The Devils Punchbowl pc-3

by Greg Iles

  “The real work’s below the waist.”

  “I feel it.”

  As the twin bridges slide past high above our heads, Kelly stops paddling and adjusts the ear bud connected to the Star Trek in his pocket.

  “Any word from Danny and Carl?” I ask.

  “The VIP boat’s still cruising south, but not in any hurry.”

  He pulls back a piece of canvas and checks the GPS unit Velcroed to the coaming of his boat. “We’'ve been doing six miles an hour. Not bad, but let’s see if we can find some faster water.”

  His kayak shoots forward without apparent extra effort on his part, then turns toward the middle of the river. I grip my two-bladed paddle and pull as strongly as I can, trying to stay up with him. On a river as broad as the Mississippi, the surface moves at different speeds in different places. Soon we’re moving at a steady nine miles per hour, and the lights of the town fall quickly behind us.

  The land beyond the levee to our right is all former plantation land, and most of it’s still farmed today. From faintly silhouetted landmarks such as grain silos, I can tell we’re passing the old Morville Plantation, the one my father mentioned as a den of white slavery and gambling in the 1960s. Remembering this gives me a feeling of futility, as though Tim’s effort to stop what he saw as the rape of his hometown was nothing more than a vain quest to fight vices that will always be with us. The ironies are almost unbearable, if I think about them. Kelly and I are paddling this river to photograph men committing illegal cruelty upon animals, in order to “save” a city built upon the incalculable cruelty of slavery. The land on both sides of this river was watered with the sweat and blood of slaves, and their descendants still struggle to find their place in the life of the community. I’'ve dealt with the consequences of that history every day of my term as mayor, and it lies at the root of the most intractable problem I’'ve ever faced.

  “Something weird’s going on,” Kelly says. “The VIP boat’s barely moving, but they still haven'’t stopped anywhere.”

  “What do you think?”

  He looks across the space between us. “Could they be fighting dogs

  on

  the boat? Down below or something?”

  “I guess. Caitlin told me urban dogfighters hold fights in basements and places like that. But that’s an expensive cabin cruiser. I can’t imagine them fighting dogs in there.”

  Kelly stops paddling and lets his boat drift with the current. “In five minutes we’ll be at the place they docked last night. If they haven'’t stopped anywhere by then, I say we get out and wait. Scout the place out. They could actually be coming back to the same spot.”

  “You think?”

  Kelly chuckles softly. “They might just be cruising around drinking, getting hyped up for the fight. Maybe the handlers haven'’t got the dogs here yet. Yeah, this might be perfect. We can videotape everybody as they get off the cruiser.”

  “What if somebody heard Danny’s chopper, and it spooked them?”

  Kelly’s smile vanishes. “Don’t put the hex on us, man. Let’s go.”

  He digs his paddle into the black water and heads for the Louisiana shore. Another mile of river slides beneath us, then Kelly holds up his hand. After I stop paddling, he checks his GPS, then says, “We’re there. Let’s take ’em in.”

  “I see a sandbar. Do you want to land there?”

  “Let’s go about forty yards farther down, where those weeds are.”

  To my surprise, Kelly lets me lead. I pull up my rudder with the lanyard, then drive the bow of my boat onto the gently sloping river bottom. When my motion stops, I lay the shaft of my paddle behind me, just aft of the cockpit, and brace the flat of the blade on the sand. Using this to stabilize the boat, I extricate my legs from the cockpit and step out into the water. Kelly does the same as I drag my kayak into the weeds, and soon we’re standing under some small cottonwoods, surveying the land where Danny saw the VIP boat anchor last night.

  Kelly takes a night scope from his pack and glasses the darkness in front of us. To me the landscape looks like a black-and-white photograph tinted slightly blue. The hum of insects is annoyingly loud, and the only light comes from the half-moon over our heads. Kelly’s

  view is completely different, of course. To him this night is a montage of ghostly greens, one he can navigate with the sure-footedness of a deer feeding at dusk.

  “What do you see?” I ask.

  “Nothing much. Let’s move inland.”

