by Richard Ford
“I guess I like the low odds better,” he said.
“You think you do,” she said. She was dreamy. “But you just want to be perfect, that’s all, and justify everything you do. I’m not into that, I’m not that stupid. I’ll take feeling good any way I can.”
“You feel good now, do you?” he said and looked at her.
“Now I do,” Rae said and smiled again. “Right now at this very moment, with all those soldiers, inside this cab, I do indeed. That’s enough.”
He thought of Bernhardt and regretted not to have regretted until now, but he’d been occupied.
“You’re never ironic, Harry,” she said airily. “That’s really what’s wrong with you. You need to be more ironic.”
“Like you?” he said.
“Sure. Like me,” she said and looked out the window again. “I’m not so fucking bad.”
The car was where he had left it. A good sign. It sat fifteen meters below the bungalow gate beside a wall grown over with bougainvillea and sky flowers. Two cars were farther up the hill, a Renault and a red VW parked at the American girls’ bungalow. Two boys were setting firecrackers in the street and running, but the street felt unattended.
Quinn watched through the windshield as the taxi eased up Pinos Street, trying to notice anything out of the ordinary. The air was cool and there was a new breeze on the hill not alive in the Centro. The sense of openness reassured him.
“What’s wrong?” Rae said. He had the pistol in his waistband. He was set to light somebody up now. “Why are you looking so strange?”
“Bad habits,” he said. He thought about Bernhardt saying they should be out of the house already.
The cab stopped at the gate. The driver turned and looked at him. Something was making him nervous. “Espera momentito,” Quinn said. It occurred to him to send Rae back down the hill right now, but that was just as risky.
“What if somebody’s inside?” she said, staring in at the bungalow.
“I want my fucking money,” he said, and got out. He took the gun out of his belt and cupped it. The metal door to the bungalow was open. He could see in through to the picture window that gave on the city. Rae’s blue Varig bag was lying in the yard, its insides yanked out. He picked it up and carried it to the door. The boys in the street set off two firecrackers in quick succession, and he could hear them laughing and their feet slapping pavement.
All the lights were on, the furniture was gone, and there was a thin pane of brown water on the floor that stank. The house seemed peaceful and enlarged, and it was empty.
He walked in through the bedroom. The bed and the table and his clothes were gone. In the bathroom the water was deeper. It seeped out below the toilet and flooded the shower trap with silt. Flies were humming on the ceiling.
He squatted behind the toilet and put the Varig bag and his pistol on the seat top. He could hear the taxi motor idling in the street. The smell was very grave, and the cesspool water soaked through his shoes. He hadn’t thought about what had happened. But it was a given, something he could’ve figured out if he wanted to. He and Rae were simply not here anymore, and this was how you knew it.
The tiles behind the toilet were in place. He dug in the paste with his fingers and lifted, allowing the silt water to drain in the hole. He dug both hands in under the tiles and pulled the money bags out in two dripping handfuls and pushed them, tiles and all, into the Varig bag. The water had already filled the hole, and he saw where there was a deep crack in the porcelain from the base to the rim of the grail where somebody had kicked it. He wondered who did the kicking, and just exactly when, and then he heard Rae at the door. He zipped the Varig bag, picked up his gun, and went to the front where Rae stood, looking out over the sill. She stared at him oddly. “What is this?” she said. She almost smiled.
“Nothing. I’ve got the money,” he said. Water was in his shoes. He wanted out of the bungalow. He pushed her backward out the doorway. He didn’t know if Deats had done it, but Deats could get credit.
“Who did all this?” Rae said. She was holding on to the jamb, still looking inside, her face pale.
“Don’t go in there,” he said. The cab driver was trying to see them through the passenger window. He wanted to get out, and was staring at the pistol.
Rae suddenly grabbed his arm above the elbow and pulled it down. “Are they after us?”
“Get the fuck in the cab,” he said. He put the Varig bag under his arm and pulled her toward the gate.
