Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (7 page)

“Hey Rollie, what’s the news?” I ask, though I don’t really want to know.

“Not a lot Gat.”

No one uses my first name except the L.A.P.D. To everyone else I’m Gat, the abbreviated form of my middle name, Gatineau, which is apparently the location of our ancestral home up in the Grey Area that used to be Canada.

“What does ‘not a lot’ translate into?”

“Well, TJ is on Pileggi. No action there. Jenna is still following up on that wandering husband, Tenenbaum. She’s got Prender with her, getting him used to civilian protocols.”

Prender is fresh out of the Forces and is still making the adjustment to non-military operations. I don’t usually do non-corporate work, like surveilling cheating spouses, but I took the Tenenbaum case just for him—it seemed wise to put him in a low-key situation his first time out. I wander behind the counter and take a look at the holo traffic but it’s routine stuff: bills, accounts paid or due, status reports on equipment orders. With relief I realize that there’s nothing here that needs my attention.

“Okay buddy. I’m going upstairs. Here’s to a quiet watch.”

“You bet. There’s a good fight on tonight.”

“You got anything riding on it?”

“Just enough to keep me interested. Can’t afford more on what you pay me.”

Rollie’s paid very well—it’s just the usual bullshit banter.

“Sooner,” I say, an old Forces habit. It’s an abbreviation of “the sooner the better,” something you say to your buddies when they’re off to battle and you’re not. The sooner you see them alive again, the better: fewer hours of waiting and wondering, accelerated relief.

In the lobby, I pause for a moment and then, before going upstairs, I step outside onto the sidewalk and breathe the late afternoon air: car exhaust, barbeque, cooked vegetables, fish—the usual fragrances of Chinatown. Neon is just starting to show here and there, and soon the day trade will make way for nighttime pleasures. There are restaurants, live theater, movies, and bars. Mingling with the residents and the gawking tourists are a few low-key prostitutes and, if you’re known, there are places you can gamble. I can’t understand a word I hear. I take a deep breath and bask in the peace of being home.

I go back inside and ride the elevator to my floor. Unlocking my door, I head straight for the food processor. This is one of the futuristic visions that did come true. I order up blackened red snapper and shrimp on rice with a Brazilian lime sauce and sit down to eat, saying a little prayer of thanks for the nanotechnology that assembles for me—atom by atom, according to a pre-programmed design—whatever food I want, with whatever flavor and nutritional qualities I want, at the exact temperature I like, any time of day or night. 
That
 is certainly an improvement over Before.

I purposely put the events of the day out of my mind, living purely in my skin, enjoying the taste of the food, the feel of it in my mouth, the delicate flavor of the cold milk in my glass. I passively take in the reassuring presence of my home, not concentrating on anything in particular, but absorbing its details and nuances nonetheless.

I live fairly frugally because Burroughs Oversight is young and growing and like all young, growing things it is always screaming for food, which means money. I feed it, hoping that it will grow up big and strong so that one day it can starting sending money back in the other direction. As a result, my home is nothing special, but it comforts me anyway. There is some nondescript furniture whose very hotel-like lack of character is soothing to me. The walls are a cool grey. Hidden lighting units make areas of brightness and shadow, giving the simple shapes of the walls a slightly more interesting, complex appearance.

There are a few pieces of art, all carefully chosen not to call up the memories of my military service. Since I never served in the middle east, that’s the theme I decided on. Hanging on one wall is a large piece of tile-work, a reproduction of a mosaic in a Moroccan mosque. On another wall is a series of framed Arabic texts, each one written in black calligraphy and surrounded with an intricate border in colored ink and, in one case, gold leaf. They are passages from Palestinian and Saudi poets, and though I can’t read them I bought them with an Egyptian friend of mine from the Forces who translated for me so that I could pick out poems I liked. In a corner I’ve hung some trays made of inlaid wood, again with the meticulous, busy patterns so common to Arabic art. Other than that, my home is mostly functional: there is the holo for entertainment and communications, the food processor, and exercise equipment. In the bedroom there is really nothing but the bed, a holo outlet, a sim bank, and my meditation mat. I don’t sleep well with distractions around me. There's a small balcony where I keep a few plants.

