Whiplash River (17 page)

Chapter 26

T
he spiky-haired guy, Gina's assistant, darted after Quinn and tried to get in front of him.

Good luck with that,
Shake thought.

Shake had concluded that his reunion with Gina couldn't have gone any worse. Now, though, as Quinn wrapped her up in a big hug, he revised that assessment.

Shake realized that he'd really never, in all their time together, seen Gina at a loss for words.

“Bro!” the assistant said to Quinn.

“Quinn,” Shake said. “Let's go.”

Quinn ignored both of them. He held Gina out at arm's length and looked her over.

“What a peach! I was not properly briefed on the matter.”

Gina laughed. “I don't think I've been briefed at all.”

“Bro!”

“Quinn. We're done here.”

“Harrigan Quinn. Call me Harry.” He gave Gina a wink. “Or sweetheart. Or sugar pie, I'll answer to either of those too.”

She laughed again. “Gina Clement,” she said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Bro!” the assistant said, his face red. “I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

“It's okay, Brady,” Gina said. “I think.”

She looked at Shake. Shake shrugged. Quinn had already crossed to the couch and made himself at home.

“Who's a guy gotta sleep with around here to a get an Arnold Palmer, on the rocks?”

“First one's on the house today,” Gina said. “I'll let you off the hook just this once.”

Quinn chuckled. “I knew I was gonna like you.”

Gina nodded to the assistant. He hesitated, then headed for the door. Shake stopped him.

“Don't bother. We're not staying.”

“Sure we are,” Quinn said. “Mind your manners, Shake.”

“Yes, Shake,” Gina said. “Mind your manners.”

Jesus Christ,
Shake thought. He sat back down on the edge of the desk.

“I apologize for interrupting,” Quinn said. “I know you two have a lot to talk about. Shake filled me in, the broad strokes. I told him I'd been there myself and I have. If you're human, you've been there. I'm right, aren't I? You go there, you come back, you hope the journey makes you a better person. I think it's made Shake a better person. I feel I can say that, Gina, knowing him now like I do.”

“Quinn,” Shake said, but Gina cut him off.

“Please, Harry,” she said. “I'd love to hear more about Shake's journey.”

“When I was young man, younger even than you are now, Gina, I went abroad to pursue a certain career opportunity. Thailand, the land of smiles. And—you ever been there?—land of the most beautiful women on the planet. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Why, thank you.”

Quinn shot a twinkling glance at Shake, like,
See how it's done?
Shake rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm.

“Anyway, as I was saying, when a man gets his heart broken, the only thing he—”

“When a man gets his heart broken?” Gina said.

“Yes. When a man gets his heart broken—”

“Quinn,” Shake said.

Quinn held up his palms. “Down to business, you're absolutely right. We've got a lot of ground to cover and we'll have plenty of time to chat about life and love. Now, Shake told you about the thing in Cairo?”

Gina was looking coolly across the room at Shake. “He told me his version of it,” she said.

“Let me give you the broad strokes. I've got an inside guy in Cairo. He heads up security for a rich expat asshole who sells valuable antiquities on the black market. You can guess the rest, I bet, can't you?”

“She doesn't want in,” Shake said.

“Doesn't want in?” Quinn said. Dumbfounded by the mere notion.

“Afraid not,” Gina said.

“I don't blame you. Exciting adventures in enchanting foreign locales, a lucrative opportunity. Who needs it?”

“Not me, Harry. Not anymore.”

“Did Shake tell you about my buddy in Egypt? The inside guy. His security firm is a big deal, big-deal clients. Celebrities, sheikhs, that crowd. What I'm saying, I'm saying we'll have every possible resource at our disposal. And wait till you take a felucca ride on the Nile at dusk, listen to the call to prayer. You haven't lived yet.”

“I'll have to do that someday.”

Quinn pinched the crease of his khakis and crossed his legs. “Gina,” he said. “Let me ask you a question.”

Shake didn't know how much longer he could sit there and look at Gina. Look at her and know he couldn't have her.

He stood up. “She said she doesn't want in.”

