The Ultimate Good Luck

8

IT HAD BEGUN raining in the Centro. Above floors, the air in the government palacio sat still and dense. Electric lights were off for siesta, and a sweet fodderish rain fragrance hung in the deputy’s office. Outside it could’ve been refreshing, but inside made it oppressive.

Bernhardt looked uncomfortable. The set of his mouth was off some way, as if he had been asleep and couldn’t quite get his features straight. It was a look that wouldn’t sell tickets.

The deputy of penitentiaries sat behind a wide French desk. He wore a white silk camisola with expensive orange scrollery on the chest, and he was writing on a printed document that had carbons under it that required him to bear down hard. Each move was a precise move. Occasionally he would stop, turn, and look out the double window at the treetops and rain on the zócalo, then start writing again without speaking. The office had scalloped flutings on the cornices, and on the wall in the shadows was a large imperial portrait of Juárez in a red ermine cape and a gold filigreed crown he couldn’t have lifted. The portrait had once been painted for someone else and Juárez’s little rodent face added, so that he looked like a sideshow freak staring out from a body that was too large for him and that had him worried.

He was impatient to talk to Bernhardt. Deats was somebody you could handle, but Bernhardt had to do the handling. In the street big monsoon drops had begun smacking the cobblestones, and Bernhardt had looked preoccupied and hustled him into the palacio saying nothing except “It is important to be on time.” But that wasn’t enough. He wanted Deats seen to before Rae knew about him.

Bernhardt had on a clean suit, a white twill with European lapels that made him look larger than he was. His glasses shone in the deep shadows, and he was impatient.

The deputy suddenly quit writing. He looked up and smiled, lifted the document off the carbons and blew it. He rose slowly, carried the paper by its corner to the door, handed it to someone outside, then returned to his chair. “Momentito,” he said amiably and pressed his lips together. He was a small, gold-toothed man and got smaller behind his desk. He put both his hands in front of him and smiled patiently so that the gold in his mouth leeched a tiny flicker of light from the room. “A seal,” he said, nodding at Bernhardt.

Bernhardt had the money ready. Six fifties in a Holiday Inn envelope. He reached carefully toward the desk, not quite leaving his seat, put the envelope on the scrolled edge, and slid it forward to within the deputy’s reach. “La petición,” he said softly.

The deputy contemplated Quinn curiously and turned his head as though he heard a sound in the air that he liked, something in the rain hiss. He picked up the envelope, opened the belly drawer, and laid it inside. He looked back at Quinn with interest. “Is your friend?” the deputy said, folding his hands back on the desk top.

“Right,” Quinn said. The deputy was an asshole, but that was a little luxury of taste he didn’t own at the moment. You went through who you went through.

The deputy began shaking his head. “Is bad,” he said and looked grave.

“What is?” Quinn said.

The deputy kept shaking his head. “Narco,” he whispered and let his eyes go dreamy.

“But in a world of bad things,” Bernhardt interrupted softly.

“Ahh,” the deputy said and smiled. It was a sound he liked making. It pleased him into submission. Bernhardt had made the same sound in the morning. “Do you like Oaxaca?” the deputy said derisively, his spidery hands still composed on the desk top. It was beginning to rain harder, and the light passing through the trees behind the deputy had become an exhausted yellow blur. Quinn was ready to get out. He heard Bernhardt shift his feet nervously.

“Sure. It’s great,” he said finally.

“Es bonita, no?” the deputy said and smiled. “Is pretty, yes?”

“It’s terrific,” Quinn said.

“But it is not the United States, correct?” The deputy continued smiling as if they both could agree on that.

“It’s got its moments,” Quinn said. He glanced at Bernhardt.

“Maybe you would stay longer,” the deputy said.

“I doubt that.”

“Of course,” the deputy said and nodded.

Steps approached the office door. A secretary, a Mexican girl in a tight skirt, brought the document directly to the desk. She placed it in front of the deputy without acknowledging anyone and left. A pen was in the deputy’s hand moving quickly.

