The Devil''s Punchbowl

  He’s been driving for nine straight hours, not counting a stop for gas. Even with the built-in head in the Roadtrek, his first instinct when he feels the need for a bathroom is to piss in a Coke bottle, something he became adept at while racing across long stretches of Texas in the late fifties. It helps to have a long Johnson—or so say the fellows who claim to have one; Walt has to make do with what God gave him, which has always proved sufficient. Not that it matters much lately. At seventy, his pride has gone soft on him. He’s heard a lot about the blue pills, but you can’t take them if you’re on heart medicine, and Walt has been taking nitrates since his bypass a decade ago. Carmelita, the Mexican woman who lives with him, has stayed on in spite of this, despite being ten years his junior. “Tirar isn’t everything,” she always says. Then she winks and adds, “And there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  At the midpoint of the bridge, it strikes Walt that the last time he crossed here his wife was the woman waiting back in Nacogdoches. Frances would have been about thirty then, shining with the glow of her second pregnancy. But even that glow faded whenever Walt chugged down the long driveway and off to work. Frances was a worrier; his fellow Rangers always said that if worry and prayer could keep you alive, Walt didn’t have a thing to worry about when the bullets started flying. Naturally, it was Frances that fate had taken too soon. Walt shoves down the memories and thinks again of Carmelita. She never worries when he leaves, though she knows some of his recent jobs have gotten hairy. Crime has changed in the past twenty-five years, even in Texas. Whatever code that once kept some sort of restraint operating among the criminal class vanished with the appearance of crack cocaine. Even so, says Carmelita, life is too short to spend it worrying, especially about old dogs like Walt, who always seem to find their way home in one piece.

  Walt takes his gaze off the city’s cathedral steeple and looks down to the foot of the bluff, where the riverboat casinos hug the shore like remora fastened to a shark’s side. Two boats north of the bridge, two to the south. Walt chuckles to himself. Mark Twain would roll over in his grave. These “boats” may have been floated down the river to reach their present locations, but they were never meant to go anywhere under their own power; they don’t even have engines. They’re floating entertainment complexes, like something from Walt Disney World. They exist for one reason: to drain money from as wide an area as possible and funnel it to the owners of the casinos, few of whom would deign to cross the borders of a state like Mississippi.

  Walt has never been a gambler by constitution. He played some poker in Korea to keep his mind off the cold, and he won enough spending money to visit the clean whores in town rather than the girls hiding in the hills by the camp, all of whom carried exotic strains of VD. He’d also done some gambling in his various undercover roles, both as a Ranger and as a special investigator for the Harris County district attorney—Penn Cage’s old boss. Winning at poker was a matter of judging men quickly and accurately, and that wasn’t much different from Rangering. Walt had found that his emotional detachment from games of chance gave him a significant edge over men who had the itch in their blood.

  As the Roadtrek rocks and bounces down off the bridge, he swings left on Canal Street and heads into downtown Natchez. He hasn’t seen Tom Cage in close to ten years, but when you’ve served with a man in combat, the passage of time means nothing. You’re brothers until death—and beyond, if there is such a thing. From what Tom said, they need to work fast, and that means Walt establishing a cover as quickly as possible. He’s traveling under one of his favorite legends—J. B. Gilchrist, a Dallas oilman—and with a little help from the Cages, he’ll embed himself in the fabric of the town, then draw the target to him as surely as honey draws a bear.

  It helps that Natchez is an oil town. There isn’t much business left here—mostly workovers being done by men trying to suck the last few barrels from wells drilled in the 1950s and capped in the 1980s—but some big fields were discovered in the old days, and the town enjoyed remarkable prosperity. Quite a few Texas outfits still have interests in the area, and with Tom arranging for a geologist friend to let it out that J. B. Gilchrist has an override on a well being drilled next week, the town’s history will firm up his cover just fine.

