Whiplash River

by Lou Berney

  “She wasn’t my girlfriend then. She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “You sound confused.”

  “I am.”

  “What were you doing at the Sphinx? I can’t figure that out.”

  “None of your business.”

  “You’re right. Did you and your maybe-girlfriend have sex last night? What positions? Were you a gentleman, if you know what I mean?”

  “Evelyn,” Shake said, “how long do we have to keep this up?”

  “I’m not bluffing, Shake. I enjoy making your life difficult. I could do it all day.”

  “I believe you. But what’s the point of doing that? If I’m never gonna dime out the Armenians?”

  “Never say never. Maybe your life just isn’t difficult enough yet.”

  Shake realized who Evelyn reminded him of right now. She reminded him of Lexy Ilandryan, pakhan of the Armenian mob in L.A. Superficial details aside, the similarities were uncanny. And frightening.

  “I really do like you, Shake. That’s not a lie. So work with me. There’s got to be a place halfway.”

  Shake slid his glass of beer aside and leaned closer, elbows on the table.

  “I don’t know how to make you understand, Evelyn. There’s not a place halfway for me. I won’t dime out the Armenians. I’m not sure I can even explain why, but I would never do something like that. I was that way as a kid, early as I can remember. I got my ass kicked plenty of times for it, believe me. So do what you want. Make my life even more difficult than it already is. It’s your call, no hard feelings, you’ve got a job to do. But I’m not gonna dime anybody out, ever.”

  She sipped her beer. “Nice speech. The violins swell.” But he thought her tone might have softened a little. Maybe.

  Shake stood up. That was it, that was all he had. “Thanks for the beer.” He was almost out the door when he stopped and turned back.

  “By the way,” he said. “Back in Belize, when I asked you to dinner—”

  “Stop,” she said. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”

  He nodded and left.

  Chapter 40

  Shake made it back to the hotel just under the wire, barely an hour before Devane was due to arrive. Gina and Quinn were waiting up in one of the penthouse suites.

  Quinn was annoyed because the best penthouse suite, the presidential, had been booked. They’d had to settle for this one, only fifteen hundred square feet and a grand piano.

  “If you’re going to play the part,” Quinn said, “you have to play the part. You know who would be in the presidential suite? The real Roland Ziegler. A part I should be playing, I’ll just mention again, for the record.”

  “Put this on,” Shake said. He handed Quinn one of the purple galabiyas he’d bought.

  “We’re good with the account hack,” Gina said. “As long as Porkpie doesn’t start poking around and run the clock out.”

  “We’re good with the gaff,” Shake said. “It only cost me a hundred bucks.”

  “That was some luck,” Gina said. “Lucking into that in the first place.”

  “We’re gonna need it,” Shake said.

  Quinn stripped down to his boxers, socks, and shoes. He pulled the galabiya over his head. Shake and Gina tried not to laugh. Quinn in the long purple dress, with his straight posture and white hair, reminded Shake of the lady in Sunset Boulevard, the one who said it was the movies that got small, not her.

  “Feel free,” Quinn said. “I’m happy to be the object of your derision.”

  Shake handed him the other galabiya. “Downstairs,” he said. “The side entrance, back behind the lobby bar.”

  “All right,” Quinn said. “Did you lose the FBI gal?”

  Shake looked around the suite. He didn’t see a black leather attaché anywhere.

  “Do we have a bigger problem than that?” he said.

  “Mahmoud will be here,” Quinn said. “I talked to him. He was just waiting for his cousin to bring it over.”

  “Why rush?” Shake said.

  “Did you lose her or not?” Gina asked him.

  “I hope so.”

  Before she could say anything else, the doorbell chimed.

  “You see?” Quinn said. He gave Shake a patient, indulgent smile and opened the door. Mahmoud stepped into the suite, grinning and sweating and looking scared out of his mind. He handed Quinn a black leather attaché but was so scared he forgot to let go of the handle. Quinn had to tap his knuckles to remind him.

  The attaché was hard-sided, about the size of a regular briefcase, a few inches thicker.

