The Devil''s Punchbowl

  “I’m also going to demand that two Natchez plainclothes detectives remain in Sands’s presence right up until the moment of the sting. That way, if Po doesn’t show, we can bust Sands before he has a chance to flee.”

  “But if Po does show—and the plea agreement remains unchanged—you have your original problem. Sands vanishes into the federal system, and we might never see him again.”

  “Right.”

  Caitlin sets aside the file in her lap and lets the blanket fall away from her shoulders. She’s wearing one of my dress shirts and nothing else, but at this moment, even Kelly is looking only at her eyes, which gleam with intensity.

  “What if I could tell you a way to get both Sands and Hull on tape, discussing all the shit that Sands has pulled this past week?”

  “Is this a trick question?” Kelly asks.

  Caitlin shakes her head, then picks up the stack of pages she’s been reading the past few hours. “There’s a direct pipeline into the heart of Sands’s operation. One that’s never even crossed his paranoid mind.”

  “Quinn?” says Kelly. “We’ve thought of that. Hull certainly has too. If Po doesn’t show, he’ll flip Quinn against Sands.”

  “Not Quinn,” she says, smiling with supreme confidence. “Jiao.”

  “Jiao?” Kelly echoes. “The girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one who let Walt live?”

  “Exactly. Jiao Po.”

  “You think she’d turn against Sands?” I ask.

  Caitlin leans over and holds up a printout of Sands giving Linda Church oral sex. “Don’t you?”

  Kelly sucks his bottom lip, thinking hard. “Okay, I get it. But still ”

  “Jiao has been living in New Orleans the whole time Sands has been in Natchez. Even before that, when he was opening other casinos along the river. She only moved up here after Hurricane Katrina forced her out of her house down there. I don’t think she has any idea what Sands’s been up to all that time. Not as far as the women, anyway. The dogfighting she may not mind, since her uncle’s always done it.” Caitlin looks at me. “You talked to her the morning your balloon was shot down, right? You saw them together. How did they seem?”

  I think back to that morning in Sands’s drug-lord-style mansion. “She walked in on her own. He wasn’t expecting her. He let her do some of the talking, but he seemed annoyed that she’d come in.”

  Caitlin nods knowingly.

  “She threatened me too, though. Subtly, but she left no doubt about what she meant.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Women will go to amazing lengths to protect their family unit, or what they perceive as that. When women kill, it’s usually to protect. Right, Mr. Prosecutor?”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’ve seen that in war zones,” Kelly says. “Okay, I’m buying it. If Jiao got angry enough at Sands, that same instinct might make her try to take him down.”

  “I think this girl is very confused,” Caitlin says. “She’s only twenty-seven. And she’s about to stand by while her lover delivers the uncle who practically raised her to the American government. If I can shake her faith in Sands, I think we might be surprised at what she might do.”

  “Whoa,” I say, seeing where this is going at last. “What do you think you’re about to try?”

  “I’m just going to talk to her. Face-to-face. A little girl talk.”

  “Caitlin—”

  “I like it,” says Kelly. “Shit, where’s the harm?”

  “Are you serious? Caitlin would be risking her life. The sting’s tonight. What can we really hope to get this girl to do, even if you turn her?”

  Caitlin smiles. “Wear a wire, of course.”

  Now Kelly shakes his head. “That, I can’t see. Jiao’s been around these guys a long time. She knows what would happen if they caught her wearing a wire.”

  “But they won’t! They won’t even check her. That’s the beauty of this.”

  I hold up both hands, trying to calm Caitlin down. “You’ve got a good idea, but it won’t work that way. Jiao won’t know how to steer the conversation. She doesn’t know what we need in a legal sense.”

  “A discussion of murder? What’s hard about that?”

  “Between Hull and Sands? How does she engineer that? I think I’ve got a better idea. Thanks to your inspiration.”

  Caitlin looks skeptical. “What is it?”

  “I knew this cop in Houston. He told me about a sting they pulled on a mob guy once. Superparanoid. Nobody could get close to him with a wire, swept his houses all the time. But they took their time and got an informant close to him, and he got a feel for the guy’s habits. Based on that, they prewired several outdoor spots he liked to visit when he needed to talk to somebody. And the night before they knew a big discussion was going down, they wired them all. They used two dozen recorders, all told, but they got him.”

