Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“What?” asks Caitlin.

“He stole it,” says Walt. “Right?”

Kelly smiles. “Lock, stock, and barrel. This is speculation, but probably very close to what happened. Right before Sands and Weldon applied for their license, Po showed up and said, ‘Hello, Jonathan, my faithful servant. I appreciate all the legwork, but Golden Parachute Gaming is about to become a subsidiary of Po Enterprises, Ltd. Unofficially, of course.’ And what could Sands do but grin and bear it? He knew he wouldn'’t live five minutes if Po decided otherwise. So, Po’s name went into the five-percent silent-partner pool as a token investor, but in reality, the bulk of the money that funded Golden Parachute was his. Craig Weldon became a figurehead, either bought off with massive payoffs or scared into silence. Chinese gangsters are pros at both. California still has Triad-affiliated youth gangs who can enforce whatever the higher-ups want. Forget Sands and Quinn—Craig Weldon owns a lot of L.A.

real estate, and an L.A. youth gang could permanently fuck up his portfolio with one weekend’s arson and vandalism.”

I wait for Kelly to go on, but he seems to have come to the end of his story. “So Golden Parachute is actually owned by a Chinese billionaire?”

“That'’s what my employers think.”

“Does the U.S. government know that?”

“That I don'’t know.”

After digesting this, I say, “What do you think Sands’s real position is with the company? Does he even have an equity stake?”

Kelly shrugs. “Whatever his title is, he might as well be chief cook and bottle-washer. He’s under Po’s thumb. It’s like he never even left Macao.”

“Except he has the girl,” Caitlin points out. “Jiao.”

“How happy did he look to you?” Kelly asks me.

“Not very. Which brings us to the question I’'ve been asking since Tim Jessup first came to me. What the hell is Sands really doing here? And is he doing it on his own, or for Edward Po?”

“Your father told me about Jessup’s theory,” Kelly says. “Sands

could

be stealing from the city to try to make his own pile. Get a stake and haul ass, with or without the girl. But is he that stupid? The world’s not big enough to hide from Edward Po. If that’s Sands’s plan, he’s a moron.”

“He’s no moron. The opposite, in fact.”

Kelly stands and begins doing dips between two crossbars on the poles supporting the deer stand. His triceps flex like those of an Olympic gymnast. “So,” he says, “whatever game Sands is playing with his accounting, he’s doing it on orders from Po. Or at the very least, with Po’s blessing.”

“That brings us back to my original question. Why risk a gaming license worth hundreds of millions of dollars to steal a few hundred thousand, or even a few million, from a small town in Mississippi? Edward Po can’t be that stupid.”

“He’s not,” Walt Garrity says in the tone of someone who knows.

“Are you familiar with Po?” Kelly asks.

“Not by name,” says the old Ranger. “But from what you'’ve said so far, I think I’'ve got the picture. Po’s Chinese organized crime, right?”

“Right.”

“If he has U.S. operations, they’ll involve human-smuggling, prostitution, possibly drugs, and definitely money laundering.”

“Right again,” says Kelly, looking slightly surprised.

“I wondered about money laundering,” I think aloud.

“Casinos are tailor-made for it,” Walt explains. “Casinos are just banks, really, without all the pesky regulations. Wherever you have casinos, you have large-scale money laundering. The feds have passed a lot of regulations, but there’s so much money to be made, crooks can bribe casino employees to ignore them.”

Caitlin says, “Would the profit be enough to tempt someone as wealthy as Po?”

“It’s not a matter of profit,” Walt says. “Not the way you think of it. The biggest problem any criminal has is what to

do

with his profits. Take drug dealers. Cash money weighs more than the product they sell. Cash is one big pain in the ass. A guy like Edward Po needs hundreds of legitimate businesses to lay off all the cash he takes in. Maybe thousands, if he’s that big in China. Import-export firms, currency exchanges, car dealerships, you name it. But casinos make the best laundries. Casinos and online gaming sites, based offshore.”

Kelly, Carl, and Danny are looking at Walt with new respect. Apparently, they took the older man for what he appeared to be, a tired cowboy who might know his way around a horse and saddle, but not a computer.

“So Tim might have been right about Sands manipulating the casino’s gross,” I reason. “But if I understand you correctly, they could be

exaggerating

the earnings of the casino rather than underreporting.”

“They might run some dirty money through that way,” Walt says, “but they’d be paying county, state, and federal taxes on it, and that gets costly. The bulk of the operation would be handled by wiring large sums into the casino’s bank for gamblers who show up a day or a week later, then gamble for twenty minutes, and cash out their accounts in money that’s now legally clean. The casino makes false reports to the government to understate or misrepresent the wire transactions, and that’s it. It’s a dream setup. How many casinos does Golden Parachute own?”

“Five in Mississippi alone.”

Walt chuckles softly, then begins to laugh outright.

“What is it?” asks my father, who seems to recognize Walt’s tone.

“Those casinos ain’t casinos at all,” says the Ranger, his face reddening. “They’re goddamn Chinese laundries.”

Kelly’s nodding thoughtfully. “That'’s got to be it.”

“If you’re right,” I say, “then why would Sands risk such a sweet deal to do things like fight dogs and run whores?”

Caitlin leans forward and speaks with cutting clarity. “The same reason a dog licks his balls.”

There’s an awkward silence, then the men burst out laughing.

“Because he can,” Carl says.

“It may be just that simple,” Kelly reflects. “Men follow their compulsions wherever they are. I see it all the time overseas.”

My father clears his throat and says, “This Freudian analysis is all fine and good, but what are we going to

do

? My wife and granddaughter are sitting in Houston with strangers because of these bastards. I want to know how to resolve this situation—fast.”

Everyone’s looking at Kelly. He stands motionless for a time, his eyes focused on the floor at the center of our circle with Zen-like calm. He’s thirty-nine years old, with not a spare ounce of fat on him. When he moves, his body ripples with corded muscle, yet his blue eyes seem mild, even amused most of the time. He may work for a security company, but when I see him like this, all I can think is

Delta Force.

“I'm tempted to pay Sands a personal visit,” he muses, still looking at the floor. “Before we do anything else.”

“For what?” I ask.

“To lay out some ground rules. He already threatened your family. He could strike at any time. He needs to know that any move against you will result in him being wiped from the board.”

I hear a couple of audible swallows.

“I can see that,” Walt says pragmatically. “The problem with going that way is you’re unzipping your fly the minute you talk to him. If Sands sees what he’s up against, he could pull in his horns and shut down for a while. That'’s the opposite of what we want. Right?”

Kelly considers this argument, then nods with certainty. “That'’s

why we’re going to end this thing tonight. Sands and Quinn are our immediate problem. We need to get them by the balls as fast as we can. Then the inevitable will happen.”

“What’s that?” Caitlin asks.