“Once you get them over the border, what happens?”
“I take them to La Gloria, a village in Chiapas along Route 190. There I turn them over to a professional coyote, who takes them north to the United States.”
“Who is this coyote?”
“I know him only by his nickname, El Monito.”
“Is he Mexican?”
“I think so. He has a Mexican accent.”
“Do you have any idea what might have happened to the group with Martina?”
“Señor, I think it is very simple: they were caught and arrested at the border. This is common. They’re in detention in the U.S. and that is why no one has heard anything. It used to be they were released, but now they keep them in camps.”
“El Monito—tell me about him.”
“He’s a businessman. He’s expensive, but he does what he promises. I wouldn’t be entrusting my people to him if I thought he was a bad man. Whatever happened to them happened once they got into the U.S.”
“How can I meet El Monito?” He once again offered Zapatero the banknote and still the man ignored it.
“I think that will be difficult. He is secretive. Six months ago, we arranged for me to bring a new group of emigrants to La Gloria next month. He is supposed to be there with the vans to take them north. That’s the only way I know how to meet him.”
“If I went to La Gloria, where might I find him?”
Zapatero shrugged. “There is a café and bar there where I make contact with him, through a bartender named Corvacho. The bar is called Del Charro. On the north end of town.”
“Thank you.” Once again he offered the note, to no avail. It made Coldmoon nervous, the man not taking his money.
Zapatero looked at him. “May I ask why you’re so concerned about Martina in particular?”
“Like you, I’m a man doing a job, and that job involves finding out what happened to her. I wish I could tell you more. I work for the good guys—that’s all I can say.”
“I accept that,” he said, finally taking the banknote. He carefully folded it up and tucked it into his wallet. “Please don’t tell El Monito we spoke. He is very protective of his privacy.”
As Coldmoon got up to leave, he added, “And, señor: he is a very nervous man. A nervous man with a gun is not a good combination.”
37
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later, there was a light rap on the door. Then Flaco slipped back in. He said nothing, but he didn’t need to: his eyes moved from Smithback to the pages, and back again. At first, he didn’t approach. He was clearly burning with curiosity, but it seemed that the break had also given him a chance to reflect on the risks of consorting with prisoners.
Smithback indicated the manuscript. “You…did this? By yourself?”
“Sí.”
“Really? Sorry, I’m not calling you a liar, it’s just…” He flipped the pages. “Really good.”
Actually, it was not very good. The drawings were fair—their style seemed to have been heavily influenced by tattoo art, which was probably the case. Ironically, it was the brief little pencil sketches Flaco had done here and there, apparently placeholders for later ink drawings, that seemed to show the most skill. It was possible the youth had latent artistic talent.
The story itself sucked ass. Part of this, of course, was due to the mixture of Spanish and English that Smithback found hard at times to decipher. But translations were easy enough to arrange, and poor spelling or run-on sentences could be fixed. The major issue was the stupid and improbable storyline. It purported to be the autobiography of a macho gangbanger, embellished with bizarre and fantastical violence, implausible sex scenes, and a ludicrous hero with popping pecs out to defeat the forces of evil in a fantasy universe. Pure crap.
“It’s brilliant, in fact,” Smithback went on, “and the illustrations are so vivid and powerful!” He slathered on the praise, raving about the authenticity of the story and how fresh El Acero, the protagonist, seemed as a character—two critical elements, he explained, required for a great story.
“Who have you shown it to?” he asked in summation.
Flaco frowned. “¿Qué?”
Smithback then launched into the prerequisites of getting a graphic novel published. He explained the arduous process: preparing a sample, looking for an agent, hoping a publisher would show interest. Sending it out cold, week after week, getting rejection after rejection. All because in order to get published, you had to have connections. Just like in the drug business. Connections were everything.
This stroke of genius was something Flaco could understand.
Where they might catch a break, Smithback went on, interjecting our and we into his advice, was that a good number of graphic novel publishers still accepted direct submissions. And unlike commercial book publishers, they weren’t all centered in New York—Drawn & Quarterly was in Canada, and Dark Horse was in Oregon, just to name two. And, of course, his friend’s small publishing house right here in Florida. Steering the conversation in this direction, he played up his relationship to the publisher he’d started calling Bill Johnson, picking a name that couldn’t be successfully googled. He was careful to be vague about the name of the company, because that was something Flaco could easily check. He emphasized again how publishing, like so many industries, was all about relationships. Getting in the door was half the battle.
And that, Smithback ended, was something he could easily do.
“He’s on Kellogg Street,” Smithback said, pulling the name of a well-tended, innocuous downtown street from his meager knowledge of Fort Myers. “We have lunch from time to time. I could get in to see him like that.” And he snapped his fingers.
“And he read it? My book?” Flaco asked this as if he’d just been offered a skeleton key to Fort Knox.
“If I took it to him, mi amigo, he would read it right there. While I waited.”
Flaco, who’d been looking increasingly excited during this exchange, now suddenly frowned, grew remote. After a moment, he held out his hand. “Give me book.”
