The Ultimate Good Luck

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 go 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.