by Lou Berney
Shake swung his gun from Jasper to the Whale. The Whale quickly swung his gun back to Shake. Jasper still had his gun on Shake. Ziegler and the Cocksman were both sitting on the couch, trying to make themselves as small as humanly possible. Gina, Shake could tell, was considering the advisability of a break for the door.
“Don’t do it,” he told her, “please.”
“It will just create more problems than it solves?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought you were a fucking professional,” Moby told Jasper. “Do your fucking job.”
“We’re two guys,” Shake told Jasper, “at a fork in the road. We’ve got a chance here to start over. Do it right the rest of the way.”
“Too late for that shit.” Jasper shook his head sadly.
“Me,” Shake said, “I’m gonna open up a restaurant. Nothing fancy. Just local ingredients and an attention to detail. You, you’re gonna give Lucy a call. Have a cup of coffee with her and see where it goes. Ted here can set it up.” He waited. “Ted?”
“Right!” the Cocksman said. “Yes.”
“Shoot the motherfucker!” Moby yelled at Jasper, furious.
“Never too late, Jasper,” Shake said. “It’s not a second chance unless you take it. Your choice.”
“Shoot him!” The Whale was practically screaming now. “Shoot him, you dumb fucking blue-gum shine or—”
Jasper turned and fired three shots so quickly that it sounded like one long shot. The Whale’s white shirt flared bright red, and he lurched backward. He thudded against the wall, knocking a candle off the shelf, then slid down the wall. He was so fat he didn’t really topple but more like melted over sideways.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jasper said.
The flame of the candle that had fallen to the stone floor still burned. Jasper stepped over and with the toe of his shoe extinguished it.
Then he swung his gun back to Shake. Shake kept his gun on Jasper.
“That simplifies the equation,” Shake said. He could taste the sharp tang of burned gunpowder in the air. “But we’re still in a pickle.”
“Can I say something here?” Gina asked.
“No,” said Shake and Jasper at the same time.
“Sheesh!”
Shake glanced at the suitcase next to the sofa. “How much?”
“Six million,” Gina said.
“Six million dollars?” Jasper said.
Shake nodded. “Half of it’s yours,” he told Jasper.
“Hey!” Gina said.
“Be quiet, please,” Shake told her.
“Let’s see it,” Jasper said.
Shake pointed at Gina, then the suitcase. “Show him, please.”
Gina frowned but crossed to the suitcase. She took advantage of her fresh proximity to Ziegler to give him the finger. Then she opened the suitcase.
Shake whistled when he saw all that cash.
“What do you say, Jasper?” Shake asked.
Jasper thought about it.
“I still don’t see why—”
“Gina,” Shake interrupted.
“I know.” She sighed. “Please.”
“All right,” Jasper said. “You can keep the—What are they?”
“Foreskins with great religious and historical significance,” Shake said.
“Hey!” Ziegler said.
“Shut up,” Gina told him.
“Foreskins?” Jasper said. “You don’t mean like—”
“I’m afraid I do,” Shake said. “Long story. On three?”
Jasper nodded.
“One …”
Jasper lowered his gun. “Shit,” he said. “I trust you.”
Shake lowered his gun, too. Took his first breath in about fifteen minutes.
“What a day,” he said.
“Freeze!” Ziegler said, his eyes wild. Shake saw that he’d pulled a small revolver out of his pocket. He grabbed Gina’s arm and yanked her close, pressed the revolver to her neck. “Back off or I’ll blow her—”
Gina kicked backward and nailed Ziegler between the legs. He squeaked and doubled over. The revolver clunked to the floor.
“You didn’t let him finish his colorful threat,” Shake said.
“Fucker,” Gina hissed at Ziegler.
Ziegler lunged. But not for the revolver. Not for Gina. For, instead, the padded envelope on the coffee table. The foreskins. But he’d overestimated, Shake saw, his capacity to locomote in the aftermath of a kick to the nuts. Ziegler squeaked and doubled over again. Gina picked up the revolver and pointed it at Ziegler’s head.