“Now just who did this?” she insisted, letting herself be pulled.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got the fucking money.”
The cab suddenly drove off down Pinos Street, leaving them in the open gate. The boys in the street were gone. Their papers fluttered on the pavement where they had been squatting.
“Was there somebody else inside?” she said loudly, pulling away.
“No. Forget that, just forget it,” he said.
“Did you lose something important, Harry?” she said.
“No.” He thought of the photograph of himself in the white sombrero smiling out at space. There was no record of that time’s ever having taken place now.
“It’s bad luck, isn’t it?” Rae said, staring down the street at the empty Dodge parked against the bougainvillea wall.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Get in the car.” And he pushed her down the street toward the Dodge.
24
AT THE HOTEL there was a message at the administración. The lobby was full of German tourists in walking shorts with Swiss suitcases on wheels, trying to speak in English to the day clerk who seemed offended and was shaking his head no. The Germans wanted out of their reservations, and they were shouting that the town was dangerous now. They stared at Quinn when he took his message, and started yelling again when he didn’t offer to help.
Rae stood at the window in the room watching the zócalo while he read the note. Students from the technological college had begun a demonstration in the park. He could hear bursts of exhortative Spanish shouted through a bullhorn, followed by cries of approval from the people who had gathered. The bursts concerned the police, and then fighting to the end of something, but he couldn’t understand the rest. He remembered the soldiers lined along Manuel Ocampo, and the paper posters on the fronts of the shanties where the Mexican boy had been dead. They didn’t matter now.
He put the letter on the table and thought about a place for the money. Every place was obvious, though there wasn’t any pure reason to think anyone wanted it anymore, if they ever had.
Rae picked up the note and read it standing at the table. It was in letters printed with a black sketching pen. It said:
Mr. Harry Quinn,
I see your problem, and I can help you with it. I’ll drive to pick you up at eight o’clock. No compromisos.
Susan Zago
Rae put the letter on the tabletop and walked back to the window and looked out. “Are you going?” she asked. Her voice was taut. There was a loud shout of appreciation and some applause from the demonstration. Someone yelled “God damn it” into the bullhorn, and there was applause.
“No,” Quinn said. He stood in the middle of the room still imagining a place for the money. “Unless I have to,” he said.
“Why would you have to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any goddamn idea why I’d have to.” He sat on the bed beside the Varig bag. “Sonny’s just got to play it straight now. No more fucking around.”
“Are you going to see him?” she said.
“I can get in at four if everything’s all right.”
“You mean if somebody hasn’t killed him?” He looked at her without speaking, his hand on the money bag. “What about Zago?” she said. She wasn’t going to lose it again. She was reliable, and there wouldn’t be any more slips.
“I’ll call him. I’ll go out in the car. Whatever. I just want to try to get him out.”
“I’d rather not g
o to the prison today,” she said. She blinked as though she’d said something he hadn’t heard. She came and knelt at the foot of the bed, staring at the chalky tiles.
“You just might not see him again,” Quinn said. It didn’t matter. But he wanted to go through it to the end.
“You know,” she said, kneeling, talking with animation. “I dropped my necklace this morning while you were getting the tickets, and do you know what I found when I picked it up?” She didn’t look at him, looked closely at the floor.
He watched her without answering. She was trying to smile. “Somebody had written in pencil on this floor, ‘Flint, Michigan, 194,000 population, Automobiles, A wonderful place to live.’ ” She looked up at him oddly, her hair in her face. “I thought those dead people were in this room. It made me cry because we were going to get out and they weren’t.” Tears were in her eyes, and she began to rub out the writing with her hand. “Just say I’m sorry,” she said and shook her head.
He said, “Do you want to take a cab ride down to Mitla?”
“I’m going to sleep now,” she said. She sat beside him on the bed, tears on her face. “Why do you think Bernhardt ditched her?” she said.
“I could come up with some reasons,” he said.