  Walt turns on Main Street and parks outside the lobby of the Eola Hotel. As he dismounts from the big van, he sees several trailers parked crosswise in the crowded lot, most with colorful balloons painted on their sides. At the back of the lot, a couple of crews seem to be packing suitcases into their trucks rather than unpacking, as Walt would have expected. He brought the Roadtrek because Tom had told him he wouldn’t be able to rent a hotel room during the festival weekend, but Walt senses that the introductory scene he’d planned to play in the lobby might just pay off with a room.

  The Eola is a classy hotel from a bygone era, a grand old dame that makes even Walt feel young again. He walks up to the brass cage of the desk and nods to the harried-looking desk clerk whose name tag reads BRAD.

  “Can I help you?” asks the young man, not meeting Walt’s eye.

  “J. B Gilchrist, checking in.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you have a reservation?”

  “Course I do. Check your screen there. It’s G-I-L, then the name of our Lord. You follow?”

  Brad looks perplexed. “Sir, ah I’m checking under G, but I don’t show a Gilchrist. Could the reservation be under another name?”

  “How could it be under another name?” Walt asks, upping his volume enough to turn a few heads. “I only got one name, son. Big Jim Gilchrist. And I’m tired from a damn long drive. Now, I was happy when I walked in. Why don’t you get me fixed up so I can stay happy?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid this is one of the most crowded weekends of the year, and—”

  Walt cuts the boy off with a withering glare. “Listen, son, let’s skip the formalities and get your supervisor in on this, so we can have an executive decision. Hotels always keep a couple rooms on standby for when they make mistakes, like you’re making now. You just tell your boss to release one of ’em, and everything will be fine.”

  “Mr. Gilchrist, I don’t think you understand the—”

  “Supervisor,” Walt cuts in. “Boss man, jefe—are you reading me? Call whoever you got to call to make this right.”

  Walt turns away from the desk and walks toward a long, black grand piano that looks like an idling limousine awaiting a driver. He begins hammering out “Chopsticks,” drawing curious and annoyed glances from the guests in the lobby.

  “Mr. Gilchrist?” Brad calls. “Sir?”

  Walt doesn’t stop banging the keys, but he cuts his eyes toward the desk. “I’ll bet you’ve got some good news for me.”

  “Well, actually, it turns out that we do have an unexpected checkout. If you don’t mind a room that hasn’t been made up yet?”

  Walt laughs good-naturedly. “Son, before I struck it big, I stayed in places a cockroach would have run from. You just print me out a key. I’m ready to get down to one of them boats and lose some money.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away.”

  Walt looks around and sighs expansively. “Seems like a lot going on for this town. This ain’t Pilgrimage month, is it?”

  “No, sir. It’s the Balloon Festival. The only reason this room is free is because we had a problem this morning with the flight.”

  Walt’s inner sentry goes on alert. “What kind of problem?

  “Well, someone took a shot at one of the balloons.”

  “I’ll be dogged. Kill anybody?”

  “No, sir. But they did have to crash-land the balloon. And the mayor was in it.”

  “The mayor?” Walt barks a laugh as he thinks this through. If Penn had been badly hurt, Tom would have called despite instructions not to save in dire emergency. “No kidding? He make it?”

  “He’s fine. They just had a hard landing.”

  “He must have pissed somebody off, huh? Wrote the wrong ordinance or something. I’ve known a couple mayors I wouldn’t have minded shooting.”

  “They think it was squirrel hunters.”
>
  “I’ll be dogged,” Walt says again. “Balloons flying tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir, Sunday too. But everybody’s nervous, and some of the pilots have left town. It’s a pilot’s room you’re taking tonight.”

  “Sounds like I owe the lone gunman a favor. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a room in this fine establishment.”

  The clerk slides a form toward him. “If you’ll just initial here, and here, and sign at the bottom. Please note the fine for smoking in the room.”

  “Hell, I’ll just pay you now.”

  Brad frowns. “It’s two hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Gilchrist.”

