The Devils Punchbowl - Greg Iles

CHAPTER

36

Kelly and I are standing at the foot of the broad gangplank of the

Magnolia Queen,

having a last talk before we go aboard. Kelly believes Sands needs to hear directly from us that we’re disengaging from our covert war, and we need his assurance that he’s doing the same. I’'ve agreed because I want no misunderstanding on that score, especially since Kelly and Danny McDavitt are flying to Houston this afternoon to bring back Annie and my mother.

“We’re just going to talk, right?” I ask a little anxiously.

“Clear the air,” Kelly says. “Everybody can get whatever they have to say off their chests, and we can all relax a little.”

“That'’s kind of hard for me to visualize, given the past few days.”

“Nah. Come on.”

As I follow him up the broad gangplank, I say, “Did that SAS sergeant ever get back to you? About Sands’s life pre-1989? The Northern Ireland stuff?”

Kelly’s face darkens. “He did, but he didn't have anything for me. He thinks Sands probably isn’t a real name. I faxed him a photo, but that could take longer. My guy’s not on active duty anymore.”

“I just wish we knew more about this asshole.”

“We’re about to. You’re not carrying a weapon or a wire, are you?”

“No. Why?”

“They’re bound to search us. Wand us, everything.”

“I'm clean. You?”

Kelly rolls his eyes. “I asked you first.”

At the end of the gangway we pass through the main entrance, where a guard in a burgundy uniform stands greeting gamblers. Seeing us, he speaks into a collar radio. Seconds later, two men appear at our sides and lead us to an elevator hidden behind a wall partition. As we rise to the upper floor known as the hurricane deck, our escorts pat us down thoroughly, then run wands along the lengths of our bodies.

“Rub a little harder down there,” Kelly quips. “You’re giving me a chubby.”

The guy pulls back, muttering something about queers and ponytails. He’d probably be shocked to learn that this ponytailed hippie could take him apart without raising his pulse rate.

The other guy finishes Kelly’s patdown, stopping at his left forearm. Kelly pulls up the sleeve of his sweatshirt, exposing a white bandage. “Dog bite,” he says with a smile. The guy fingers the entire length of the bandage while Kelly grits his teeth. Then the man presses a remote in his pocket.

The doors open onto a carpeted corridor where the jangling sound of slots does not intrude. The men motion for us to walk past simulated gasoliers to a set of stainless-steel doors at the end of the hall.

As we reach them, the doors part as though by magic, and I catch my breath. The steamboat-Gothic motif that dominates the

Magnolia Queen

ends at the door of Jonathan Sands’s office. Behind his sleek black desk stands a solid glass wall that offers a breathtaking vista of the upstream bend of the Mississippi River, the great reddish tide flowing down out of verdant green bluffs on the east, and flat delta earth to the west. Sands sits behind his desk wearing an olive green commando sweater with patches on the elbows. He’s furnished the room with Barcelona chairs, an Eames lounger, and several other iconic pieces. The office feels as though it was ordered in a single shipment from Ultra Modern or Design Within Reach.

“Well, Mr. Kelly,” he says. “We meet at last.”

Kelly nods but says nothing.

“Where did you come from, if you don'’t mind my asking?”

“I flew in from a place called Qalat. You know where that is?”

Sands gives a surprised smile. “Actually, I do. I passed a few years there one afternoon, back in the nineties.”

“I figured maybe you had. Or somewhere like it.”

“So. Brothers-in-arms.”

“I wouldn'’t go that far.”

“Well, get on with it. Why are you here?”

“Diplomacy. To make sure something’s understood.”

“I'm listening.”

“At the request of the government, we’re going to cease and desist trying to nail your hide to the barn door.”

As Sands laughs, the doors hiss open behind us. When I glance back, I see Seamus Quinn, his face clouded with suspicion. After Quinn comes the white Bully Kutta I last saw at Sands’s house. The dog walks around us and sits calmly to the right of Sands’s desk, the piercing eyes staring out of its wrinkled face.

“That'’s already been communicated to me,” Sands says.

“From Hull, no doubt,” I say.

“We’re here to add the personal touch,” Kelly says. “I have a message of my own for you.”

Sands raises one eyebrow.

“I want you to understand that the only thing keeping you alive is this man standing here.”

Sands looks back and forth from me to Kelly.

