A Crossword to Die For by Nero Blanc

Author:Nero Blanc
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497671720
Publisher: Open Road Media

CHAPTER 21

The air conditioner gurgled, wheezed, then spewed a burst of semicool air into the room before again retreating to hiccoughing inertia. The man seated at the table looked up at the ancient machine, stood, walked to the window, banged on the unit once—producing another blast of unchilled and rank-smelling air—then returned to the papers spread across the table’s chipped Formica surface. The design was intended to resemble walnut—a wood supremely out of place in this humid, tropical port town.

From beneath the man’s sealed window, the desultory sounds of a waterfront trapped in the August heat of a southern latitude rose and fell. The noise was sluggish, enervated; even the boat engines seemed exhausted as they sputtered within waves made greasy and brown by diesel fuel. A voice called something in Spanish; an albatross or another type of sea bird squawked in alarm, then all was silent. The man at the table watched as a dark and prehistoric shape of a pelican floated by, its body momentarily shadowing his view of the blue and glaring sky. Then the pelican was gone, while the sun, despite the bird’s absence, grew suddenly dimmer as clouds as opaque as paint swelled around and over it.

All at once, rain lashed at the window, at the languishing air conditioner, at the spindly palm trees dotting the quay side. The man glanced at his watch as if monitoring the precise hour and minute of the torrent’s arrival, then returned to his work. In the hot room, his naked back glistened with sweat.

He pulled a dingy towel off a nearby chair, wiped his face and hands, then took up a newly sharpened pencil and carefully shaded four squares on the sheet of graph paper he had before him. He didn’t utter a word, but his eyes shone with as much energy and interest as if he were deep in animated conversation.

He shaded more squares, copied letters and numbers in a precise, mechanical hand, then realized that the brief rain squall had passed and the day grown even more unbearably warm.

Another boat putt-putted by below his window—a local fishing vessel by the smell of it. A cadre of gulls screamed and whirled in its wake, and for a moment the small room was full of their greedy calls—as well as the cloying scent of rotting fish guts and blood.

The man again consulted his watch, then returned to his efforts, at length nodding approval as he outlined and shaded the crossword puzzle’s final squares. Completed, the hand-drawn cryptic looked as meticulously delineated as one printed in ink on crisp paper.

He stood, pulled an aged T-shirt over his faded shorts, then slid his feet into rubber sandals. Dressed for the street, he retrieved a Global Delivery envelope from the rumpled bed. The recipient and her address were already written in bold, block letters.

He slid his handiwork into the envelope, opened the door to his room, and locked it carefully behind him. The exterior passageway that ran the length of the

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