She put her hands in her lap and stared at the open window. “You can’t depend on somebody who’s on the ropes. He must’ve been smart enough to know that. He just wasn’t smart enough to know what to do about it.”
“Maybe he loved her.”
“Don’t say that, Harry,” she said.
“Is that the other half of your theory?” He picked up the Varig bag.
“You can’t depend on somebody who’s on the ropes,” she said accusingly.
“What about me?” Quinn said. “Can you depend on me?”
“I don’t know about you,” she said. “It’s fucked up where you’re concerned.”
“I already said that. But I could put you on a bus tonight,” he said. “I don’t care.”
“Just go fuck,” she said, crying. “I don’t have any place to go. If I did, I would, but I don’t.”
“I’ll be back then,” he said.
25
IN THE LOBBY the Germans were sitting against the wall behind their suitcases-on-wheels. They looked resentful. They watched him at the desk as though they suspected he was being given privileges they weren’t allowed to have anymore.
Quinn wanted the money in the lockup. There was no good place for it, so the obvious had become practical. The clerk took the bag and gave him the box key without showing him the fit, then asked him in English if he was interested in a tour of Monte Albán. He said no and asked for the phone. The clerk seemed annoyed and led him into the office where the lock boxes were, and where the air had stale smoke in it. The Germans watched cynically when he went behind the desk and began whispering. The clerk handed him a directory and disappeared into the lobby.
He wanted to tell Zago the deal was still on, and deliver what Zago wanted as quick as he could get it. The document of release expired in two days, and a lawyer would have to get another one. So it was impossible to start over now. The best that was left was to keep Sonny alive. There wasn’t time to get him out.
No one answered at the first Luis Zago, and he dialed the next, watching the door to the lobby. He could hear the Germans mumbling and the clerk’s feet scuffing the tile floor. In the park there were shouts from the demonstration.
The voice that answered spoke in English. He hadn’t expected it, and he waited a moment, thinking. He wanted to speak Spanish, but Zago’s wife would know who it was.
“Let me speak to Luis Zago,” he said quickly.
“He’s not here,” Zago’s wife said.
He kept his eyes on the door for a sign of the clerk. “Do you expect him?”
“Is this Mr. Quinn?”
“I need to talk to your husband pretty bad. Can I talk to him?” he said. He felt stupid. The Mexican telephone was stupid, and he felt like a tourist calling home for help.
“He’s out of town, Mr. Quinn. He won’t be back for a week.” She paused a moment. “Am I going to see you tonight?” She sounded amused.
The idea that Zago was unreachable opened like a lightless room. He understood she was lying, but it didn’t matter if he couldn’t get to Zago right away. Bernhardt had been the only contact, and he was out of it. He wondered for the first time who had killed Bernhardt and why they’d bother. “No,” he said.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind,” she said. “There’re no obligations.”
“Just tell me how can I reach your husband,” he said.
“I don’t think he wants to see you anymore,” she said cheerfully. “But I do.”
“Forget it,” he said, and put down the receiver.
In the lobby the Germans were gone and Rae stood in the middle of the lobby, crying. “I was waiting for you to come out on the street, and you didn’t come,” she said. “I thought something happened to you.” She began walking back toward the stairs.
“I made a call,” he said.
She was sobbing. “Then you should tell me, God damn it.”
He put his arms around her at the bottom of the stairs. There was a cheer out in the park. “It’s all right,” he whispered in her ear.
“No it’s not,” she said. Her hair was damp and smelled stale. He took the lock-box key and put her hand on it.
“This is the bag,” he said softly. He turned and looked across the lobby for the clerk, but no one was behind the desk. The lobby was deserted, though a waiter in a white jacket stood in the atrium scalding glasses in a pan of water for the comida. All the tables had white cloths on them, and the light was watery. He could hear the glasses tinkling. “It’s behind the desk,” he said.
“Are you getting us in trouble now?” she said, still facing the dim marble stairs up to the room. Her voice was accusing.
