The Devil’s Punchbowl

11

Tim Jessup’s wife and son live in Montebello subdivision, a cluster of small clapboard homes built in the 1940s to house the employees of the International Paper Company. For most of their history, these structures sheltered generations of working white families, but in the past ten years, quite a few have been taken over by African-American families. Despite the age of the houses and the inexpensive materials with which they were built, most are well kept up, with fresh paint and well-tended lawns. What sticks in your mind when you drive through during the day is the abundance of kids, dogs, bicycles, flowers, lawn ornaments, and glitter-painted bass boats parked on the grass beside the driveways. Tim and Julia bought one of the more run-down houses when she got pregnant, then spent eight months fixing it up for the baby. Montebello is a long way down from the tony subdivision where Jessup grew up, but after he turned thirty, Tim stopped caring about things like that. His father never did. After my return to Natchez, I learned it was better not to mention Tim when I ran into Dr Jessup. Whenever I did, all I saw in the old surgeon’s eyes was shame and bitterness.

I turn off Highway 61 at the Parkway Baptist Church and take the frontage road down into Montebello. A warren of curving, tree-shaded streets divides the neighborhood into asymmetrical sections, and it’s easy to get lost down here if you haven’t visited in a while. After one wrong turn, I find Maplewood and swing around a broad curve through the parked cars and pickups that line both sides of the street.

In less than a minute I will shatter the life of Julia Stanton Jessup, and I’m suddenly aware that my outrage over Tim’s death is an order of magnitude smaller than what she will experience after the initial shock wears off. The explosion might even be immediate. Julia is no shrinking violet. She began life in a coddled existence, but fate soon had its way with her family, and she did not pull through without becoming tough. I still remember kissing her once at a senior party, when she was in the ninth grade. We’ve never spoken of it since, but the image of her as she was then remains with me, a beautiful girl just coming into womanhood, and unlike Tim she retained the glow of her youth through the hard years. I suspect that tonight’s shock may take that from her at last.

The instant Julia’s house comes into sight, I know something’s wrong. The front door stands wide-open, but there’s no car in the driveway and no one in sight. The doorway appears as a rectangle of faint yellow light coming from deep within the house, though deep is not exactly accurate in terms of a house that small. I reach under my seat for the pistol Tim told me to bring to the cemetery meeting. The cold metal is my only comfort as I leave the relative safety of my car and walk through the shallow yard toward the house. I should call Logan for police backup, but Tim’s words from last night keep sounding in my head: You can’t trust anybody. Not even the police.

The neighborhood is relatively quiet. I hear the thrum of a few air-conditioning units, still laboring hard in mid-October. A couple of TV soundtracks drift through the air, coming from the houses that have opened their windows to the damp, cooling night. I press my back to the wall outside Jessup’s door, then crash through in a crouch, the way a Houston police detective taught me. The last thing I thought I’d be doing tonight was clearing a house, but at this juncture, there’s no point in analyzing my instincts.

As I move from room to room, it becomes obvious that the house has been thoroughly searched. Every drawer and cabinet has been opened, the books pulled from the shelves and rifled, and the mattresses slit to pieces. Even the baby’s mattress was yanked from the crib and slit open.

The house has only six rooms, all clustered around a central bathroom. I call out Julia’s name, half-hoping she might be hiding somewhere. But I’ll be happier if she’s not. I hope she’s miles away from this place, safely hidden or running for her life. For the state of this house tells me one thing: Whatever evidence of crime Tim was looking for today, he found it. And that discovery cost him his life. The only questions remaining are what did he find, and where is it now?

I lean out the back door, but all I see in the backyard is a plastic playhouse bought from Wal-Mart, looking forlorn and abandoned. I’m raising my cell phone to call Chief Logan when it buzzes in my hand. I jump as though shocked by a wall socket, and this makes me realize how tense I was while I searched the house. The number has a Natchez prefix, a cellular one.

‘Penn Cage,’ I answer, wondering who might be calling me after 1:00 a.m.

The first sound I hear is something between sobbing and choking, and I know before the first coherent word that Julia Jessup already knows that her husband is dead. She is so hysterically anguished that speech is almost physiologically impossible. Yet still she tries.

‘Ih–ih–ih—’ The vocalization catches repeatedly in her throat, like an engine trying to start in cold weather. And after a couple of gulps and stutters, the full sentence emerges. ‘Is Tim dead?’

‘Julia—’

‘Huh–he-he told me not to kuh-kuh-call you. Unless something hah-happened. But Nancy Barrett called me from Bowie’s. She said…Tim feh-fell. Off the bluff. I don’t understand. Tell me the truth, Penn. Tell me right this minute!’

