Whiplash River

by Lou Berney

  “Don’t worry,” Roger said. “I called the cops.”

  Oh, no, Shake thought. Shit.

  OH, NO, EVELYN THOUGHT WHEN the sketchy dude in the stained apron stepped out of the kitchen and announced that he’d called the cops. Shit.

  Well, of course he’d called the cops, or somebody had, but that didn’t make Evelyn’s current situation any less sticky. As a United States law enforcement official, a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, she had sworn duties and responsibilities. She took them seriously. Like, don’t leave the scene of an attempted murder. Like, wait for the cops and answer their questions with truth and candor.

  But, shit, if she waited for the cops and answered their questions, it would take Cory Nadler at DSS about a minute to find out where she’d been tonight, what she’d been up to. After telling her, and throwing such a hiss about it, to keep a low profile and stay away from Bouchon.

  She rehearsed the conversation in her head.

  “Cory, I was just having dinner.”

  “Where were you having dinner, Evi?”

  And then he’d pick up the phone and call Mike, her ASAC back in L.A. And Evelyn would be in so much shit that she’d never slog her way out again.

  Evelyn hadn’t known that a human being could keep screaming for as long as the girl across the room had. The screaming girl and her husband appeared unharmed. So did everyone else. The hostess, a formidable-looking black woman with a gold ring in her nose and a sort of turban on her head, was gently trying to calm the screaming girl down. Shhh, shhh, shhh.

  Evelyn probably would have just given the girl a slap. A gentle one.

  When the shooting started, Evelyn had reached for her purse. And then remembered she didn’t have her firearm. Cory had made her promise to lock it in the hotel room safe. Evelyn didn’t need a gun on vacation, he’d pointed out, now, did she?

  So that had left her—as she hunched behind the table and counted the shots from the shooter’s Glock— armed with nothing but a steak knife.

  She’d assumed, at first, that the shooter’s target was the shithead—her shithead, damn it, just her luck. She wondered how in the world the Armenians could have known that she was there to flip him. They couldn’t have known.

  After a couple of quick peek-and-ducks, a stray bullet zinging past, she realized that the target was actually the old guy.

  He was yelling at the shooter, taunting him. Evelyn was 1,000 percent certain nothing good could come of that. She was surprised the shooter hadn’t hit the old guy yet, but not shocked. It happened sometimes. A shooter’s adrenaline went crazy, the target kept moving, the gun kicked and jumped. Evelyn had seen TV footage once, caught by a local news crew, of a client trying to shoot his lawyer outside a courthouse. Point-blank range, but the lawyer kept moving, juking, ducking behind a tree. He’d survived, not a scratch on him.

  Evelyn doubted he’d been taunting the shooter, though.

  When she’d counted fifteen shots, the magazine empty, she started to make her move. To her surprise, Bouchon was already making one of his own. He tackled the shooter and knocked him to the floor. The gun came free, but Evelyn had to stay where she was. She could probably get to the gun before the shooter did, but that really wasn’t something you wanted to be almost sure about.

  The shooter got to the gun before Bouchon did. They wrestled and then the shooter punched himself in the face. Evelyn wasn’t exactly sure how Bouchon arranged that, but the shooter dropped the gun and took off.

  Now the sound of sirens began to drift in through the broken window. Shit, Evelyn thought again.

  Bouchon had checked on the screaming girl, and now came over to check on Evelyn. He looked like he might want to say something clever, but finally he just ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  Evelyn reached up and touched the lobe of her ear. A sharp fragment of painted coconut shell had stabbed into the wall right next to her head. Bouchon worked the piece of coconut shell loose from the wood. It still had a little blood from her ear on it.

  “Your poor mermaid,” Evelyn said. The mermaid had been smashed to pieces by a stray bullet.

  “Other than all that,” he said, “it’s been a pretty good day.”

