The Devil''s Punchbowl

  Caitlin steps closer and speaks with all the sincerity she can muster. “Sir, my only concern is the safety of Linda Church. She’s a material witness to a major crime, and I believe her life is in danger.”

  “Well, what’s that got to do with us?”

  “I believe you helped Linda. I think you got Darla to carry a note from Linda to Penn Cage.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The mayor and I are very close friends.”

  Simpson snorts. “Livin’ in sin is what you mean, ain’t it?”

  “Mr. Simpson, I believe you acted as a Good Samaritan to Linda, just as your faith teaches, but I’m not sure you understand how dangerous the people who are looking for her are. If you really want to help Linda, you’ll tell me how to find her. I’ll make sure she receives around-the-clock protection.”

  Simpson stares at Caitlin for a long time, as though about to come clean. Then he says, “It’s hard to stay protected when you’re on the front page of a newspaper. I tell you what, missy. If Linda Church had asked me for help—and I’m not saying she did—I woulda got her straight outta town where no slimy sons-of-bitches could hurt her. Okay? Now, that’s all you’re gonna get from me without the sheriff.”

  Caitlin turns to Darla, but before she can speak, Simpson interposes himself between them. “You leave this girl here alone too, or I’ll have some law on you. We don’t take kindly to harassment on this side of the river, especially by the likes of you. Now, get off my lot.”

  Caitlin tries to step around Simpson to address Darla directly, but he steps in front of her and shoves her backward.

  “That’s assault,” Caitlin says quietly.

  “You don’t get your ass off my property,” Simpson snarls, his eyes blazing, “I’ll show you some battery too. Git!”

  Caitlin holds her ground for a face-saving moment, then turns and walks back to her car.

  CHAPTER

  42

  Walt Garrity blinks in surprise as he’s ushered into Jonathan Sands’s office. He expected the antebellum decor to be uniform throughout the boat, but this room could be the office of a European investment banker. The play that brought him here is simple: He’s told the pit boss that he needs to speak to the manager about a special group event, one the standard event planner won’t be able to okay without the manager’s approval, and since that’s the case, he’d rather talk directly to the man with the power to answer his questions.

  Sands looks bigger than he did walking the casino floor. He has an imposing density that Walt has seen in natural fighters, and he has a fighter’s eyes as well, always probing for vulnerability. Yet when he rises from his desk, the watchfulness recedes, and he offers his hand with a smile. Walt takes it, gauging the power in it. It’s the hand of a laborer or an infantry soldier.

  “Hello, Mr. Gilchrist,” Sands says in a cultured English accent. “It’s good to have a real gambler aboard.”

  “Aw, you must see my type all the time.”

  “You’d be surprised. The average player on a Mississippi boat loses about fifty dollars. Our average is higher, because we have a higher percentage of table games, and we draw the affluent clientele that does exist. But still. It’s good to have a real player aboard.”

  “Winning, losing, hell, it’s all the same after a while. It’s the risk that keeps you going. Just like the oil business. I hate a duster, but, goddamn, it just makes it all the sweeter when you hit that pay sand on the next one. You know?”

  “A man after my own heart,” Sands says. “A man who can live out Kipling’s famous advice about victory and defeat—to treat those two impostors as the same.”

  Walt laughs. “You Brits sure have a way with words. I’ll bet the ladies just fall over and beg for it when they hear that accent, don’t they?”

  Sands smiles and takes his seat. “What business are you in?”

  “Oil.”

  “Not too much of it left around here, is there?”

  “More than you’d think. And with the price through the roof, the numbers on old wells look a lot better than they used to. Course, you’re right. In the fifties and sixties, they found some fifty-million-barrel fields over here. Most of them are still producing. But I’m rambling. Times have changed, that’s for sure.”

  “You mentioned a group event in the future.”

  “Right. But it’s not your standard-type junket.”

  Sands smiles expansively. “I always have time for a man with an interesting proposition.”

  “I’m the same way myself. You never know what’ll come your way if you keep your ears open.”

