Richard Ford - The Ultimate Good Luck

“Did you like the paintings?” he said. There was no use talking about it. If Bernhardt wanted to put that up as earnest money he could. Somebody always fucked somebody else, but nobody gave a shit.

Rae thought about the paintings for a moment. “They were just therapy,” she said without an edge. “She wanted to know if I loved you. She asked me if I thought love was visible and uncontingent. Isn’t that sweet?”

“What was your opinion?”

Rae turned toward the open end of the court where nothing was visible in the darkness. The question seemed to have an extra dimension. “I told her it was. I didn’t really take to her.” Rae seemed isolated in the court, almost unreachable. “What was Zago like?” she said.

“A grocer,” he said. “A fat old grocer.”

“His wife’s much younger,” she said.

The door opened and the Mexican in white shoes leaned out, holding the knob. Bernhardt emerged after him, and Quinn began walking toward the car.

“Sonny’s such an asshole,” Rae said. She was looking at where the stars should’ve been.

“We’re way past that now,” Quinn said.

“But I want you to know I know it,” she said and took his arm. “My motives weren’t very pure; you’re aware of that, aren’t you?”

“I’ve always suspected it,” he said. He opened the back door to let her in the car.

The lights at the army inspection had been turned out. Soldiers still lingered in the shadows, drinking mescal and gazing into the dark. Low lights glittered across the fields where the marginales had settled. Their effect was of great inertia, of no life, like a photo negative held to a dim light.

Bernhardt took a drink from his bottle and gave it over. The air in the car was cool. Rae had gone to sleep on the back seat.

“What is it like to wait?” Bernhardt said. He seemed at ease and drove with his elbow out the window.

“It’s boring,” Quinn said, “mucho boring.” The mescal made a warm place in his gut. It was smart to use it now. It would make him sleep without pills. Mescal was the pure distillate of drunkenness, and that’s what he wanted. It was worth risking bad dreams.

“Fastidioso,” Bernhardt corrected and smiled. “In Spanish, means to be too careful. Maybe you are too careful, see too narrowly.” Bernhardt looked out at the black highway. He was cheerful. “Your wife is beautiful, you have nice memories together, your senses are engaged, you should take pleasure in what’s pleasurable, not be bored.”

“Is that what you do?”

“If I can,” Bernhardt said agreeably. “It is a way to take perspective on good and evil.”

“O.K., so what’s evil?” Quinn said.

Bernhardt looked at him as if he should know the answer. “Feeling so bad,” he said and smiled.

“And what’s so good?”

“Not feeling so bad,” Bernhardt said, smiling more broadly. “I don’t think that’s the way you see it.” Bernhardt looked at him as though it was a joke.

“Was it tough finding me?” Quinn said.

The car neared the first confluence of city streets. Vapor lights drifted up the periférico, but there was no traffic. The empty boulevard opened wide and gaseous into the distance. The city was sealed. Bernhardt took his pistol from under the dash and put it inside his shirt. “You found me, I think,” he said. “No?”

“I want to know what your part is in all this, all right?” Quinn said. He wanted, for once, to see all the lines run back to origin. It was just a matter of seeing it done. That was all you could get out of it now.

“I am like you,” Bernhardt said briskly. He fingered the frame of his glasses so that they sat higher on his nose. “In by accidence.”

“You’re not Zago’s man?”

“I work for you,” Bernhardt said confidently. “You find that impossible?”

“You didn’t know Sonny was asshole deep in with Zago? I’m supposed to conclude that?” He had hoped Bernhardt wouldn’t run it back this way.

“You pay me for what I know, Mr. Quinn,” Bernhardt said. “It’s possible to know a thing, suspect a thing, but not to be compromised.” He looked across the car amiably.

“Why make me see that boy, then?” Quinn said.

“For me,” Bernhardt said quietly. “I told you. You are in Vietnam, but this is a different thing. You need to see what you are involved in here. It’s better.” Bernhardt’s eyes were bright and glimmering. He took another strong drink of mescal. “You say you like to see things. You should trust me,” he said and smiled.

“Why did Zago zap him?” Quinn said.

“Señor Deats,” Bernhardt said authoritatively.

“Then how did you even know about it?”

“Someone says to me, there is a boy who is injured in the cabañas, I should be interested. It is a gesture. Señor Deats and Señor Zago have difficulties. I don’t know about them very much.”

“So what’s the mechanism?” Quinn said.

“Señor Zago trusts you,” Bernhardt said. “Your wife’s brother will be released, put to an airplane, and you will return to Señor Zago what he asks for. No holdups.”

“I trade myself, then,” Quinn said.

Bernhardt seemed sympathetic. “Sí . But. Then you will be asked to trust your amigo and not the dueño. He understands that. That is better too.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then you should leave the country now,” Bernhardt said. “I wouldn’t blame you. You owe nothing to me.”

It seemed like the point he’d been working down to the whole time, the point of taking Sonny’s place, some necessary penance.

“Do you recognize the woman?” Bernhardt said. He seemed pleased with himself.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quinn said.

Bernhardt looked at the periférico without interest. “In the mansión. The woman there?”

“I didn’t recognize anybody,” Quinn said.

“Bueno,” Bernhardt said, and turned off the periférico up into the dark streets toward the Centro. They passed the calle de putas. Rae was sleeping still. Bernhardt glanced sideways, but the street was empty, and there were no lights burning along the little block of whores’ cribs. “But you do see what I risk for you, though. You see that? It’s as if we are friends.”

“Sure,” Quinn said. “That’s great.”

“That’s all that matters to me,” Bernhardt said. “That’s enough. Tell me what you dream about, Señor Quinn.”

“Getting out of here,” Quinn said. “I don’t have room for anything else.”

TWO WOMEN SAT in the Portal de Flores, drinking beers and talking in the blue fluorescence. They looked like English women. Something in the way they sat in their chairs, too straight, holding their beers with their fingers extended. The Centro was empty except for a few police and the soldiers in campaign coats shadowing the street corners. As they passed it, Quinn peered in through the pink, Moorish arches of the Monte Albán, where they would be in an hour. He thought, for some reason, he might see Deats there. Lights inside were blue and filmy, and he could see into the atrium, the skeletal dining tables set in lines. Nobody moved and there was nothing else to see.

“I need to telephone,” Bernhardt said in a businesslike way. “Then I drive to get your luggage.”

Bernhardt didn’t notice the soldiers. He turned past the university buildings up Cinco de Mayo and rolled noisily up the cobbles.

The streetlights here were pale and gauzy. A dim, prestorm clarity froze the façades and made the sky flat and seamless. There were no cars on the street and no one was walking. When the Mercedes stopped, the street was silent and Quinn listened for sounds in either direction and heard nothing until the air softly began a low sibilance that covered everything, like the night expiring.