Gutshot Straight with Bonus Excerpt

by Lou Berney

  ON THE BUS TO L.A., he sat next to a tiny bird of a woman who seemed impossibly old, a hundred years at least. She was already asleep, snoring softly, when he took his seat.

  Ten minutes into the trip, the sun set without fanfare. The world bled out suddenly and left behind nothing but the bright bubble of the bus, rocketing along through the darkness. With the flare, every minute or so, of the green mile markers when the bus headlights hit them.

  Shake tried to figure out who he’d call when he got to L.A. He knew a couple of women who had nice places, and if they were still single, he was pretty sure they’d put him up for a few nights. But if they were still single, that meant those few nights would be complicated. It was probably better, he decided, to find a cheap motel, maybe one near the beach, stay there while he lined up his next job.

  His next job. After he got settled, he’d drop in on Frank. Frank was certain to have something for him, or know someone who did. Shake didn’t consider himself the best driver in the business—only assholes and beginners thought in those terms—but he knew that a lot of people on the West Coast would be eager to hire him, now that he was in play again.

  That thought should have made him feel good, had in the past, but right now it had the opposite effect. Here he was, forty-two years old, and what did he have to show for it?

  Four hundred bucks, the clothes on his back, a key to a storage unit in Inglewood, and a path ahead, if he wasn’t careful, that looked a lot like the path behind.

  He wondered where exactly in his life his shit had gone sideways, and why. It was hard to say. It hadn’t been a couple of momentous decisions that had determined the course of his life. No volcanic eruptions that altered and fixed his personal topography. Instead what had happened were all the little decisions along the way, most of which he didn’t even realize at the time were decisions, the bits of coincidence and circumstance, good luck and bad, the steady, slow accretion of rock and soil and sediment.

  He needed a volcanic eruption. He needed to make a move. If he didn’t want to find himself back here on this bus again, ten years from now, ten years older, thinking these very same thoughts. Or dead. Or worse.

  He had good ideas for the restaurant he wanted to open, and he knew he had the chops to make it work in the kitchen. But the business end, the money, permits, partners, the ridiculous odds against staying above water—Shake tensed up even thinking about it.

  You had to be young, he supposed, to enjoy a volcanic eruption. Young or dumb or convinced of your own miraculous ability to beat the odds. Shake was none of those, unfortunately.

  The old lady in the seat next to him stirred and woke. She clutched her purse in her lap with small, veiny hands and examined Shake with the clearest blue eyes he’d ever seen.

  “I suppose you just got out of prison,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  She nodded, satisfied, then proceeded to chatter cheerfully on for the next two hundred miles. She told Shake she visited her sister in Riverside every month. She told Shake she’d once been courted by Walt Disney. Which, in case Shake couldn’t figure it out, meant she’d had a fling with him. She told Shake she’d married a marine the day after VJ Day. They’d had four children, none of whom had turned out to be worth a damn. Those four children, however, had given her a dozen grandchildren, all of whom, surprisingly, had turned out to be worth a damn. One was the mayor of a small city in Arizona. Her husband had passed years and years ago, when LBJ was still president. She learned to be independent, something her own mother had never been.

  “I suppose you expect me to give you some wise advice or such,” she said.

  “I wish you would,” Shake said. “I could use it.”

  “I don’t have any advice to give. You pick out the kind of person you want to be, then you try your best to be that person.”

  “I think that’s pretty good advice.”

  She scoffed, as if she thought he was humoring her. Which he wasn’t.

  When they finally reached L.A., well after dark, he helped her down off the bus and carried her suitcase to a waiting cab.

  She gave Shake’s forearm a surprisingly strong squeeze and looked at him with her clear blue eyes. “You’re on parole?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m free and clear.”

  “Get a haircut. You’re a good-looking fellow. You’ve got good-natured eyes and a nice nose. But you look like you got your hair cut in prison.”

  He smiled. “That I did.”

  “You have a girl?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Had one?”

  He thought he knew what she meant. “I’m not sure.”

