Whiplash River (21 page)

“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 Shake 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

G
ina 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.

“Fucker,” she said.

He didn't say anything. They were walking down the street, his arm around her. He'd put it there and she'd let him, because that was the plan.

“Let's go walk down by the river,” he said.

“Let's go back to my room,” she said.

He didn't say anything, but at the next corner he turned right, toward the hotel entrance and away from the river.

In the hallway, outside the door to her room, she turned and put her arms around his neck again. Her boots had three-inch heels, so she only had to lift up onto her toes a tiny bit.

She brought her lips close to his. She could feel his thumbs resting lightly on her ribs, through the silk of the dress. Through the silk of the dress, she could feel him rocking a serious boner.

Gina had spent half the day in Cairo looking for a dress the same shade of green as the one she'd worn in Panama, that first night they'd had dinner together.

“You can't have me,” she breathed into his mouth.

He opened his eyes.

“Sorry, Charlie,” she breathed. “You blew it.”

He looked down at her. Gina didn't know how long she could stay like this, up on her toes, her lips so close to his.

“That's my real name,” he said. “Charlie. Charles.”

“I know that.” She had known that, she'd just forgotten.

“You blew it and you can never, ever have me again.” Their lips almost touching. “Sucks, doesn't it?”

“This little trick will only work on me one time, you know.”

“Doubt it.”

He smiled. She wanted him so much. The flaw in her genius plan to teach him a lesson was becoming more and more apparent to her. “Maybe just one kiss,” she said.

He hesitated, then sighed. “You almost got me again.”

“Don't worry,” she said. “I probably won't bang Devane just to teach you a lesson. I know that's what you were worried about.”

He blinked. She smiled. He was worried about it now.

“And you can trust me on the business end too. I won't be looking for an opportunity to screw you over when you're at your most helpless and vulnerable. Probably.”

She went into her room and shut the door and left Shake standing alone in the hallway. She peeped through the peephole and liked what she saw. She might be making herself miserable by making Shake miserable, but it was worth it. She just hoped he didn't think it was worth it too, because then where did that leave them?

“Rest easy, partner!” she yelled through the door. “See you at breakfast!”

Chapter 32

M
eg checked into a fancy hotel in the business district of Guatemala City. It was the kind of fancy hotel Terry had always wanted to stay at. He said he'd heard that some fancy hotels had girls in little uniforms by the pool, and all they did was walk around and clean your sunglasses for you.

“Can you believe that?” he'd said.

“I believe there's somebody fool enough to do anything,” Meg said.

Terry chewed on that. “You mean fool enough to put on a little uniform and walk around the pool and clean folks' sunglasses?”

“I mean fool enough to want to stay in a place like that.”

But now here she was. She took the elevator up to the roof of the fancy hotel to see if Terry was right about the girls in the little uniforms. The pool was closed, though, because it was dark outside.

Meg went back down to her room and ordered a shrimp cocktail from room service. That was another thing Terry had always wanted to do. Meg had never let him, because room service in a hotel, whether it was fancy or not, cost you an arm and a leg.

She had plenty of money now. After she shot Jorge, she'd helped herself to the cash he had in his desk. Close to ten thousand U.S. dollars. Meg didn't feel bad about stealing the money. Jorge couldn't use it anymore. They didn't sell orange Fanta and greasy goat-smelling tacos in hell, did they? That was Meg's position on the matter.

Meg ate half the shrimp cocktail even though she wasn't hungry, and then rode a taxi out to where the rich people in Guatemala City lived. Not the very richest people, but the people a step or two down from that. She went to the address Jorge had scrawled on the greasy goat-smelling paper bag. Jorge's boss lived in a nice big house with flowers spilling down off all the walls. There were lights in the yard pointed up at the house. That way you wouldn't miss how nice the house was, how pretty the flowers were, even though it was dark.

Meg stood on the porch. She was here to make Jorge's boss tell her where she could find the man he'd sent to kill Terry. She'd planned to kill that man, and Jorge's boss too, for sending the man in the first place. But now it was like all the stuffing had gone out of her, like she barely had the energy to take one breath after another. She couldn't stop thinking about that room-service shrimp cocktail, and how much Terry would have loved the little forks that came with it.

