The Devil''s Punchbowl

  I’m receiving yet another message from Labry when a black Jeep thunders up behind my Saab and skids to a stop. In my side mirror, I see Seamus Quinn jump out and march toward my car. The Irishman must have driven all the way over from the Magnolia Queen. I roll down my window, allowing an endless stream of curses into the car.

  “What the fuck do you want, just?” he growls. Quinn is a darkly handsome man with bad teeth and eyes that glint like polished metal.

  “I want to talk to your boss. It won’t take long.”

  Quinn plants both hands on the side of my car and glares into the backseat. “You fuckers banjaxed it, did you?”

  In my rearview mirror the two bruisers hunch in the backseat like toddlers dreading a spanking. Quinn stares in amazement as I take two Glocks from my waistband and hand them to him butt-first. “I’m already late for something, and if I don’t show, people are going to come looking.”

  The glinting eyes narrow, but Quinn finally waves me forward with a guarded smile. “I’ll follow you in, your lordship.”

  As he walks away, the gate rattles open on its electric chain, and I drive through under the watchful eye of a video camera mounted on a pole to my right. Is Sands watching from his bedroom? I wonder as my car tops a low rise, and I see the casino manager’s house for the first time. In a city famed for Greek Revival, Spanish, and Italianate mansions dating to before the Civil War, Sands has chosen the closest thing to a Miami drug lord’s palace as his residence. The linked boxes of white stucco may overlook the river, but they look like alien spacecraft that landed in the antebellum South by mistake, crushing an acre of pink azaleas when they set down.

  “Why does Sands live here?” I ask the guys in the backseat.

  “Why not?” one says sullenly.

  “There’s concrete and steel under that stucco,” says the other. “He won’t sleep in a house that won’t stop a bullet. I think it’s an Irish thing.”

  “Must be.”

  “You are sooo fucked,” the second guy says for the tenth time. “I can’t believe you’re driving into this place. If I had the keys, I’d be halfway to Mexico by now.”

  “I’m not the one who banjaxed it” is my reply. “Whatever that means.”

  Sands’s driveway is a long ellipse, and the river shows to great advantage, for the bluff is lower here than in town and steps down gently to the water. As I brake to a stop behind an Aston Martin Vanquish—an automobile beyond the reach of any honest casino manager—it occurs to me that the best way to go after these guys might be to put the IRS on their tails.

  Quinn skids to a stop behind me, jumps out, and opens my door. “Here we are, guv’nor,” he says, his voice dripping mockery. “Let’s go see the man.”

  “If you’re waitin’ on me, you’re walkin’ backwards.”

  Quinn’s eyes become slits. “Eh?”

  “Never mind.”

  The Irishman opens the back door and motions for his two thugs to get out. After some effort one of the guys manages to work his way out of the small backseat with his bound hands. Quinn regards him silently for about ten seconds. Then he takes something out of his pocket and fits it over his right hand. I catch the gleam of brass just as Quinn swings, a powerful uppercut delivered with such speed that it would have taken a stop-action camera to capture it. The snap of bone shatters whatever illusions of security I might have had.

  “That’s battery,” I say stupidly.

  Quinn gives me a grin that’s close to a leer. “You’re seeing things, Mr. Mayor. He fell down.” He extends a hand toward the mansion. “After you.”

  Jonathan Sands awaits me at his kitchen table in a white terry-cloth robe, a steaming cup of coffee and the Natchez Examiner laid out before him. The kitchen looks like an operating theater: The cabinets are white, the appliances steel, the countertops architectural concrete. The only raw touch in the room is the owner’s unshaven face. Sands’s sniper’s eyes rake left and right as he scans the Examiner, but he says nothing.

  Before entering the front door of the house, I was hand-searched, scanned by two electronic wands, and had my gun and personal cell phone taken away, along with the BlackBerrys belonging to the unfortunate men sent to watch me.

  “I’m told you have a message for me,” Sands says in his artificial accent, not lifting his eyes from the newspaper.