  She smiled. She was finding it harder and harder to think of him as a shithead. He was, no question. In Evelyn’s book, anyone who made a living from unlawful activity, past, present, or future, was a shithead. But she’d always been able to read people well. She’d known, for example, that her ex-husband was an asshole the minute she met him. Shake Bouchon just didn’t seem that bad of a guy, for a bad guy.

  She was still going to put the screws to him. It just wouldn’t be quite so much fun now. Maybe.

  “I’ll go get the first-aid kit,” he said. He left as the sirens grew louder.

  Evelyn had to make a decision. If she stayed, she reasoned, she wouldn’t be able to give the cops much. She hadn’t seen anything that the other witnesses hadn’t. On the other hand, her continued presence here would definitely jeopardize the case against the Armenians, who were surely a much greater threat to society than some lone gunman with terrible aim. Right?

  Her earlobe started to sting. She made sure that no one was paying attention to her and slipped out the front door.

  EVELYN SAW LIGHTS FLASHING ACROSS the water—the cops were coming by boat. So she headed inland until she found an unpaved road that ran parallel to the beach, behind the resorts and restaurants. She walked along that for half an hour or so, tripping in the darkness and fighting off mosquitoes. When she figured that she’d gone far enough, she cut back toward the beach to a hotel pier, and from there she caught the ferry to town.

  Evelyn sent Sarah a text from the ferry.

  Howzit, sweetpea? Everything here is great but miss u. Love, mom.

  It was eleven o’clock by the time she got back to her resort. Her dress was torn and her hair was a mess. Not to mention the mosquito bites on her legs and the wounded earlobe, caked with dried blood. The female desk clerk in the lobby gave her a sour look. Assuming, no doubt, that Evelyn was just another debauched gringa tourist, fresh off some wild, booze-soaked sexual encounter.

  Evelyn wished. She ducked her head and hurried past.

  Chapter 5

  Maybe Shake was just feeling sorry for himself, but each bullet, it seemed, had managed to cause the maximum possible damage to his restaurant.

  He frowned at yet another ugly gouge in the floor. One bullet had hit the paneled wall in such a way that the wood cracked, splintered, and split apart, floor to ceiling. Two lanterns had been blasted to pieces. Two windows broken. An antique ship’s wheel had fallen off the wall and crushed an antique ship in a bottle.

  Cops swarmed all over the dining room, digging bullets out of the walls and bagging shell casings and dusting every surface for fingerprints. This was the most excitement the San Pedro Police Department had seen in years. They were having the time of their lives.

  “It was a robbery,” one of the cops sitting with Shake said.

  “It wasn’t a robbery,” Shake said. “I told you. He was shooting at the old guy.”

  “Why?” the other cop asked.

  “Ask him,” Shake said.

  Quinn was sitting across the room with another cop and the chief of police. He had his legs crossed and was doing all the talking.

  Shake didn’t much care why the gunman had been shooting at the old guy. Shake had bigger worries. His restaurant was trashed and he couldn’t afford to shut down, not even for a minute. Baby Jesus would expect his next payment, rain or shine, no excuses.

  Shake watched Quinn pour himself a glass of wine. Miraculously, his bottle of Argentine white had survived the mayhem. When Shake had gone to see if Quinn was okay, right after the gunman fled, Quinn had waved the question off. “Hell,” he’d said.

  “Please describe the robber again,” the cop told Shake now.

  Shake sighed. “Six two,
two hundred pounds or so, a white guy.”

  “He was a white guy.”

  “He was a white guy.”

  “But you said he was wearing a mask!” The cop leaned forward, eyes shining. He’d seen too many reruns of Law & Order.

  “It was a ski mask,” Shake said. “I could see part of his nose and some of his forehead.”

  “And that was white?”

  “And around his eyes. Yes. It was white.”

  The other cop made a note in his notebook.

  Shake looked around the room. The woman, Evelyn, had disappeared. He didn’t know what to make of that. She’d been gone when Shake returned from the kitchen with the first-aid kit for her ear.

  He spotted the reporter from the island newspaper taking photos of a smashed lamp. Shake jumped up, crossed the room, and grabbed the guy by the arm.

