Gutshot Straight

by Lou Berney

  “I’m suppose to tell Mr. Moby deal’s off and everything’s cool?”

  “There you go,” Shake said with a shrug, to indicate how simple the equation was. He crossed to the nightstand next to Gina and picked up the phone book sitting there. “You happen to know, Jasper, where I can get some good Texas-style barbecue around here? Last fifteen months straight, I’ve been craving it. Hill Country brisket, I’m talking about, not East Texas ribs with all the sauce.”

  Jasper took another long, leisurely look at Shake—wondering, measuring, sorting his options.

  “Let’s go,” he said finally, to Gina.

  Shake considered, one last time, the consequences of what he was about to do. Then, as Jasper stepped past him toward Gina, Shake squeezed the phone book tight, swung hard, and hammered Jasper in the back of the head with it.

  Jasper staggered forward. Shake hit him again. Jasper banged into the wall, rebounded drunkenly, and crashed backward into the nightstand. It splintered beneath him, and he hit the carpet hard, lamp tumbling down on top, one arm tangled in the cord.

  Shake, his hands stinging, dropped the phone book and grabbed Gina’s arm. He pulled her toward the door, not looking back. Stay calm. Behind him he could hear Jasper grunting, already stirring in the wreckage.

  Shake dragged Gina out into the parking lot. Jasper’s SUV was parked next to the Town Car. He hadn’t thought to block them in, luckily—it was just supposed to be a routine handoff, and why would Dick Moby’s bagman anticipate anything different? Shake would have liked to yank the SUV’s distributor cap, but there was no time.

  “We have to run,” he told Gina, and they did, across the hot, spongy asphalt. Gina stumbled once but quickly regained her balance. When they reached the Town Car, Shake dug in his pocket for the keys and looked over his shoulder. The doorway to the motel room was still empty, and Jasper wasn’t on their tail, not yet. He turned back to the Town Car, noticed that Gina was holding, in her cuffed hands, the leather briefcase.

  “What are you doing with that?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I just thought, I don’t know, I thought it would be a good idea.”

  There was no time to discuss.

  “In,” Shake told her.

  He pushed Gina into the car, then slid in after her. The last he saw of the Apache Motor Inn, as he gunned the Town Car onto South Las Vegas Boulevard, was Jasper in the rearview mirror, staggering out of the motel room with a .45 automatic in one hand and an unhappy expression on his moon-shaped face.

  Chapter 6

  Traffic on the Strip had turned heavy. Shake was glad for it. He buzzed lane to lane between annoyed tourists in their rented PT Cruisers until he was certain that Jasper wasn’t tailing them. Then he shook his head at the sheer audacity and suicidal stupidity of what he’d just done.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “Wow.”

  “Thank you, mister,” Gina said. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what—I just …”

  He checked the cup holders and glove compartment, then slid open the ashtray. There it was.

  “Here.” He handed Gina a small silver key. She tried to unlock the cuffs herself, but her hands were shaking, and she almost dropped the key. At the next red light, Shake turned in his seat and did it for her. He dropped the cuffs on the floor next to the briefcase and showed her how to massage the feeling back into her raw, red wrists.

  “It’s Shake,” he said. “My name.”

  “Oh, God. They were gonna kill me.”

  Not right away, he started to say, then didn’t. Instead he glanced up ahead at the big casinos lining each side of the Strip and told her they needed to get the Town Car off the street.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving,” she said. “Yes.”

  THE IRON CANNON BOOMED. Flames burst from the deck of the ship. A female pirate with boobs swelling out of her lace-up corset fell from the crow’s nest, turned one slow somersault in midair, sliced the water with a perfect dive.

  The crowd packed onto the wooden dock applauded.

  Shake leaned close to the window and waited for the diving pirate to surface. She didn’t. Probably they had a scuba tank waiting for her underwater, or there was a hidden air lock that all the dead pirates passed through on their way back to the dressing room. Whatever the case, it was a neat trick—a snap of the fingers, then vanished forever. Shake wished he had something like that up his own sleeve.