  She scoffed. “You’d be sure.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Stay that way.”

  “Free and clear?”

  “Bingo.”

  He watched the cab drive off with her. When he turned away, he discovered that a long black limo had eased silently up to the curb next to him.

  No one knew where he was, no one knew he was even out of prison. Why, then, was Shake not surprised when the tinted back passenger window melted slowly into the door frame and he saw Alexandra Ilandryan smiling out at him.

  “Hello, Shake,” she said.

  “Hello, Lexy.”

  “You are surprised to see me?”

  Shake shook his head.

  “You are happy to see me?”

  That one was more complicated. He gave her a wink.

  “Depends,” he said as she popped the door open for him.

  Chapter 3

  Shake settled himself in the limo across from Alexandra and took a nice long look at her. She hadn’t changed a bit since they’d last met—the languid gray eyes, the cheekbones, the lips parted slightly with a hint of amusement.

  “You just seem to get younger and younger,” he told her. He felt the limo pick up speed as it merged onto the highway. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you made a deal with the devil.”

  She brushed off the thought with an elegant, pale hand.

  “The devil,” she said dismissively.

  Alexandra Ilandryan was probably the most beautiful woman Shake had ever known. She was also—not probably, but certainly—the most formidable. Shake didn’t know all the details, but enough of them. Married off at age sixteen to a brutish, midlevel warlord in the mountains just across the Armenian border from Turkey, Alexandra had by the age of twenty dispatched the husband, taken over his operation, driven all local competitors out of business. A few years later, she immigrated to America. Within a decade she’d used her charm, her smarts, and a bottomless reservoir of sheer ruthless will to assume control of the entire Armenian mob in L.A. She was the boss, the pakhan. The devil came to Alexandra Ilandryan for favors, not vice versa.

  She dropped an ice cube into a glass. She was wearing a silk blouse the same smoky color of her eyes, tailored slacks, and simple black sandals that Shake knew must have cost a fortune.

  “Maker’s Mark?” she asked. “Rocks?”

  “Good memory,” Shake said.

  “You are impossible man to forget, Shake.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  She poured his drink. Her smile revealed nothing. It never did.

  “You spend fifteen months in a hard place,” she mused. “I wonder why do you not make plea bargain?”

  Shake shrugged. “Dime out the most dangerous lady on the West Coast? And possibly the best kisser?”

  “Possibly?” She arched an eyebrow and studied him. He wondered why he was here. Some kind of business, no doubt, but there might be more to it than that. He and Alexandra had enjoyed a brief but intense relationship several months before the job that sent him to Mule Creek. Shake still wasn’t exactly sure why the relationship had petered out, or which of them exactly had been responsible for the petering.

  “I appreciate your loyalty,” she said finally. “Now I return favor. I have little something for you, put some mon
ey in your pocket.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Lexy. The timing.”

  “You’re at this time in your life, the middle of things.” She smiled at him. “You want a fresh start. Et cetera.”

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She reached across and touched his shoulder.

  “Just listen first before you decide,” she said. “Yes? What can this hurt?”

  Shake sipped his drink and watched the city lights flow past.

  What could it hurt?

  “It’s your car,” he said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  SHE TOOK HIM TO DINNER at a time-capsule steakhouse in Hollywood—framed head shots from the forties and fifties, red leatherette booths, grouchy old Iron Curtain waiters in tuxedos and starched aprons.

  He ordered the New York strip, hot and rosy in the center, and the creamed spinach. Both were excellent. Alexandra let Shake savor the meal and an after-dinner brandy before she brought up business. It was a simple job, she said after she explained what was involved. Then she corrected herself.

  “No. ‘Job’ I think is too … grand a word.”

  “Errand?” he suggested.

  “Yes.”

  “I drive a car to Vegas. I meet a guy and give him the car.”

  “Could not be simpler, no?”

  “The guy gives me a briefcase. I fly back to L.A. and give the briefcase to you.”

  “A small errand.”

  “And you give me twenty thousand dollars. Because …”

  “Because I am fond of you, Shake. Because you have paid debt to society and deserve fresh start in life.”

