by Lou Berney
“Probably not.”
“But you don’t know what you’d say.”
“Don’t buy me a ring. That puts a girl on the spot.”
“Maybe I want to put you on the spot.”
“Did you know it at the time, that I was watching planes take off from LAX and not the sunset?”
“I thought you were watching the Ferris wheel down on the pier. It was hard to tell, you always had sunglasses on.”
“Sometimes I was watching the Ferris wheel. Most of the time I was watching the sunset.”
Her burner cell, on the nightstand, buzzed. Devane was the only one who had the number.
“Looks like we’re on, sport,” she told Shake. “Better get your head in the game.”
Chapter 39
Shake checked his watch. It was going to be a busy day.
Devane had told Gina he’d be at the hotel at three to show them Roosevelt’s speech. Gina had tried to bump him back a few hours to buy them time, she’d tried her best, but Devane had said take three o’clock or leave it. Shake knew Devane wanted to put them under the gun. It was the smart, suspicious play. He deserved a tip of the porkpie hat.
So that gave them—Shake checked his watch again—less than five hours to make sure they had all their corners squared away.
Five hours. Like this wasn’t gonna be hard enough already.
On the other hand, this kind of pace gave you less time to worry about one of Devane’s Egyptian ex–secret service goons shooting you in the face. That was the silver lining.
Quinn’s job was to hunt down Mahmoud. Who had not yet produced the exact twin of Devane’s black leather attaché case as he had promised. Who had not returned the voice-mail messages that Quinn left him.
“I’m not worried,” Quinn said, looking worried.
Gina was going to contact her computer hacker guy back in San Francisco. Devane had demanded they have proof, the minute he walked in the door, that Roland Ziegler possessed the necessary funds for a minimum bid. Seven and a half million dollars. Most of Gina’s ready cash was tied up in her business, so she needed her computer guy to work his magic. Shake didn’t understand the details, not a single one of them, but the gist was the computer guy would create some kind of shell account. A shell within a shell on a mirror. With lots of smoke blown across the surface of the mirror. Devane would open his laptop between 3:00 and 3:09 Cairo time, punch in some numbers, a password, and then see—“see”—that Roland Ziegler—“Roland Ziegler”—had plenty of cash ready to transfer.
Maybe. Fingers crossed.
Gina looked a little worried too.
“What is it?” Shake said.
“He’ll need a little coaxing,” she said. “My hacker. Hackers are total sociopaths, but they’re scared to death of doing time.”
Shake had his own job to do. Two jobs, both critical. Three jobs. What wasn’t critical, at this point?
He walked through the lobby of the hotel and out into the heat, the honking. He stood there for a second before he remembered to wave for a cab.
He was trying to keep his head in the game, but it was hard not to drift back to last night with Gina, this morning, everything. He had hope. He was practically bouncing off the walls with it.
But that, in his experience, was when you needed to be most careful. When everything seemed to breaking just right for you, when the morning sun lit up a beautiful woman’s naked body right in front of you, the woman you loved.
Shake remembered the real Roland Ziegler. The real Roland Ziegler had been feeling pretty good about himself back in Panama City three years ago, about to walk away with both the money and the merchandise, back to his private island in the Caribbean. Next thing he knew, his hopes had gone up in smoke and he was staring at twenty years in the federal lock.
It was like poker. You might be zooming right along, a killer hand, picking up speed on the flop and the turn. But the game wasn’t over yet. That last card, the river, it could jerk you around fast. Shake knew it.
EVELYN SLEPT TILL NINE, HAD some coffee, and called Mohammed. She asked him to meet her in half an hour at the hotel.
“Your hotel?” he asked.
“Their hotel,” she said.
Mohammed was alarmed. “No, Evelyn. I will pick you up!”
She told him no, she was going to walk. She needed the fresh air and cardio, what with all the secondhand unfiltered Camel smoke she’d sucked down yesterday.
