Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“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.”