  “Good morning, mateys!” the waitress said. “Avast ye!” She wore a ruffled shirt, a bandanna, and an eye patch. Her shoes, though, Shake noticed, were New Balance cross-trainers. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Are you gonna think less of me,” Shake said, “if I order bourbon with my breakfast?”

  The waitress broke character for a second to smile and roll her eyes. “This is Las Vegas, dude.”

  “Right,” Shake said. “Then a double on the rocks. Maker’s Mark if you have it, Jack if you don’t.” He glanced over at Gina. Her adrenaline rush was subsiding, he guessed, and full-blown post-traumatic stress syndrome was setting in. She stared down at her menu like it was written in Swahili. “You want something?”

  “What?” she said.

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “Lemonade?”

  “A Mormon,” Shake said. “I forgot.”

  “It’s not what you think,” she said, a little annoyed. “Not all Mormons—It’s not like you see on TV. We’re just normal people.”

  Then she seemed to remember where she was, what had happened to her.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured, closing her eyes and shaking her head. The waitress eyed her with curiosity.

  “We’ll both have the bacon and eggs,” Shake said quickly.

  “Over easy?” the waitress said.

  “Scrambled soft, with shallots and a little crème fraîche.”

  “Aye-aye.” The waitress wrote down the order and padded off across the dining room in her cross-trainers, her pantaloons rustling. Gina opened her eyes and looked at Shake.

  “Are we … are we safe here?”

  She meant the coffee shop at Treasure Island, right now. But even if she’d meant planet Earth, for the rest of their lives, Shake’s answer to the question would have been the same.

  He waited till the waitress returned with his bourbon. He swallowed half with one long pull, then sighed. He wondered who the more immediate threat was: Dick Moby or Lexy. Long-term, it was no question.

  “No,” he said. “But we’ll probably be okay for the time being.”

  “I can go to the police. I can—”

  “You can’t.”

  “But—”

  “No police.” Shake had no doubt that Dick Moby had a whole chess set of the city’s finest in his pocket—beat cops, detectives, maybe even a captain or two. “Don’t go home. Don’t call any friends or family. Just get on a plane and leave. As far away from Dick Moby as you possibly can.”

  “I don’t have any money,” Gina said. “And my boys—”

  “Get on a plane and leave.”

  He watched her struggle to absorb all this, the sudden vertigo of a life flipped sharply and irrevocably, in the course of a single heartbeat, upside down.

  “I feel,” she said, “a little, a little …”

  “Sick?”

  She nodded. He pushed the glass of lemonade closer to her. She lifted it to her lips, then lowered it without drinking. She smiled faintly.

  “Oh, my God. Last week I was worried would we have enough gumdrops for all the kids in third grade to do the craft project? You know?”

  “I know.” He did.

  She seemed to have a short conversation with herself in her head, then nodded once and reached across the table. She picked up Shake’s glass and took a sip of his bourbon. Her nose wrinkled, and she gave the glass back.

  “I think I better stick to lemonade.”

  “I’ll give you money for a plane ticket,” he said.

  “I ca
n’t … I can’t even begin to thank you. Shake.”

  He shrugged. The waitress returned with their food, and they ate. Some color started to creep back into Gina’s cheeks. Shake, too, began to feel slightly more serene, if not exactly hopeful, thanks to the food in his stomach and the bourbon circulating in his bloodstream.

  “What are you going to do?” Gina asked when they’d finished eating.

  “I’ve got the briefcase at least, thanks to you, which might appease the lady I work for.”

  And it might not. It all depended on how badly Lexy wanted those stamps—or whatever they were. How much she valued her business association with Dick Moby. How forgiving she felt toward an old lover who never dimed her out and did fifteen months because of it.

  Shake would make sure to remind her of that.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble?” Gina asked.

