by Lou Berney
*
GUTSHOT
STRAIGHT
*
Lou Berney
For Christine
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Acknowledgments
Also by Lou Berney
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Charles Samuel Bouchon—“Shake” for short, ever since his first fall for grand theft auto when he was nineteen—took another look at his hole cards.
He tended to fold with a bullet showing and his opponent betting big, but Shake was sitting on a pair of hearts, and he was pretty sure the beast across the table from him wouldn’t recognize a flush if it jumped into his lap and kissed him on the mouth.
The beast was Vader Wallace, a mean young black con from Block C who was one long rope of muscle, braided around and around and around until it was a wonder he could walk. He was doing a dozen years behind a first-degree-manslaughter charge, aggravated. Extremely aggravated, according to the rumors.
Shake, on the other hand, was just a rangy white guy up on another GTA, forty-two years old and feeling every minute of it. But he’d survived the last fifteen months here at Mule Creek and wasn’t going to roll over just because some pumped-up, puffed-up con glared at him.
He called Vader’s bet. “I’ll pay to see that last card,” he said, and gave Vader a friendly smile.
Missouri Bob, the dealer, took his time with the river. Missouri Bob’s hand was tooled with crude blue tattoos—roses and rose stems and thorns.
Finally, dramatically, he showed them the last card.
Queen of hearts.
“Tramp of hearts,” Missouri Bob said. “Lovely but dangerous. Beware.”
Shake waited till he was sure Vader was watching him and then he frowned.
Vader saw the frown and smirked. Shake felt a little sad, how easy this was.
“Bet it all,” Vader said. He pushed his entire bankroll of Top Ramen noodles into the center of the table.
“The bad-tempered brother wrongly convicted of manslaughter bets it all,” Missouri Bob said.
“I heard what the bad-tempered brother said,” Shake said.
“Small-change white bread stalls for time.”
“I don’t know how we’d manage without your commentary, Bob.” Shake gave the queen of hearts another frown, just to see Vader smirk again. He noted that Vader’s head was too small in relation to all the muscle it was perched atop. His mouth, by contrast, was too large in relation to the head.
The fourth person at the table, a tweaked-out kid with one eye focused, the other swimming, tried to get a peek at Shake’s cards.
“That right, Shake?” he asked. “You’re small change?”
“Walks outta here a free man in seventy-two hours,” Missouri Bob said.
“Sixty-eight,” Shake said. “Not that I’m counting.”
“Call or fold, motherfucker,” Vader said.
Shake pushed his call in. “Show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“Three aces.”
Vader started to rake in the pot. Shake dropped his flush.
Missouri Bob clapped a hand to his bald head and woo-heed. Vader stared at the cards with affront and confusion, like a dog that’d just banged its head against a glass door it didn’t know was there.
“Say what?”
“Five hearts,” Shake explained, tapping them one by one. “Young and in love.”
Vader turned to Missouri Bob. His expression was both plaintive and murderous. “Don’t beat three aces, do they?”
Missouri Bob shook his head sympathetically. “Like a rented mule.”
Vader slammed his forearms against the table. The impact bounced the queen of hearts to the concrete floor. “Motherfucker!”
He stood up. His expression was just murderous now. Not plaintive. The tweaked-out kid’s good eye went wide, and Missouri Bob began edging discreetly away.
“Motherfucker cheated,” Vader said.
Shake gathered up his winnings. It wasn’t smart to start a beef with sixty-eight hours left on your ticket. He hadn’t cheated, though, and resented the accusation. Plus, he had a hunch, glancing up at Vader, that this beef had started without him; it was just a question, now, of how it ended.
There was a CO across the room, watching some cholos play checkers, but Shake knew that the guards weren’t paid enough to intervene in Vader’s business, not until it had been safely resolved.
“Said the motherfucker cheated!”
“No, Vader,” Shake said, “you just weren’t paying attention. Odds tell you I’m playing hearts in the hole.”
“Fuck the odds, motherfucker.”
Shake shrugged and bent to pick the queen of hearts off the floor. From beneath the table, he saw Vader shift his weight to his back leg, preparing to strike.
“You can run, motherfucker, but—”
Shake kicked hard and drove his heel into Vader’s kneecap. Vader’s back leg snapped with a soft, damp crack, and he dropped like he’d been chopped in half.
“Woo-hee!” Missouri Bob said, and then he beelined for the door as fast as his legs would carry him. Shake followed close behind, trying to think of a good parting shot, while Vader thrashed around with pain and rage.
“You a dead man!” Vader bellowed. “You ain’t leaving here but in a motherfucking bag!”
“I think I’ll just walk,” Shake finally came up with, but not until he was already out of the room, halfway across the yard.