More than anything I want to ask where Julia is, but there’s no way I’m going to do that over a cell phone. Whoever killed Tim may be searching for his wife at this moment, believing she’s in possession of whatever evidence Tim found.

‘It’s true,’ I say as gently as I can, walking quickly back to my car. ‘I’m sorry, Julia, but Tim died tonight.’

A scream worthy of a Douglas Sirk melodrama greets this news, then the words pour out in a senseless flood. ‘ OhmiGodohmiGodoh–oh–oh—I knew it! I knew something was going to happen. He knew it too. Goddamn it!’ Another wail. ‘Oh my God. After everything I’ve done to get him clean…. No. No, no, no. It’s not–no, I can’t go there. What am I supposed to do, Penn? Tell me that! How am I supposed to raise this baby?’

‘Are you with somebody, Julia?’

‘ With somebody? I’m at—’

‘Stop! Don’t tell me where you are. Just tell me if you’re with somebody.’

Even before she answers, I realize I need to get Julia off the phone. Anyone with direction-finding equipment or good hacking skills could triangulate her position. She’s sobbing again, so I speak with as much firmness as I can. ‘Julia, are you with someone? Answer me.’

‘Yes,’ she whispers.

‘Listen to me now. If you’re in a building–a house or a hotel or whatever–I want you to lock the doors. Keep your cell phone with you, but switch it off. Then switch it back on again exactly thirty minutes from now.’

‘What? Why thirty minutes?’

‘Because I’m going to call you back and give you some instructions. I have to make some arrangements first. Don’t forget to switch off your phone. The people who–who hurt Tim–can use that phone to track you down.’

‘Oh, God. Oh…I knew it. I told him not to do anything.’

‘Julia! Don’t say anything else. Don’t trust anyone Tim didn’t mention specifically. And don’t come home. Don’t even think about it. I’m there now, and the place has been torn to pieces.’ I glance at my watch as Julia whimpers incomprehensibly. ‘I’ll call you back at one thirty-five. I’m hanging up now.’

It’s hard to do, but I press END and run for my car. My hand is on the doorknob when two police cars roar around the bend of Maplewood and screech to a stop behind me. A blue-white spotlight hits my face and a harsh voice speaks over the car’s PA system.

‘Stop right there! Put your hands up and step away from the vehicle!’

I feel no fear at this order, only anger and impatience. And curiosity. I haven’t had time to call the chief and tell him that Jessup’s house was broken into. It might make sense that Logan would send someone to make sure I’d informed the widow–or even to search Jessup’s house–but to see a brace of squad cars wheeling around Maplewood as though responding to a home invasion is more than a little surprising. Yet all I can think about as two cops approach is how I’m going to get Julia to safety.

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ barks the first cop.

‘I’m Mayor Penn Cage. I came here to inform Julia Jessup that her husband was killed tonight. Chief Logan can confirm that, and you’d better call him right now. I don’t have all night to stand out here talking.’

The cop on my left looks closer at me, then taps his partner on the upper arm. ‘It’s okay. He’s the mayor.’

‘You sure?’ asks the second guy.

‘What the fuck, am I sure? My dad went to school with the guy, dude.’

On another night I would ask the young cop who his father is, but not this time. ‘Guys, I’ve got to go. Somebody took that house apart. You need to lock it down. Don’t let anybody inside.’

‘The wife’s not here?’ asks the young cop.

I answer him while climbing in to my car. ‘Still trying to find her. I’ll update the chief later.’

I jerk the Saab into gear and head back to Highway 61. I can be at my house on Washington Street in less than five minutes, and I need a plan of action by the time I get there. Julia could come apart in less time than that, and a wrong move on her part could be fatal. But my options are almost nonexistent. All the resources I would normally use in this kind of situation have been placed out of bounds by Tim’s warnings. Last night I wasn’t sure his caution was warranted, but after seeing the condition of his body and the state of his house, I have no intention of risking the lives of his wife and son on assumptions.

I’ve called on other, private resources in extraordinary situations, but none are ready to hand tonight. The man I trust most to help me in a crisis is in Afghanistan, working for a security contractor based in Houston. His company may have some operators Stateside who could help protect Julia, but none would be any closer than Houston–seven hours away by car.

Most people who felt they couldn’t trust local law enforcement would probably call the FBI, but that option presents problems for me. Seven years ago I forced the resignation of the Bureau’s director, when I proved that he’d been involved in the cover-up of a civil rights murder in Natchez in 1968. That won me few admirers in the Bureau (open ones, anyway) and made me a liability to the field agents I’d befriended during my successful career as an assistant district attorney in Houston.

