The Ultimate Good Luck

by Richard Ford

  “I have no idea,” Susan Zago said airily. She made a U-turn in the street and approached the wide avenue slowly in the dark. “He was narco-tráfico,” she said. “A lot of people might have killed him. There was probably a queue.”

  “I don’t think so,” Quinn said.

  “It doesn’t much matter what you think,” she said.

  “It was your husband, right?”

  She turned on the lights and eased into the avenue. She seemed impressed that she was doing things right. “Why should he?” she said.

  “Because of the kind of photography you and Carlos used to tease each other.”

  “He doesn’t care about that,” she said, her face motionless in the dash light. “It’s not your business anyway. Who I fuck is my business.”

  “It was supposed to make me trust him.”

  “How nice,” she said. She seemed amused, as if Bernhardt had been a child she was tired of. “Are you happy you trusted him?”

  “You said it.” He watched her face in the dark. He wanted to see a response. “It’s my business. It didn’t work out, that’s all.”

  “Apparently not.” She turned down Bustamante Street above the Centro, where there were no streetlights. “But it leaves you in a bad position now, I’m afraid,” she said.

  There were no soldiers on the street, and the pottery alleys in the next block were shut, though far down beyond the market he could see in the sheen of night rain the glare of the truck garages still working.

  “I want to know who Deats is,” Quinn said. They were not very far from the Hotel Monte Albán. He thought he could make it back all right now and he felt safer, which he knew was also silly.

  “He’s a man who works for my husband,” Susan Zago said, carefully watching the adobe façades pass by the car window. She was looking for something that required her concentration. “In the States. You know? A connection?” She looked at him as though she’d figured something out. “You need time, don’t you Mr. Quinn? But you don’t have it. Too many facts piling up.”

  “I guess I’ll have to brave it,” he said.

  She stopped the Renault outside a white building without windows, but with a curved arch-entry to an invisible inside. It became quiet a moment. “I always try to remember everything that ever happened to me, you know?” She smiled over at him appealingly, her face pale and calm. Her perfume smelled sweet. “So I need time. I suppose I think everybody else is the same way.”

  “I forget as much as I can,” Quinn said.

  “A tough guy,” she said, and her look became strange again, as if she believed him and pitied him at the same time.

  “How did you get into this?” he said.

  “In what?” she said.

  “These people.”

  “It’s fun,” she said, and looked out the window behind him into the rain as if for a signal. “Don Luis is an old man. I’m interested in young men. Our interests coincide.” She opened her door. “There’s nothing else amusing to do here.”

  The arch-entry protected them a moment from the rain, then opened to an atrium where there was a low concrete sculpture and a reflecting pool. The building was two-tiered with a loggia and a stone staircase at the far end that rose to the gallery level. The rain was intense inside the court, and it was hard to see what the sculpture was imitating.

  Susan Zago hurried up the far stairs ahead of him and Quinn had a strong feeling suddenly of being followed. He looked back in the open court, but no one was there.

  At the top of the stairs a man leaned forward out of the dark with a short, blunt-nosed weapon, and Susan Zago immediately stepped aside. The man was not a man really, but the boy who had killed Bernhardt. He was wearing thick black-rimmed glasses with wet lenses, and put the barrel of the gun squarely in the middle of Quinn’s stomach and reached forward to search. “Don’t cause trouble,” Susan Zago said quietly from the side. “This is necessary.”

  He wanted to concentrate on the boy. He had almost shot him the night before and now the same boy was keeping him in the rain while he patted under both arms and down his trouser seams, the gun barrel jerking against his stomach. The boy smelled like disinfectant and didn’t search like Zago’s man. He did it the way he’d seen it in movies, and he missed the pistol in the small of his back. The boy’s hair was wet and parted in the middle and slicked back, making him look very young. When he finished the boy dropped his eyes. It felt odd, Quinn thought, always to be intimate with strangers, never with people you cared about. Kids with guns. Ladrinos. It had to be another phase of the modern predicament.

  He wanted to know how many people were here now. It was a measure of normal efficiency to know who you’re going to see coming back out. He looked around the dark gallery, but there was no one to see behind the other balusters.

