Crooked River(62)



He heard the two of them laughing now in the passage; the slap of a high five. Carlos, it seemed, was going out on some errand. Smithback turned his gaze back to the ceiling. It surprised him, distantly, that he could look upon his captors with relative charity. Maybe it was an indication of how resigned he’d become. If they’d stayed in Guatemala, if they hadn’t fallen victim to bad influences, Carlos would probably still be working in the moped shop, and Flaco—Smithback wasn’t sure about Flaco. The day before, bringing in what passed for his prisoner’s dinner, he’d had a graphic novel jammed into his back pocket, and when Smithback commented on it the guy had hastily dropped the plastic plate on Smithback’s mattress and walked out, pushing the comic book deeper into his pocket. Only then did Smithback realize it was not a book, after all, but a manuscript—the drawings had been Flaco’s own. If he was working on a graphic novel, or even just drawing in his spare time, it probably wasn’t the kind of hobby his compa?eros would think highly of.

Carlos had gone; it was late afternoon, and the little shop had grown quiet. Smithback closed his eyes, tried to shut down his thoughts and sleep. But within five minutes, he was interrupted by a scraping sound: his door, opening.

He pushed up on his elbows, wincing a bit. It was Flaco. For some reason, instead of exuding his usual cocky air, he looked nervous. He glanced up and down the passage, then—after making sure Smithback hadn’t moved—he stepped in, closed the door, and approached the pallet of tamarind soda. It was still where Bighead had dragged it over twenty-four hours before.

He sat down. “You,” he said in English. “You writer. Periodista. ?Sí?” Flaco dug into one pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and held it in front of Smithback. The reporter, one eye better than the other, peered at it in the dim light. With surprise, he saw that it was his first article for the Herald on the feet that had washed up on Captiva. Flaco pointed at the byline. “Smithback,” he said. “That you, right?”

Smithback nodded. Flaco spoke better English than he had initially let on.

“You work with…with a publisher?” Flaco asked. “Newspaper publisher?”

He wondered where Flaco had gotten a copy of that article. It was blurry, like a screenshot that had been printed. All of a sudden, Smithback realized what all this would look like from the perspective of a person like Flaco. He didn’t know much about the young man’s background, but he almost certainly came from a small Guatemalan town where the outside world rarely intruded. To a guy like that, a reporter for a big newspaper might be seen as someone important. Smithback recalled Flaco bragging about his initiation into the Panteras. He’d been told to kill two people: a rata, informer, and his wife. He could kill the man any way he wanted to. But first, he had to kill the woman. He had to cut her throat—in front of the rat. That, anyway, had been the gist of the story. But the way he told it, the bragging and unlikely details, made Smithback think the whole thing was made up, or at least highly embellished.

Flaco was looking at him, question still hanging in the air. Smithback thought quickly, pushing these speculations aside. A reporter, his name on the front page of a big city newspaper…to someone like Flaco, his lifestyle must seem so unimaginably distant that he might as well be from another planet.

“Yes,” he said, sitting up. “Yes, I work with lots of publishers. Important publishers.” A spark of hope that had died sometime during the previous night now flared to life again. He’d been like a drowning man, and all of a sudden, he’d caught sight of a life preserver. Distant, but visible nonetheless. There might, after all, be a way out of here.

“What kind of publishers?”

“All kinds. Newspapers. Magazines. Books.”

As he spoke, a light gleamed briefly in Flaco’s eyes. “Magazine?”

“Sure. My best friend, mejor amigo, he used to do cartoons for my newspaper. Now, he has his own publishing house. Right here in Fort Myers.” This was a lie: Smithback hadn’t known anyone in the comics section of the paper, and he personally hadn’t read a comic since the Peanuts and Zap Comix of his youth.

“What kind of publish, this amigo?”

“He publishes…” Shit, what should he say? He gestured. “Graphic novels. Manga. ?Sí?”

Flaco became animated. “Graphic novels? Sí. Sí. And you say this friend, he live here? In Fort Myers?”

“Yeah. Downtown.” His mind ran wild, trying to fill in the story. “He’s also getting into movies. Hollywood. But this…” He made a sweeping motion that, he hoped, indicated a lateral professional move. “He helps make graphic novels get made into movies.”

“You…you read graphic novels?”

“Sure. I love them. Big fan!”

Flaco, encouraged, patted one pocket of the cargo shorts he wore. “I…draw novels.”

“Really? You draw graphic novels? Come on, really?” Smithback tried to inject the right mixture of admiration and incredulity—one that would flatter rather than insult.

“Sí. Since I was little, all I want to do…is dibujar.” The young gangster mimicked sketching on a pad. “My father, he beat me when he find I drawing, not working. No me importa.”

“Wow. Amazing.” And it was amazing, in a way. Smithback always liked to find creativity in unexpected places. Bighead wouldn’t be happy if he thought Flaco’s ambitions ran in some direction other than dealing drugs and wiping out competition. The man was obviously starved for some sort of recognition.

Douglas Preston & Li's Books