‘Damn it!’ I shout, pounding the wheel in frustration. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

It’s like screaming inside a bell jar, but at least my outburst gives vent to the rage and frustration that have been building since I saw Tim’s body. Closing my right hand into a fist, I pound the passenger seat until my wrist aches. When the national park at Melrose Plantation flashes by, I realize I’m driving eighty–forty miles an hour over the speed limit.

Settle down, I tell myself, remembering my father, who becomes calmer the more dire the medical emergency. When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy….

My decision to run every stop sign on Washington Street is perfectly rational. They are four-way stops, and unless someone else is doing the same thing I am at exactly the same place and time, I have enough visual clearance to safely jump the intersections.

I park on the street, exit my car, and move toward the house in continuous motion, my mind in flux. Taking the porch steps at a near run, I notice that the cast-iron lamp hanging above me is out. Mom must have inadvertently switched it off. That isn’t like her, but I don’t have time to worry about personal inconsistencies tonight. I’m slipping my key into the lock when a man’s voice speaks from the shadows to my right.

‘That’ll do, Mr Cage. Stand easy where you are. No need to disturb the women.’

I fight the urge to whirl toward the sound. I’ve tried too many cases where people were shot because they saw the face of someone who didn’t want to be remembered. Yet from the voice alone, I’m almost certain that the man in the shadows is Seamus Quinn, the security chief on the Magnolia Queen. I’ve never heard an Irish accent like Quinn’s outside the movies, and even then only in Irish-made films.

‘What do you want me to do?’ I ask.

‘I want you to listen. It’s all right to turn. I want you to see.’

By now my eyes have adapted to the darkness, so when I turn, I see enough to register how wrong I was: The face staring at me out of the shadows belongs not to Seamus Quinn, but to his boss, Jonathan Sands.

Wait, I think, the voice is all wrong. Gone is the refined English accent of the Magnolia Queen’s general manager, replaced by a coarse, working-class Irish accent identical to that possessed by Quinn. Then it hits me: I’m looking at Sands, but it was Quinn who spoke. The Irishman must be standing behind his boss, down in the flower bed. I glance past Sands, but all I register is something low and pale in the blackness behind him, like a crouching animal.

Sands moves his hand slightly, which pulls my eyes back to him, and then I see his gun, a small but efficient-looking automatic held at waist level.

‘Easy now, darlin’,’ he says. ‘I only brought this wee pipe so I don’t have to lay hands on you.’

With a start I realize it was Sands who spoke the first time. He’s simply speaking with Seamus Quinn’s voice rather than the cultured English accent he doles out for public consumption. I only know about British accents because my sister, Jenny, lives in England. She went to Britain as a visiting professor of literature at Trinity College, dated a Dubliner for several years, then married an Englishman and settled in Bath. For this reason, what would sound like a British accent to most other Southerners sounds like Belfast to me, and it tells me I know a lot less about Jonathan Sands than I thought I did. Tonight he sounds like a cross between Bono and the lead singer of the Pogues.

‘You’re not English,’ I murmur, trying to get my mind around it. ‘You’re Irish.’

‘As Paddy’s goat, Your Honor,’ he says, chuckling softly. ‘But let’s keep that between us, eh?’

While Sands’s eyes flicker with private mirth, the evil that Tim hinted at fills my soul like a squid’s ink. I know without doubt that everything my dead friend suspected must be true.

‘What do you want?’

‘Your undivided attention. Do I have that, Mr Cage?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Before we talk, I’ll ask you to hand over that weapon you’ve got in your pocket. Two fingers only.’

Sands materialized so suddenly on my porch that I actually forgot I was carrying a gun. But his ability to spot my concealed pistol in the dark tells me that trying to use it against him would be the last thing I’d do on earth. As directed, I carefully draw the Smith & Wesson and pass it to him, butt first.

With the sure movements of a man accustomed to handling firearms, he slips the gun into his waistband at the small of his back, then gives me a courteous nod. ‘Fair play to you, Mr Mayor. I’m going to pay you the compliment of speaking frankly, because this town is full of cute hoors, but you’re not one of them. A friend of yours died tonight, and died hard. He died because he stepped over the line into other men’s business. Timmy Jessup thought he was the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. When the flood rose and rolled over him, he sucked in his breath and kept his finger where it was. Pity, really, because he was all alone. Everyone else in this culchie town is swimming in the flood–sunbathing beside it, windsurfing on it. Because it’s a flood of money, Mr Mayor, not water. And if you try to put your finger in the hole Jessup left…Well. What matters now is that he’s dead, and nothing can bring him back.’

