Gutshot Straight

by Lou Berney

  “Do you feel flattered or scared?”

  She ignored the question.

  “I like Panama so far, too,” she mused. “I’m newly all about Central America.”

  “Well. San Salvador is a shithole. At least it was twenty years ago.”

  “Shake?”

  “Gina?”

  “You want me to let you go back to sleep, don’t you?”

  “If you want me fully rested.”

  “I want you every which way I can have you.”

  She felt him kiss the top of her head. He held his lips pressed there for an extra second, and she knew he was thinking about something. She knew it wouldn’t do any good to ask about what.

  She propped herself up on her elbow and kissed him on the lips. With more gusto than she’d originally intended.

  “Gina?” he said after they came up for air.

  “Shake?”

  He smiled and drifted off again. She watched him sleep. She thought about everything that had happened, everything that now might, then laid her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

  Chapter 37

  When Shake woke up the second time, the light streaming through the windows had turned hard and bright—middle-of-the-day bright. Gina was on the balcony—bare feet propped on the rail, reading the Panama guidebook, smoking a cigarette—and the phone on the nightstand was ringing.

  “You gonna answer that, buttercup?” she called, without glancing up from the book.

  The question on her end was rhetorical, but Shake was giving it some serious thought.

  If he answered the phone, he realized, a new door opened. It might lead somewhere interesting—$5 million, for example—or it might lead to a room filled with even more trouble, capital T, than the one he was in right now.

  Thing was, Shake liked the room he was in right now. He liked who was in the room with him.

  But, come on: $5 million?

  He sat up and ached in odd places. Normally Shake had no desire to wind the clock back—he was content with the trade-off of youth for wisdom—but right now, aching, watching Gina paint her toes, he did wish for some of the supernatural stamina and elasticity of his dumb-ass nineteen-year-old self.

  And just exactly how much wisdom, he wondered, had he traded his youth for? It was debatable. He picked up the phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Five o’clock today,” said a man’s voice, American. “Soberania National Park.”

  “Want to be a little more specific?”

  “Take the SACA bus from Plaza Cinco de Mayo to Gamboa. Tell the driver to drop you at the entrance to the Canopy Tower.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “Take the marked path that begins in front of the observation tower. Walk into the jungle for approximately one quarter of a mile.”

  Was this guy serious?

  “Take a bus, not a taxi. Come alone. You’ll be watched.”

  “Do you want us to wear our state-of-the-art hidden recording devices?” Shake asked, amused.

  “Don’t be late.”

  The phone clicked and went dead.

  Gina had returned to the room, walking awkwardly on the sides of her feet so as not, apparently, to smudge the toenails she’d painted bright red while he was still asleep.

  “Have you heard there are places in Panama where the sun sets in the Atlantic and rises in the Pacific?”

  He shook his head. He hadn’t heard that and wasn’t sure he believed it.

  “I really want to see a three-toed sloth,” she said. “So? We in business?”

  “We’ve got a few hours before we have to leave,” Shake said.

  “Not much time, but let’s make some hay.” She tossed the book away and jumped back into bed with him.

  “Gentle,” he said. “If it falls off, I’m out of luck.”

  She straddled him and, with more enthusiasm than gentleness—not that he could complain—arranged the sum of their parts into a much nicer whole.

  “You and me both, buster,” she said.

  ON THE WAY OUT OF THE HOTEL, they stopped at the front desk and asked to see the hotel manager. The desk clerk made a call. A few minutes later, a nervous young man with expressive eyebrows appeared. He couldn’t have been much older then twenty or twenty-one.

  He explained to Shake and Gina, with apologetic eyebrows, that he was only the assistant hotel manager. So that there might be no unfortunate misunderstandings. The hotel manager himself was out of town, on something called a benchmarking trip to London, during which he would visit top hotels and return to Panama with ideas on how to improve the Bradley.

  “This is not a problem, Señor Boxman?” the assistant manager asked nervously. “Señora Boxman?”

