Gutshot Straight with Bonus Excerpt (10 page)

V
ader’s Road Runner could definitely do just that—run roads, and with panache. Shake couldn’t resist taking an extra lap around downtown, the perfectly tuned 426 Hemi growling sweet nothings back to him every time he goosed the gas. Around 10:00
P.M.
he pulled up to the Clark County Bureau of Records. He parked, paused to admire the Road Runner from a couple of different angles, then went inside.

The lobby was crowded with applicants for marriage licenses. Several of the men wore cheap tuxedos, and many of the women were in full, flowing, white-trash bridal regalia. Acres of white polyester lace, rhinestone tiaras, six-foot trains the brides-to-be had to keep bunched under their arms so they wouldn’t get stepped on. Just about everyone looked drunk.

Shake got in line behind a cheap tuxedo and a rhinestone tiara. When the female clerk informed the couple that the Nevada legislature had recently instituted a proof-of-identity requirement for marriage licenses, they didn’t take the news well.

“That ain’t right!” the man said.

“Is bullshit!” the woman said. She held her bunched-up train in one hand and a yard-long plastic tube filled with beer in the other. She was drunker than her fiancé, though not by much.

“I wish it wasn’t the case,” the clerk behind the window said, sighing. She was cute—why he’d picked her window—but had the glazed look of a long-stretch CO.

“Whose bullshit is this?” the man demanded.

“The Nevada legislature,” the clerk said.

“Is bullshit!”

Shake took a step forward. “Excuse me,” he said to the man. “But there’s no proof-of-identity requirement in Reno.”

The man wheeled around, too far, wheeled part of the way back to face Shake.

“Serious?”

“Serious.”

“Reno.” He processed this new information while his bride-to-be slammed back half a foot of her beer. “How far?”

“Reno? Half an hour, maybe. Straight up Highway 95. Can’t miss it.”

A cagey look spread across the groom-to-be’s face. He wheeled back to the clerk, smacked the counter with his palm, gave her a triumphant glare.

“Ha!” he said.

He marched toward the exit. His bride-to-be hurried after him, swishing (the train) and sloshing (the beer).

Shake stepped up to the counter. The clerk smiled at him.

“There’s a proof-of-identity requirement in Reno, too, you know.”

“Is there?”

“And it’s a lot more than half an hour from here.”

“Live and learn,” Shake said.

“Thank you for that,” she said.

She had an interesting tattoo on the inside of her forearm, a frog. Shake imagined that every guy who hit on her said how much he liked that tattoo. So instead he said, “I’ll bet getting that tattoo on your arm was the worst mistake of your life.”

“What?” The clerk laughed. She’d liked him before, but now—more important—she was also intrigued. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I bet every guy who hits on you tells you how much he likes that tattoo.”

She watched him. Tried to figure out his angle. Discovered it was more fun trying to figure out his angle than it was dealing with drunk people demanding marriage licenses.

“So you don’t like my tattoo?” she asked. “Or do you?”

“I’ll answer that question when we’ve concluded our official business. I don’t want our personal relationship to compromise your professional judgment. Deal?”

She laughed again. “Deal.”

“Exotic dancers in Las Vegas,” he said. “They need a sheriff’s card to work, right?”

“That’s right.”

“And you have a record of the information on those cards?”

“Yes, but—”

“You’re not allowed to give out the information.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She’s my little sister. She called last night, crying, and now she’s not answering her cell phone.”

“I really can’t.”

“She has this new boyfriend who likes to slap her around. I drove down from San Francisco, and now I don’t know what to do.”

The clerk hesitated. Shake felt bad. He was a pretty good liar, but he didn’t like lying to nice people and tried to avoid it unless absolutely necessary. He’d felt relieved when Vader’s sister-in-law had seen right through his bullshit.

No, he revised with a slight smile, he really wasn’t even a pretty good liar, not compared to Gina.

“Never mind,” Shake said. “I shouldn’t have even asked.”

“You’re her brother?” the clerk said. “You’re not some kind of a stalker customer from the club where she works?”

“I am most definitely not anything like that. I promise.”

She studied him. She seemed to sense that was the truth, which it was.

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Gina Clement.”

The clerk went to the back. After a minute she returned with a slip of paper. She handed it to Shake.

“If I’m still in town tomorrow night,” Shake told her, “I’m gonna come back here and ask you to dinner.”

That was the truth, too.

“Oh, yeah?” she said, smiling. Then, as he turned and headed toward the door, “Hey.”

“What?”

“You never told me if you liked my tattoo or not.”

“Probably not as much as I’m gonna like your other one.”

She blushed. Shake winked and pushed out through the door.

THE APARTMENT COMPLEX WAS A SERIES
of featureless faux-adobe concrete boxes painted the shade of Pepto-Bismol. The sign said
MOUNTAIN PALMS
, but there were no palms in sight and the closest mountains weren’t close.

Shake climbed the metal stairs to the second floor of Building B and knocked on the door to 201.

The peephole blinked light to dark. Then, after a long moment, back to light. A Latina babe in a bathrobe opened the door, chain length, and peered out at Shake.

