Whiplash River

by Lou Berney

Who could that be? Shake started to say. But that was too obvious, a terrible oversell, no matter how he said it. So instead he just looked over at Gina. She looked over at Devane.

  “If you try to screw us,” she said, “your reputation will be dead. You will never sell another fucking thing in your life.”

  That rattled Devane. Just for an instant, and just a little. Gina’s hard work finally paying off.

  “Don’t answer it,” Shake said.

  “Answer it,” Devane said. Because he wanted to prove he wasn’t trying to screw them. And if they were trying to screw him—well, he had two armed bodyguards. He knew all the tricks.

  Gina walked across the suite and opened the door. Quinn stood there in his purple galabiya, looking agitated. “Where’s Lauren?” he said.

  “What do you want?” Gina said.

  “I want my daughter!” Quinn said, and barged past her into the suite. “Lauren!”

  The first bodyguard made a grab for him but Quinn barged past him too. Quinn made it all the way to the coffee table before the second bodyguard grabbed him. Quinn tried to shake him off and the two of them almost fell into Devane’s lap. Devane had to shove them away.

  “Lauren! I will not stand for this any longer! Come out here!”

  The second bodyguard wrestled Quinn around so that Quinn could see the first bodyguard pointing a gun at his face. Quinn stopped struggling. The second bodyguard let him go.

  “How dare you!” Quinn said to the bodyguard with the gun in his face.

  Please take it easy, Shake thought. Please. Nothing unnecessary. Just stick to the script.

  “Sir,” Gina told Quinn, “I’m afraid you have the wrong suite.”

  Devane seemed coldly amused by all this, coldly suspicious.

  “Are you doing his daughter?” Devane asked Shake.

  Quinn turned to Devane and glared at him. He was not supposed to turn and glare at Devane. That was not in the script.

  “Do you know who I am?” Quinn said. Neither was that.

  The second bodyguard had his gun out now too.

  “No,” Devane said. “Who are you? What’s your story, old man?”

  Gina slid over and grabbed Quinn’s biceps. Shake saw her fingers tighten as she tried to pull Quinn toward the door. Quinn pulled back. He glared at Devane and rose up to his full height.

  Oh, fuck. Shake saw it all falling apart, just like that, a slow-motion unfolding of the future.

  And then: Quinn glanced around the suite. He seemed to realize something. He cleared his throat. “I appear to have,” he said, and then stopped. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

  That was in the script. Quinn played it perfectly—stiffly embarrassed, not overselling.

  The next part of the script was Quinn leaving.

  He left. Shake relaxed.

  “I want to meet this Lauren,” Devane said. “I want to pop a cork with her.” He mimed opening a bottle of champagne, squirting the champagne everywhere. “Don’t you? Don’t you bet his daughter’s a fun chick?”

  Shake could see Devane’s mind working. Devane was trying to decide if what had just happened was staged. The suspicious type, he would be inclined to think so. It was just too much of a coincidence otherwise. But if it had been staged, why had it been staged?

  At least Shake hoped that was the road Devane was driving down.

  “Forget it,” Shake said. “No way I go an extra million. Why do I care if you piss off your other buyer? I’ll go an extra quarter, final offer. And word to the wise? I don’t bluff.”

  “Nope,” Devane said.

  He stood and picked up the attaché case. He nodded to his bodyguards. The bodyguards stuck their guns back in their hip holsters and buttoned their suit coats. The three of them moved to the door.

  “Wait,” Gina said. “Roland?”

  “No,” Shake said. “I’m not going higher than a quarter.”

  “Let me walk you down,” Gina told Devane.

  “Whatever floats your boat.” Devane made a boat with his free hand and floated it along on invisible waves.

  GINA RODE THE ELEVATOR DOWN with Porkpie and his goons. It was all on her now and she knew it.

  “He’ll go up another half million,” she told Porkpie. “He’ll go to seven and three-quarters, but you have to let him think he’s outsmarted you.”

  “So he does indeed bluff.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Why are you telling me this? What’s in it for the bitch?”

