The Devil''s Punchbowl

  “Don’t do this,” she whispers.

  “Don’t make us,” Sands answers, then steps into her field of vision.

  The look in his eyes is terrible to behold. Yet he speaks softly, like a man talking to a child. Behind him the white dog stands alert, awaiting a command. He looks something like a giant pit bull, but his face is wrinkled, and his eyes project a sentience that makes her shiver.

  “I need to know some things, girl. And I don’t have a lot of time.”

  She nods quickly, submissively. “Can I ask a question first?”

  “One.”

  “Is Tim dead?”

  Sands inclines his head slowly.

  She doesn’t want to let them see how this hits her, but she shuts her eyes before she’s even aware of it, shuts them the way a little girl does hearing her father has been killed in a car wreck, as hers was when she was nine.

  “How did he die?”

  “That’s two questions. We’ve no time for tears, Linda. Timothy tried to bite the hand that fed him. He stole something from me, and we have to get it back. Answer up the first time. Don’t make me ask twice.”

  “I don’t think I know anything. But I’ll tell you what I do.”

  “Fucking right you will,” Quinn mutters from behind her.

  Sands raises a hand to silence him. She has never seen Sands this way. He is more focused now than he is during sex. The pupils of his eyes gleam like scorched motor oil. When he looks at her, she feels her will sapped away, like a bird being hypnotized by a snake.

  “What did Timothy tell you he was going to do tonight?”

  “He told me he was going to stop you. That’s all I know. I don’t know what he was after, exactly. I tried to talk him out of it. I knew he’d never get away with it.”

  “Fucking right,” grunts Quinn again.

  “What did he want to stop me from doing?”

  “The dogs,” she says, trying to think. “He had a thing about dogs. He went to a dogfight on the river. Remember? You must have said he could go. It upset him. Something happened to him there. The dogs and the girls. He couldn’t deal with it.”

  “The girls?” says Sands.

  Quinn laughs. “He was bending you over the aft-deck head while his wife nursed a kid at home. What did he care about some runaway whores?”

  Linda shrugs. “He did. He was like that. I don’t know.”

  “There’s more,” Sands says. “A lot more. Give us the rest.”

  “There isn’t any more. He wasn’t complicated.”

  “He had a plan. You had the TracFone hidden in your car.”

  “That was just so that he could find me afterward.”

  “You were running away together?”

  “Not like that. We had to leave for a while, he said, until it was safe. He wasn’t leaving his wife and son, though.”

  “How long was it going to be before it was safe?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. A few days. A week. He never really said. I don’t think he knew.”

  Sands’s eyes bore into hers like the light the ophthalmologist shines into your eye to see the very back of it, where the blood vessels and the nerve go in. Sands knows she’s concealing something. If Tim could see her now, he would want her to save herself, to spare herself pain. But he wouldn’t want her to sell out Penn Cage. Penn has a child, and that child needs him.

  “Where’s your cell phone?” Sands asks. “Your personal phone.”

  “I lost it.” She knows this is stupid even before she finishes speaking.

  Quinn makes a mocking sound, but Sands only sighs. “I’ve known you for seven months and I’ve never once seen you without your phone. I’ve read your text messages to Timothy. Everything from ‘I love you, my darling’ to ‘I want you to come in my mouth tonight.’ If he’d known the things you did for me the boy would’ve gone mad.”

  Hot tears streak her face. Sands is right: Tim never got pleasure from degrading her; but Sands lived for it. Worse, he knew that some sick part of her derived pleasure from it as well. Once you’d been wired that way, there was no way to short-circuit those urges and reactions. A harsh voice and a slap made her wet, like Pavlov’s dogs hearing the dinner bell. All you could do was struggle against it, try to drive it out with something else.

  “How long has Timothy been talking to Penn Cage?”

