Crooked River

32

Roger Smithback rolled over on the dirty mattress that served as his bed and — with a groan — gingerly held one hand up to the side of his face. Even now, two days later, the pain hadn’t abated much. His eye was puffy and half-closed, his ear swollen, and his temple almost too tender to touch. He could only guess what a wreck he must look — there was no mirror in the grimy little storage room that made up his cell.

Two days — he’d been here two whole days. He knew this only because of a tiny barred window high up in the wall that permitted sunlight to enter. When he’d first come to after that awful sucker punch, it had still been dark. Then hours later, the sun rose, then after an interminable wait it had gone and he faced a second endless night. It had risen again, and set — for the second time.

Two days. His only food had been bags of plantain chips, his only drink cans of tamarind soda from a pallet stored in one corner. The chips had been served to him daily, each time accompanied by a shouted warning, and a door cracked open just wide enough to toss a few bags in at the point of a shotgun. His toilet was an old galvanized pail. It had yet to be emptied.

It had taken him a long time to clear his head of the effects of the blow. Once he had, he felt overwhelmed with terror: What was going to happen to him? Was that blow to the side of the head a mere taste of things to come?

Was anyone looking for him? Since the death of his brother, Smithback had no family to speak of, and no girlfriend. He traveled so often and unpredictably, with no notice to his friends, that they wouldn’t be alarmed at his disappearance. Which left Kraski as the only one who would note his absence — and he’d probably just assume his reporter was slacking off.

At least it seemed they weren’t going to kill him... not right away. And he wondered: what did they want with him?

With this realization, his thoughts — as much as the blinding headache allowed — turned to the events that had led up to this. He’d been set up by that old bastard landscaper. Maybe Smithback should have seen it coming. As usual, he’d been too eager for the story.

He now had a story, all right, if he could only get out of there alive.

Given his limited Spanish, he’d been able to comprehend only a portion of the loud talk that went on beyond the locked door. As far as he could tell, he was being held prisoner in some unused back room of the tienda guatemalteca they’d passed just before turning into the alley. There were two male voices only, it seemed. Sometimes the two laughed coarsely, telling crude jokes and bragging about their exploits. They had speculated about some big reward being offered by someone for something. There was much talk of drugs, shootings, and smuggling. Once or twice, he thought they’d mentioned him, and the dismissive way they’d done so was chilling. Mainly, though, it seemed they were waiting for their boss to come back. Somebody they called “El Engreído.”

Engreído. He’d puzzled over that one. Figuratively, Smithback thought it meant “stuck-up.” Literally, he knew, it meant “Bighead” and must be a nickname. He wondered what was going to happen to him when this Bighead dude came back.

As if on cue, a commotion sounded in the passage outside his makeshift cell. He heard the two familiar voices, yammering excitedly. And then a third voice joined in: slower, deeper, full of authority.

Instinctively, Smithback slid backward on the mattress until he was pressed against the wall farthest from the door. Shit.

He didn’t have long to wait. There was a brief fumbling at the lock, and then the door opened. No shotgun barrel peeping in this time; no need for that. The doorway was filled by the giant figure of the tattooed man who’d coldcocked him.

Seeing Smithback, the man grinned and stepped through the door.

“Flaco, cierra la maldita puerta,” he said over his shoulder. The door closed behind him and then, a moment later, a wire-basket light in the ceiling came on for the first time since Smithback awoke. In the light, the man looked even bigger than he had in the alleyway. His head was shaved, and a thick rope of fat — it looked more like muscle, if that was even possible — formed a bulging ring around the back of his neck. The wifebeater he wore strained to cover his massive chest, and both arms were sleeve-tattooed from shoulder to wrist. In one spot, Smithback noticed with a spike of fear, were the P and N that had become all too familiar to him.

The wooden pallet of tamarind soda sat in one corner. Bighead pulled it toward Smithback’s mattress. Though it had to contain a dozen cases of soda, the giant man slid it over as easily as if it had been a shoe box. He settled himself atop the pallet and looked at Smithback.

“Got a little boo-boo, chiquito?” he asked in surprisingly unaccented English.

Smithback realized that, unconsciously, he was still covering his injured temple, and he immediately lowered his hand.

“So you’re the one who’s been waving photos all over the barrio, asking questions about how we’re inked.”

“I’m a—” Smithback began, but Bighead raised his voice and spoke over him.

“I know who you are. You are Roger Smithback. Smith-back. A reporter.”

For a moment, curiosity mingled with fear: how did this brute know that? Of course — they’d taken his wallet, looked at his driver’s license. A Google search would have done the rest.

“But you’re a long way from home, Smith-back. What are you doing so far from Miami? And why are you asking about the Panteras?”

The man’s English was very good. Smithback swallowed, trying hard to keep in mind the code of journalistic integrity his father, a newspaper editor, had fiercely advocated. What would Ernie Pyle do? he had always asked at difficult moments. “If you know I’m a reporter,” Smithback said, “then you know it’s my business to ask questions. I—”

Bighead shut him up just by lifting one index finger. “I’m the one asking questions now. And you — you’re no reporter anymore. You’re dogshit on the sole of my boot.” He paused, looking at Smithback speculatively. “Got a problem with that, mierda de perro?”

