Whiplash River (12 page)

And then:
Fuck.

“Ladies and gentleman!” Quinn yelled. “Your attention, please! Do as you're told and nobody gets hurt!”

A few tourists looked over at him.

“Don't,” Shake said. “Stop. Damn it.” He made a grab for Quinn, but Quinn slipped it and climbed up onto a storage locker. He lifted the overnight bag over his head.

“We have a bomb!” Quinn yelled. “Everybody get your asses in the water, now, or we blow you to kingdom come!”

The tourists started screaming and jumping, their flippers smacking the water. The boat rocked back and forth. Shake wanted to throw Quinn's ass in the water, but instead he just stepped over into the other boat. He was committed at this point. He had been committed. The little mestizo just stared at Quinn, and then at Shake. Shake hoped he didn't have a knife, or try to use it.

“Let's just all be cool,” Shake said.

“Out of the boat!” Quinn yelled at a couple of tourist stragglers. “Go! You want to see if I won't blow your asses to kingdom come?” The stragglers hit the water.

The little mestizo stayed where he was. He was thinking, Shake could be pretty sure of it,
You don't have no bomb.
But then he just shook his head. The boat belonged to the hotel, not him.
Fuck it.
He muttered something in Spanish, grabbed a couple bottles of Bud Light from the cooler by the wheel, and jumped into the water.

Most of the tourists were already swimming hard for shore, past the coral heads of the reef. All you could see of them in the water, mostly, were their bright orange foam floaties.

Two people were still treading water alongside the boat. Shake recognized them. They had recognized him. The young honeymoon couple from Buffalo. “Is this really for real?” the honeymoon kid said.

“Sorry,” Shake said.
Think of the stories you'll tell your grandkids.

“Go on,” Quinn said. “Get out of here. Don't be a hero.”

“It's only a few hundred yards to shore,” Shake said. “There's a place with a phone when you get there.”

The honeymoon couple drifted off. The kid looked dazed, like no way could this be happening again. The girl just looked mad. “I am so putting this on TripAdvisor,” Shake heard her say quietly.

“The way to control a crowd of people,” Quinn said, “buddy of mine worked state security in Budapest told me this once, is you just scare the living Jesus out of them. But you don't want to rile them up, it's a fine line.”

Shake turned to Quinn.

Quinn lifted a hand. “Don't mention it,” he said. “You're welcome.”

“What the hell was that?” Shake said.

“It's called improvisation. It's called thinking on the wing. You think I've stayed alive this long without a little improvisation along the way?”

Shake, honestly, had no idea how Quinn had stayed alive this long.

“Cool your jets.” Quinn sat down and settled in. “Sometimes you have to cut to the chase, Shake. My understanding is we're on the clock here. Let me know if we're not.”

“Listen to me,” Shake said, but he didn't finish. Quinn was standing back up and looking out over the water.

“Uh-oh,” Quinn said.

 

SHAKE PUSHED THE SNORKEL BOAT
they'd hijacked as hard as he could, but Baby Jesus's Esprit cruiser, no mistaking it this time, flew at them like they were sitting still. The snorkel boat—yesterday Shake's first stolen golf cart, today his first stolen boat—had maybe four hundred horses. Baby Jesus's cruiser had five or six times that.

“Step on it, Aunt Martha!” Quinn hollered over the wind blasting past. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Shake knew they couldn't outrun Baby Jesus. Shake had been in this situation before, though never on water. The trick, in a car, was to minimize your disadvantage—take the chase to a parking garage, for example, where the souped-up Camaro trying to catch you wouldn't be able to open up and run.

Where was a parking garage, Shake wondered, when you needed one?

Baby Jesus was close. Shake glanced back and saw him at the wheel of his Esprit, a couple of his thugs up on the bow with what looked like semiautomatic rifles. They were close enough to open fire but didn't. That meant they wanted to make sure they had a clear shot, or that Baby Jesus wanted Shake alive so he could kill him slowly. Probably the second one.

Shake got as close to the reef on his right as he dared. The coral heads, only a few feet below the surface, flashed past.

“Any time now!” Quinn hollered. “Whatever you got in mind!”