“Hi,” she said. She flashed ferocious dark eyes at him and rattled an aerosol can at him. “Do you want me to pepper-spray you now or wait till after you tell me what the
fuck
you want knocking on my door at eleven o’clock at night?”

“After,” Shake said. “Definitely.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I’m looking for a friend of mine. Gina Clement.”

The fierceness in the Latina babe’s dark eyes wavered.

“She gave you this address?”

“Sort of.”

The Latina babe shut the door. Shake heard the chain slide back. The door opened again, all the way this time. The Latina babe looked like she might be about to cry.

“I can’t believe she gave you this address.”

“My name’s Shake.”

“Lucy.”

“It was on her work card. She doesn’t live here?”

The fierceness in her dark eyes flared again. “
No
, she doesn’t live here.
No
, I haven’t seen her.
Yes
, I’m gonna kill her if I see her, so if that’s why you’re here, get in line.”

“You want to take it easy with that pepper spray, Lucy?”

“Oh.” She slipped the can, which she’d been waving around without much regard to safety, into the pocket of her bathrobe.

“Any idea where she might be?”

“On the moon? I don’t know. She blew town, like, a week ago.”

“She’s back,” Shake said.

“I doubt that.” Lucy looked Shake over. “So are you her latest?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘latest.’ ”

Lucy snorted. She seemed to understand what he meant.

“There is this one place she used to go,” Lucy said. “A guy she knows has a houseboat there.”

“Lake Mead?”

“I don’t know the guy’s name. Dobney something. Or maybe that’s his last name. Did she ever happen to mention me?”

“Mention you?”

“Just in passing or, you know—”

“I think so,” Shake said, to be kind. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Lake Mead, yeah, but don’t waste your time.” Suddenly Lucy looked again as if she might cry. “I’ve already been up there to look for her, like, a hundred times.”

SHAKE CROSSED THE PARKING LOT
of the Mountain Palms. To his left were the lights of the Strip, a few miles away, smoldering on the horizon. To his right the sky was darker, deeper, richer, and you could even make out a few stars.

Lake Mead.

He shook his head, slid behind the wheel of Vader’s Road Runner, and fired it up.

L
ucy watched the guy walk away. She shut her door, bolted it, reattached the chain.

“He’s kind of a hottie, isn’t he?” Gina asked. She was sprawled on the couch, eating an apple, her bare feet resting on the coffee table. On the third toe of her right foot, she still wore a silver ring Lucy had given her. The weekend trip to the beach, a few weeks after they met. Lucy had found it on the boardwalk in Venice and knew right away it was the perfect gift.

Take it off, please
, she wanted to tell Gina but didn’t.

“Who is he?” Lucy said.

“Oh, just a guy who gave me a ride back from L.A.,” Gina said.

“I’ll bet.”

“Hey, now, Loosey Screw. Don’t be jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” Lucy said. It was true. She was just stupid and pathetic. “I’m just stupid and pathetic.”

Gina stood up and bounded over and wrapped Lucy up in a big hug.

“Don’t say that! You’re not. You’re loyal and loving, which are excellent qualities in a person.”

“In a golden retriever.”

But Lucy didn’t pull away from the hug, and Gina kept squeezing. Like she could make Lucy believe anything, do anything, be anything, just through the sheer force of herself.

Which of course, Lucy knew, she could.

Gina had been only the second girl Lucy had ever slept with. Until Gina, Lucy had rarely even
thought
of other girls in that way.

Lucy closed her eyes and breathed Gina in—peach and smoke and shimmering vitality. When Lucy opened her eyes, Gina was looking over her shoulder.

Of course.

“We should make sure he’s gone,” Gina said.

Lucy sighed and went to the window. She peeked through the blinds. Down in the parking lot, the guy, Shake, was unlocking his car door. He
was
, Lucy had to admit, kind of a hottie. She watched him kick gravel at whatever predicament, thanks to Gina, he’d found himself in. Lucy knew the feeling and shook her head without realizing it. He climbed into his car and drove off.

“He’s gone.” Lucy turned away from the window. Gina already had the wig on. A jet-black number with long braids that Lucy sometimes wore when she danced, part of her Harajuku getup.

“Ah-so,” Gina said.

“You’re crazy, you know,” Lucy said. “You’re gonna get us murdered, Gina.”

Gina just smiled and examined herself in the living-room mirror. She plucked the cigarette from behind her ear and looked around for her lighter, even though Lucy had asked her a million times to “please smoke on the balcony if you’re gonna smoke.”

This was not a healthy relationship. Lucy tried to imagine how liberated she might feel if, right now—right this very instant, without a second of hesitation—she snuck her cell phone into the bathroom and sent a secret text message to Jasper. Told him the person he was looking for was sitting on the couch right here in Lucy’s apartment.

One little text message and Lucy would be finished with Gina forever.

“I’ve got to pee,” Lucy said. She felt a thrill of guilt and fear and joy and horror, even though she knew she’d never go through with it.

“Okay.”