Journalistic integrity or not, Smithback had no problem with it.

Bighead nodded. “I think I would like being a reporter. You get to go everywhere, stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. You talk to the cops, talk to the street, learn twice as much as anyone else. Ask all the questions you want, even if they’re none of your business.” He paused, mimicking the act of puzzling something out. “And if I was a smart reporter — and maybe I learned something I shouldn’t have — I could ask even more questions. Like about the Panteras. And everybody would think it was just my job.”

Suddenly, swift as an adder’s tongue, the man’s huge arm darted forward, grabbed Smithback by the collar, and pulled him bodily up from the mattress. Smithback yelped in mingled pain and surprise.

“So what’s going on, chiquito?” he asked in a dreadfully menacing, silky voice. “I know you want to tell me. You wouldn’t have such a hard-on, sniffing around here day and night, if you didn’t know something. What went wrong at the meet? Where are they, las mulas? What’s the story with all those trucks?”

Smithback’s mind worked fast as the fist tightened, but only a childlike babble escaped his lips. “What are you talking about? Mulas? Trucks?”

“Don’t play stupid. Big trucks, government trucks. Were they full of stuff? My stuff?” He paused. “Something’s late, my journalist friend. Very, very big. Very, very late. That makes my hombres angry. That makes my jefe angry.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, tightening his fist still further around the collar, he lifted Smithback off the ground. With a grunt of effort, he smacked his other fist into Smithback’s stomach, suspended over the mattress. A horrific pain ripped through the reporter’s gut. His body instinctively tried to curl into a fetal position but, dangling as he was by the collar, his knees only jerked: once, twice. Bighead delivered another terrible blow to his midsection, then threw Smithback down onto the mattress.

Smithback doubled over, vomiting on the filthy cover.

Bighead stepped forward, straddling him. “You don’t have all the shit already, chiquito, or you wouldn’t be around here asking questions. But you know something. I think maybe it’s about those trucks — the ones with their numbers painted over.”

Smithback barely heard. He struggled to breathe, waves of cramping pain ripping through his guts.

“And you will tell me,” Bighead said. “You know why? Because people always tell me. Like when I spent two years in Charlotte CI. I had a thing for new fish, especially the diaper snipers. They were all soft — soft like you. I’d push their shit, just to break them in a little... and they’d start talking, right away!” Bighead laughed in mock surprise. “They’d tell me everything, every secret they ever had, every messed-up thing they’d ever done, hoping to make me stop. But I didn’t stop, chiquito. I pushed their shit until I was fucking finished. Now... talk to me.”

“It’s the feet,” Smithback groaned in agony.

“¿Qué?”

“The feet...” Smithback was still dribbling vomit, and he could only speak a few words at a time. “That washed up... on the beach...”

Bighead stopped straddling him, took a few paces back. “What about the feet?”

“That tattoo... it was on one of the feet...”

“What? Those feet on that beach in Captiva?”

“I got the photo from... from an autopsy... Trying to use the tattoo to... get a story... a story... ”

“Shut up! My missing shipment got nothing to do with those feet! You’re just trying to hustle me.” Bighead cursed, then called over his shoulder. “Carlos! Flaco! ¡Pongan tus culos aquí, carajos!”

Immediately, the door opened again and the two figures stepped inside. Through his haze of pain, Smithback saw they were both as heavily tattooed as Bighead: one tall and well-built, the other short. Turning away from Smithback, Bighead started speaking to them in low, rapid Spanish. Smithback didn’t even try to understand. Something had occurred to him — something he should probably have thought of before, but it had taken this brief, vicious beating to bring it to mind. That old gardener, the spotter — when he’d driven Smithback around, he’d done a lot of talking. It sounded like the gang, the Panteras, had some kind of serious problem going on — this was what Bighead wanted to know about. But the thing Smithback couldn’t get out of his mind was something a cop buddy had once said: If you’re kidnapped, and they don’t wear masks, if they mention each other’s names in your hearing, that means you’re fucked: sooner or later, they’ll put a cap in your ass.

He realized Bighead was looking back at him. The hulking figure wore an expression Smithback couldn’t read: it might be anger, it might be uncertainty — it could have been any number of things.

“That’s some little story, the feet,” he told Smithback. “I don’t know if you’re smart or stupid. I’m going to ask around. See if maybe you speak a little truth, see if there’s a connection. Then I’ll come back and break you in. That’s when I find out whether you’re lying — or, if you tell the truth, maybe you’ll tell a little bit more.”

“I’ve told you everything—” Smithback began, but Bighead had turned away and was walking toward the door. Already, he was pulling a cell phone out of his pocket. In the doorway, he paused to give his two gunmen another instruction.

“Fuck him up a little more before locking him in again,” he said. Then he stepped into the narrow passageway and vanished.