Quinn hesitated, but then got to his feet. He took Gina's hand and kissed her knuckles.

“You're gonna let it simmer,” he said. “This Egypt thing.”

“Nope,” she said.

“Promise me. One night, just let it simmer. Give it a taste in the morning, see if the flavors have come together. Is that too much to ask? And I'm asking for your sake, not mine. I hate to see anyone rush into a decision, I've seen the consequences.”

“Harry, sweetie . . .”

“Promise me.”

She smiled. “And then you'll give me my hand back?”

He kissed her knuckles again and dropped her hand, all but a single finger he hung on to. “Good faith,” he said. “Now promise.”

“Okay,” Gina said. “I promise.”

Quinn dropped the last finger and headed for the door.

“Take your time,” he murmured to Shake on the way past. “Don't blow it.”

Don't blow it.

After Quinn left, Gina turned to Shake.

“Zowee! Where did you find him?”

“Long story. He's one long story.”

“You told him I broke
your
heart?”

“No. I didn't. I tried not to tell him anything.”

“You're lucky I believe you.”

“Gina,” Shake said. “Two years, two whole years, and there wasn't a minute I ever stopped thinking about you.”

She blew her bangs out of her eyes, a long sigh.

“I have a life, Shake. A happy life. I'm sorry if it hurts—and it's not me being mean, cross my heart—but I did, I stopped thinking about you.”

She held up her left hand. It took Shake a second to realize she was showing him a ring, a simple gold band on her ring finger, a wedding ring.

Chapter 27

G
ina was half an hour late to her lunch. She was the dog with the bone now, so no big wiggie. Gina still wasn't used to that, being the one with the money and everyone else trying to get it. Who would have ever imagined such a topsy-turvy development in her life? Gina loved it.

The waiter brought her poached salmon and a glass of sparkling water, her usual, without having to ask. Gina nibbled and listened to some Stanford professor describe the front-end hedge-fund management software he'd developed.

“Now listen to what I've done with modeling integration,” he said. “This will really blow you away.”

Gina sipped her sparkling water—from a special stream in the Dolomites, more expensive ounce for ounce than a pretty decent wine—and thought about the Gina she used to be, the Gina who seemed so far away now. That poor girl was exhausted, wasn't she? Always scheming and dreaming and making the most questionable decisions possible. It exhausted Gina, now, just to think about Gina then.

That girl would have jumped at the prospect of an exotic adventure, a lucrative score, a questionable decision. But not this girl. This Gina, here and now, would never dream of jumping at something like that. Why in the world would she? She'd promised the old guy, Harry, that she would sleep on it, but only because she could tell he'd never leave otherwise. He was a piece of work. The old Gina would have loved him.

“You're smiling,” the professor said. “Does that mean we're on the right track here?”

Gina was smiling because she could imagine the professor's reaction if he ever found out who she used to be. If she worked it casually into the conversation. As in, “Hey, yeah, you know, your front-end hedgefund management software reminds me of the time I got a job dancing in a strip club so I could rip off Dick Moby, the most dangerous man in Vegas. Funny story, remind me to tell you about it sometime.”

“We might be on the right track,” she said instead, checking her BlackBerry. Twelve messages, just since she sat down to eat. “Shoot Jason the specs and I'll talk to him about it on Monday.”

After lunch, she drove back to the office and spent the afternoon listening to pitches, listening to pitches of pitches, listening to Jason, one of her business partners, talk about modulated risk.

What's the point of risk,
she wanted to ask,
if it's modulated?

A little after six she called it a day. She stopped by the apartment to throw on a cocktail dress, then headed out to the Legion of Honor. A fund-raising gala for this or that, she couldn't remember what exactly. Jason had said she needed to make an appearance. Gina couldn't remember exactly why that was either?

She stepped into the foyer of the museum and her friend Kelsey motored straight over. Kelsey worked in PR and never walked when she could motor instead.

“Oh, my God, G,” she said. “Wait till I tell you who's here.”

