The Devils Punchbowl - Greg Iles

Logan gives me a weary sigh. “I'’ll think about it, okay?”

“Don’t think too long. Tapes can be erased. Actually it’s probably hard drives, not tapes. I’d get on top of this fast.”

“In an ideal world.”

“The world is what we make it,” I say softly.

Logan steeples his fingers and regards me with a cold eye. “You know, when you won for mayor, I was looking for some big changes. And I think you were ready to make them. So why haven'’t things changed much?”

“I take your point. I realize you don'’t have a lot of power, Don. But you do have some. And no one can fault you for working a homicide case hard. Certainly not the average citizen. If you say you need those tapes, I'’ll back you up, and so will the people of the town.”

“The people of the town won'’t be sued for harassment by a battery of attorneys.”

“Who do you think pays if you lose a suit? Ultimately, it’s the town.”

“Okay, okay. But let me turn this around. What are

you

doing about Jessup’s death?”

“Nothing,” I say flatly.

Logan seems surprised, but after a few moments he seems to reconcile himself with the fact that I can’t or won'’t say more. “Penn,

what did Jessup steal? What’s on that USB drive he hid up his ass? If I knew that…”

I turn up my palms and give him a helpless shrug. Unless he’s a very good actor, Don Logan is an honest man. That he’s in the dark about the missing data tells me that. But his power to help me with my problem is limited. “Are your men as ignorant of that as you are?”

His eyes never leave mine. “I wish I knew.”

“Have you been threatened, Don?”

“Not in so many words. But it’s no secret that nobody wants a cash cow to stop making milk.” Logan gets up and gets himself a cup of coffee from a small carafe on a table to his left. “I thought I was being put through the ringer, but you look pretty rough, brother.”

“I feel worse than I look.”

“You’d better get some sleep.”

“I'm about to. Maybe things will be better when I wake up, huh?”

Logan sips his coffee. “I wouldn'’t count on it. If this were a hurricane, I’d say it hadn'’t even made landfall. Yet.”

I get to my feet and walk slowly toward his door. “I hope you’re wrong.”

“Any last advice?” Logan asks.

“Think hard about who you assign to this case.”

“Who would you suggest?”

“Family men with no history of financial problems or substance abuse. And none with expensive habits.”

He studies me in silence for a while. “What if they actually turn up some evidence?”

“I’d keep it to myself until I talked to the mayor.”

Logan clucks his tongue. “What about the district attorney?”

“Obviously the DA has to be informed. At some point.”

“That sounds like a dangerous game.”

“It has been from the start. We just didn't know we were playing it.”

When I step outside, Caitlin actually gets out and opens my door for me. “A new black Cadillac Escalade parked in the lot three minutes after you went inside.”

“Where is it now?”

“The second you appeared in the entryway, it took off, headed downtown.”

“It didn't pick up anybody or drop someone off?”

“No. And it had tinted windows. I couldn'’t see anything.”

Only after I'm in and seated do I notice my open backpack on the floor at my feet. My pistol is lying on the dashboard.

“Good girl.”

“Maybe it was nothing,” she says.

“Don’t think that for a second. You’re in the middle of this now. You’ve been in it ever since you wrote the story on Tim’s death.”

“Should I drive back to the office and get my car?”

“No. This van’s blown now. Let’s take the shortest path to your house. I need a bed.”

She pulls out of the lot and turns right, heading toward town through widely spaced pools of sodium-pink light. “What did Logan want?”

“He knows Tim was murdered. He knows it has something to do with the

Magnolia Queen.

Beyond that…I don'’t know.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I think he’s clean on this. But he knows something’s wrong, and that it runs deep in the town.”

“Can he help?”

“Not much, if at all.”

The smell of the leftover Greek food combined with the mess already in the van makes my stomach roll.

“What is it?” Caitlin asks anxiously.

“Just queasy. Exhaustion.”

I feel her hand close on my left knee. “Three minutes, you’ll be in my bed.”

A strange laugh comes from my lips, but it sounds like someone else’s voice. “I thought that would take a lot more work than this.”

“Oh, I'm not worried. I don'’t think you could do anything about it even if you wanted to. Certainly not up to my standard, anyway.”