  “Not a problem,” Shake assured him.

  Gina set the padded envelope on the counter. Back in the room, Shake had placed the glass case, with foreskins, safely inside once more. Gina had watched him. He’d watched Gina watch him.

  “We’d like to put something in the hotel safe,” Shake explained.

  “With pleasure,” the assistant manager said. “I will take care of it at once.”

  He reached for the padded envelope. Gina intercepted his hand.

  “My elderly husband said we’d like to put something in the hotel safe?”

  The assistant manager’s eyebrows bounced and curtsied and begged forgiveness.

  “With pleasure,” he said.

  He led them to the safe in back. Shake wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. A massive vault, antique, big brass wheel. It was just a normal safe, though, big but nondescript, with a digital keypad. It seemed sturdy enough, at least.

  Shake and Gina looked politely away as the assistant hotel manager punched in his code and unlocked the safe. Then he took a small key from a ring of small keys attached to his belt and unlocked one of the deposit trays. He slid it out. Gina placed the padded envelope inside.

  The assistant manager slid the tray shut and locked it. He swung the door of the safe shut. A red light beeped.

  “Voilà!” he said.

  “When we want to make a withdrawal?” Shake asked.

  “Quite simple. One of you will merely notify me and—”

  “No,” Shake said.

  “Nope,” Gina said. “I am very sorry?” the assistant hotel manager said.

  “Do not,” Shake said, “open that safe for me unless my wife is also present.”

  “I am not certain, I apologize, that I understand this instruction. If—”

  “Do not,” Gina said, “open that safe for me unless my husband is also present.”

  “Under no circumstances,” Shake said. “I might beg… .”

  “I might wheedle and cajole… .” Gina said.

  “But under no circumstances.”

  “The safe stays shut unless we’re both here.”

  “Both of us.”

  “Alert, awake, and capable of reasoned consent.”

  “Or the safe stays shut.”

  “Got it?” Gina asked.

  The young assistant manager’s eyebrows expressed acrobatically nervous confusion. Gina reached out, took his chin between her thumb and forefinger, slowly nodded his head for him.

  “You’ll understand someday, sweetie,” she assured him. “When you’re married.”

  Chapter 38

  They took the bus from Plaza Cinco de Mayo north toward Gamboa. It was real jungle a lot of the way. Shake was impressed. He thought he understood now what people meant when they called something “primeval.” Every now and then, they’d catch a jarring glimpse, through a gap in the trees, of a giant cargo ship working its way up, or down, the canal.

  “I always thought it would just be like a giant concrete ditch filled with water,” Shake said. The canal, what he was seeing of it at least, was much more like an exotic, snaking river, crowded on both sides by green, squawking wildness.

  “The word ‘canal’ is misleading,” Gina agreed. “It makes you think,
ugh, boring. Artificial. Where cholos in L.A. race their tricked-out cars when it dries up during the summer.”

  The bus wheezed and hissed to a stop. The entrance to the Canopy Tower Ecolodge. They walked up the road, up the hill, until they reached the observation tower—what used to be an observation tower and was now the Ecolodge itself; they found the marked path that led into the jungle.

  Shake looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before five. The sun had dipped behind mountains to the west (or was it the east?) and the rain forest ahead looked darkly menacing, darkly inviting. Birds screamed and trilled and whooped. Birds and/or monkeys. And/or God knew what.

  They started walking. The jungle closed in around them and the light; it felt like they were walking across the bottom of a lake. Strange, but peaceful, too. The screaming and trilling and whooping increased in volume and intensity.

  “Scared?” Shake asked Gina.

  “I’m looking for a sloth,” she said. “They’re supposed to have the cutest faces.”

  They came to a sort of small clearing and stopped. Shake checked his watch again.

  “This is probably about a quarter of a mile,” he said.

  “You think Ziegler lives out here?”

  “I think he has a sense of theater,” Shake said. “Or thinks he does.”

  “This isn’t a safe place to be when it gets dark,” a voice behind them said.