  “I am very nervous,” Mahmoud apologized, grinning.

  You should be, Shake thought.

  “Nothing to be nervous about,” Quinn said. “This’ll be a piece of cake!”

  Mahmoud grinned, nodded, and bolted, almost knocking over a housekeeper who was vacuuming the hallway. When he was gone, Shake took the attaché from Quinn. He lifted it, lowered it. Lifted it, lowered it. Gina was thinking the same thing.

  “It’s empty,” she said.

  “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Shake said. “How much does a fifty-page speech with a bullet hole in it weigh?”

  “Does it matter?” Quinn said.

  “It might,” Shake said.

  Quinn nodded. “You’re right, you’re right.”

  Shake didn’t see fifty pages of paper lying around. He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The housekeeper with the vacuum looked over at him.

  “Shampoo?” he said. “Wash hair?”

  She nodded. Shake grabbed a few little bottles of shampoo from her cart. He went back inside the suite and dumped the shampoo bottles in the attaché.

  Shake lifted and lowered the attaché.

  “Inshallah,” Quinn said. Shake handed the attaché back. They had about twenty minutes left. Quinn started to leave.

  “Wait,” Shake said. “Let’s just go over it.”

  “Go over what?”

  “Just keep it tight. In and out, nothing unnecessary. No improvisation.”

  “Stick to the script, Harry,” Gina said. “Okay?”

  Quinn rose up to his full height. The effect was either more or less impressive because of the galabiya he was wearing. Shake couldn’t decide.

  “I’m a professional,” Quinn said. “I’ve been a professional since before either of you was a goddamn twinkle in your mother’s eye.”

  Shake was afraid to look at Gina. She was probably afraid to look at him too.

  “Go get ’em, Harry,” she said.

  SHAKE CHANGED INTO HIS SUIT. Ten minutes till showtime. He took a seat on the couch next to the grand piano. Gina took a seat on the couch across from him. A minute passed. Another minute passed.

  “I wish we had something to talk about while we wait,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  Chapter 41

  Evelyn sat next to Mohammed on the hood of the Mercedes. He’d parked in the shade, across from Shake’s hotel, but it was still hot. A dry heat, though, not murderous. Sarah had been right. It was probably a lot worse in the summer.

  “In Hurghada,” Mohammed said. “The sea breeze is so niiiiice, Evelyn. Oh, my Gaaawd!”

  They’d tailed Shake back from the Khan el-Khalili market. He’d entered the hotel and not come out again.

  “Do you think I’m a little bit out of my mind, Mohammed?” she said.

  He didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t understand the question, or maybe he didn’t care one way or another, or maybe he thought all American women were a little bit out of their minds.

  Evelyn knew, if she was serious about this, that she should send Mohammed to cover the hotel’s side entrance and have him call her if he saw Shake come out.

  If she was serious about this.

  Evelyn thought about what Shake had told her back at T.G.I. Friday’s. How he’d never flip on the Armenians in L.A., or anybody else for that matter. She’d heard a version of that speech approximately a thousand times befo
re. Baby Jesus, most recently, had given Evelyn a version of that speech, not long before he broke down and flipped on the Zeta cartel.

  But Shake’s version of the speech—it was the first time in a thousand times that Evelyn believed the guy giving the speech really meant it. She was pissed at Shake because of all the times she’d told a shithead, “I like you, I do”—also, most recently, Baby Jesus—this was the first time that Evelyn had really meant it.

  She was pissed at herself. For coming all the way to Cairo. For going home with nothing. She knew exactly what Cory Nadler would say, his mouth agape in disbelief. He would say:

  “Evi, you lunatic, you just busted and then flipped the biggest drug dealer in Belize, and now you’re pissed because you couldn’t take down the Armenians in L.A. the same week? For God’s sake, Evi, what does it take for you to consider it a good week?”

  “Busting and flipping the biggest drug dealer in Belize,” she would have said back. “And taking down the Armenians in L.A.” She would have considered that a good week.

