Whiplash River (10 page)

“There he is!” Quinn said.

Here I am,
Shake thought.

Chapter 14

Q
uinn explained to Shake that the resort was closed for renovations. Fertility tourism, you had to understand, was a top-shelf racket. You couldn't cut corners. You had to pamper the gals. They'd expect the very best, from Italian tile to Frette linens to a special kind of toilet made only in Japan. The special toilet squirted warm water up your ass and then blew your ass dry.

Shake let that pass. Quinn caught him thinking it, though. His eyes twinkled. “You think that's what I'm doing, Shake? Blowing hot air up your ass?”

“What happened?” Shake said, looking around, innocent. “The construction crew doing the renovations knock off early today?”

“Go ahead and ask,” Quinn said. “I'll tell you the truth. It used to be simple, before nine/eleven. You wanted to move your money from here to there, you moved your money from here to there. Now, though, Christ, the regulations and the government sniffing around. Whoever even heard of a forensic accountant, twenty years ago?”

They were sitting in the resort's outdoor café. Or what someday might be the resort's outdoor café. Right now it was just a concrete slab and a couple of plastic beach chairs, with a big faded umbrella advertising a brand of Italian liqueur Shake had never heard of.

“So, yes, I'm experiencing a liquidity issue,” Quinn said. “I went deep on this place. I threw the bomb. Let me ask you a question, Shake. When you die, are you gonna look back and regret the things you did, or the things you didn't do?”

What Shake was starting to regret was this conversation. He was starting to think he should just take his chances at airport security in Belize City.

An old Kriol man, older than Quinn, shuffled out of the main building and handed them two cans of lukewarm Coke. Then he shuffled away.

“Who's trying to kill you?” Shake said.

Quinn leaned back and studied Shake. “I told you.”

“They're trying to kill me now too.”

“You?”

Shake told him about the restaurant blowing up, the girl with the freckles putting the gun on him.

“Because—what?” Quinn said. “What you did for me the other night?”

Shake waited.

“The why doesn't matter,” Quinn said. “Okay. I see your point.”

“The who matters. And no hot air up my ass.”

Quinn drummed his fingers on the plastic arm of his beach chair.

“I might have an
idea,
” he said finally. “That's all.”

“Let's hear it.”

“Back in the eighties, this was after Nicaragua, after Berlin, I did some consulting work in Southeast Asia. I told you before, the kind of people hired me. The business of relationships? Bringing folks together? Well, Vietnam back then, you remember maybe, it was the Wild West. The Reds had gone free market, Saigon was a boomtown. And Cambodia, with the Khmer Rouge gone. It was Filene's Basement on a Saturday afternoon. Anything you wanted, a five-hundred-year-old stone monkey demon chiseled right off the wall at Angkor. If you knew what you were doing. If you had the right connections.”

“Long story short,” Shake said.

“Hey. You want to tell it?”

“Go ahead.”

“Anyway,” Quinn said. “I got to know this kid at the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh. Just starting out, assistant to the assistant something. Nice kid. I showed him the ropes. Showed him how to tie a few knots with the ropes. Okay? We made some money together. Sticky Jimmy. That's what everyone called him. Funny story, how he got that name. Let me tell you that story.”

Shake almost stepped into it, before he realized Quinn was having fun with him.

“So jump ahead to the present day,” Quinn said. “I'm reading the newspaper a few weeks ago. I turn the page and guess who's looking back at me from the financial page?”

“I'm gonna guess Sticky Jimmy.”

“Sticky Jimmy. That's right. But now the kid's not a kid anymore, he's got his own company, natural gas, it's doing well. You ever heard of fracking? Getting the gas out of the shale? Anyway, our boy came up with a way to do that, a better way. Some engineer on his payroll did, I mean to say.”

The sun had started to set during all this.

“Take it easy,” Quinn told Shake. “What I'm telling you, Sticky Jimmy is legit now. Pure as the driven snow. You think he wants any of it coming back to him, what he was up to in Cambodia?”

“So he goes after you?” Shake was dubious.

Quinn shrugged. “I knew what he was up to. I'm the only one. We were up to it together.”

“Why now?”

Quinn shrugged again. “You asked. It's just an idea I have. Jimmy's moving up the ladder, he's getting his picture in the papers. He's taking care of loose ends. I don't know.”

Shake decided that the who probably didn't matter any more than the why. What mattered was the what.

“You know what William Faulkner wrote?” Quinn said. “William Faulkner the writer?”

“Not William Faulkner the astronaut? The light heavyweight?”

“He said, ‘The past isn't dead, it's not even past.' ”

“I need a favor.”

Quinn lit up like Shake had just given him the best news of his life. “Name it,” Quinn said.

“I have to get out of the country.”

Quinn mused. “You think they'll take another shot at you? Maybe. But it's me they really want, right? So maybe if you lay low for a while . . .”

“It's not just that.”

“There's someone else trying to kill you too?” Quinn looked impressed.

“I have to get out of the country quietly. I thought you might be able to help.”

Quinn frowned.

He
frowned
.

Shake, already hot and tired and his ribs aching, felt the air go out of him. You knew you were in bad shape when even your worst option wasn't an option. He remembered what his dad used to say at times like that. He called it getting fired from the carnival. Because if you couldn't even meet the standards of the carnie riffraff who worked the state-fair midway, you were in some bad shape, pal.

But then Quinn laughed. “That's it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I owe you my life. You lost your restaurant because of me. Your livelihood and passion. Sticky Jimmy tried to have you iced because of me. And that's all you want? You want to get out of the country? I'm disappointed, Shake, I'll be honest with you. I don't even get to break a sweat with this favor.”