“Penn is your old-school type guy. A gentleman and a scholar. Officer material, you might say. I'm more the direct type. A grunt. A grunt’s grunt might be more accurate. I have certain skills that your average grunt doesn’'t. When the brass sees a problem they can’t solve with a TV-guided bomb or an Abrams tank, they point guys like me at it. The paper pushers call it discretionary warfare. Doesn’t sound very bloody, does it?” Kelly smiles. “But you know the real definition, don'’t you? Mate?”

Sands’s good humor seems to be wearing thin. I doubt he’s accustomed to being challenged in his own office.

“I know what you did to his sister,” Kelly says mildly. “And he told me what you said you’d do to his little girl. I'm a big fan of that little girl. I like the way she smells—like clothes that just came out of a dryer. So when Mayor Cage asked my opinion of your recent

activities, I told him you were a one-bullet problem. Do you require a translation, Mr. Sands?”

Sands chuckles in appreciation. “You’re all balls, aren'’t you, Danny boy? Where was your grandfather from? Derry?”

“South Boston. You can play it as cool as you want, but you see me. You hear me. And I don'’t want any misunderstanding after I leave this room. We’re not your problem anymore, and you’re not ours. You guys can rob this town blind for all we care. Neither I nor the mayor is going to lift a finger to stop you. Am I right, Penn?”

“Right.”

“But,” Kelly adds, “if anything happens to my friend or his family—if his father should suffer a minor heart attack while walking through the produce section of the local Wal-Mart, say…then you, Jonathan Sands, will cease to exist. Your pal standing behind me too—but purely as an afterthought. I’d take him out just to get rid of the bog stink.”

I hear Quinn shifting his weight, but Sands stops him with a glance.

“Are we clear?” Kelly asks.

“Danny, Danny,” says Sands. “Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

“Rats,” Kelly says. “Informers. But that’s an old IRA tradition, isn’t it? That'’s why you have the kneecapping with the power drills and all that, to try to keep your mates from selling you out for a bottle of Bushmills.”

Sands’s eyes harden remarkably fast.

“You’re ratting Po to the government,” Kelly goes on, despite my trying to shut him up with a glance, “which sounds like a risky proposition to me, even if they get him. But if I were you, I’d be worried about what your lapdog behind me’s going to do if Po

doesn’'t

take the bait. Hull is going to want something to show for his years of investigation. Quinn might decide to flip on you and turn state’s evidence to keep his own ass out of jail. Yeah, I’d be thinking hard about that.”

I hear a quick sliding sound, and then Quinn is flying over Kelly, a gun in his hand. At first I think he’s pistol-whipping Kelly, but when the motion stops, Kelly is wrapped around the Irishman like a boa constrictor, his bulging calf locked across Quinn’s thighs, his forearm wrapped around Quinn’s neck. The Irishman’s spine is

bowed to the point of breaking around Kelly’s other knee. Sometime during this commotion Sands whistled and the white Bully Kutta went alert, but something makes Sands call him off. The dog stands with his forelegs braced three feet from Kelly and Quinn, his clipped ears back, his bunched muscles quivering, tongue panting in frustrated energy.

Then I see why.

Kelly’s free hand is holding something small and black against Quinn’s bulging neck. Thin and irregularly shaped, it looks like the ancient flint knives I used to see in my father’s anthropology books. Where the point should be, I see only skin; then a trail of blood begins to make its way down the flesh of Quinn’s neck. Sands is on his feet behind his desk, as ready as his dog to burst into action, but he can do nothing, short of ordering his dog to attack me.

“Pick up the gun, Penn,” Kelly says in a steady voice.

I look down. Quinn’s automatic is lying on the floor, two feet in front of me. It would be nothing to pick it up—if Sands’s dog weren’t here.

“You give that animal an attack order,” says Kelly, “Quinn will be spurting blood like the

Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

and I'’ll gut the dog before he’s dead. Pick up the gun, Penn.

Now.

”

I feel like I'm reaching into a cobra’s basket, but I bend at the waist and pick up the gun. There’s no question about who’s in charge in this room.

“Don’t point it at the dog,” Kelly says calmly. “Point it at his master.”

I turn to Sands, which brings the barrel of the pistol in line with his stomach.

“That'’s right,” says Kelly, like a man giving instructions to toddlers. “That dog could take three or four rounds from a nine mil, but Mr. Sands will have a hard time surviving one.”

Quinn suddenly jerks hard in Kelly’s grip, but Kelly tightens his arm and leg, and I hear a sound like rope being stretched taut. Quinn groans, then screams in agony.