Smithback gave him the book back. Flaco stuffed it in his pocket, turned, and left.
Son of a bitch, thought Smithback. He almost had him.
Ten minutes later Flaco was back. “You lie. You want escape.”
Smithback shook his head. “Where would I go? You know my name. You have my license—you know where I live, where I work. Look, if you don’t trust me, come with me.”
But Flaco shook his head. “Bighead back tomorrow afternoon. If he find out we go…”
While Smithback had been reviewing the comic, he’d also been assembling a game theory decision tree. Now he played the best of his limited options. “So I go in the morning. We go in the morning,” he said hastily as the expression on Flaco’s face changed. “You wait outside, at the corner. Better Bill not see you first, because of…you know…” And with more gestures than words, he explained how Flaco’s fearsome demeanor might initially put the publisher off—though ultimately Johnson would appreciate the realism Flaco could bring to his work.
Flaco seemed to be on the fence while Smithback made his case. Then he shook his head. “No. Demasiado peligroso. Too dangerous.”
“Look, we can make it fast. I’ll go in, shake his hand, get him excited about your manuscript—give it to him and then leave. Let him read it. All it takes is a read and then he’ll see the genius in your story. Then you can follow up with him yourself. You won’t need me after that.”
“Why not talk to him now? You call.”
“Flaco, it doesn’t work that way! It’s all done in person! Just like in the drug business. Would you do business with someone only over the phone, that you’d never met in person? Of course not!”
Flaco seemed unconvinced; his creative ambitions were clearly at war with his cautious instincts. “Peligroso,” he repeated.
Smithback played his last card. “You’re the boss,” he said. “But you’ll never get another chance. This is it. He knows
all the important people in Hollywood. And for a character as exciting as your El Acero, the movie tie-ins, series licenses…” He shook his head. “Bill’s made a lot of artists rich.”
They fell silent as someone passed by in the corridor. Flaco pursed his lips. “We see. If Carlos go out in the morning…” He shrugged with feigned nonchalance, but Smithback could tell that he could barely contain his excitement.
“I’ll need to clean myself up.” Smithback indicated his wrinkled clothes, the dried vomit that was still caked to one side of his head.
“We see,” Flaco said. “Meanwhile, you remember. Say anything to Carlos, and—better keep mouth shut.” He took out his switchblade and pointed it at Smithback’s mouth, for emphasis. Then he slipped it back into his shorts. “I get your dinner now.”
And with that he turned and left the makeshift cell. The door closed and locked behind him.
38
CONSTANCE AND PENDERGAST sat in deck chairs on the wide veranda, looking westward over the gulf, watching the sun slide toward the western horizon. Pelicans, seagulls, and sandpipers cruised across their line of vision, black spots against the pink and blue and gold. On a table next to the door sat Coldmoon’s police scanner, which he’d left behind when he went to Central America. It was on constantly, volume turned low, its background squawk like law enforcement Muzak. They had been relaxing for over an hour, and their conversation, despite its unhurried back-and-forth and occasional lapses into silence, had been of absorbing interest to them both. They had spoken of how Piranesi’s Carceri had managed to influence at least three disciplines—fine art, literature, and rectilinear geometry. The topic of geometry led them, indirectly, to a debate on the house they were currently inhabiting, and whether its symmetrical façade and numerous formal touches—transoms, coffered ceilings, rococo molding—truly qualified it as an example of shingle-style Victorian architecture. Once or twice, in the subtlest of ways, Pendergast had inquired how, exactly, Constance was spending her days; each time, the question was put off with equal delicacy.
“Peculiar, isn’t it,” Constance said, rather abruptly.
“What is that, my dear?” Pendergast asked. The conversation had moved on to whether Campari or Aperol made for a nobler aperitif.
“The way the sun sets over the sea. At first, it seems to drop so languorously, one can barely observe its transit. But then—as it nears the horizon—it accelerates, as if pulled by some invisible elemental force.”
“There’s a scientific explanation for that,” said Pendergast, sipping his Campari. “But I think I prefer your idea of the elemental force.”
“Sunset is time for the appreciation of elemental forces, not talk of science.”
Pendergast smiled slightly.
At that moment, his cell phone rang. He plucked it from the jacket of his suit pocket, examined the caller ID, which indicated nothing, then answered it. “Pendergast.”
“Good,” came the voice on the other end. “And you’ve answered your work phone: that will make things easier.”
Pendergast recognized the voice as that of ADC Pickett. But it was not quite that man’s normal voice: it sounded strained.
“I’ve just heard from our station in southern China. Specialist Quarles is dead.”
For the briefest moment, Pendergast went totally still. Then he reached for his glass. “Give me the details.”
“He fell from his suite at the Sofitel Foshan, in Guangdong Province. Chinese police and medical workers recovered the body and had already begun an investigation before Quarles’s credentials, and his assignment, were spotted as active by Langley. By the time we reached out to the Chinese authorities and completed the necessary diplomatic dance, the autopsy was complete. We were lucky to get one of our own forensic specialists in for an examination before the body was cremated and returned to the States.”
