The Devil's Punchbowl

by Greg Iles

  “I get you.”

  “After you, his fear is Hull. If Po doesn’t show, Hull’s going after Sands’s scalp. So Sands has to have an exit strategy in that event too. Just keep all that in mind while you’re ‘winging it.’”

  “I will.”

  Kelly grins at last. “We’ve been here before, bro. If the wheels come off, hit the deck and listen for me. I’ll be right with you.”

  “I know you will.”

  Kelly looks to his left, over the long gangplank that leads to the main deck of the Queen. “There’s our buddy,” he says, lifting a hand to wave at Seamus Quinn. “I’m gonna give you one for Linda Church before we’re done, you mick bastard.”

  “Aren’t you Irish too?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Nothing. Just take it easy. We didn’t come to fight.”

  “I’m easy, baby. Let’s do it.”

  As we walk across the broad gangplank, I lean toward Kelly. “You think it’ll be Sands’s office or belowdecks?”

  “Interrogation room,” he whispers. “The Devil’s Punchbowl.”

  “Why there?”

  He laughs loudly, as though I’ve just told a joke. “In case they decide to shoot us. Easier to dump the bodies.”

  I can’t tell if he’s kidding or not, and before I have time to think about it, we’re through the main door of the casino, where a doorman with gold-braid epaulets and a captain’s cap greets us in an “Ol’ Man River” bass.

  “This way, gents,” Quinn says from behind him in a surprisingly professional voice. We’re within earshot of fifty customers playing the slot machines, so some rudimentary courtesy is called for. Quinn leads us down the length of the three-hundred-foot-long saloon. The sunset has lit the skylights a brilliant orange with purple shading, and for a moment this sight behind the glittering chandeliers makes me dizzy. A second later, though, I see Chief Don Logan standing at the head of the escalator that leads to the Queen’s upper or “hurricane” deck.

  Logan and a handpicked team of plainclothes police detectives are here to take charge of the recorders planted by Jiao as soon as we vacate the room where the meeting is held. Logan will kill time playing slots on the hurricane deck, and when I appear afterward—either from Sands’s office or from the interrogation room in the bowels of the barge—I’ll signal the chief by touching the top of my head, and he and his men will move to retrieve the appropriate recorder.

  “What did I tell you?” Kelly says softly.

  Quinn has walked us behind a partition three-quarters of the way down the saloon, where a brass-plated elevator waits discreetly for staff with business belowdecks.

  Quinn punches a nine-digit code into a keypad beside the doors, and they open with a soft whir. The elevator is surprisingly spacious, and Kelly stands unnecessarily close to Quinn during the brief descent.

  “Stand back, queer boy,” Quinn says, now that we’re away from the paying customers.

  Kelly laughs but doesn’t move.

  When the doors open, three security men in black coats stand waiting for us, wands in hand.

  “Assume the position,” Quinn says, gesturing at the wall to our left.

  Kelly and I flatten our hands on the wall and spread our legs, though Kelly mutters under his breath for effect. As per the terms set for this meeting, neither of us is carrying a weapon, but as strong hands pat and probe me, Quinn says, “I’ve half a mind to poke a light up Ponytail’s arse, to make sure he hasn’t got one o’ them knives stuck up it.”

  Kelly mocks a girlish squeal. “That’s just the excuse you need to check out what you been craving since you saw me, isn’t it?”

  Quinn is cursing when one of the wands stops and hovers at my belly button, beeping softly.

  “What is it?” asks Quinn.

  “Probably my belt buckle,” I say, straightening up.

  “Not so fast,” says Quinn, gripping my upper arm. “Take your belt off.”

  “What for?”

  “Jaysus, just do it.”

  With obvious reluctance I remove my belt. The guard wands my belly while Quinn feels his way along the belt. His hand stops, then with a chiding smirk he draws a knife from his boot and slices the leather on the inside of the belt. One flick of the knifepoint exposes a thin wire antenna, and he rips out the transmitter with a laugh.

  “Sneaky bastard. Wouldn’t have thought it of you, Your Honor.”