  Linda blinks but says nothing. Hope has flickered in her breast with religious power. Tim was supposed to meet Penn tonight. Either Tim missed that meeting or he delivered his evidence to Penn. Either way, she has reason to hope. If Tim missed the meeting, Penn will surely turn the town upside down to find him, starting with the Magnolia Queen. And if Tim did manage to get him the evidence, Penn, being the mayor, must certainly know by now that his friend is dead. Either way, his first instinct will be to have Sands arrested. That’s why Sands feels pressed for time. The mayor could be on his way down to the boat with a squad of police at this moment.

  You have to stay on the boat, says a voice. Tim’s voice. If they take you off this boat, you’re dead. Or lost, because no one will know where to look for you. But as long as you’re here, you can be found. Whatever they do, you have to take it—

  A stalling strategy occurs to Linda, one learned so long ago that it feels inborn. I’ll give them things in stages, she thinks. Lie first, then give up something true. Something to keep them trying. When they feel I’m cooperating, resist again, then give up the next bit. It was like negotiating with a boy in the backseat in junior high. Let him slide his hand under your shirt, but not your bra. Kiss awhile, then push his hand out and kiss some more. When he’s finally, really angry, let him push up the bra and feel them for real. Then the game begins again with the belt and the snap to your jeans.

  Only this was no backseat. And these weren’t junior high boys. Every minute of delay would be bought with pain.

  You have to take it, Tim’s voice says from within her. Whatever it is—

  Sands reaches out and lays a hand on the gleaming metal printer cart. A black rag lies on it. Sands lifts the rag like a magician beginning a trick, and her eyes track to what’s beneath it. The wires end not in EKG leads, but in shiny metal clips. Alligator clips, she remembers from a lab in high school. One of the wires is connected to a metal bolt about five inches long. Dried blood coats it.

  When Linda recognizes the blood, her mind jumps to the man on the floor with no pants, and the idea she had before—that she was in some place beyond fear—vanishes like water thrown onto a hot skillet. She’s only crossed the threshold of fear. When she first entered this room, her grief over Tim had smothered everything, even her will to live. Now she wants only to keep breathing, to avoid pain.

  Sands moves closer, leans down, pushes a strand of hair from her eye. With an intimate caress he wipes a tear from her cheek, then raises his finger to his mouth and licks it.

  “Linda, girl,” he says softly, “there are things far worse than death in this world. I’ve seen people beg to be where Tim is now. There are appetites. Appetites that fall outside the pale. Quinn is a man of such appetites. I, on the other hand, prefer the shortest path from A to B.”

  This statement confounds her.

  “In business,” he clarifies, seeing her reaction. “This machine generates electric current, in varying intensity. The clips attach to things that protrude, and the bolt is for insertion.”

  Linda’s stomach heaves.

  “Get the bucket,” Sands says.

  Quinn moves behind her; a door opens and closes. Then Quinn returns and places a bucket stinking of vomit on the floor. The stench is so primal that it cuts through every last illusion.

  They’re not going to stop until they know everything, she realizes. Maybe not even then. Because he’ll have to be sure. Linda has never known such despair. She can protect no one. They’ll find out about Penn Cage, where Julia is hiding—

  The generator hums ominously when Sands switches it on, like the motor in a dentist’s office revving up to drive a drill. At the sound, the dog tenses with arousal. Despite its remarkable discipline, it cannot remain still.
>
  “Where’s your cell phone?” Sands asks.

  “I threw it overboard.”

  “Why?”

  “Tim told me to. He said you could track us with it.”

  Sands shoots Quinn a brief glance. “What else? What was on the phone? I can get your records.”

  “I got a text message I didn’t understand.”

  “From who? Timothy?”

  She nods quickly. “I think he used a stranger’s phone. He thought that was safer.”

  “What did it say? Word for word.”

  “It wasn’t words. Not really. It didn’t make sense.”

  Sands picks up the bloody bolt on its wire. “It’s very important that you remember, Linda.”

  “It was just letters that only half made sense. I thought he meant to send it to someone else.”

  “What were they?”

  “The first word was Thief with a capital T.” Then www, like for ‘World Wide Web.’”

  Quinn takes a small pad from his pocket and begins writing on it.

  “What else?” Sands asked.

  “‘Kill mommy,’ that was next.”

  “Kill mommy?”