“And the findings?”
“The official Chinese verdict was death by blunt force trauma, consistent with a fall from the twentieth floor of a building. I’m sending you some encrypted images now.” There was a brief pause. “Suicide was presumed. The autopsy was quite thorough, and our expert had a difficult time finding evidence to the contrary. Quarles fell from his room, all right. But…”
“Yes?”
“Our expert noticed something unusual: the man’s esophagus was abraded.”
“Abraded?”
“That was the word our medical examiner used in his report, yes.”
“Will you send the report to me, please?”
“Just a moment.” Another pause. “The Chinese M.E. brushed it off as esophageal perforation due to a preexisting—let’s see—squamous cell carcinoma.”
“Anything else?”
“There was no time. He did what he could before the Chinese cremated the remains—as is their usual damnable practice, covering up any hint of foul play that might befall foreigners in China.”
“Do you have any images of the esophagus?”
“Sending it now.”
During this exchange, Constance had risen from her chair and walked to the railing of the deck, aperitif in hand, and was looking west across the beach. The sun was now an orange ball of fire kissing the sea horizon. Pendergast decrypted the messages on his phone, then quickly scrolled through the photographs. Quarles was barely recognizable as a human being, let alone as the short, fussy man with the Eton haircut he’d met in the M.E.’s office in Fort Myers not so many days ago. That was a tall building. He scrolled forward to the U.S. doctor’s report.
“It says here that both the mucosa and submucosa were involved, and that there was no indication of either eschar or debridement.”
“Agent Pendergast, you’re losing me with that medical terminology.”
Pendergast swiped ahead to the final image—the single picture their doctor had been able to take of Quarles’s esophagus.
“Traumatic injury or no, these are definitely not cancerous squamous cells,” he said.
Pickett sighed audibly. “Dr. Pendergast speaks—”
“The expert from the FTG I sent to China earlier this week did not have advanced esophageal cancer. That much I can tell you for a fact.”
“So what was it?”
“I’m saying exactly what our own medical expert is probably also implying, as diplomatically as possible under the circumstances. This damage to the esophagus wasn’t caused by cancer or a fall. It was caused by full-thickness burns.”
“Burns?”
“Third-degree, where tissue is destroyed down to the subcutaneous level.”
This pause was longer. “And you’re implying what, precisely?”
“That Specialist Quarles was tortured. A specially fitted gastroscope was inserted down his throat.”
“Specially…fitted?”
“Yes. They can be purchased if one knows where. Medical instruments that aren’t meant to heal but do the opposite. Gastroscopes can normally be fitted with lights, cameras, tiny scalpels for the taking of biopsies. But they can also be fitted with electric probes, cautery pens. A method of torture that leaves no visible exterior trace, only interior.”
“Good Lord.”
“Quarles called me three days ago. He said he thought he’d found the manufacturer of the shoes. It was a small company that furnished items to a limited list of clients—including a jobber that, fairly recently, had ordered three hundred pairs of our precise shoe.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. He said that there had been some unusual requests involved. He also said that he felt this was a sensitive order, and that learning more might present problems.”
“And?”
“Sir, Quarles was as comfortable doing business in China as he was analyzing shoes and neckties in Huntsville. But he was not an agent, and his primary training was not in covert work. He thought he’d found the manufacturer and jobber. We wanted to identify the buyer, of course, but I told him to use his discretion, and that if he felt any danger, he shou
ld abandon the attempt and exfil the region immediately.”
“Did you get the name of the manufacturer or jobber?”
“Neither. There was no reason for him to tell me more at that point—for security reasons, if nothing else.”
“Security? It sounds to me like when you had this conversation, it was already too late.”
“That has occurred to me as well.”
“Has it also occurred to you that if they, whoever they are, went to such lengths…then Quarles probably gave them what they wanted to know?”
“Yes.”
“He would have told them of our interest in who ordered the shoes, the name of his case agent. That is, you.”
“The real question is: how did they know how close he was? Quarles and I took level one classified precautions.”
“That is an important question. How do you want to proceed?” Pickett asked after a moment.
“I’d like to think about it overnight.”
“Okay. I think it’s safe to say this unfortunate development tells us one thing, at least: the people we’re dealing with are sophisticated and have a surprisingly long reach. I’m warning you officially to watch your six. And tell Coldmoon to do the same.”
“When I’m able to reach him, I will.”
The phone went dead, and Pendergast slipped it back into his pocket. The sun had sunk below the horizon now, leaving behind it an afterglow of the purest cinnamon. Constance had taken her seat again. Pendergast had made no attempt to hide his end of the conversation from her.
She finished her drink, put it on a nearby glass table. “You lost somebody,” she said.
“I’m afraid that’s too kind a way of putting it. Because of my instructions, somebody was tortured—and killed.”
Constance did not reply to this. Instead, she took his hand and they sat in silence as the light slowly faded.
“What was he, or she, like?” she asked at last.
“He was a courageous man who died in service.” A grim look flitted across Pendergast’s face. “One can offer no higher praise than that.”
Crooked River Page 20