  Why, I wonder, does he preserve the illusion of Englishness here? “That’s right. I sent my mother and daughter away this morning. I wanted you to know that.”

  Sands sniffs, sips from the steaming cup, then looks up, his eyes devoid of everything but irritation. “That wasn’t part of our agreement.”

  We have no agreement, I think. “I realize that. But you need to understand something about me. I’ve come close to losing my daughter before, and I can’t function if I have to worry about her safety. So I took her off the board. I’m still clear about what you want. I don’t care about the money you left with me, so you might as well take it back. But I will try to locate what Tim stole from you, and I will give it back to you if I find it.”

  After a long silence Sands says, “I find that difficult to believe, Mr. Cage.”

  “Which part?”

  “That you’ll return my property to me.”

  “You shouldn’t. I might look to you like some Dudley Do-Right with a savior complex—and maybe I used to be that way, a bit—but I’m cured of that. When I first took this job, I was full of fire. My priority was to fix the school system, because all progress flows from that. It took about a year to realize that was never going to happen. I wanted to bring industrial jobs back to this town, and I lost my best chance of that when Toyota pulled out. I got your boat instead. The truth is, I’ve been thinking about stepping down for some time. My priority is my little girl, not this town. So, if you want to rake a little extra money out of the local yokels’ pockets, it’s fine by me. I’m ready to get out, and I mean out.”

  A lopsided smile has lightened Sands’s face. His teeth are perfectly straight and startlingly white; much too perfect for a working-class Irishman. He wears dentures, I realize.

  Before he can reply, a door to my left opens, and I go rigid, half-expecting the eerie white dog to enter the kitchen. Instead, a brown-skinned Asian woman of startling beauty glides into the room with grace so effortless the most cultured belle would be hard put to match it. Scarcely five feet tall, she radiates a self-possession that seems to affect Sands as profoundly as it does me. When she takes the chair nearest me and gazes up at me, her eyes take my breath away. They are aquamarine, but they shine from the perfect archetype of a Chinese face. I’m put in mind of some English smuggler who spread his seed during the Opium Wars or the Boxer Rebellion and left half-caste beauties like this one behind to suffer the fate of mixed-blood children.

  “We have not yet been introduced,” she says, and in those six words I hear the pure source of the English accent Sands mimics so well. The woman looks no more than twenty, but she must be older.

  “I’m Penn Cage.”

  She grants me the slightest of smiles. “I’ve seen your photograph in the newspaper. I am Jiao. I did not mean to interrupt. Please continue.”

  Jiao’s unexpected appearance has jarred my sense of purpose. “I’ve already said what I came to say,” I say awkwardly. “My only concern is the safety of my family.”

  Sands’s lopsided grin has returned. “And your friend? Jessup? What about him?”

  “Whatever Tim did to you, he was on his own. I’m sorry he’s dead, but I warned him not to do anything stupid. When you stick your nose in other people’s business, you get hurt sometimes.”

  “Just so,” Jiao says gravely. “In business and politics, casualties are a fact of life.”

  I incline my head toward her.

  “It’s rare for an American to understand this,” she says.

  “Oh, we understand it. We just don’t like to admit it in public.”

  Sands laughs softly, but only the memory of a smile is on his lips. With almost affected care, he takes a cigarette and a gold lighter from the deep pocket of his robe, touches a hissing jet
of butane to the tobacco, and draws deeply. An acrid scent fills the room.

  “Mr. Mayor,” he says, exhaling purplish blue smoke. “Did you know that when you line people up in front of a pit to shoot them, ninety-nine out of a hundred kneel meekly and wait for the bullet?”

  Jiao’s eyes remain on me; Sands’s bizarre question seems not to have shocked her, or even registered at all.

