Whiplash River

by Lou Berney

  Chapter 11

  Shake woke up again. Sunlight now, not moonlight. He was in the same room. Idaba sat in the same chair by his bed, still working on her beads. Now that it was light, Shake noticed the big full-color poster on the wall: an illustration of a human body with the skin peeled back so you could see the muscles and tendons. Another smaller poster showed the human eye in various states of disease.

  He still had his watch on. Seven o’clock in the morning. Which meant he’d been out, for the most part, for the last twelve hours. Twelve hours ago his restaurant had exploded and . . .

  “What happened?” he said.

  Idaba kept working on her beads. She shrugged, annoyed. “I told you last night. I was next door at the Fish and Hook.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Shake said. “Was Geraldine’s baby as ugly as the daddy or not?”

  That got a sliver of a smile out of her. Miracle of miracles.

  “I didn’t see a thing,” she said. “Heard the first big boom and I came running. The second one about knocked me over.”

  “The police. Did they get the girl with the gun?”

  “The which?”

  “On the beach, right after the explosion. She was gonna shoot me.”

  Idaba glanced over at him. “Wasn’t no girl on the beach when I got there. Just you.”

  “With freckles. And the other one. With the other gun. You remember the woman from the night before, the pretty one with dark hair? Evelyn. Her name was Evelyn. She was there too, with a gun . . .”

  Idaba set the beads in her lap again and turned to give him a good look. “They gave you some drugs,” she said. “For your ribs.”

  “I’m not imagining it.” Or was he? He tried to bring into focus those blurry moments right before he blacked out. The girl with the freckles and the gun. Evelyn. Never a dull moment.

  No, definitely. All that had happened. Shake was positive, drugs or no drugs.

  “She thought I’d be in the restaurant when it blew. When I wasn’t, she came over to shoot me.”

  “This Evelyn lady?”

  “No. Freckles. Evelyn saved my life.”

  He wondered what Evelyn had been doing with a gun. She had to be a cop of some kind. American. What was she doing in Belize?

  “Police say it was the propane tank that blown up,” Idaba said. “A leak, maybe.”

  Shake couldn’t believe it. “A leak.”

  “What they say.”

  “They’re not seeing a connection. Between a gunman in a mask opens fire one night, and a restaurant that gets blown up the next day?”

  Idaba frowned. “Freckles was the one in the mask?”

  “No.” If Freckles had been the one in the mask that first night, Shake was absolutely certain that she would have shot him when he grabbed for the gun. She would have shot Quinn. She wouldn’t have missed. “The guy in the mask was her partner, maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “But he wasn’t after you. He was just after that old man.”

  Not anymore, Shake thought. He could see Idaba thinking the same thing.

  No good deed goes unpunished. Shake wondered if he’d ever get that through his head.

  The door to the room opened. A nurse poked her head in. “Visitor,” she said.

  Baby Jesus and his Rasta thug in the ONE LOVE tank top walked in. Baby Jesus was so big that he had to turn sideways coming through the door, a nimble little dance step. “My friend!” he said. “When I hear this about your terrible misfortune of the propane leak, I came at once!”

  “It wasn’t a propane leak,” Shake said.

  “You must be very careful,” Baby Jesus said, “with explosive substances in the household or business setting. I know this from my line of work too.”

  “It was a propane leak my ass.”

  “I do not care.” Baby Jesus smiled sweetly. “What it was.”

  He cared that the restaurant was gone, Shake realized. He cared that the collateral against the money Shake had borrowed was gone.

  “Leave us,” Baby Jesus told Idaba. She didn’t move. Baby Jesus tried out a glare, but it was halfhearted. Even he was afraid to tangle with her.

  “It’s all right, Idaba,” Shake told her. “Give us a minute, will you?”

  She slowly gathered up her beads, stood, and crossed the room with regal indifference. When she was gone, One Love removed a gun from the back waistband of his baggy shorts.

  “Get up, guna boi. Let’s go.”