Quinn's one employee, the old Kriol man, shuffled up to take the Coke cans away. Quinn waved him off. “Get out of here! You see we're having a conversation?” The old man shuffled away. Quinn turned back to Shake. “You have these kind of problems with your joint? The quality of the local workforce, I'm talking about. I don't want to sound like an asshole, but there it is.”

“Can you help me?” Shake said.

“Where do you want to go? When do you want to go? How many beautiful blond girls you want waiting naked for you when you get there? Or brunettes, if that's what you like.”

Shake put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. Quinn laughed again. “Okay, okay. I get it, you're under a lot of stress and I'm not helping that, am I?”

“No.”

“Here's what I can do. Okay? I've got a buddy lives on the mainland. The line of work he's in, let's just say he needs to come and go without attracting scrutiny. Into the country, out of the country. He knows where the back door is, in other words. He knows which windows are unlocked.”

“Dope.” Shake shook his head. If it was dope, then Quinn's buddy on the mainland probably worked for Baby Jesus, and Shake was out of luck again.

“No, not dope. Birds, snakes, that sort of thing.”

“Birds and snakes?”

“Exotic pets. It's real money, believe it or not. And you get caught, it's just a slap on the wrist, not like dope.”

Shake felt a stirring of what might actually be called hope. He'd have to find a way to the mainland, get to Quinn's buddy, but if the buddy really did know a back door out of Belize . . .

“Just a quick hop over the border,” Quinn said, “and then we'll be drinking margaritas in Mexico, you and me.”

Chapter 15

W
hen Evelyn got to the clinic, Shake was already gone.

“You're joking,” Evelyn told the nurse.

“No.” The nurse looked as pissed about it as Evelyn was, so Evelyn didn't push. She left the clinic and went down by the water to sit and think. She supposed she wasn't that surprised by this new wrench thrown at her. She'd been shot at twice and reamed out by DEA. She'd ruined two of her favorite dresses. Why wouldn't the shithead choose this opportunity to disappear?

A scrawny Rastafarian with a
Cat in the Hat
hat asked her if she'd be interested in some smoke. She told him to get lost.

She was scheduled to fly back to L.A. in three days. Her hotel was already paid for. Evelyn decided to stop feeling sorry for herself and find the shithead. Do what she'd come here to do.

Evelyn went to the restaurant where she'd first met him. She waited till the lunch rush slowed, then asked to see the owner. He came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron, a barrel-chested Latino guy. He said his name was Pijua.

“I want to ask you a couple of questions about your friend. Shake Bouchon? You might know him as Quentin Cleary.”

“Who?” he said, his expression flat.

“I want to help him.”

“Me too. Who is he?”

“I really am trying to help him. I think he needs help.”

He shrugged. Evelyn knew she wouldn't get anywhere with this guy. With who, then?

 

IT WAS ALMOST DARK BY
the time Evelyn finally tracked down the formidable black hostess. The woman with the turban and nose ring was sitting in a bar called the Fish and Hook, just up the beach from where the shithead's restaurant used to stand. Now it was just a pile of charred timber that looked like it burned down a hundred years ago.

“What's good here?” Evelyn slid in next to the hostess. She guessed the woman was in her late fifties or so.

The hostess looked her over. “I know you.”

“Evelyn Holly. I was at dinner the other night when all that excitement went down? I don't remember your name, I'm sorry.”

“Idaba.” She looked over Evelyn some more. “You up to something, ain't you?”

“Yep.” Evelyn showed the hostess her FBI creds.

The female bartender asked Evelyn what she wanted to drink. The bartender held in her arms what had to be the ugliest, hairiest infant that Evelyn had ever seen.

“Belikin, please,” Evelyn said.

Idaba seemed unimpressed by Evelyn's badge. “Huh. That's why.”

“That's why what?”

“That's why you on the beach the other day with a gun. I thought he was on drugs.”

“Shake?” Evelyn said.

Idaba got up and walked away. Evelyn took her Belikin and followed her outside.

“Just give me a minute,” Evelyn said. “One minute.”

Idaba turned to face Evelyn, arms crossed over her chest. “I don't know where he at, where he going, what he plan to do when he get there.”

“I don't want to arrest him. I want to help him.”

“Do you.”

“I saved his life on the beach.”

“So you can arrest him.”

“I don't have jurisdiction here. I couldn't arrest him if I wanted to.” Evelyn hesitated, and then decided she had nothing to lose. “I'm gonna put the screws to him in other ways, try to get him to help me.”

Idaba looked at her with mild but renewed interest. Evelyn told her about the Armenians, and how she wanted to take them down.

“So?” Idaba said.

“That's important to me. I know Shake is important to you.”

“Huh.”

“I saw you in the clinic. Sitting there by his bed.”

“Huh.”

“And I really can help him, Idaba, if you let me. If he lets me. People are trying to kill him. I saw it. I was there. You ever heard of WITSEC? Witness protection? I just want to talk to him. If he doesn't want to cooperate, fine. I can't force him. I just want to give him the choice. He deserves a choice, don't you think?”

Idaba was still studying Evelyn. “I suppose he was right about you.”

“About me?”

“That you pretty. You got parts of your face don't match up, though.”

“My grandmother was Japanese. She married an Ozark hillbilly. And there's some Puerto Rican in there too, don't ask me how.”

Idaba seemed to weigh the matter. Evelyn couldn't read Idaba for the life of her.

“If he gets mad at you for telling me where he is,” Evelyn said, “I'll say it wasn't your fault.”

“He ain't gonna be mad,” Idaba said.