Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“Do you know who that is?” Sands asks.

“Ben Li.”

“Jaysus,” whispers Quinn. “Fucking Jessup.”

“Do you know what he does?”

“Something with computers, that’s all I know. I only found that out a couple of days ago.”

Quinn savagely kicks the body on the floor. Ben Li doesn’'t flinch.

“Is he dead?” Linda asks.

“Not yet,” Sands replies. “Soon.”

Gooseflesh rises on the back of her neck. She tries to shift, but the straps hold her fast to the chair.

“Will you move that bucket?” she asks. “It’s making me sick.”

“Tell me about Penn Cage.”

“What about him?”

“We don'’t have time for this,” Quinn snaps. “Juice the cunt and get it over with. Give me five minutes with the lying

sleeveen.”

“Please,” she whimpers, searching for something human in the

depths of Sands’s eyes. “Please. I'’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Tim is dead. What’s the point in hiding anything?”

Sands’s eyes offer her nothing. “Penn Cage.”

“Tim went to school with him. He worshipped the guy. He called him the Eagle Scout. He said Penn was the only man he knew he could trust to do the right thing.”

“And what did he mean by ‘the right thing’?”

“Arrest you, I guess. Tim was going to steal something that could stop what’s been going on. He wouldn'’t tell me what, and I didn't want to know. I tried to talk him out of it, I swear. He was like a little boy. He had no idea what he was up against.”

“Too fucking right,” says Quinn.

“Look, I don'’t care what you’re doing. You know that. I worked one of those fights, for God’s sake. Remember? That'’s where you first really noticed me. But I didn't tell a soul what happened there. I never have!”

Sands gives her a chiding smile. “You told Timothy.”

She closes her eyes in surrender.

“How many times did he talk to the mayor?”

“Just once that I know of. Last night.”

“And he was going to meet him tonight?”

“Yes.”

Sands reaches out with the bloody bolt and touches its tip to the hollow of her neck. The cold metal alone seems to shock her. “One more question,” he says, dragging the bolt down and across her chest, stopping at her left nipple. “The most important one.”

“What?”

“Did Tim say anything about making copies of what he stole?”

“No.”

Sands circles her aureole with the head of the bolt. “Not so fast. Think about it, Linda. Tim was smarter than I gave him credit for. And a smart man would know that he might not make it off the boat with a disc. Did he mention hiding a copy anywhere?”

“No. He didn't tell me anything about a disc. He didn't want to put me in danger.”

Sands smiles. “But he did, didn't he?”

Dropping the bolt on the cart, Sands picks up one of the alligator clips. “Hold her head,” he says mildly.

Quinn moves behind the chair and locks his forearm around her neck, cutting off all air.

Sands forces open the clip, then attaches it to her upper lip, just beneath her nose. Quinn gives her neck a hard squeeze, then releases her head. Sands steps back and rubs his stubbled chin, regarding her without emotion.

“Did he ever sneak a notebook computer on board?”

“Not that I know of.”

“He never talked about trying to transmit what he stole while he was on the boat?”

“No. He didn't tell me anything like that.”

Sands lets his hand fall on a black dial atop the generator.

“Don’t,” she pleads softly. “I’'ve told you everything. If I ever meant anything to you, don'’t do this.”

“Your word’s not enough. I have to know if you’re holding back. Last chance to come clean.”

She shakes her head. “didn't I always do what you wanted? Did I ever say no?”

“No, you didn't. But you lied, Linda. It’s not that you fucked him, you understand? You’re as human as the next woman. But you tried to help him take me down.”

Her brain is transmitting a speech signal when the current hits her, scrambling every impulse in her body. She flails her head, trying to escape the blowtorch burning her lip, but it follows wherever she goes. The pain arcs up her nose to a point between her eyes, which feel as if they’ll explode if the electricity doesn’'t stop.

Then it stops.

“Pissed herself,” Quinn observes. “Should have made her go beforehand.”

Linda is sobbing in the chair, with relief that the pain has ended, with terror of the agony to come. The white dog shivers from the effort of remaining still.

“Tell me the rest,” Sands says patiently. “You don'’t want any more of that, do you?”

She shakes her head hopelessly.

“Quinn will put that clip anywhere I tell him, and he’ll run the generator all night long. He’d like nothing better.”

“Nothing,” Quinn says simply. “I think she wants the bolt, mate.”

A sharp ringing startles them all. It’s a telephone, Linda realizes, not a cellular, but a hard line. It must be lying on the floor in the corner. Quinn curses and walks to the corner, then crouches to answer the phone. After speaking softly, he hangs up and says, “They want you up in the cashier’s cage.”

Sands sniffs, then shoots his cuffs and pats the dog’s head. “Take the clip off.”

Quinn blinks in confusion. “What?”

“Get it off.”

While Quinn reluctantly obeys, Sands reaches under the top shelf of the cart and brings out a paper cup.

