Gutshot Straight - By Lou Berney Page 0,2

up with another black con, leading him on a leather leash attached to a rhinestone-trimmed dog collar. Both of which, Shake guessed, had been procured by Tatum.

Shake, sitting on the edge of his bunk, gave Vader and his boy a polite nod. “Help you fellas?”

“This here my top punk,” Vader said. “Mad Ty.”

Shake considered. “Mad as in angry, mad as in crazy, or mad in the hip-hop sense meaning excellent?”

Mad Ty lunged on the leash and snarled. He was cranked up, or hopped up, or both.

“He gonna shut that smart-ass mouth of yours once and for all,” Vader said.

“Think he can handle the assignment?”

Vader grinned. “Either way,” he said. “You get lucky and jack Mad Ty, you go straight to the hole, stay right here at the Creek and don’t walk.”

“And you stay clean.”

“That’s right.”

“Not a bad plan,” Shake admitted. He reached under his bunk.

“Go on. Get out your shiv.”

“I don’t have a shiv, Vader. I believe in the power of the printed word.”

Shake produced what had been in the brown paper package the size and shape of a phone book:

A phone book. Clark County, Nevada, white pages, 2007–2008.

Vader was momentarily perplexed. “The fuck is that?”

Shake didn’t answer. He assumed that the question was rhetorical, though with Vader you could never be sure.

Vader finally gave a derisive snort. “You gonna hit him with that?”

Shake hefted the heavy book in his hands. Not the worst idea in the world, come to think of it. But instead he dropped the book to the floor. It landed with a boom.

“Two-eighty-one Manzanita Ranch Court,” Shake recited from memory. “Henderson, Nevada.”

Mad Ty lunged again. “Lemme kill that peckerwood! Kill!”

Vader yanked Mad Ty back. “Hold the fuck on, motherfucker.”

“Your brother and sister-in-law live at that address, right?” Shake asked pleasantly. “Couple of nieces?”

He waited for Vader to remember the conversation at the pay phone. Then he gave Vader a little help, just to speed things along.

“ ‘If you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, I want you to do it.’ What I told my buddy on the outside, remember?”

“Kill! Gonna tear off that peckerwood’s head and stick my—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Vader gave Mad Ty another yank, even harder, and the rhinestone collar bit into his throat. Mad Ty made an ack-ack sound, like he needed to cough up a fur ball, and shut the fuck up.

“You mentioned one time you had family in Henderson,” Shake said, “so I looked it up. Sure enough.”

“The fuck you think you playing at?”

“You see, V,” Shake said, “I was just paying attention. What I’ve been telling you.”

Vader’s braided muscles vibrated helpless rage. He started to open the mouth that was too big for his head that was too small for his body. Shake had to smile.

“Motherfucker,” Shake said. “Yeah, I know.”

SHAKE WOULD HAVE PREFERRED a giant iron gate rattling open, sunlight pouring down and making him squint, the wide horizon stretched out limitless before him, a swell of violins, all that. That’s how you were supposed to leave prison a free man, wasn’t it?

Instead a CO walked him out a side door, through a couple of chain-link gates, and left him in a gravel parking lot across the highway from a bus stop.

Shake didn’t complain.

Chapter 2

Shake rode a city bus into town. The next bus to L.A. didn’t leave for a few hours, so he ate lunch at a fast-food place. Where—Jesus—the scope and variety of choices on the brightly lit plastic menu board left him a little dazed. Salads, pita wraps, burritos. Saver size, supersize, brown-bag combo. He had to step away from the counter for a minute and regroup before he ordered.

He carried his tray to a table by the window. He had a little more than four hundred dollars in cash on him. He had the clothes he was wearing when he was busted and was wearing now—a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans; a striped, pale green button-down shirt; a pair of comfortable brown leather shoes he’d bought on sale at Nordstrom; a brown leather belt. He had a key to a storage unit in Inglewood, by the airport. In the storage unit were a few more clothes, his books, his tools, and another grand or so. The storage unit would be his first stop when he got back to L.A.

And then?

That was the question.

Shake decided not to tackle it till after lunch. Right now he’d just enjoy his grilled chicken pita wrap and appreciate the view of dusty green strawberry fields, no barbed wire or gun