  Midgallery there was a door to the right. Susan Zago stopped in front and turned. “You get to see where I paint,” she said. Her skin was light colored and her hair shone in the dark.

  “Who’s that boy?” he said. He touched the pistol grip, found he could reach it with his entire hand. He felt himself getting cold along his ribs.

  “Just a boy,” she said. “Do you know him?”

  “ ’Fraid not,” he said.

  “Just step inside,” she said.

  The air inside made him think there were high ceilings, though he couldn’t see walls. The air felt cool and large, and there was a thin odor like kerosene that didn’t seem to come from any one direction. Susan Zago closed the door and shut out the rain noise, and immediately there was a sound to the left of feet moving. He couldn’t see distinctly. Water ran out of his hair, and he pulled the gun to the front of his belt against his stomach.

  There was the sound of glass scraped over metal, and a match flared low to the floor. He could see two knees and two hands raising the chimney of a metal lantern. The odor of kerosene grew stronger while the man fingered the glass, holding the match until the wick flamed and burnt off freshly and began a glow. The man lowered the chimney with his finger tips, adjusted the jet so the light grew into the dark, then picked up the lantern and held it out and walked forward toward where Quinn stood with Susan Zago.

  “This is Señor Muñoz,” Susan Zago said formally.

  He watched the man shape up behind the lantern. He was a tall handsome boy in his twenties with a smooth brown face and fine features that looked more intelligent than the boy’s outside. He was wearing a blue cotton work shirt and white pants, and his hair was neat. His eyes moved confidently to Susan Zago when he heard his name spoken. He had a big automatic pistol stuck in the front of his trousers, the grip turned toward the hand that carried the lantern. When he came closer he raised the lantern so that Quinn could feel the heat in his eyeballs, then drew it back as if he had satisfied himself. “I am sorry to meet you this way,” the boy said politely, and his face became serious. “I would like to meet you in a nice restaurant if I could. But.” He smiled in an embarrassed way.

  Quinn tried to think if this was a boy he’d seen her with in the Portal. “This’ll do,” Quinn said. “Let’s just get on with it.”

  Muñoz’s eyes darted at the ceiling, then back as if he had avoided saying something. Quinn could see high on the walls, but not low. They were white with no windows, though most of the studio felt behind him. The lantern hissed and Muñoz took a firm breath. “Your brother is in the cárcel?” he said softly.

  “Right,” Quinn said.

  Muñoz’s eyes trained on him thoughtfully. “It is a terrible place,” he said.

  “In a world of bad places,” Quinn said.

  Muñoz thought a moment, then smiled appreciatively. “Is true. But I can bring him out for you. It is not difficult.”

  “That’s odd,” Quinn said, “because it’s been really difficult for me so far. You understand?”

  “My brother is the guardia,” Muñoz said with authority. Muñoz was a student. He had that bullshit unassailable certainty about him. “So it is possib
le to let your brother out,” he said, “and to take him where it is safe.” Muñoz’s eyes held steady. You couldn’t know what that steadiness meant, except he was eager.

  “Where’s safe?” Quinn said.

  “Las montañas,” Muñoz said. “Hay muchas lugares. There are many places safe there.” Muñoz looked confidentially at Susan Zago.

  “What do you want?” Quinn said.

  Susan Zago translated.

  “Money,” Muñoz said, and looked serious.

  “How much?” Quinn said.

  “In dólares,” Muñoz said. He paused a moment to think. “Five thousand,” he said firmly. “There is the risk. It is more.”

  “When would it take place?” he said.

  “You don’t have time to wait, do you?” Susan Zago said abruptly. She stepped out of the dark.

  “I’ll find time,” he said.

  “Esta noche,” Muñoz said quickly.

  “And I pay when he’s out, right?” He guessed the answer, but he wanted to hear it.

  “No,” Muñoz said emphatically. “You pay now.” He blinked several times.

  “Half. And half when he’s safe,” Quinn said.

  Muñoz looked at Susan Zago oddly, as though he had failed a connection. She spoke something in quick Spanish, and Muñoz held the lantern higher so that the kerosene smell became richer. “You must trust us,” Muñoz said. His eyes flickered but he wasn’t angry. “I will show you.” Muñoz stepped past into the dark half of the studio.

