The Devil's Punchbowl

  “Do you miss it, J.B.?” she asks softly. “Don’t you just want to put your finger in it sometimes?”

  Walt tries to laugh this off, but something sticks in his throat.

  “Everybody wants to,” she says. “You don’t never get too old for that.”

  Walt looks into her eyes, then back at the triangular shadow.

  “I’ll be around,” she says, letting the thong pop back into place. “You let me know.”

  She pulls down the clingy skirt, opens the door, and steps out of the van.

  Walt drives away without looking back. Her groping touch had repelled him, but that last, unexpected display, her frank lack of embarrassment, arced across the space between them and struck something vital. It’s enough to make him want to stop the van and pour another drink. A girl he wouldn’t have looked at twice ten years ago has pierced his armor with a simple tease. The confidence he felt on the boat has been shaken. As he climbs the long road that leads up the bluff, he wonders, Am I getting too old for this game?

  CHAPTER

  27

  After two nights without sleep, seven hours’ rest is not enough, but ten minutes in a steaming shower at least make me feel human again. Caitlin woke me from a dead sleep at 3:45 a.m. and led me to her bathroom. Now, as I’m toweling off, she comes in and sets a cup of coffee beside the lavatory. I wrap the towel around my waist, and she perches on the edge of the commode. She’s still wearing the clothes she had on at the police station.

  “Have you slept?” I ask her, taking a hand towel off the rack to dry my hair.

  “I’ve been reading about dogfighting.”

  “And?”

  “My mind is blown. I’m serious. This is a worldwide sport—if you can call it that—and it goes back centuries. It’s been outlawed almost everywhere except Japan, but it’s still thriving all over the world. Did you even Google this?”

  “I haven’t had time.”

  Caitlin shakes her head as though I’m hopeless. “I pictured, you know, a mob of hicks with twenty-dollar bills in their hands gathered around a couple of bulldogs. But this is a big-money business. There’s a whole American subculture out there. Two subcultures really: the old-timer rednecks—who specialize in breeding ‘game’ dogs and pass down all the knowledge about fighting bloodlines from the 1800s; then there’s the urban culture—the street fighters, they call them. Hip-hop generation and all that. It’s a macho thing. They fight their dogs in open streets, basements, fenced yards. But as different as the two subcultures are, they have a lot in common. They’re highly organized, they train the dogs the same way, and they expose their kids to it very young to desensitize them It’s sick.”

  “‘Game dogs,’ you said. Is that what they call fighting dogs?”

  “No, no. ‘Gameness’ is a quality that a dog has or doesn’t have. If a dog is ‘game,’ that means he’s willing to fight to the point of death, no matter how badly injured he is. Truly game dogs will keep fighting with two broken forelegs.”

  “Jesus.”

  Caitlin stands, outrage animating her. “Apparently pit bull terriers are among the most loyal dogs in the world, and it’s that loyalty that these assholes twist to create animals that will sacrifice their lives to please their masters. You should see some pictures. When they’re not fighting, these dogs live on heavy three-foot chains or on the breeding stand. That’s it. And they don’t live long. You know what happens to dogs that aren’t considered game?”

  “I can guess.”

  She nods. “They kill them. Kill them or use them for practice. ‘Practice’ means letting other dogs tear them to pieces, to give them a taste for blood. If it’s the first option, they shoot them, hang them, bash in their skulls with bats, electrocute them, run them over with trucks. Sometimes they just let them starve.”

  “It’s hard to grasp,” I say, knowing this is hardly adequate. “I need my clothes.”

  “They’re in the dryer. I’ll get them. Though I kind of like seeing you this way. It’s been a while.”

  This is what you get with a journalist like Caitlin. She can talk about horrific details in the same sentence with her desire for food or sex. I guess it’s like doctors talking about suppurating infections while they eat. After a while, they just don’t think about it.

  “Yes, it has,” I agree.

  She looks at me for a few moments more, then leaves the bathroom.

  The hook has been set. She will not let go of this story until she finds everything there is to know. This probably puts her in more danger than she was in before, but at least now she knows what she’s dealing with, and I will be close enough to protect her.