Her hotel, as luck would have it, was only a couple of blocks from the new hotel that Shake and Company had checked into. Their hotel was much swankier than hers. Was it true that crime paid? If Evelyn had to break it down, based on her experience in law enforcement, she’d say it probably paid a fair amount of the time.
It took her half an hour to walk the two blocks. Cairo traffic—so much for fresh air.
Mohammed was waiting for her, parked down the block and across the street from the new hotel. They took their seats on the hood of the Mercedes. Mohammed stripped the cellophane off a fresh pack of Camels and Evelyn sent Sarah a text. What time is it there? Luv u bunches.
The reply came back a second later. Midnight. Mom, I cannot believe you actually went to Egypt.
Midnight!?! U r not in bed yet?! i m so disappointed in u!
I AM in bed. You woke me UP.
You forgive me.
Sarah didn’t text back for a long time. Evelyn wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
Dad is mad at you. For going to Egypt and not telling him.
Why the fuck does he give a fuck? Evelyn thought.
OK, she texted back.
He said I could have stayed with him and Lilly instead of Aunt Katie.
What a responsible, attentive, considerate parent Andre was! The asshole.
Every guy has a mustache here. It’s like Magnum PI wherever you turn.
Don’t be mad at him, Mom.
Mohammed nudged Evelyn with his elbow. Evelyn had already seen: Shake standing outside the hotel entrance, looking kind of stupefied. Finally he raised his hand to hail a cab.
Gotta go. Yella beena! Love you bunches.
They tailed Shake’s cab through town and across a bridge. His cab dropped him off at the pyramids.
The pyramids! “My daughter would flip out,” Evelyn told Mohammed.
He double-parked behind a tour bus. Evelyn got out and tailed Shake on foot. She gave him a block, just to be safe, even though there were tons of tourists milling around. He walked down the street and stopped in front of the Sphinx.
The Sphinx!
He stood for a long time in front of the Sphinx, just staring up at it. Then he walked over to a little café and took a seat at a table. He ordered coffee, or tea. Evelyn couldn’t be sure which, from a distance.
What the hell was he doing? Sipping his coffee, or tea, and gazing up at the Sphinx. He didn’t look like a guy mixed up in sketchy shit at all. After he finished his drink, he paid the waiter and found another cab. Evelyn and Mohammed tailed this cab back over the bridge. It dropped Shake off on the edge of a small crowded square, across from a big mosque. Shake crossed the square and turned down an alley.
“Ah,” Mohammed said, peering through the windshield of the Mercedes. “Khan el-Khalili.”
“Khan el-Khalili?”
“Yes! Very famous.”
“For what?”
Mohammed pondered. “Souvenir.”
What? A little sightseeing, some souvenir shopping. What the hell?
Evelyn started to get out of the Mercedes.
“Wait,” Mohammed said. “Listen to me. La shukran.”
“What?”
“La shukran.” He said it slowly. “Say it to me.”
“La shukran. Why? What is it?”
“It means ‘No, thank you.’ Say it again, please.”
She thought he’d lost his mind. “La shukran, Mohammed, la shukran.”
Evelyn crossed the square and turned down the alley that Shake had turned down. The alley was
insanely narrow, crammed with shops and shoppers and shopkeepers. All the shopkeepers were men, with mustaches, most of them wearing the long cotton caftans that a lot of Egyptian men wore. They spotted Evelyn and, oh, wow, it was like the running of the bulls, but at her.
“Where you from?”
“Please look! No cost to look!”
“Special price! One pound only!”
“You like this, I promise!”
“No cost to look, please enter!”
“Where you from?”
“La shukran!” Evelyn said. “La shukran!”
The nearest shopkeeper feigned surprise. “You are from la shukran? I do not know this place! Where is this place?”
“La shukran! Hey! Watch it! La shukran!”
They didn’t touch her, but if she stepped left, so did they. If she faked left and stepped right, so did they. Evelyn saw that Shake, about a hundred feet up the alley, had been waylaid too. A shopkeeper had dragged him over to his shop.