Shake waited, waited, waited, until Baby Jesus was right on them. “Hold on,” Shake hollered. He cut the wheel to the left and eased off the throttle, hoping it would send them into something like a bootlegger's slide. It did, sort of, turning the snorkel boat broadside into the path of the cruiser.

Baby Jesus reacted instinctively. That was the biggest difference between a professional driver and an amateur. An amateur did the first thing his brain told him to do, without stopping to think about it. Baby Jesus didn't stop to think about it and cut his wheel hard to the right to avoid a collision. His Esprit sliced into the reef.

The cruiser grazed the first coral head but hit the next one flush. The sound was like nothing Shake had ever heard before—a crunching shriek, like someone was pounding a buzz saw against . . . well, the hull of a boat. One of the thugs on the bow of Baby Jesus's cruiser was flung into the water. The coral opened up the hull of the Esprit like it was a can of tuna, leaving a long jagged gash just below the waterline.

The cruiser started to list fast, taking on water. Baby Jesus tried to gun the cruiser off the coral head. He didn't stop to think about that either. The big engines roared, the teeth of the coral bit deeper, the long jagged gash got longer.

Shake hit the throttle of the snorkel boat and headed away from the reef. Apparently Baby Jesus had decided he'd rather have Shake dead quick than not at all. He yelled at his thugs and they opened up with their automatic rifles.

It was touch and go for half a mile. Shake heard—felt—a couple of rounds snap past. But he and Quinn stayed low. A few minutes later the Mako was safely out of range and they were in the wind, headed for the mainland.

Quinn dug around in the cooler and pulled out a beer. He settled back and put a hand up to shade his eyes. “Piece of cake,” he said.

Chapter 17

E
velyn hired a taxi boat to take her way up north to the Crystal Shores resort. The driver asked if she knew that the resort had gone bankrupt several years before. Evelyn told him to take her there anyway. He shrugged. “Okay, you say so,
madame,
your money to spend.”

When they reached the Crystal Shores, it was deserted. Evelyn walked around the whole place and poked her head into all the bungalows. On the sun-soaked patio of one bungalow she found an iguana the size of a golden retriever. Just lying curled up on the cracked tile, regarding her with drowsy indifference. She hoped it was indifference. Evelyn snapped a photo with her cell phone to send Sarah, and then got the hell out of there.

One of the suites, in the main building, looked like someone had been living there. Sheets on the bed, a closet full of clothes. Evelyn picked up a knockoff Patek Philippe watch from the dresser. It was an excellent knockoff, one of the best she'd ever seen. It reminded her of somebody, or something, but she couldn't place who or what. She returned the watch to the dresser and went back outside. She didn't think Idaba had lied to her, but if Shake had been here earlier, he wasn't here now.

Evelyn decided to leave a note in case he returned. Why not? She dug around in her purse until she found a pen and the wrinkled paper sleeve of her American Airlines boarding pass. She tried to think about how to start.
Dear Shithead?

“Dear Charles,” she wrote, and then stopped.

A lady in a one-piece, dripping wet and carrying a snorkel mask, came stomping across the cracked concrete slab toward her. “Is there a phone inside?” The woman looked pissed and exhausted.

“I don't know.” Evelyn was too surprised to say anything else.

“Great,” the woman said, and stomped past.

Evelyn saw more snorkelers straggling out of the ocean. She counted nine in all. A few collapsed to the sand and just lay there. A few began to straggle up the beach, heading toward the next resort over. Evelyn couldn't begin to imagine what was going on. She went down to the beach.

“Hey,” she asked the snorkelers who had collapsed to the sand. “You guys okay?” They looked okay, just pissed and exhausted.

“They stole our boat,” one woman said.

“What? Who did?”

Before the woman could answer, Evelyn saw more figures splashing toward shore, up to their waists in water. Four big black guys and one enormously big black guy. Each guy had an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle hanging from a strap around his shoulder, and each carried a brown burlap bundle above his head, to keep the bundle from getting wet.

Evelyn took her SIG Sauer out of her purse.

“Not them,” the snorkeler on the beach said. “I don't know who they are.”

“That's okay,” Evelyn said.