  “Hey!” the reporter said.

  “No,” Shake said. “No, no, no.”

  He propelled the reporter out onto the veranda, and then off the veranda.

  “Take it easy, man,” the reporter said. “No harm.”

  “No harm?” Shake said. He saw a crowd of lookie-loos on the beach, drawn from the bar next door by the flashing police lights. “Get out of here!” he yelled. “Free beer next door!”

  A couple of people chuckled, but nobody moved. Shake went back inside.

  The police chief came over. He seemed glad to take a break from Quinn. “He don’t shut up,” the chief said. “I’m ready to shoot him myself.”

  Shake nodded. “He know why somebody’d want to take a shot at him?”

  “He say he don’t know,” the chief said. “Who do you think? Was it a professional, you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Shake said. If the gunman had been a professional, Shake didn’t know what that said about the state of the profession. He shook the chief’s hand and passed over the bills folded in his palms.

  “I appreciate all your help with this, Chief. I appreciate your discretion.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “You know what I mean?”

  “Shake,” the chief said. “You hear about that tourist last week? That fishing accident on the flats?”

  “I didn’t.”

  The chief waited. Shake caught up.

  “Okay,” he said. “Thanks. You want me to make you something to eat? Some rice and beans?”

  “Later,” the chief said. He saw Idaba approaching and hurried back to Quinn. There wasn’t anyone on the island who wasn’t scared of Idaba.

  “They’re ready,” she told Shake.

  “You think so?”

  She shrugged. He followed her to the kitchen. The young honeymooners were leaning against the reach-in, sipping hot tea that Idaba had made for them.

  “I’m glad you’re both okay,” Shake said, his opening argument.

  “You think we’re okay?” the kid said. Not so much in anger as in disbelief.

  “Well,” Shake said, Idaba scowling at him, “I just mean—”

  “Oh my God!” the girl said. “We could have been killed! That was the most horrible, the most . . . the most . . .”

  “It’s our honeymoon!” the kid said. Angry now, but Shake thought it was mostly for the girl’s benefit.

  “Listen,” Shake said. “I want to do what I can here. Okay? When are you supposed to go home? To Buffalo?”

  “Tuesday,” the kid said. “Why?”

  “Why don’t you spend a few extra days in Belize? I’ll cover your hotel.”

  “Really?” the kid said.

  “And your meals,” Shake said. “You can eat here for free.”

  The kid was thrilled, but he needed to gauge his bride’s attitude before he showed his hand. He turned to her.

  “We don’t have to have to have to be back home till Wednesday,” he said.

  “What if it costs money to change our flight?” she said. “It costs to change the flight even if it’s a frequent flyer award.”

  “I’ll cover that too,” Shake said.

  “That would rock,” the kid said.

  “And we’d want to do a snorkel trip,” the girl said. “If we were going to be here a few extra days. There’s that place up north?”

  Holy shit. Shake was impressed. The girl was shaking him down like a pro.

  “And I’ll cover your snorkel trip too,” he said. “As long as you don’t mention any of this. All right? The shooting. You don’t write about it on TripAdvisor.”

  They agreed. Shake went back into the dining room to see if the cops were done taking Quinn’s statement, but Quinn was already on his way to the pier. The chief said he’d sent a couple of his men to escort Quinn back to his resort.

  Shake caught up to them on the beach.

  “There he is!” Quinn said.

  “Mr. Quinn. If I could talk to you a second.”

  “You saved my bacon back there, Shake.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Quinn turned to the cops. “You hear this guy?”

  “Mr. Quinn,” Shake said. “I’m just thinking. It probably doesn’t do anyone any good, does it? Word of this gets around. You know?”

  Quinn laughed and clapped a hand on Shake’s shoulder, squeezed hard. “You hear this guy?” he asked the cops again.

  The cops boxed Shake out and steered Quinn toward the pier.

  Shake walked slowly back up to the restaurant. He felt exhausted all of a sudden, too dense for the earth’s gravity. Idaba was waiting on the veranda for him.

