Whiplash River (4 page)

Chapter 4

T
he young honeymooners from last night were back again. Shake told Idaba to seat them inside tonight, since the wind had picked up and the tables on the veranda were getting blasted. Plus, there was only one other customer so far, an older man eating by himself. Shake didn't want the dining room to look deserted if the woman he'd met at Pijua's actually showed up.

He didn't know if she would or not. She was a tough read. But it was still early, only a little after seven, so there was time. It occurred to Shake that a high percentage of the women he'd been attracted to over the years had been tough reads. He wondered what that said about him.

In the kitchen, Roger was explaining to Armando how soccer was a sport fit to be played only by homosexuals, and how that made anyone who watched soccer, like Armando, even more of a homosexual than the homosexuals who played it. Armando was asking Roger if everyone from Detroit liked giving the business to dogs and other stray animals, and getting the business from dogs and other stray animals, or was it just the
pendejos
like Roger? Neither Armando nor Roger was doing any work. They were lounging around and rolling a lemon back and forth across the floor.

Shake plated the conch fritters for the honeymooners and took the order out himself. The honeymooners were holding hands across the table again. They looked even younger and more sun-flushed than they had the night before.

“Good day?” Shake asked.

“Oh my God,” the girl said. “It rocked!”

“We went ziplining,” the kid said.

“This is the most amazing week of my life,” the girl said. “I'm not even kidding.”

“I know!” the kid said.

They started gazing into each other's eyes, so Shake left them to it. On his way back to the kitchen he stopped to check on the other table, the older man, who had ordered the lobster and a bottle of a good Argentine white.

“How's that lobster treating you?” Shake said.

“Let me ask you something,” the older man said.

“Fire away.”

“Harrigan Quinn, by the way.” The man held out his hand and Shake shook it. “Call me Quinn.”

“Shake.”

The man kept his grip, strong, on Shake's hand. He was a youthful seventy or so, tall, tan, and fit, with craggy good looks and a full head of wavy white hair. He reminded Shake of someone, but Shake couldn't put a finger on who. He was wearing pressed khakis, a pale pink polo shirt, and on his tan wrist a Patek Philippe that could have paid off a lot of Shake's debt to Baby Jesus.

“This is your place, I take it?” the man said.

“For better or worse.”

“All right. Here's my question.” He finally gave Shake his hand back. “You know what's the one thing, not music, that's the universal language? Not sex either.”

“Food?” Shake guessed.

“Food. I'll tell you why.”

He pinched the crease on his khakis and crossed his legs. Shake could sense him settling in for the long haul.

“Excuse me, Mr. Quinn. I should get back to the kitchen.”

“Harry. Please. I'm not your high school principal, am I?”

The woman Shake had met at Pijua's entered the dining room. Shake watched Idaba lead her to a table.

“Harry,” he said. “Enjoy your meal and let me know if there's anything you need.”

He escaped and crossed the room. He waited till Idaba handed off the menu and then stepped up to the woman's table.

“Evelyn,” Shake said. “I was positive there was a remote chance you might show up.”

She'd changed into a dress and her dark hair was down around her bare shoulders. In this light—tabletop candles and the lanterns on the wall turned low—her smile was even more dazzling.

“I had to see it for myself,” she said. “The kind of place that the kind of guy like you would own.”

“The kind of guy like me?”

She looked around the room, taking her time and not missing anything. Shake had a feeling, he couldn't explain it, that maybe her father had been a cop, maybe her brothers and uncles too.

“I see you've got a ‘ye olde sailing ship' thing going on.”

“That was the previous owner,” Shake said.

“A little on the nose for a place on the beach, don't you think?”

“Like I said.”

“But I dig the—mermaids?”

She pointed toward the wall at one of the few additions that Shake was responsible for. Hung there were half a dozen folk-art figures made from painted coconut shells, leather, old tin cans.

“The kind of guy like me?” he asked again.

She opened the menu. “So. How good are the conch fritters?”

“On a scale of nine to ten?” Shake pondered. “Hard call.”

She started to answer but stopped because Armando, the waiter, had come up next to Shake. Armando tugged at Shake's sleeve. Shake wasn't thrilled by the timing. He was warming fast to Idaba's advice about getting a woman in his bed, if that woman turned out to be this woman.

“What?” he said.

“He want you, boss,” Armando said.

“Who?” Shake looked around. The old guy, Harrigan Quinn, was flagging Shake down. He had pulled his chair over and was sitting now with the young honeymooners. Shake wondered how they knew one another.

“Tell Idaba to take care of it,” Shake said.

“He say it got to be you, boss.”

“All right.” Shake turned back to Evelyn. “Don't go anywhere.”

“Don't worry,” she said. “I'm not through with you yet.”

Shake paused, then hurried back across the room. Idaba was watching him with what might have been interest.

“How's everybody doing over here?” Shake said.

“I want you to hear this too, Shake,” Quinn said. Saying it like he'd known Shake all his life. Making Shake almost believe it. “You're going to love this.”

Shake forced a smile. He decided that Quinn, with his craggy good looks and alert blue eyes, looked like he could have acted in B-movie westerns when he was young, the handsome deputy who took a bullet for the girl he loved.

“I'll tell you what,” Shake said. “If you could just give me a—”

“A while back I was in Nicaragua on business,” Quinn said. “My first time in Central America. Like the lovebirds here, that's why I thought of it. Anyway. I get invited to a big shindig at a mansion outside Managua, beautiful place, amazing view of the volcano. This would have been the late seventies, before the Sandinistas. The shindig was a surprise birthday party for the
commandante
himself, Somoza. The whole nine yards, fountain filled with champagne and a stripper popping out of a cake.”

