Whiplash River (26 page)

There she was.

Evelyn was six or seven shops behind him. Almost hidden by the crowd. Almost. Shake bought two galabiyas, plus some small stone beetles he thought Idaba back in Belize might like. He paid way too much for everything, forty bucks American, but the guy who ran the shop was now Shake's best friend for life, or at least for the next five minutes.

“Is that a door?” Shake said. “In the back of your shop? You mind if I go that way?”

“By all means, my friend.” The guy thumbing the two twenties that Shake had given him to make sure they were real. “By all means.”

Shake squeezed through the galabiya shop and pushed the back door open. He found himself in another alley, this one even narrower, but less crowded. Next to the door was a big steel trash barrel, just the right height. Shake dragged it over, tipped it up, wedged it under the handle of the door.

He tested it and nodded. Evelyn wasn't getting through that door.

Good-bye, Evelyn.

Shake moved fast up the alley, back toward the square. He'd told his cabdriver to circle around and meet him back at the square. But when Shake got to the end of the alley, the edge of the square, he stopped.

Evelyn was standing there, waiting for him.

“In your defense,” she said, “I came this close to taking the bait.”

“In my defense,” he said, “it's worked before.”

“What did you buy?”

“Galabiyas.”

“Is that what they're called? I got four fake stone jars that weigh a ton and were probably made in China.”

“Those guys are sharks. I've never seen anything like it.”

“They're fucking hammerheads. Can I buy you coffee? Or is it tea?”

Shake sighed. “I could use a beer.”

 

NONE OF THE JOINTS NEARBY
sold alcohol. Finally they found a T.G.I. Friday's that did.

Shake tried an Egyptian beer, Sakara. Not bad. He might have enjoyed it under different circumstances.

“Did you ever think that one day you'd be having a beer at a T.G.I. Friday's in Cairo, Egypt?” Evelyn said. “Bet you didn't.”

“And with an FBI agent. No.” He shook his head. “Safe to say.”

She took a sip of her beer. “How can a Muslim country make its own beer? I don't get that.”

“Their beer is better than their food,” he said.

“What are you talking about? Have you tried the hummus? It's fantastic.”

He just grunted.

“And something they call ‘old cheese' is good,” she said. “Which, I agree, could use a more tempting name.”

“What do I have to do to get you to stop following me?” Shake said. If he didn't lose her soon, and lose her for good, if he didn't make sure she was nowhere near the hotel when the deal with Devane went down, they were screwed.

“Lose the FBI gal,” Quinn had said that morning. “Top of your list, okay?”

“What can you do to get me to stop following you?” Evelyn said. “Let's see. I know!”

“I'm never gonna dime out the Armenians.”

“That's what you say now. But we haven't finished our beers yet.”

“You're the fucking hammerhead shark.”

“Stop. You're making me blush.”

“I'm serious. Are you out of your mind? Coming all the way to Cairo?”

She looked wistful as she sipped her beer. “Probably a little I am. I've never been the greatest investigator. You know, the slow and steady, the paperwork, all the federal bur-ese. I probably should have washed out at Quantico. My first SAC actually told me that straight up. But what I'm great at is, I don't ever give up.”

“Give up,” Shake said. “Please.”

“And I'm really pissed off at my asshole ex-husband. I think that might be a factor too.”

“Your ex-husband?”

“I was so close to nailing the Armenians a few years ago. So close. But my asshole ex totally screwed it up for me. He's the asshole D.A. in Los Angeles.”

“Don't take it out on me.”

“I'm not! That's what you don't understand.”

“You want to be my friend. I forgot.” Something clicked and Shake looped back around. “Andre Guardado is your ex-husband?”

“You know him?”

“Not personally. Well, I met him once. Briefly.”

“And?”

Shake didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

“See!” Evelyn said. “You thought he was an asshole too!”

“I barely shook the guy's hand,” Shake said. But, yes, he had seemed like an asshole.

“It's okay if you think less of me for marrying him and letting him impregnate me,” Evelyn said. “I know
I
do. And hey, on a separate topic, what's the deal, asking me to dinner back in Belize when you already had a girlfriend?”

She was trying to spin Shake around. And doing a good job of it.

“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

S
hake 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

E
velyn 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 before. 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.”