Make Them Cry
Page 30
As night came on and they drove toward the growing darkness, the stars over the desert, she began to think that the Concern could well be a total lie, but she also let herself believe everything she wanted to believe. What difference did it make at this point what she wanted, whether her luck was running or running out?
They drove mostly at night, sleeping the days in motels, her always waking to him with a book. Outside El Paso, she asked him what he was reading. He grinned and shook his head.
“Fantasy. Dragons and swordsmen and wizards. There is a series of novels I am loving right now. They are about a warrior called ‘the Twin,’ and I read them thinking about myself because my name means ‘twin,’ did you know that?”
She did not.
“He is a warrior. Very bloodthirsty. A very good killer. So maybe more than just that my name means ‘twin’ is why I read them. But also, he’s looking for a place worthy of his talents. He wants to be a knight. You know, have a code, use his skills for a noble purpose.”
He smiled broadly at her, his face lit up in the dash lights like a comic mask, his face so broad and joyful that she laughed. “This is also like me, no?”
It was a squat brick building on the edge of Eagle Pass, Texas. Smelling of oil and sand to collect the oil and grease. It stunk like dirty red rags and reminded her of her daddy.
Tomás took her into a back office and down an interior concrete stairwell. A breeze gave away what was behind the heavy wooden door on iron hinges.
The tunnel, twelve feet in diameter, that biased to the left and down. He gestured for her to go ahead.
“You’re not coming?”
“I’m to stay here. But he’s on the other side.”
Tomás was holding a paperback open with his thumb, and when he was closing the door on her he rested his cane against the wall so he could keep his nose in the book until the moment he had to set it down and lock it up. It struck her as almost comical that she’d shot him, that he’d scared her so much that she did this. She wondered how long they’d be friends, how long this chapter of her life would last.
She walked down the slight and slowly descending grade. Small track lights gave off just enough light to see by. After a few laps down, the tunnel straightened. There was a lukewarm earthen breeze, and she walked along the track for miles. She wanted to run, but she decided instead to just walk. Every half mile or so, a pair of cameras pointing in each direction. She stopped and looked at one, the red light on it.
She wondered who was watching, if Carver was, and she wondered if he knew what all she’d been through, what all she’d suffer again to be here. She’d come all this way, and the end was here in a hole in the ground. She’d been running for this rabbit hole her whole life.
She walked on and on, the black terminus of the tunnel getting closer and larger. It grew warmer and for a moment seemed like an ingress to hell.
Fine, I will go to hell.
And then she heard a motor and saw a sudden column of light and a platform descending, and she could see Carver’s legs. He squatted down and removed a cowboy hat from his head, and his hair was pasted to his skull like he’d come from a field or a raw labor, for all the world like a man who was building something. She saw his face then, and on it that he couldn’t wait to see her and greet her, and she couldn’t wait to see him and get started.
So she ran.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dick Gregorie and Harry Giknavoian for their information on district attorney practice. They also wish to thank the Los Angeles Drug Enforcement Agency office, in particular Sarah Pullen, Vijay Rathi, Almador Martinez, and Timothy Massino for their insights into DEA protocols, culture, and interagency deconfliction practices.
The authors also wish to thank Texas State University and the faculty senate for granting Jon Marc the nontenure-line workload release in fall 2016.
Thanks to everyone in the Texas State English Department, especially Steve Wilson, Nancy Wilson, Dan Lochman, Mike Hennessy, Vicki Smith, Taylor Cortesi, Tom Grimes, and Debra Monroe.
Thanks to the Science and Entertainment Exchange.
Thanks to Susie Tilka for making it easier to go to work every day.
To Katie Kapurch—all the credit, A++.
And thanks to Ally Israelson for her support and effortless insight.
Thanks to Matt Fuller for information and background about the State Department.
Thanks to Brandon Ricks for info about the CIA and chain of command.
The authors owe a huge debt to Oscar Rodríguez, who was invaluable in helping to research this book.
Thanks to Bobby Earl Smith for the legal knowledge, and thanks to Judy Smith for marrying him.
Thanks to Dan Halpern for taking this project across the finish line.
And thanks to Nicole Aragi for being there from the beginning.
Thanks to Tomás Morín for the rights to his name (and for being such a great poet).
Lastly, the authors wish to thank each other for making this joint effort an interesting pleasure.
About the Authors
SMITH HENDERSON is the author of Fourth of July Creek.
JON MARC SMITH teaches creative writing, film, and literature at Texas State University.
Make Them Cry is their first novel together.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Smith Henderson
Fourth of July Creek
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MAKE THEM CRY. Copyright © 2020 by Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover photograph © Abstract Aerial Art/Getty Images
Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Smith, Jon Marc, author. | Henderson, Smith (Joshua Smith), author.
Title: Make them cry: a novel / Jon Marc Smith and Smith Henderson.
Description: First edition. | New York: Ecco, [2020] | Identifiers: CCN 2019049282 (print) | LCCN 2019049283 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062825179 (hardback) | ISBN 9780062825186 (paperback) | ISBN 9780062825193 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.M58847 C66 2020 (print) | LCC PS3619.M58847 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049282
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Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-282519-3
Version 07302020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-282517-9
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