AT LUNCH, SHAKE CARRIED HIS TRAY across the room and found Tatum. Tatum was considered the best go-to guy in the California state system. Even the blacks and Mexicans, who had their own fixers, used him for important acquisitions. Tatum was wired top to bottom, inside and out, and could score just about anything, for a price that was generally fair.
“I need something,” Shake said, sliding in next to him. “Chop-chop.”
“Like what?” Tatum said. “A coffin?” He cracked himself up.
Shake waited patiently for him to finish laughing. “Word travels fast, doesn’t it?”
“You gonna need a bazooka take Vader out.”
Shake passed him a piece of paper.
Tatum read it once, then twice. “A say-what?”
“By tomorrow afternoon.”
“Why—”
; “Can you get it? That exact one?”
Tatum shrugged. “Course I can get it.”
THE LINE FOR THE WORKING pay phone was long. Shake approached the guy at the head of the line, a Fresno Bulldog he knew from laundry detail. He slipped the Bulldog a pack of Crest White Strips he’d won last week playing Omaha, and the Bulldog surrendered his place in line to Shake. Just in time, because a minute later Vader came limping along.
Shake picked up the phone and listened to the dial tone. When he could feel Vader right behind him, sour and sweaty, he shook his head.
“No, I said Tuesday,” Shake said into the phone. “If you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, I want you to do it. Understand?”
He hung up before Vader heard the dial tone and realized there was no one on the other end of the line. Shake turned and pretended to notice him for the first time.
“Vader! What’s happening?”
Vader glared at him. The cords in his neck were as thick and rigid as rebar. “Motherfucker.”
The CO at the door sensed the sudden spike in electricity. He moved a thumb to the panic button on his radio.
“Buddy of mine on the outside,” Shake explained, tapping his knuckle against the phone. “Nice to have friends, you know?”
“Ain’t no friend of yours gonna hear from you by Tuesday,” Vader said. “Guarantee that shit, motherfucker.”
Vader let the threat sink in. Shake assumed an expression of appropriate gravity.
“Is that right?” he asked.
“That’s right.” Vader nodded—once up, slowly; once down, slowly. Then he pushed past, smacking Shake hard with his shoulder.
Shake watched Vader limp off, then checked the clock on the wall.
A QUIET SUNDAY, AFTER CHOW. A couple of boom boxes were dueling. 50 Cent on tier two, Metallica just above. Most of the cons were still in the yard, though, scheming and dreaming and dying slowly from boredom.
Shake stretched out on his bunk, hands behind his head, and worked on the menu for the restaurant he planned to open once he was a free man.
Pan-fried chicken, maybe, lightly floured and lots of spice. Mashed potatoes and cream gravy. A few gumbos, of course, with a roux like Shake’s grandmother used to make.
Grilled fish of some sort, whatever was fresh and good. With a grenoblaise sauce, maybe, though that might be too fancy for the effect he was after.
Shake let his mind wander. The only thing, in here, that could. He remembered something he’d heard about death row up at San Quentin. A condemned man, so he’d heard, could request anything he wanted for his last meal—lobster and crème brûlée, barbecued shrimp, you name it. Apparently, though, orders were filled in-house, with whatever the prison mess had on hand, so the poor doomed bastard who ordered filet mignon and strawberry ice cream usually ended up with chopped hamburger steak and a cherry Popsicle.
That was pretty shitty, Shake thought, to get a guy’s hopes up like that, even if he was more than likely a baby-killing sadist. But that was the California Department of Corrections for you—experts at making your life pretty shitty.
He heard the squeak of rubber wheels. Tatum, rolling a meal cart for the keep-locks. He stopped outside Shake’s cell.
“Got it?” Shake said.
Tatum checked the tier for a nosy CO, then handed Shake a package wrapped in brown butcher’s paper. It was the size and shape of a phone book.
“You sure you don’t want to tell me what you need it for?”
Shake slid the package under his bunk. “Sure am.”
VADER DIDN’T COME ALONE. Shake hadn’t expected him to. Just before lockdown, Vader showed up with another black con, leading him on a leather leash attached to a rhinestone-trimmed dog collar. Both of which, Shake guessed, had been procured by Tatum.
Shake, sitting on the edge of his bunk, gave Vader and his boy a polite nod. “Help you fellas?”
“This here my top punk,” Vader said. “Mad Ty.”
Shake considered. “Mad as in angry, mad as in crazy, or mad in the hip-hop sense meaning excellent?”
Mad Ty lunged on the leash and snarled. He was cranked up, or hopped up, or both.
“He gonna shut that smart-ass mouth of yours once and for all,” Vader said.
“Think he can handle the assignment?”
Vader grinned. “Either way,” he said. “You get lucky and jack Mad Ty, you go straight to the hole, stay right here at the Creek and don’t walk.”