Gina nabbed a glass of champagne from a waiter drifting past. Kelsey was a sweetheart, bright without being smart, from one of the wealthiest families in the Bay Area. It would blow her socks off too if she ever found out about the old Gina. Kelsey thought Gina had gone to Arizona State and pledged Kappa Kappa Whatever.

Gina downed the champagne in one shot.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I got a job dancing in a strip club so I could rip off the most dangerous man in Vegas?” she said. “His name was Dick Moby, but they called him the Whale. The Armenian mob caught me and put me in the trunk of a car.”

Kelsey squealed with laughter. “You're hilarious! Now shut up and let me tell you who's here.” And then she squealed again, this time with shock. “Oh, my God!”

“What's wrong with you?”

“That!”

Kelsey pointed to Gina's hand. Gina had forgotten about the ring. She set her glass down so she could switch the ring from her left hand back to her right one, where it belonged.

“It's not what you think,” Gina said.

“You almost gave me a heart attack! I thought you'd run off and eloped or something!”

“I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

Gina had switched the ring when the old guy had left her office. She'd hoped that Shake wouldn't spot the pass, and he had not. She'd always been quick with her hands, a quite proficient picker of pockets in her day.

“I have a life, Shake,” she'd told him. “A happy life. I'm sorry if it hurts—and it's not me being mean, cross my heart—but I did, I stopped thinking about you.”

The ring was her being mean. You betcha. She'd wanted to know what it felt like to see Shake's face go slack, to see the surprise and pain in his eyes.

It had felt good. Mostly good.

“Timmy Biancalana,” Kelsey said.

“Who? What? Why?”

“That's who's here tonight. You promised you'd let me introduce you.”

“I doubt it,” Gina said.

“Okay, but you need to meet him. You need to meet some eligible guys. You haven't been out on a date in like forever, have you?”

Kelsey didn't wait for an answer. She took Gina by the wrist and pulled her across the room, through the hum of conversation about start-ups and teardowns, the
tink-tink
of champagne flutes brought together in toast.

“Timmy, meet Gina. Gina, Timmy. Discuss.” Kelsey motored away.

Gina smiled at the guy, mop-headed but cute, in a navy pin-striped Zegna.

“Kelsey,” he said.

“Kelsey,” Gina agreed.

“So. You're the mover and shaker behind Two Birds.”

“Ta-da!”

“You funded one of the companies my firm does legal for. PNL-SimLok in Milpitas?”

“Oh, sure,” she said.

“They've had some amazing breakthroughs with wafer inspection hardware?”

“That's right.”

“Amazing stuff. And you wouldn't believe where they're going with it now.”

Gina looked at him. He seemed like a perfectly nice guy. Now was the moment to embark on a perfectly nice conversation with him. Instead, here she was thinking about the old Gina, about Shake. It infuriated her, all over again, that Shake had just bombed down on her. He'd already wrecked her life once, and now he was trying to do it again. What right did he have?

Maybe, Gina considered, what she needed was closure. The little trick with the ring had been a nice start, but if she ever wanted to feel whole again, she needed Shake to understand how much he'd hurt her.

She realized that she'd just come up with a pretty good answer to the question she'd asked herself earlier.

Why in the world would I ever want to go to Egypt with Shake?

To teach him a lesson, that's why.

“Don't you think?” Timmy Biancalana said.

He was still talking about wafer inspection software. Was it possible that was he still talking about wafer inspection software?

“Do I seem like a perfectly nice girl to you?” Gina said.

He was surprised. “I,” he said, “well. Yes?”

Of course she wasn't going to Egypt. No matter how tempting the thought of teaching Shake a lesson might be. No matter how desperately the old Gina might have been enticed by an exotic locale, a lucrative score, a questionable decision.

Gina reached for another glass of champagne.

“Please,” she said to Timmy Biancalana. “Tell me more.”

 

THE ONE RULE FOR A
wheelman, the only rule, was to
stay cool.
No matter how hot the situation. Shake had learned that early, his first real job, when a back tire blew half a block from the check-cashing joint his partner at the time, Vincent, had just knocked over.

Stay cool.
Because panic never had an upside. Panic was a sucker bet.

With Gina, two years ago, Shake had panicked.