  Shake couldn’t help but smile. “I got out of the joint less than twenty-four hours ago. This must set some sort of new world record.” He finished off his bourbon. “I probably should be on that plane with you.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, but the way she looked at him—eyes surprised but pleased—made him realize that maybe he hadn’t meant it as a joke after all.

  He glanced away, embarrassed, and quickly changed the subject.

  “Go ahead. Ask.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “I was in for grand theft auto. I did the full fifteen months because I wouldn’t play ball with the D.A.”

  “You steal cars?”

  “Well …” Shake hesitated. Then figured, after what they’d been through together, there was no reason to be coy. “I drive them. I’m a wheelman. Getaway driver?”

  “Wow,” Gina said. “That must be so exciting.”

  “Not really. Mainly it’s just making sure you drive the speed limit and don’t get pulled over. Check the oil beforehand, the tire pressure, brake lights.”

  The waitress came by and asked Shake if he wanted another bourbon. He did—he wanted to keep drinking until his brain was so filled with soft, sweet, cotton-candy fuzz that there was no room in it for Dick Moby or Alexandra Ilandryan, for electrical tape and .45 automatics—but he knew better. His wits were all he had, and he knew he’d have to keep them about him. He refused the drink. The waitress said she’d bring the check and left.

  “How old are your kids?” he asked Gina.

  “Will’s four, Jeff’s two. Do you—”

  “No.”

  They sat for a moment in silence. Someone, far away on the casino floor, hit a slot jackpot and started cursing with delight.

  “Oh, I get it now,” Gina said. “You steal it first. The getaway car?”

  “So they can’t ID it. Some people just steal a set of plates. If you’re in a hurry, that’s better than nothing.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “Do it?”

  “Steal a car. Where do you steal them from?”

  “I like to use long-term parking at the airport. Boost a car, do the job, get it back before anything’s even reported stolen.”

  She looked up over the lip of her lemonade glass and gave him a crooked smile. “So why’d you get caught, if you’re so smart?”

  The teasing took him by surprise. A side to her he hadn’t expected. “Who said I’m so smart?”

  He smiled back, and for a second it was like that instant when you crossed two bare ignition wires and felt it in your fingertips, the plugs sparking and the engine stirring.

  Then the waitress returned with the check. Shake and Gina looked away from each other at the same time.

  “Take a cab to the airport,” Shake said. “The Town Car is too risky.”

  Gina frowned. “Is there any way—Do you think I have time to get a room here? Just for a shower?”

  Shake thought about it, then nodded.

  “Why not?”

  Chapter 7

  Those long, suffocating nights in the joint, hours inching past—these were some of the things he’d dreamed about: A real mattress. A real pillow. And silence, more than anything else. Just the hum of the air conditioner cranked to high and the soothing hiss of the shower from the bathroom.

  Shake stretched out on the bed, put his hands behind his head, and lay perfectly still. He wished he could close his eyes and just sleep for a week. Then wake up back in time, back walking out that gate at Mule Creek, still a stranger to Gina and Jasper and all the shit he was swimming in now.

  “That’s not your real name?” Gina called from the bathroom. “Shake?”

  Except, to be honest, Shake wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be a stranger to Gina. He stared up at the ceiling and realized, to his surprise, that maybe he wouldn’t want to go back in time after all. Crazy as that sounded.

  “Nickname,” he called back.

  He heard the shower faucet squeak off. The curtain rattled.

  “Because you like milk shakes?”

  “Because I’m white like a milk shake. Some of the black guys started calling me that my first time I went down. Vanilla Shake. It just stuck.”

  “How old were you, your first fall?”

  Shake remembered climbing off the county bus that first time, belly chain clanking, sweat gathering in the small of his back. A tower guard with an M16 slung over his shoulder was eating a candy bar. The sky was pale blue and cloudless. Shake remembered thinking, This is wild; this is unreal, man.

  “Nineteen,” he said.

  “Maybe they thought you were cool like a milk shake.”

  “I doubt that.”