  Sands exhales the rest of the smoke, then leans his chair back on two legs, which creak under his weight. “Down the line walks the executioner. The shots grow louder, the bodies fall, but still the prisoners wait their turn. It’s beyond me, really, but that’s human nature. Once in a while, though, you get a man—or a woman—who won’t wait. Sometimes they run, or leap into the pit after someone they knew. But rarest of all is the man who turns and fights. He hasn’t a gun or a knife or even a club, but when he hears those shots getting closer, something in him knots tight and says, ‘By God, I’ll not go down like that,’ and he turns with his teeth bared and his nails raking and goes for the man come to kill him.” Sands grins. “I’ve cheered those bastards every time.”

  Jiao watches me with grave attention.

  “Is there a point to this story?” I ask.

  Smoke drifts up from the tip of Sands’s cigarette, and his eyes smolder with apparent fascination. “You know there is, mate. That’s you. You’re the one in a hundred. Jessup was a fool, but you’re a bloody scrapper.”

  Holding Annie’s face in my mind’s eye, I stare back with impassive eyes, as though Sands has shot far wide of the mark. “I used to be that guy,” I say with seeming reluctance. “And in the right circumstances—given something worth fighting for, like my family—I still would be. But this is about money. I have all the money I need. If I lose it, I can earn more. I already lost my wife to cancer, okay? I can’t replace my little girl.”

  Sands’s eyes narrow, but he says nothing. Jiao turns to him as though for help in understanding some obscure mammal, but Sands suddenly slaps his knee and laughs out loud. Behind me, Quinn permits himself a chuckle. Still laughing, Sands points at me as if to say, Listen to this guy. Isn’t he something?

  “Why don’t you let me in on the joke?”

  Sands is belly-laughing now, even though his laughter seems to annoy Jiao.

  “I too am confused,” she says finally.

  Sands wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his robe, then sets down the front legs of the chair, leans forward, and points a thick forefinger at me. “You can’t fool me, Cage. Go on! You’ve made a career out of sticking your nose into other people’s business. You’re coming after me. Of course you are. I should have seen it last night. You never even had a choice. It’s your nature.”

  “Is this true?” Jiao asks, her translucent eyes on me.

  “Course it is,” says Sands. “That’s why he sent his kid out of town. And his sainted mother.”

  “I told you why I did that.”

  “Bollocks! Whoever picked up your kid blew through this town like the fuckin’ Secret Service. They iced Quinn’s men like they were corner boys. If you wanted out of this town, you’d be gone. But you’re still here, aren’t you?”

  I shrug. “This is the biggest weekend of the year for the city. I have obligations.”

  Sands pulls a mocking face. “I thought you didn’t care about the job.”

  “I’m still a man of my word.”

  “My point exactly. You must have taken an oath when they swore you in. I’ll have to get a copy of that.” Sands’s levity disappears like bubbles in a tube of blood. “Who got your women out of town, Mr. Mayor? The FBI?”

  I shake my head. “No. Those men work for a private security company I’ve dealt with in the past. They have no government or law enforcement connection whatever. They’ll guard anybody for the right price. Even you.”

  Jiao rises silently and takes two steps toward me. A scent like warm caramel reaches my nostrils. “Please do not involve yourself in our business. I can see that you care about your family. It would be unfortunate for everyone if you allowed your priorities to become confused.”

  “I haven’t,” I tell her, trying to blot out the memory of Tim’s mutilated corpse. “I promise you that.”

  “We very much want our property back.”

  Yeah, I got that.

  With her feline gaze still on my face, Jiao reaches out and takes hold of my hand. Then she looks down, turns my palm up, and traces out the lines that curve across my skin. Her exotic face becomes somber, as though a cloud has passed over a terra-cotta figure. She looks over her shoulder at Sands, then back at me. I try to penetrate the blue-green portals of her eyes, but I can’t. At last she drops my hand, murmurs something softly in a foreign language, then leaves by the same door she entered through.

  “What was that about?” I ask.