  Shake thought about the girl with the freckles and the big .44 revolver. She didn’t know it, but today was her lucky day. “Why don’t we talk about this,” Shake said.

  Baby Jesus didn’t answer. He’d noticed the poster of the human body with the skin peeled back. He studied it with a curiosity that didn’t make Shake feel better about his situation.

  “I am a businessman, my friend,” Baby Jesus said finally, turning back to Shake. “I have a brand identity. You understand? Like CocaCola, like the Apple computer. I’ve been reading about these things. Do you know, for example, that the Four Seasons hotel company will never lower their rates. Never! When they have rooms they must fill, when business is not so good, they might offer a special, three nights for the price of two. But they never lower their rates!”

  Shake looked over at One Love. “You following any of this?”

  “If I don’t protect my brand identity,” Baby Jesus said, “who protects Baby Jesus?”

  “Get up,” One Love told Shake.

  “No one is who!”

  “Up.”

  “Just listen to me,” Shake said.

  “Oh, Shake,” Baby Jesus said. He gazed up at the ceiling, wistful, looking even more cherubic than usual. “I don’t enjoy this.”

  Shake thought he probably did. “What if I told you I have the money I owe you,” Shake said. “More.”

  Baby Jesus giggled again. “I would say fiddlesticks.”

  “Think about it.” Shake didn’t know what he meant by that. He just needed time to figure out his bluff. He knew it was going to be a weak bluff, no matter what he came up with.

  “Think about what, my friend?”

  “You’re aware of my past associations.”

  “The Armenians. I know them. You think they come save you now?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that when I left L.A., I didn’t leave empty-handed.”

  Baby Jesus studied him. “Fiddlesticks. Because why, if you have so much money you steal from the Armenians, you have to borrow money from me?”

  “Because I didn’t want the Armenians to know I stole their money. If they find out about my restaurant, they’re going to wonder where the money came from. Right? This way, if I borrow money from you . . .” Shake didn’t finish the thought. Someone like Baby Jesus, anybody really, you let them feel good about figuring it out themselves.

  “It look like you don’t steal their money,” Baby Jesus said.

  Shake was hoping that Baby Jesus didn’t know the Armenians as well as he claimed. If he did, he’d know that no one would ever be crazy enough to steal from them.

  Well, almost no one would ever be crazy enough to steal from them—Shake thought of Gina and almost let a smile sneak away from him.

  “That’s right,” Shake said. “I was covering my tracks.”

  “Fiddlesticks.”

  “Maybe. But you take me out in a boat and shoot me, you’ll never know for sure.”

  “Shoot?” Baby Jesus asked mildly.

  Shake tried to ignore that. “I’ve got two and a half million dollars, U.S.”

  Baby Jesus picked up the clipboard that hung from the foot of Shake’s bed. He scanned it. “Here,” he said. He tapped his ribs.

  One Love stepped over and punched Shake in the ribs.

  “And I suppose you tell me now,” Baby Jesus said, “that these millions of dollars was not burned up with every other one of your possessions in the world?”

  “Yes,” Shake
said. Grunted. Gasped. Fuck.

  “Excellent.” Baby Jesus clapped his big hands together. “We go now and get these millions of dollars.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Baby Jesus tapped his ribs again. The “One Love” thug stepped toward him.

  “Wait.” Shake gathered his breath. “I’ll bring you the money. Give me twenty-four hours.”

  “So you can run away.”

  “So I can meet you in a public place and not end up dead after I hand over the money.”

  Baby Jesus settled down into the chair that Idaba had vacated, one massive haunch at a time. A guy that big, he did his best pondering while seated. “I don’t think you have the money,” Baby Jesus said. “But just maybe you do.”

  “And you’re a businessman.”

  “If you think you will run away on your boat,” Baby Jesus mentioned, conversationally, “you know we have your boat now.”

  Shake shrugged. Thinking, Shit. The Wahoo had been escape plan number one.

  “And you know, my friend, I have eyes everywhere. The airport, the ferry. The police, of course.”