“Don’t do it,” Shake said.
She considered. “I’m gonna need at least two good reasons.”
“You’re not a killer, killer,” Shake said. “And you don’t want to be.”
“I could just shoot his dingle off, how about that for a compromise?” But after a second she tossed the revolver away.
Shake stuffed the Glock into his waistband. “Jasper,” he said, “you have something we can tie this fucker up with?”
Jasper thought for a second. Then he went to the balcony, found the draw cords for the curtains, yanked them free. He tossed them to Shake.
Shake lashed Ziegler’s hands together, his feet, his hands to his feet. With the remaining cord, Shake tied the whole package to a thick stone column, against which Ziegler could struggle to the end of time for all the good it would do him.
“There,” he said when he’d finished.
“Foreskins with great religious and historical significance?” the Cocksman asked. “Gee. Interesting. I find that interesting. This will all be a funny story I can tell people back at home.” It appeared to Shake as if the poor guy had formally entered a state of official shock. Eyes glazed, movements robotic, he’d taken the slender glass case from the padded envelope and was examining it carefully.
“Don’t open that!” Shake yelled, and Ziegler yelled, and Gina yelled.
Ted looked up, startled, but it was too late. He’d already unsnapped the latch and lifted the glass lid.
For a second, nothing happened and Shake had to wonder—were these fake foreskins actually fake fake foreskins, not ancient and fragile at all?
But then, one by one, the foreskins began to lift gently off the glass. One by one by one, they wafted upward until the room was thick with them, a hundred pale ghost moths that fluttered and danced in the drafts from all the candle flames. Fluttered and danced, Shake realized, toward the candle flames.
“Noooo!” Ziegler let rip a low, throaty moan of animal despair. At the same instant, the first fluttering foreskin touched candle flame. It flared, a single orange spark, then vanished, leaving behind a thin coiled thread of smoke.
“Nooooo!”
A couple more foreskins flared, a few more, then suddenly, like fireworks, like an enormous school of fish turning as one and catching the light, the whole room flashed and popped with orange sparks.
Smoke curled and settled. There wasn’t a smell. Shake was glad of that.
“No, no, no,” Ziegler said. He was sobbing now.
Shake was looking around for something to use as a gag when he heard the scrape of metal on stone. Heard what sounded like a wet bubbling breath, sucked in hard. He looked over and saw the Whale—still alive after all, just barely—dragging his gun off the floor and pointing it at Jasper.
Before Shake could react, Moby fired. Jasper fired back, putting the Whale down for good. Then Jasper sank slowly to the floor.
Shake hurried over and knelt next to Jasper.
“Jasper, buddy, where y’at?” Shake said. “Talk to me.”
Jasper grimaced. “Damn,” he said.
“Where’d he get you?”
“Fat cracker shot my knee,” Jasper said. “My good one.”
Shake looked down and saw the dark, wet mess. He laughed with relief. “Not anymore it ain’t, champ.”
“Never working again for no fat evil cracker,” Jasper said through teeth clenched in pai
n.
“You won’t have to,” Shake reminded him. “You’re now officially a rich man. You can buy a battalion of fat crackers to carry you around all day in a big, comfortable recliner.”
Shake’s eyes had started to water. The room was filled with smoke. From candles, from gunshots, from toasted foreskins. Ziegler was still sobbing. The Cocksman had squeezed his eyes shut and was whispering to himself—Shake laid even odds he was whispering something along the lines of, “This is just a dream, this is just a dream.” And Gina …
Shake looked around the smoky room.
Gina was gone.
The suitcase with the cash was gone.
Shake leaped up. He went straight to the balcony and tore the drapes aside. He gripped the iron railing hard and searched the plaza below.
There—just a quick glimpse of blond head—Gina, disappearing into the Carnaval crowd below.
Jasper struggled to sit up. “What’s the trouble?”
“You mean,” Shake said with a sigh, “who.”