  “What’s in the trunk of the car?” he asked.

  “Is not your worry.”

  “What’s in the briefcase?” he asked.

  She laughed musically, a run of sweet notes climbing the scale. Her gray eyes twinkled.

  “I miss you, Shake. Your sense of humor.”

  “How about the guy I meet in Vegas?”

  “He works for a man,” Alexandra said. “Dick Moby.”

  “The Whale?”

  “You are familiar?”

  Shake was familiar. You didn’t do time west of the Mississippi without meeting someone who’d worked for, borrowed money from, or narrowly escaped being murdered by Dick Moby. Often all three. The Whale owned a strip club in Vegas, but his real business was drugs, shylocking, extortion, immigrant sex slaves.

  “So,” she said.

  Shake tried to think of the name of the actor in the head shot above Alexandra’s head. He’d been in The Killers with Burt Lancaster, a character actor who often played a guy you thought was good but turned out bad. Or vice versa. Shake couldn’t remember.

  It never worked that way in real life, those sudden character twists, but it made for good movies, he guessed.

  “I’m serious, Lexy,” Shake said.

  “I know you are.”

  “I’m forty-two years old.”

  “Yes.”

  He explained to her that if, if he took this job, it would be his last one. And he’d only be taking the job so he could put the twenty grand toward the restaurant he planned to open. Twenty grand wouldn’t be nearly enough, of course, but it was a beginning. And he was resolved to make a new beginning.

  She listened politely. He knew she didn’t believe him. He knew she didn’t believe he believed it himself.

  Their waiter, a dead ringer for Nikita Khrushchev, stomped over and glared at Shake’s empty brandy snifter.

  “Another?” he grunted.

  Alexandra looked at Shake.

  He hesitated. He did believe it himself. At the same time, though, he couldn’t deny how relieved he’d felt when Lexy’s limo had rolled up. When he realized he could just give himself up to the current, one last time, and let life take him where it wanted.

  He’d go to work on that new beginning tomorrow.

  He shook his head at the waiter. “I’ve got a long drive to make tonight.”

  Chapter 4

  Alexandra took out her cell phone and made a call from the table, a few curt words in Armenian. When they exited the restaurant, a black Lincoln Town Car was parked next to the limo. Parked next to the Town Car was Alexandra’s personal bodyguard and number-one hatchet man, Dikran Ghazarian, a prehistoric thug with a shaved head shaped like a bullet that hadn’t been fired yet. His squashed blob of a face, however, looked like a bullet that had been fired, then dug out of a concrete wall.

  “Shake,” Alexandra said. “You remember Dikran?”

  She knew he did, of course. Not only was Dikran possibly the ugliest man on the face of the planet, he was a stupid, sadistic bully who’d once tried, stupidly, to bully Shake. Shake, stupidly, had refused to back down. This was years ago, on Shake’s first job for Alexandra. She’d intervened to impose a truce. Dikran—denied what he considered his God-given right to tear the spine from Shake’s body and strangle him with it—had resented Shake ever since.

  “Still waiting for evolution to come back for you, Dikran?” Shake asked pleasantly. He knew that Dikran would never dare come after him while he was under Alexandra’s explicit protection. Shake also knew that if for some reason she ever withdrew that protection, nothing in this world or the next would stop Dikran from killing him. Either way, Shake’s fate was decided, so he always tried to see how far he could goad the big ugly lizard before Dikran burst a blood vessel. “Still waiting for those higher motor functions?”

  Dikran took a menacing step toward him and spit onto the asphalt between Shake’s feet. Dikran was wearing a short-sleeved madras shirt and black satin parachute pants that were too short for him. Dress shoes with no socks.

  “Fuck you,” Dikran said. “Still fuck you mother?”

  “Boys,” Alexandra said. She snapped her fingers. Dikran, still glaring at Shake, handed her an envelope, a set of car keys, and a cell phone. Dur ing the transaction Shake noticed a cloth patch stuck to Dikran’s bare bicep.