  Walt laughs like a man for whom $250 is a minute’s pay, then signs his name with a flourish. “Just pulling your chain, Brad.”

  As the clerk tries to pull back the form, Walt leans in close. “Say, what’s the action like around here?”

  Brad looks confused. “The casinos are all beneath the bluff. Our concierge can help you with anything else, but he’s busy right now.”

  Walt slides a $100 bill across the desk. “I’m talking about girls, Brad. I know where the gambling is, but that’s only half the party. I’ve been hankering for a colored girl, to tell you the truth. Been a while, you know? This seems like the right town for that. They got girls on the boats or what?”

  Obviously offended, the clerk lets his voice take on a haughty tone. “I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

  “What about cockfighting? I know you got some of that around here. That’s the kind of action I’m talking about. Blood sport.”

  Brad straightens up and squares his shoulders. “Sir, if you don’t mind, there are people waiting.”

  Walt snatches back the bill. “You’re in the wrong job, sonny. You say the concierge is busy? You got an elevator man? Somebody around a hotel has to know what’s what.”

  The clerk’s cheeks are red. “Will you be needing help with your luggage?”

  “I need a bellboy who can earn that C-note with some useful information, that’s what I need.”

  “Perhaps someone can help you on one of the boats.”

  Walt walks away muttering loudly, “I never heard of a deskman in an oil town who don’t know nothin’ ’bout the local trim.” He turns and shouts, “Send a bottle of Maker’s Mark up to my room from the bar. You know what that is, don’t you?”

  “A full bottle?”

  “Jesus, Brad, where’d they find you? I want whiskey, and if you’ve got a pretty maid who can bring it up, send her up with it.”

  There was a time when the way he’d behaved in the last five minutes wouldn’t have shocked any hotel man in the South, and not many around the country. I guess times do change, Walt thinks. But not that much. The clerk would gripe to somebody about the old asshole he’d had to deal with, then repeat what Walt had asked for, and soon enough, like ripples in the proverbial pond, word would reach the proper ear. It was simply a matter of waiting.

  Any fisherman could tell you that.

  CHAPTER

  25

  “Do you have any food in your backpack?” Caitlin asks. “I think better when I’m eating.”

  “No food, sorry.”

  She’s pacing the supply room of the Natchez Examiner, studying my handwritten transcription of the text message Chief Logan showed me, the one Tim sent to Linda Church shortly before he died. I’ve told Caitlin all I know of the case so far, but true to character, she has set aside the larger questions to focus on an immediate challenge. She’s something of a savant with puzzles, and nothing if not obsessive in all pursuits.

  “I don’t think this is a password,” she murmurs to herself. “It’s too long, plus it’s counterintuitive. Have you gone to this URL, www.thief.com?”

  “Yes. I don’t see how the site could be related to any of this. And there’s no dot-com in the text message. We’re just assuming that one follows.”

  “Right, right. What is in the backpack?”

  “A gun and a satellite phone.”

  She looks up, checking to see if I’m joking. When she sees I’m not, her gaze drops back to the message. “I suppose there could be more to the Web address, and Tim knew Linda would know what the rest of it was. But if that’s the case, we’re not going to find that without Linda. Not easily, anyway.”

  “Obviously it could be a code of some kind, but it’s not simple enough for me to break it.”

  “Maybe,” Caitlin concedes. “But the words that follow don’t appear to be random. ‘Kill mommy. Squirt too.’ But they don’t actually say that, do they? Are these letters exactly what you saw in the police station?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “And you don’t believe Tim would have tried to get rid of his wife and kid to run off with this Linda woman?”

  “No way in hell. He lived for that kid. I’ll be surprised if it turns out he was even having an affair with Linda.”

  “I won’t.”

  Caitlin makes another tight circuit of the room, then stops with her forefinger on the paper. “You know what?” she says, her voice suddenly bright with excitement.

  “What?”

  “I think this message is just what it looks like!”

  “Which is what?”