  After I dress, we take my backpack and slip out a side window, then through a neighbor’s yard to a street two blocks away. There a female reporter named Kara picks us up in her Volkswagen. She drives us to her apartment on Orleans Street, tells Caitlin to be careful, and disappears. Then Caitlin takes the wheel and follows the directions I’ve given her.

  Our destination is a hundred acres of gated land called Hedges Plantation. Just off Highway 61 South, it’s owned by Drew Elliott, my father’s first junior partner, and a friend of mine since grade school. Dad is supposed to have got the key so that he can let us onto the property at 4:30 a.m. Danny McDavitt and Kelly are flying in from Baton Rouge, and McDavitt can probably set the chopper down there without anyone being the wiser. Though Hedges is surrounded by the newest residential developments on the south side of town, it’s mostly wooded, and protected from casual observation on every side. Drew originally planned to build a home here, but now I hear he plans to build a high-end subdivision. Modern medicine in a nutshell. There are a couple of aluminum buildings on the property, and it’s one of these that I’ve chosen for our rendezvous.

  “Is that the one?” Caitlin asks, pointing to a narrow gravel road just past the entrance to an antebellum home on the right.

  “No, the next one.”

  “I see it. Okay.” She slows the car, and the wheels crunch on gravel. “The thing about dogfighting,” she says—it’s standard procedure for Caitlin to return without warning to a previous discussion—“is that when the police do bust fights, which is rarely, they always turn up evidence of other crimes. Drugs, weapons, prostitution. The gambling goes without saying.”

  “Kill your lights.”

  “What?”

  “There’s enough moonlight to get us down this road.”

  She switches off the lights but keeps talking. “I don’t mean random stuff either. The same criminals who run drugs and guns and girls love fighting dogs. It’s like the ultimate expression of the male lust for power and violence.”

  “Your Radcliffe education is showing.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “I know. That’s why I called Kelly.”

  She gives me a tight smile. “Yeah, I get it now.”

  As we roll up to a metal gate, a tall, white-haired man steps from behind some cedar trees to our right. My father. Caitlin smiles and starts to roll down her window, but Dad pulls open the gate and motions for us to drive quickly through. After we do, he locks the gate behind us and comes to the passenger door of the Volkswagen. I get out and squeeze into the back, leaving the front seat for him.

  “Well, Kate,” he says, his eyes glinting as he looks at Caitlin. “It’s sure been dull without you around.”

  “No more boredom,” she says with a smile. “I guarantee that, at the very least. Have you heard from Peggy and Annie?”

  Dad shakes his head. “We’re talking as little as possible. And only on the satellite phone.”

  “I have it with me,” I say. “We can get an update after this meeting.”

  “Good. I have a surprise for you, Son.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Walt’s here.”

  “Garrity?”

  “Right.”

  “What do you mean ‘here?’ In Natchez? Or here here?”

  “He’s in the shed now, talking to Kelly.”

  For the first time, I feel a rush of real optimism.

  “The sly son of a bitch just appeared in my house,” Dad says
. “Almost gave me a coronary. I have James Ervin watching me, and he had no idea Walt was even there.”

  James Ervin is a black cop my dad used to treat. “That’s not encouraging.”

  “Walt’s pretty slick,” Dad says.

  “Who’s Walt Garrity?” Caitlin asks.

  “A Texas Ranger,” Dad explains. “Met him in Korea, when we were still boys. He’s semiretired, but I guess once you learn to sneak past Indians and Mexicans, retired city cops aren’t much of a challenge. This will be the only night we see him. He wants to work totally apart from everyone else.”

  As well as I got to know Walt in Houston, there are many things I don’t know about him. For example, I know that my father saved Walt’s life during the Korean War, and that Walt later returned the favor, but I don’t know the circumstances of either episode. Both men belong to a generation that doesn’t talk about certain things without a compelling reason.

  “I’m sure Walt knows best,” I say. “We’ll talk about your security later.”

  Dad ignores this and motions for Caitlin to continue up the road. She gives his hand a squeeze, then begins driving us deeper into the forest.