  “What’s that?” he asked Dikran. “Get a tattoo of your phone number so you won’t forget it?”

  “The doctor tells Dikran his cholesterol is too high,” Alexandra said. Her expression was solemn, but Shake could tell she was enjoying this. “He says Dikran has testosterone too low.”

  Dikran made a sound like a strangled cough, and the skin beneath his eyes darkened.

  “A testosterone patch?” Shake said, amused. “Any side effects?”

  “Fuck your mother,” Dikran said, which was pretty much the extent of his repertoire. He turned his squashed face toward Alexandra. “Why you give ass-lick this job?”

  “Headaches?” Shake wondered aloud. “Nausea? Persistent erections?”

  Alexandra put a hand on Dikran’s shoulder.

  “Because I am the pakhan,” she told him. Her voice was mild but deadly. “Yes?”

  Dikran held the pose for a second, then stalked over to the limo, got in, slammed the door shut behind him.

  “This patch,” she explained to Shake. “It make him crankier than usual. Hard to believe, I know.”

  “Where’s the meet?”

  “Motel on Las Vegas Strip. Seven A.M. tomorrow. Address is in envelope.” She handed over the envelope, the car keys, and the cell phone. “And three thousand dollars cash to start. You say thank you now.”

  “Thank you, Lexy.”

  Shake opened the door to the Town Car and climbed in. Alexandra leaned close. One last thing.

  “Shake?”

  “Yes?”

  “This Dick Moby, in Las Vegas. He is not one to fuck with.”

  “I know.”

  “Shake?”

  That inscrutable smile of hers.

  “Neither am I.”

  He nodded, smiled back. “I know.”

  HE LEFT LOS ANGELES AROUND one-thirty in the morning. By three he’d left the ugly sprawl of suburbs behind—West Covina, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga—and was deep into the dark, empty desert, soaring along just a hair below the leg
al limit of seventy. Windows rolled down, a sweet-scented springlike wind whipping through the car.

  The wind was chilly, but he didn’t mind. Fifteen months locked up at Mule Creek and this was what Shake had dreamed about most. More than a good meal, more even than a woman. This—driving, just driving, a wheel in his hands and the low-throated thrum of a 240-horsepower, 4.6-liter V-8 making every molecule in his body vibrate. Shake couldn’t recall his first kiss, but he did remember precisely the first time he’d driven a car, which also happened to be the first time he’d stolen one. Eighth grade, age thirteen, New Orleans, Louisiana. He wasn’t a bad kid, just a little wild, fallen in with some older kids who were even wilder. The car was a 1974 Ford Maverick, white with a tan hardtop, and the owner had left the keys in the ignition while he popped into a K&B convenience store. His mistake. Shake and his two friends, Whelan and Chunks, tooled around town for a couple of hours, inventing (so they thought) the bootlegger slide in the deserted parking lot of a defunct supermarket. They ditched the Mav down by the levee, and then Shake walked home euphoric, exhausted. That night he slept like the dead and didn’t wake till three o’clock the next day. Shake smiled at the memory.

  Whelan would die a few years later when a jack failed and the boosted Corvette he was working on crushed him. Chunks was a dentist, last Shake had heard, living somewhere in Florida.

  A sign flashed by that said LAS VEGAS, 100 MILES. Shake flipped through FM frequencies until he found a station with a clear pulse. It was playing slow jazz, unfortunately, not the sound track you wanted when blasting down the highway, so he kept flipping. Rap, rap, country. Finally, at the far left end of the digital dial, he found an old Spring-steen B-side, “Be True.” The Big Man’s sax growled, Bruce sang in a refreshingly grown-up way about the provisional nature of love and trust, and for three beautiful minutes everything in Shake’s world was just about perfect.

  Shake drummed along on the wheel as Mighty Max’s tom-toms built to a thunderous crescendo. He’d just about convinced himself he hadn’t made the wrong decision, taking this job. He’d just about convinced himself it had been a decision, and he wasn’t falling back into the old lazy habits again.