  “A text message.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just a second.” She rummages through her purse, then pulls out a small flat pen and a business card. Setting them aside, she taps at the keys of her cell phone for half a minute. Then, after scrawling on the back of the card for a few seconds, she drops the pen back in her purse and shoves the card at me with a look of triumph. “There you go. There’s your message.”

  I look down and read aloud what she’s written: “They know. Run. Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So he was warning her to get off the boat?”

  “Yep.”

  “How did you get that?”

  “The cell phone Tim used to send this message was in predictive text mode. Either he didn’t know that or he forgot, and he typed the message without looking at the screen. Otherwise he would have seen what was happening to his intended message. Was this sent from his personal phone?”

  “I don’t yes. This actually makes sense. He was being chased in his car. He couldn’t take time to try to use his extra phones, or even to look down at his own phone.”

  “A lot of girls I know can do that,” Caitlin muses. “Not so many guys.”

  “Tim probably could.”

  “But he didn’t warn her in time. Did he?”

  “I don’t think so. I think Linda Church is dead. Or worse.”

  “What’s worse?” I actually see the memory of my describing Tim’s tortured body come back to Caitlin. “Oh. Never mind.”

  I turn over the card she gave me. Zeitgeist Films HD. “Ah. Your friend.” She gives me a look like Give me a break, but I don’t. “What’s the deal with that guy? What did you tell him?”

  “He had interviews to do in New Orleans. I didn’t.”

  “Does he expect you down there?”

  “Not so much. Look, he was starting to get on my nerves, if you want to know the truth.”

  “And this little adventure gives you a good excuse to blow him off.”

  “You don’t want me to blow him off?”

  “I just need to know I can count on you being here for three or four days. Without interference.”

  “The answer is yes. And don’t forget, I’m already paying my way. I just broke your code for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Should we tell anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Then can we get out of here and get some food?”

  “Not if you want to keep talking about the case.”

  She gives me a crafty smile, says, “Give me forty seconds,” then leaves the supply room. She returns in less time than that, a set of keys with a Chrysler ring in her hand.

  “This van is a mess, but there’s no way it’s bugged. No one would even get into it without a hazmat suit. Come on. We can talk in there.”

  Walking out to the van, I scan the parking lot and the street. I don’t see anyone watching, but that doesn’t mean anything.

/>   As predicted, the van is a wreck, but I do feel more secure in it. The best way to beat surveillance—or even terrorists—is to abandon all patterns, to make random decisions. This is a good one.

  Caitlin drives us over to Franklin Street, where a recent arrival has opened a Greek fast-food joint in an old fried-chicken restaurant. He still serves fried chicken and catfish, but now the black section of town—where this restaurant is—is getting a taste of pita and souvlaki. So far, the place is still open, and it has a drive-through window.

  “So what about your high school girl?” Caitlin asks, after ordering gyro plates to go for both of us. “You two still talk?”

  “Give me a break. You know nothing happened.”

  Her eyebrows arch for a split second. “So you say. Still at Harvard?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought she might flunk out, pining away for you and all.”

  I shake my head and look away, pressing back thoughts of Mia Burke and what she might be doing tonight. She has e-mailed me several times, and I have responded twice. But I have kept her at a remove.

  “So, what are you doing about Tim’s death?” Caitlin asks. “I still haven’t heard a plan of action.”

  “Daniel Kelly’s on his way here from Afghanistan. He should be here early tomorrow morning. Like six a.m.”

  “That’s a good first step. Rambo with a blond ponytail.”

  “Sometimes that’s what you need.”

  “Oh, I know. I was kidding. What about the local cops? You don’t think you can trust Chief Logan?”

  “I think it’s more a matter of him not knowing who he can trust.”

  “Will he work Tim’s murder, at least?”

  “I don’t think it matters much, unless he finds a smoking gun. Which he won’t. Even if he did, Shad Johnson could still make it difficult to prosecute the people involved.”