  “I want to pay my debt. I want to be square with you,” Shake said. He glanced over and saw One Love yawning. “Are we boring you?” he said.

  One Love looked like he was about to smack Shake in the ribs again, but then he saw Baby Jesus frowning at him too.

  Baby Jesus pondered some more.

  “Twenty-four hours,” he said. “And if you don’t have this money, Shake, you will pray you are already dead.”

  Chapter 12

  Terry had the idea, once they got to town, that they buy some flowers. Or a teddy bear, to make it look better. “You don’t think I didn’t already think of that?” Meg said. But a while later, after he’d given her the silent treatment, she sighed and lifted up on her toes to kiss him. “I didn’t think of the teddy bear,” she said. “That’s better than flowers.”

  Terry thought it was. People saw a teddy bear and they went, “Aw, ain’t that sweet?” They put their guard down.

  The clinic was in the middle of town. A place down the street sold flowers and get-well cards, but no teddy bears. Meg said that was all right, just focus on the job now. Her plan was Terry would walk into the clinic and tell the girl at the desk he wanted to visit his hurt friend. It would have to be Terry, because the chef would recognize Meg, he’d seen her on the beach. Meg would wait out in the alley while Terry went into the chef’s room. The chef would ask who Terry was, and Terry would say he was with the Young Christian Leadership group there in Belize, and they went around visiting all the sick foreigners. Terry would ask had the chef abandoned himself to the Lord Jesus Christ yet? While the chef was thinking, Oh, great, a Bible-thumper, Terry would pin him down and put a pillow on his face so he couldn’t yell out. Meg would come in through the window and shoot the chef in the face through the pillow. She said the gun wouldn’t make so much noise that way. Then they’d both go back out through the window.

  That’s all Terry had to do, Meg said, did he think he could do it without being too much of a moron? Terry thought he could, no problem. He had a good twenty pounds on the chef, and the chef had bruised ribs to boot. That’s what the girl at the clinic desk had said when they’d called to see if the chef was at the clinic. Meg had seen the explosion knock him down, and suspected he might have ended up there.

  But Terry asked her again, did they really have to kill the chef? The broken nose was water under the bridge as far as he was concerned. Meg turned and looked at him. “I start what I finish,” she said. “Don’t nobody hurt the folks I love and get away with it.”

  Terry didn’t think the chef had got away with anything much at all, seeing how his restaurant had blown to bits and with him in the clinic now, but Terry didn’t make a fuss. He just wanted to get this done and get Meg back to the shack, get her shucked quick out of her cutoff shorts.

  “Whatever you say, my darlin’ redheaded girl,” Terry said, and he picked out the biggest bunch of flowers he could find.

  WHEN EVELYN WOKE UP, SHE ordered eggs from room service and sent her daughter a text. I had the weirdest dreams last night.

  Sarah sent a text back. Everybody has weird dreams, Mom.

  While Evelyn ate her eggs, she considered how her own position had improved. She’d come to Belize without much to squeeze the shithead with. The best she had in her bag was that good old standby: Talk to me or I’ll let the Armenians know you’re talking to me. You think they’ll be happy to hear about that?

  The problem was that Bouchon had already served out his full bid on a GTA at Mule Creek because he refused to play ball with the prosecutor. He wasn’t a ballplayer and the Armenians knew it. They still might try to clip him, just to be safe, if they thought she was trying to turn him around, but that threat didn’t have the weight she would have liked.

  Now, though, Evelyn didn’t need the Armenian threat. Somebody was already trying to clip Bouchon. His restaurant had been destroyed. If ever he needed a friend, he needed one now.

  Evelyn planned to be that friend, a shoulder to lean on. All the shithead had to do in return was be a friend back and help her nail the Armenians. Easy.

  And then what, Evelyn? Evelyn was disgusted with herself, with the little crush that she’d developed on Bouchon. Realistically? She and the shithead would hold hands as they shopped for bargain wine at the Trader Joe’s on Pico? They’d pull weeds together in the garden and he’d thumb a smudge of potting soil off her upper lip before he kissed her? He’d show Sarah how to cook conch fritters while Evelyn sat on the sofa and luxuriated in the sound of their happy laughter? Maybe, while he was at it, cooking conch fritters with Sarah, he could instruct her on the finer points of car theft and evasive driving.

