorenos family's home that Jane helped install.

Entering his decrepit hovel, he glanced around the one room hut. The place was a mess, he knew, and he recognized that the continuing decline was symptomatic of a worsening depression. In some ways, he was mystified how it could get messy at all. He didn't do much there, just lay in bed reading or rereading his collection of books. Yet the dirt seemed dirtier, the cracked plaster seemed more damaged. Sorta like his soul.

He sat on the lone seat in the room, a rusting folding chair across from his bed. After removing his shoes, he slipped them into the netted bag on the wall that prevented scorpions from using them as a prefab home. Then he took off his shirt and shorts before falling heavily onto his cot, realizing too late he was taking a chance that the rusty springs beneath the straw-filled mattress would hold against the impact. With dread, he listened to the old metal scream as it took his weight. Luckily, it didn't snap like his first bed had done.

He closed the mosquito netting over the bed. He'd survived one bout of dengue fever not long after he'd arrived which made him immune to that one strain. He had no interest in finding out about any of the other three strains. After his first illness, a mitigation program was instituted to eradicate the mosquitos that carried the virus, but Jane was taking no chances.

Settling onto his lone pillow and staring blankly at the spider-cracking in the ceiling plaster, he realized yet another change had come over him. By the sole candle that lit his lonely hovel, he no longer sought patterns in the random lines. The cracks were just cracks. The shadow cast against the stucco walls remained the outline of a stack of books instead of becoming a ziggurat or a tiered wedding cake.

The only images that now filled his vision alternated between the knife in his hand plunging into Red John's foul chest with red blood spraying, and later the tears brimming Teresa Lisbon's green eyes before she turned away from him for the last time as she struggled to keep her anger and disappointment from turning into rage. Both riled his stomach to nausea.

He needed to go to sleep, and like most nights it was difficult. For a while he listened to the white noise track in his head, trying to lull his mind by combining it with the frog song in the encroaching jungle. Just as he was slipping away, he said the four-word chant that he hoped would do some good in the world, even though he knew it was hopeless.

"I love you, Teresa," he said into the darkness.

"I love you too, Patrick," said a male voice in falsetto.

In one smooth motion, Patrick sat up while grabbing his derringer from the small table inside the mosquito net. He pointed it at the doorway. The light from his jar-enclosed candle did nothing to illuminate the familiar figure silhouetted against the distant sky.

"Mashburn," Patrick said, dropping his gunpoint toward the mat-covered dirt floor. "What are you doing here?"

"Coming to get you, you damned fool." The tall man stooped to pass under the lintel and into the light. The boyish face looked older than when Patrick had last seen him eight months before, but the big grin flashed just the same as ever. "Get your stuff and let's go." Then he glanced around until his gaze fell on a light switch. He flipped it, turning on the low wattage bare fluorescent bulb over the kitchen area. Taking a quick glance around, he grimaced and shut the light off again. "What a dump, Patrick! It's worse than when I last saw it."

Running his hand over his long, unruly hair as he replaced the gun on the table, Patrick had to agree. It wasn't one of his finer residences. Even the Aerie at CBI headquarters had more charm than this shack backing to the village's midden pile. "Go where?"

Again the cheeky, boyish grin.

"Maybe a barber first. What's with the whiskers? And your hair is a mop. Teresa is not even going to recognize you through all that hair."

"Go to hell, Walter."

"I just arrived in hell." He gestured around the room. "And I've come to take you out of it."

Patrick slipped out of his mosquito tent and nodded his head toward the bottle of scotch on the counter next to the unused hotplate.

"Have a drink while you explain what you mean by that. But turn on the light first."

When the fluorescent flickered back on, Mashburn took a couple of steps into the hut. He picked up the bottle and let out a low whistle. He looked at Patrick who had just slipped his plaid surfing shorts back on.

"You're the town drunk on twelve-year-old single malt? Man, I knew you were eccentric but this is ridiculous."

"Only the best with your money, Walter."

Mashburn jerked his head back in surprise, then set the bottle down.

"Come on! I checked. You haven't used a dime of that stash I left you at the house."

"Oh, I was tempted, Walter, especially when you added to it."

"How are you getting along?"

"I have a little money of my own. I told you that before. It wasn't like I couldn't figure out that I'd be on the run after I killed Bertram. Besides, living here is cheap."