  “I know, it makes no sense.”

  “Was there more?”

  “The last said, ‘Squirt too,’ or something like that.”

  Sands’s eyes narrow in confusion. “Are you lying to me, Linda?”

  “No.”

  Sands sighs and nods to Quinn. Quinn steps forward and rips the blouse from her chest, his eyes flashing.

  She struggles not to void on the chair. “What do you want to know?”

  “Was that a code for something else? Who would Timmy be sending that to?”

  “I don’t know! I swear to God!”

  “Wire her up,” Quinn says. “Give her a jolt.”

  “I might, just,” said Sands, “depending on how she answers the next question.”

  Sands nods toward the corner. “Turn the boy over. Show her his face.”

  Linda’s gaze follows Quinn as he walks to the wall. He bends and pulls the bare-bottomed man over on his back. She’s afraid the face will be butchered, but it’s not. She recognizes a young Asian man she has seen a few times on the boat. Ben Li. She only knows who he is because of Tim. Li works in the security area, running the computer accounting system. On paper he’s listed as a gaming consultant, but his real job is working some sort of illegal magic on the computers that track the profits. Tim only found this out because Ben is lonely, and he uses drugs to dull the ache. Unlike the other employees, Li isn’t given monthly drug tests. In the past few weeks, Tim has become Ben’s supplier. That somehow played into Tim’s plan. Linda only learned this last week, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but it seemed important to Tim to tell her. It was as though by telling her this—information that could get him killed—Tim was proving how much he loved her, trusted her.

  “Do you know who that is?” Sands asks.

  “Ben Li.”

  “Jaysus,” whispers Quinn. “Fucking Jessup.”

  “Do you know what he does?”

  “Something with computers, that’s all I know. I only found that out a couple of days ago.”

  Quinn savagely kicks the body on the floor. Ben Li doesn’t flinch.

  “Is he dead?” Linda asks.

  “Not yet,” Sands replies. “Soon.”

  Gooseflesh rises on the back of her neck. She tries to shift, but the straps hold her fast to the chair.

  “Will you move that bucket?” she asks. “It’s making me sick.”

  “Tell me about Penn Cage.”

  “What about him?”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Quinn snaps. “Juice the cunt and get it over with. Give me five minutes with the lying sleeveen.”

  “Please,” she whimpers, searching for something human in the depths of Sands’s eyes. “Please. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Tim is dead. What’s the point in hiding anything?”

  Sands’s eyes offer her nothing. “Penn Cage.”

  “Tim went to school with him. He worshipped the guy. He called him the Eagle Scout. He said Penn was the only man he knew he could trust to do the right thing.”

  “And what did he mean by ‘the right thing’?”

  “Arrest you, I guess. Tim was going to steal something that could stop what’s been going on. He wouldn’t tell me what, and I didn’t want to know. I tried to talk him out of it, I swear. He was like a little boy. He had no idea what he was up against.”

  “Too fucking right,” says Quinn.

  “Look, I don’t care what you’re doing. You know that. I worked one of those fights, for God’s sake. Remember? That’s where you first really noticed me. But I didn’t tell a soul what happened there. I never have!”

  Sands gives her a chiding smile. “You told Timothy.”

  She closes her eyes in surrender.

  “How many times did he talk to the mayor?”

  “Just once that I know of. Last night.”

  “And he was going to meet him tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  Sands reaches out with the bloody bolt and touches its tip to the hollow of her neck. The cold metal alone seems to shock her. “One more question,” he says, dragging the bolt down and across her chest, stopping at her left nipple. “The most important one.”

  “What?”

  “Did Tim say anything about making copies of what he stole?”

  “No.”

  Sands circles her aureole with the head of the bolt. “Not so fast. Think about it, Linda. Tim was smarter than I gave him credit for. And a smart man would know that he might not make it off the boat with a disc. Did he mention hiding a copy anywhere?”

  “No. He didn’t tell me anything about a disc. He didn’t want to put me in danger.”

  Sands smiles. “But he did, didn’t he?”