  But it wasn’t like she was done with the Armenians. Not by a long shot. Shake might be a dead end, Cairo might be a dead end, but Evelyn had plenty more angles to work. She was going to work angles and take down the Armenians if it killed her.

  That made her feel better. And, hey. She wasn’t going home from Cairo with nothing, was she? She had four stone jars that she’d paid way too much for and would have to lug through three different airports. Mohammed had explained that they were canopic jars, replicas of the jars that ancient Egyptians used when they made a mummy. The lid of one jar was the head of a jackal. The ancient Egyptians put the stomach from the mummy’s body in that one. The mummy’s intestines went in the jar with the falcon lid, the lungs in the jar with the baboon lid, the liver in the jar with the pharaoh’s head.

  According to Mohammed, the ancient Egyptians didn’t have a jar for the brain. They used a long needle to drag it through the dead person’s nose, then tossed it. The heart stayed in the body, so the gods could weigh it in the afterlife and judge the dead by it.

  Good for the ancient Egyptians, Evelyn thought. They had their priorities straight.

  The driveway of the hotel was buzzing. Check-in time. Evelyn watched expensive cars come and go.

  “What did the ancient Egyptians say about gracious defeat?” she asked Mohammed. “What was their position on that? I’m having a hard time getting my head around the concept.”

  He shrugged and lit another unfiltered Camel. Evelyn sighed and slid off the hood of the Mercedes.

  “Okay, partner,” she said. “We’re done here. I’m going home. Let’s get the yalla bina out of here.”

  Chapter 42

  Devane called from the lobby a few minutes after three. Gina told him to come on up. Shake sent Quinn a text.

  Shake didn’t feel like a billionaire swindler who bought high-dollar antiquities. He felt like an ex-con ex-wheelman who used to own a struggling little restaurant in Belize. He felt like that guy, just wearing a suit and sitting in a penthouse suite.

  Quinn was right. Quinn should be playing the part of Roland Ziegler. Shake was no good at playing parts other than himself.

  The doorbell chimed.

  “You’ll do just great,” Gina said, because she knew that would annoy Shake. She gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder as she went to answer the door. She knew that would annoy him too.

  “I was also a professional,” Shake said, “before you were a twinkle in your mother’s eye. Or close to it.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she said. “You’re an old man, I’m well aware.”

  “I’m forty-four.”

  She smiled. “And?”

  Shake smiled back. He was in a better mood than any guy in his situation had a right to be.

  Gina opened the door. Devane, in his straw porkpie hat, was flanked by the two hard-looking Egyptians from the nightclub. He was carrying a black leather attaché case. It looked to Shake just like the one Mahmoud had procured for them. When Devane lifted the case up and set it down on the coffee table, though, Shake could tell it had something inside that weighed less than hotel shampoo.

  Oh, well. That train had left the station. There was nothing they could do about it now.

  Devane’s two bodyguards were armed. They didn’t try to hide the bulges in their suit coats. Shake wondered how they’d gotten through the metal detector in the lobby. He supposed it wasn’t that hard when your boss was rich and you used to be state security.

  “You didn’t bring your charming naked Russian prostitute wife,” Gina told Devane. “I assume she’s your wife? You two seem like a perfect match.”

  Shake didn’t know what any of that meant. He knew, whatever it meant, that Gina was giving Devane a little jiggle, trying to rattle his focus.

  Devane glanced her way, cold, and then ignored her.

  “Roland Ziegler,” he said to Shake. “In the flesh. Last I heard, you were in prison. In the clink, the pokey. A guest of the American federal government.”

  Devane moved his hands a mile a minute. To mime the pokey, he turned a key in a lock and then threw the key away.

  You heard right, Shake started to say. But then he stopped and tried to think how Ziegler himself, the smug smirking prick, would put it.

  Fuck. He was taking too long to think. Devane watched him.

  Shake tried a smirk. He wasn’t good with smirks.

  “Is that what a little birdie told you?” he said. “The little birdie didn’t tell you the whole story, apparently.”

  Shake thought he could hear Gina exhale. A little.