When he had finished he folded the document carefully, placed it in a fresh white envelope, and pushed it across toward Bernhardt. He smiled again. It was a postal clerk’s smile, no special conviction. “Is dangerous,” the deputy said, looking at Quinn.

“What’s that?” Quinn said.

“Narco,” he whispered, musing in the shadows.

“I wouldn’t know about it,” Quinn said. He didn’t like the implication and he didn’t like the deputy too much. Bernhardt was already at the door.

The deputy leaned backward in his big chair and opened his arms widely as if his appeal went out to a higher authority. “I know about it very much,” he said and sighed, his chest heaving beneath his silk blouse. “It is a grave offense.”

“I’ll take your word,” Quinn said.

“But I envy that,” the deputy said loudly, letting his arms fall onto the sides of his chair. “You are lucky to know nothing. Maybe you will do well.” He kept the smile frozen on his tiny clerk’s face.

“I’m betting on it,” Quinn said and followed Bernhardt out.

In the courtyard a farmer in a straw hat stood beside a goat, sheltering below the arches of the palacio. A current of urine had drained from between the goat’s legs out into the court and become diluted in the pool of speckled water where the center drain of the court was clogged. The farmer was looking straight into the sky as if he could see the end of the rain high up and was waiting for the moment when that end would arrive where he was standing.

“Deats showed up,” Quinn said when they had stepped out to the cooler air of the mezzanine. It seemed believable to him now. Something about the deputy made it completely believable.

Bernhardt’s mouth was nervous. “Where?” he said. He reached in his coat pocket for the envelope.

“At the bungalow.” He watched Bernhardt closely for some sign of going down the road. “Something’s got to happen right now,” he said.

Bernhardt looked at him. “Do you want just to let it go? We can just let it go.”

“That’s not one of the options,” Quinn said. “Think of something else.”

Bernhardt stepped beside the granite balustrade that overlooked the court where the farmer waited, staring toward the sky. He put his fingers on the edge of the stone. “Does it matter to you if your brother-in-law did as Mr. Deats says he did, or that he didn’t?” Bernhardt said. “A moral dimension.”

“I’m not thinking about that right now. I’ll think about it later.” He didn’t like things that way, but they were that way. The moral dimension wasn’t an issue.

“These are necessary questions,” Bernhardt said.

“So what do you know about him?” Quinn said.

Bernhardt watched the farmer with the goat. “I know a man Mr. Deats has business with,” he said softly.

“And?”

Bernhardt seemed to want to be very precise. “To deal with Mr. Deats in any way may damage their business, and then we are in their business. And that becomes risky. Do you understand?”

“No,” Quinn said. “I just want to get Sonny out of the joint and the fuck out of here. Why is that risky?”

“I have to see the other people involved. I must impress Mr. Deats.” Bernhardt was keeping his eyes on the courtyard while he talked. “That’s the risk. It might be better to disengage.”

“Are you talking more money?” Quinn said.

“No,” Bernhardt said and suddenly looked at him significantly, though he couldn’t be sure what the significance attached to.

“What happens to Deats?” he said.

“I will talk to him,” Bernhardt said. He took off his glasses and held them up to the grey rain light that bathed the inside of the court.

“Is it easy?” Quinn said.

“No. It is not easy,” Bernhardt said, blinking in the cool air.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Maybe it is,” Bernhardt said.

“I don’t want my wife in this.” He tried to get Bernhardt’s eye. “Do you understand that?”

“It is not necessary,” he said. “She can go back. We do not need her.”

“We need the money, though, right?”

“Of course.”

“All right,” Quinn said. “I just don’t want her in any heavy-duty shit.”

Bernhardt fitted his glasses carefully back over his ears and looked at Quinn calmly. “I will want you to come with me tonight,” he said, “for business. I will explain to you.” He began to walk toward the stone steps.

Quinn looked in the court for the farmer with the goat. They had moved back under the arches. Bernhardt appeared suddenly in the court below. He stopped and looked up and took his glasses off again in the shelter of the lower arcade. Quinn felt something changing imperceptibly, something that didn’t make any difference. It was simply the less important thing you gave up, the slightest measure of control, he knew, that meant you wanted something very bad.