I want to offer a riposte, but my synapses don'’t seem to be firing properly. My eyelids are closing when my cell phone rings. I start to ignore it, but then I see that the caller is Seamus Quinn.

“Our friends from the Emerald Isle,” I mutter. “Hello?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Quinn asks with his usual diplomacy.

“Making sure the police don'’t turn my ex-girlfriend’s son into hamburger.”

There’s a short pause. “Where are you now?”

“With my old girlfriend.”

“What girlfriend? The bookstore woman?”

“No, my

old

old girlfriend. The mouthy cunt, as your boss called her.”

Caitlin shoots me a sidelong look.

“What kind of game are you playin’, counselor?”

“No game. You told me to do what I would normally do. The chief called me about Soren Jensen, I went to deal with it. I'm still looking for your property.”

“And you haven'’t found it?”

“I covered the whole cemetery today, but I couldn'’t find anything.”

“Keep lookin’.”

On a hunch, I decide to take a gamble. “I did find Tim Jessup’s car.”

“Did you, now? Where was that?”

“Bottom of the Devil’s Punchbowl.”

“Ah. Well. That doesn’'t interest me.”

So they already knew about the car. They may even have burned it and run it into the Punchbowl. But from Quinn’s tone, I don'’t think he has Carl Sims on his radar. “Does your company own a black Escalade?”

“Don’t know what you’re blathering on about,” Quinn says. “But stick her once for me tonight, eh? She’s a hot piece.”

Caitlin obviously heard this last remark. She’s acting like she can’t believe the guy would say that, but she knows better, and she leans close to hear the rest of the conversation.

“I'’ll keep that in mind. I'm sleeping at her place. Tell your goons to keep their distance.”

“High and mighty,” Quinn says. “Know her type well. They want it nasty. She looks a bit young for you. Give me a ring if you run out of steam.”

Quinn is laughing as I click END.

“Was that Sands?” Caitlin asks.

“No, his security chief. He’s a thug. A monster, probably. Sands talks like the Duke of York. At least until he takes off the mask. Then he sounds like what you just heard.”

“Charming.”

“Don’t try to find out for yourself.” I slide lower in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position. “These guys are predators, you can’t forget that. Tim told me that the first night, and I didn't let it sink in. Don’t make the same mistake.”

Caitlin nods thoughtfully in the dark, but her eyes are bright. As it does most people, evil fascinates her. Like me, Caitlin has probed the dark side of human nature through her work. But unlike me, she has not become exhausted by the effort. As I descend into sleep, I recall a line of Wilde’s that she once quoted to me:

The burnt child loves the fire.

CHAPTER

26

It doesn’'t take long for a hooker to latch onto Walt. He’s playing the craps table in high style, like an oilman with money to burn, and nothing draws girls like burning money. This one’s young, and that fits his role: sugar daddy on the prowl. She’s a bottle blonde with skinny legs, a hard face, and hard little tits, but she’s not more than thirty, so she’ll do. Walt likes dark-haired women, but he’s somebody else tonight—J. B. Gilchrist from Dallas, Texas—and picking a wrong woman makes it easier to remember that.

Walt’s working the

Zephyr,

not the

Magnolia Queen.

In a market this small, word of a big player will spread plenty fast. His goal is to lose enough of Penn’s money that by tomorrow night, every pit boss and dealer in town will know his name.

The crowd on the

Zephyr

is mostly black, which he’d expected when a guy on the shuttle bus joked about him going to the

African Queen.

The majority of this clientele clearly doesn’'t have money to lose, but here they are, dropping their dollars into the slots and looking longingly at the table games. He feels guilty sliding the brightly colored chips across the felt under their watchful eyes, but he’s got a job to do, and there’s no point worrying about something he can’t change.

It takes about fifteen minutes—and a good deal more of Penn’s cash—before the table hits a hot streak. Walt’s not the roller when it happens, but that hardly matters: Craps is the most social of casino games, with the players rooting for each other, united against the house. By laying down hundreds per bet, Walt’s become the de facto “table captain,” and all eyes are on him. If he wins, everybody wins, at least in spirit.

By the time the roller has hit his fifth point, Walt’s up by thousands, and the hooker’s snuggling closer on his arm. His fellow players’ eyes go from Walt, as he makes his bet, to the tumbling dice, then back to Walt, who’s increased his line bets to a thousand dollars.