"Well…except for paying off the bribes to local canton politicians as some of us have to," Walter said. "Not all of us have the reputation as a charmer of both men and women. But you're right. Cheap rent, cheap women, cheap help…"

Especially when you're serving as the number one employer in the region. The local government doesn't want to do anything to discourage you, do they?

Jane reached for his shirt, a faded, patterned thing that clashed with his surf shorts but worked perfectly to exemplify him as a poor local serf in Mashburn's petty little kingdom.

"I assure you, that Laphroaig is the real deal and not cheap at all."

"Oh, I believe you," Mashburn chuckled.

Patrick crossed the room to pick up the bottle and bumped into the billionaire as the other man stepped away. He apologized and placed glasses to dole out two fingers for each of them. "My only luxury lately," he mumbled, touching his glass to Walter's.

"Let me change that for you, Patrick."

He met the billionaire's gaze, studying him for some clue about why the man was there. To his horror, he found Mashburn unreadable. He'd finally lost his mojo.

But he wasn't going to show it.

"What is it that you want?" he asked.

"Your cooperation. I worked out a deal with the Feds; they retain one of my subsidiaries in a military contract and I talk you into turning yourself into the US Embassy in San José."

"The Feds? Which agency? FBI? Homeland Security? CIA? IRS?"

"More than one, actually."

Patrick paused only a moment before, taking a sip of his simple joy that he usually allowed once a week – Sunday afternoons at 2:15pm, the exact time he killed Gale Bertram, aka Red John, in that city park by the capitol building. Apart from tasting good, it temporarily banished the sting he still felt on his tongue from when Bertram's blood landed in his gasping mouth.

"Walter, you helped me get here to begin with. Why would I want to turn myself in? And give up this luxurious lifestyle?"

Mashburn quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Three reasons, smartass. First, the FBI is working on extradition papers with the Costa Rican government to haul your sorry carcass back to the US. Second—"

Patrick pointed northward. "Nicaragua is ten miles that way and has no extradition agreement with the US. I could easily slip into the jungle and out of the country."

Mashburn gave him a sour look and then continued like Jane hadn't interrupted. "Second, the CIA is working to get their extradition papers filed before the FBI so they can haul your sorry carcass back to the US. The Feds want you in a very big way and are willing to fight each other over getting you. And of course, Costa Rica is quite willing to play along in an effort to keep Washington happy with them. Come to think of it, Nicaragua would probably be glad to sacrifice you for that same purpose."

"What do the Feds want with me?"

Walter took a sip of his scotch and made an appreciative noise before examining the glass closely. For some reason, he looked like Colonel Hogan from the television show Hogan's Heroes. Maybe it was the scheming look behind the eye. "Well, let's see. The way it was explained to me is that apart from the phenomenal way you caught bad guys and at one time had saved National Security from a code breaking machine – something I appreciate, by the way, since all my systems could have been affected by a universal hack – I have heard some rumor that they both want to hire you."

"Hire me?"

"Yeah, I told them that it was a crazy idea, that you're certifiably mad. Somehow, I think they're both counting on bringing your sanity back by dropping the charges of murder and assault on a law enforcement officer."

"Assault on what officer?" That was an outrageous charge. He hadn't hit anyone in his escape from Hedley Park.

"They say you knocked over one of the Sacramento police officers who responded."

"He tripped on Bertram's gun! I never touched him."

Again, Mashburn took a sip. Patrick suspected it was to hide a smirk, although that wasn't like Walter at all. The man reveled in his smirk. He was practically famous for his smirk. With a soft growl, Patrick took a sip of his own drink.

"Aren't you going to ask what the third reason is?"

"What?"

"The third reason. The one that will convince you to go to San José with me."

Damn. He really was losing his touch. No, he hadn't even thought about it.

"I figured you'd get to it eventually," he lied, covering his failure. "You like to make a grandstand that you readily perform to."

"Well, Mr. Pot, it's nice to meet you," Mashburn said, his tones droll. "Please call me 'Black'."

"Come off it, Walter. What's the third reason?"

Again, Mashburn took a leisurely sip of his scotch while Patrick held onto his patience as much as possible.

"Teresa Lisbon is waiting there. Waiting for you. Something about how much she misses you or some bullshit."

Patrick stared for a moment and then pulled Mashburn's jeep keys from his own pocket. Walter looked shocked and then patted his jeans.

"Let's go, Walter. Teresa's waiting."


Thank you for reading. I appreciate reviews.