  “How does that relate to Jiao?” Caitlin asks.

  “We don’t need two dozen recorders. We only need two.”

  Caitlin is shaking her head, but Kelly is nodding, his tactical sense kicking in.

  “I’m going to demand the meeting I told you about a few minutes ago. But not just with Hull. I’m going to demand that Sands be there too. He won’t want to come, but if the thumb drive is what we think it is, I can make it happen. I pressure Hull, Hull pressures Sands.”

  Caitlin’s listening now.

  “There’s only one place Sands is going to feel safe in a meeting like that,” Kelly says.

  She blinks in silence. “The Magnolia Queen?”

  “You got it,” I say. “And so far as I know, there are only two places on that casino boat not being recorded by surveillance equipment twenty-four hours a day. The first is Sands’s office, where Kelly and I talked to him. And the second is—”

  “The torture room,” Caitlin says. “The Devil’s Punchbowl. Jesus.”

  “If Jiao will hide voice-activated recorders in those two rooms, I can do the rest. Fifteen minutes alone with Hull and Sands, and I’ll have them both by the balls.”

  “And you know what happens then,” Kelly says, watching Caitlin like a hopeful teacher.

  She smiles. “Their hearts and minds will follow.”

  Kelly laughs and looks at his watch. “Right now, Jiao Po is taking a PiYo class at Mainstream Fitness.”

  “Are you kidding?” I ask.

  Kelly shakes his head. “Hell, no. She’s like a Mafia wife. People are dying left and right, and she’s worried about her cellulite.”

  “She doesn’t have any,” Caitlin says. “I’ve seen the pictures. Is that where I approach her?”

  Kelly shakes his head. “She likes to go down to the coffee bar on Franklin Street after her workout, for green tea and a bran muffin.”

  “That’s it,” I say, squeezing my right hand into a fist.

  “I have a feeling,” says Caitlin, “that her muffin won’t be going down so well today.”

  CHAPTER

  67

  Caitlin is sitting at a small, round table in the Natchez Coffee Bar, a long, narrow space downtown, not far from the club where Jiao Po takes her PiYo class. Jiao sits across the table, not an arm’s length away, her eyes deep and remote. People have often told Caitlin that her skin resembles porcelain, but Jiao’s skin is perfect, without blemish. She radiates a self-possession that Caitlin finds intimidating, and her light eyes seem startlingly alive in the Chinese face. The coffee bar is almost empty, but when Caitlin asked to sit with Jiao, the woman did not object. Only when Caitlin identified herself did Jiao’s eyes rise to take her in.

  “Is anyone watching you?” Caitlin asks. “Any of Sands’s men, I mean?”

  Kelly has already assured Caitlin that Jiao isn’t being tailed, but Caitlin wants to make sure.

  “What do you want?” Jiao asks, regarding her coolly. “A human interest story for your newspaper?”

  “No. I want to show you something. A photograph.”

  Jiao rises from the table.

  “You stayed in New Orleans too long,” Caitlin says quickly. “I know you must suspect about the women.”

  The girl slows almost impercepti
bly.

  “I know you went to Cambridge, Ms. Po. I know you don’t miss much. But sometimes we blind ourselves intentionally to things we don’t want to see.”

  Jiao stops and looks back, her body utterly motionless. “What does this photograph show?”

  Caitlin shakes her head. “You have to see it. Either you have something to fear or you don’t. I’m not here to hurt you. Only people you trust can do that.”

  Jiao steps back to the table with regal poise and gives Caitlin an impatient look. “Well?”

  “Will you sit down?”

  Jiao sighs lightly, then takes her seat again. “Show me.”

  Caitlin takes a five-by-seven manila envelope from her bag and removes the bathroom-mirror photograph of Sands screwing Linda Church. With an eerie sense of detachment, she slides the photo across the table, just as Penn told her he did with Shad Johnson.

  Jiao doesn’t flinch or even blink. After a few seconds, Caitlin can’t tell if the woman’s breathing.