“And you stay clean.”
“That’s right.”
“Not a bad plan,” Shake admitted. He reached under his bunk.
“Go on. Get out your shiv.”
“I don’t have a shiv, Vader. I believe in the power of the printed word.”
Shake produced what had been in the brown paper package the size and shape of a phone book:
A phone book. Clark County, Nevada, white pages, 2007–2008.
Vader was momentarily perplexed. “The fuck is that?”
Shake didn’t answer. He assumed that the question was rhetorical, though with Vader you could never be sure.
Vader finally gave a derisive snort. “You gonna hit him with that?”
Shake hefted the heavy book in his hands. Not the worst idea in the world, come to think of it. But instead he dropped the book to the floor. It landed with a boom.
“Two-eighty-one Manzanita Ranch Court,” Shake recited from memory. “Henderson, Nevada.”
Mad Ty lunged again. “Lemme kill that peckerwood! Kill!”
Vader yanked Mad Ty back. “Hold the fuck on, motherfucker.”
“Your brother and sister-in-law live at that address, right?” Shake asked pleasantly. “Couple of nieces?”
He waited for Vader to remember the conversation at the pay phone. Then he gave Vader a little help, just to speed things along.
“ ‘If you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, I want you to do it.’ What I told my buddy on the outside, remember?”
“Kill! Gonna tear off that peckerwood’s head and stick my—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Vader gave Mad Ty another yank, even harder, and the rhinestone collar bit into his throat. Mad Ty made an ack-ack sound, like he needed to cough up a fur ball, and shut the fuck up.
“You mentioned one time you had family in Henderson,” Shake said, “so I looked it up. Sure enough.”
“The fuck you think you playing at?”
“You see, V,” Shake said, “I was just paying attention. What I’ve been telling you.”
Vader’s braided muscles vibrated helpless rage. He started to open the mouth that was too big for his head that was too small for his body. Shake had to smile.
“Motherfucker,” Shake said. “Yeah, I know.”
SHAKE WOULD HAVE PREFERRED a giant iron gate rattling open, sunlight pouring down and making him squint, the wide horizon stretched out limitless before him, a swell of violins, all that. That’s how you were supposed to leave prison a free man, wasn’t it?
Instead a CO walked him out a side door, through a couple of chain-link gates, and left him in a gravel parking lot across the highway from a bus stop.
Shake didn’t complain.
Chapter 2
Shake rode a city bus into town. The next bus to L.A. didn’t leave for a few hours, so he ate lunch at a fast-food place. Where—Jesus—the scope and variety of choices on the brightly lit plastic menu board left him a little dazed. Salads, pita wraps, burritos. Saver size, supersize, brown-bag combo. He had to step away from the counter for a minute and regroup before he ordered.
He carried his tray to a table by the window. He had a little more than four hundred dollars in cash on him. He had the clothes he was wearing when he was busted and was wearing now—a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans; a striped, pale green button-down shirt; a pair of comfortable brown leather shoes he’d bought on sale at Nordstrom; a brown leather belt. He had a key to a storage unit in Inglewood, by the airport. In the storage unit were a few more clothes, his boo
ks, his tools, and another grand or so. The storage unit would be his first stop when he got back to L.A.
And then?
That was the question.
Shake decided not to tackle it till after lunch. Right now he’d just enjoy his grilled chicken pita wrap and appreciate the view of dusty green strawberry fields, no barbed wire or gun towers in sight. He’d ignore both future and past and live in the present, live in the moment, just as he’d been advised to do by one of the COs—a reformed crack dealer and self-styled Buddhist—the first week of his first fall, all those years ago back in Louisiana, Shake just a kid and scared out of his gourd. Live in the moment. Shake, even now, couldn’t decide if that was the best advice you give a man doing time, or the very worst.
“You all done with this?” asked an empty-eyed girl in a bright orange uniform.
Shake looked down at his tray, at the balled-up wrappers and flattened ketchup packets. He realized he must have been waiting for the whistle, tell him chow was over.
ON THE BUS TO L.A., he sat next to a tiny bird of a woman who seemed impossibly old, a hundred years at least. She was already asleep, snoring softly, when he took his seat.
Ten minutes into the trip, the sun set without fanfare. The world bled out suddenly and left behind nothing but the bright bubble of the bus, rocketing along through the darkness. With the flare, every minute or so, of the green mile markers when the bus headlights hit them.
Shake tried to figure out who he’d call when he got to L.A. He knew a couple of women who had nice places, and if they were still single, he was pretty sure they’d put him up for a few nights. But if they were still single, that meant those few nights would be complicated. It was probably better, he decided, to find a cheap motel, maybe one near the beach, stay there while he lined up his next job.
