Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

Dad moves quickly to Mom and Annie, but my mother steps past him and looks at me with utter clarity. “I know whatever you’re doing must seem important, but please remember this. You are the only parent that little girl has left. She’s the most important thing in this family. Tom and I are old now. She needs you. Nothing matters more than Annie, Penn.

Nothing.

Not honor or justice or anything you learned in school. Your flesh and blood.” Mom reaches up and touches my cheek. “I'm only saying what Sarah would if she were alive. Sometimes men forget what’s important. Don’t.”

“I won'’t,” I promise, knowing that despite my best intentions, I have done so before. But that’s why I'm acting decisively now.

“Time,” says Samuels.

“Daddy?”

I step past Mom and sweep Annie up into my arms. At eleven, she’s no longer a little girl, but I could still carry her five miles if I had to. Her eyes are crusted with sleep, but even now they project the perception I know so well.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“It’s a surprise. I'm coming to see you soon, though. Will you take care of Gram?”

Annie smiles. “You know I will. I sure hate to miss the races. I wanted to fly in a balloon.”

“When you get back, I'’ll get Mr. Steve to take us up. As many times as you want. Okay?”

She nods, but balloon races aren'’t what’s on her mind. She pushes her mouth close to my ear and says, “Will you tell Caitlin I’'ve been missing her?”

I close my eyes and force down the emotion welling up from within.

“Mr. Cage, our ride’s coming up the block. We’'ve got to move.”

I hug Annie tight and murmur, “I'’ll tell her,” in her ear. Then I hand her to Jim Samuels, who carries her to the front door while Annie stares back at me over his shoulder.

Another hard shoulder brushes past me, and Samuels’s partner joins him at the door. He’s wearing an earpiece, and he seems to be receiving updates from it. He and Samuels communicate with hand motions; then Samuels tells my mother something, and she nods. He looks back at me, raises his hand to indicate five seconds, and ticks his fingers down one by one.

My heart tries to race ahead of itself, then the door is open and the Blackhawk men are rushing Mom and Annie across the open space like the royal family through a tunnel of paparazzi. I glimpse a big black Suburban before the door slams, then the growl of a modified V-8 roars loudly enough to shake my front wall and wake everyone on the street. With a screech of rubber the Suburban blasts up Washington Street like an Abrams tank heading off to war.

“Good God,” Dad says, still staring at the front door. “What now?”

“You go to work.”

“What are you going to do?”

I take the confiscated guns from the side table and shove them into my waistband. “Return some personal effects.”

“Who do those belong to?”

“The men who were watching the house. The Blackhawk guys took them.”

“Jesus. Don’t you want me to come with you?”

“Nope. I'm just going to give them a friendly message for their boss.”

Dad studies me for some time, then takes his keys from the tabletop. “I have my cell phone. Call me if you need me.”

I give him a smile of gratitude. “I did.”

He smiles back. “I guess you did. Okay. I'’ll take care of that other thing.”

I'm puzzled for a moment, but by the time Dad says, “The medicine for your heart,” I’'ve remembered:

Walt Garrity.

With three guns in my waistband, I grab a paring knife from the kitchen, then walk out my back door, wondering what I'’ll find.

The previous owners installed a stone fountain on my back patio, and this morning two men wearing dark windbreakers are sitting on the bricks, leaning back against the fountain’s basin. Their hands and feet are bound with plastic restraints, and their mouths are covered with black tape. When they see me, their eyes bulge with anger, but fear as well.

I walk slowly toward them, making sure they see the guns in my belt. Both men have the thin legs and overdeveloped upper physiques of bodybuilders. The right breasts of their windbreakers read MAGNOLIA QUEEN. Above the letters is an embroidered paddle wheeler; above this a pair of dice. I squat before the men and smile.

“Surprised to see me?”

The guy on the left nods meaningfully, silently promising revenge. He has hair like black steel wool, and his sweat smells of alcohol.

“Here’s the deal,” I tell him. “Option one, I give you back your guns and phones, and you take a message to your boss for me. Option two, I call Sands and have him drive down here and see you like this. Now, I'm going to take the tape off your partner here, and he can make the choice.”

I reach out and rip off the tape with one fast jerk. The second man gasps in pain.

“Best way, really,” I tell him. “I’'ve experienced it myself.”

“You are

soooo

fucked,” he says. “I wouldn'’t trade places with you for a million bucks.”

I smile and start to reapply the duct tape. “I guess that’s option two.”

“Wait!” he says, all bravado gone. “No matter what message you give us, he’ll send us back to bring you to him. You might as well come with us now.”

My watch reads 6:51 a.m. I'm scheduled to fly in the first race at 7:15, but I have no desire to do so. Hans Necker will be disappointed if I don'’t show, and the selectmen will go batshit, but maybe that’s a good thing. At least I can promise Sands that if he kills me this morning, half the town will be searching for me in less than an hour.

With two quick jerks of the knife, I free both men’s legs. They hold out their bound hands, but I shake my head, wondering if either of these men was present when Tim was tortured.