  “What sort of event do you have in mind?”

  Walt hesitates as he once did when asking a pharmacist for a condom, but inside he’s feeling a too-long-absent thrill. He loves nothing more than facing his mark and winging it, which is what he’s always done best. If you look a criminal in the eye and come right at him—tempt him toward a crime as though it’s your idea—he frequently forgets to doubt you. Of course that can get into entrapment issues, these days. But in the heyday of the Rangers, there’d been a lot of latitude when it came to that kind of thing, and not much concern about procedure. Case notes tended to be spare, running a line or two every couple of days. “Drove from Austin to Dallas. Located suspect in barn. Killed him at dawn. Returned to Austin” was one Walt remembered fondly. Times have changed of course, but this meeting has some of the flavor of the old days.

  “Mr. Sands,” he says, “when you get to my age, like me and my friends, there’s not much you haven’t seen. It tends to take a lot to get the old ticker racing.”

  A sympathetic smile from Sands. “All pleasures grow stale, don’t they?”

  “Indeed. But in about a month, I’m bringing over a bunch of boys for a visit. We’ve been looking for a place to blow off some steam without the wives, and we got to talking about Natchez. We used to come over here for a golf tournament they had every year, the local oilmen. Man, after that thing was over, we’d go back to the hotel, and they’d have the girls waiting. There were lines out the doors of some rooms, and local guys charging admission just to watch.”

  “That’s the kind of action you’re looking for?”

  “Some of that would be appreciated. With enough to go around, of course.”

  “Oh, that’s never a problem here.”

  “Not just girls, though. I’m talking about the gambling too.”

  “Well, you’ve seen the boat.”

  “And a fine one she is too, as far as she goes.”

  Sands cocks one eyebrow. “Meaning?”

  “Legal gambling’s all right, in its place. But it’s kind of restrictive, if you get my meaning. It’s like sex in a medical clinic with all the lights on. Takes the zing out of it. Half the fun’s the sneaking around, the mystery of it. That’s what gets the blood pumping—the forbidden. You with me?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “When I was a boy, before I went into the army, I used to work in a gambling joint down in Galveston. Illegal, of course, like all the best places. Man, there was nothing they didn’t have. I’m talking sport, now. Bare-knuckles boxing, strictly for interested parties. Cockfighting. Shooting contests. That’s the kind of action I’m talking about.”

  Sands mulls this over, watching Walt with unblinking eyes. “I see. You ever put money on dogs?”

  “Dog racing?”

  “Dog fighting,” says Sands, his eyes as insinuating as those of a pimp offering a young boy to a tourist.

  “Oh, I get you. Twenty, twenty-five years ago we had a good bit of that in my neck of the woods, but the governor got a bug up his ass and the state troopers started cracking down. The Rangers too. I saw old Red fight in Taos. She was bred out of Arkansas Blackie. Hell of a leg dog. Went for the foreleg every time, but she could really break ’em down. A real champion. That was years ago, though. I’ve heard they do a lot of hogs-and-dogs-type stuff out at the hunting camps, and I’ve seen a little of that. But straight fighting? Pit fighting? Not in a while.”

  “Well, we have a variety of activities available to players accustomed to more intense games. I’ll
give it a think and see what I come up with. As for ladies, do you have any preference?”

  “I gotta tell you, I like those oriental girls. You seem to have a surplus too.”

  Sands’s eyes flicker with light.

  “When I first got to town, I was thinking about a colored girl, but these young ladies you got remind me of some I spent time with in Korea.”

  “Recently?”

  “Hell, no. I’m talking 1952–53.”

  For the first time, Sands looks truly interested. “You fought there?”

  “All along that godforsaken thirty-eighth parallel, with those hookers’ granddaddies launching human-wave attacks every night. Only one out of two of those bastards even had a rifle in his hands when they started, but soon as one man would fall, the unarmed fella would pick up his gun and keep a’comin’.”