  Shake. It was a better nickname than “Baby Jesus,” but still kind of silly for a grown man. Charles was a perfectly good first name. Charlie. No, Charles.

  Sorry, Charlie. I’m your only friend in the world now.

  She finished her eggs and drank another cup of coffee. It was seventhirty. She decided to head over to the hospital and deliver the good news.

  Chapter 13

  Shake sent Idaba to the post office. He kept his passport in his post office box, taped to the wall of the box so the box looked empty. He was lucky the passport hadn’t been upstairs in his flat when the restaurant blew. Baby Jesus was right. Everything else that Shake owned had been.

  He started to climb out of bed, but the pain froze him in place. “Oh, no, you don’t,” the nurse told him. She’d come into the room to bring him breakfast. She put the tray aside and helped him lie back down. “Not till the doctor comes in and says you can.”

  “What time?”

  “Later.” As exact as island time got. The nurse put a hand on Shake when he started to sit up again, so Shake waited till she left. He didn’t plan to hang around till the doctor arrived, no matter how much it hurt to get out of bed. It hurt a lot. Every move he made was like another rib cracking. You’d think he had an unlimited supply of ribs to crack. He put on his pants, his T-shirt, got one sandal on, and then paused to take a breather.

  The nurse poked her head in again. “What’d I just tell you?”

  “I forget. Must be the drugs.”

  “You got another visitor.” Shake thought, Who the hell now?

  A second later Armando walked in. “How you feelin’, boss?” he said.

  “Help me with this,” Shake said, pointing to his other sandal.

  Armando frowned. “You need you rest, boss.”

  “Help me.”

  Armando helped him put the sandal on. Roger walked in. “You ask him yet?” he asked Armando.

  “Idiota,” Armando snapped at him.

  “Oh,” Roger said.

  Shake sighed. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Two weeks,” Armando said.

  “All right. See Idaba about it in the next few days.”

  “Thanks, chef,” Roger said.

&nbs
p; “Thanks, boss.”

  “Help me up.”

  “You think you wanna do that, chef?”

  “C’mon. Both of you. Let’s go.”

  Shake put a hand on Armando’s shoulder. He was just the right size. It hurt to stand, but no more than sitting up. With Armando on one side and Roger on the other, Shake made it down the hallway. He thought the nurse might try to stop him, but she was having a conversation with a guy holding a bouquet of flowers. The guy, with his back to Shake, blocked the nurse’s view of the lobby.

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse was saying. “You just gonna have to wait.”

  There was something vaguely familiar about the guy, the way he was standing. Shake didn’t have time to worry about it.

  OUTSIDE, SHAKE SAID GOOD-BYE TO Armando and Roger. Idaba was waiting for him on the corner of Pescador Street. It took Shake a while to get there. The grit was blowing around and the sun felt twenty or thirty degrees hotter than it should have. Shake noticed sweat popping out all over his body.

  “You see him over there, don’t you?” Idaba said as she handed Shake his passport.

  “I do,” Shake said. One Love, Baby Jesus’s thug. Hanging out about halfway down the block, lurking in the shadows.

  “I guess Baby Jesus don’t trust you,” Idaba said.

  “I guess he shouldn’t.”

  “Come to my house. My husband and I, we’ll help you.”

  “Your husband thinks I’m a jackass.”

  She didn’t deny it, or argue with her husband’s conclusion. “Come to my house,” she said.

  “You think you can cover a couple of weeks’ pay for Armando and Roger?” Shake said. “I’ll pay you back when I can.”

  She nodded. They stood there for a minute.

  “You sure you didn’t see her on the beach?” Shake said.

  “Who? The one with freckles?”

  “The other one.”

  “The pretty one,” Idaba said. Sly.