“I don'’t think so, guys. Let’s go see the boss man.”

CHAPTER

17

Julia Jessup awakens to the crying of her son. She blinks crusty eyes, rolls onto her husband’s thigh. Groaning in exhaustion, she reaches down to shove Tim’s leg, to tell him to go get the bottle—

—and freezes where she lies. Her hand is not on Tim’s leg. It’s on the baby’s belly.

For a few blessed moments she’d forgotten. Now, in the span of a closing synapse, the infinite weight of death and grief returns, pressing her into the mattress.

He left you,

says her father, dead almost twenty-five years now.

Alone,

says her mother, who followed him not long afterward.

Who’ll help you now? Who cares whether you live or die?

Julia rolls all the way over and sees faint light showing through the curtain. This is Daisy’s house. It was the only place she could think to run, the last place anyone would look. Daisy took care of Julia when she was a baby, before her father lost it, when they still had money to pay for a maid. Daisy’s house is old, not even a house really. A shotgun shack, like the ones in New Orleans. The floor is rotted through in places, and when the wind blows hard, the holes whistle and the bedclothes sway.

The baby’s cry grows louder, more insistent. Tim junior is hungry. He doesn’'t care that his father is gone. He knows only the ache in his belly. But Julia knows. Her father killed himself when she was

eighteen, and she’s missed him every day since. So many times she’s needed him, or someone. God, how different everything would have been had he lived. And how different will life be for her baby? His childhood will be a struggle against want, his mother always away, struggling in vain to keep ahead of the bills. This dark foreknowledge is like a festering mass in her stomach. Tim left nothing behind him but a mortgage. It wasn'’t his fault, really. He had nothing to leave—

“Now, now, I hear that baby cryin’,” sings a chiding voice. “He just a bawlin’, and you lyin’ in bed like Miss Astor.”

Daisy is close to eighty now, but she still gets around like a woman of sixty-five, despite her arthritis. Her flower-print dress crinkles as she sits on the bed and gives the baby a bottle to suck. Tim junior’s eyes go wide and blue as urgency changes into bliss, and he grips the bottle with one strong hand. Daisy tries to take the other in hers, but the child will not be led.

“I used to look at you like that,” Daisy says wistfully.

“I know,” Julia whispers. “I wish I was back there again.”

Daisy shakes her head, her eyes on the baby. “Everybody wish that sometime. But there ain’t no going back.”

Julia closes her eyes. The smell of her own breath sickens her. She ran out of the house without even a toothbrush.

“You hungry yet?” Daisy asks.

“No.”

“You gotta eat sometime. Can’t take care of no baby without getting something down yourself.”

There’s a sound of horsehair rope being stretched, and Julia knows that’s Daisy turning her head. She looks up into the yellowed eyes and says, “Thanks for letting me stay here. I didn't have anywhere else to go.”

Daisy smiles. “Well, I think you gon’ be here a while yet.”

Julia goes still. “Why is that?”

“Well, there was something in the newspaper this morning. I hate to say nothing about it, but I guess there’s no point hiding it.”

“What was it? Something about Tim?”

Daisy’s crinkled lips curl around her dentures like dark papier-mâché. Julia’s glad Daisy put her teeth in. Last night, the old woman looked one step away from the grave. “I can’t read too good no more,” she says, “but it didn't sound good.”

“Where is it?” Julia asks, sitting up in alarm. “What did they say?”

“On the kitchen table.”

Julia bounds out of bed and runs for the kitchen.

CHAPTER

18

The guard at the gatehouse of Jonathan Sands’s home stands gaping at the two bound men in the backseat of my Saab.

“I said I want to see Mr. Sands.”

“Does he know you’re coming?”

“No. I have a trespassing problem I’d like to discuss with him.”

“Just a minute.” The guard vanishes into his hut. Like the men in the backseat, he is American, not Irish, but the brief look he gave my passengers told them all they need to know about the trouble coming their way.

“Are you armed?” the guard asks, reappearing at my window.

I point down at my waistband, where the butts of three handguns jut from my waistband.

“You need to leave those with me.”

“I go in like this, or I drive away now.”

The guard vanishes again. I check my watch. The first balloons should be taking off any minute. Judging from the treetops, the wind looks to be gusting seven to ten miles per hour, which is enough to stop many pilots from launching. During the drive over from Washington Street, I received a text from Paul Labry, informing me that the balloons would be taking off from a vacant lot just off Highway 61 South. The destination of this morning’s “race” is predetermined, but the launch point varies according to the direction of the

wind, with various pilots making complex calculations and jockeying for takeoff positions in spaces just big enough to accommodate a launch without hitting power lines or other lethal obstacles. I texted Paul that a family emergency would prevent me making the launch in time and that he should fly in my place. Labry has already sent four anxious text messages in reply, asking what the problem is. I’'ve responded by begging him to trust me and to try to keep Hans Necker from getting too upset.

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.”