  “Well?” she said.

  She and Shake watched the police boat with Quinn on board pull away from the pier.

  “I think we’re good,” Shake said.

  Chapter 6

  Terry’s nose hurt so bad he thought he was gonna pass out. It was like getting smashed in the face every time he took a breath or the boat hit a bump in the water. Blood and snot bubbling out. He wished he hadn’t tossed the ski mask over the side, ’cause then at least he’d have something other than his sleeve to press against his nose. But Meg said they had to get rid of the evidence, don’t be a goddamn moron.

  She was driving the boat. Wind whipping her hair around, one hand on the wheel and the other fist on her hip, looking even more ferocious than usual. You wouldn’t think that a little slip of a girl, just turned twenty-one years old, could look so ferocious. Barely five foot two, a hundred pounds dripping wet, with freckles and a cute button nose. But Meg never looked nothing but ferocious, even when she was sleeping. You didn’t want to wake Meg up when she was sleeping, take it from Terry. He’d learned that the hard way.

  She looked like a pirate right now, standing there at the wheel of the boat. In her cutoff jeans and wife-beater and bare little sun-brown feet with the nails painted pink. A sexy ferocious pirate.

  “Goddamn it, Terry!” she said. He was sitting there right next to her, but she refused to look at him. Which meant either she had to keep her eyes on the water ’cause they had their running lights off and were going fast, or it meant Terry was in her doghouse big-time.

  “Wasn’t my fault, babe!” he said. “I ran out of bullets!”

  “Swear to God, Terry. Who shoots off a whole clip and don’t hit a goddamn thing?”

  The boat bumped against the water, and Terry’s nose blew out another big bubble of blood and snot. He whimpered. “I think my nose is busted,” he said.

  “Don’t be a pussy,” she said.

  “But it hurts!”

  “Pussy.”

  Terry climbed to his feet. Standing up hurt his nose even more than he’d expected it to, all the blood sloshing around in his face, but he didn’t care. He walked to the back of the boat and stared out at the water foaming up behind them.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” he heard Meg say, and then louder, “C’mon, get back over here!” He walked back up to the front of the boat, but this time he was the one who refused to look at her. Two could play at that game. He admired the lights twinkling fa
r off on the island.

  “Stop that,” Meg said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “I’m not,” he said. Though ask just about anyone, their nose got busted, if maybe they deserved a kind word or two. Just because one time Meg pulled a nail out of her own foot and then went right back to whatever she was doing, and another time didn’t even know she had a cracked collarbone till the doctor told her. That didn’t mean everybody else in the world was a pussy but her.

  Though probably, Terry considered, everybody else in the world was a pussy, compared to Meg.

  He’d made her go in and get a shot after she stepped on the nail. Everybody knew that your jaw could freeze shut otherwise, and then you’d starve to death.

  “Get on over here,” she said. He took a step closer, wary. She yanked him the rest of the way and then yanked again to bend him down. He was close to a foot taller than she was, unless she was standing on her tippy toes, or on the bottom rung of a bar stool. She reached up and kissed the bridge of his busted nose, her lips tender as a whisper.

  “That feel better?”

  He nodded. The first time he’d ever seen her, going on three years ago now at a bar in Anchorage, she’d been standing on the bottom rung of a bar stool, telling the bartender to pour her another goddamn shot of whiskey and hurry it up.

  “Now sit back down and be still,” Meg said. “Ain’t nobody ever died of a busted goddamn nose.”

  She eased back the stick and turned the wheel. The boat drifted to a stop on the open water, facing sideways. She squinted her eyes and stared off into the darkness that they’d just come out of. Terry knew he better be quiet while she was doing that.

  “I think we’re all right,” she said finally. “There ain’t nobody following us.”

  “Maybe you just don’t never hear about the ones that do,” Terry said. “ ’Cause they’re the ones that died.”

  She looked at him. “What?”

  “The ones died of a busted nose,” he said. “So they’re not around to tell you about it.”