  All I can do is follow orders and walk in his tracks. The soil is sandy, the weeds and nettles thick. As we get farther from the river, the cottonwood trees tower above us.

  “Any signs of people?”

  “There’s a shed about forty meters to the north,” he says. “No lights. Looks like a swing set or something beside it.”

  As we pick our way through the tree trunks, Kelly adds, “I see a few benches and chairs.”

  Though the chill of fall was in the air on the river, here the night is thick with the smell of green foliage, and I’'ve begun to sweat. It’s as though we’ve stumbled into some low-lying region where summer never ends.

  Kelly curses as I collide with his back. He stands immobile, head cocked as though he’s listening for something. When I start to speak, he flips up a hand and whispers, “Give it a second. You’ll understand.”

  Then I do. The smell of death is in the air—thick and powerful enough to smother the green scent I savored only moments ago. The odor isn’t alien; it’s what you smell when you’re forced to drive slowly past an armadillo that’s been dead for two days.

  “This place feels deserted,” I whisper.

  Kelly lowers the scope, then raises his neck and turns his head like a meerkat moving in slow motion. “No, there’s something here. Something alive.”

  “Deer?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  I have no desire to walk any closer to whatever is producing that reek. But when Kelly creeps forward, I realize I have even less desire to stand here by myself.

  As I follow him, the stench of death grows overpowering. I can barely suppress my gag reflex. Beneath the putrid smell of decay is a pungent, ammoniac funk that almost burns the nostrils. Lifting the

  crook of my left arm to my face, I bury my nose in my jacket sleeve and survey what little I can see by moonlight.

  There’s the swing set Kelly mentioned. It’s a standard A-frame set, like the one my parents bought at Western Auto in the 1960s, but no swings are attached to its crossbar—only some heavy-gauge springs and short links of chain. The chains end in hooks, while large carabiners dangle from the springs. Fifteen yards to my right is some sort of contraption that looks like a piece of antique playground equipment. It has two metal arms jutting from a central pillar that looks as though it’s meant to rotate so the arms can turn in a circle. But I can’t quite solve the puzzle of its function. One of the arms ends in a hook, and a short length of chain dangles from the second, a few feet behind that one.

  “What is this place?” I whisper.

  “It’s for training,” Kelly murmurs, clicking on a flashlight with a red filter on its lens. “They hang things the dogs want from the hooks and springs. Pit bulls will leap up and bite and hang there for hours. They do it to strengthen the dogs’ jaws.”

  “What’s that thing that looks like a homemade merry-go-round?”

  “You don'’t want to know.”

  “I do.”

  Kelly points his red beam at the strange machine and walks over to it. “See this front arm?” He points to the one that ends in a hook. “They hang a pet caddy from this hook with a kitten or something else inside it. Then they chain the dog to this arm back here. The cat goes crazy from terror, of course, and the dog chases it, pushing against the resistance in the machine.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s sort of like dog races—only with this deal, when the dog’s through running, they let him kill the cat. Sometimes they don'’t even use a pet caddy. They just hang the bait animal from the hook. I’'ve seen that in Kabul. I think they call this thing a jenny, or something lik
e that.”

  Suddenly the red beam vanishes, and I feel Kelly’s hand on my arm.

  “What is it?” I ask, feeling my heart kick. “Did you hear something?”

  “A cat, I think. Listen.”

  He’s right. Beneath the whine of insects, I hear a tiny feline mewling, like the kind you hear behind Dumpsters at fast-food restaurants.

  “I think it’s coming from the shed,” Kelly says. “Come on.”

  I follow reluctantly, still thinking about the jenny.

  Kelly quickly covers the distance to the shed, but as I follow, my right foot bangs into a bucket on the ground, sending a hollow clang through the trees. Before the sound dies, a cat screams inside the shed. Then something scuffles against the wall boards.

  “Very smooth,” Kelly says, trying the door handle. “It’s locked.”

  “I saw a silencer on your pistol. Just shoot it off.”