The enormously big black guy was the first one to reach the beach. He saw Evelyn. He saw the gun she had pointed at him. “United States Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Evelyn said. “Keep your hands above your heads.”

He had a weirdly small and round and smooth face, with delicate little Cupid's-bow lips. Evelyn understood it now, the nickname.

“Lady.” Baby Jesus smiled at her. “Pretty lady. What is this?”

Evelyn smiled back, her best big warm smile. That seemed to surprise him. He'd probably never been outsmiled before. “One at a time,” she said, “slowly, lower your hands and drop your weapons. You first.”

After a second Baby Jesus lowered the burlap bundle to the sand. He straightened back up and moved a hand to the strap of his AR-15. If he went for his gun, if the other four guys dropped their bundles and did the same, it would be five guys with semiautomatic rifles against her one SIG Sauer. Not to mention the several gawking civilians behind her who would be mowed down when the shooting started.

“Do it now,” Evelyn said.

“Lady,” Baby Jesus said with a coy, sweet smile. “There is only you. You see this? And all of us.”

Evelyn kept smiling back. “I'll shoot you before they can draw on me.”

“But then what? What is the ending to that story?”

“I guess we'll never know,” she said. “Either one of us.”

He chuckled. His hand tightened on the strap of his rifle. “Lady,” he said. “Pretty lady. I don't believe you will shoot me.”

“Really?” Evelyn said. She turned her smile off—
boom
. Her gun stayed steady as a rock.

His smile faded. His brow knitted. He pursed his little cherub lips. Finally he shrugged the strap off his shoulder and dropped his AR-15 to the sand.

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

Chapter 18

T
erry glanced over at Meg sitting on the other bench, her knees pulled up to her chest and her chin on her knees. She hadn't said a word to him in hours. She hadn't yelled at him once.

He cleared his throat. “Well. Could be worse.”

And it could be. The jail they were in wasn't half bad, so far as jails went. One time Terry spent a week in a jail in East St. Louis, Illinois, which was like spending a week inside an asshole. This jail wasn't anything like that. It had a fresh sea breeze coming through the windows and the floor was swept clean. And they got to stay together, Terry and Meg did. A lot of jails, they put the men and the women in whole different parts.

The police station here on San Pedro didn't have any other parts. There was the front, with a couple of desks where the cops sat, and then, toward the back by a soda machine, a kind of cage made of iron bars, painted a cheerful shade of sky blue. Terry and Meg were locked inside that.

“Could be worse?” Meg said. She looked over at Terry. “That what you just said?”

Terry was happy to hear her voice again, to have her look at him. Even if he could tell she was so mad at him she could spit. “Hell, yes,” he said. “You think about it. All they got us on is a little old possession charge. For pot! Why, just think what they coulda—”

“Terry,” Meg said, sharp.

He shut up and looked over to the cop sitting at one of the desks. The cop was reading a magazine with a picture of President Obama on the front of it. Terry hoped that didn't get Meg started on President Obama. She could go on for hours, what a pussy she thought he was.

“Hey, over there!” he called to the cop. “What all they do to the people get busted down here on a little old pot charge? Ain't hardly nothing at all, is it?”

“Nobody does,” the cop said, turning a page of his Obama magazine.

“Nobody does what?”

“Ain't nobody gets busted down here for pot except a goddamn moron,” Meg said. “Ain't nobody goes up to a cop and asks him to light up his goddamn doobie.”

The cop turned another page. “Nobody till now.”

Terry didn't like it how they were teaming up against him. Not when the whole situation had been set in motion with a selfless endeavor on his part. He and Meg had just missed the chef they were going to kill, just by a whisker. He had already checked himself out of the clinic when they got there. Meg wasn't happy about that. She was steaming. So when Bob Marley down by the water asked Terry would he be interested in a little smoke, Terry thought a doobie might be just the thing to cool out Meg's nerves.

How was Terry supposed to know the cop he asked for a light was a cop? The cop just stood there watching Terry's whole transaction with Bob Marley without batting an eye. Terry figured he must be a tourist helper, the kind that wore uniforms and helped point tourists around to the various attractions. He was wearing short pants! What kind of cop wore short pants?