  “Is this the only one?” Jiao asks at last.

  “No.”

  “Show me.”

  Caitlin removes five more photographs, each showing Sands having sex with a different woman, every one an employee on the Magnolia Queen. Jiao must have seen many of these women over the past few weeks. The final photo shows only a male organ entering a woman’s anus, but Caitlin is sure that Jiao knows whose penis she’s looking at. Her doll-like lips purse for a few seconds, then without lifting her eyes from the top image, she says, “Do you have money?”

  “Do you need money?” Caitlin asks, confused. Perhaps Jiao has been cut off by her uncle and fears she can’t survive without Sands’s support.

  A fleeting smile crosses Jiao’s face, and the aquamarine eyes rise to Caitlin’s. “No, I mean, were you raised with money?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father made little, but my uncle saw that we never went without. Father wouldn’t touch that money for himself, but we children got the necessities. After he died, I lacked for nothing. But I found that whether women have money or not, we look for men who are strong enough to be providers. Strong enough to protect us, yes? But with that strength comes things we do not want so much. A wandering eye, aggressiveness, even cruelty. Yet the men who would always be faithful, the ones who worship us, we ignore or kick away. Do you find this to be true?”

  “I’ve made mistakes like that. But some men are both strong and kind.”

  Jiao’s eyes move over Caitlin’s face. “I think my father was like your lover. He was a professor. He taught law in Communist China. What could be more absurd? When I was young, I thought he was a fool. After he died, I attended school in England, as you said. But during breaks I went to Macao, to live under my uncle’s protection. He didn’t want me there, but I insisted. I was seduced by his power, his money, the unimaginable wealth. And I fell in love with Jonathan Sands. He seemed a glamorous figure to me, an Irishman who could carve out a place for himself among my uncle’s henchmen. He was white, yet my uncle respected him. And of course, my mother was a Scot.”

  The coffee bar’s single waitress walks toward them. Caitlin lays the manila envelope over the explicit photos as the woman passes and goes to the restroom. “You must have been very young when you fell for Sands.”

  Jiao shrugs. “Older than my mother when she married. But, yes, I was young. Too young to see what I was to him. A way to rise in the hierarchy, to reach the inner circle. He was playing a role from the beginning, I think.”

  Caitlin is impressed by the girl’s sangfroid, but it makes her doubt the soundness of her plan. Without an angry Jiao, nothing of value will be accomplished here.

  “I’m curious about something. Did they let you see the violent part of what they did?”

  Jiao takes a quick breath, then expels it. “They tried to insulate me from that, my uncle especially. But everyone has a primal fascination with violence. At that point in my life I was curious. But my curiosity was quickly satisfied. Death holds no mystery for me. I think women are interested in life, men in death. What do you think?”

  Jiao’s genuine interest in her opinions takes Caitlin off guard. This meeting reminds her of conversations during college. “I think there’s some truth in that.”

  Jiao toys with what’s left of the muffin on her plate. “At first I thought violent sport was something that came along with male strength. They admired in others what they aspired to in themselves.”

  She slides the envelope off the picture and stares clinically at her lover fucking another woman. “I saw much dogfighting in Macao. My uncle lives for it. He and his friends. Breeding the dogs, training them—most of all fighting them. But what I learned watching those men was this: They prized the dogs that would fight to the death, beyond all hope of survival. The ones too weak to do that, they killed. In the end, though, all the dogs died.” Jiao looks earnestly into Caitlin’s eyes. “They prized some dogs, you see, but they loved none of them.”

  This insight silences Caitlin for a while. “Is Sands like that?”

  Jiao ignores the question, her gaze still on the photograph. “They see us the same way,” she whispers.

  “How do you mean?”

  The girl’s eyes rise to Caitlin’s. “You’re a beautiful woman, Ms. Masters. Don’t protest, please, you know you are. It’s a fact, like strength or height. All your life you’ve benefited from this attribute, as I have.”

  Caitlin can feel herself blushing. “Yes. I have.”

  “Men prize beautiful women, they pursue us with all their power, shower us with wealth. They settle for those of medium attractiveness, and the ugly ones they treat as slaves.”