As the initial shock of being surprised on my own doorstep begins to fade, my outrage boils over. ‘You sorry son of a bitch. Are you telling me you killed—’

Sands silences me with an upraised hand. ‘Quiet now, mate. You’re in more danger than you know.’

12

My mouth has gone dry. It’s not the screamers who scare me; it’s the men who don’t let emotion get in the way of what they want. They’re the ones who’ll kill without hesitation. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Grand. Because this is all the talking I’m going to do. After this, I act, immediately and irrevocably. Understood?’

I nod.

Sands puts his hands behind his back and looks down like an officer contemplating a job in progress. A born soldier was my immediate impression of the man when I met him, for his bearing seems altogether military, though somewhat more fluid than that of the regular officers I’ve known. Sands has little skin fat; his face looks like a skull overlaid with the optimum amount of muscle, and little else. He’s losing his hair in front, but his baldness gives no impression of weakness; rather, the heavy brow and blue-gray machine gunner’s eyes give one the feeling that hair was simply an inconvenience better dispensed with. He stands right at six feet, but his trim waist and thickly muscled shoulders give one a much more aggressive perception of his height.

‘I have a problem, Mr Cage,’ he says. ‘I’m here because I want you to solve it for me.’

‘What’s your problem?’

‘Your friend Jessup stole something from his place of employment.’

I blink slowly, a man trying to find an appropriate response.

‘You don’t look surprised enough to suit me, Mr Mayor. Not nearly.’

‘Tim wasn’t exactly a Boy Scout,’ I say as calmly as I can. ‘What did he steal? Money? Drugs?’

The Irishman gives me a tight smile. ‘You know better than that.’

‘What I know about Tim Jessup is that he was a fuckup. And I don’t know what any of this has to do with me.’

Sands takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. ‘I have a decision to make tonight, Mr Mayor. A decision about you. And you’re not helping yourself. Your family either.’

At the word family, something squirms in my belly.

‘The question,’ Sands enunciates softly, ‘is can I trust you? For example, you may already know what Jessup stole from my boat. Do you know that, Mr Cage? Don’t lie. If you lie, I’ll know it.’

By God, I just about believe you. ‘I have no idea.’

The blue eyes don’t waver; this man has spent a lifetime calculating odds. ‘Don’t you now?’

I shake my head deliberately.

After what seems a full minute, Sands says, ‘Would you bet your daughter’s life on that answer?’

An image of Seamus Quinn holding Annie prisoner upstairs fills my mind, and terror compresses my heart. I grab for the door handle, but before I can turn it, something white explodes out of the flower bed, and iron jaws clamp around my wrist, pinning it motionless in the air. I try to jerk away, but the jaws tighten, numbing my fingers as surely as a nerve block.

A white dog more than half my size stands like an apparition between Sands and me, its eyes cold and blue above the wolfish mouth locked around my arm. Hot saliva runs down my tingling fingers, yet I can’t quite accept the evidence of my eyes. No sound preceded this attack, not a growl or a bark or a word of command–only a quick swish of foliage from behind Sands.

‘Easy now,’ he says either to me or to the dog, maybe to both of us. ‘Your daughter’s just fine, Mr Cage. For the moment, at least. She’s sleeping soundly, with your sainted mother beside her in the scratcher. But if you step through that door before we come to an accommodation, that could change very quickly.’

I try to back away from the door, but the dog’s forelegs are braced like white-painted fence posts, its jaw locked like a steel wrench. After a few moments, Sands makes a clicking sound with his tongue. The dog releases my arm, then walks to his master’s side and sits at attention like an obedient soldier. I stare at the animal as I rub the circulation back into my hand. I’ve never seen its like before, not even a similar breed; an oversize pit bull might be its closest cousin, but this dog has a wrinkled face that throws me. White from nose to tail, he has cropped ears and a thickly muscled chest to match his master’s. The animal has an unearthly silence about him, as though spectral and not a thing of blood and flesh, but I can still feel the imprints of his teeth in my muscles; I’ll have blood bruises in the morning.

‘You’re not a stupid man,’ Sands says, rubbing the dog’s head affectionately. ‘Don’t start playing at it now. I make it my business to know who I’m dealing with. I know you put a lot of hard men in prison back in Texas. Rapists. Robbers. Murderers. Aryan fanatics. Got some of them executed too. I also know you’ve taken on men from your own side of the table. That FBI bastard, for example. I only mention this because you need to understand something. Despite your grand experience, you’ve never come across a man like me.’ A smug smile. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard that one before, eh? The innocent man on death row. The whore with a heart of gold. But every now and then you come across a bloke who knows what he’s on about.’ Sands smiles to himself. ‘That would be me. And this is how you know.’