Shake looked over at the honeymoon couple. They were looking at him. Shake realized that they didn't know Quinn at all, that he must have invited himself over to their table.

“Next thing I know,” Quinn went on, “wouldn't you know it, I'm in the back of a limo barreling up the volcano. Me and Somoza—‘Tachito' everybody called him—and the stripper that popped out of the cake. She's the one driving the limo, still naked as a jaybird, nothing on her but a little chocolate frosting. She must've been doing a hundred, hundred and ten, laughing like crazy and coked out of her mind. Somoza's bodyguard, he's about to have a coronary. So he says, ‘
Commandante,
maybe we should slow down.' So Tachito, Somoza, nice and calm he snaps open his holster and pulls out his piece, Beretta 92F. And he points it at the stripper's head—she's got us up to a hundred and ten by now, remember—and he tells his bodyguard, ‘You want to slow down?
No problemo.
' ”

Quinn chuckled and took a sip of his wine. The honeymoon girl was looking at her husband, telling him with her eyebrows to do something. He was pretending he couldn't speak eyebrow.

“Quinn,” Shake said, but that was all the edgewise the old guy gave him.

“Now, I'm about to have a coronary, you've got my word on that. Because if Somoza pulls that trigger and shoots the stripper, we all go flying off the side of the volcano and the monkeys down in the jungle below will be picking us out of their fur for the next few days.”

Shake hoped Idaba would know what the hell to do with this guy. He turned to motion her over. Instead, though, he found himself staring at a man in a ski mask.

A man in a ski mask. With a gun.

Shake was so surprised that he just stood there when the man in the mask stepped past him, lifted the gun, and leveled it at Quinn.

“So long story short,” Quinn was saying, “the stripper looks back at the gun Somoza has pointed at her, and she just keeps laughing. You know what she says?”

Quinn noticed the man in the ski mask. The honeymooners did too. Time stopped for one fat, floating second, like even the gunman was waiting to hear the end of the story.

And then everything sped up to a blur. Shake grabbed the gunman's arm, the gunman pulled the trigger. The explosion of the gun going off was like plate glass shattering inside Shake's head. The bullet blew a hole through the wall behind Quinn, about a foot above his head.

The honeymoon girl screamed and Quinn ducked down behind the table. Shake tried to hold on to the gunman's arm, but the gunman was stronger. He yanked his arm away before Shake could get his other hand on the gun.

Shake was dead. Just standing there, breathing, thinking how quick it was going to be, all the lights going out.

But the gunman ignored Shake. He swung the gun back around and fired at Quinn again, missing again, smashing a lantern. Quinn was on the move, crawling fast across the floor toward the next table over. The gunman blasted away at him, but either he was nervous or a terrible shot or both. Plates exploded, wood crunched, one of the glass portholes in the kitchen doors blew out. Quinn made it to the table and then went crawling for the next one.

Shake ducked down and scooted over to the honeymooners. The girl was still screaming, the pitch rising and falling like a car alarm. He pulled the table over on its side to provide some cover for the three of them. It wasn't much cover, but you had to play the cards the dealer flopped.

Across the room, Evelyn had pulled a table over too. Smart girl—Shake congratulated himself on his taste in women. Though he doubted that this incident would speed along their relationship. Idaba and Armando were crouched behind the checkout stand. Roger hadn't emerged from the kitchen. Either he'd already fled halfway to San Pedro or was so drunk he hadn't noticed anything wrong.

Three more gunshots.
Bambambam.
More glass breaking, more wood snapping, more sparks showering everywhere when the gunman hit another lantern.

“Screw you!” someone yelled. It took Shake a second to realize that the gunman wasn't yelling at Quinn, Quinn was yelling at the gunman. “Screw you, punk!”

Are you kidding me?
Shake thought.

Bambam. Bam. Bam.

Idaba peeked around the checkout stand and gave Shake a look that said,
Do something!

Shake gave her a look back that said,
Yeah? Like what?

The smart play, Shake knew, was no play. The gunman was after Quinn. When he got him, there was an excellent chance he'd leave without hurting anyone else. He'd already had a chance to shoot Shake and passed it up.

But the smart play meant Shake would have to sit by and watch an innocent unarmed man get gunned down in cold blood. He didn't think he could do that. It was, Shake realized, a dangerous defect of character.

When the shooting stopped, Shake snuck a look. The gunman was fumbling with a new clip. Shake didn't give himself time to think about what he was about to do. He darted out from behind the table, put his shoulder down, and hit the gunman hard from behind.

They both went down. The gun tumbled loose. The gunman bounced up first and grabbed it. Shake was long past his bouncing days, but managed to lurch up and sideways and grabbed the gunman's wrist.

Now they were back where they'd started. Once again, the gunman tried to yank his arm away from Shake. Shake held on. The gunman yanked again, harder. Shake held on again. The third time the gunman yanked, with all his strength, Shake stepped into it, steered, and helped the gunman bash himself in the face with his own gun. The gunman dropped the gun and stumbled backward, clutching his nose. Shake kicked the gun away. He didn't want to risk the guy coming at him when he bent down to pick it up.

The gunman glared at Shake and seemed to be thinking about coming at him anyway. His eyes, all that Shake could see because of the ski mask, blinked fast and watered.

“Be smart,” Shake said.

Quinn had climbed out from beneath a table and was tucking his pink polo shirt back into his pants. His face was flushed, but the head of wavy white hair had not been ruffled.