Whiplash River

by Lou Berney

  “C’mon,” Gina said. “You’re giving up so easy?”

  Shake looked at her. His face surprised, wary, defeated.

  She knew he knew what she meant.

  “Shake and I should check out his nightclub, at least,” Gina told Quinn. “See what we can see. My friends tell me I haven’t been on a date in forever.”

  Shake glanced at her. Again he looked surprised, wary, defeated, and—just a little bit, that sharp silver, dangerous sliver—hopeful.

  “Fantastic idea,” Quinn said. “Now we’re cooking with gas.”

  Chapter 30

  Shake pulled the blackout curtains in his room and slept most of the afternoon, into the evening. When he woke up he felt better, his head clearer, the world more like the world as he knew it and less like a dream. He took a long, hot shower and that made him feel better too.

  He didn’t feel any better about Quinn’s scheme. He felt worse about that. The downside, unfortunately, of a clear head.

  The apprentice bartender, Teddy Roosevelt’s speech with the bullet hole in it, this shadowy Devane guy, his house with the safe and the guards. All that was a disaster waiting to sail. No, it was already sailing, far from land, and Shake was standing right on the top deck of it.

  But he was going to stay there. He had nowhere else to go, not as long as Gina was on the top deck of the disaster too. Whether or not there really was a chance he could get her back. Whether or not she was here in Cairo for the sole purpose of torturing him. The distinction for him, at the end of the day, was meaningless.

  He went downstairs. The hotel, a former palace on an island in the middle of the Nile, was hopping. The lobby was packed with guys in galabiyas and guys in sunglasses and Armani and other guys, darker-skinned, in flowing snow-white robes with matching head wraps, the whole nine yards. These guys looked exactly like you imagined Saudi oil sheikhs would look.

  Quinn had said Muslims from all over the Middle East came to Cairo to party on the weekends, since the Egyptians had a more relaxed attitude toward booze and girls and gambling. Nobody wore a tie with their suit and every Arab guy, it seemed, had a mustache. Were Egyptians Arabs? Some of the lighter-skinned guys looked more like Italians than Arabs. Shake didn’t know. He’d have to ask Quinn.

  He caught himself. Christ, he thought.

  Shake spotted a couple of girls in high cork heels lounging on a red velvet sofa. Hookers, he guessed, probably Russian. Ukrainian. Beautiful pale eyes and cheekbones, bad sharp teeth. Eyes moving moving moving around the lobby while the girls put on lipstick.

  He walked past the casino and skirted the garden, where a wedding was going on. On the other side of the garden were some shops. Shake found a shop with suits on the rack, pretty good ones. He tried on a charcoal two-button that fit just about right, but the tailor who ran the shop wouldn’t have anything to do with about right. He kept Shake there for half an hour, chalking and tucking and snipping, Shake waiting in his boxer shorts and sipping tea. The tailor asked him if he wanted a tie too, but Shake said no. When in Cairo.

  He charged the suit to his room—he didn’t think Gina would mind—and told the tailor he’d wear it now. The tailor put Shake’s other clothes and shoes in a bag and offered to hold on to them. It was almost ten o’clock by now, so Shake headed back to the hotel lobby. He took a seat on a red velvet couch across from the elevators and waited for Gina.

  Shake had expected Quinn to cut in on their night out. Instead, though, he’d told Shake and Gina that he was hitting the hay early, have fun, let’s all catch up at breakfast in the morning.

  When in his life, Shake wondered, had Quinn ever hit the hay early? When had he headed south when the action pointed north? It was a cagey move. Maybe Quinn figured that his best shot, if he wanted to keep his scheme on track, was to keep Shake and Gina on track. Or not on track. Shake wasn’t sure which. Maybe Quinn understood what was happening between Shake and Gina better than Shake did.

  When Gina stepped out into the lobby—in a dark sea-green dress that tugged and shimmered, knee-high leather boots—Shake understood for sure that she’d come to Cairo to torture him.

  About a dozen guys with mustaches stopped what they were doing to gawk at her.