A couple of men in Western-style suede sport coats have joined the swelling crowd waiting for an opening at the table. Well-heeled rednecks by the look of them—one older with gray whiskers, the other a Tim McGraw look-alike in his midthirties—father and son, maybe. If they stick around, Walt might ask them about finding some action. They’ll ogle the blonde and say, “It looks like you already found some, partner,” but he’ll shake his head and draw them in close and ask about some real sport. They might act confused, play it carefully, but the young guy’s wearing an Angola Prison Rodeo belt buckle, so he can’t be from too far away. Walt suspects that he, at least, knows the score.

“Five, five,” the stickman calls out. “No-field five.” He pushes the dice to the red-hot roller. “High, low, yo, anyone?”

The stickman’s pushing for prop bets, bad-odds wagers that only amateurs make.

“Thousand on the yo.” The crowd hushes, watching as Walt tosses out two purple chips. “One for me and one for the boys.”

“Thank you very much for the action, sir,” says the stickman loudly, placing the chips in the middle of the table, one representing Walt’s bet, the other $1,000 bet for the stickman, the pit boss, and the two dealers running the table. Now Walt has the employees’ attention as well. If his bet hits, the dealers will win a tip that comes only a handful of times in a career.

“Whew,” breathes the girl on his arm. “That'’s a lot.”

Walt grins like he’s lapping it up. “That'’s the secret of this game, hon. Soon as you get a good run going, you ride it. Ride her till she bucks ya and go home happy.” He leans down to her ear and adds, “And ride some more.”

“You go, Dad,” says the rodeo fan. “Show ’em how it’s done!”

Walt gives the kid a hard look, then softens it into a smile, hugging the girl to his side. “This’un here’s the only one who gets to call me daddy.”

There’s general laughter from the crowd, and the roller tosses the dice.

The crowd whoops as the dice come up eleven.

“Yo eleven,” says the stickman, barely controlling the excitement in his voice. “Pay the line, and pay the gentleman. Thank you again, sir.”

Walt gives a casual nod as the dealers collect a total of $16,000 in tip money to divide as they see fit.

He lays down the same bet again, to sincere thank-yous from the crew. Predictably, it misses. And just as predictably, the roller’s hot run ends a few throws later. Gradually, the dice make their way around the table. When they reach Walt, he gestures graciously to the hooker that she should take his roll. She squeals and squeezes his arm, then takes a gulp from her rum and coke. He drops the dice into her moist palm, tells her to blow on them before she rolls. Her eyes light up like a penny slot machine. She blows on the dice, then flings them down the table like a kid skipping rocks on a pond.

“Seven,” says the stickman. “Winner, seven. Pay the line, take the don'’t.”

The crowd roars as usual, and Walt uses its attention like a spotlight. “Let’s do another bet for the boys,” he says generously. “You can win it for them, right, honey?”

The hooker giggles wildly as the stickman places another thousand-dollar “yo” bet for himself and his coworkers.

The hooker rolls the dice, establishing a point of four, but losing the prop bet. The crowd sighs.

“Sorry, boys,” Walt says. “Let’s hit that point. What do you say, Fancy?”

“It’s Nancy,” the girl says with an exaggerated pout.

Walt grins for the crowd. “I knew a Fancy in New Orleans once. Or was it Dallas? Hell, I can’t remember. But I sure remember her. How ’bout you be Fancy just for tonight?”

The hooker looks uncertainly around at the attentive eyes, then down at Walt’s long rack of high-value chips. Her eyes flash, and she pumps her fist like a high school cheerleader at a pep rally.

“Fancy Nancy!” she cries. “Gimme those damn dice!”

The crowd chatters while Walt places the maximum odds bet on his four, then falls silent, waiting for the throw.

“Roll ’em, Fancy,” Walt says. “Put the magic on ’em, baby. Give us a four. Make those old bones pay, I know you know how to do that.”

The crowd laughs again, but the girl’s past caring now. Walt feels like a son of a bitch, but it takes a son of a bitch to get his rocks off watching two dogs tear each other to pieces to please men who don'’t care if they live or die, except as extensions of their own pride.