Gutshot Straight with Bonus Excerpt

by Lou Berney

  Evelyn loved that saying: putting the screws to someone. She loved doing it.

  But at this point, Bouchon definitely had his guard up. Evelyn didn’t let the wry smile and the warm eyes fool her. You didn’t stay alive as long as he had, in the kind of company he’d kept, without staying on your toes. He’d only done two relatively light stretches in prison, which in his line of work was evidence that he was one careful shithead.

  She reached for the ketchup. He laughed because he thought she was kidding. She wasn’t kidding. The empanadas looked like something you might reasonably put ketchup on. He stopped laughing when he saw her face. So she laughed.

  “You should have seen your face,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d fall for that.”

  “You’d be surprised what I fall for,” the Shithead said.

  Evelyn smiled. This would be so easy. It almost wasn’t fair. “Good to know,” she said.

  SHE ATE THE EMPANADAS, ADMITTEDLY fantastic, talked herself out of dessert, and then drove her rented golf cart back to the resort.

  From her bungalow, she called to check on Sarah. It was noon in L.A. Sarah told her that Andre had come by to take her to breakfast at the Farmers Market. Evelyn didn’t say the approximately one thousand things she had to say about that. About how the sneaky asshole waited until Evelyn was out of the country to show even the slightest interest in his own daughter.

  “Send me a text later,” Evelyn said. “Tell me how much you miss me.”

  “Mom!” Sarah laughed. “You’re such a dork.”

  Evelyn had been gone less than twenty-four hours and already she missed Sarah so much it ached.

  “Don’t text when you’re driving. Don’t borrow my yoga mat and lose it again. Don’t join a cult.”

  “Check, check, oops,” Sarah said. “Too late.”

  And don’t believe anything that your asshole of a father tells you, Evelyn thought but didn’t say.

  “Does it seem like a nice cult at least?” Evelyn said. “Do they have a cute secluded compound in the desert?”

  Her daughter was, literally, the last teenager in California who would ever join a cult. Or text while driving. Evelyn knew that Sarah would probably spend the rest of her weekend studying for the SATs, practicing her jump shot, and downloading recipes for healthy, delicious, onepot meals. Maybe taking a break to learn Farsi and help inner-city kids create a sustainable dairy farm.

  She wouldn’t, in other words, be smoking pot or luring a skateboard punk rocker up to her bedroom or sneaking into a club to see Social Distortion. Nor any of the other myriad transgressions that Evelyn would have committed, sixteen years old and left more or less on her own for a week.

  Sometimes Evelyn couldn’t believe that she and Sarah came from the same gene pool. If they didn’t have the same laugh, the same scowl first thing in the morning, the same gangly legs, Evelyn might have seriously wondered about some mix-up in the maternity ward, a nurse switching one baby for another.

  “Text me,” Evelyn said. “Every fifteen minutes if it’s convenient, okay?”

  “Mom!”

  A few minutes after Evelyn hung up, there was a knock on the door. She took her firearm out of her purse, chambered a round, and checked the peephole. On the deck of her bungalow stood Cory Nadler, of all people.

  Evelyn stuck the gun back in her purse and opened the door.

  “Cory?” she said.

  “Hi, Evi,” he said. He looked cranky and sweaty. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure. Of course.” She took a seat on the edge of the bed. He sat in the wicker chair with the floral-print cushion. He was wearing a navy suit that looked way too hot for this climate. “What are you doing here, Cory?”

  “I’m with DSS now,” he said.

  “Diplomatic security?”

  “Out of the embassy in Mexico City. But I’ve been doing liaison work in Belize the last couple of months. I happened to be looking through passenger manifests this morning and I saw your name.”

  “Cory,” she said, “take your coat off. That suit looks way too hot for Belize.”

  “It’s fine,” he said.

  “Is it wool? You look like you’re dying.”

  “It’s tropical wool.”

  Evelyn cocked her head, dubious. “I don’t think it is.”