“Drink this,” he says, offering it to Linda.

“What is it?”

“Just drink it and be thankful.”

“Will it kill me?”

“No. It will make you sleep.”

She sniffs the cup. The clear fluid inside smells like Sprite. “Will it hurt?”

“No. It’s a drug called Versed. It’s like Valium. It’s what they give children before they sew them up in the casualty ward.”

“Casualty ward?”

“Emergency room.”

A faint memory of a kind doctor stitching her knee long ago brings fresh tears to Linda’s eyes. For some reason, she is suddenly sure the doctor was Penn Cage’s father, Tom Cage. With a silent prayer that Penn and his daughter will be all right, she nods to Sands and opens her mouth. The fluid tastes just the way it smells. Sprite, gone half-flat. She coughs as she swallows, but it all goes down. She half believes the drink will kill her, but she’s past caring. She cannot endure the clips or the bolt.

Sands walks forward and gives her a strange smile. “You gave a good ride, I'’ll say that. One of the best. Quinn’s been itching to have a go at you from the beginning. Now he’ll get his chance, I guess.”

She shakes her head slowly. “Don’t leave me with him. Please. Give me enough of that stuff to finish it. Please.”

Quinn’s eyes flash behind Sands. “Now where’s the fun in that?

Linda feels herself fading already. The hum of the generator is the brightest thing in the room.

“Where are you taking them?” Sands asks. “The farm or the island?”

“The farm. I’d just as soon stay out there tonight, if you’re okay with it?”

Sands’s voice is tight. “I don'’t care what you do with her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

That'’s it, right there,

Linda thinks. No one had ever really cared what anyone did with her. No one but Tim.

“Cunts like this run off all the time,” Quinn says. “With Jessup dead, no one would even ask what happened to her, if it weren’t for the pictures.”

“The pictures sell the story,” Sands says. “Just make sure no one finds her.”

Quinn laughs, dark and low. “Don’t worry. The lads are starving.”

A black curtain falls over the world.

Linda awakens to a cold wind on her face, a sky filled with stars. A silver moon shines down like a pitiless eye, made hazy by fog. She hears a motor, feels herself pitching like someone trying to lie on a trampoline while someone else jumps on it. She tries to brace herself, but her hands are bound with rope. Worse, they'’re numb. On the next bounce, she rolls over and retches on hard, white plastic.

Boat,

she realizes.

I'm in a boat. A

real

boat.

She looks up from the white deck. Seamus Quinn sits behind a steering wheel, the wind blowing his curly black hair wildly behind him. He grins down at her, his eyes flickering like silver points of light.

“Wakey wakey,” he says, mocking an Australian accent. “You’ve got company now, Benny lad.”

Linda turns her neck and looks behind her. Ben Li lies hog-tied on the deck behind her, a strip of duct tape over his mouth. His eyes bulge, and in them she reads a desperate plea for help. As if she could do anything. After the first few moments, he stops straining against his bonds and falls back against the deck. Ben Li graduated from a college called Cal Tech, she remembers. His parents are Chinese immigrants. Tim said Cal Tech was better than any school in the South, when it came to computers. Linda wonders if Ben Li ever imagined he would end up hog-tied in a boat in the Mississippi River.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

Quinn laughs. “You know where. To have some fun.”

“Fun for who?”

He laughs harder, then jerks the speedboat’s wheel as though to avoid an obstacle in the water. “Me first. Then the dogs.”

Linda swallows, trying to block her memory of the one night she worked a dogfight for the company. It was like stripping in Vegas after a fight. All the girls hated it. Boxing earned millions because men were drawn to violence like a drug. But dogfights took it to another level entirely….

It was as if ten thousand years of civilization had been stripped away in an hour. Every guy in the place wanted to fuck or fight, and half didn't care which. If they got you in the VIP room, they wouldn'’t take no for an answer, and if they fought, it hardly mattered who won or lost. They just craved the release.

Fighting was the only way some men could have sex with other men. Men like Quinn. Fighting or sharing a woman. That was what they really wanted, and what she’d narrowly escaped the night of the dogfight. She’d only needed one night to know she’d never go back. How many times had the drunks started chanting,

“Train! Train! Train!”

? She’d finally persuaded Sands to take her to a separate building, and she’d had to service him to get him to do that. But at least she’d escaped what the other girls got. Some had apparently done that kind of thing before, but others hadn'’t. Some had been more afraid than she was—

“I’'ve been watching you for a long time,” Quinn says. “Strutting up and down like the queen. You’ve been off-limits long enough. Tonight I'm going to find out what’s kept the boss interested for so long.”

Linda shivers and watches the moon grow fainter as the fog on the river thickens. She wishes she knew enough about the stars to know whether she’s moving upstream or down. But even if she did, the heavy mist is quickly whiting out everything around the boat.