  “Well, well,” she said, eyeing his new suit.

  “Off-the-rack, but I did my best.”

  “You didn’t want to disappoint.”

  “That dress,” he said. “The color.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” She smiled pleasantly. “I forgot all about that.”

  Devane’s nightclub was only a few blocks away, so they decided to walk. The night was warm but not muggy. Strange, since the river was so close by. New Orleans, when it was warm, was always muggy. Shake could smell the river, and burning charcoal, and jasmine, and garbage, and the fruit-flavored smoke drifting away from the sheesha cafés that lined the street.

  “So tell me really,” Gina said. “How did you end up with a piece of work like Harry?”

  “You want the extended version?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Shake told her how he’d moved to Belize and bought his own restaurant.

  “You did?” she said. “You did it!”

  “It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected.”

  “Your own place! What did you name it? Did you put your gumbo on the menu?”

  “It was the Sunset Breeze when I bought it. I never got around to changing the name. And yes.”

  “I missed your gumbo more than I missed you. You didn’t name the restaurant after me?”

  “No. Sorry.” Though Shake had thought about it, long and hard.

  “That’s probably good. It would have made you seem like some poor lovesick loser who’d made the mistake of his life.”

  “Do you want to know about Quinn or not?”

  “Go on.”

  He told her about the masked man who tried to shoot Quinn and how Shake intervened to save Quinn. He told her how the people who wanted to kill Quinn now wanted to kill Shake too.

  “Mr. Nice Guy,” she said. “When are you ever gonna learn?”

  “Not soon enough, apparently.”

  “This time, I’m thinking, it’s like that fable. Is it Greek? The boy and the lion. The boy thinks the lion is going to eat him, but the lion has a thorn in his paw. The boy feels bad for the lion so he takes the thorn out.”

  “And then the boy can’t get rid of the lion? The boy wishes he’d never touched that fucking thorn?”

  “You don’t wish that. You can’t help it, that you’re Mr. Nice Guy.”

  “I can wish.”

  “Androcles and the lion. I don’t remember how it turns out.”

  Then Shake told her that the guy who wanted to kill Quinn, and now him too, was Logan James.

  “Logan James the billionaire?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Oh,” she said. Quietly. “Fuck.”

  “Ask Quinn to tell you about it, next time you have a couple of weeks free. Bottom line, Quinn knew Logan James when he was just a kid, over in Asia. I don’t know exactly what all they were into. Scamming NGOs, fraudulent government contracts, moving the shells around. Now Logan James is legit and he needs to make sure those days are gone and forgotten. That’s Quinn’s theory, at least.”

  “Logan James,” Gina said. “Wow. How do you get yourself into these situations?”

  It was a sincere question. This from a girl Shake had first met when he found her gagged and handcuffed in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car.

  “My dad had this saying,” Shake said. “When you sank so low it was embarrassing. When people you thought were the worst at something suddenly looked down at you. He called it getting fired from the carnival.”

  She smiled. “Given the lofty employment standards of the carnival.” And then, “Wait.”

  “That’s right. When it comes to getting into situations, you’re the carnival.”

  “Shut up,” she said. They turned the corner onto a busier street.
“You never told me anything about your dad.”

  “Nothing to tell. He wasn’t around much, and then he wasn’t around at all.”

  “The Bouchon men have commitment issues? Imagine that.”

  Shake stopped walking. “There’s somebody on us,” he said.

  Gina didn’t miss a beat. She turned back and put her arms around Shake’s neck. Like she was about to kiss him, but really so she could look past and behind him.

  “Are you sure?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”

  He wasn’t sure. It had been just a feeling. Shake trusted feelings like that, he was still alive because of them, but this one had passed now.

  Gina’s lips were inches from his, her breath warm in his face. That was all he could feel now.

  “When did you quit smoking?” he said.

  “Long time ago. New Year’s Day two years ago.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I’m touched by your concern for my health.”

  “Still nothing?”

  “No.”

  “It was just a feeling,” he said.