She remembered the thought she'd had back at Jorge's, when he told her that his
muy poderoso
boss, the heavy man, would kill her.

Maybe I want him to kill me,
Meg had thought.

Now, on the porch of the boss's house, she had a thought that was even shorter and got right to the point. It was just:
Kill me.

She felt so tired. She felt heavy, though not the kind of heavy Jorge was talking about. Meg's kind of heavy was in her arms and legs and most of all in her heart. Like she had a bag of something dead and wet inside her, and there was just no way she could keep dragging it along, not for one more second.

An aunt of Meg's had told her once that life was like a movie and everybody thought they were the star of it. That's why dying was hard. People didn't want to accept it, that the movie would go on without them.

Meg lifted her heavy, heavy arm and rang the doorbell.

 

BABB SAT ON A BENCH
on the bank of the river.

I am sitting on a bench on the bank of the River Nile,
he told himself.

He tried it in third person:

Babb sat on a bench on the bank of the River Nile.

Crazy!

Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been sitting in the Belize City airport. He had traveled, in less than twenty-four hours, across time and space and history. It boggled the mind. What would the emperors and popes and philosopher-kings of yesteryear have given to possess such power? Anything!

It was dark, after midnight. He had followed the bodyguard, Shake, and the woman he was with, back from the nightclub to the hotel.

Now he was just waiting for Gardenhire to call and give him the goahead. He would tell Babb the time line and explain what arrangements would be made.

Gardenhire, rumpled and ruffled, balding, bustling from conference room to conference room, drinking pots of bad coffee. He was under an enormous amount of stress at the moment. Big developments afoot.

The man who worked for the Man Who Would Be Senator. That was Gardenhire. Which made Babb the man who worked for the Man Who Worked for the Man Who Would Be Senator.

Big boats festooned with lights plied their way up and down the River Nile. Dance cruises. Music and laughter floated through the warm night air. The lights of the boats shimmied across the water. Babb thought the dance cruises looked like fun.

He felt his phone vibrate. He took it out of his pocket and checked caller ID. He was surprised. It was not Gardenhire calling with the goahead, as Babb had expected. Calling instead was the liaison Babb used in Guatemala City, Edgar Ramales-Llende, a real up-and-comer in the Guatemalan justice department. The Man Who Worked for the Man Who Worked for the Man Who Worked for . . .

The real surprise was that Gardenhire had not already called with the go-ahead. Babb sensed that Gardenhire was struggling with the decision. Babb didn't know why and didn't want to ask. It really wasn't any of his business.

“Hello,” Babb said.

“I have news,” Ramales-Llende said.

“Great.”

“The other account has been closed.”

Babb thought for a second. “The girl's dead, you mean?”

Ramales-Llende was silent.

“It's okay,” Babb said. “You're using an encrypted phone, aren't you? I am.”

“Yes,” Ramales-Llende said. “She is dead. She killed Jorge.”

“Really?” Babb had definitely called that one—the girl was a firecracker.

“And then she came to my house,” Ramales-Llende said.

“Did you kill her yourself? Did she put up a fight?”

“My bodyguard did. No, not really. She had a gun, but she did not shoot.”

“Huh,” Babb said. “Interesting.” The complex workings of the human mind never failed to fascinate him. But he also felt a little disappointed. “I guess this is good news. But I feel left out, I guess is my immediate reaction. Though why should I feel that? It's stupid.”

Ramales-Llende was silent for another moment.

“You would like a souvenir?” he said. “It can be arranged.”

“A keepsake,” Babb said. “That would be fun. If it's not too much trouble? The girl, I remember, she was wearing a silver ring on her ring finger. Was she wearing a silver ring on her ring finger?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“If you could maybe FedEx me the ring she was wearing, that would be great.”

Silence. Ramales-Llende cleared his throat.

“No!” Babb said. He laughed. “Not with the finger in it! I'm not some maniac.”

“Of course not,” Ramales-Llende said.

“Can you hold for just one second?” Babb asked. He had another call beeping in, the go-ahead coming in from Gardenhire. “I'll be right back.”