  Quinn uses this find as an excuse to have the men go over Kelly again, but they discover nothing. Telling the guards to stay where they are, Quinn leads us down a narrow corridor. The barge really feels like a ship down here, with hatches dividing the compartments instead of doors. Suddenly Quinn stops, then twists the wheel on a hatch, pushes it open, and motions for us to follow him.

  Kelly enters first, and I follow him into a long, dim room. The walls are black, but two large TV screens in a far corner to my right glow with changing images of the casino decks above. Three chairs have been placed in a rough triangle near the hatch, facing inward. Two are occupied, the nearest by Jonathan Sands, who’s wearing a business suit, and the other by a man who must be William Hull, who looks nothing like I imagined. He has a lean, well-muscled frame, and his face is long and angular. The bureaucrat I imagined vanishes, replaced by this figure who looks more like a Cold War–era military officer.

  Deeper into the room stands a single, more substantial chair. With a roll of my stomach I realize this is the chair where Ben Li and Linda Church were tortured. Beside it stands the cart that held the electrical generator. Inside this cart, Jiao is supposed to have planted one of the microrecorders.

  “You a furniture aficionado?” Hull asks with his faint trace of Southern accent. South Carolina, maybe.

  Beyond the torture chair, against what must be the hull of the barge, a metal staircase leads up to a hatch near the ceiling of the room. An escape hatch? At some level I register that we must be below the level of the river. “I was just thinking about something that happened in that chair.”

  “Nothing’s ever happened in that chair,” Sands says, looking up at me with unnerving intensity. The skin of his balding head seems stretched even tighter over his skull, if that’s possible, and his cheeks look hollow. Apparently not even Jonathan Sands is immune to the effects of stress.

  “Why are we down here?” I ask.

  “Privacy,” says Hull.

  “We never shut off the security cameras on the boat,” says Sands. “If we were anywhere but in here or my office, you could subpoena our hard drives.”

  “Look what I found on Hizzoner,” says Quinn, handing the small transmitter to Sands. “Bastard was planning to tape the whole meeting.”

  Hull gives a theatrical frown, then looks up at me. “Is there any further point to this meeting, Cage? If this was just an excuse for you to entrap us, you should let us get on with our business.”

  “The tape wasn’t the point,” I say. “I’ve just never seen a government attorney act with such cavalier disregard for the law, and I wanted some kind of record.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. Sit down and speak your piece.”

  As I take my chair, I realize there’s a man standing in the shadows behind Hull. He looks more like a Green Beret than an FBI agent. Quinn closes the door behind us, leaving six of us in the room. With an almost antiquated feeling of symmetry, Kelly stands behind me, Quinn behind Sands, and the Green Beret behind Hull.

  “Well?” says Hull.

  “I want to know the terms of your plea agreement with Sands. What happens to him after tonight, if the Po sting is successful?”

  “He testifies against Po in federal court.”

  “In exchange for?”

  Hull shakes his head. “I’m not at liberty to disclose that.”

  “Mr. Hull that’s why we’re here. I think you’d do just about anything to get Po’s scalp, at this point. For instance, you might promise to let Sands keep his interest in Golden Parachute. You might even try to use some Homeland Security, national-interest bullshit to keep the State of Mississippi from prosecuting him on other charges. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t
happen.”

  Sands looks expectantly at Hull, but Hull doesn’t deliver the withering broadside Sands apparently expects.

  “That’s what I figured,” I say. “Well, it’s not going to happen.”

  Hull sighs. “What exactly do you want?”

  “I want to know that Sands isn’t going to vanish into federal custody the second Po is in your hands.”

  “And how do I prove that to you? You want a letter of agreement?”

  I chuckle at this. “I want plainclothes Natchez police detectives beside Sands from now until five minutes before Po’s expected touchdown, and within sight of him until the moment you take Po into custody.”

  “He’s out of his fucking mind,” says Sands, not even deigning to look at me.

  Hull gestures for the Irishman to be silent.

  “That could create practical difficulties,” the lawyer says calmly. “If Po has anyone watching Sands—and he well may—then seeing men like that might spook him. Small-town police detectives don’t have the training to blend into the scene I foresee tonight.”