I approach one of the poems and admire the details of the calligraphy and the surrounding design. The writing is incomprehensible to me, but since this is my favorite I remember exactly what it says:

On the other side of this desert
is my love
is my father’s house
is water.
On the other side of this desert
is my honor.
All I have to do is cross.

I’m not sure why I like it so much. Maybe it’s because it captures the idea of just how difficult it can be to get the simple things in life that make you happy. Everything you need is waiting for you—all you have to do is cross that damned desert to get it. Every time I read it I picture a young man, earnest, brave but afraid, taking a breath to brace himself and then taking that first step into the desert. The first step of thousands, with the hot sun above him. The poem holds me for a moment, then gently lets me go and my thoughts return to the here and now.

After a meal and some mental rest I feel ready to do some research. Reclining on my bed with the remote, I flash through item after item on the holo, reviewing what I know of the 
Suerte
, perusing my old field notes, Certified Security’s Compendium, even the web. The text, images, and vidclips scroll, appear, and disappear—a small sea of information.

The 
Suerte
 originated in the vast slums and shanty towns in and around Mexico city. There is a small, wealthy, cultured elite in the city, but for the millions of people who live in the slums, there is little if any work, money, food, health care, or proper shelter. More often than not people live in abandoned buildings made unsafe by earthquakes or homes made by hand with refuse from the city dumps. There is virtually no police presence. The few rules that exist are enforced by gangs and a few powerful families. No one is safe and children grow up fast. There are seven-year-olds with guns and the blank stares of shell-shocked soldiers, teenage hookers who sell themselves for the price of a meal or a hit of Shudder, and the average life-expectancy is about thirty.

It’s a place of violence and brutally sad stories, and it’s no wonder perhaps that the question of 
suerte
—the Spanish word for luck—arose for the people who lived there, given that they had so little of it. The sheer, gaping absence of 
suerte
 from most people’s lives gave it a reality. How on earth could you lack something so utterly unless it really existed? And of course there was always the inexplicable contrast between the people of the slums and the relatively few rich families who lived in walled, closely guarded estates or gated communities. Obviously there must be 
suerte
, not only because you lacked it, but because some other bastard had lots of it. They weren’t any better than you, they didn’t work harder—hell, most of them didn’t work at all—but they had all the money. 
That
 is 
suerte
. This differentiation, between those with and without 
suerte
, naturally gave rise to an intense curiosity about how it could be acquired, which led in turn to a booming industry in cheap charms, dubious spells and counter-spells, and other means of potentially increasing one’s supply of good fortune.

One young man, however, had an epiphany about a hundred and fifty years ago. It might have helped that he was stoned on the harsh local weed at the time, but it was an epiphany none the less. Vicente Suarez realized that the way to acquire more 
suerte
 was not to ask for it, or to pray, or to buy images of saints or spirits. The way to get more 
suerte
 was to steal it—just 
take
 it from someone who had it. How do you steal someone’s luck? No one outside the 
Suerte
 is sure how they supposedly accomplish this metaphysical theft, except that one method—the first that occurred to Vicente and the simplest—is to inflict 
muerte
, death. By forcing bad luck down your victim’s throat, you displace their good luck, which at the moment of their death flees their body like a passenger abandoning a leaky boat. This puts you in a position to inhale it, imbibe it, bathe in it. Whatever the means, you can collect it and make it part of yourself. There are rumored to be other methods, but given the collective frustration of the poor, 
muerte
 is pretty popular, especially since the most obvious targets for this ceremony are those whom they most hate: the fatass rich, with their abundant 
suerte
.