  “A very effective tactic,” Sands says, “if you can find personnel fanatical enough to carry it out.”

  Walt laughs. “That’s your basic Chink soldier right there. Fanatical. I’ll bet you couldn’t find a hundred Americans on the East Coast who would do that.”

  “Quite right. If one American dies in Iraq, it’s national news.”

  “You look like a man who’s spent some time in uniform.”

  Sands shrugs. “When I was young and stupid, I confess. But the real fighting isn’t always done in uniform.”

  “I imagine you’re right, there. Anyway, it goes without saying that anybody who can help us out with extracurricular activities would be handsomely compensated.”

  Sands dismisses this with a flick of his hand. “I have no worries on that score, Mr. Gilchrist.”

  “J.B., please.”

  “You know, of course, that the type of action we’re discussing is illegal, both in Mississippi and Louisiana.”

  “Ain’t just about everything worth doing illegal? That’s the way this country works. Pure hypocrisy, from Plymouth Rock on down.”

  Sands sniffs and leans forward, subtly signaling that the meeting is over. “Which hotel are you staying at?”

  “The Eola.”

  “If you’ll call ahead on your next trip, we’ll comp you a suite at our hotel.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’ve got a soft spot for those grand old dames. The downtowns may be dying, but the great hotels soldier on, in the good towns anyway. Course, I don’t mind putting the boys up in your hotel. We’ll make that part of the deal if it makes things easier.”

  “It does simplify issues like transport.”

  “It’s a deal, then.”

  Walt gets up, not wanting to press, but Sands comes around his desk and says, “Are you interested in any special action during this visit? A test-drive, say?”

  “A girl, you mean? Or the blood sport?”

  “You seem quite able to manage the ladies on your own. I was thinking of sport.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be against it. I got three, four more days here. I was planning on getting to know one of those little China girls better. But I’m open to anything. You get something good going, I’m in.”

  Sands shakes Walt’s hand and leads him to the door with a smile. “I’m sure we can accommodate you.”

  Walt has shaken a lot of hands in his life, and he knows the feel of great strength under restraint. The manager of the Magnolia Queen could tear a deck of cards in half.

  CHAPTER

  43

  Kelly and Major McDavitt flew Annie and my mother back from Houston this afternoon, arriving at my house just after seven. My mother insisted on cooking for us. We tried to make Kelly eat, but he privately told me that he wanted to go down to the Magnolia Queen and make sure that Sands appeared to be keeping his part of the deal. “I like to know where my enemies are” was how he put it. Kelly expressed visible relief when Dad informed him that Sands’s guard dog had tested negative for rabies, and laughed that he might have to celebrate.

  Living in the Texas safe house for a few days had been surprisingly comfortable, my mother claimed. The simple fact of separation had proved to be the ordeal. Though Mom sensed that the crisis that had necessitated their fleeing was not fully resolved, we assured Annie that the bad guys were all taken care of. When she asked why James Ervin and his brother were standing guard on the front porch and in the backyard, I told her that we just needed to play it safe for a couple of days.

  “In case the bad guys’ friends are mad, right?” she said.

  “Sort of,” I admitted.

  My parents left a half hour ago, with James Ervin driving. His brother Elvin stayed behind to await Kelly’s return. Annie took a quick bath, then climbed into bed and called for me to tuck her in.

  It’s obvious that being home has given her a great sense of relief, no matter how hard she pretends that living on the run was no big deal.

  “The second house was scarier,” she says, looking up at me from the covers as I sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Why?”

  “The first one was a condo, really. Like a vacation. But then Mr. Kelly called, and Mr. Jim said we had to move. The place he took us to then wasn’t near as nice. I think it belonged to a lady he knew. The house was okay, but I could tell that Mr. Jim and his friends were worried. At the first house I never saw their guns, but at the second one, they had them out all the time.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that, baby. But it’s over now.”

  “How was Mr. Tim’s funeral? Was it sad?”

  “It was. All funerals are sad, but when the dead person is young, it’s harder.”