Chapter 49
Shake tore up the drapes, and they bandaged Jasper’s knee as best they could. With what was left over, he gagged Ziegler, who’d stopped sobbing but started cursing and threatening and swearing that he’d use every penny of his fortune to hunt Shake down and torture him and so on.
The Cocksman, Ted, had found a wrought-iron candlestick that was just about the perfect length for a cane and brought it to Jasper. Ted had calmed down a little when Shake explained that he, Shake, was a DEA agent working for the United States government and Jasper was an undercover field operative for the ATF, and Ted had just done his country a great service in helping take down a couple of bad, bad men.
Shake didn’t know if Ted really bought it all, but he knew that Ted wanted to. That was the important thing. And Shake knew Ted was pretty sure that the last part—about the bad, bad men—was absolutely true at least.
Shake and Ted helped Jasper hobble down the hallway to the elevator. Shake pushed the button, and they waited for the iron arrow to inch along from One to Two to Three.
“You gonna be cool?” Shake asked Jasper.
“Shit.” Jasper gave his shot knee a condescending glance.
“I mean the money.”
Jasper smiled, just a little. “Mr. Moby got a safe back in Vegas.”
“And you know the combination?”
“Only one does now.”
“Good for you.”
“First thing, though …” Jasper looked a question at Ted.
“Of course,” Ted said. “Yes. I guess, though, that …”
“If Lucy don’t want to see me in person,” Jasper said, “I understand. We can talk on the telephone. Tell her I just want to clear a few things up, then I won’t bother her no more, that’s what she wants.”
Ted nodded. “That sounds good. That sounds okay.”
“Tell Lucy I said hi,” Shake said. “Tell her thanks for help with … ah, the investigation in Las Vegas.”
“What about him?” Jasper said. He tilted his head back toward the room where Ziegler was tied up.
“He doesn’t realize it yet,” Shake said, “but his bad day is just beginning.”
The elevator dinged, and the door slid open. They got inside and rode down to the ground floor. The bell dinged again, and the door slid back open.
Standing there, when it did, were Alexandra and Dikran.
Alexandra smiled pleasantly at Ted, then Jasper, then Shake.
Dikran glowered at Shake. “Give me fucking gun back.”
Shake handed over the Glock. “Third floor. The room down the hall on the left.”
Shake, Jasper, and Ted exited the elevator. Alexandra and Dikran entered. After the elevator door closed behind them, Jasper gave Shake a quizzical look.
“That’s the lady runs the Armenians in L.A.”
“That’s right.”
“But—”
“Turns out she wasn’t after the money. She didn’t want to sell the foreskins, she wanted to use them in a different way.”
“Get to Ziegler?” Jasper guessed.
Shake nodded. “Bait. The foreskins flush him out, get him out in the open, then Lexy makes the nab.”
“So she can turn him over to the feds?”
“High-profile collar for them. Network news, everybody gets a promotion.”
“Thanks to her.”
A big prize like Ziegler, Shake knew, would buy Lexy a lot of federal goodwill. A few indictments buried at the bottom of the stack. A couple of grand juries released from service. “She’s been setting it up with the deputy attorney general for a couple of months.”
Ted had been trying to follow the conversation. Without much luck. Without, actually, any luck.
“So,” he said, “I guess I’ll head back to the hotel now, if that’s okay. I can talk to Lucy in the morning. Then I’ll call you, and we can set a time to …”
Ted stopped, since he was the only one nodding, not Jasper.
“How about right now,” Jasper said, without using a question mark of any sort.
“Well,” Ted said. “Well …”
Now Jasper was the one nodding. After a second, Ted wisely joined in.
“Go get us a cab,” Jasper said.
Ted, still nodding, hurried across the plaza to flag down a taxi.
“You better get that knee looked after,” Shake told Jasper.
“It can wait.” When Jasper was certain that Ted really was going to flag down a taxi and not try to make a break for it, he turned back to Shake. “You really gonna open that restaurant of yours?”