“Here, special price, you may hold it,” a shopkeeper told Evelyn. He forced a stone jar into her hands before she knew what he was doing. The lid of the jar was the head of a—dog? Coyote?
“La shukran,” Evelyn said, trying to hand the jar back. But her shopkeeper had his hands behind his back now, and she couldn’t just drop it.
Shake’s shopkeeper was showing him one of the long cotton caftans, a sort of dusty lavender color, holding it up so Shake could see how snazzy it would look on him.
“Please, miss,” Evelyn’s shopkeeper said. “I make a special deal for you. Ten pounds. Have pity, miss. I must feed the mouths of my family. You have a very good eye, miss, you select the very most excellent jar. I see you know this business. This price, I lose money, I barely feed the mouths of my children. The quality is excellent, you can see that, I see. The jar is yours now, you have picked it, I cannot take it back. Please do not waste my time, I am a very busy man.”
And then he gave her a wink, like this was all in good fun, of course.
And then he frowned, like of course it wasn’t, he had to feed the mouths of his family.
And then he frowned differently, like she better buy the jar or else, all the time of his she’d wasted.
Evelyn was impressed. “You’re good,” she said. “You should go to Hollywood and be an agent.”
“You are from Hollywood! I know Hollywood! My cousin lives there. I give you a special discount.”
“How much is it?” Evelyn sighed. She knew when she was beat. “Ten Egyptian pounds? It’s like two dollars, isn’t it? I only have American.”
“Ten pound British,” the shopkeeper said. “Oh, no. You have mistaken me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Evelyn said. She handed over an American five. Her shopkeeper looked scandalized, then wounded, then resigned. He trudged back into his shop to wrap up her dog-headed stone jar in newspaper. He brought back three more jars that he said completed the set, an extra five bucks each, how could she refuse, she had already agreed in principle, had she not, and he had already gone to all the trouble of wrapping them too.
Evelyn saw Shake buying one of the lavender caftans. Apparently his shopkeeper was as relentless as Evelyn’s. Then Shake pointed to something inside the shop. The shopkeeper nodded. Evelyn watched Shake step into the shop and disappear.
EVELYN WAS GOOD. SHAKE GAVE her that. She did almost everything right. But of course he spotted her, about thirty seconds after he left the hotel. Shake had spent most of his professional life making sure he didn’t have a tail, and shaking them when he did.
She’d surprised him once, yesterday. She wouldn’t do it again.
The cabdriver who picked Shake up at the Sphinx was a young kid, midtwenties, his English as good as Shake’s. Probably better. Shake said something about it and the kid told Shake that he had an engineering degree. With the economy tanking since the revolution, though, he was lucky to have a job driving a cab. Still, he was glad the revolution had happened.
Shake asked him if he knew where he could buy a—he forgot the word for a second. A galabiya.
“Sure,” the kid said. “I know a place. It’s close by. And it’s quality stuff, not like most tourists buy. Locals shop there. It’s just up the street. You could probably just walk, if you want.”
“You need to get the hang of this cab-driving racket,” Shake said.
The kid grimaced. “Tell me about it.”
“Listen,” Shake said. “Is there a place, like a shopping area, lots of shops, crowded? Lots of tourists? Is there a place like that where I can get a galabiya? As far away as you want, keep the meter running.”
The kid checked him out in the rearview mirror. “Sure,” he said.
He dropped Shake at a square across from a mosque and pointed him down an alley. Shake made sure Evelyn had time to catch up. He couldn’t see her, she was good, but Shake knew she was there.
Shake walked up the alley. It was nuts. Tourists wall to wall and the vendors were ferocious. He wondered how they’d do with Quinn. Probably, five minutes with Quinn, these guys would be down on their knees in surrender, begging Quinn to just take the goddamn plaster pharaoh head, on the house, mister, just shut up about the one time you met a pharaoh and gave him the idea for the pyramids, unofficially, of course.
There she was.
Evelyn was six or seven shops behind him. Almost hidden by the crowd. Almost. Shake bought two galabiyas, plus some small stone beetles he thought Idaba back in Belize might like. He paid way too much for everything, forty bucks American, but the guy who ran the shop was now Shake’s best friend for life, or at least for the next five minutes.
