Джеймс Грейди - The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

“Señor,” he exclaims as the man stands and begins to walk toward the back of the room, “you are forgetting your knife.”

José Antonio smiles and in one motion the knife disappears into its sheath and the sheath disappears over his head and down his back beneath his shirt.

The clerk scurries behind him, holding the ledger open to a particular page.

The old man shakes hands gravely. “Señor López, God smiles on you.”

“And on you, señor.”

“Perhaps, my friend. You see, we have an unusual circumstance here. The ticket you presented to my assistant, it bears a winning number.”

José Antonio nods. “Your letter said so.”

“Ah, we send many such letters. But from the secondary drawing.”

“What secondary drawing?”

The old man smiles at his assistant. “It’s true, no one ever reads the regulations.”

“Regulations?” José Antonio repeats.

“On the back of the placards. They all have it. It’s required. But never mind that. We’re not talking about you, Señor López. The secondary drawing, that’s for all those poor devils.” The chief clerk waves vaguely toward the crowded vestibule. “A hundred pesos, two hundred pesos, perhaps five hundred for the lucky ones. They come all this way, and for what? Enough to get back home — maybe.”

“That’s their fortune?”

“No, my friend, that’s their fate.”

José Antonio sighs. “And me, what’s my fate?”

“Why, a fortune.” The old man grins. Then glancing at the ledger, he corrects himself. “A small fortune.”

“How much?”

“We’ll have to calculate that. It’s a percentage of the third level. Minus the fees, of course.”

“Fees?”

“Administrative fees. It’s all spelled out in the regulations.”

The assistant clerk computes the figures and presents his tally to the chief clerk, who examines the calculations before initialing them. Drawing a sheet of blue letterhead from a drawer, the old man copies the number, folds the page in half, and slides it across the desk to José Antonio.

Opening the blue sheet, he is surprised. Yes, it is more than he has ever had before, but he would not call it a fortune. He could buy a house with it, he guesses, a nice house, even here in the capital. If nothing changed, he could live a long time on it, for the rest of his life probably, in Bejucal. But the unimaginable riches promised on the placard in Doña Ananá’s cantina, they must have gone to someone else. Still, his prize is enough to do what he has come to do.

José Antonio nods and starts to slide the paper back across the desk, but the old man stops him. “You must sign it as a receipt. Diaz will take you downstairs to the bank for the money and the other paperwork.” The chief clerk stands and extends his hand. “I congratulate you, Señor López.”

José Antonio nods again.

“Just one more thing,” the chief clerk confides as if to save the man from an embarrassment. “It is the custom for a lottery winner like you to tip poor civil servants like us for this good fortune.”

“Is that in the regulations, too?”

“Regulations?” The old man laughs. “Ah, very good, señor. I see we understand each other.” He motions to his assistant. “Don’t worry. Diaz will advise you when you get downstairs.”

Despite Diaz’s advice to leave the money in an account at the bank, José Antonio insists on taking his winnings with him in the woven bag from San Ignacio Falls, which he emptied of his clothing last night for this very purpose. He also ignores the young man’s outraged remonstrations when the lottery winner declines to share a single peso of his wealth with the clerks of the Office of the National Lottery.

The young widow, cleaning beans for dinner at the kitchen table, listens sympathetically to José Antonio’s story. He does not mention the lottery winnings he has hidden in his room upstairs behind the cornice of the heavy armoire, nor does he describe Elena’s murder. But the woman learns he was orphaned of his mother and abandoned by his father at the age of five, raised by a great-aunt, and left to fend for himself after her death. He tells Señora Machado that he has come to Puerto Túrbido to track down his father and make peace with the old man.

The widow’s melancholy sigh, José Antonio understands, is not for him but for her own young son, Enrique, whom she pets each time the child tugs at her skirt from under the table where he plays with a wooden rabbit.

“But how am I to find him?” her boarder asks as she dotes on the boy.

The child has distracted her from their conversation. “Who?”

“My father.”

“You need a detective, Señor López. A professional. You must ask Dr. Hidalgo. He will know where to go. Tonight at dinner, ask him where.”

“It sounds as if you need a detective to find a detective.”

The woman’s laugh is soothing as water over stones.

Dr. Hidalgo, unfortunately, does not know any detectives, but one of his patients is a lawyer. The next morning, the lawyer recommends one of his clients, a former policeman recently released from prison. “A temper, yes, it’s true. But a more honest man you’ll never meet. In court, no excuses, no alibis. He stands up and tells the judge, ‘Sure I killed him. He was a pain in the ass.’ How do you like that? Right there in the courtroom. Luis Menéndez, that’s the man for you. Honest as the day is long.”

By the time José Antonio returns to the widow’s house at sunset, Menéndez has agreed to find Juan López. He is touched that a grown son would seek a father who abandoned the family. Between his old friends on the force and his new friends from prison, he is confident that he can track down the old man. It may cost a bit — “Everybody has one hand out,” the former police officer complains, shaking his head — but he has no doubt he’ll turn up the missing father.

His landlady greets José Antonio at the door. “What’s this?” she wonders, pointing to the stuffed blue crocodile in his hand.

“For your little fellow,” he explains shyly.

“Come.” She smiles, taking his arm. “Dinner is ready.”

As he lies in his bed after supper and Dr. Hidalgo’s stories about patients’ afflictions, he realizes it is finally in motion, the vengeance he has sworn. He throws off the covers, kneels on the worn rug, and repeats the vow he hasn’t uttered since his last night in Bejucal, praying before the picture of the Virgin while Maciza watched him from the bed.

Falling asleep, José Antonio rehearses the scene he has imagined night after night as far back as he can remember.

He knocks at the door. His father answers. He drives his knife into the man’s belly.

The one thing that changes, the one thing of which he remains uncertain, is what he should say as the blood pools beneath the figure dying at his feet. Should he declare, “I am the son of the woman you murdered”? Perhaps he should simply curse his father. Or should he say nothing, letting the old man die without explanation, without a word?

As always, he falls asleep without deciding.

When he next meets Menéndez, the detective has no firm leads but remains optimistic. “It’s only a matter of enough time,” the former policeman assures José Antonio, “and enough money.” Menéndez himself has scoured the last three years of records in the notarial archives but has found no reference to a Juan López of the right age and with the correct birthplace. When his client prompts him, he admits it would go faster if he could hire assistants to examine the bills of sale, the tax assessments, the census records.

“By all means,” José Antonio agrees. “Hire whoever you need. The money doesn’t matter. The only thing I care about is finding my father.”