A group of followers formed around Suarez known as 
Suerte y Muerte
, Luck and Death. At first they were thought to be just another street gang committing aimless atrocities, but soon people noticed that they never stole from their victims, not jewelry or money or cars or any of the other things that gang members typically took. All they took, presumably, was 
suerte
. It seemed absurd but, without robbing a single person or burgling a single home, the group did, in fact, prosper. Through fortuitous accidents, gambling, lottery winnings, and other means dependent on chance, they slowly became modestly wealthy, then very wealthy. No one could prove that they were successfully stealing 
suerte
, but no one could prove they weren’t either, and in the desperate poverty of the slums they attracted a lot of aspiring followers.

Suarez was smart; he didn’t let just anyone in. He vetted each potential member personally by standards that can only be guessed at, but that are rumored to have included physical endurance, intelligence, ambition, and Yakuza-style demonstrations of personal loyalty with the cutting off of little fingers or the intentional scarification of the flesh. One requirement was clearly bravery, or perhaps desperation, because anyone who tried to become a member and failed immediately became a victim. His or her 
suerte
—however little there might be—was given up to the group and the body was tossed aside like an empty candy wrapper. It was the chance you took.

Suarez was also cunning. He set up the cult’s headquarters within the slums. Despite his wealth, he stayed in his old neighborhood and managed to project the image of a local boy made good, rather than being seen as having become one of the hated rich. He gave out presents to children on holidays and, just as cheerfully, cut the throats of any rival or enemy who came along. Every now and then some enemy’s head would appear in front of the cult’s headquarters, hanging from a tree by its hair like an ugly fruit. About equally often, Suarez would pay for someone’s expensive medical treatment, or give them a little capital to start a business. Through this combination of goodwill and bloodthirstiness, he maintained control over his group and his standing in the community.

Mexico is a very Catholic country, and wild stories circulated that Suarez had made a pact with the devil, that he 
was
 the devil, that he ate people’s souls. Suarez did nothing to stop the rumors, he simply ensured that his lifestyle was enviable enough that he would always have followers, and that his reputation was sufficiently frightening that, eventually, no one dared to oppose him. If the devil helped him a little in the latter regard, well so be it.

Taking all that I knew about the 
Suerte
 into account, Alan’s difficulty in making a risk assessment made sense. The 
Suerte
 had reputedly honed their luck to supernatural levels. It was entirely conceivable that one of their members could have simply walked past all of Max’s security measures, relying on sheer luck to ensure that each piece of equipment failed in turn. The only thing that bothered me about the scenario was the missed killshot, but maybe bad luck can occasionally hound even the luckiest people.

At the same time, whether or not Max had luck to steal was a question that could be answered either way, as Jerome had hinted. Max had never had a lot of talent, and what little he had he’d been born with. Despite that, he’d parlayed his minor skills into a staggeringly successful and lucrative career. He’d indulged himself in behavior that had caused many of his peers to die of overdoses, get thrown in jail, get bogged down in paternity suits, or simply alienate their fans to the point where they could no longer work, and yet none of that had happened to him. Despite his present decrepit state, he was still alive and people still occasionally played his sims and listened to his audio recordings. He was rich beyond the standards of even most wealthy people. In all these ways he seemed to have more luck than just about anyone you could think of.

Nonetheless, what was more 
un
lucky than succeeding in such measure while failing to find any happiness in it? His daughter had been a wreck from the beginning and was now dead. Her mother, his first wife, had left him long ago and there had been a succession of failed marriages in her wake. His only living relative was a shallow vixen who, despite her inability to do anything about it, wanted nothing more than for him to die so she could have his money. He was surrounded by a staff of yes-men who catered to his every whim but wouldn’t have bothered to attend his funeral had he died. He was insane and, most of the time, seemed either angry or sullen. Looked at from this perspective, his wealth and fame weren’t luck, they were a cruel joke and the worst form of bad luck in that they seemed to place happiness within his grasp, only to pull it away again every time he reached for it.