  Sands raises his eyebrows. “Who knows? I’m guessing she saw something linking the two of us. Or thinks she did, anyway.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I have no idea. Nor do I give a fuck.” With his flint-hard eyes on me, the Irishman stubs out his cigarette, then lights another, drawing deeply. When he leans forward and speaks, exhaling smoke with every word, I’m reminded of how Tim characterized him in the cemetery. “Listen to me, mate. I’ve done things for kicks you wouldn’t do to save your own life. I’ve lived in places where nightmares are scenery, killed too many people to remember. Man, woman, child—it makes no difference. After you’ve gone where I have, you understand: There are no civilians. Not on this stinking planet. Now, I gave you the rules last night. You cross me, I act—immediately and irrevocably.”

  “I haven’t crossed you. I’ve only done what any father would do.”

  “Father,” Sands echoes thoughtfully. “I suppose your father could serve as de facto hostage for now. While we see where you really stand.”

  “I can live with that,” I say with apparent resignation, even as my heart begins to race. “You don’t mean as a prisoner?”

  Quinn laughs behind me.

  “No need for that,” says Sands. “We know where to find him.”

  “All right. Look—”

  “Tell him about the USB drive,” Sands says.

  “Jessup made a copy of the DVD he stole,” Quinn says. “Part of it, anyway. He made it while he was still on the boat. We need you to find that too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that last night?”

  “We didn’t know last night, did we?” Quinn says angrily. “We’ve been going over the computer logs, and we just found it. He copied nearly two gigabytes of data from the DVD drive to something attached to a USB port. It was probably a thumb drive, but we don’t know. You just keep your fucking eyes peeled.”

  Real exasperation enters my voice. “How am I supposed to find this stuff? I don’t even know what I’m looking for. How do you know he didn’t e-mail a copy of the data to a dozen people?”

  Sands shakes his head slowly. “He couldn’t access the Internet from where he was. It would have set off an alarm.”

  “Plus there’s no record of that in the logs,” Quinn says.

  “He could have done it from his car, couldn’t he? From a notebook computer.”

  “If he had done, he would have e-mailed it to you. Do you have my property, Mr. Mayor?”

  “No!”

  “Then stop worrying about things we’re not worried about.”

  “Okay. Fine. If that’s all, I have somewhere to be.”

  Sands looks at his watch. “The first race? You’ve already missed it.”

  “I should still make an appearance.”

  The Irishman makes a clucking sound with his tongue. “What you should do is start looking for my property. While everyone else is busy. I’d start in the city cemetery.”

  So Tim did make it that far last night. “Maybe I will.”

  Sands picks up the newspaper from the kitchen table. “Yer one from the Examiner wrote a story about Jessup’s death. They must have held the presses for that one.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. My Examiner is still lying beside my front porch where the paperboy threw it this morning.
/>
  “See that she sticks to the script, right? And not too loud with it. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. You might want to go back to banging her one day. If she’ll have you.”

  As I bite off a stinging reply, Sands cuts his eyes at Quinn. “Take him back to Bedford Falls, Seamus.”

  Without another look at me, Sands exits through the same door Jiao used, his muscular calves rippling beneath the hem of the robe.

  Quinn grins but says nothing while I follow him down the long, tiled hall to a stone portico, then out to my Saab.

  The two goons I brought back are nowhere to be seen. Quinn reaches into his pocket and fishes out my cell phone, then takes my gun from the small of his back and passes it to me.

  “Don’t do anything like this again, Your Honor. That was local boys watching you last night. Next time it’ll be my men.”

  “Who was that girl back there? Miss Teen China?”

  A gleam of malice lights Quinn’s dark eyes. “Maybe one day you’ll find out.”

  Ignoring his implied threat, I reach for my door handle.

  “Keep your cell phone switched on,” Quinn says. “I like to know where my friends are.”

  With my gun hanging loose in my hand, I look off toward the river, then turn back to Quinn, my eyes stripped of all affect. “You stay away from my family.”

  The Irishman’s eyes flash with challenge. “Or what?”