  We’re meeting in a sixty-by-forty-foot shed of galvanized aluminum, the kind you see along highways all over the South. My father leads Caitlin and me past a ski boat on a trailer, a 1970s-vintage Corvette with a hole in its fiberglass, an orange Kubota tractor, a zero-turn lawn mower, and various other power machinery used for grounds maintenance. Near the far end of the building, sitting in folding lawn chairs beneath two camouflage-painted deer stands, are Danny McDavitt, Carl Sims, Walt Garrity, and Daniel Kelly. At first glance, they look incongruous, like an illustration of different American types: an astronaut, an NFL cornerback, a cowboy, and a surfer with a blond ponytail. I’m surprised to see Carl Sims here, but before I can ask about his descent into the Devil’s Punchbowl, Walt Garrity drawls, “Look what the cat drug in.”

  Rising from his lawn chair, Walt catches sight of Caitlin and quickly doffs his Stetson. “Ma’am. I didn’t realize we’d be having female company.”

  Kelly rises to give Caitlin a hug. They met seven years ago, when we were drawn together by the Delano Payton case. “What do we have here, Penn?” Kelly asks. “The Seven Samurai?”

  Carl Sims smiles from his chair. “Kind of looks like it, if you count the lady.”

  “Oh, she pulls her weight,” Kelly says.

  Gratitude shines in Caitlin’s eyes as she shakes hands with Carl and Danny.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I say. “Leaderless soldiers gathered to save a village.”

  “Well, I’m impressed,” Caitlin says. “An air force pilot, a marine sniper, a Texas Ranger, a Delta Force commando, and a doctor.”

  “You left out lawyer and reporter,” McDavitt points out.

  “Superfluous on any important mission, I’m sure,” she quips, getting a chuckle all around and putting everyone at ease.

  “Not these days,” Kelly says. “Even the army needs a legal department and a propaganda machine.”

  He unfolds three more chairs, and we sit in a tight circle, surrounded by chain saws and Weed Eaters and the oily smell of two-stroke engines. I look across the circle to Carl.

  “So, you made it out of the Punchbowl?”

  The sniper grins and shakes his head like a man who’s spent a week crossing a desert. “Took a while, but I finally did.”

  Danny McDavitt says, “I would have called and told you, but I figured you needed the sleep.”

  “Thank you,” says Caitlin. “He did.”

  “Did you find anything down there?” I ask.

  “Not a damn thing. Not in the car or around it. I grid-searched on my hands and knees. If there was anything down there, somebody else already got it.”

  “Do you think the car burned when it crashed, or somebody torched it and dumped it there?”

  “Somebody torched it, but I don’t think they did it until yesterday. I think somebody else made the same climb I did, either to find something or to be sure they destroyed something.”

  As I recall the USB drive Tim concealed in his own body, Dad says, “So, where do we start? Is everybody on the same page, or whatever they say these days?”

  Walt leans back and speaks from beneath the brim of his hat. His voice has been roughened by years of cigarette smoke, and the clear eyes in the weathered face give him a natural authority that the others seem ready to defer to, at least for now.

  “Mr. Kelly was just telling me some things his company has learned in the past few hours. Reckon he ought to start us off.”

  “Everybody good with that?” Kelly asks.

  The group nods as one.

  “As most of you know, I work for Blackhawk Risk Manage ment. We have a research department, and they’ve been checking out Jonathan Sands. In some ways, our research people aren’t much different from those at any other corporation. They use Google, Nexis, et cetera. But Blackhawk also employs former counterterror operators from the U.S., Britain, Israel, Germany, South Africa—basically every major military power. We also employ former government lawyers and retired line officers. So our informal network of sources is pretty good. The initial bio I got back is detailed, but it only goes back to February 1989, when Sands left the UK. Northern Ireland, to be exact. This was just after some of the worst fighting in the so-called Troubles over there. The Brits are stonewalling on exactly what Sands did before ’89, so we’ll have to be content with what we have for now.”

  “Why would they hold back?” I ask.