“Is that a door?” Shake said. “In the back of your shop? You mind if I go that way?”
“By all means, my friend.” The guy thumbing the two twenties that Shake had given him to make sure they were real. “By all means.”
Shake squeezed through the galabiya shop and pushed the back door open. He found himself in another alley, this one even narrower, but less crowded. Next to the door was a big steel trash barrel, just the right height. Shake dragged it over, tipped it up, wedged it under the handle of the door.
He tested it and nodded. Evelyn wasn’t getting through that door.
Good-bye, Evelyn.
Shake moved fast up the alley, back toward the square. He’d told his cabdriver to circle around and meet him back at the square. But when Shake got to the end of the alley, the edge of the square, he stopped.
Evelyn was standing there, waiting for him.
“In your defense,” she said, “I came this close to taking the bait.”
“In my defense,” he said, “it’s worked before.”
“What did you buy?”
“Galabiyas.”
“Is that what they’re called? I got four fake stone jars that weigh a ton and were probably made in China.”
“Those guys are sharks. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“They’re fucking hammerheads. Can I buy you coffee? Or is it tea?”
Shake sighed. “I could use a beer.”
NONE OF THE JOINTS NEARBY sold alcohol. Finally they found a T.G.I. Friday’s that did.
Shake tried an Egyptian beer, Sakara. Not bad. He might have enjoyed it under different circumstances.
“Did you ever think that one day you’d be having a beer at a T.G.I. Friday’s in Cairo, Egypt?” Evelyn said. “Bet you didn’t.”
“And with an FBI agent. No.” He shook his head. “Safe to say.”
She took a sip of her beer. “How can a Muslim country make its own beer? I don’t get that.”
“Their beer is better than their food,” he said.
“What are you talking about? Have you tried the hummus? It’s fantastic.”
He just grunted.
“And something they call ‘old cheese’ is good,” she said. “Which, I agree, could use a more tempting name.”
“What do I have to do to get you to stop following me?” Shake s
aid. If he didn’t lose her soon, and lose her for good, if he didn’t make sure she was nowhere near the hotel when the deal with Devane went down, they were screwed.
“Lose the FBI gal,” Quinn had said that morning. “Top of your list, okay?”
“What can you do to get me to stop following you?” Evelyn said. “Let’s see. I know!”
“I’m never gonna dime out the Armenians.”
“That’s what you say now. But we haven’t finished our beers yet.”
“You’re the fucking hammerhead shark.”
“Stop. You’re making me blush.”
“I’m serious. Are you out of your mind? Coming all the way to Cairo?”
She looked wistful as she sipped her beer. “Probably a little I am. I’ve never been the greatest investigator. You know, the slow and steady, the paperwork, all the federal bur-ese. I probably should have washed out at Quantico. My first SAC actually told me that straight up. But what I’m great at is, I don’t ever give up.”
“Give up,” Shake said. “Please.”
“And I’m really pissed off at my asshole ex-husband. I think that might be a factor too.”
“Your ex-husband?”
“I was so close to nailing the Armenians a few years ago. So close. But my asshole ex totally screwed it up for me. He’s the asshole D.A. in Los Angeles.”
“Don’t take it out on me.”
“I’m not! That’s what you don’t understand.”
“You want to be my friend. I forgot.” Something clicked and Shake looped back around. “Andre Guardado is your ex-husband?”
“You know him?”
“Not personally. Well, I met him once. Briefly.”
“And?”
Shake didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“See!” Evelyn said. “You thought he was an asshole too!”
“I barely shook the guy’s hand,” Shake said. But, yes, he had seemed like an asshole.
“It’s okay if you think less of me for marrying him and letting him impregnate me,” Evelyn said. “I know I do. And hey, on a separate topic, what’s the deal, asking me to dinner back in Belize when you already had a girlfriend?”
She was trying to spin Shake around. And doing a good job of it.