  Dropping the bolt on the cart, Sands picks up one of the alligator clips. “Hold her head,” he says mildly.

  Quinn moves behind the chair and locks his forearm around her neck, cutting off all air.

  Sands forces open the clip, then attaches it to her upper lip, just beneath her nose. Quinn gives her neck a hard squeeze, then releases her head. Sands steps back and rubs his stubbled chin, regarding her without emotion.

  “Did he ever sneak a notebook computer on board?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He never talked about trying to transmit what he stole while he was on the boat?”

  “No. He didn’t tell me anything like that.”

  Sands lets his hand fall on a black dial atop the generator.

  “Don’t,” she pleads softly. “I’ve told you everything. If I ever meant anything to you, don’t do this.”

  “Your word’s not enough. I have to know if you’re holding back. Last chance to come clean.”

  She shakes her head. “Didn’t I always do what you wanted? Did I ever say no?”

  “No, you didn’t. But you lied, Linda. It’s not that you fucked him, you understand? You’re as human as the next woman. But you tried to help him take me down.”

  Her brain is transmitting a speech signal when the current hits her, scrambling every impulse in her body. She flails her head, trying to escape the blowtorch burning her lip, but it follows wherever she goes. The pain arcs up her nose to a point between her eyes, which feel as if they’ll explode if the electricity doesn’t stop.

  Then it stops.

  “Pissed herself,” Quinn observes. “Should have made her go beforehand.”

  Linda is sobbing in the chair, with relief that the pain has ended, with terror of the agony to come. The white dog shivers from the effort of remaining still.

  “Tell me the rest,” Sands says patiently. “You don’t want any more of that, do you?”

  She shakes her head hopelessly.

  “Quinn will put that clip anywhere I tell him, and he’ll run the generator all night long. He’d like nothing better.”

  “Nothing,” Quinn says simply. “I think she wants the bolt, mate.”

  A sharp ringing startles them all. It’s a telephone, Linda realizes, not a cellular, but a hard line. It must be lying on
the floor in the corner. Quinn curses and walks to the corner, then crouches to answer the phone. After speaking softly, he hangs up and says, “They want you up in the cashier’s cage.”

  Sands sniffs, then shoots his cuffs and pats the dog’s head. “Take the clip off.”

  Quinn blinks in confusion. “What?”

  “Get it off.”

  While Quinn reluctantly obeys, Sands reaches under the top shelf of the cart and brings out a paper cup.

  “Drink this,” he says, offering it to Linda.

  “What is it?”

  “Just drink it and be thankful.”

  “Will it kill me?”

  “No. It will make you sleep.”

  She sniffs the cup. The clear fluid inside smells like Sprite. “Will it hurt?”

  “No. It’s a drug called Versed. It’s like Valium. It’s what they give children before they sew them up in the casualty ward.”

  “Casualty ward?”

  “Emergency room.”

  A faint memory of a kind doctor stitching her knee long ago brings fresh tears to Linda’s eyes. For some reason, she is suddenly sure the doctor was Penn Cage’s father, Tom Cage. With a silent prayer that Penn and his daughter will be all right, she nods to Sands and opens her mouth. The fluid tastes just the way it smells. Sprite, gone half-flat. She coughs as she swallows, but it all goes down. She half believes the drink will kill her, but she’s past caring. She cannot endure the clips or the bolt.

  Sands walks forward and gives her a strange smile. “You gave a good ride, I’ll say that. One of the best. Quinn’s been itching to have a go at you from the beginning. Now he’ll get his chance, I guess.”

  She shakes her head slowly. “Don’t leave me with him. Please. Give me enough of that stuff to finish it. Please.”

  Quinn’s eyes flash behind Sands. “Now where’s the fun in that?

  Linda feels herself fading already. The hum of the generator is the brightest thing in the room.

  “Where are you taking them?” Sands asks. “The farm or the island?”

  “The farm. I’d just as soon stay out there tonight, if you’re okay with it?”

  Sands’s voice is tight. “I don’t care what you do with her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  That’s it, right there, Linda thinks. No one had ever really cared what anyone did with her. No one but Tim.