  “Evi, shut up for a second, okay?” Cory was eight or nine years younger than she was, in his early thirties, but he’d probably been one of those kids who, in kindergarten, listened to classical music and wore sweater vests. The kind of man her daughter would probably marry someday. “You can’t be here, Evi.”

  “I’m on vacation,” she said.

  “Vacation.”

  She shrugged.

  “Did you pack a bathing suit?” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  Cory sighed. “Evi,” he said, “I’ve known you for how long?”

  “So you know I need a vacation.”

  “I know you’ve still got a major, major hard-on for the Armenians, even after you were explicitly told to cool it with all that.”

  “Real girls don’t get hard-ons, Cory. You’ve spent too much time in Bangkok.”

  “I know that Charles Samuel Bouchon, aka ‘Shake,’ alleged former wheelman for and close associate of the Armenian pakhan in L.A., allegedly owns a restaurant on this island. I know that you’re still pissed off that your ex-husband—”

  “Stop. Thank you. Right there.” She didn’t need anyone to walk her back through it. Seriously.

  The short version was that Evelyn, a couple of years ago, had helped build a slam-dunk case against the Armenian mob. Evelyn had been this close to taking them down, top to bottom, pakhan to foot soldier, when the district attorney in Los Angeles blindsided her by negotiating a deal between the Armenians and the feds. It turned out that the Armenians knew the whereabouts of a fugitive Wall Street swindler that the Department of Justice was desperate to nail. So DOJ got their swindler, the Armenians got a time-out called on the racketeering investigation, and the asshole D.A. in Los Angeles—Andre Guardado, Evelyn’s ex-husband—was the hero of the hour.

  Well, that was then, this was now. Now, as far as Evelyn was concerned, whatever time-out the Armenians had earned two years ago had expired. Game on.

  “Here’s the thing, Evi.” Cory leaned forward, the shoulders of his allegedly tropical wool suit coat bunching up. “DEA has been down here since October with a major, major ongoing. Okay? Serious stuff, a drug kingpin here in Belize with ties to the Zeta cartel. You have any idea how long it took me to get the Belizean government on board?”

  “Good for you, Cory. I always thought you’d make an excellent liaison.”

  “DEA has put the kingpin together with Bouchon a couple of times. It’s maybe nothing, it’s maybe something. So help me God, Evi, if you step on this investigation, if you disrupt or compromise it in any way …”

  “I’m not going to step on anything.”

  “Because you’re on vacation.”

  “Exactly.”

  It had taken Evelyn almost a year to track down Bouchon. Alleged former wheelman for and close associate of the Armenian pakhan. Alleged, her ass. He’d worked with the Armenians for years, and his relationship with Alexandra Ilandryan, if the rumors were true, had been closer than close. With his cooperation, Evelyn could put her, and every Khederian, Ghazarian, and Bazarian, behind bars till the end of time.

  Bouchon wouldn’t want to cooperate. That was okay with Evelyn. She did her best work with shitheads who didn’t want to cooperate. Back in elementary school she’d been a gleeful playground bully, taller and stronger and craftier than the other kids. Her brothers, whom she had bullied relentlessly, still called her Evil Lynn.

  Cory was studying her. “And Mike,” he said. “If I called your ASAC, he’d confirm that?”

  She shrugged again. Mike was her supervisor, the assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office. “Mike knows I’m on vacation,” she said.

&nbs
p; “But not where, I bet.”

  Evelyn had learned early in life that the advantage of having a great smile was the impression you could make when you shut it off abruptly.

  She did it now. Cory shifted uncomfortably.

  “I’m not, you know, I’m not going to call Mike,” he said. “I just want to make clear that if you stay down here—on vacation—you have to keep a low profile. It’s critical. A low, low profile. And stay away from Bouchon.”

  Evelyn turned the smile back on. “Of course,” she said. “Absolutely.”

  Chapter 4

  The 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, ni
ce 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.