Whiplash River (27 page)

Chapter 42

D
evane called from the lobby a few minutes after three. Gina told him to come on up. Shake sent Quinn a text.

Shake didn't feel like a billionaire swindler who bought high-dollar antiquities. He felt like an ex-con ex-wheelman who used to own a struggling little restaurant in Belize. He felt like that guy, just wearing a suit and sitting in a penthouse suite.

Quinn was right. Quinn should be playing the part of Roland Ziegler. Shake was no good at playing parts other than himself.

The doorbell chimed.

“You'll do just great,” Gina said, because she knew that would annoy Shake. She gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder as she went to answer the door. She knew that would annoy him too.

“I was also a professional,” Shake said, “before you were a twinkle in your mother's eye. Or close to it.”

“Don't I know it,” she said. “You're an old man, I'm well aware.”

“I'm forty-four.”

She smiled. “And?”

Shake smiled back. He was in a better mood than any guy in his situation had a right to be.

Gina opened the door. Devane, in his straw porkpie hat, was flanked by the two hard-looking Egyptians from the nightclub. He was carrying a black leather attaché case. It looked to Shake just like the one Mahmoud had procured for them. When Devane lifted the case up and set it down on the coffee table, though, Shake could tell it had something inside that weighed less than hotel shampoo.

Oh, well. That train had left the station. There was nothing they could do about it now.

Devane's two bodyguards were armed. They didn't try to hide the bulges in their suit coats. Shake wondered how they'd gotten through the metal detector in the lobby. He supposed it wasn't that hard when your boss was rich and you used to be state security.

“You didn't bring your charming naked Russian prostitute wife,” Gina told Devane. “I assume she's your wife? You two seem like a perfect match.”

Shake didn't know what any of that meant. He knew, whatever it meant, that Gina was giving Devane a little jiggle, trying to rattle his focus.

Devane glanced her way, cold, and then ignored her.

“Roland Ziegler,” he said to Shake. “In the flesh. Last I heard, you were in prison. In the clink, the pokey. A guest of the American federal government.”

Devane moved his hands a mile a minute. To mime the pokey, he turned a key in a lock and then threw the key away.

You heard right,
Shake started to say. But then he stopped and tried to think how Ziegler himself, the smug smirking prick, would put it.

Fuck. He was taking too long to think. Devane watched him.

Shake tried a smirk. He wasn't good with smirks.

“Is that what a little birdie told you?” he said. “The little birdie didn't tell you the whole story, apparently.”

Shake thought he could hear Gina exhale. A little.

“You cut a deal with the
federales
?” Devane said. “Okay. Sure. I heard that too. It's plausible. But how do I know, Roland, that you didn't cut a deal to give me up? Me,
moi
? How do I know you don't have a wire? Though it wouldn't be a wire. It's a patch they use now, a wireless transmitter.”

That was calculated stupidity. Shake knew the real Roland Ziegler wouldn't even bother to respond to something that stupid, so Shake just smirked.

It seemed to work. Devane snapped his fingers at Gina. “Laptop,” he said.

Gina set the computer they'd borrowed from the hotel on the coffee table next to the black attaché case. Devane sat down on the couch and opened the computer.

“Bank and account number,” he said.

Gina handed him a slip of paper. Devane started tapping.

“This is just like in the movies,” Gina said. “It's how you like to do things, isn't it? The girls in the club, the bodyguards, the British colonial yacht. Your life is a series of movie clichés.”

“How can you stand this bitch?” Devane asked Shake without looking up from the keyboard. “I don't care what she looks like naked.”

“Neither do I,” Shake said. The biggest lie he'd told so far.

Devane nodded. He finished tapping, looked at the screen for a second, and then shut the lid.

“I know all the tricks,” he said. “So if you think I'm gonna shut my eyes now and drift off to dreamland”—he mimed drifting off to dreamland—“just because I see you have some money stashed in some bank. No. Sorry. If you think I trust a wire transfer? I know all the tricks. That was just to see you're viable. I deal in hard cash only, bearer bonds, seventy-two hours to turn it around or the deal is off.”

“What deal?” Shake looked at Gina. “Did you make a deal? I didn't make a deal.”

She sent him a look that Shake took to mean
You're doing okay, but stop smirking so much, you don't know how to do a smirk right.

Devane snapped open the attaché case and lifted the lid. Inside, cushioned by custom-cut foam, was Teddy Roosevelt's speech.

The speech was about half an inch thick. Heavy, good-quality paper, the color of old ivory. The corners of the top page had gone a little brown, and there was a brown crease where the manuscript had been folded in half lengthwise. The type was double-spaced, from an old-fashioned typewriter, the letters crowded together. There were a few handwritten notes, almost faded away, in the margins.

The manuscript had been folded when Roosevelt got shot, so there were actually two bullet holes, one on each side of the fold. Small caliber, a .22 or a .38, probably. Shake could see that the bullet had gone all the way through. One hole was neat and clean, almost like it had been drilled, while the other one was a little ragged and torn at the edges. That bullet hole was right above a line of type that read “experiencing a partial corruption of foreign blood.”

“Imagine it,” Shake said. He ran a finger along the top sheet. He could feel the dents the typed letters had made in the paper. “Just imagine. Teddy Roosevelt held this. He folded this. He put this in the pocket of his overcoat and stepped out in the Milwaukee autumn.”

He leaned down to smell the pages. He thought that was a nice touch.

“Gunpowder,” he said. “Or maybe that's just my imagination.”

“Roosevelt also had a metal eyeglass case in his pocket,” Devane said. “That slowed the bullet down too. Nobody knows what happened to the eyeglass case or the bullet. The overcoat. If you could find all that, you could write your own ticket.”

“How do I know it's real?” Shake said.

That was calculated stupidity. Shake thought Devane might expect it from someone like Roland Ziegler.

“Ha, ha,” Devane said. He closed the attaché case. “My other bid is for seven million, so you'll have to beat that by another million.”

Where the fuck was Quinn?

“Another million?” Shake said.

“If I'm gonna piss off my other buyer, it's got to be worth my while.”

The doorbell chimed. Finally.

Devane remained cold and slack on the sofa, but his two bodyguards clicked into action, tucking back their suit coats to clear their guns. One bodyguard stayed by the sofa with Devane and the attaché case. The other bodyguard fanned out to get an angle on the door.

The doorbell chimed again. A fist pounded the door.

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.