  “No.” He runs his hand down the faces of the weathered boards. Slipping his fingertips into a crack between two boards at shoulder level, he yanks a board right off the shed, then jumps back as though he expects a wildcat to leap out of the dark opening. When nothing emerges but the stench of old urine, he switches on his flashlight and shines it into the shed.

  “This is fucked-up,” he says.

  “I can smell it. I don'’t need to look.”

  “You said you needed to be able to testify about what we found, right? Well, here it is.”

  I peer through the hole long enough to see half a dozen malnourished, extremely dehydrated cats. Three or four others appear to be dead. Half-buried piles of excrement litter the dirt floor. My horror deepens when I realize that some of the cats are wearing collars. Mercifully, Kelly shines his light into the corner of the shed away from the animals, onto some short metal bars leaning in the corner.

  “What are those?” I ask.

  “Break sticks. Bars to pry a bulldog’s jaws loose from something.”

  Kelly takes out his camera and begins videotaping the contents of the shed.

  “We’'ve got to let them go,” I say.

  Kelly makes a humming sound I can’t interpret, but it sounds negative. “We don'’t want anybody to know we were here. I'm going to put that board back in place.”

  I look back at him for a few seconds, then kneel and yank one end

  of the bottom-most board away from the wall. While Kelly stares with a curious look on his face, two cats shoot through the opening and race away into the darkness.

  “Put the other board back up,” I tell him. “They don'’t know how many cats were in here.”

  “There go the rest,” says Kelly, pointing at several dark shapes escaping cautiously through the opening. The last cat through seems barely able to keep its feet.

  “Okay, Gandhi,” says Kelly, hammering the top board back on with his hand. “Let’s put it back like we found it.”

  As I wedge the bottom board back into place, a chilling sound reaches my ears. It’s a low, haunting howl, coming from somewhere deeper in the trees. It sounds like the crying of a soul that’s wandered lost for a thousand years.

  “I

  know

  I don'’t want to see that,” I whisper. “Whatever it is. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “Wait,” says Kelly. “Danny’s talking to me.”

  I’d forgotten that Kelly’s still wearing his earpiece.

  “The VIP boat’s getting close to where we are,” he says.

  “What do we do?”

  “Let’s check out that noise, and by then we’ll know if they'’re going to put in here or not.”

  With a silent groan I follow him toward the wavering howl.

  “We’re on a path,” he says, shining the red beam along a sandy track worn through the grass. “I bet this ends where they fight the dogs.”

  Thirty yards farther on, the path terminates in a small clearing. In the middle of the clearing lies a shallow pit dug in the earth. It’s about eight feet square, and eighteen inches deep.

  “That'’s where they do it,” says Kelly. “One place, anyway. In Afghanistan they fight them right in the street, but most places use a pit.”

  Staring into the hole, I try to imagine two heavy-muscled pit bulls exploding out of the corners and smashing into each other, dueling for a death grip. But even standing in this spot, it’s difficult to believe that happens here. The howl comes again—lower in pitch, but much closer now.

  “Over there,” Kelly says, pointing the beam toward the trees.

  He trots across the ground, and I reluctantly follow. The first thing I see when I reach the trees is some sort of block and tackle hanging from a branch, the kind deer hunters use to gut animals. But as I try to look closer, the red light vanishes. Kelly has knelt to examine something at the base of the tree.

  “Easy now,” he says, as though talking to a child. “Just take it easy. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  Dread flows into me like an icy tide, but after a deep breath, I force myself to take a step to my right. Four feet in front of Kelly, at the base of a cottonwood tree, a pit bull terrier lies shivering on its belly. It’s a brindle, I think, but so much of its coat is covered with dried blood that it’s hard to be sure. The howling has stopped. Now all I hear is panting, accompanied by a strange whistling sound.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I ask, wondering why the dog hasn’'t bolted in terror. “Can’t it move?”

  “I don'’t think so,” says Kelly. “I think her back is broken.”

  “How do you know it’s a her?”

  “No balls. Just checked.”

  “Can a dog break its back in a dogfight?”

  “No way. Easy, girl, easy,” Kelly murmurs, sweeping his beam around the tree. The light stops at the trunk of the next tree. “That'’s what did it.”