“How do you like being on the receiving end?” Kelly asks mildly. He drags the black blade farther along Quinn’s neck, and blood begins to stream from the cut.

“You’re a dead man,” Sands says quietly.

Kelly laughs. “It takes one to know one. Open the door, Penn. Nice and slow. Just put your foot in front of it. Anyone but Penn moves, I'’ll sever Quinn’s carotid. Fair warning.”

“He’s bluffing,” gasps Quinn, still struggling against the hold.

With a strained smile, Kelly tightens his calf muscle, and Quinn screams like a heretic on the rack.

“I never bluff,” Kelly says. “You came after me with a gun. I kill you, it’s self-defense all the way. Right, Mr. Prosecutor?”

“Absolutely. Any reasonable person would have been in fear for his life.”

“Yeah, I almost shit myself from fear. Now, open the door.”

I obey, but slowly, the dog watching me all the way.

“Okay,” says Kelly, his voice strained from the effort of holding Quinn immobile, “just so we’re all clear. First, I'm going to let this piece of shit go. Then Penn and I are going to walk off this tub. And you two, after licking your wounds, are going to realize that business is business. You crossed the line when you brought Penn’s family into this, and I’'ve pointed out your mistake. Now we’re all going to go our separate ways.”

“Are we?” says Sands. “I think we have some unfinished business. You killed two of my dogs last night. I had an investment in those animals.”

“Consider it overhead. Now, I know what you’re thinking. As soon as the door closes, Quinn will say, ‘We’'ve got to kill that bastard. I'm not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for him.’ But you don'’t have to do that, you see? For two reasons. First, because I'm a man of my word. We’re backing off. And second, because it would be a waste of time. You’d never see me coming anyway.”

Sands is smiling again, but the effect is more frightening than a scowl on a normal person. “Before you go, Mr. Kelly, let me tell you something about myself. I don'’t often do that, but you'’ve earned it, so I'’ll make an exception. You ever hear of the Shankill Butchers?”

Kelly thinks for a few seconds. “Northern Ireland. They were a Prod bunch, right? Mass murderers. More gangsters than political.”

“One of the bloodiest gangs as ever stalked the streets of Belfast. Scum, really. Grabbed Catholics at random off the streets and tortured them. Cut them to ribbons, beat them to death. When they couldn'’t get Catholics, they took whatever they found. I know,

because I worked with them now and again, on legitimate UDF missions. For a while they were protected by the Brits because they occasionally topped an IRA man or two. But eventually, everyone on both sides knew something had to be done.”

“My arm’s getting tired,” Kelly says. “Can you cut to the chase?”

Sands smiles, then rubs the Bully Kutta’s head and speaks in a barely audible voice. “I killed their headman, Mr. Kelly. When two armies of killers who couldn'’t agree on a fucking thing for thirty years decided one of their own needed killing, they came to me. And I wasn'’t even twenty. Oh, it’s a famous murder. Never solved.”

“What’s your point?”

“Let’s don'’t be making threats that it’s in neither of our interests to back up. We’re both tough boys, but there’s room in the jungle for both of us. At least until Mr. Hull and I conclude our business. We have a cease-fire until then.”

“That'’s exactly what we came to get.”

“After that, we can renegotiate new terms, if you like. I hear you may be looking for work soon.” Sands gives me a pointed look. “

You

go back to worrying about city ordinances and garden clubs. However, if you should come across that data that Jessup copied, make sure it gets to me. If you find out somebody else has it, you do the same. No copies. No games. Are we clear?”

“No problem,” I say. “It’s your property anyway.”

“Right.” Sands doesn’'t move, but the sense of dismissal is unmistakable. “I think we’re done here, gentlemen.”

In a burst of motion almost as fast as the one with which he restrained Quinn, Kelly disengages from the Irishman and bounds to his feet. Then he takes the gun from me, and we back out of the office, the dog watching us like a wolf cheated of a kill.

“I'’ll leave the gun with your doorman,” Kelly says. “Have a grand day altogether, gentlemen.”

The doors hiss closed.

Outside, stepping off the far end of the gangplank, I finally take my first easy breath.

“I know that was tense,” Kelly says, “but it was necessary. Especially if I'm leaving town for a few hours to get Annie back.”

“Why did you provoke them like that?”

“Guys like that only understand one thing. Force. I wanted them to know who they'’re dealing with, and I wanted more information about Sands than we had before. I accomplished both things.”

“You did that, all right. Sands shocked me when he asked about the USB drive. I’'ve assumed they had that for a while now.”