  Confusion clouds Annie’s eyes. “Mr. Tim wasn’t young.”

  I smile. “I guess I’m not either, then. He was the same age I am.”

  “Well, you’re not old,” she says, obviously a little embarrassed. “But you’re not young either. I guess what I mean is, Mr. Tim seemed a lot older than you.”

  “That’s because he didn’t take care of himself when he was young. He had some bad luck, and he”—I hesitate—“he turned to drugs to try to deal with it.”

  “You don’t have to tell me not to do drugs. I already know.”

  “I know you do. But life looks different to people as they grow older. Fate always throws something you don’t expect in your path, and sometimes it’s really tough.”

  “Like Mom getting sick.”

  The rush of emotion that hits me is almost dizzying. “Yes. Like that.” I look away for a moment and gather myself. “We’re okay, though. Right?”

  Annie nods with reasonable certainty.

  “I want to ask you a question, squirt. A big one, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What would you think if I wasn’t the mayor anymore?”

  Her eyes widen, but I can’t tell what she’s feeling. “What do you mean? Are you going to get voted out or something?”

  “No, no. But for a while now I’ve been thinking that I haven’t been able to accomplish the things I wanted to. The things I wanted to change for you and the kids your age. I think only time is going to fix those things, and you and I only have a certain amount of time together. Time to get you the education you deserve, to—”

  “What?”

  “To live, I guess. It’s hard to explain, really.”

  Annie works her mouth like someone trying to solve a difficult problem. “I liked it better when you just wrote books. You were home a lot more.”

  “I sure was.”

  “But to have things back like they were before, you’d have to quit, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You always tell me never to quit, no matter what.”

  “I know. I’ve been struggling with that. But this job is about serving the people of the city. And if I’m not giving my full self to that job, then I’m betraying those people.”

  Annie looks at the ceiling, considering.

  “It’s been done before,” I tell her. “The last mayor resigned, remember? That’s how I was elected, during a special election. That’s what would happen this time.”

  “But Mr. Doug had cancer. Who would be mayor if you stopped?”

  I give her a smile. “I know someone who’s wanted to be mayor for a l
ong time.”

  “Not Mr. Johnson!”

  Laughing at her sound political instincts, I say, “No, no. Shad’s always wanted it, but I was thinking of Paul Labry.”

  Annie’s eyes brighten. “Yeah! Mr. Labry would be a great mayor. He’s so nice, and he likes being out talking to people on the streets. You don’t like that part of the job so much. That’s not good.”

  “You see a lot, don’t you?” I rub her head affectionately. “Annie, I think what I’m really feeling is this. Natchez was the right place for me to grow up, but I don’t think it is for you. The town was different when I was a boy. I ran for mayor because I thought I could bring back some of the good ways life used to be, and at the same time fix the things that were wrong back then. But that job’s too big for one person. I want us to be somewhere there are more kids like you—as smart as you—and also more who are different from you. I want you to be exposed to everything that’s out there. You deserve all that.”

  She knots the blanket in her right hand and speaks in a voice that is subtly changed. “When you say ‘us,’ do you just mean you and me?”

  This is the unspoken heart of our conversation.

  “Well you know my decision to run for mayor was probably the main reason that Caitlin and I broke up.”

  “Uh-huh.” That’s why I’m asking this now, dummy, her eyes seem to say. “But I don’t think she really wanted to leave us.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “She kept her house here.”

  “Yes. And I think that house was sort of a symbol. A reminder that she was still out there, hoping I would come to her. But this town is too small for Caitlin. If we were all going to be together, I think it would have to be somewhere else. And I’m not sure that’s what you want, since you’d have to leave behind the friends you’ve made here.”

  Annie’s face can be difficult to read, but in this moment her mother’s eyes shine out at me with certainty. “I don’t care where we live, Daddy. As long as we’re together.”

  “By ‘we,’ do you mean you and me?”

  Annie shakes her head. “I mean the three of us. I want Caitlin to be my mom. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.”