  One goon was right behind her on the left, the other goon slightly behind her on the right. They stank of sweat and nicotine and bad cologne.

  “I’m sick of Cairo,” Gina said. “I’ve been here what—three days? Three days is all, and I’m already sick of it. I don’t know how you can live here.”

  “I’m not moving off eight,” Porkpie said. “And nobody outsmarts me.”

  “I said just let him think that. I’ll handle all that.”

  The elevator reached the lobby. Porkpie stepped out. Gina followed. The goons followed her, staying right up on her ass.

  “What kind of deal did he cut with the feds?” Porkpie said, crossing the lobby. Gina had to walk fast to keep up. “I’m just curious.”

  “A good deal.”

  “I bet.”

  They passed the soldiers at the metal detector and pushed through the doors outside. Porkpie headed for his car, which he had waiting down at the end of the turnaround.

  “So do you always do it this way?” he said. “The tag-team approach that’s supposed to throw me off my game? Good cop, bad cop? Does it ever work?”

  “Listen,” Gina said. “If he doesn’t get this stupid speech, he’ll pout and whine for months. He’ll pout and whine to me. Moi. Come down a quarter and I’ll make it happen. You still come out seven hundred and fifty grand ahead.”

  Gina was good at this, if she did say so herself. She could play any part.

  “I don’t want to come out seven hundred and fifty grand ahead,” Porkpie said. “I want to come out a million ahead. And I want the infamous Roland Ziegler to understand that I’m smarter than he is. And what’s wrong with Cairo?”

  They had reached Porkpie’s car. Gina was almost there, it was almost done.

  “What’s wrong with Cairo?” she said. “I just spent a week in Beirut. That’s what’s wrong with Cairo.”

  Devane opened the car door and then stopped. Turned. Looked at her.

  It was like all his nervous, coked-up, hand-waving energy had been suddenly condensed down to a single humming laser pinprick, aimed at the pupil of Gina’s left eye.

  “What did you just say?” he said.

  Chapter 43

  The girl blinked. That was all. That was enough. Devane knew he had her.

  “What did you just say?” he said.

  She smiled like she didn’t know what in the world he was talking about.

  Did she really think she could smile her way out of this one?

  Mohammed Number One picked up Devane’s vibe and moved closer to the girl. He grabbed her arm. He was the number one Mohammed because he had a gift. He could always read Devane’s vibe. Devane never had to nod or point or murmur under his breath, “Hey, Mohammed, the bitch is trying to game me.”

  Mohammed Number One nodded at Mohammed Number Two, who came around on the other side of the girl.

  “Rabat,” Devane said.

  “What?” the girl said.

  “You said, the first night we met, that you’d just come from Rabat. Morocco. Not Beirut. Rabat. Très charmant, remember?”

  “We did,” the girl said. She rolled her eyes, exasperated. Pretending to be exasperated. “We went to Rabat for a night after Beirut. Do you want a detailed itinerary? Do you want to know what I had for breakfast each day?”

  “You’re lying,” Devane said.

  Mohammed Number One picked up Devane’s vibe and squeezed the girl’s arm harder. Devane had seen him break a girl’s arm just by squeezing
it. Another gift that Mohammed Number One had.

  “I’m so not lying.”

  “What’s your game?” Devane said. “You thought you were so smart, didn’t you?”

  The girl rolled her eyes again. A convincingly exasperated roll of the eyes, but—Devane caught the nervous flick at the end of the eye roll, a nervous flick of a glance over his shoulder.

  Devane turned.

  There. The crazy old man in the purple galabiya. The crazy old man, purple galabiya and white hair, who’d pushed his way into the suite and hollered for his daughter.

  He was walking away fast. Just about to turn the corner on the other side of the hotel. He must have used the hotel’s side exit. And he was carrying, at his side, a black leather attaché case.

  Devane stared at the old man. He stared down at the identical black leather attaché case in his own hand.

  It was impossible. It was fucking impossible. There was no way they could have pulled a switch. Devane had kept his eye on the real attaché case the entire time.