“I bet you a hundred dollars we don't get no more than a month or two,” Terry told Meg. “For a little old pot charge. And I been in worse jails than this one, I can tell you that.”

Meg's eyes just about set Terry's head on fire. Before she could say anything, though, the front door of the police station opened and a man walked in. He was American. Terry could tell it right away, and not just 'cause the man was white instead of black or Mexican. He had on a suit with his tie knot pulled away from his collar, and glasses that were just glass without any rims around them. He had the tallest, longest forehead Terry had ever seen in his life.

“Hi, sorry, sorry I'm late,” the man told the cop at the desk.

“I knew it,” Terry whispered to Meg. “I knew he was American.”

“Be still,” she whispered back.

The man opened his wallet and showed the cop something inside. The cop put down his magazine and walked over to the cage where Terry and Meg were sitting.

“Hi, guys,” the man said to them as the cop unlocked the cage. “Sorry I'm late. It's a Saturday night, and usually, you know, well, since it's a Saturday night and all.”

Terry looked at Meg. Meg was watching the man.

“Oh, right,” the man said. “My name's Kevin Coover? I'm with the U.S. embassy in Belmopan? I'm the vice consul. The acting vice consul?”

“Stand up, please,” the cop said.

Terry and Meg stood up. The cop put the handcuffs back on them.

“Sorry, guys,” Kevin Coover said. “About the restraints? It's kind of a new deal we have. Just till we get you folks processed out? But we'll get you processed out ASAP. And then we'll get you on your way.”

“What do you mean?” Meg asked.

“Well,” Kevin Coover said, “you're American citizens and we have a, well, it's informal, an understanding with the Belizeans. A reciprocal agreement? Kind of a new deal. If it's not a huge, you know, if it's not murder or bank robbery or whatever.” He made what Terry supposed was a machine gun with his two hands and pretended like the machine gun was kicking back on him as he fired all over the room.

“You mean to say you're gonna let us go?” Meg said.

“Well, I'll have to process you out. And that takes some time? Sorry about that. But then we'll get you on the next flight back home, courtesy of the United States government. And American Airlines? Because we have an agreement with them too.”

Terry turned to Meg in happy wonder.

“Your lucky day,” Kevin Coover said.

 

KEVIN COOVER TOOK THEM DOWN
to the ferry and they all three of them rode the last ferry of the night over to Belize City. It wasn't a long ride, and smooth enough. The whole way Coover kept saying he was sorry about the restraints, sorry they couldn't go back to their place and get their personal belongings till later, sorry about how he'd been running late to get them out of jail.

Terry said, hell, they hadn't even known somebody was running to get them out of jail, so no apology necessary.

A couple of the other passengers glanced at the handcuffs. Terry didn't mind. He wasn't embarrassed. Everybody ended up in handcuffs, one time or another in their life. It wasn't anything to be ashamed of.

After the ferry, Coover put them in the back of a dark green SUV and drove them across town to a little office building. He had to stop and get out because the gate to the parking lot of the office building was locked. “Sorry,” he said. “Everybody's gone for the weekend. Be right back.”

While he was out unlocking the gate to the parking lot, Terry turned to Meg. “How do you like that?” he whispered. “They're gonna get us on the next flight home!”

“We ain't gonna get on no next flight home,” Meg hissed back at him. “I'll tell you that right now.”

“What?” Terry was pretty sure that was exactly what Kevin Coover had told them. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we got a job to do and we're gonna do it.”

“But—”

“Don't you understand?” Meg's lips were chapped. “If we don't do this job, you think Jorge's ever gonna give us another one? You think anybody's ever gonna give us another one? We won't ever amount to shit, is what'll happen.”

Terry didn't know what to say. On the one hand Meg was right. On the other hand, though, it did seem like a hell of a lucky day, getting pulled out of jail and put on a free plane ride home.

“We gotta look for the right moment,” Meg whispered. “You hear me? If he tries to stop us, that's his own problem.”