“No way,” he said.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said. “I’ve really had enough now.” She began the stairs without looking back at him.
There were no buses on the highway and few cars that weren’t heading south toward Chiapas. The Germans had seemed to want to leave town in a hurry, and that was a bad sign. Up in the mountains the sky was bruising up to rain, and he could see the pale curtains distinctly farther down the valley. The south had a wide, softened prettiness in the rain light, and the entire landscape seemed to be under a different authority, as if it had become familiar. The children who sold iguanas were gone, their adobe empty and ruined. One iguana was left strung to the electric pole, hanging motionless in the cool sunlight.
The army inspection had been reinforced. He recognized none of the faces, but none of the soldiers had white puttees or orange epaulettes. There was a bivouac behind the wood shelter with tents set up in facing rows. There were two new six-by-sixes and another sixty bagged to face toward town. When he drove in under the awning, the soldiers manning the sixty swiveled the target irons slowly toward the windshield and stared impassively. There were no cars at the inspection, and the corporal took his turista card inside the shelter, copied something onto a clipboard and showed it to another soldier, then returned it without comment. When he drove back out onto the road the soldier wrote down his license number. It was all routine and unimportant, but it made him think about the Americans at the airport and what they saw at the end that probably seemed routine. Maybe just a jeep, or a soldier holding a light, or someone waving. There was never any way to get spared, then, no way for anyone to know what you were doing or where you were. Everything was bad risk. It all screwed down to make you feel as far away as possible from anything that cared about you.
He sat alone in the visitation, facing the yellow door. The cafeteria had the same sweet urine stink from the day before, though it was empty except for the guards at either end. The visiting hour was nearly over and the guards were bored and careless. Water had seeped from the walls and the pools were full of dead be
etles. Outside someone was methodically kicking a ball against concrete.
When Sonny stepped into the room, he had a wide gauze bandage on his head that was thick over his left ear. His hair had been cut to his scalp and his face looked too white. He looked as if he wasn’t sure where he was, and might cry but didn’t want to.
“Did they let you see medics?” Quinn said automatically, when Sonny was in front of him. He pushed the Gauloises pack across the table. He wasn’t sure Sonny could speak, and that was everything now. “What in the fuck happened?” He rested his hands on the table. He wanted to take Sonny’s hand, but he didn’t want to be conspicuous. Someone continued kicking the ball outside.
“My ear,” Sonny said softly. Tears suddenly swelled out, and he shut his eyes and pressed his lips against his teeth.
He wasn’t sure he could make Sonny understand, though he thought the situation had to be pretty clear. “Now listen,” he said, “they know you skimmed it.” He glanced at the two guards who were watching Sonny oddly.
Sonny looked dazed. He seemed to want to portray disappointment but didn’t know how. “What’s going to happen, Harry?” he whispered. He raised his hand to touch his ear, then put it back under the table.
“Did you hear what the fuck I said? You’ve got to give it back, or they’re going to blow you up.”
Sonny’s blue eyes blinked. “Who?” he said.
“Zago.”
Sonny shook his head and smiled. “I don’t know him,” he said. His eyes glazed as if words were in his head but wouldn’t get organized and he was waiting for them to do that. “Two guys came in to cut my hair last night, you know. They said I was coming out. Then they took scissors and cut off my ear.”
“Zago did it,” Quinn said. “You’ve gotta quit this shit. You understand?”
Sonny blinked again. His eyes looked like Rae’s eyes expressing something he’d seen Rae express, bewilderment over too much at once. “I didn’t lay any shit off, Harry,” Sonny said in a practiced voice. He let his gaze drop to the Gauloises box. “I picked it up in the room. I took a cab. Some dudes in white shirts came in the airport and grabbed me and I got set up.” He let his eyes wander slowly toward the exit at the far end of the cafeteria. “Where’s Bernhardt?” He stared at the yellow door as if he thought Bernhardt was going to walk through it.