  They turned. A guy in a lemon-colored guayabera shirt smirked at them from the edge of the clearing. He was American, about forty, soft around the edges, holding a big flashlight. He flicked the flashlight beam across Shake, let it linger on Gina.

  “So why are we here?” Shake asked.

  “I’m Mr. Ziegler’s executive assistant,” the guy said. “Ronald. At your service.”

  “We’re the Boxmans.”

  “Of course you are.” The guy smirked. “Did you bring the items Señor Cornejo mentioned?”

  “Did you bring Señor Ziegler’s cash?”

  “Touché.” The assistant flicked the flashlight beam toward the jungle behind him. “Come with me, please.”

  They followed him down a narrow path that zigged, zagged, climbed, plunged, and disappeared beneath the undergrowth for long stretches. After about fifteen minutes—it was almost dark now—they came to a second, smaller clearing where a muddy four-by-four was parked.

  “Vehicles aren’t allowed in this part of the park,” the assistant explained, “but Mr. Ziegler has certain … influence.”

  Shake and Gina climbed into the backseat of the four-by-four. Ziegler’s assistant settled behind the wheel. He bounced through the jungle for a few hundred yards, then cut onto a paved road. It led, eventually, to what Shake recognized as the highway they’d come up on from Panama City.

  Theater.

  “You could have just picked us up at the bus stop, you know,” Shake said.

  The assistant didn’t answer.

  “So tell us about this boss of yours,” Gina said.

  “My—Ziegler?”

  Shake gave Gina a look.

  “Well,” the assistant said, “I guess I’d say he’s just a down-to-earth guy who happened to hit it big.”

  “Smart?” Shake asked.

  “You’d have to think so.”

  “Would I?”

  “Guy made his first hundred million before he was thirty.”

  “Stole it, you mean.”

  Shake noticed the assistant’s eyes dart over to the rearview mirror, then quickly away.

  “How about you two?” the assistant asked.

  “Are we smart?” Gina asked.

  “Are you having a good time in Panama?”

  “I think I speak for both of us,” Shake said, “when I say it’s not what we expected.”

  “He speaks for both of us,” Gina said.

  They drove north, all the way up to the Caribbean, then east along the coast. Their headlights flashed, along the side of the muddy road, on piles of garbage and birds of paradise and schoolgirls in immaculate plaid uniforms making the long walk home from school.

  Just before they reached the town of Portobelo, Ziegler’s assistant stopped the four-by-four. He pointed to a bluff strung with the crumbling stone remains of an old fort, overlooking the moonlit water.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” he told them.

  Shake and Gina got out. The assistant drove off with a crunch of shell gravel.

  In the center of the ruins, on a carpet of green grass, framed by rows of rusted iron cannons, a table had been set for three. There were candles, flowers, and a starched white tablecloth. Two dark-skinned Panamanian waiters in starched white uniforms stood at attention next to the table.

  Shake pulled a chair out for Gina. The view from up here, the moon just a night past full, was spectacular.

  One of the waiters placed napkins in their laps. The other one poured them each a glass of champagne.

  “Mr. Ziegler will join you shortly,” he said. Then both waiters melted away into the shadows.

  Shake tasted the champagne. “Good stuff.”

  “I read you can go scuba diving in the Pacific in the morning, the Caribbean in the afternoon,” Gina said.

  “I’ll put that on my list of amazing things to do before I die,” he said.

  “Now that you can take me off it, huh, sport?”

  Shake only smiled. He sipped the champagne and watched the play of glittering moonlight on the water below and just let the sheer sensual pleasure of the moment pulse through him. Gina had kicked off a shoe and propped a bare foot on his knee. She was flexing her toes in a contemplative way. She smelled like the sea. Or the sea smelled like her. Either way, equally nice.

  Live in the moment? Shake knew, now, this was a moment he wouldn’t mind living in for a long time.