  “I’m not negotiating, Hull. I’m telling you what I need in order to give you the time you need to bust Po. Otherwise, we take Sands now. I’ve got police standing by to arrest him, and I’ve got the district attorney ready to take him before a grand jury in the morning.”

  Sands shifts in his seat like a man preparing to spring to his feet. Quinn looks even more tense.

  “Shad Johnson’s no longer playing for your team,” I tell Sands. “I’ve got the evidence to bury you right now, and Shad knows it.”

  Hull holds up his hands to calm his informant, and in this moment I sense the frightening tension between them. “Penn, you’ve got to be reasonable here. You’ve got to try to see the larger picture.”

  “I’ve tried to do that, William. I honestly have. As a former prosecutor, I have a lot of empathy for your position. But the crimes your informant has committed in the past week alone—”

  “Were part of the very operation that’s about to take place. The dogfighting—”

  “Dogfighting doesn’t even register on the scale he’s established in the past few days.”

  Hull looks at his steel watch and winces. “Edward Po’s a well-known breeder of fighting dogs. Sands had to use whatever bait he could to lure Po onto U.S. soil.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that every instance of it is a felony.”

  “Christ, Cage, you can’t be that much of a Boy Scout. You worked in Houston for twelve years. You dealt with major crimes.”

  “Mostly murder. Not this pseudo-spook stuff. That’s why this case sticks in my craw. Jonathan Sands murdered or ordered the murders of Tim Jessup, Ben Li, and Linda Church, all employees of the Magnolia Queen, all of whom were in a position to supply enough evidence to put him in state prison for the rest of his life. He also ordered the kidnapping of Caitlin Masters. All those crimes are capital offenses in Mississippi. Tim Jessup was a friend of mine, but even if he weren’t, this man would not go unpunished. I don’t give a damn what federal authority you try to invoke, once you have Po, this son of a bitch is going to jail. Either he does hard time as part of your plea with him, or Shad Johnson sends him to Parchman for murder and kidnapping.”

  Sands leans in from my left and laughs in my face. “You don’t get it, mate. If I don’t cooperate, Hull doesn’t get Po. And I don’t cooperate unless I’m guaranteed immunity from prosecution. Full immunity. End of story.”

  “Not quite,” I say. “If Edward Po doesn’t show up for your little Roman spectacle tonight—and I’d lay ten-to-one odds that he won’t—do you really believe that Hull’s going back to Washington empty-handed? After all the time and money he’s spent on this? No. In that case Quinn’s going to get the free pass, and you’ll wake up as the most vicious criminal in America. I can see the headlines now: ‘Irish mob man kills defenseless dogs, launders money for the Chinese triads. Possible links to terrorism.’”

  As Quinn glares at me from behind Sands’s head, I see that Sands has obviously considered this possibility.

  “After all,” I go on, “all we’re sure Seamus did is rape Linda Church and kill a few dogs. Maybe he killed Tim Jessup, maybe he didn’t. But he can tell us everything you did. And without Po in hand, you’re the big fish everyone’s going to want to fry.”

  “Why the fuck are we even listening to this?” Sands snaps, getting to his feet so fast that Quinn jumps back to get clear.

  “Because I have evidence, Mr. Sands” I say evenly. “Hard evidence. I can bust you for money laundering right now. Chief Logan is standing by on the shore, and all the FBI agents in the world can’t stop him.” I lean back and look up at Sands with all the hatred in my heart flowing through my eyes. “This is still the United States of America, asshole. That’s why you’re listening.”

  Hull looks worried. “You don’t have cops where somebody could see them, do you?”

  “Take it easy, William. I want Po busted almost as badly as you do. I understand the priorities here. But I don’t think he’s coming. And I’m making sure that in the heat of the moment, this psycho doesn’t slip away to a fairy-tale ending.”

  While Sands flexes his fists like a man preparing to beat down a door, Hull stands, turns his chair around, then straddles it and looks at me like a sergeant about to dress down his troops. I probably already have enough audio evidence to ruin Hull’s career, but I have a feeling we’re headed into serious criminal territory.