  Quinn was aware of the rain beating on a skylight at the end of the room. Muñoz stepped toward the far wall, holding the lantern up, until the yellow began to illuminate something unusual he could only partly see. Muñoz came near whatever it was and the light clarified a shape wrapped in clear plastic, leaned against a wood chair. Behind the chair several framed canvases were stacked against the wall. One he could see was of a terrace over-looking a harbor with pennants flying at the edge of the blue water.

  “See,” Muñoz said, and pulled away the plastic. Deats was in the chair. Muñoz folded the plastic so that Deats’ head was exposed. A purple bump spoiled the middle of Deats’ smooth forehead. His eyes were half-open, and his arms had been tied back with cloth, and blood had come out his nose and run into his mouth. Muñoz stared at Deats appraisingly, then looked up at Quinn with confidence. “Es Señor Deats,” he said in a proud whisper. He held the lantern near Deats’ face so that the light made Deats’ khaki skin shine, then held it up again in the dark.

  “You’re showing this to the wrong customer,” Quinn said. Deats wasn’t different from any other dead man, just nothing there. But he didn’t want to look at Deats again, and the entire room seemed different, as if it had suddenly become too familiar.

  “It’s what you paid for,” Susan Zago said flatly. “It’s what Carlos was arranging for you.”

  “Sometimes it is necessary to kill someone,” Muñoz said, standing holding the lantern. “So you must trust us now,” he said.

  He realized everyone was offering pledges of steadfastness all of a sudden. “Let’s just get the fuck on with this.” He turned back to Muñoz.

  “Pay us now,” Muñoz said. He held the lantern in front of him. “It is business.”

  “You bet,” Quinn said.

  Susan Zago said something in Spanish. Muñoz stopped walking and frowned at her as if she had suggested something that insulted him. He looked at Quinn, then reached suddenly for his pistol with the lantern hand. The glass chimney swagged his leg and the bail caught the hammer, and Muñoz peered down at it oddly as if he didn’t understand the mechanics of it. Quinn already had his gun in both hands, pointing at Muñoz’s shirt pocket. The lantern jigged up and down as Muñoz carefully unclasped the bail from the hammer.

  “Don’t do that,” Quinn yelled. He couldn’t think of the right Spanish words and it made him feel stupid, as if he wasn’t going to be able to make the boy understand before he had to shoot him.

  “No, no,” Susan Zago said. She extended both hands, palms out. Her face was panicky. “Basta, querido mio,” she said. She looked at Quinn beseechingly. “He’s just a baby,” she said. “He isn’t doing this right, please. You haven’t given him a chance.”

  Muñoz looked up at her and pursed his lips tightly. Her alarm seemed to disappoint him, and he looked womanly, like someone caught impersonating a man.

  “Tell him just leave the fucking gun alone,” Quinn yelled. He heard footsteps outside and squeezed on the grips. Muñoz stared at the pistol pointing at him, then raised his own slowly. “Come on, for Christ’s sake,” Quinn said, and he shot Muñoz high in the chest.

  Susan Zago screamed. Quinn got himself turned quickly in the direction of the door, the pistol out in front of him. He couldn’t see Muñoz, he couldn’t take his eyes off the door. He couldn’t release a breath and get another one, and he had the fear that Muñoz was going to shoot him. Susan Zago stood up in the dark. “You fuck. God damn you fuck,” she screamed, and the door opened behind her. A body came into the frame very low, and there was a yellow and red flash and the room was full of noise, and Susan Zago was in silhouette, then knocked sideways as though someone had grabbed her shoulder and flung her out of the way. He put three rounds into the door opening and slid sideways, and whatever had been in the door went out and something metal hit on the floor, then everything stopped. Susan Zago was lying on her stomach in front of him, not moving or making a breathing sound. Muñoz began jabbering in Spanish, his face to the floor, the lantern leaking fluid so that a flame began to travel on the tiles. There was the hot metal smell in the air, and Quinn had a roaring in his ears, as though he was dying and could hear it coming. He pushed back to the wall and waited for the boy outside. He put the gun exactly where he had it before and let himself slide so that he was aiming the pistol up through his bent legs. Muñoz kept jabbering for a minute, then suddenly took a deep exhausted breath and exhaled in a way that made his lips flutter, and then he was quiet and the room was quiet.