  He thought Gina might be thinking the same thing, but, truthfully, he had no fucking clue. He hoped that’s what she was thinking; he hoped that was part, at least, of what she was thinking.

  “This doesn’t suck,” she said.

  “No.”

  She continued to flex her toes in a contemplative way. “You sniff a hink with the assistant, too?” she asked.

  Shake nodded. He finished his glass of champagne and lifted his chin to point behind her. She turned. A man was strolling toward them. It was Ronald, the assistant, who’d changed out of the guayabera shirt and into a tailored linen suit.

  “Welcome,” he said, grinning.

  “Let me guess,” Shake said. “Roland Ziegler.”

  “Gotcha, didn’t I?”

  “Sure did,” Shake lied.

  “You know how hard it is to get good help these days.” Ziegler laughed. He sat down and put too much effort into it, pretending not to be knocked completely out by Gina. “Seriously, though, no hard feelings, okay?”

  “None at all,” Shake said.

  “Then let’s eat!”

  GINA WOULDN’T HAVE CALLED ZIEGLER attractive, not exactly. Well, actually, not at all. He was doughy, his features sort of pale and unbaked, and his eyes were a tiny bit on the beady side, set just a tiny bit too close together. Hair the color of a dead lawn in winter, cropped short. But he had good teeth and a larger-than-life self-confidence Gina found almost mesmerizing.

  That and—uh, Gina?—the fact that he had a couple of hundred million dollars to his name. Definitely mesmerizing. He’d just told them all about two private islands he owned, one off the Pacific coast of Panama, the other off the Caribbean.

  So the guy’s a little doughy, eyes a bit beady. Gina warned herself not to be a superficial kind of person.

  Shake had just asked Ziegler why he’d decided to move to Panama.

  “This used to be a fort to protect the coast from pirates,” Ziegler said. He speared a shrimp with his fork.

  He did that a lot—not answering the question he’d been asked, or at least not right off, or at least not in a straightforward way most people would answer a question. Shake, Gina could tell, hated it. But S
hake nonetheless kept asking questions. Probably because he hated how Ziegler evaded them. Gina shook her head. Boys, she thought.

  “For a couple of hundred years,” Ziegler went on, “more gold passed across this isthmus than all the gold in the rest of the world combined. All the gold from the New World, on its way back to Spain. Incan gold. Aztec gold. Pirates—could you blame them?—they couldn’t resist. Pirates and people who wouldn’t have even thought of themselves as pirates, but all that gold just lying around, these guys weren’t fools.”

  “I suppose you consider yourself a modern-day pirate,” Shake said.

  Ziegler grinned and speared another shrimp and prepared to not answer the question. Gina felt Shake clench his jaw.

  “A pirate wasn’t a common crook. You have to understand that. A pirate wasn’t some grimy lowlife who broke into the mansion through the cellar window and made off with the family silver. Wasn’t some cracked-out jig, pardon me, who holds up the check-cashing joint on the corner with a Phillips-head screwdriver and a do-rag for a mask. To put it in modern terms. Right? A pirate made his living with skill, brains, audacity. Imagination.”

  “That what it takes to cheat old people out of their life savings?” Shake asked.

  “You only rob the rich, Shake?” Ziegler said. “Give it all to the poor?”

  They smiled pleasantly at each other with intense dislike.

  Gina watched them. If she had to have sex with just one person for, say, the rest of the month—as horrifying as that concept was—she would of course pick Shake over Ziegler in a second. All things being equal, she’d pick both the waiters over Ziegler, she’d pick the jangly bracelet girl back at the antique shop for sure, the debonair owner of the shop, too. All things being equal. But things, in life, rarely were that.

  It was odd, though. When Gina thought about it more carefully—when she thought about having sex with just Shake and nobody else for the rest of the month, for the rest of the year, even—she didn’t feel horrified at all. Neither freaked nor claustrophobic. She could actually imagine the two of them a year or three from now. Hanging out together and hatching interesting business plans over breakfast together and scuba-diving both oceans in a single day.