  The door to the bathroom opened and Gina stepped out, wearing only a towel. Her hair was damp, and her bare shoulders were lined with glittering beads of moisture. When she smiled at him, it was a smile he hadn’t seen from her before, lazy and sly, a smile that seemed to belong to a different person entirely—a beautiful girl who looked a lot like Gina but didn’t have much else in common with her.

  “I think you’re cool,” she said.

  Shake stood. As Gina crossed the room and put her arms around his neck, he felt the same strange detachment he’d experienced that first time off the county bus. This is wild; this is unreal.

  Her face was so close to his that he could taste the wintergreen toothpaste on her breath. Her face was too close; he couldn’t keep it in focus.

  “You’re making me dizzy,” he said.

  “I’ve been known to have that effect.”

  He blinked and looked away. The whole room was going blurry now, not just Gina’s face. The walls bent at impossible angles, and Shake felt himself bending with them. Gina’s arms around his neck were cool and smooth.

  “How did you know it’s called that?” he asked. “When you go to prison? A fall?”

  “Shhhhh,” Gina whispered. She withdrew her cool, smooth arms, and the floor began to roll, very slowly, out from under his feet. Shake staggered, then managed to take a few steps toward the bathroom, where there was cold water he could splash on his face. He’d almost made it to the sink when the floor finished sliding away and he toppled heavily backward, onto his ass.

  From the bathroom Shake watched Gina toss her towel aside and start putting her clothes on. He tried to climb up off the tile, but his arms and legs were pudding. The light dimmed, as if a cloud had passed across the sun. His tongue felt thick.

  He knew it wasn’t love that was happening to him. It wasn’t bourbon.

  “Okay,” he said, trying hard to concentrate. “Hey. What … ?”

  Gina sat on the edge of the bed as she pulled on her jeans.

  “Gamma hydroxybutyrate, sweetie,” she said.

  Shake’s brain translated sluggishly. “You roofed me.”

  “I always keep one in my pocket, in my Burt’s Bees lip balm tin, in case of emergencies.” She zipped up her jeans. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Shake doubted that. He wasn’t even sure himself what he was thinking.

  “I didn’t have a chance to use it
earlier,” she explained, apologetic. “They grabbed me too fast, put me in that stupid trunk.”

  She entered the bathroom with the handcuffs he’d found her in. She snapped one cuff on Shake’s wrist, the other to the pipe beneath the sink. Then she bent down and brushed a quick kiss across his lips.

  “I really do think you’re cool,” she said.

  “Oh, man,” Shake said.

  She grabbed the briefcase, then paused at the door to give Shake a wink.

  “I owe you one, okay?” she said.

  Shake managed a wry smile even as total darkness descended on him.

  “You’re not a Mormon housewife, are you?”

  “Not exactly,” she said.

  Chapter 8

  Four days, thirteen hours, and nine minutes earlier, approximately 150 feet across Las Vegas Boulevard from the Apache Motor Inn, Gina had lit the last Marlboro in her pack, tipped her head back, and blown a lazy plume of smoke toward the ceiling, where the spangles of light off the disco ball danced and shimmied. She’d downed the shot of tequila the bartender had poured her and beamed.

  “Zowee!” she’d said.

  “No,” the bartender had said, before she could say anything else.

  “The other girls get mad at you when you give me free drinks, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “But I’m not like the other girls, am I?”

  He sighed, shook his head, and poured her another one, just like she knew he would.

  “No,” he agreed, “you’re not.”

  Gina gave him a wink and turned on her bar stool so she could see the booth. The new DJ was a metal freak with no ear for rhythm. When he glanced up from his turntables, she made a pistol with her thumb and forefinger and pointed it at him. He tried any of that headthrasher crap during her set, she’d personally kick his ass.

  He thrashed his head and grinned like a retard at her. The shrieking guitars of the last song faded out. The girl on the main stage—cute in pigtails and a plaid Catholic-school skirt—used the toe of one Mary Jane to scrape together the crumpled dollar bills scattered like carnations along the edge of the stage.