  She didn’t laugh. “Keep me posted. You better not get me killed because Harry got you killed.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Devane’s nightclub was just across the street. The name of the place was in English, in blue neon over the door: THE WILD ROSE. The doorman took one look at Gina and fell over himself to let her in. She pulled Shake along with her.

  Inside, the place was dark and crowded, the music hammering away. A DJ in a glass cockpit had James Brown’s “Please, Please, Please” buried under some kind of weird pulsing electronic beat.

  Please don’t do that to James Brown, Shake thought.

  “Not that busy yet,” Gina said into his ear.

  “It’s not?”

  “When’s the last time you’ve been out to a club? Was everybody kung fu fighting?”

  She wasn’t far off.

  “Hey,” she said. “Our lucky night.”

  Shake saw Devane in the next instant. It had to be Devane.

  A youngish white guy, early thirties, wearing a straw porkpie hat and spread out in a booth at the back of the club. He had girls on each side of him, girls in the laps of other girls, girls giggling and spilling out of the booth. Several of the girls wore skimpy dresses that seemed to be made from bandages they’d wrapped around themselves. Devane, nodding along to the weird electronic pulse, had his straw porkpie tipped down over his eyes.

  Off to the side, back in the shadows, stood a pair of hard-looking Egyptian guys with mustaches. In suits, no ties, hands at their sides. Devane’s beef.

  “Shall we?” Gina said.

  “Do we have a plan?” Shake said.

  But she was already on her way across the dance floor, zeroed in on Devane.

  DEVANE’S BODYGUARDS STIRRED WHEN SHAKE and Gina approached the booth. They had their eyes on Shake, not Gina. Their mistake, Shake thought.

  “It’s cool,” Devane told them. He had his eyes on Gina.

  “Hi,” Gina said.

  “Have a seat.”

  “Give me a break.”

  Devane considered, and then gave the girl on his left a nudge. She got up and then all the other girls got up too, like birds lifting all at once off a telephone wire.

  Clearing the girls out was a move like you saw in movies. Shake thought Devane had probably spent a fair amount of time working on it.

  The girls drifted out onto the dance floor and started dancing. Shake and Gina sat down across the booth from Devane. The bodyguards eased back into the shadows. They were even more hard-looking up close than they’d been at a distance. Shake wanted no part of them.

  The bodyguards fit, but Devane wasn’t what Shake had expected. At first glance—the stupid porkpie hat and the jeans with fancy embroidery up and down the legs, the boyish sunburned cheeks and blond hair—he came off more like a trust-fund brat than a high-end fence for stolen antiquities. But once Shake looked closer, he saw that Devane’s eyes were cold, suspicious, alert, and in his own way he was just as hard-looking as the bodyguards.

  “Americans,” Devane said. “You are, aren’t you? You don’t see many Americans in Egypt since the revolution. The revolution, yeah right, what a joke. But Americans. Americans walk into a room like they own it, here we come, ready or not. This land is my land and all that.”

  Once he got going, he talked fast, using his hands. He used his hands to mime shit blowing up in the revolution, Americans walking into a room, Woody Guthrie playing “This Land Is Your Land” on a fiddle.

  Shake might have thought he was coked up, and maybe he was, but his eyes didn’t move at all. They stayed steady.

  “What are you?” Gina said. “You sound American too.”

  “No, thanks. Canadian.”

  “We don’t have to discuss health care, do we?”

  “What do you want to discuss? Is your friend here a mute?” Devane mimed zipping his mouth shut. “I can tell right away that you two aren’t together, not romantically.”

  “Because he’s so much older than me? Because I’m so clearly so far out of his league?”

  “That must be it,” Shake said.

  “Huh,” Devane said, picking up on something. “Maybe you are together. Or were. I don’t really give a shit if you are or not.” He looked at Gina. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you naked.”

  “I don’t really give a shit if you’d mind or not,” Gina said, friendly.

  All this time, Devane had stayed settled back on his side of the booth, slouched down. Now he sat up and leaned forward.