  Leaning against the next tree, a blue aluminum softball bat gleams dully in the red light. Like the dog, it’s covered with dried blood. Beside the bat, three car batteries stand on a small square of plywood. Kelly shakes his head and aims the beam back at the wounded dog. The terrier’s eyes look plaintive, almost human, but shock and exposure have obviously taken their toll. Both forelegs have deep, suppurating gashes at the shoulder.

  Kelly edges forward, but I grab his arm. “That dog can still take your hand off.”

  “Don’t worry, I know what I'm doing.”

  As he moves closer to the dog, I ask, “What’s that whistling sound?”

  He leans over the animal, training the beam on the top of its skull. Even with its back broken, the dog instinctively jerks its head away from Kelly’s arm.

  “Christ,” Kelly says in a stunned voice. “They cracked her skull with the bat. When she breathes, the air goes through it. Kind of like a sucking chest wound, I guess. I can’t believe she’s still alive.”

  As I stare in horror, Kelly takes out his camera and videotapes the wounds, then painstakingly videotapes everything in the clearing. As sick as it makes me, I can’t take my eyes off the suffering animal. Her plight is beyond understanding, like that of so many human victims I encountered in Houston. The sound of running footsteps makes me jump, then Kelly is at my side.

  “What is it?” I ask. “Did the VIP boat land here?”

  “No, it passed us. Goddamn it!”

  “Maybe they

  are

  fighting dogs on the boat.”

  “No. That cruise was some kind of con—a diversion. It’s like they knew we were coming. I think we’d better get out of here.”

  He stuffs his camera into his pack and starts walking away.

  “Wait,” I call. “What about her?”

  He stops and looks back at me. “I told you. They can’t know we were here. We got nothing tonight, unless Sands himself owns the land we’re standing on. We’re going to have to do this

  again.

  ”

  “We can’t leave her like this. Can’t you ”

  “What?”

  “Shoot her?”

  Kelly shakes his head. “I can’t be sure the wound wouldn'’t show, and I can’t get close enough to stick the gun in her mouth.”
r />   “We can’t leave her like this,” I insist.

  He sighs like a soldier being forced to consider the feelings of civilians. “You want to put her out of her misery?” He shines his flashlight back on the softball bat. “There you go.”

  A wave of nausea rolls through me. “They already hit her with that,” I stammer, recoiling at the thought.

  “They weren’t trying to help her. They were having a party. If you hit the cervical spine as hard as you can, death should be instantaneous.”

  I look down at the dog, then back at Kelly.

  “You wanted to come,” he says, shining the light in my eyes. “If you want to finish it, finish it.”

  This is not like Kelly at all. Whenever we’ve worked together, he’s always been ready and willing to do whatever dirty work was

  required. I’'ve never completely understood the dynamic between us, or what motivated him to go beyond what I consider the call of duty. He’s always operated by a private code, one I thought I understood. It’s as though together, we function as a complete man—a rational mind capable of enforcing its decisions with implacable force. But in the past, I realize now, Kelly’s willingness to kill has always been demonstrated while he was protecting me or my family. This situation falls outside those parameters. In fact, letting the dog die in agony is probably the safer choice, from that perspective. But I can see that Kelly feels for the animal. Is he testing me? Is the iron fist performing a gut check on the mind that wields it? Or is he trying to find out whether I'’ll let my emotions override my reason? Knowing there’s no sure answer to any of these questions, I walk to the tree and lift the bat, certain that the last person who did so was the one who battered the helpless dog into what huddles at my feet now.

  “Wait,” says Kelly.

  I stand over the shivering dog, waiting to feel the bat taken from my hands.

  “Danny thinks he’s got something. Uh-huh Right How far?” He checks his watch, then says, “Shit, we can do that. We’ll come in the boats . No, no, if you drop us in close enough, they’ll hear the chopper. Stay well clear. If they leave before we get there, try to get a license plate, but don'’t let them know you’re there. I'’ll radio our coordinates en route . Right. Out.”