  Caitlin isn’t sure what to say. “That might be a little extreme.”

  “Do you think so? I do not.”

  “Well—”

  Jiao silences her with an upraised finger. “We all lose our beauty one day, Ms. Masters. All of us. Never forget that.”

  “That day is a long way off for you.”

  Jiao smiles. “In the eyes of the man I thought I wanted, it has already come and gone. I sensed it long ago. I’ve tried to deny it. I have been a fool.”

  Caitlin says nothing.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  CHAPTER

  68

  It’s 6:00 p.m. as Kelly and I drive down Pierce’s Mill Road toward the Magnolia Queen, the flaming sun beginning to set above the bridges behind us. I wanted the meeting earlier, but I was lucky to get it at all. Had the thumb drive not turned out to contain the legal dynamite I’d hoped it would, Hull would have told me to go to hell. As it was, he tried to sidestep my intent by offering a quick meeting between the two of us, but I demanded that Sands be present, and despite Sands’s resistance, Hull forced him to accede to my wishes. What gave me the boost of confidence I feel now was Sands’s insistence that the meeting take place aboard the Queen. I’d worried that I might have to insist on this venue myself, but as I’d anticipated, Sands considered it a victory to force his home territory on us.

  “What are you thinking?” Kelly asks, braking his 4Runner as we descend the long hill.

  “I’m not.”

  “Bullshit.”

  To my left, the Mississippi River blazes orange under the falling sun, and five hundred hundred yards below us, the fake smokestacks of the Magnolia Queen suggest the opening shot of a Technicolor version of Huckleberry Finn. “Seriously. Whenever I had to go into court for a summation, or even a critical cross-examination, I winged it. I figured if I didn’t already know everything I needed to, I was lost anyway.”

  “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse about this.”

  “Everything depends on Hull. I envisioned a bow-tied Beltway tight-ass, but the more I’ve talked to him, the more I’ve realized he’s a pro. He’s just been working this case too long. I can’t imagine what trying to run a guy like Sands as a CI would be like. They’re probably like two scorpions in a bottle by now.”

  Kelly laughs wickedly. “That I don’t doubt.”

  “Hull and I will be a little like that. More like boxers, maybe. The wi
re idea was genius. That’s what’s going to make him let his guard down.”

  “Nothing increases the odds of victory more than letting the enemy think he’s already taken your secret weapon.”

  Hidden in my belt is a digital transmitter Kelly brought along in his Blackhawk gear bag. Given Kelly’s flint-knife surprise in Sands’s office, we feel sure that Quinn will search every nook and cranny of our bodies before allowing us near Sands. When his search turns up the wire, that should convince our marks that we have no other way to record the conversation. After that everything depends on Sands’s steering us to his office or to the interrogation room below deck.

  “You know what I’m wondering?” Kelly says.

  “What?”

  “Did Jiao really hide those recorders in there?”

  “You mean where she was supposed to?”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “I mean at all.”

  “She did. Don’t even think about it.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  I turn to him, a slight smile showing. “Hell hath no fury, brother. It’s a law of the universe. Like gravity.”

  The grade levels out at last, and Kelly pulls the 4Runner alongside the massive barge with the faux steamboat built atop it. The structure dwarfs everything around it, and only the steel cables running above our heads that moor the casino to the shore betray that it’s a vessel and not a building. A red-coated valet approaches the 4Runner, but Kelly rolls down his window and waves him off, then raises the window with a whir.

  “Listen,” he says, all levity gone from his voice. “No matter how you look at this, we’re about to walk into hostile territory. Indian country. I don’t know if Po is coming to this party later or not, but you can bet that Sands, Hull, and Quinn have contingency plans in case things don’t go their way. At a certain point, every situation becomes every man for himself. Understand?”

  “You’re saying if it goes to shit, I’m on my own?”

  “No. I’m saying those guys won’t hesitate to fuck each other or anyone else who gets in their way. Trust does not exist among these people. Not even Quinn and Sands, who probably grew up together. But Sands’s biggest fear is you. You’re the loose cannon on his deck. While he had Caitlin, he felt he had you under control, but now I don’t think he’d hesitate to kill you if he thought you were going to have him arrested.”