  “Let me give you the facts of life,” the lawyer says in a stern voice. “Sands may be a psychopath, but who really gives a fuck? Do you think I’d be wasting my time with him if he couldn’t deliver? The NSA confirmed that Po’s Dassault Falcon lifted off from Madrid Barajas Airport in Spain five hours ago. He was directly observed loading three Tosa Tokens aboard, and—”

  “Tosa Tokens?”

  “Fighting dogs, Cage! Po thinks he’s bringing them here to fight a man.”

  The reality that Edward Po might actually be falling for Hull’s trap hits me for the first time, and the force of the realization shocks me. “How long till he gets here?”

  “Barring unforeseen delay—like this absurd bullshit—three to four hours.”

  Sands looks down at Hull. “You’d better straighten this bastard out, Will.”

  “He’s seeing the light. Cage, do you know who you are in all this? I’ve read your file from cover to cover. You think you’re Atticus Finch and Thomas Jefferson rolled into one, but I’ll tell you who you are. Barney Fife. Barney fucking Fife, with one bullet in your gun, aimed straight at your own foot. I’m fighting for the national security of this nation, and you’re busting my balls over collateral damage that doesn’t add up to one day’s casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan. Do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear. But we’re not in Iraq. And the laws of this country apply to you as well as to Sands. When you gave me the proof of life I asked for yesterday, you proved yourself an accessory to kidnapping.”

  Hull laughs outright. “You’re joking, right? Do you seriously think you’ll be able to trace that text message back to me? There are so many cutouts between those communications shit, you won’t even be permitted to access the records.” He gets to his feet and kicks over the chair he was straddling. “This meeting’s over.”

  I stand also, knowing I’ve got more evidence than I’d hoped for.

  “All right,” I say with seeming resignation. “If Po is really coming, take your best shot at getting him. I want you to get him. But I want Natchez cops standing by within a half mile of the sting.”

  Hull shakes his head. “We can’t risk it. I give you my word, Sands will still be on U.S. soil tomorrow. That’s the best I can do.”

  “You gave me your word that Caitlin Masters would be safe last night, but she was nearly killed by your informant’s attack dogs, and the woman she was being held with died as Sands’s prisoner. Your word means nothing to me. I’m calling in my cops.”

  “We can’t let you do that.”

  “How are you going to stop me? If I don’t walk off this boat under my own power, Logan’s men come aboard. If we have a s
hoot-out, or even a standoff, Po’s jet is heading back to Spain.”

  Hull looks at Sands, then back at me. “One man,” he says finally. “You can put one detective with us tonight.”

  “No,” says Sands, feeling the tide turn against him.

  “It makes no difference,” Hull says, looking hard at the Irishman.

  “It does to me.”

  “Well, that’s the way it is. Who do you want, Cage? Whoever it is, make sure he has a nice suit.”

  “Kelly,” I say without hesitation.

  “No fucking way,” blurts Quinn.

  Sands, too, is shaking his head.

  “Anybody else is like no guard at all,” I say. “Sands could put down a city cop without breaking stride. I want someone who can control him.”

  “Kelly it is,” says Hull. “Does he own a suit?”

  “He’ll have one in fifteen minutes.”

  “Then we’re done here.” Hull nods at the door, and the Green Beret steps forward and opens it. Quinn and Sands look like they’re on the ragged edge of making a move, but Hull’s bodyguard projects the feeling that he wasn’t party to the firearms prohibition governing this meeting.

  Kelly’s hand is in the small of my back, pushing me through the hatch. He clearly doesn’t want the two of us left in the room with Sands and Quinn. As I pass into the corridor, I’m acutely conscious that I’m leaving behind the taped evidence that will give me control of William Hull, but there’s nothing to be done about this, short of fighting the two Irishmen for it. I’ll have to trust that Logan and his men can get down here and retrieve the recorder without trouble.

  What fills my mind as we move up the passageway behind Hull is the real possibility of nailing Edward Po. I never quite believed that the billionaire would risk stepping onto U.S. soil, but maybe Hull knew his prey well, and did what was required to draw him into the net.

  At the elevator we all bunch up again as we wait for Quinn to arrive and punch in the security code. The other three guards have gone, but when the elevator arrives and the doors open, it’s all we can do to fit the six of us inside the car.