  His first thought—of course it had been his first thought, when the old man bulled his way into the suite—Devane’s immediate first thought had been: It’s a distraction. The oldest trick in the oldest book. Distraction, misdirection. It was the first trick a grifter learned. Look over there, while I do this over here. It was a trick that fucking pickpockets used. The wrench. The bump.

  So when the old man in the purple galabiya had bulled his way into the suite, Devane had kept his eye on the attaché case. He didn’t think the old man was really a bump. Who would try something that clumsy? But better safe than sorry. Devane lived by that motto. Guilty until proven innocent, and even then probably guilty. Right?

  So he hadn’t taken his eyes off the attaché case. He hadn’t taken his hand off it!

  Had he?

  Devane watched the old man in the purple galabiya walking fast, almost to the corner, the black leather attaché case in his hand.

  He remembered, back in the suite, the old man and Mohammed Number Two almost falling on him. Devane having to shove them off. A split second when he’d taken his eyes off the attaché case, when he’d taken his hand off it . . .

  “Get him!” Devane told the Mohammeds. The Mohammeds looked confused. They didn’t understand. Mohammed Number One tightened his grip on the girl’s arm and she spiked her elbow into his stomach, hard.

  Mohammed Number One was a brick wall, he barely moved. But the girl had slipped her leg behind his leg before she spiked him, and he moved enough backward to lose his balance. The girl chopped him with her other hand, the side of her palm to his Adam’s apple. He dropped her arm and stumbled backward, gagging.

  The girl bolted. Mohammed Number Two started to go after her.

  “Forget her!” Devane screamed. He’d been screaming for a while and hadn’t even realized it. “The old man in the purple! He’s got the real case!”

  Mohammed Number One understood, but he was still gagging. Mohammed Number Two looked even more confused. Devane grabbed Mohammed Number Two’s gun and took off after the old man. The old man was just turning the corner, just about to disappear.

  Mohammed Number Two finally understood and sprinted after Devane. Mohammed Number One sprinted after them, slower, still gagging.

  Devane whipped around the corner. The old man in the purple galabiya was up ahead, turning another corner, down a tight alley. He was walking fast but not fast enough. There was no way he would get away.

  Did those fuckhead Americans think they were going to pull this off? Typical arrogant Americans. Though they would have pulled it off, Devane realized, a chill rippling through him, if the girl hadn’t fucked up the one tiny detail about Rabat and Beirut.

  That fuckup was going to get them killed. Because once Devane had his case back, once he shot the old man right there in the street like a dog—the Egyptian cops? What Egyptian cops?—once he had Roosevelt’s speech back, he would sell the speech and use every dime of the money to hunt down the girl, hunt down the other guy. After he hunted them down, Devane would let Mohammed Number One have them. Devane would bust a few rails, find a comfy seat in the theater, and watch the show.

  They had to be magicians! To switch the cases that fast, that clean, in the one single split second that Devane had looked away.

  Devane whipped around the next corner. The old man was boxed up at the end of the alley, trying to get past a couple of fruit carts.

  You’re a dead man, Devane thought. Your friends will wish they were.

  He reached the old man and slammed him against the stone wall. He yanked the attaché case away from him. Devane was so locked into that, getting the case back, that it took him a second to realize that the old man in the purple galabiya had a mustache.

  A mustache. A mustache?

  Mohammed Number Two put a gun to the old man’s head and then looked at Devane, surprised. “He’s got a mustache,” Mohammed Number Two said.

  The man had white wavy hair, but also a mustache and dark eyes. He was Egyptian, not American. He looked like he was about to faint.

  “It’s not him,” Mohammed Number Two said. “This isn’t the man that was upstairs.”

  “Who are you?” Devane screamed at him.

  The old man started mumbling and jabbering in Arabic. Devane had to slap him.

  “Ask him who the fuck he is!” Devane screamed at Mohammed Number One. Devane’s Arabic was good, but he wanted to make sure he got this exactly right.

  “He says he’s a waiter. He says he works at a restaurant in Giza, by the Sphinx. He says a man paid him a hundred dollars if he would wear this galabiya and carry this case.”