  Kelly shrugs. “We don’t know that yet. But he has an amazing story, and I’ve heard a few. When Sands left Northern Ireland—one step ahead of somebody, is my guess—he worked as a mercenary for almost a decade, then settled in Macao. He started in the security department of a casino owned by Edward Po. Po is a legend, a whole separate story, so let’s forget him for now. Suffice to say he’s a sixty-eight-year-old Chinese billionaire, utterly ruthless and notoriously kinky. The important thing is that Sands arrived just before Macao was returned to Chinese sovereignty. It was about to expand from a serious-gamblers-only city to a Vegas-style destination, and Sands proved a valuable asset to Po. He was white, he could pass for English, and he had the kind of skill set that rough boys develop in Northern Ireland, plus what he’d learned in the interim. That doesn’t explain his meteoric rise within Po’s organization, though. He was promoted very quickly, and within three years he was often seen with Po at various public functions in China. And not as a security officer, but a corporate officer. Sands even seemed to overtake Po’s son, whose name is Chao.”

  “What explains that?” asks my father.

  “Dogfighting,” says Kelly. “That’s what I think. It’s Po’s passion. He’s a famous breeder of Japanese Tosas, and he definitely fights them on a circuit.”

  “You think Sands picked up the taste for it there?” Carl asks.

  Kelly shakes his head. “My gut tells me Sands grew up around it. Specialized knowledge about the sport would have got him noticed by Po.”

  Caitlin says, “I found a lot online about dogfighting in England and Ireland, going back centuries.”

  Kelly nods sagely. “Let’s rewind a few years. Before Sands arrived on the scene, Edward Po had a younger brother named Yang, who died of cancer. Yang Po was a Christian, a Baptist converted by Scottish missionaries, and he ultimately married one of their daughters. Yang had a daughter named Jiao—half-caste, white blood. Very hot—in pictures, anyway.”

  “I met her,” I say. “She’s striking, all right.”

  Caitlin cuts her eyes at me. “Is she part of whatever’s going on here?”

  “I think so, yeah. That’s the vibe I got.”

  “That’s interesting,” says Kelly. “Because Yang Po had no involvement in his brother’s casinos or any other criminal activity. He was a professor—a law professor, if you can believe that. Edward, on the other hand, was neck-deep in every racket you can run in China, and that’s saying a lot. He’s since exported a lot of his operations to the U.S. and Europe, as well. What’s important for us is that Edward
Po promised his dying brother that he’d not only take care of Jiao, but shield her from the sinful lifestyle. And he tried. He sent her to Cambridge, in fact. But when Jiao returned to Macao, she naturally fell for Sands, the Irish bad boy, much as her uncle seems to have done. Po hoped she’d grow out of it, but when she didn’t, he told Sands to get out of town or else.”

  “Or else what?” asks Caitlin.

  “If Sands left China without Jiao, he’d get a nice severance package and the highest recommendation. If he stuck around or tried to take Jiao with him, they’d sever his genitals from his body, then his head from his neck.”

  Caitlin’s eyebrows arch with interest, if not surprise. “So what did he do? Jiao’s here now. Did Sands risk the reprisal and take her with him?”

  “He’s not the type to cave to threats,” I say.

  “Depends on who’s doing the threatening,” says Kelly. “The IRA thinks they know something about torture? Trust me, you have to go to Asia to learn about pain. Sands had seen Po’s organization from the inside, and he knew what would happen. He did exactly what the boss wanted. He left the girl and China. Anyone want to guess where he went?”

  “Land of opportunity?” prompts Danny McDavitt.

  “You got it. Las Vegas, to be exact. With Po’s recommendation, Sands got a top security job with the Palm Hotel group. Turned out his ambition was to own a casino himself. I think that’s what Sands was doing with the niece in Macao, trying to marry into the business. Fast-forward a few months, and enter Craig Weldon, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer who liked to hang out at the Vegas Palm. Weldon owns a sports management agency, and he had the same dream as Sands, to own a casino. The difference was, Weldon had the money to build one. That’s how Golden Parachute was born. They made a simple plan to go into secondary markets—like Mississippi—and beat out the competition. They wanted to clean up out in the sticks, then return to Vegas as conquering heroes ten years later. Not a bad plan. But while they were putting all this together, Jiao showed up in Vegas. Couldn’t stay away. True love, and all that. Now, did Sands try to send her back to China? Did he ask her to stay? We don’t know. All we do know is that Po didn’t send an unlicensed surgical team to castrate Sands. He let the Golden Parachute get completely unfurled, ready to catch wind, and then ”