  He was coked up for sure, Shake decided, but smart and suspicious. Probably more suspicious because of all the coke.

  “I know why you’re here,” Devane said.

  “Of course you do,” Gina said.

  What? Shake wondered. He tried not to look like he was wondering. Gina would kill him if he did.

  “Too bad,” Devane said. “You’re too late. Already off the market.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Where’d you hear about it? From Billheimer?”

  “I don’t know any Billheimer. You just made that name up.”

  “Okay.”

  “We were just in Morocco,” Gina said. “We came for the waters, but would you believe it? No waters! Well, really we came to check out a little bronze dog, first-century Roman. Supercute, and a real bargain. Have you ever been to Rabat? Très charmant, non?”

  Gina’s ability to lie on the fly was scary. Shake had almost forgotten. She told lies like Italians spoke Italian, the words rolling off her tongue fluid and effortless.

  Shake could lie when necessary, but he never enjoyed it. Once a Catholic altar boy, always a Catholic altar boy. If he had to lie, Shake liked to be prepared for it.

  “I don’t know anybody in Rabat,” Devane said.

  “They know you.”

  Devane slouched back and picked at the fancy embroidery on his jeans. “Who’s your buyer?” Devane said. “Not you.”

  “Him,” Gina said.

  Fuck, Shake thought.

  “The mute?”

  Gina turned to Shake and smiled. And waited.

  Fuck.

  She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew all about his past as a Catholic altar boy, his mixed feelings about lying.

  Shake tried to remember how Ziegler would put it. Ziegler was a Wall Street swindler, on the run from the feds, who Shake and Gina had encountered in Panama at the beginning of their relationship. Ziegler was the kind of guy who would drop six million dollars for Teddy Roosevelt’s bullet-hole speech, he wouldn’t think twice.

  “I collect stories,” Shake said. “Not objects. The object has to tell a story. What’s the point, otherwise?”

  He thought that was right. Gina was still smiling at him, winking without winking. Shake realized that he hadn’t felt this happy, not once, in the past two years.

  Devane was paying attention to Shak
e now, from beneath the brim of his straw porkpie, the first time he really had. “I’ve already got a buyer lined up.”

  “Lined up means the buyer hasn’t bought yet,” Gina said. “Lined up means the bidding is still open.”

  “Let me see you naked. You can keep the boots on.” Devane mimed unzipping Gina’s dress, and then turned to Shake. “That’s smart. Why you brought her along. You think she’ll distract me.”

  “Is it working?” Shake said.

  “No. I’m never distracted. It’s a gift.”

  “We’d like to examine the merchandise before we make an offer,” Gina said.

  “Oh, sure. What hotel are you staying at? I’ll just leave it down at the front desk.”

  “Yuk, yuk,” Gina said.

  She stood. Shake stood too. Devane nodded along to the music. The DJ was now murdering James Brown’s “Get Up off Me.”

  “Wait,” Devane said.

  One of the bodyguards stepped forward and handed Shake a business card. There was nothing on it but a phone number. “Don’t waste my time,” Devane said.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Gina said.

  Chapter 31

  Gina held it back for as long as she could, then started laughing as soon as they were outside the club. She couldn’t believe it.

  “Jesus fricking Cricket!” she said. “He dropped that right in our lap.”

  “He had help,” Shake said.

  “I’m good, aren’t I? It’s a gift.”

  She knew she was good, but so was Shake. Gina hated that. She hated how he’d managed to keep up with her when she put him on the spot. She hated it and she loved it. Gina couldn’t count how many guys she’d been with who couldn’t keep up with her. Or could keep up but got all pissy because they had to work so hard at it. But Shake never got pissy. He liked how hard Gina made him work.

  She hated and loved that the two of them had fallen so quickly back into the same easy rhythm, that same hot blue spark arcing back and forth between them. One of Gina’s brothers, growing up, had been into welding. The energy she had with Shake was still like that. As if the past two years had never happened. As if he’d never left her a fucking note and DUMPED HER.