Free The Wild Girl by Jim Fergus

going. And now here you are, kid, dropping into my life like an angel sent from heaven—a fresh-faced, dewy-eyed, eager, ambitious, and possibly even talented young man, though that is somewhat beside the point. It’s almost too good to be true.”
    “You mean I got the job?” I asked. “Just like that?”
    “Not quite yet, kid,” Big Wade admitted. “I have a little finagling to do. I’ll have to introduce you to my editor for starters. And then I’ll have to make it look like this was his idea. Fortunately, he’s one of the dumbest human beings on the planet, so that shouldn’t be too hard. How old are you, anyway, kid, twelve?”
    “I’m seventeen.”
    “Okay, for our purposes you’re twenty. You just look young for your age. I don’t suppose you have any experience at all, do you?”
    “Well, for the past couple of years I’ve belonged to an amateur camera club back in Chicago,” I said. “Last year I won the prize for—”
    Big Wade raised his hand. “Say no more, kid,” he said. “Drop that part from your résumé right now. You think anyone’s going to be impressed by the fact that you won a photo contest against a bunch of little old ladies with Brownies? What else you got?”
    “I worked for two weeks as a gofer for the staff photographer at the
Omaha Daily Star,
” I said. “They laid the guy off I was working for, so I got laid off, too.”
    “Now that’s more like it,” Big Wade said. “I can work with that. What was the guy’s name?”
    “Jerry Mackey.”
    “Mackey, Mackey, okay,” Big Wade said. “Can you write?”
    “Write?” I asked.
    “Yeah, can you write?” Big Wade repeated impatiently. “See, they like me because I take pictures
and
write. Two for the price of one. In case you haven’t seen it yet, kid, the
Douglas Daily Dispatch
is not exactly
The New York Times.
And it’s not like they have a budget for a big staff of photographers and print reporters.”
    “Yes, I can write,” I said. “I keep notebooks.”
    “Uh-huh, notebooks, well, that’ll just have to do,” Big Wade said. “Tell you what, kid, after I introduce you to my editor, you keep your mouth shut, let me do the talking, okay? You just follow my lead.” He raised a fat finger in the air. “And, kid, don’t ever mention the fuckin’ camera club again. You’re a professional now.”
    “Sure, okay, Big Wade.”
    By now a few people had begun to arrive in the hall and the committee members were taking their place at the table, chatting easily among themselves. Big Wade identified them for me and got me situated in the prime spot up front, setting up his own camera nearby.
    “The chubby, cherubic-looking guy on the left is Mayor A. G. Cargill,” Big Wade said as four men entered the meeting room together. “The handsome, fair-haired Spaniard next to him is Fernando Huerta, the father of the kidnapped boy. The wiry, mean-looking fella behind them, walks like he’s got a rifle barrel stuck up his ass, that’s Chief of Police Leslie Gatlin. And the
federale
with the mustache and the medals, looks like Valentino? That’s Colonel Hermenegildo Carrillo, the commanding officer of the expedition.”
    “You think they’ll really be able to rescue the boy, Big Wade?” I asked.
    Jackson cut me a look that seemed to say I was the second dumbest human being on the planet. “You do understand that this whole thing is just a giant booster scheme, don’t you, kid?”
    “I’m not sure I understand what that means,” I said.
    “It means that everyone on the committee is a member of the Greater Douglas Area Chamber of Commerce,” Jackson explained. “Señor Huerta came here looking for help in finding his son, and so the mayor and his chamber cooked up the Great Apache Expedition. But the truth is they’re much more interested in promoting the town of Douglas than they are in finding the boy. Who is mostly being used as a shill. The area has been pretty hard hit by the Depression, especially