Having returned to the world of human beings, I go to the Mega’s second-level food court and order from a Greek stall. Sitting in a brightly colored plastic chair I bask in the sounds and smells of the mall, letting its familiarity drain away the memory of the Tics, the spider, the things caught in her web. Down here it’s hard to imagine that she’s even really up there. Everything is so normal.
At the table to my right four young men with mixed African and Hispanic features are playing some game that involves hand signals, like janken or shoushiling but more elaborate. They hide their hands behind their backs, then pull them out simultaneously to reveal previously hidden gestures, and one guy keeps score on a holo tablet he’s projecting from a wrist unit. At times they pull their hands out and then break out into loud laughter at some turn of events in the game.
At the table in front of me two high-school girls are talking loudly about the date one of them had last night, the description occasionally rising into squeals of disbelief or degenerating into fits of giggling. It seems the girl with the date, who has short blonde hair and deep brown eyes, finally bagged some big game – a boy she’s been after forever but who’s ignored her until now. I hear enough to learn that he broke up with his girlfriend and that seems to have turned the tide in blondie’s favor. Her friend cups her own breasts and squeezes them together in a lurid gesture and they burst into another round of hormonal giggles.
I finish my souvlaki and turn from the life around me to the business at hand. My best guess at what the spider meant is that I should begin with the suspect who is furthest away physically. This literal interpretation could be completely wrong, of course, but that’s how it is with the spider. She’s like the Oracle at Delphi or a Zen master in a koan. She dispenses wisdom in confusing, indirect ways, and those of us who consult her have to try to interpret her messages as best we can. There’s no way to know if you’re right or wrong – you just have to hope.
My most distant suspect, of course, is Vicente Suarez and the rest of the Suerte. The question is, how do I investigate him? It’s precisely because he claims to have the power of fate on his side that he’s a suspect in the first place. If his claim is false, then he’s not a viable suspect. If his claim is true then a covert investigation is doomed. His supernatural luck will feed me some misinformation, or get me killed, or simply put him beyond my reach. I think about it, sipping at an orange juice, but the more I think, the more it seems that there is really only one way to approach the problem and that’s directly.
What I need to do is sit down with Vicente Suarez and ask him: are you after Max Prince? Not only are all other plans likely to fail, but if he’s genuine then there’s no reason, really, that he shouldn’t tell me the truth. His famed suerte has kept him alive far beyond his natural lifespan. It’s protected him from the Mexican authorities and rival gangs. Why wouldn’t it protect him against me? If he tells me that the Suerte y Muerte tried to kill Max, what am I going to do, arrest him? Shoot him? Hell, I can’t even bring weapons with me to Mexico. Here my security license gives me certain privileges – there I’m just a tourist. And if I walk into a police station and repeat what he’s told me, why should he care? He’s killed, or his people have killed, hundreds or maybe thousands of Mexicans, many of them wealthy and influential. The police have been powerless to do anything about it, so why should they try to arrest him, maybe even risk their lives, for a washed up gringo like Max?
The thing is, if I’m going to talk to Suarez, I’m going to need help getting in to see him. It’s not like I can just look up his address the way I would with some citizen, go to Mexico City, and ring his doorbell. Trying to meet him without arranging it properly first is only likely to get me killed, if not by the Suerte then by one of the numerous other gangs in the city that prey on stupid foreigners who stray into the wrong neighborhoods. Fortunately, I know someone I think can help me. Unfortunately, she’s a member of one of L.A.’s most dangerous gangs. After the Tics, of course.
YOU ARE READING
Luck and Death at the Edge of the World
Science FictionSecurity specialist Gat Burroughs died once and he'll be damned if he lets it happen again. Unfortunately, somebody is determined to kill his client, a washed-up star named Max Prince, and isn't afraid to go through Gat to do it. Is it Max's debauch...