“Last week I would’ve had to tell you no fucking way. I was just bullshitting myself and everyone in the neighborhood. But now …” Shake shrugged. “You never know, right? If you’re ever looking for a good investment, all that Whale money, look me up.”
“Yeah you right.”
Jasper was smiling more now. He shook hands with Shake and hobbled off.
Chapter 50
Shake used the last of his cash to take a cab back to the hotel. He waited outside the door to the room for a long time, maybe half an hour. Until roused by a maintenance guy who walked down the hallway and looked at him strangely.
Turn around and leave, Shake told himself. Don’t go inside. It’s just go ing to make it harder, this little sliver of dumb blind hope you won’t let go of.
He unlocked the door and went inside. The room was empty. The bathroom was empty. The bathtub was empty.
No Gina.
Sure enough, going inside made him feel even worse.
He drank a couple of miniature bottles of rum from the minibar, more than a couple, and fell into a queasy, dream-filled sleep. He was a pale ghost moth, fluttering and flaring. A guy with the head of a lion and Dr. Gorsch’s voice was demanding his foreskin. It was one of the most fucked-up dreams he’d ever had.
Chapter 51
Jasper stood outside the door to the apartment with Ted and waited. Listened to the locks rattling open on the other side. Seemed like a lot of locks for one door, but Jasper wasn’t sure if he minded. He wasn’t sure right now if he was in a hurry or just the exact opposite.
Tell the truth, wasn’t a damn thing he was sure about right now. All what he’d been planning to say to Lucy when he saw her, all what he’d worked out on the taxi ride over here, it had turned slippery in his mind and slithered out between his fingers.
They hadn’t been able to call ahead, since Jasper’s cell phone was out of battery.
“Listen here,” Jasper said to Ted, thinking now maybe they should wait till morning after all, but the door to Lucy’s sister’s apartment was already swinging open.
The pretty Panamanian girl who opened the door, Lucy’s sister, had more hair than she knew what to do with, and twice as many bracelets. She smiled big when she saw Ted. When she saw Jasper, she kept smiling, but in a perplexed sort of way.
“Hola, Mariana!” Ted said. “This is Jasper. He’s a friend of Lucy
’s?”
Mariana took this in. A girl’s voice behind her called out something in Spanish. Mariana called something back in Spanish. Jasper heard the footsteps. That was something he literally heard—Lucy inside coming to the door in her high heels—but it was also a metaphorical expression from his football days. When a quarterback heard the footsteps, it meant he was thinking too much about the hammering he was about to take and not enough about the pass he had to throw.
Jasper was usually the one making the footsteps that made the quarterback lose his nerve. This was the first time it’d been the other way around.
Mariana opened the door wide.
“Hola, Lucy!” Ted said.
Lucy looked at Jasper. He looked at her.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name’s Jasper,” he said. He took a deep breath to make up for all the ones he hadn’t taken in the last few minutes. “I thought you was a different Lucy.”
This Lucy didn’t look like his Lucy at all. She was taller, less round, had darker skin. Some body like his Lucy’s, but a bitty nose and a turn to her mouth that was nothing like the one he’d been thinking about kissing for the last hour and a half.
Ted was looking at him with genuine sympathy, which Jasper appreciated. Jasper was glad he hadn’t shot him.
“I’m really sorry about this, Jasper,” Ted said.
Funny thing was, Jasper felt all right. His knee ached like a son of a bitch, and he needed a glass of water, a place to sit for a spell, but the feeling that had started flapping in his chest when he thought he’d found his Lucy, thought she was here in Panama—it was still flapping.
Because he would find her. Simple as that. He’d find her and explain why events had unfolded the way they had, and then he’d ask could he kiss that mouth of hers.
This certainty of the future filled him with a powerful kind of peacefulness, one he hadn’t known in a long time. Though his knee still ached like a son of a bitch.
“Y’all mind if I have a glass of water,” Jasper asked this Lucy and Mariana and Ted. “And sit for a spell?”
Chapter 52
In the morning Shake woke to bright slanted sunlight and the sound of a door lock snapping, the door opening.