  That’s what Devane thought he had said.

  “He says he doesn’t understand what’s happening,” Mohammed Number One said.

  Devane didn’t understand what was happening. He was starting to understand.

  “Let him go,” Devane said. He shoved the old man away. Devane was starting to understand. He bent down and popped the clasps on the attaché case that the old man had been carrying. His heart was beating so hard he could barely breathe. It was like he’d done way too much coke. He opened the lid of the attaché case. Inside were a few bottles, small plastic bottles, of shampoo.

  Mohammed Number Two looked confused. “That was not the man from upstairs,” he said. “This is not your case.”

  “No,” Devane said. He understood now what had happened. “No. No. No.”

  Chapter 44

  Shake picked up the attaché case.

  The real case, the case with the speech that had saved Teddy Roosevelt’s life.

  It was on the pavement next to Devane’s car, in front of the hotel, right where Devane had left it when he and his bodyguards went running after the dummy case.

  There was nobody around Devane’s car. The car looked like somebody had jumped out for a second to deliver a package to the hotel. The front door of the car was ajar. The door-ajar warning bell was going ding . . . ding . . . ding.

  Shake dropped the attaché case in a big plastic shopping bag. He’d already changed out of his suit and put on a baseball cap, sunglasses. He crossed the street, not rushing, and got into the cab that was waiting for him.

  Quinn was in the backseat. He’d changed out of the purple galabiya and was back in a polo shirt and khakis. “I’ll be honest,” Quinn said as the cab drove off. “Now that we’ve come up roses. I didn’t know if he’d go for it or not.”

  Shake hadn’t known if Devane would go for the dummy case either. Devane was no dummy. But that was why, in the end, he went for it.

  “Hoisted by his own petard, wasn’t he?” Quinn said. “Too suspicious for his own goddamn good. Let me have a look.”

  Shake slid the attaché case out of the plastic shopping bag and opened it. Quinn ran a finger along the edge of a bullet hole.

  “I don’t understand it myself,” he said. “It’s a mystery. Why some people get so worked up by something like this. But I’m happy fo
r them, if it makes them happy. God bless ’em.”

  “How do we sell it?” Shake said. “If Devane’s the main dealer for things like this?”

  “The main one, not the only one. Hell, we’ll sell it back to him if we have to. It’s the way the world turns, Shake. You should know that. We’ll sell it to the real Roland Ziegler when he really cuts a deal with the feds and gets out of prison. How would you like that?”

  Stranger things, Shake knew, had happened.

  The cab took them deep into the Christian Coptic area of Cairo. Fewer minarets, but just as much traffic, just as many donkeys pulling carts loaded with watermelons, honeydews, big green flopping bunches of sugarcane.

  Shake and Quinn got out of the cab across from an old Coptic church with a bronze dome. They went past the church, turned down a deserted cobbled street, turned down an even more deserted cobbled street, turned into the courtyard of an abandoned building.

  Gina was sitting on a plastic bucket in the middle of the courtyard, eating a slice of watermelon. “It’s not bad,” she said. “But I’ve been to this place that has the best watermelon in the world. Rush Springs, Oklahoma. The watermelon capital of the world.”

  “Let me ask you a question,” Quinn asked her. “Now that we’ve come up roses. Did you think he’d go for it?”

  “Porkpie?” Gina said. “Sure. Well, I wasn’t totally sure. I thought he’d go for it, but I also thought he might check the real case first.”

  “He was so sure he’d figured it out,” Shake said.

  “He was hoisted by his own petard.”

  “His what?” Gina said. “I never touched his petard.”

  Quinn started to say something. Gina laughed. “I’m kidding,” she said. “Sheesh, Harry. I know what petard is. It’s gunpowder, isn’t it? It’s when you get blown up by your own gunpowder.”

  “You sold it, young lady,” Quinn said. “You came up all aces. Brava.”

  “You too, Harry. Now that we’ve come up roses, I can say you had me a little worried.”

  “I guess I just stood around and watched,” Shake said. “I guess you two did all the work.”