  He needed out, though he wasn’t sure yet who was outside or how even to get to the door. There was a strong kerosene smell in the room now. Muñoz’s pants had caught fire and begun to burn with a lazy yellow flame, and Quinn wanted outside before the flame lit the room. He pushed away from the wall and rolled toward the door. It was raining, and he couldn’t hear a small sound distinctly. There was a machine gun on the floor, and when he looked through the door he saw someone was lying against the stone balustrade. The rain made a soughing noise and beat loudly on the skylight inside. He got on his stomach, squirmed onto the gallery facing the way he had come, and rolled behind the dead man. The dead man was the boy who had killed Bernhardt, his slick hair and the soft features slightly disarranged. The boy still smelled like disinfectant. He had been shot in the neck and the flesh of his arm was torn and he felt soft. His glasses were still on. Quinn peered up over the boy’s chest toward the steps. There was no way to see both ends of the gallery, and there was no way to tell which direction anyone would take around the paseo. He waited what felt like ten minutes to see a movement. Water drained off the baluster and washed blood down the front of the dead boy’s shirt, and Quinn realized if he lay any longer he would get caught in the building and somebody would shoot him.

  He got on his feet and crept low along the balcony, gun out in front of him, and came round the steps. No one was there, though a gun was on top of the baluster. He knelt against the cold stone and listened for anything, the sound of footsteps or sirens or whistles or an engine in the street, and he could hear nothing to believe someone was coming or that the commotion had been noticed at all. He stood and looked down the second tier of the building through the rain and dark, and could see nothing. The door to the studio was invisible and nothing seemed out of order. Everything was just as it had been for ten minutes.

  He walked down into the open court where the light was grainy, and through the archway to the street. He looked out the entry down Bustamante. He could see th
e glare of blue lights where the truck repairs were still working, but there were no figures in between. He stepped into the cool street, the gun in his shirt, and walked toward Susan Zago’s car. It was a shuck, all of it, but you just couldn’t tell from the outside. You had to go all the way inside to find that out, like Bernhardt had said, and then you were in too deep. He thought about Bernhardt saying how much everybody wanted to please his wife, and that the guerrillas never pleased and never got pleased. Muñoz, he imagined, had probably never been really pleased in his life, but still managed to look spoiled and disappointed when he got lit up, as if it was the first time in his life things had ever gone really bad, and he didn’t like it. He’d probably been coping real well, Quinn thought, until that very moment.

  At the corner of Jiquilipán a mound of garbage was piled outside a vegetable market. A movie was letting out up the street, the lights on the marquee yellow and flatted by the rain. The movie was playing The Sound of Music.

  Everything seemed let out, all the tricks, and it was stupid to have a gun now. He looked down the empty street, then took the gun and pushed it in with the soft vegetable mulch as far as his arm would go, then started quickly up Jiquilipán without looking in any other direction but the one he was going. He wondered, as he walked, if he’d perfected something in himself by killing three people he didn’t know, when he had come at the beginning, simply to save one, and if now he had pleased anybody anywhere. Though he thought if he hadn’t pleased anybody, at least he’d tried to, and had performed it under control, and he hadn’t coped so bad all by himself at the end. He thought, in fact, that he’d done fine.

  28

  TWO MEN HAD BEGUN dismantling a Willys in the street at 2:00 A.M. One stood while the other pried at the fenders with an iron bar, like a cow being skinned, then the duties were reversed. There was no reason for it Quinn could see, but they were making a big racket in the street. A blue bus sat in front of the government palacio, a black 8 painted on its roof. A pair of the white puttee soldiers stood in the zócalo watching the men peeling metal off the jeep, though after a time they wandered away into the shadows of the Portal and became invisible. The rain had quit and water had collected on the concrete promenades, and crows were asleep in the jacarandas. He sat at the window and watched the Centro for any activity he could feature as significant, but there wasn’t any. He had taken too many pills now and he felt dead inside.