Coover got back in the SUV and pulled into the parking lot.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

He took them up the stairs to an office on the second floor of the building. The office had hardly any furniture in it, just a couple of chairs and a big old steel filing cabinet and one computer monitor sitting on the floor. There was dust everywhere and Terry sneezed. Coover said his department was in the process of relocating to this office from another property where the rent had gone up. He didn't apologize about it, and Terry thought,
Hallelujah!

Coover asked Meg if she'd mind taking a seat over in the chair by the big filing cabinet. She looked at him a minute, then did. He unlocked one half of her handcuffs and locked that half to the big steel filing cabinet. He explained he was sorry but the rules about processing said he had to interview them separately, in different parts of the office.

“He ain't goin' nowhere without me!” Meg said, so fierce that Coover took a step backward. “We don't go nowhere without each other!”

“It's the rules,” Terry said. “Settle down, darlin'.”

“It really is,” Coover said. “And I'm sorry about the restraints, but that's the rule too. Because it's not business hours? If it was business hours, I wouldn't have to use the restraints. You could just sit here with the administrative assistant and chat. She's a hoot.”

“Let me loose!” Meg said.

Kevin Coover looked like he was about ready to die, he felt so bad about leaving Meg restrained there in the front of the office. “I'm really, really sorry,” he said. “We're just going down the hall for a minute. If you need anything at all, all you have to do is holler.”

“Terry,” Meg said, so soft all of a sudden that Terry could barely hear her.

“I'll be back in flash,” Terry told her.

“I promise,” Coover said. “You two won't be apart for long.”

He led Terry down the hallway to another office. There was just one chair in there. Coover used another set of handcuffs to lock Terry to the chair.

“No apology necessary,” Terry said, beating him to the punch, and they both laughed.

“So, Mr. Epperson,” Coover said. “What was the purpose of your visit to Belize?”

“Vacation.”

That's what Meg had told Terry to say, and not to add on anything else.

“Vacation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you and your wife weren't hired by Jorge Nolasco in Guatemala City to perform a contract killing of Mr. Harrigan Quinn?”

Terry sat there. It felt like the whole room had tipped upside down on him.

“How'd you know 'bout that?” he said before he could stop himself.

Kevin Coover took his glasses off and put them in the pocket of his suit coat.

“I don't know nothing 'bout that,” Terry said.

“Mr. Epperson,” he said. “You mind if I call you Terry?”

“All right.”

“Terry. My name's not Kevin Coover.”

“It's not?”

“You can call me Paul. Paul Babb. That's what a lot of people call me.”

“Okay.”

“And I don't work for the American consulate. I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“That's the FBI.”

“Yes. And I'm afraid you're in a lot of trouble.”

“I told you. I don't know nothing 'bout no Jorge or no contract to kill nobody.”

“We have your fingerprints on the weapon. We've got your DNA. The blood from your nose?”

“I don't know nothing 'bout that.”

Damn it. Terry remembered now, his nose dripping blood all the while he ran out of the restaurant. They could get your DNA from blood. And then they could take your DNA and figure out all sorts of things about you.

“I'm afraid that you and your wife are going to prison for a very long time,” the FBI man said.

Terry felt like he might burst into tears.

“Unless you cooperate with me, Terry. Okay?”

Terry nodded. He felt like he was so close to bursting into tears he better not open his mouth.

“Good. Now I want you to tell me what happened. That first night when you went to kill Mr. Quinn. I want you to tell me everything.”

Terry told him everything, the words rushing out so fast that a couple of times the FBI man told him to slow down, back up. He kept asking about the restaurant chef, the one that broke Terry's nose and kept him from shooting the old man. Did it seem like the restaurant chef and the old man were friends? Did it seem like maybe the restaurant chef was really there to protect the old man?

“I think he was, come to think of it,” Terry said. Watching the FBI man's eyes, wanting to make him happy. “Yes, sir. I know that for a fact! And I'll tell you another thing. That chef ain't no run-of-the-mill chef. He works for some people in California. Some Mafia people.” Terry tried to remember what kind of Mafia people. Meg had told him—Germans?—but now he couldn't remember.

The FBI man was watching Terry real close.

“Armenians?” he said.

“That's it!” Terry said. “That's exactly it!”

“Okay,” the FBI man said. He clapped his hands together once and then held them like that, clapped together. “I think we're done here.”