Whiplash River (20 page)

“Oh,” Mahmoud said. “Well. I should clarify, I think, perhaps.”

Of course.

 

THE WHITE-HAIRED OLD WAITER, QUINN'S
twin brother, brought tea for Mahmoud. Mahmoud sipped the tea and explained that no, he didn't technically own the private security firm, and technically the private security firm wasn't one. It was a catering company. Mahmoud was a bartender. Well, to clarify, he was an apprentice bartender.

Shake was not surprised to learn that the bullshit had been flowing both ways. Mahmoud, apparently, had been led to believe that Quinn worked for the CIA and would show up in Cairo with Ocean's Eleven.

“So, yes, I see,” Mahmoud said when he finally had to accept the reality that this was the sum of Quinn's associates, just Shake and Gina, and no martial-arts expert back at the hotel unpacking his high-tech fiber-optic heist gear. “Ah. I see.”

He was grinning still, but starting to falter under the strain of it.

Quinn was faltering under the strain of his grin too.

Serves the old son of a bitch right,
Shake thought.

“Let me get this straight,” Quinn said. “Mahmoud, my friend. A bartender? So the man you told me about, the black-market dealer with the item in question. Do we need to clarify any details there too?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Quinn!” Mahmoud said. “Those details are precisely accurate! It is since September I have been working for Mr. Devane. Exclusively so! At his house and his nightclub, both. I hear things, you see, as bartender. As apprentice bartender, the distinction is meaningless. I see things. I have seen, with my own eyes, the item in question. I have verified the value of the item. And it can be ours, Mr. Quinn,
inshallah.
”

“Inshallah,”
Quinn said.

Shake didn't know what that meant. Judging by their current situation, he thought it probably meant something like “What the fuck, you never know.”

“What's that mean?” Shake said.
“Inshallah?”

“God willing,” Quinn said.

Shake hadn't been far off.

“He's got a nightclub?” Gina said. “This Devane fella? I thought he worked the black market.”

“He does, yes,” Mahmoud said, turning his grin, with the missing tooth, on her. “But the club, you see, is one of the most exclusive in Cairo. You can guess its purpose, I think? I do not know how to say it in English.”

“To launder his money,” Shake said. Mahmoud looked blank. “Wash it. Make it clean.”

“Exactly!”

“Let's talk turkey,” Quinn said. “Okay?”

Mahmoud nodded uncertainly.

“Where's he got it?” Quinn said. “The item. At his house?”

“Ah. Yes.”

“He's got a safe?”

“Yes.”

“Security? Cameras?”

“Yes. Cameras. And men who watch the house. Two, I think.”

“Just like
Ocean's Eleven,
” Shake said.

“Exactly!” Mahmoud said. And then frowned, because Shake, it was tragically apparent, was no George Clooney or Brad Pitt. He was not even one of the lesser Eleven.

“Inshallah!”
Gina said cheerfully.

 

GINA WAS ABOUT TO DIE
she was so jet-lagged. She was about to die she was working so hard to pretend she wasn't. Because she wanted Shake to know she had the edge in every possible way.

He was onto her. He'd figured out that she'd come to Egypt just to torment him. And it hadn't taken him long. Which annoyed her—she thought she'd played it just about perfectly back in San Francisco.

Though probably, she admitted to herself, she would have been more annoyed if Shake hadn't caught on so quickly. This was a guy, after all, she'd been in love with. Think how poorly it would have reflected on her if she'd fallen in love with a total idiot.

It wasn't the end of the world that Shake was onto her. So what if he was? He still, Gina could tell, clung to a sliver of hope that she really would fall back in love with him. A sliver of hope that she'd forgive, forget, leap into his arms, pop the buttons off his shirt, et cetera.

Gina could work with that sliver of hope. It was shiny and very sharp. It could be very dangerous in the right hands.

“Well,” she said in the cab back to the hotel. “That went well, didn't it?”

“He told me his firm handled security for the guy with the speech,” Quinn said. “He told me explicitly.”

“What did you tell him?” Shake said. He had his head propped against the window, his eyes barely open. “Explicitly? You told him you were bringing Ocean's Eleven, didn't you?”

Gina tried to keep her own eyes open. It was taking forever to get back to the hotel. Traffic was even worse coming than going. How was that possible? She noticed that a lot of the women on the street wore burkas and had their faces covered. Gina was cool with that—if that was what the woman wanted, and not what the woman's husband or father or preacher told her she wanted. In that case she was not cool with it whatsoever.

“It's a wrinkle,” Quinn decided. “That's all.” And,
boom,
he brightened right up again, just like that. Gina was impressed. She didn't think it was an act. “We iron it out, we move on. Let's not get our knickers in a twist.”

“Move on?” Shake said.

“Sure.”

“A safe, security cameras, at least two security guys watching the house. Our guy on the inside's a bartender. Apprentice bartender, though of course the distinction is meaningless.”

“His knickers are twisted, Harry,” Gina said.

“I know it.”

“And a break-and-take to begin with,” Shake said. “I'm a wheelman. I was a wheelman. The only thing I know about a break-and-take is how to drive away from one.”

“Whoever said anything about a break-and-take? Show me the transcript.”

“Then what?”

Quinn didn't answer. Gina wanted to lend a hand, she liked the old fella's upbeat attitude, but really her knickers were just as twisted as Shake's.

“I loved the first one,” she said.

After a beat Shake said, “The one with Sinatra, you mean?”

“No. The first new one.”

“I didn't see the other new ones.”

“The other new ones weren't as good. They used a different writer, I think.”

“Let's put our heads together,” Quinn said. “There's more than one way to skin a cat.”

“Who's the cat in this scenario?” Shake said.

“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

S
hake 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.”