He'd loved everything about their life together in Santa Monica. Everything. And then one morning he woke up with aching knees and a few gray hairs and remembered that he was almost fifteen years older than her. Remembered what Gina had admitted to him soon after they first met, that she was the kind of girl who couldn't be trusted. As if—this was after she had double-crossed Dick Moby and triple-crossed the Armenians and handcuffed Shake to a pipe under a hotel sink—Shake needed a reminder.

For the year they lived together in Santa Monica, Gina had never done or said or even seemed to do or say a single thing that made Shake worry. Just the opposite. But then he woke up with those aching knees and gray hairs, feeling old, and panicked. He became convinced that she would leave him, and that it might hurt less if he left first. Or something like that. You don't think clearly when you panic—the problem with panic, the reason it's so important to
stay cool.

He wrote the note fast, and left the house fast, and took the flight to Belize because it happened to be the first one leaving from the international terminal at LAX.

Shake had read somewhere about scuba divers in the water at night who became disoriented in the dark and panicked. They thought down was up and swam the wrong way. They didn't stay cool and follow their air bubbles. They drowned.

That's what happened to Shake. He'd felt, in his panic, that he had to escape the pain that was coming, when in fact he was just swimming deeper and deeper into it.

The phone on the nightstand
bleep-bleep-bleep
ed. Shake picked it up.

“Sir,” a man said, “this is the front desk.”

“What time is it?”

“A little before midnight. Sir, I'm sorry to bother you, but there's a problem with your room. Would you mind coming down to the front desk, please?”

Shake got dressed and took the elevator downstairs. The front desk clerk just pointed across the lobby to the hotel bar and shrugged apologetically.

Shake sighed and walked over to the hotel bar. He saw Quinn sitting at a table in the back. And then he saw Gina. She was sitting next to Quinn, smiling pleasantly at Shake.

“Surprise!” Quinn beamed. “Guess who's decided she wants a piece of Egypt after all?”

Shake stayed cool. He sat down across from Gina.

“Harry here was very convincing,” Gina said. “He's quite a salesman.”

“Well,” Quinn said. He tilted his head, modest.

“We were just going over the deal points,” Gina said. “I want half, since I'm the one making the capital investment.”

“The lady has resources,” Quinn said, “that I don't have at the moment. I'm not embarrassed to admit it.”

“So the other half split three ways now,” Shake said.

“Plenty for everyone,” Quinn said. “No need to get greedy.”

“What else do you want?” Shake asked her.

“Whatever I think of, sport,” Gina said. “Whenever I think of it.”

Shake almost smiled, but he hadn't forgotten the ring. He felt it all over again, the wave of black nausea that ran over him when Gina first flashed the gold wedding band. He tried to get another look at it now. He did and he didn't want to get another look at it. Gina's left hand was under the table.

“Is that all?” he said.

“That's all,” she said. “And a pony. With ribbons in his tail.”

“This calls for a celebration,” Quinn said. “Why don't I chase down a bottle of champagne so we can toast the beginning of a long and fruitful association?”

He got up and headed to the bar. Shake stayed cool.
Follow the bubbles. Don't drown.

“What about your husband?” he said.

“What about him?”

“He won't mind? You run off to Egypt for a few days?”

She laughed. And laughed.

“ ‘He won't mind?' ” she said. “ ‘You run off to Egypt for a few days?' ”

A pretty good impression of someone trying to be casual but failing miserably.

She laughed some more.

Shake grimaced. “You're not really married.”

“Don't you feel stupid?”

Mostly he felt dizzy with relief, with joy. But also wary. Because he had no idea, not really, why she'd changed her mind about Egypt.

“Why are you doing this?” he said.

She stopped laughing.

“I don't know,” she said. She gazed off across the bar, serious now. “I don't forgive you for what you did. But I guess, when I'm honest with myself, I guess I understand it. I just think—I don't know. I'm not going to promise anything. You know? But if there's something still there, between us, maybe we should see.”

She was gazing at him now. Her hand was on the table, almost touching his but not quite.

“Maybe we should see if there's something still there,” she said.