“I’m gonna take my phone in there. Maybe I’ll send a text or two.”

“Go ahead, Loosey Cannon.”

Instead Lucy sighed and flopped down on the couch.

“I thought you had to pee,” Gina said.

“I wish you’d smoke on the balcony, if you’re gonna smoke.”

“This Shake guy is pretty good,” Gina mused. She seemed pleased. “He might actually find me someday.”

J
asper put one foot against the wall to the left of the pipe and one foot against the wall to the right of it. He wrapped his hands around the pipe and pulled. The pipe didn’t want to come loose, but after a spell it had no choice. Water sprayed everywhere, which gave Jasper an excuse to go home and change clothes before he went to see Mr. Moby.

The handcuffs were still locked tight to his wrist, too, which gave him another excuse, to stop by the trailer of a friend who wasn’t a locksmith but had all the tools.

Jasper got to the club around eight. The young bouncer with long, greasy hair in his eyes, the one all the girls thought looked like some rock star or another, was on tonight. He was always friendly and deferential, but Jasper disliked him anyway. Maybe because he was
too
friendly,
too
deferential. Jasper wasn’t sure. Maybe it was because Rock Star thought he was pretty when by any sane standard of measurement he wasn’t. Maybe it was because one time Rock Star had said to Jasper that he bet Lucy would know how to throw a party, wouldn’t she, did Jasper know what he meant, hee-hee? Jasper had just nodded. There was no sense letting someone like Rock Star know your true mind.

“Hey, Jasper!” he said, flipping his long, greasy hair around so it ended up even more in his eyes than it had started. “What’s going on, my man? How you been?”

Maybe, above all else, Jasper disliked the boy because he made Jasper picture in his imagination what Mr. Moby might have been like when he was twenty-two, when he was still whip thin and eager to get started on all the evil he’d do in his life.

Not that this pretty-boy Rock Star was ever going to be near as smart as Mr. Moby. Not many people were. Jasper supposed every living one of God’s creatures should thank Him for that.

They should probably thank Him that there weren’t more people like Jasper, too. Jasper didn’t dispute it.

“What happened to your nose, dude?”

“It ain’t broke,” Jasper said. His friend who wasn’t a locksmith also wasn’t a doctor but had all the tools for that as well. He’d looked over Jasper’s nose and pronounced it fit. “Where’s Mr. M?”

“He called and said he’d be in around midnight. He wants you to wait for him. Sounds like he’s in a bitch of a mood.”

Jasper touched his nose and swallowed two more of the white capsules. He considered how his day had started bad and then—improbably—turned even worse. And now, instead of finally reaching the apex of worseness, the day was going to drag him on behind it like roadkill caught under a car for another four long hours.

“You want a drink while you wait?” Rock Star asked him.

MR. MOBY CURSED HIM BACKWARD
and forward, upside and down, spittle flying off him and his teeth glistening with it.

Jasper weathered it impassively, his eyes fixed on a spot just to the left of Mr. Moby’s ear. He didn’t know if this sort of reaction mitigated or further enflamed Mr. Moby’s fury. Jasper was impassive by nature, though, and didn’t know how else to act. Plus, he couldn’t deny he deserved to be cursed, not after what he’d let happen.

“You know what I should do to you, you dumb fucking shine?”

Jasper didn’t want to think about what Mr. Moby would do to him. Or what Mr. Moby would hire men from Los Angeles or Chicago to do to him. These men came in on a plane and left the same day, usually.

Jasper had been one of those men originally. That’s how he’d ended up with this job.

“How the Jesus
fuck
do you let some half-wit ex-con errand boy just
walk off
with the fucking girl I’ve been looking for day and night for a fucking week? And the fucking briefcase, too? Why didn’t you give the cocksucker the keys to your car and your fucking
kidney
, too, while you were at it, you dumb motherfucking retard? Do you know how fucking humiliating this is for someone in my position, in the eyes of my business associates?”

Mr. Moby had talked to the Armenians in L.A. before Jasper’d had the chance to fill him in, which had not helped Jasper’s position at all.

Mr. Moby took a deep breath because he was out of it, then burped. He was a fat, fat man, but not the jolly kind. And not the weak kind, the ones looked like they might have a heart attack any second. You thought a man like Mr. Moby would ever let a heart attack sneak up and kill him, you were a fool.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jasper,” he said, not quite so loudly and without so much spittle, “I fucking
count
on you!”

That hurt Jasper more than all the rest.

“I’ll find them.”

“You better fucking believe you’ll find them!”

Then suddenly, just like that, Mr. Moby plopped back in his desk chair and chuckled.

“This does remind me of the old days, I gotta admit.”

Jasper knew better than to ask.

Mr. Moby sat there for a minute, rocking in his desk chair, savoring what seemed to be a pleasant memory.

“I ever tell you about Laos? Back in the sixties?”

Jasper knew better than to answer.

“Maybe I needed something like this to get my juices flowing again,” Mr. Moby said. “I was getting too soft.” He savored for another minute his pleasant memory of a less soft time in his life, then noticed Jasper and started cursing him all over again.