  “You cut a deal with the federales?” Devane said. “Okay. Sure. I heard that too. It’s plausible. But how do I know, Roland, that you didn’t cut a deal to give me up? Me, moi? How do I know you don’t have a wire? Though it wouldn’t be a wire. It’s a patch they use now, a wireless transmitter.”

  That was calculated stupidity. Shake knew the real Roland Ziegler wouldn’t even bother to respond to something that stupid, so Shake just smirked.

  It seemed to work. Devane snapped his fingers at Gina. “Laptop,” he said.

  Gina set the computer they’d borrowed from the hotel on the coffee table next to the black attaché case. Devane sat down on the couch and opened the computer.

  “Bank and account number,” he said.

  Gina handed him a slip of paper. Devane started tapping.

  “This is just like in the movies,” Gina said. “It’s how you like to do things, isn’t it? The girls in the club, the bodyguards, the British colonial yacht. Your life is a series of movie clichés.”

  “How can you stand this bitch?” Devane asked Shake without looking up from the keyboard. “I don’t care what she looks like naked.”

  “Neither do I,” Shake said. The biggest lie he’d told so far.

  Devane nodded. He finished tapping, looked at the screen for a second, and then shut the lid.

  “I know all the tricks,” he said. “So if you think I’m gonna shut my eyes now and drift off to dreamland”—he mimed drifting off to dreamland—“just because I see you have some money stashed in some bank. No. Sorry. If you think I trust a wire transfer? I know all the tricks. That was just to see you’re viable. I deal in hard cash only, bearer bonds, seventy-two hours to turn it around or the deal is off.”

  “What deal?” Shake looked at Gina. “Did you make a deal? I didn’t make a deal.”

  She sent him a look that Shake took to mean You’re doing okay, but stop smirking so much, you don’t know how to do a smirk right.

  Devane snapped open the attaché case and lifted the lid. Inside, cushioned by custom-cut foam, was Teddy Roosevelt’s speech.

  The speech was about half an inch thick. Heavy, good-quality paper, the color of old ivory. The corners of the top page had gone a little brown, and there was a brown crease where the manuscript had been folded in half lengthwise. The type was double-spaced, from an old-fashioned typewriter, the letters
crowded together. There were a few handwritten notes, almost faded away, in the margins.

  The manuscript had been folded when Roosevelt got shot, so there were actually two bullet holes, one on each side of the fold. Small caliber, a .22 or a .38, probably. Shake could see that the bullet had gone all the way through. One hole was neat and clean, almost like it had been drilled, while the other one was a little ragged and torn at the edges. That bullet hole was right above a line of type that read “experiencing a partial corruption of foreign blood.”

  “Imagine it,” Shake said. He ran a finger along the top sheet. He could feel the dents the typed letters had made in the paper. “Just imagine. Teddy Roosevelt held this. He folded this. He put this in the pocket of his overcoat and stepped out in the Milwaukee autumn.”

  He leaned down to smell the pages. He thought that was a nice touch.

  “Gunpowder,” he said. “Or maybe that’s just my imagination.”

  “Roosevelt also had a metal eyeglass case in his pocket,” Devane said. “That slowed the bullet down too. Nobody knows what happened to the eyeglass case or the bullet. The overcoat. If you could find all that, you could write your own ticket.”

  “How do I know it’s real?” Shake said.

  That was calculated stupidity. Shake thought Devane might expect it from someone like Roland Ziegler.

  “Ha, ha,” Devane said. He closed the attaché case. “My other bid is for seven million, so you’ll have to beat that by another million.”

  Where the fuck was Quinn?

  “Another million?” Shake said.

  “If I’m gonna piss off my other buyer, it’s got to be worth my while.”

  The doorbell chimed. Finally.

  Devane remained cold and slack on the sofa, but his two bodyguards clicked into action, tucking back their suit coats to clear their guns. One bodyguard stayed by the sofa with Devane and the attaché case. The other bodyguard fanned out to get an angle on the door.

  The doorbell chimed again. A fist pounded the door.